 We're going to reconvene our meeting and shift gears to a law group of age 812, an act relating to threatened endangered species. I would like to give Representative Sakowicz an opportunity to introduce it, although it's just now rejoining us. He made it. And I would say that this bill got my attention because all of the members of this committee signed onto it. So I thought it would be worth understanding why Representative Sakowicz introduced it and walking through it with the Legislative Council. So we're ready to represent Sakowicz when you are. Okay, thank you. So given the worldwide biodiversity crisis, it might seem like it might be an aspect to look at our endangered species statutes. And so after a not very deep dive into the statutes, I found a handful of items which I thought could be updated. And just very briefly, the ones which I think are the most most significant are right now, the state does not need to update that list within any particular amount of time. And so this bill would require the state to update the list at least once every three years. Currently, the state does not have to find critical habitat for particular species. It may do so, but this bill would change that to a shall do so. Currently, there's a significant list of exceptions that would allow people to take endangered species, some of which don't really seem necessary in my opinion. And so this bill would curtail that list to really just actions that would potentially enhance the propagation or survival of the species. The last big thing that this bill would do is currently the state gives a very wide latitude to farming and forestry operations to take endangered species. And this bill would require the agency of natural resources to create rules around the taking of these species to give them some more protection. Representative Smith. I have a question. Thank you for this bill, I think. If they review it every two years, can they add and take off to this list? I believe that is the case, yes. You think it is. Michael, answer a question like that. Yeah, they do it by rule. And so they have added and subtracted. Thank you. Representative Clifford. Thank you, my chair. Bill, as you mentioned, on the farmland, so if there's an endangered species on the farmland, would like an A&R could remove it from that farmland and have the farmer be like responsible for plotting off a certain area for these to live? Potentially, I think that would be what the rules would end up describing. We'll talk about that. Okay, that's just a concern. Thanks. Yeah. So, as Representative Sack was just stated, the bill makes multiple amendments to the Threatening Environment and Endangered Species chapter in law, section one, Temusei 5402, there is a requirement that A&R list of the Threatening Endangered Species in the state. Part of that list is everything that's designated federal. So, everything designated federally endangered becomes federally endangered species in Vermont. And then the state can add to that list for those species that are endangered in Vermont, but maybe not. There is no directive for the agency to do that on any particular timeline. So, this would require them to do that on a three-year timeline. That's the first major change in the bill. The second major change relates to the designation of critical habitat. So, critical habitat, let me define that for you, means a delineated location within a geographical area occupied by a species that has the physical or biological features that are identifiable, concentrated, decisive, the survival of a population, and was necessary for conservation or recovery of the species, and may require special management considerations or protection. So, that's what critical habitat is. The agency currently is not required to designate critical habitat for any species, and you will see that provision on page three, lines two and three, and that is being struck. The language that the secretary shall not be required to designate for a habitat for every stateless species is being struck. And instead, on page two, it provides that the secretary shall adopt or amend by rule a critical habitat designation list for each threatened or endangered species. That doesn't mean that everywhere that a threatened or endangered species is located will be designated critical habitat. It's areas that are necessary for their survival will be designated. And it doesn't mean that the agency has to designate every area that is used by species as critical habitat. It's those certain areas that are critical for the proliferation of the species. And so there would be a designation for every one of the listed threatened and endangered species. Threshold that automatically makes the species eligible for being endangered and threatened. No, there isn't. Well, there's criteria. The secretary shall determine a species to be endangered if it normally occurs in the state and its continued existence as a sustainable component of the state's wildlife or wild plants is in jeopardy. Secretary shall determine a species to be threatened if it is a sustainable component of the state's wildlife or plants. It is reasonable to conclude based on available information that its numbers are declining and are less protected and will become an endangered species. And then there are further considerations, but there are no subdivisions law. Do we have a list in this state of species that are not threatened by like climate change that are expected to be just fine? That are not threatened by climate change, not that I am aware of. Because they are our best guesses. I mean, I just, yeah, it just, yeah, it occurs to me this, this could be the evidence. Should I move on? So, Representative Sackwood referenced a kind of an interesting component of the threatened endangered species law, which is also a component of the wetlands law, is that no rule adopted by A&R underneath this chapter can have an undue interference with farming or forestry operations or accepted silver cultural practices. And A&R shall not adopt rules that affect farming, forestry operation or accepted silver cultural practices. So the first reference, the first change to that on page two, line 19, in A&R's adoption of critical habitat, it doesn't have to consult with the agency of Ag for the Department of Forest and Parks in the designation of critical habitat. It will be solely based on the A&R's consideration of the criteria for critical habitat. However, on page three, they'll still consult with the agency of Ag and Forest and Parks in determining where to designate critical habitat, whether or not it's needed, but where it should be located. So no longer consulting with the agency of Ag and Forest and Parks about whether it's needed, but they continue to consult where it should be located. I mean, right now the statute says they're going to consult with AAFM for any species, not just ones that are found on. For anything that could affect farming, yes, they have to be consulted. Anything that could affect, do you know how that's been applied? Yeah, there's, it's often like kind of a prolonged and difficult process to get to a rule that the affected agencies will reach in. Representative Pat. This is just a kind of words, I just was noticing in terms of consulting, the agency of the Department of Forest and Parks is part of the agency of natural resources. Agriculture is not, so you're asked, I agree, I would hope they would consult with Forest and Parks, but the secretary of A&R is the commissioner's boss in terms of the organization itself. I wonder whether there's just a slightly different way to work. So the rest of that section is conforming changes, changing whether habitat is designated to when or where it's designated. So that's the rest of section two. Section three relates to the prohibition on taking of a threatened and endangered species. Right now, there are specific prohibitions on what you can do or how you can do something to a threatened and endangered species. You can't take possess or transport wildlife or wildlife or wild plants that are threatened or endangered. You can't destroy or adversely impact critical habitat. And then on page six, there's three new subdivisions. A couple of them are a bit of bootstrapping, but it's also something that you might want to include because of their clarity and transparency. Because right now on page five, line 18, you'll see that a person can't possess a threatened or endangered species. The way that possess is defined in statute and it includes selling and transporting and importing. So that's not really clear that possess means to sell or not to sell. And so on page six, you'll see a clear prohibition on the sale or offer for sale in intrastate commerce within Vermont of a threatened or endangered species. And then you'll see page six, line three. You can't deliver, receive, transport or ship a threatened or endangered species intrastate. And you can't import a threatened or endangered species into Vermont. Now, the Federal Endangered Species Act, implemented and enforced by the U.S. Central Wildlife Service, they already prohibit the interstate importation or sale of a federally listed species. So why would you need number five to import a threatened or endangered? Because there are state listed species that are not on the Federal List. So that's why five is there. It might look duplicative of the Federal ESA, but it is not. Because it incorporates those state listed species, not just a federally listed species. So that's an important thing to remember. There are federal prohibitions on transport of federally listed species across state lines or across national, international lines. There's this whole thing called SITES where it's incorporated into the Federal Endangered Species Act. But Vermont is going to regulate itself. It's intrastate movement. It's intrastate sale and the importation or sale into the state of the state listed species. That makes sense to everyone. Okay. So moving on to section four, as Representative Sack was referenced earlier, there are authorized for activities that are currently authorized where a person can apply to the Secretary of A&R and get a permit to take that species. And taking means many things. It means to kill it, but it also means to capture it, to keep it and to study it. And so right now you can take that animal for scientific purposes, to enhance the propagation or survival of a species for zoological exhibition for educational purposes, for non-commercial cultural or ceremonial purposes, or for special purposes consistent with the purposes of the Federal Endangered Species Act. So let's talk about a couple of these. So what the proposed change would be would to limit those authorized takings only to enhancement of the propagation or survival of a threatened or dangerous species. Federal Endangered Species Act has the same authority. You can take an animal for this purpose. They call this authority the recovery authority. It's when you need to approve it, taking the capturing or the killing, or et cetera, of that animal to basically allow for its recovery. Say it's disease and there's a disease outbreak in a population of threatened or dangerous species, then you're authorized to take that animal. Say you need to study that animal for some purpose. You can, underneath this authority, you can take that animal, capture it, study it, in order to enhance its propagation or survival. You are not just going to be allowed to take it, to study it, to see some other scientific purpose besides its propagation or survival. And it's not going to be allowed for zoological exhibition. There is the non-commercial cultural or ceremonial purposes. Now this is a little complicated because there are federal laws that allow recognized Native American tribes and recognized Native American religions to take certain parts of threatened or endangered species for the purposes of their ceremonial rights. And it usually relates to birds of prey, certain eagles, their feathers. Those federal laws have preemption provisions in them, so those rights or recognized tribes in Vermont would still receive that protection under federal law. But it's something you want to think about considering that the tribes in Vermont are not all federally recognized. So if you want to allow those tribes to use certain feathers and other parts for their ceremonies, then you might want to think about clarifying that provision. There's also something called an incidental tank. It's when you don't know for sure that you're going to take the animal, but there's a reasonable probability that you will, and that remains largely unchanged. So when you know you're going to take the animal with change, when you don't know, but there's a probability you can still get the incidental tank permit. That brings you to page eight, nine, five. This is the language about interference with agricultural or civil cultural practices. So currently, no threatened or endangered species rule shall cause undue interference with farming, forestry operations, or acceptance of civil cultural practices. And that leads to negotiations between the relevant departments and the agencies about what a TNE rule will look like. So instead of having that limitation, what the bill proposes is that the Secretary of A&R at the consultation with the Agency of Ag shall develop by rule practices that a person engaged in farming, forestry, or accepted civil cultural practices may implement, avoid, or minimize the taking of a threatened or endangered species. And that encourage critical habitat for threatened or endangered species. Senator Clifford, persons farming, and they know that there's a certain area of wetland on their farm or a certain area of vegetation that has threatened or endangered species. They could work within these rules that the agency sets to basically protect and preserve that area so that it doesn't have an impact on the species or that critical habitat. And if they do that, and there is in fact a taking of that animal or plant on page 8, line 15, they will receive a rebuttable presumption that they did not cause the taking. Because if they're complying with the rule to preserve or protect that species, and for some reason there is a taking of that animal, not by the person, they'll have a rebuttable presumption that they did not cause them. So these rules kind of flip the current practice of instead of the agency of ag having to agree what the rule is going to be and the threatened and endangered species rule. So there is no undue interference. The agency of natural resources says do this and you will get the presumption that you did not create the taking of that or plant. Oh, yeah. So, but can the ANR take that if it's a, if the say the farmer does not do that because of whatever circumstances can the secretary, can the ANR do that? Can they take it or if it's a nuisance for the farmer? And it might mean I'm not getting that clear, but can the ANR issue take it or move it? So only to enhance the propagation or survival of the species because ANR is subject to that same restriction of what they can take than any that any other member of the public is. So if there was a need to move it or to do some other conservation where they could authorize that. Thank you. But then the last change is on page nine. It's in the general permit authority lines 14 through 15 that the secretary has approved best management practices to minimize the greatest extent possible of the taking. Well, that's what they're going to do in that rule. They don't need to include in the general permit any more of these EMPs. That's what the rule is going to do. And so you don't need duplicative references to that. The act takes effect on July 1, 2024. You probably had to think about that because they had to adopt a rule. You might want to basically base in some of these because of just it's going to take time to do some of these things, like designating critical habitat for every species. You probably want to give a general schedule for when that's going to be done. Right. A number of questions are kind of ours. Thank you, Madam Chair. It's just, we went through this earlier and I was trying to think about it and I wanted to ask when we were on this point, but the critical listing the critical habitat or identifying where that is, we've taken out their former restriction where the secretary shall not be required to designate critical habitat for every state listed threatened and endangered species. So now they're going to have to. How does that work with an elusive animal? That they don't have a specific territory. And I hate to say the word catamal, but if there is such a thing and has been a that how would they identify? I don't believe the catamal is listed anymore. I think the catamal was removed from the last a few years ago. So something that that we do have that could be a the most population we keep hearing where it's diminishing or being they may come to a point where they call that an endangered species in Vermont. What how would they how would they determine where that critical habitat is or well, if it's really rare and elusive, as you said, but they have identified it, they generally have an idea where it is. And the best example I have of that are the timber wrapped things that are that are in Vermont and they don't tell anybody where they are. It's a general idea where they are, but they don't tell. They have designated that as critical habitat. All right. So that's my point is this is not going to cause any undo. There might be some like I can't remember the one bubble be that they're really sure is going to go endangered. I don't know if they could. I don't know if they know where it is. And that's that's right. That's might be something you consider and talk to the Department about the agency. Thank you for all of that. Walking us through bills. I'm going to shift gears one more time committee to money. Yeah. Money. Be safe. It has a good benefit. I left over. Next up, we're going to get just representative Tory went to the Ways and Means Committee last week to listen in on the conversation about the report and the agency of natural resources. So I thought it'd be good for us to hear how that went. It was very annoying for actually never been in Ways and Means. Yes. Julie Mark was there. And big budget in our house. This is the year 25. It's going to be 219 million, which is 26 about the current year due to increase that once. But in terms of fees, I guess it's been eight years that we've had. So it was good to hear like how many fees are there anymore. So I learned that, you know, they have permit funds. They have special funds at DC. They have funds that include ski resorts, resort areas, fish and wildlife. And Forest Parks and Wildlife DC has 300 fees. That was the most, which includes dams and safety. And the fewest, I think, were in maybe the parks. And so, you know, some good questions got asked about when were they last changed at ANR. And it looks like in 2017 after the PUC is not nearing, they had to do some updates then and, you know, some trends. Are there any trends with fees amounts going up or down? So it looks like fish and wildlife fees are starting to drop because of fewer people hunting fishing. Also, maybe more people buy the lifetime life pieces. So that affects fees. So, you know, a pretty straightforward question got asked as far as like, you know, what would be involved? How would you approach a fee bill? And, you know, there's, according to the Secretary, there's no simple equitable approach to changing fees. You use the term summer elastic and summer inelastic. And let's see what some other highlights here. Anyone from Ways and Means talk about how we used to do fee bill adjustments? No. It's very methodical and well done. Yeah. It was very rational. Hmm. Yeah. There's a three year rotation that every agency would filter. So last year it was the transportation, right? Well, we haven't had a fee bill in eight years. But some fees. Chose fees. Yeah. And I guess, Chair Rheiser said that they'll be deciding this week. What are they going to do? About A&Rs fee, whether they do a fee bill. So not to wait very long. Drop a mind over there. Great. Thanks for that. And Representative Stebbins went to the Appliations Committee on our behalf to hear about budget adjustment. I assess what questions we might write to in the past with fee bills. Agency would actually come in with a proposed fee bill. Yeah. They would generate them. Maybe just look at how it's happening. Since we haven't had one in eight years from what happened last year, the committee just had to do it itself. I do have a few. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. That's when we started. Okay. So I put together a handout to give a summary of what is being proposed in the Governor's Recommended Budget Adjustment Act. For those of you who haven't spent time in a money committee, they get two parts. They get this spreadsheet. And this is posted. They get this spreadsheet and then they have this narrative that goes with it. In some, there are like six or seven proposed changes of which at this point, it seems like, well, I'll go through them. They all seem very reasonable. But the way my brain works is I prefer to actually understand what we're talking about. So hence why you have this table. So the first item, Fish and Wildlife, it adds $655,000 for a pay class upgrade from a mixture of different funds, general funds, special funds and some federal funds. This is essentially to upgrade a pay class for various staff in Fish and Wildlife. And maybe just in terms of process, I can go through them all and give a summary. The next one is a pay class upgrade. I would imagine it's probably keeping up with cost of living. I was not able to go to approach, so I listened. And now there are questions asked. There weren't, I mean, there wasn't that. So I can follow up if that's helpful or... There are a lot of little questions that I don't have answers to, as you might imagine. Representative Sebelia. So I'm wondering about if there was a total fees raised that was discussed in ways of means. So I'm looking at this and going, okay, there's a pay class upgrade and they're cobbling together funding here for this. Where is it going to happen in the future? So is there any postponing? Were there total amount of fees being considered discussed? You're specifically interested in solid waste? No, this is Fish and Wildlife. Oh, Fish and Wildlife. Is it just Fish and Wildlife in this particular... This may be because they're... Oh, maybe. No, so this is not... I mean, this is Gabrielle working on this from 11 to 1 this morning. So let me see if it's A&R or if it's just Fish and Wildlife, because I think that's incorrect. One minute. Oh, it's not. No, it is Fish and Wildlife and it's 655,000. And as a caveat, so we have the Budget Adjustment Act where we can write a letter with our general comments, but we also have the Budget, which so we could tee things up if there are concerns like we're proposing a pay class upgrade, but then we may or may not be... We haven't had a fee bill in eight years, so we can put some of those high-level comments in our letter back to APPROPS for the BAA without necessarily saying we think it should be X. Because we do have another bite at the apple. And just for high-level, when do they want to hear back from us? Oh, yeah, I mean, they have to present on Friday. They're doing it this week, so yeah, we should... Let's keep going. So they're just looking for high-level concerns. So, recognizing... So that's something that I could put into a draft letter that everyone could skim tomorrow morning, but basically, to your comment about pay class upgrade, are we going to have a fee bill, something like that? Yeah, I can add just my notes that they have 100 different fees at Fish and Wildlife, and that comprises a third of their budget. I wonder what the intent is of not allowing fees to be raised in Fish and Wildlife, therefore trying to get rid of that department. We haven't raised them at the whole agency, which costs all of government. Get rid of all government. So next, this is related to PCV testing program in schools, an increase in the number of schools above the original estimate, and the addition of a building materials survey, which is used to define the number of indoor air samples that need to be collected, have resulted in an increase to the overall budget. So there is a proposed transfer of $3.5 million from the Solid Waste Management Assistance account of the Waste Management Assistance Fund to the Environmental Contingency Fund, or the PCV testing program. This transfer represents the additional amount needed to ensure testing in schools scheduled for sampling through July 2025. Failure to provide these funds will result in schools being responsible for testing per Act 74 of 2021 without state financial support. So when I read something like this, generally just so you know, it comes from the governor's explanation. If I recall correctly, someone asked, so what is not going to be paid for? Like what is the impact to the Waste Management Program? And if I recall correctly, I have to double check my notes, but it was not necessarily articulated in a pointed way as to what would be different. Well, we've not found it. So Public Service Department, after the July floods, the emergency board pulled $20 million from the general fund that had been set aside for the Public Service Department to set up the Business Emergency Gap Assistance Program. When the emergency board approved this transfer, they also included a requirement that the Commissioner of Finance and Management present a plan to replenish the spending authority for the PST in the fiscal year 24 Budget Adjustment Act. So that's this plan. Essentially, it's refilling the 20 million that had been earmarked by the PST for broadband funding. So it's taking it from the general fund to make sure that we fill that gap that we shifted from the Public Service Department to go to businesses after flooding. Next, we have DEC within ANR. This is adding $165,000 to continue with the assessment regarding the Green River Reservoir. So we initially appropriated $350,000. The additional $165,000 is for an analysis to evaluate structural stability, hydraulic adequacy, risk valuation of the infrastructure and alternative uses. And this is a one-time funding. The $350,000 didn't include those things. So this is to evaluate that there's been talk and discussion since it doesn't make sense for the Morseville Electric to operate this dam under environmental restrictions that the state should take it over to preserve the reservoir and everything that means. So this is an assessment towards that end. What would the cost be to the state? Okay, thank you. Well, it's additional funding for the initial assessment, but it's still on. Were they to do that? What would be involved and what are we getting ourselves into? Okay. That's my understanding. I'm speaking with my House of Props, Pierre. Thanks. Did anyone ask the original scope? Is scope expansion or this is just more expensive than we estimated? I don't think anyone asked that. This is state. Morseville Power and Light do right now. Question is, should the state and if they do keep it? So this assessment to determine whether the state should, that's the purpose. Yes, buy it. Okay. So next we have taking $120,300 from the general fund to go to the Act 250 permit fund. So I don't know if you recall when we had, so on Haskell here, she mentioned that there was a small gap in their budget. S 100 that we passed last year provided some exemptions related to utility and housing costs permits. And it resulted in $120,000 from their $120,300. So essentially, this is filling that gap as a result of that particular bill. So three years ago, the next line on MD.101, we'll see number five. The next one is that apparently three years ago, $100,000 was given to the agency or transferred. I don't know which one it was to the agency of administration to do an audit of the Clean Water Fund. Apparently no one responded to the RFP. So the funds are now going back to the Clean Water Fund. And if the next question is, so does that mean we just didn't do the audit? I was not in committee. I do not know. Thank you. The next two items. So this is related to timing of some bond issues and issuances. There are two funds. There's a Protection Projects Fund and then also a Natural Resources Projects Fund that the timing of the bond essentially meant that $1.18 million was pulled from the Protection Projects Fund and $2.12 million was pulled from the Natural Resources Projects Fund. So both of these are being brought back up to the original fund level, I guess. Via the general fund for both of those. And then if you flip over, in this narrative piece that accompanies the Excel spreadsheet, there are a couple of language changes that don't appear in the spreadsheet because they're not necessarily numerical, but they do have policy implications. So one relates to the conversation that we had last year relating to Brownfield's reuse and environmental liability and limitation act. If you recall, we discussed a lot. How there was a discussion about geographic diversity, making sure we provided support to different locations across the state. The suggested language change here is to remove the cap on the number of Brownfields for consideration. So rather than having it read, funds shall be used for the assessment and cleanup planning for a maximum of 25 Brownfield sites. The governor's recommend has language that says funds shall be used for assessment and cleanup planning of Brownfield sites. And then lastly, I believe Savannah Hospital also mentioned this that there were proposals to the NRB in which people were perhaps presenting multiple projects as one permit application fee. So there are two or three paragraphs and I only rewrote one example. There are two or three paragraphs that articulate that the fee applies to each individual permit or each individual permit application to make it more clear that if you're filing a permit application, you pay a fee for each one. And I have that in more full language if it's helpful. Any questions? I don't know why we had cap 25 on the Brownfields. Did anyone else have that? And then just on the backside, you listed the agency or division I guess or department, but these last three don't have that and they're not all NRB. And so this is the agency of administration, the next one I guess. Do you mean the back page on your front? Oh, well, bottom three don't say which department. So this is one of the things that I, I mean, I spent two years on transportation, so I saw a lot of this, but I never quite figured out when something made it here, but they didn't make it here or when something made it here and it didn't make it here. So these items, those three items at the bottom of the table on page one are listed in this, but not in this. So and I think the, I think the background is because it's essentially a transfer. So it's not really a revenue impact. So it's not necessarily a budget impact. At least that's the most that I can explain it and I could be explaining it incorrectly. Okay. I know a recollection I think on the Brownfield side, so we were trying to prevent them from getting coupled up in one or two uses, but we may have gone too far with 25 and maybe we've, you know, no, but what they want to do is go further. Yeah. So if they have 40 projects that they could give they do now $200,000 to or whatever, although this also would have the effect of allowing it all to go to max. Right. This is pretty broad flexibility. Do you know how much money is left in there? No. And that's why I was thinking maybe, I mean, appropriations hasn't raised any particular flags in my conversations with them. But more of a general, you know, what we had talked about last year, you know, the clean water fund or what we just heard about BHCB or, you know, what is the plan for, you know, in the in the budget proposal? Are we going, how are we going to make sure that these various funds are, you know, either upheld or supported and to call out some general, like, okay, so I'm just throwing this out there. We support this. We're okay with this. I mean, you can say you support it. You can say you're, you don't support it. And here's why. Or you can say we're neutral. So we could say we support it. We have these general concerns, which is, you know, we're talking about a pay class upgrade, but we don't know if there's going to be a fee bill proposal. We could also say, you know, we're okay with the solid waste management transfer, but it does make us wonder what's not being done for the budget. We'd really like to understand if you've made proposals like this, that you articulate what's not being done and what we're kicking, you know, what ball we're kicking down the road. So we could have sort of a generic letter like that. That's pretty specific and good on the things we've brought up. I love it. If you're able to do that. Okay. Don't overdo it. No, I won't. Keep it simple. Yes. Don't stay up to one doing this. That was last year. Might do that for the budget. I mean, there's nothing in here that jumps out at me. Like, oh no, that, you know, what are they doing again? There's nothing like that from a policy or, you know, significant spending level, but there are some, some questions about what if you, if you do this, I mean, I fully understand it happens all the time to borrow from one fund and it's a good thing when they repay it. But nothing's jumping out of me. It's like, what are they, what are they, that they're somehow setting a policy or eliminating programs or anything like that. But those are good questions. I think we can ask it at a high level. Yeah, I would just note in the PSD section that I believe it should say anticipate receiving a large program. Sure, I can change that. I probably should have written draft on this document, but consider it done. Thank you. All right, members, I think that completes our work for the day. So with that, we will adjourn.