 Hello. Welcome to Vermont Statehouse Headliners. My name is Guy Page. I'm the host and producer of this show. This is our first show. Headliners is all about letting people know about the bills that are in the Vermont Statehouse. I've been a lobbyist and a journalist and I've written a lot about the legislature, but I realized that a lot of people don't know, maybe don't really care, doesn't make a lot of sense sometimes what they read in the paper or they hear in the news. So I figured I would just run off a list of the bills that have been introduced into the Vermont Statehouse this year, and we'd talk about some of them. A little bit about myself. I live in Berlin, Vermont native, married, three adopted children, like to go walking on Berlin Pond. I'm a Berlin JP. And by the way, is it Berlin or Berlin? I've heard different things from people who are born and raised here. So some of you have any insight into that. I would welcome hearing it. You should be seeing my email address somewhere in the screen, and I welcome any input, including how to pronounce the name of the town that I live in, but also on the legislation that comes up. And if you want to receive our daily column that we produce for Vermont Statehouse Headliners, please just send along a request by email, and we'd be glad to add you to the list. It's completely free. Yeah. Okay. So let's get going. Bill H-113 would expand the beverage container deposit redemption system. Right now it's just, you know, beer and soda pretty much. Well, this would add water bottles, wine bottles, containers for all non-carbonated and carbonated drinks, except for milk, rice milk, soy milk, almond milk, hemp seed milk. I didn't know there was a hemp seed milk, and dairy products. I did a little bit of research on why people are foreign again. One of the concerns I hear is that the back in the day when these laws were passed, there was a real problem of ditches just being full of containers and known as recycling anything back then. But now the argument goes, well, a lot of people just sort of recycle naturally because we've been kind of trained to it. And so maybe it's not quite as necessary, they say. And it's kind of cumbersome and it's expensive. And I will say that last fall I was walking a lot around the street, the roads of Berlin and Barry and Montpelier, and I picked up 1,600 bottles and cans. And most of them were, well, actually Bud Light was definitely the most popular brand. But a lot of beer, a lot of soda. But there were quite a few non-returnables. There's certain kinds of hard cider, believe it or not. I never realized, but this hard cider you can buy? No, you don't get your nickel back on that one. So there's definitely, you might say people are maybe more likely to throw these away if they don't get their nickel back. So take all that for what it's worth. I also know that the businesses, the stores, convenience stores, they're very willing to help out in this. I would describe to them all the containers I was finding and they'd say, look, anything we can do to make our roads cleaner and safer to be on, just let us know. So that's one bill. H111, this is an interesting one, creates a woman's health stabilization fund to support Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and offset any decrease in the amount of federal funding received in fiscal year 2019. Money's deposited into the fund shall comprise revenues from attacks imposed on manufacturers of erectile dysfunction drugs. That's Representative Mike Marwicky from the southern part of the state. And I guess the idea there is that if the federal government decides to reduce any funding for New England's Planned Parenthood organization, he's saying it should be offset with a tax on ED drugs. Now all of these bills, they've just been introduced into the Vermont House. Once they're introduced, they get sent to a committee. And there's nothing that says that that committee has to then take it up, look at it, study it, pass it along for another vote by the House and then have it move over to the Senate. No, it can just hang out on the wall as they say. It's up on the wall. And that means the committee hasn't discussed yet and a lot of bills at the end of the session, which is usually four or five months long, they're still up on the wall. So there's no rule of law that says that just because a bill is introduced it's going to become law. In fact, most of them don't. Picture those little turtles in their thousands trying to get into the sea and only a few of them make it. That is kind of what it's like with bills in the legislature. Maybe, I don't know, one in 50? Something like that. One in 50, one in 20 actually make it. So another bill, H110 would eliminate strikes and imposed terms in connection with collective bargaining for teachers and school administrators contracts. So the school strike because they don't like the proposed contract, that would be out. I'm not really sure what the thinking behind that is. I know there are some people who believe that schools belong somewhat in the same category as police and fire and public transit and other groups of workers who are not allowed to strike but receive other benefits. So of interest to all Vermonters, but especially Montpelier residents, I think H109 Dewey Day. This Dewey Day, this H109 would designate October 12th every year as Dewey Day after U.S. Admiral George Dewey. The only person to attain the rank of Admiral of the U.S. Navy was born and raised in Montpelier. He was a renowned U.S. Navy hero whose military leadership resulted in the destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. The original Dewey Day celebration occurred in Montpelier on October 12th, 1899. And in recent years, there's been an attempt to kind of bring that back. I do know a little bit about George Dewey. When I'm giving tours of the State House, I like to tell groups of children that as a boy, George Dewey would stand at the top of the steps of the State House, blindfold himself, and then run as fast as he could down the steps and out across the street to his father's house. His father being Julius Dewey, the founder of National Life. So a wild kid, this young George Dewey. But sometimes a wild kid grows up into being a courageous man. Lieutenant Commander Dewey in the Civil War was aboard a ship that was sinking and the captain had ordered a abandoned ship. But there were four men stuck below decks on a burning ship and Lieutenant Commander Dewey went down below decks on that burning sinking ship and rescued those four men. So maybe the wild kid became the brave man who became really Vermont's most famous naval officer. Okay. On a more contemporary vein, H-103 would restructure drug possession laws to make possession of marijuana, cocaine, LSD, heroin and other illegal drugs a misdemeanor. That's right. Possession of coke, LSD, heroin, other hard drugs a misdemeanor while keeping possession with intent to sell as a felony. So this is the, it's not just marijuana anymore move in the Vermont Statehouse where other drugs, harder drugs, most people considered to be more serious addictive drugs are now being proposed to be moved into just a misdemeanor. So the process of the decriminalization now of the harder drugs has begun. And that has been proposed by most of the members of the House Judiciary Committee. Now House Judiciary is a very interesting committee, has a lot of Chittenden County people on it and they are generally very motivated to do a lot of the more, what are considered to be the more progressive things. Marijuana, some of the immigration legislation, it often comes out of judiciary and Berlin's own legislator in Northfields, Ken Goslin is on that committee. So I hope at some point on a future show to give him a call and he can give us a sort of an update on what his committee is doing. A similar law built by also by judiciary legislators would limit drug related criminal liability and civil forfeiture. In other words, we take your car because it had drugs in it. Civil forfeiture actions against persons associated with an approved safer drug consumption program. So if there's a part of this program that says, well, they were using or possessing a safer drug, then the forfeiture and the criminal liability would be limited. So again, it's all part of this trend to reduce the criminal aspect of drug possession in Vermont. H99 would ban the sale of protected animal parts or products. So that's a rhino and elephant. If you happen to, someone in your neighborhood says, hey, I've got a great rhino horn for sale. I'll give you a good deal. That would be against the law. H91, this comes to the contentious issue of the carbon tax or carbon taxation. H91 would enable Vermont to participate in a multi-state cap and trade program for greenhouse gas emissions caused by transportation, heating, cooling, and ventilation. A cap and trade program, to put it really simply, you put, say, nine or 10 states together. And the states that are producing the most greenhouse gas emissions have to pay the states that aren't. So Vermont is actually part of a cap and trade system right now for electricity generators. And of course, Vermont, we don't have any smokestacks or very, very, very few smokestacks for power companies. We don't have any coal plants, very little in the way of fossil fuel electricity generation. So we do really, really well. We make like a million bucks a year from these other states combined about that. And that money goes into our energy efficiency, efficiency of Vermont, weatherization. Now, the problem here is that this talks about transportation. Well, and on transportation, Vermont actually has the highest percentage of greenhouse gas emissions for transportation of any of the other northeastern states who would be part of this multi-state thing. So we would end up paying, it seems, common sense would say, we would be likely to end up paying them. There'll be some sort of fear taxation on you as the driver, as the homeowner heating fuel, propane. You would be paying extra because so New Jersey or some other state in the northeast does really well in this area, and you'd be paying them. The whole idea, of course, is to get everyone to use less. So it's kind of a sort of a force prevention, raise the cost, maybe people use less. Now, here's the problem with that. Let's say that home heating oil becomes too expensive for people to use. Now, in Vermont in July 1, we started using really clean heating oil. It's called an OSHO, an ultra-low sulfur. As of July 1 this year, all heating oil sold in Vermont has like almost no particulate matter, very little. Really, really clean stuff. If suddenly that becomes too expensive or discouraged, what are most homeowners going to do? Well, some folks will get a nice pellet system or a heat pump. Yeah, that'd be great. That'd be great for the environment. A lot of other people, though, are going to use their wood stove. They're maybe not quite so energy efficient and clean wood stove. So we have to think about the real world consequences of putting a big tax on fossil fuels. What will Vermonters do if we do that? Oh, there's a Trump bill here. H88, an act relating to requiring a presidential candidate to disclose federal tax returns in order to be placed on the presidential primary and general election ballots. I think they're talking about President Trump there. They want to see his tax returns. Don't know if that'll pass. Don't know how effective it would be if it did pass. But that does tell you there are some legislators there who want to see those tax returns. H90, this is about hunting and guns and gun safety. Requires the Department of Fish and Wildlife to assist public and independent schools interested in offering hunter education courses. Which sounds pretty straightforward, right? What could be wrong with Fish and Wildlife and other gun experts teaching hunter safety to children who want to learn? I was overhearing a conversation yesterday where apparently there are legislators who do not like that idea. Who do not want either private groups or Fish and Wildlife to be coming into schools and teaching about gun safety. It's not that they don't like safety. They're all for safety. It's the gun part that they don't like. And so we'll see where this bill goes and in future editions of Vermont State House headliners. I'll try to follow that bill and other gun safety bills. H81 defines milk as, quote, the pure lactial secretion of doved animals. Of course we make a lot of milk in Vermont, so this is important. And I think there's some concern maybe that they're calling almond milk milk and hemp seed milk milk. And so they want to get a little distance between good old Vermont milk and these other products. I did have one of my readers respond with the question, what would the savants in the state house have us call the fluid produced by lactating mothers, those without cloven hooves? That's a good question. What would we call breast milk then? Anyway, H80 authorizes a gun suppressor, a silencer while hunting and provides hearing protection for persons while hunting. And this is an interesting bill in that the sponsors for this bill, there is a doctor who is very concerned about hearing loss. And there is a strong supporter of gun rights and hunting rights. And they have gotten together. I think these two individuals probably don't often vote together on things or work together on legislation. But on this one, they found common cause. And that does happen sometimes in the legislature where opposites attract and they come together over an issue and they work together. And this would be one of those bills. Act 46, there are about six bills regarding Act 46. That's the forced school district merger law. Act, Bill 78 would place a moratorium on school district mergers ordered by the state board of education until these legal issues are rejudicated. As you may know, Act 46 is facing a legal challenge in Vermont courts. The plaintiffs are very concerned that towns are being forced to close schools, to sell schools, sell school property. Also take on debt of less financially strong districts that they've been forced into a merger to. And just the whole imposition of this by the state board. And they're concerned that the law perhaps wasn't very clear on the state board having the authority to impose consolidation as much as it is doing. And they're very concerned that once the financial funds of school districts are merged and their investments are merged and their accounts receivable and everything all merged, as one lawyer said, it's going to be a real rat's nest to straighten out. So they want that moratorium because that day of required mergers is coming very soon. I think it's July 1 of this year. And they want more time to work on this and straighten it out. Plastics, for those of us of a certain age who enjoyed the movie The Graduate. One of the key lines there is the hero of the story has someone come up to him and says, my boy, just remember one word, plastics. And back then it was sort of like a good thing. You want to get into the plastics industry. There's a bunch of plastic bills introduced into this legislature and none of them like plastics. It's mostly they're really concerned about plastic getting into the waste stream. For example, H74 would prohibit restaurants from providing carry out bags, plastic carry out bags, expanded polystyrene food service products, and plastic straws. These would be banned under H74. A local bill, Representative Tommy Walts of Barrie, has H73 to approve amendments to the charter of the city of Barrie. The way that works is the city votes on something, say at the previous city meeting, and then the legislature has to approve or not approve those proposed charter amendments. That's just how our government works, that a municipal charter change needs to be approved by the legislature. So for you Barrie residents, we'll be watching that. H53 would establish the crime of disturbing the legislature with punishment of fine and or jail. We've had some protesters coming into the House of Representatives and yelling and carrying on and perhaps requiring more security, and the legislators don't like that. And so there is this bill that would say, you do that, you're going to pay a fine or do the time. From Barrie Town, you have Representatives Rob LeClaire and Topper McFawn, another charter change that would add gender inclusive language for town officers to the charter of the town of Barrie. All of these, by the way, you can look up on the Vermont General Assembly website. Just Google Vermont Legislature and up it will come. It's quite user friendly, and you can learn almost everything that you've heard is available on the website. It's had a pretty tough January, right? A lot of snow, a lot of ice. Maybe this is where this one's coming from. H65 requires removal of snow and ice from vehicles operated on public highways. So you people who just turn on the car, clean off the windshield a little bit and go racing off and you're a blizzard for the first two miles for the people behind you. This law passes, you might get pulled over for that. H68 provides up to two consecutive hours of paid leave so that employees may vote in primary and general elections held in Vermont and on Town Meeting Day. Interesting idea. A lot of people say, hey, we don't have time to go voting. The employers are saying, wow, actually you can usually get there before or after. It's not like the lines are all that long for most elections. The sponsor for this is Representative Nadir Hashim, who is the first state trooper, currently employed state trooper to be elected to the legislature. He's out of Westminster down over by the Connecticut River. Another plastic bill. H50 requires that when a person installs a buoy, dock or floating structure on state waters, expanded polystyrene flotation foam shall be encapsulated by protective covering or shall be designed to prevent foam from disintegrating into the water. It would also prohibit nearby sail, like out of Marina, of non-encapsulated polystyrene foam products. So those white styrofoam bumpers, no. Those would go under this bill. I've talked some about gun control. This bill, H49, is about knife control or saying no knife control. This would prohibit municipalities from passing any ordinance or about possession, ownership, sale, carrying of a knife. So it's trying to carve out some knife rights there. Representative Pat Brennan from Colchester. H48 would raise the tax rate by $1.25 on a pack of cigarettes. Representative George Till, the doctor from Underhill. For those of you who are interested in sports betting, a young legislator would create a sports betting study committee to examine legalizing, regulating, and taxing sports betting, and to prepare legislation that would provide for gradual legalization. Back on the highway, this H38 would authorize primary enforcement of the adult safety belt law. Right now, a cop can't just look at you and say, you don't have your seat belt on. If you're driving by, he can't stop you just for that. He needs to stop you for something else and that if he happens to see that you don't have your seat belt on, he can give you a ticket, click it or ticket. What this law would do is if at any point the police officer notices that you don't have a seat belt on, he can ticket you. Another plastic bill, H33, would charge $0.10 for each disposable carryout bag used by a person for carrying goods, food, or other products. Well, I see that we are out of time. Got plenty more to talk about next week. We'll talk about some more bills and maybe some progress on some of these other ones. Hope it's been interesting. I would appreciate your feedback. Thank you very much.