 I know Becca is doing some majority leader work and will be in shortly. Somebody is going to get green paper for her to send out. And would you like to send it again on white paper? It's okay. I'll send the next one. I won't do anything to do that. Sheila, why don't you come up to the conference and we'll get started. Did you text them that we're starting? I did. I did announce it five minutes ago. Okay. We actually do have a break schedule in here today because of scheduling. Most of time for that. I can't read. Okay. So we're going to start this is the exposure to radio frequency usually known as 5G report. I don't think we asked for it. Did we ask for this report? We asked for it. We asked for it. Okay. We did. Okay. Act 79. Act 79. All right. So we are going to start. Hello everyone. My name is Sheila Livingston. I'm a policy advisor at the Department of Health. And what I'm going to do today is walk you through the reports that we submit to you on January 1st. And then of course take questions. If at any point I don't have an answer to your question, I will be sure to write it down and get back to you. There's many different people at the Health Department contributed to this report. Is that what you're looking for today? Yes. I'm a teacher. Great. So the Health Department went through recent literature and studies and regulations in order to compile this. So I want to be very clear that we did not do any of our own research. We do not do research at the Department of Health. But we compiled the information from the scientific body of literature that exists already. The request for the report was to look into radio frequency radiation generally. And then also to look at 5G being the most recent iteration of the cellular network that will theoretically become available. And I think we asked you to do a similar report when we were doing smart meters. Correct. Years ago. That is correct. And this is exactly what I was going to say, which is that there is even more information in the previous report. For additional background information, we completed the smart meters. It's very similar to this. Previous, I think about five years ago. So I'll start by saying, when you're thinking about radio frequency radiation, there is a spectrum. And radio waves like that that you get on your hand, like on radio or on women, end of the gamma rays are way on the other. And if you're looking at the report on page four, you can sort of see that as you go higher from radio waves up towards gamma rays, the waves get small. Along that, you've got microwaves, you have infrared radiation, you have visible light, and then you have x-rays. So this is going to be important as we start to talk about the difference between 2G, 3G, and 5G. And what is interesting is as you go up the Gs, the wavelengths change. So I just want to make sure everybody understands that as I begin talking. So in the start of talking generally about radio frequency radiation, the only consistently proven negative health effects from radio frequency radiation is heat and heating. So much like you heat your food in a microwave using radio frequency radiation, the types of radio frequency radiation we're exposed to are at a lower level. So you're not going to heat it like your food in the microwave. That's a similar concept. And this is the people who are at most at risk for this are individuals who work in the field. So they're close to transmitters. And that's what the FCC designates regulations about how close you can get and what kind of protections you need if you're going to be very close to one of these really high-powered transmitters. Your skin, your tissue can actually be heated by the radio frequency and potentially burned. And so that is the only proven well-known, well-established health implication. And that is what the FCC regulations address currently. Moving on. Cancer from RMR exposure has been extensively studied in lab and epidemiological studies. And the results from these studies do provide some evidence that are far as associated with cancer in animals and humans. But more studies are needed to understand how that works. So right now there is not a known biological mechanism for how that would actually happen. And so that's a really important part of us understanding how anything would cause a cancer is having a plausible biological mechanism. And I'll get into that a little bit deeper in a few minutes. 5G wireless is different from other RFR in that it does not penetrate the human skin. So it's potentially different than 2G or 3G. And if you've read about 5G, one of the issues is that there's going to need to be more transmitters. And the reason for that is that 5G does not penetrate walls or buildings and similarly does not penetrate the human body. So again, it's a slightly different technology. It's going to behave slightly differently. So when we were looking at smart meters, the concern was the rays would penetrate into the house, into people's living space. 5G is different than that. It won't penetrate through the walls of your house. So 5G is different. I'm not going to say it won't penetrate the walls, but it does not do that as well. So 2G does that to a much greater extent, for example, than 5G would. But we know it does not actually penetrate human skin. So I think from the health, and I'm going to talk about the structural elements because I know that less, but from the health perspective, that's the most important part. That was the other, if we keep talking on our cell phones, it would cause brain cancer. This is a better... Can't say better. No, it's a different trick. So the Federal Communications Commission is the entity that regulates the occupational health. This is really where we're most concerned right now about exposure. They regulate occupational health requirements, and they just recently actually, while we were writing this report, reaffirmed their permissible exposure limits, and that was on December 4th of 2019. So they just put out a report saying from their perspective, from the available evidence, that their current limits are still good enough to protect human health. So I just want to put that out there for folks. So I'm going to get into a little bit more of the science and the background unless the committee wants me to sort of move on from thermal effects. And if you have more questions from the committee. Okay, all right. Well, sorry, man. So again, and I thought this was going to be a few minutes late. So again, just to reiterate, there are some radio frequencies or other things on the electromagnetic spectrum that people are using today that do penetrate the skin. And 5G says 5G. So I'm going to, right now, if you're following along with the report, I'm on page 5. And I'm just going to talk a little bit more about the carcinogenic, chemical carcinogenic effects on it. One other question. Oh, sorry. You have one. Senator Campion now supports the question for me. So it doesn't penetrate the skin. Can I assume, like, how do we expect, how does the technology work inside a building or a car where everybody's using their mobile phones through the window? Okay, we're going to go outside my area of expertise really quickly. All I can tell you, Senator, is I know that they need many more transmitters than. So it's a very different setup than what we are used to right now. So with 3G and 4G, you have the towers, you have these big transmitters. And with 5G, my understanding is that there will need to be, it's more like wireless. You know, in my mind, I'm thinking about it more like wireless. Not much I got. But that still doesn't solve, if it doesn't penetrate in the same way that the bigger technology does, how do we, there is a way that this technology works inside a building, clearly. Yep. Yep. I think it does, I mean, I think it does penetrate to some extent. And again, I don't want to speak to the... Yeah, we may need, we can have somebody from the industry come in and present the body. I can just tell you that part of it. Sorry. So in, when you're doing research with person agents, there's two very large categories, and I'm sure you all know this, but there's the laboratories into the animals, and then there's epidemiological studies. So that would be, you know, how public health normally does this type of work, is to look at the human, you know, the epi studies, so human behavior, and then the human response, but there are also toxicological studies that we look at when we are examining this type of issue and exposure. So based on the available evidence from 2G and 3G wireless telecommunication RFR, it is reasonable to conclude that high levels of RFR from cell phones could be harmful to humans when they're exposed for very long periods of time for their whole life. And then also... Sorry, one second. But again, those studies have not been done for 5G, so we're not sure we can translate that or tell you about 5G based on the... And I also assume that we haven't exposed humans to high doses of RFR for long periods of time for their whole life. So, right, so you're getting to one of my points that I'm going to make, and I'm going to pull you all down a little bit into the appendices. So I am now on page 9, bottom of page 9. So the reason that toxicological studies are so important is that no, no one would do that. No one would expose somebody to something that could be harmful to them for long periods of time. So when the National Toxicological Program did this work with wireless, and again, I want to clarify it was with 2G and 3G, so it was not with 5G, they did find some evidence that it caused cancer. And it was a specific type of cancer and only for males. So if you... Male, male, monthly. Get off the cell phone. No comment? Okay, so the NTP studies, when they classified their evidence, they have different categories of evidence, and they did find clear evidence of tumors in the hearts of male rats exposed to RFR. And then they found some evidence of tumors in the brains of male rats exposed to RFR. So I want to make clear that these rats were exposed for much longer periods of time and at much higher doses than most humans are exposed to. And it's not clear from these studies, since it was only the male rats, why that would be. So we still do not have this biological plausibility reason for why it would only be males or why it would actually cause these cancers. But, that said, they did find this evidence and it was important to note that. We... When you say that they're exposed much more than humans, but even in places in Vermont where we struggle with cell service, you know, there are... How is that different, I guess? If you're walking around, you're not using your phone, but if your phone is in your pocket, it's sort of transmitting. So can you just help us understand that? I mean, is there a difference between being on your phone and having it on your body? Or is there a difference of not even having a phone and walking down the street when there's cell towers or what? Sure, so let's scroll up a little bit. Let's do this to everyone, but page six. So we do... Because there is this possibility of carcinogenic effects, there are recommendations for how you can reduce your exposure right now. And when you look at this, one really important thing to think about with radiofrequency is that the distances between... the distance that it takes for something to be really intense and then to dissipate, obviously depends on the transmitter and which transmitter that is, but if your cell phone is pressed up against your head versus your cell phone on the table, that's actually a very important distinction for exposure. That changes depending on what we're talking about. But to your question for a cell phone specifically, if it's on the table, my level of exposure will be much lower than if it is pressed if I've got it. Like I do all the time, right? That's going to be a much higher level of exposure comparatively to it being literally a foot away on the table. If you are looking to reduce your own personal exposure, there are ways to do that. And obviously the main ones are to not be on the phone as much and to have it a little bit further away from your body to use headphones that connect to the phone, to see you turn off your wireless features when you're not using them, that includes split tooth and also to look at the cell phone that you have because there are cell phones that are lower level emissions than others. So does that answer your question? I think in terms of the levels that the rats were exposed to, no human would be exposed to that level. There's not a scenario where that's plausible unless there wasn't some horrible work accident. But again, they wouldn't be exposed to it for their whole life that way. But these studies again are all on the 2G and 3G, which do penetrate skin. The 5G does not. So we don't know at this point. It's probably too late to have done anything. Right. And so that's one of the things that we know in the report under the 5G section, which is on page 5, is that in order to be able to tell you more, there needs to be more research on 5G specifically. Scrolling down a little bit, regulation, the report was requested that we discuss the regulation. So again, RFR is regulated by the FCC and they did just re-state that their current levels are sufficient to protect human health. We know in our report that the two large bulletins that they have about biological health and health effects are fairly old and probably could use updating as well. So we link to those in case you're interested in those. That's all. How you happy? Exactly so. Reading the executive survey in the last bullet says the FCC regulations are permissible exposures that are to be able to state regulations apart. Does that mean if we had concerns, we'd be unable to do anything more than what the FCC was doing? So I'm going to look a little bit to the Ledge Council. Maybe we'll have, is that, Maria, is that? It's probably more Ellen. I can speak a little bit, but this is something that came up. But that's what we've been told. That's what we've been citing in the federal direction of environmental effects. Right. That's my understanding, but that's definitely not my expertise. It has to end on. I know that's what I've been told every time we've asked in years that this, we cannot ban it, we cannot regulate it like, or limit it, I guess, limited. There are potential types of regulations, but with respect to citing. We can do cycle. Under Title 47, there is a specific preemption related to the preemptive state from regulating based on the environmental effects. And my understanding is if you tried to regulate using your authority to do citing, but if the underlying purpose was a health issue that would be preempted. Okay. So it's been a while since I've looked at this. Okay. That has been my understanding whenever I've asked because this is not the first time that this concern has come up. I know smart meters was the last major kind of expansion that we looked at. We were told the same thing that we really don't have ability to stop it or limit it or do much of anything except advise people how to limit their exposure. But it would seem that something that doesn't penetrate your skin other than if you get too close you'll get burnt or too much. You might get burnt. It's very different. It could potentially be a different one. Yeah. I don't know. We don't know that. We don't know it, but that's right. But it is a different. We can't just say this is more. Right. We can't extrapolate it from one to the other. Okay. Just a question. The evidence that you're referring to here largely refers to things like cell phone coverage and the bands that are the 3G or 4G bands. And have you, is there any study that you're aware that has found any adverse effect with 5G? Yeah. So in our little section on 5G, the only 5, again, the body of literature is very small. We want to be clear about that. But the studies that do exist did find just that this technology does not penetrate the skin and that the only known health effects in those studies were from excessive heating of the eyes. And were there a lot of studies that attempted to find out whether 5G represents health risk? No. There have not been any studies. Is there any jurisdiction banned in 5G? I don't think so. Are there different levels of 5G that's further like low, medium, high? Right. Right. So that's a level of nuance that we're definitely not able to speak to yet. But you're right. There are different. It is not like 4G where there's just one type. If there are different, there's a technical term that I'm not going to break. Grades are a lot larger. Is there a level of health effects that's potentially a little hard to say? We don't know. Probably. Probably soon. I don't want to fall around this very soon without knowing exactly what the health effects are. Probably aren't a whole lot of studies. All the chemicals. But we're such a contagious society that I think accompanies me. Welcome to America. Yeah. Make your mind and face the wall. Make your mind and face the wall. Right. Watch your fire retardants in the furniture. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions for Shayla? It's really helpful. It is. It's really helpful. Sorry. We can do more. No. I think, you know, we asked because the concern came up. I think the hard thing is even if you came in and said, you know, it's going to cause everybody's head to balloon up. Yeah. That there's very little we can do about it. This is federal. Yeah. This is federal domain. So we're going to... We are permitted, as Raymond says, not for health reasons, but to regulate siting. Yes. And the technology depends on below the other sites than on many, many more sites. So that is an interesting airplane. Yeah. So we can use that as a big leaf to deal with the health issue. Right. I mean, yes. Yeah. But I checked this last year because the concern was that infrastructure was going up and it could just be turned on and there would be no public input or knowledge or discussion. And when I asked, I don't know if it was the public service department, but when I asked, I was told, you've got something on a pole. But in order to do 5G, you need a box on the ground and that would require a siting permit. You can't just go and say, I've got a permit to hang a 4G or a 2G up there and I can just switch that out for five and it's the same. That there is actual something that needs to go and would need a public hearing. So people will be aware when something is going in and because it needs so many. I think we've also heard that to become, it would probably be the one place that it will hit. It might hit some of the larger cities like Montpelier. So Chicken County Mills. Yes. But I can sell you some private real estate in Washington. That's a better method. Maybe you covered the setup. Sorry, I was a couple of minutes late. But I have traveled a little bit since we last had this conversation and noticed 5GE on my, it'll pop up on my phone. And I've kind of assumed that, because I think you need a new phone to use 5GE. But do you have any sense of what that is? Is that just a marketing thing? I don't know. It's always been a big, basic thing. Not big for months, but real cities. And I'm assuming they're just getting ready. I think we're creating the desire for it. So when it comes. 5GE ready. Yeah. We'll be ready. Okay. Before a G-Phone, you wouldn't have to worry about it. What's that? It's always here for me. Okay. Committee. We've got some down time. So I've got a couple things. We never confirmed the tax commission. Someone asked about a background check. I did get a letter back from the tax department. And they said, as a matter of course, they do not do background checks. Thank you for checking that out. But you did check it. But in this case, won't you read it? This is the governor's appointment. It's his responsibility. We have no reason. This man worked in Vermont in the tax department for something like 20 years. So before everybody leaves, Senator Campion. I would like to do that. The other thing, we have all the studies. And I've got one, two. Okay. I've got two, three reports of the people. That one's got four. I'll give you one with X's. Yeah. You've got X's. I think the only thing I'm seeing that has nothing on it is the last report. I'll go over these closely, which is the report on resources made available for the Vermont Enterprise Fund. I think. Is that still around? You wanted that? No. I said, is that still around? Is there money in that? I have no idea. I don't even know what it is. Is there one next door? I won't say how I'm portrayed in the morning. But it was a gun or something. It rhymes with shush. All right. That's what I thought it was. I wouldn't be surprised. Well, maybe we should find out where that report is and find out if there's any money. And what, that sounds like it might hit your committee more than mine. So do you want to find out if there's any money in it and then we'll tell them to cancel the report? Okay. I'll find out. I think there's, I can't believe there's any money left, but I'll ask. If there's any money left. It's like eight years ago, 10 years ago. And they gave most of it an idea. Okay. All right. All right. Now, I'm remembering. Now it's coming back. Yes. Okay. Yeah, we should. But four of them are left. Yes. Everybody's left. All right. I've got all but one of you. I've got a motion to a point. So confirm. All right. I've got a motion to confirm Craig Bolio. As the commissioner of taxes. From December 18, 2019 to February 28, 2021. Until successors be awarded. Further discussion. It's not all those in favor say aye. Opposed. Say no. I'm going to hold that open for Senator Brock since he was the one that asked for the background check. And he was here when we started, but I'll let him vote because I'd like to get into this or if he wants to say wasn't here, that's good. That's a commissioner. So I do it. And I will do it. We do not have another witness until 2.45. Because Tom Covet is in high demand. I might take it. This will be my third time going through the revenue. So maybe else. Maybe after another. I know to see you. Yeah. Welcome. The first two committees ran late and I try to catch up. Anyway. So everybody has a copy of this. This is not an earth shaking forecast. This is a modest mid course correction. When you add up all the all the three funds that are involved, you get about 23 million more dollars than we expected in July. That's about 1%. A lot of it is just technical adjustments based on new taxes. Some of these e-commerce taxes, vaping tax and things like that. Not only of actual receipts, we have some hard data and revised and adjusted numbers. And when you add it all up, that's the net effect of what you get. So. Who are you? Pardon? Who are you? I think we need you to just introduce yourself. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Tom Covet. He just swept right in. I've been doing this all day. I've been doing this all day. I got a message from the last meeting. Santa Finance is waiting. This is my, yeah. Different number of each committee. Yes, I do. See if they remember that. And then if they do, I'll know who's questions. Just give us the real numbers. Tell me what numbers you want. See what we can do. So anyway. I just wanted to do Q&A. Is there anything in this that you want to get into in more depth? The presentations on the emergency board are pretty superficial. Just a broad brush. And there are issues that you sometimes have to deal with. They're much more granular. And there might be revenue issues that you'd want to get into. We just got this sort of, yeah. I had a question about some of these tax. Do you know anything about any structural changes with short term rentals? Do the Airbnb contract where they collected? But it's supposed to be doing that for the Airbnb. The next thing is, don't you also pass a law that I don't know whether it may be that contract you have, you know, unnecessary or not. But I don't know whether they're collecting that large sum of taxes. Do you think they're directly to the state or are they just still in the agency? No. So Airbnb has been remitting and collecting for a while. As of September, we started getting home away and, well, actually, they're both home-like. And then Expedia is reporting separately for travel agency-related revenues, not short-term home stays. So we didn't sign a contract for the home away of the Airbnb. The law took care of that. Now we're getting one check from each of those entities for all there. Yeah, so the home away includes the VRBO. And then Expedia does a separate one for their online travel agency work. And then Airbnb's... And is that on the market for moving forward? No. The Airbnb in the home state part has been great, very solid and a growing phenomenon. So that's good. The estimates that were made, and again, it's very hard for tax-sorturing fiscal to make estimates for things that haven't really been taxed before. And so they use other states' things and all the rest, but that turned out to be a lot lower than expected. So the travel agency fees are just a part. So the hotels, they're making reservations. The hotels have always been remitting themselves for that. So Expedia's not remitting that part of it. It's just they're part of the profit for the travel agency. I guess I was more interested in the short-term rentals on the VRBO platform. So we only have a quarter of data since they came in in September. And even Airbnb took a long time to kind of ramp up. If you look at the early numbers, there's like this extraordinary growth. What wasn't that they were growing at that rate is they were starting to comply at that rate. And so I'm not sure if we're into sort of complete compliance, covering everything, or if it is, I would say it's on the low side, but I think we have to give it more time. Yeah. And that was supposed to start in July, but as I understood, there was some issue and it was a negotiated start date that they ended up with. But going forward, we'll be getting that revenue. And it's boy, it's been the e-commerce revenue and sales and use and meals and rooms has been phenomenal. It's really a big chunk and it's growing at incredible rates. And we can break it out now with tax, the way tax generates the information so we can really understand it. But that's been impressive. The sales and use numbers, you know, we've had Amazon, but with the Wayfair decision, we're getting almost 1,900 new vendors that we got as part of that. And even though there's a handful that are paying most of it, still it's a loss coming in and you can tell that early on there wasn't 100% compliance because it's also ramping up. And it's just a big chunk of money and, you know, had been out of the tax base. That was why sales and use have been growing so slowly now. So that's been important to have. Yeah, what are the new taxes? Oh, the best, you know, or the worst good revenue news we have is the vaping tax. Turns out to be about four times the size of the market that had been expected. So, you know, that gives you an idea of a public health issue. But, you know, there's $3 million instead of $800,000 in revenue, we'll probably get through. So it's too bad. But anyway, that's part of the healthcare fund section. It got a little bit of a bump. Well, it just makes it harder for us to pay them, right? Well, on the one hand, it's harder on the other hand, even more imperative that, you know, because when you look at the public health costs and the health and life kind of costs and the poor folks that are, you know, tied to that, it's just, you know, anyway, it's quite a market. How much of that, you know, we also banned internet sales of vapes. So, do some of the, you know, the fact that it came in strong and we thought some of it might have to do that now that they have to buy it locally? Yeah, but that was part of the estimate. It's just that nobody knew how big that market was and there was no real way to find out. So there were other states that we looked at and things like that, but it wasn't like jewelers giving us their marketing data. So, it was, yeah, it wasn't all clumped in one month. It was spread pretty evenly. There were only five of the six months that had reporting in the first half. It started, you know, but that's not unusual when tax effective. So, yeah, it seemed to be spread pretty evenly. It didn't look like there was some inventory bump or something that was happening. It didn't go down when kids started dying. It didn't go down when kids started dying. That's the nature of an addictive product. Yes. My definition. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. So, do you have a question? No, go ahead. Let's do Q&A as it comes up because that's not what I'm interested in. He needs to break it up after doing this all day. Well, but I just think it's more interesting to be more grown up. I can talk forever about all this stuff, but I want to know what you're interested in and what things you're, you know, contending. I get a sort of key part of it here. The first one was the rate of the disparity between those from our, you know, partners between the top and the bottom growing, continually growing, and if so, whether it's faster or slower rate than usually. And he had some testing, he had some data and generated another question if you answered the question. We don't have real good data on, you know, distributional stuff, but the strength of the personal income tax received is reflective of the fact that there's a preponderance of money that's going to higher income, higher bracket, tax bracket earners, and so we're getting more tax revenue from that. So that's a big part of why there's still growth there. You have a tax source that, you know, if you look at the peak earning age demographically, like maybe age 47 to 61, when you have peak AGI, and we look at when did Vermont have the most of those, of that cohort, it was 2010. Since then we have 22,000 fewer of that age cohort. Since 2010 personal income received has gone up 80%. So almost $400 million. You know, part of that growth is just income growth. Part of that is more income landing where there's a higher margin of tax rate. And so everything we know nationally about income distribution being skewed is likely to be present here. There's not clear good state metrics on that, but we've been working with tax to try to develop some stuff, just looking at income tax distributions because it's important in understanding the forecast to be able to do that. So I hope we have some of our data. Second question on those lines. You had some testimony yesterday from David Howard. I'll just, I remember his last name he came in yesterday from JFO and he was explaining to us what he was seeing coming from pasts for income tax payers. You have any ground? Yes. Okay. And the question that was asked yesterday are more people seek, since the 2017 tax changes, which people are changing their behaviors to take advantages of things like fast food, not taking advantages. And are we losing income because of these new opportunities and your switching lanes? Yeah. Now the jury's still out. We're in the dark still on that. We don't have data on that. And it's really, you know, there are reasons to and not to do these things. And so the models that they use assume rationality that this always occur. We're just going to have to look at the tax data after it comes in to be able to sort it out. But there's nothing new on that. There's nothing more on that I can add. Graham ran some stuff through Chainbridge and that's using maybe 2016 data, something like that to try to estimate stuff. But I think for those that experienced a tax increase as a result of the tax haven job tax, there will be efforts to try to minimize that. And if that's one way to do it, that would be done. But when we seek to set policy in the collection of taxes, which changes your take place sort of in front of our very eyes, but we don't know what they are. How can you help us not get farther and farther behind the analysis report? Well, as soon as their data that are clear, we put them in. So something like the vaping thing, we got pretty good clarity early on. But whether that stays or whether that... I mean, it's just we've got to be plugged in and we're asking tax the same questions. So as the filings come in and get compiled and we can start to assess that, we'll be doing the same. But it's not always real time. It seems to impact the things like vaping or small and easier to give a... Yeah, no, no. And where the real action is taking place. Yeah, the sort of swirling of our... Well, the e-commerce is big. That's another one that's, you know, more like a $40 million thing. And the disparity in incomes, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fine. Yeah. Go ahead. Can I ask about the unemployment metrics when they're all going to be here? And for, you know, we've been leading the pack here. But if you were to ask about sort of so-called real unemployment, just whatever it is. I guess, can you comment on that and to your understanding, if we were looking at chronically unemployed and metrics that make up real unemployment, would the shape be roughly the same? In other words, is it the same relative for other states or any kind of like that? So there are six measures of unemployment, as you probably know. And the one that's headline reported every month is called U3. So the six ones are creatively U1, U2, U3, U4, U5, U6. And U3 is the one that's reported on monthly. And that's the one that's kind of most commonly, you know, compared to all the rest. Not all the measures have been collected over the same length of time. So almost everything's been collected since 1994. But some go back to 1947. All of the unemployment rates have come down. So the ones above U3 include less employable people. So people that are marginally attached to the labor force, people that are out of work longer, or people that have given up on looking for work. People that are under employed that have a part-time job or like a full-time job. So those are, you know, that's what those broader metrics are designed to capture. In December, the broadest U6 rate was 6.7%. And so that's, you know, about double the 3.5% U3 rate. But that's the lowest recording ever posted for that. So it's come down just like the other, the other unemployment rates of 15 or above. They track pretty closely. Vermont's, you know, has the lowest U3 unemployment rate. It also has the lowest rate for several of the other unemployment measures. The measurements at the state level for the alternative measurements are not as accurate. So you usually do like maybe three-quarter groupings so that you have enough observations to, you know, to make sense of it as a pretty noisy series. But Vermont's the lowest in the country at about maybe four of the six categories. But it's, but I don't think U6 was one of them. It's like maybe fourth or fifth or something like that. But they do tend to move in sync and rates across the board are historically low. Doesn't mean they're zero, but historically, yeah. What's remarkable about what's happening in latent markets to me is not, you know, I mean, the record unemployment is remarkable. But the chart on page six shows that even with labor markets this tight, there's no meaningful wage growth. So, yeah, so this speaks to your question. But it also underscores the extraordinary lack of power that labor has in the workplace today. A combination of, you know, this memory of this terrible recession where a lot of people lost their jobs and people are just happy to have any job and they don't want to lose it. And, you know, so there's that kind of sense. A lot more service jobs, way less unionization. You know, all these things contribute to a powerlessness that exists as employers are, you know, have relatively a lot more power and are just not using wage to try to, you know, if you really need to work, you could offer a higher wage somebody. They'll do all sorts of things. Even if it's a hiring bonus, it's like a short-term thing, but then the wage isn't, it doesn't stick to you. You get the employee with a bonus, but then you still pay no lower wage. So wages have been sticking. This chart here shows non-wages in red and real wages in blue here. So, you know, that had been going up, as you might expect, as labor market's tightened in February. We had 3.4% nominal wage growth. That was the highest it's got in this cycle. You know, that was about 2% real after adjusted for inflation. But that's dropped to under 3% in December. It was 2.9%. And that is the equivalent of a 0.6% real wage change. So that's just extraordinary when you have these kinds of unemployment rates. And you've had them for that long. You know, we've been fairly persistent to have so little demand and power to affect that. I don't know if you'll read this chart. Okay, so nominal wage. Yeah, just an nominal wage. Okay. Blue is the real wage growth in each month. Yeah, so year over year percent change. Year over year. So December 2019 versus December 2018. Okay, so, I mean, there must be a figure from June 11th to October 19th as to what the actual, the nominal growth in wages and the inflationary adjusted growth in wages over that eight-year period. Well, each one of those is a month, right? So each little tip. So that arrow points to this point here, which is the peak, is plus 3.4%. So wages in February were 3.4% higher than they had in the year before. That's, you know, and then when you adjust for inflation, that's a little under 2%. Right, so I understand. So this goes above 5%. Yeah, but then they can drop it. But is there a chart that shows cumulative growth over that whole period of time in wages both nominal and... No, I can run those. How do you, just at gut level, is it keeping pace with inflation? Well, to the extent this blue line is above zero, it's keeping place with inflation. But in a tight labor market, you expect to see real growth, not just keeping pace with inflation. And even in the first few months, it was losing ground to inflation, right? The first few months, no, it wasn't losing ground. The first few months over here. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, back here. This is 2011. Yeah, yeah. No, there have been periods where I did, even though, you know, the nominal wage here was, you know, flat. That's right after. So, again, that's just after. Particularly shocking because of the tight labor market. Yeah, the fact that we're clear out here now at a time of really low on employment rates, you'd start, you would expect to see real wage gains, up to maybe even two and a half percent. And that's just not happening. Not only has it, it's not growing much, it's actually the rate of change has slowed a little bit. And that was surprising. You know, we had done some work looking at New Hampshire. I was part of some minimal wage stuff. And we were looking at who in New Hampshire was earning less than the Vermont minimum wage. Because we thought, you know, even with a 725 minimum wage, you can't hire anybody for 725. So, who's actually making, you know, shows up in summer making $8 and $9. So, what are the characteristics? There was heavily female and older female, you know. So, part of it too is that workers aren't raising their hands saying, I'm worth $10 an hour. I'm worth $15 an hour. And I'm not going to work unless I get that. Or, you know, I'm going to, you know, bounce around the different jobs and try to get, you know. Yeah, so, the problem, though, is that without some kind of collective action, workers don't have a lot of strength, compared to strength. And also, when the expectation of inflation is fairly low, and it is for the most part, there's also not quite as much pressure thinking, you know, whatever I'm making now is I'm going to erode quite as fast. Yeah, I need a raise, yeah. But it's just remarkable to me. I mean, there certainly are professions and sectors that are getting bigger wage jumps, but it's just remarkable overall that they're so staying inspected. So, Tom, can you remember another time in your career when the graph has looked like this? When unemployment has been so low that you're really not seeing a concomitant rise in wages. What was the last time you saw? Well, unemployment has not been this low for a very long time. So, at the US level, it's 50 years. Yeah, so that's really going back. But then, you know, you have more inflation and you have, you know, more wage growth, much higher levels of unionization in 1969. So, yeah, so that's notable just in terms of markets. Any other questions? Yeah, one. Is that... I'm wondering if there's a parallel. I mean, in 1969, for instance, we didn't have income inequality anywhere near the scale we have today. Do you expect those historic periods of high income inequality match with low unemployment and low wage growth? I mean, is that sort of... You know, back in the late 20s and times like that to try to find something top-notch, I'm just curious. I probably would, but... Well, we did have extreme economic disparity between men and women, and we still do. So, I just want to make sure that we... Well, we're all impacted by it. Yes. And then we have an extra layer. There's an interesting stat. In December, it was only the second time in history, on record, that there were more women working than men. So, the December payroll and jobs number was higher for women. There were 145,000 jobs added in December. 139,000 was one of those. So... In the country. Yeah, nationally. Yeah. Right on there. Yeah. We haven't got a number. It's set us for a decade. But the only other time that happened was right in the early phases of this last recession when construction, manufacturing, and all these more male-oriented industries dropped fastest. And so women just briefly had more. But this is now at the end of a pretty long period of sustained growth, which just means the sectors that have been growing fastest are service sectors where women tend to dominate. But I think... But they'll tend to be highly paid. But they'll tend to be highly paid and they're not highly organized. Is that? So are more, maybe more complacent in terms of accepting salary levels and paying those things. You tend to dominate or be relegated to... What's that? You say the... They're dominating those sectors. It could be relegated to. Yeah, I mean, healthcare, education. I mean, for whatever reasons, they just tend to be more highly employed in those areas. But they're outnumbering men. And that's what's unusual. Yeah. So what's gotten us to this point of low unemployment across the country? Just tell us, I mean... It's a standing economic growth for a long period of time. It's the longest exposure... So it's behind that. Why is economy growing so low? Yeah. Good public policy. So no policy mistakes. Uh-huh. Where? The federal level. That's the most important problem. Population growth. You know, all the... What was the term migration? Well, it doesn't matter. Population growth. Yeah. Population growth. Uh, nationally. Uh-huh. Um... You know, a good business environment. Good, you know, a rule of law society. A lot of innovation. And, um... Uh... A lot of blue and red. So that, you know... So when you have a sustained 126 months... Yeah, an expansion. Uh... You gradually start using everybody in the labor force. You don't have a recession. You have no, you know, correction. And, um... So... You know, you're reaching full employment. Which is a good thing for an economy. Yeah. And actually, the things that would have put the economy in recession, you know, as we were looking at the world in July and there's this risk matrix thing, you know, it was on page 13. Uh, you know, it just sort of looks at all the factors that could affect, uh, you know, the recession. The two things that were leading the recession, uh, were the most problematic by recession. The year ago, the Federal Reserve was raising interest rates. The year ago this time, they've been raising interest rates steadily, and they were expected to raise them well into the new year. And that was a policy mistake. That was, that was too aggressive and not, you know, again, not reading the current situation, kind of using historical data, thinking that the, you know, that they needed to be tighter. Um, so that was, that was one. And the second thing, the second highest risk was the escalation of the trade wars. So the trade wars were, it was a pure policy decision. It wasn't anything, any imbalance in the economy. It was a policy decision. So, the Fed turned around and it's revived real estate markets. Property transfer, tax revenue has benefited from that. Home prices have increased more. So that was clearly, you know, a move in the direction, you know, they move in the right direction. The trade wars, just the tariffs that were put on, probably cost a half a percentage point in real GDP growth in, in, um, uh, 2019, kind of about 450,000 jobs. So that was also in terms of economic performance and policy mistake. But the fact that there's a phase one trade deal, right, tariffs aren't removed, but at least they're backing down, um, you know, things that probably won't get any worse, and that's not something that's likely to, to the economy intercession. There are a few things that have gotten worse, but they're not in the quadrant of sort of the most impact and highest risk. So, you know, corporate debt, rising corporate debt is, is one, the sort of personal debt. Personal debt's the housing, housing balance sheets are in really good shape. So there's been, um, in part a lot of the folks that were most exposed in the last downturn are cut out of credit markets, and that has other impacts. But in terms of household balance sheets, that's not that. Corporate balance sheets, though, you know, debt's cheap, and whether the rating agencies are doing a good job this time around with assessing corporate debt, I don't know. There's a lot of it that's jump-rated, and so that's shown up, maybe more should be. There's a lot of it, and that's just the concerns that, um, you know, that's part of that. But in general, that the, the worst risks, the things that are all kind of over here, all the arrows are pointing down. So that's, you know, that's why the recovery could continue. There's nothing that says it has to stop, you know, and there's a chart in here about other countries. Even those in the American psyche, in the American psyche, but if you look a little beyond America, you see like, you know, Australia, what's that? The page number is Australia. Page number 10. There are three countries that have, that are currently in expansions that are longer in the United States. And, uh, two of them are more than twice as long. Australia and South Korea are all currently in expansions, page 10, that are, that are double the length in the United States, currently. Now, it's helped Australia that China is a, you know, sort of huge demand in right near by. Um, and during this last downturn, China was the least impacted country in the world, and so they kept buying from Australia, and that, you know, that helped the whole region. Uh, but there's, but there's no reason that the recovery has to end just because it's 126 months old. It's record also the fact that it's been growing at really slow rates. It's really looking where they're going, and how they're going to get the balance that can't keep going. Or, is there some external shock that, you know, might be coming that we should be prepared for? That's part of the, yes. The one thing we added to it, speaking of external shocks, uh, from July, was significant military conflict is out there on the, uh, edge, uh, you know, just payment and consciousness would be a rampant, but, um, thank you. Yeah. Okay. Michael, you have one to wrap it up. So, um, we hear a lot about what's going on about the demographics. Is there anything in here, or do you have an opinion or an impact of some of the challenges you're facing? Anything to hear about that? Uh, there's not something new on the demographic front. There's new data out from the Census Bureau every year, so they make estimates between the decennial censuses and the 2019 estimate wasn't great because they revised their way 2000 people, the 2000 person gain that they had estimated the year before. So, you know, it's basically the story, though, through the last decade is not you know, where there's a little bit about or a little bit below, it's basically flat. And it's important to remember that when they do the real census, which is this year, there will be a much more definitive count and much more credible analysis around and detail around, you know, what's happening. It sometimes, you know, there are sometimes surprises for the real count. We've had some kind of, they go through, by the end of nine years, they're estimating, estimating, estimating, they can get pretty far off. So, we'll see when that comes out. Is there a rule of thumb that it's good to have more people or is this could possibly be good to be flat? There are pros and cons to it. I mean, on the one hand, if, I don't think a primary, it's necessarily better to have more people. It's sometimes harder to manage costs if you don't have growth, if there's an assumption there's growth. As long as you're managing your costs consistent with the population you have, you don't have a problem just because, by definition, there's slow growth. In fact, too much growth can be a real problem. This is mentioned sometimes in climate refugee scenarios, but a lot of the Act 250 stuff was that the feeling is there was too much growth happening in Vermont in the 70s and it was like kind of out of control and it wasn't so good. It's hard to downshift because we have been used to regular increases and budgets went up in a regular way and there was sort of this expectation of growth. So, sometimes it's hard when the growth stops to adjust. But I don't think a priori are people less happy if there's less growth? Not necessarily. You know, if and we've seen tremendous income growth of bad organic income growth not distributionally you've got the same issues that exist but you know it's, I mean it is what it is. The only thing you can change, given that the fertility rate, and that's the biggest part of it, you know, if we had been creating babies at the rates we were in the 19, early 1990s just I don't know if you know what's going on but the drop in fertility rates you know, you can't really influence that to public policy and there are real limits to the extent to which you can bend any of the economic fundamentals that affect migration. You know, you're not going to get it by little things around the edge you can get little results. But the big thing now would be when real estate markets are covered to the extent that selling a house can represent some kind of gam that then allows you to work that won't get any migration at all. If we're as a tax policy community what actions might where should we be focusing our actions if we're trying to narrow this disparity between the top end and the bottom end? And what should we and at the same time I ask this question we're going to have a we're going to be proposed to us by the administration to do certain things and they signal that demographic changes are a crisis. What should we be avoiding if someone asks us to do something if our goal is to try to bring this disparity down and move the people at the bottom actually see more of the benefits of the full employment. I think it's important to understand that there are limits to what can be done in the state. That's hard. There are programs like the earning income tax credit that really do stimulate and enhance earnings of low income people and encourage work. Things like minimum wage changes the state's been good with you know affects some distributional issues. I think it's also important not to necessarily waste money on things that aren't going to be terribly impactful so if you're well spending money to try to bribe people to come to the state just doesn't have just is not going to have internet and you're there just many it makes the state look desperate not you know those are small amounts of money in their cap if you really wanted to if you thought that was effective you'd have to spend enormous amounts of money but the thing that gets people to move to the state for positive many values in the state is the thing that's most attractive that most motivates people to come to the state not you know something little around the edges quality of life issues do you also include in that benefits such as pay family leave higher minimum wage those kinds of things and I think those things for some people make a difference I don't think we've got a huge onslaught of low income people in wage but quality of schools low crime rates healthy environment you know when you look across professions if you look at wage differentials you know the highest wage differentials with Vermont versus the nation are not in low income wage areas but they're with you know doctors and lawyers and things like that and those are not people that even people that can live anywhere and the reason then that they choose to earn less and be here is well there you go okay you do that's right why are we why are we well you better protect those kind of if your house is under the water you're living in Massachusetts and we have a lot of immigration from Massachusetts you're going to sell your house and turn your paper into a real loss and then have less money when you're you know that froze migratory flows in a way that is just now being analyzed in academia there's some excellent work by a demographer at the Carpsy Institute at the University of New Hampshire probably the best rural urban demography studies that is focused on how this this recession that was real state centered was critical in freezing migratory flows and is still not unthought completely and I think that is far more to do with it than you know than any other things but that's outside of the control of you know of what a state can I'm going to have to wrap this up because I'm told they're twiddling their thumbs across the hall and I know Senator Pearson had a question he wanted to ask you and I'm happy that you individually engage with folks and or come back sometime with this I think as we work our way through this and I think yeah the demographics is definitely going to be a nation I know I don't care what they do we're going to twiddle no we're we have a group full of people you can actually but I'm trying to move on so you want to hear it six o'clock thank you so much June Chair from the Particle of Service it's nice to be back again everybody else have a nice time off as well we have been very busy in all divisions of the department just as a table center for you everything which are things that would bear further briefing if you have the time and I would be happy to make that step be able to you because a lot of community I think we've got other folks coming in giving us a more detailed I'm just going to try so starting first in the Consumer Affairs and Public Information Division we are doing significant work on overhauling the Residential Disconnection Rule which has not seen any love from the unifying world since 1983 just to give you an idea since 1983 with connectivity having progressed the way it has a lot of issues coming out this connection remotely it's just one and issues in that sphere and the department is taking the lead on modernizing that rule it has big implications for customers to make sure they have a practical interface with their regulators and also the utilities so it saves costs in rolling trucks to get out to people's places to disconnect from the state we also completed the Consolidated Service it is a quality Consolidated Service Service Quality Investigation that we launched that a few days ago if you may recall from a variety of media reports Consolidated Delivered less than quality of service and so we undertook to have some disciplinary intervention with the PUC the upshot of it was so we had advocated for a $5 bill per incident for every customer who experiences an outage as a way to create a serious incentive for our Consolidated to fix the service quality problems we lost that argument from the PUC however the PUC did impose an ultimate fine quality penalty if you will on the company and said you can either invest $150,000 in infrastructure upgrade and build out or you can pay $120,000 to the general phony under $30,000 in security I just highlight this point in the community because I think this is an area that would be a course where there is some inquiry by the legislature this has been a problem for many years before the PUC and the department the fact that it goes to the general fund instead of going to or directly to the consumers who are harmed by the outage for instance, I think is an issue that would be worth looking twice at so that was not yet but I think that was my purpose in going through that investigation was to say can we get the PUC to order this $5 bill because that's direct relief to move the spirit outage or who experience bad conduct and we've got our ruling now and we understand that so I think the next step is to either try to negotiate this as far as the senate regulation plan or to come to you are you saying that the law prohibits it going back to customers or it's just not been in practice the law contemplates that when you impose a penalty under time 30 we'll go to the general fund the PUC has kind of danced around this for many decades and created a variety of mechanisms to avoid the problem but I think it's time to adjust and get fixed if you folks agree with that we also completed the WEC the national electrical rate design during this period we had a very difficult position that we were taking in that case and frankly I had a lot of difficulty accepting it but I thought it was the right thing to do in the end WEC has inclined block rates meaning they have a a signal in their rates that is designed to encourage efficiency which is a good thing and they've been doing that for decades but we now are launching policies in the state that encourage electrification we want people to use electricity and get away from fossil fuel and that rate design then becomes something an obstacle in service territory because people correctly perceive it if they're using more electricity for a car for instance a EV so we brought this argument to the POC they reviewed it they ruled against us and said now we're going to let WEC keep its inclined block rate in its rate design I would sit here today and tell you that's a bad thing necessarily because WEC has a very high number of local customers but it is a policy issue that needs to be addressed in due course because if you're going to be sending signals for people to use electricity and you're saying that that's the way then your rate design also needs to reflect that and so some of these things we're going to have to look down in public advocacy we have set up a system now for monitoring decommissioning and I'm very proud to say that one of the things that we've done in addition to retaining experts who will help us with financial monitoring of the decommissioned fund we've also overhauled our website to make it more accessible to the public so that they can monitor our decommissioning at the time as we do and we are aggregating information from the agency natural resources and the Department of Health as well to make it easier for people to follow up to have a stop shopping so to speak in the planning division I'm very proud to report that we achieved two pieces of very important regulatory work one was to perform an assessment of the value of solar on average and we were looking at it from a system perspective meaning relative to what it costs for a solar power at wholesale and what we determined was that the average value of solar is 0.092 kilowatt hours set to the kilowatt hours it's a point of reference I think it's useful to have in mind as we look at beneficial electrification and have the ability to quantify some of our policies so we can make good judgments about where we put more money or perhaps to share money another tool that we created that I've been very excited about is a model that we were able to for this after we were able to hire some of these kinds of skills this model allows us to compare the relative cost of carbon reduction measures and that's a very helpful thing to have when you're trying to make judgments again about what are the policy emphasis it's not sufficiently granular to where a residential homeowner decide whether to buy a EV supposed to do modernization as a means of reducing carbon but at a policy crafting level it gets it back and I believe Director McNamara is going to be coming in to talk to you folks about energy matters and he would be there's a person to follow up with on that it's a very interesting work and I think Tyrone in the energy efficiency realm we have completed the efforts that are required in three years of the residential and commercial building codes it was a rough road I think that Senator McDowell will recall that I think there were some overhangs from years before about how the department was completing those updates by rule and we got that ironed out so that our process and the format for it is now comporting with laws we know to be we also launched a thermal clearing house website this summer this is one of the one of the issues that I have for the department a place where folks from all walks feel confident about going to get information about energy issues energy measures they can take and the like so this is a clearing house that gives you practical information about measures that you can take in your home for instance to weatherize and the like it calls it like you see it isn't spinning toward one program or a particular philosophy about energy efficiency or another and this is putting the good stuff in my point of view it goes to the core of our public information and education mission that's something that could work as well when the access is put in there we also completed several program evaluations that are core that we do as a matter of statute but they are also they form the basis of policy arguments that we make and advocacy for the PC so in that sense they're substantive they're ever changing one of the very important studies that we completed was the efficiency potential study this is the study that says okay in the period of time before is the next three years five years whatever it is how much efficiency can EBT realistically and with reasonable measures realize and for many years the state has been engaging with policies that puts a lot of money toward that through the energy efficiency charge and results there does come a point when things mature and so we've been looking at that and the conclusion of the efficiency potential study was that reasonably achievable program potential is no longer increasing in the electric sector and that's not a bad thing it means that efficiency policy and remodeling has been very successful but it's important to keep in mind it's not ever increasing we plateaued for you to consider because weatherization is such a big topic right now and so a legitimate question to ask is do we need to continue putting even more money into energy efficiency, electric efficiency or is there a point where we perhaps cap the viewing and put money elsewhere the people to talk to about that would be T.J. Poor and his staff they're coming in next week as well and can give you more granular explanation of where to sit up we also went through efficiency remodeling and remodeling gas and fertilization programs and we audit and determine that for EVT the program savings now to be clear about this is not criticisms, not indictment, anything of this sort it's a math exercise that proves the data that comes in and according to our audit we were able to confirm 65% of the savings that EVT had claimed through its weatherization program and for Vermont Gas they were 85% less than the light what this means is that the processes need to be calibrated or recalibrated and that's what we've been doing in the CTO of left town it's an important finding it's not a bad finding but it's an important finding I understand the finding that for Vermont Gas claimed to have made certain amount of savings and the result was 85% less than what they claimed and for efficiency remodeling 65% less than what they claimed 65% less than what was claimed and is that true for Vermont Gas no 80% less the language is not symmetrical got it 65% of what was said and in Vermont Gas in this case it was 85% less because there is confirmation though when you say 65% of what was claimed was it that they didn't do the remainder based on your audit or that there was simply no evidence to support it it's neither and this is why I've qualified the statement these assessments of savings today are based on professional judgments and assumptions they're made by practitioners so when EVT gives you a savings estimator or it calculates a savings it has done so using perfectly valid methodologies making assumptions that are necessary in order to do that kind of reckoning if you will and the department our folks follow the same processes but they make different judgments so it can happen that the two don't close and that's why we have a calibration in order to come to a shared understanding of how the savings should be measured and I think that's an issue we've had since day one is the reliability when you start assessing home efficiency and stuff is you just haven't been at it long enough to have a formula you know enough information to say yes this saves X it's just not measurable and what we intuitively want is a measuring stick that we could take and say this is how much weatherization how much fuel is safe but the the discipline, if you will, doesn't lend itself to that kind of measurement it's necessarily a question of modeling derivation, assumptions, calculations we're going to assume that you're going to insulate my house and I'm going to keep the heated 60 because that's where I've kept it if I turn the heat up to 70 because I've been freezing for years, I'm getting old and I get cold I know my grandmother used to turn it up to 80 and then open the window when she got hot but I mean those are assumptions that you assume you won't use your dryer more than you will both it's costing you less maybe you will use the dryer more than you did on a granular level, I think you're absolutely on the right track and this is 65% that's all in there weatherization correct, it's just a weatherization so I would encourage you again to ask these questions of our director for I would take away to be this is looking to be alarmed about it's something to know about the department this is why you have the department regularly doing these verification exercises this is what we do I'm just accused of letting industry run the state so I guess in this case we've got the department to help us ask the questions but industry may not be telling us everything in the nutshell is what we do that's right we also reestablished the labeling working group meetings also very important because that's the cohesive work by which we interface with stakeholders, the industry but also folks who are not part of the industry in order to come to a consensus if possible as to what the building energy should be like very helpful for data forward in that direction and we've also just started again on this three-year cycle for investigating the EU budgets and their targets which are the in an energy efficiency world the equivalent of what a electric utility does by virtue of existing as a business and having service to render to its known late-pay of base and calculating cost of service and that setting rates except their only target if you will is to provide adequate safe reliable energy on that system basis in the energy efficiency world that's the objective and design for those into saying okay what should EBT be trying to do what should be a target speed for the next foreseeable period because they're not actually delivering their mission isn't to find the way electric utilities is moving to the telecom sector we have successfully ruled out the broadband innovation grant program yes just a question about Vermont CAS yes the weatherization gas is based on a carbon tax carbon tax it charges it has a energy efficiency charge weatherization that is placed on the purchase of how much natural gas carbon you use so I I'm not sure I could agree with that characterization here's how I understand where does Vermont CAS get its money from to do weatherization so Vermont CAS first has its rate case and then it also exists as efficiency utility for gas purposes and they let me a gas charge the way electric utilities I mean excuse me an efficiency charge the way electric utilities an efficiency charge so the efficiency charge money is that they raise specifically for natural gas service and that is paid by natural gas customers that's the money they use for their services so that answers your question so that an EC charge natural gas you use the more or it would be an NGV charge correct and is it volumetric is what you're asking yes the answer is to that and for the electric utility the charge is on the electricity you use regardless of whether it's carbon or hydroquapac it's a very interesting point that you're raising because we call it electricity and we don't give it another thought but you're quite right underlying electricity is generation and many forms of generation are carbon based not all, but many for instance as you say it's natural gas generation or if it's oil and oil exactly that's carbon that's correct but if it's solar for instance or high volume to high hydro power as clean and renewable so that's not carbon anyway you said you did some work on a metric around solar or value of solar did you do that for wind or any other solar production it was everything it was done in the net meter context and as you know net meter is also a relatively solar in the state to be absolutely certain about the answer to your question I would ask you to return to that with director McNamara I think we're definitely what's standard off of coming in and we're going to be looking at the whole system so moving back into the telecom space we have rolled out the broadband innovation grant program we have one round of grants already they went to the wind and regional planning commission New Mary and two CP fiber we will have a second round going out it is actually happening right now and we have a third round after town meeting this is the money that was set aside 513 last session we've had a lot of great interest we had more applicants for the first round of grants than we could provide and we also discovered that the applicants need help in putting their needs together and so we've been doing everything we can to help them put a stronger bid together and it's torrential to have the fact that our telecom division is now fully stopped we were sitting here this time last year we had director and one person I think can we authorize or put money in last year for an assistant we have one new position that does the broadband coordinating and if you've followed the media on this so there's a lot of interest in two areas of the state and for communication union districts there's a function of the work we've been able to do using that position in the division but even apart from that we had three other two or three other vacancies two other vacancies so a division that was down to director and one staff is now a director and four staff that makes a big difference we've also got through the poll attachment rule adoption the department involved a petitional wealth act to modernize and make it easier for the poll attachment process for the PEC the PEC is in the final stage I think it's adopting that rule now and the take place with that is there's now one touch for me which is a long overdue that means that you can you roll the tracts once to get the job done and secondly there's self help in there now so that an entity such as the PC fiber can resort to self help measures if they've gone through the process if they've gone through the process and for a variety of reasons it's taking longer than you should not everything PC fiber is their rule but the mind share and I'm very pleased with that we also completed the election broadband feasibility which was a big piece of work too the upshot of that was that there still may be one solution does not fit all for the electric utilities and that was good to see the things that we just talked about there are also significant capital investment investments that have been made one estimate in the study is $284,000 below the capital that does cover operation costs and the other thing people mind about that number is it's not like you could take $20 million and make an investment and get the job done but rather it's the aggregate of what it would cost for the utilities and their respective territories to complete this one so it's a round number but you have to look behind it when you look behind it it's complexity the good news is for at least one possibly two utilities there's some there and there that's what they're looking into and something that was very very encouraging one is we learned a lot about funding it's available to the federal money some of it can move out as we did and the second that I thought was very intriguing is this legislature has taken steps to empower local communities to help themselves connect to the Vita program and the like and I took the study and results to mean that we're heading in the right direction but that's the way to go to get some of this work done I'm excited about the federal funding aspects of it because that is consistent with the direction I've been taking for some time and taking this argument to a couple and not going to be able to see in February to discuss the general prize and the recent decision to shut down the military fund too that had been unavailable for wireless mobility and shut that down and just decided to put that money towards that 5G stand and I'm going down to DC explaining to his staff that this is, I understand why they might make a policy decision like that but it's got serious implications for the rural parts of states like the law where 5G is just not where we're going to get now we need to continue to grow so I just had a session on 5G I think this is an area where the state of Vermont has been missing and talking to commissioners down in DC I've been doing that with Burke and from that I learned that there's no harm in knocking on the door of the FCC and saying hey this is what the real world implications are of your decisions in case we consider them there's one other thing I wanted to think of the committee I think it's important for you to know this last year was the year of formal budget problems for the department and the legislature was very good about reaching across and helping us fix that and so you authorized an increase in gross receipts tax and you also licensed the institution of signing fees for the department and the CDC I just wanted to give an update on where we are on that we do not yet know what the impact of raising the gross receipts tax would be more than at the end of the fiscal year but we do have data that indicates that for the signing fees when we have projected we would realize something and put it at 100 at least $1,000 we are on track to make about $120,000 for the signing the good news from my perspective is that if everything goes right if there are no unexpected expenditures and I'm not planning it for we might close the end with a small surplus which would be good for building for other strategic purposes at the department order one has been stabilizing its finances and it looks like we're pulling that off you have a telecom playing in the status we are working on that and thank you I took to heart everything I heard in this room last year, no question we put out a request for information this summer to see what it would cost to retain experts in this area to do a plan that tracks with Act 79 and not just the requirements that were in statute before the session we arranged that it came back to us was something in the neighborhood of the I would say $250,000 and up that was for one consultant and I think the highest was $800,000 for the other consultant so that was the range $250,000, $800,000 but that's as I just said I'll be lucky if I close the year out and pay for an external consultant so that's going to be an interesting is there any chance I know there's a budget adjustment act in process I'm still in progress I know I've talked to some of you about the letter that I'm sending to you under Act 79 to let you know that we don't have the requisite resources I'm still turning over every rock and knocking on every door to make sure that that's the case what does that do is January the letter what does that do whenever I determine that I don't have the resources well it's a practical matter if you don't have the resources and we have asked you to do a plan unless there's a measure if you get resources you can't do the plan you can't meet the objective I think that's fair and in terms of just looking at when you get money things like the budget adjustment act is the appropriate place as the thought you know what to do because time is running out what I can say today is I'm aware of that and it's been considered in my mind and as I said I'm still knocking on more depending on the rocks when will you be able to tell us what we're going to do whether or not you're going to have funding whether it be the budget that's back or otherwise to do it before the end of January along those lines if we were to find money in budget adjustment is it become is that something you would be willing to use you know what I mean I get that sometimes the administration doesn't want to ask for money but at least that's a priority for us if we give you the funding is it possible that would sort of help at this juncture in time yes and it's for you absolutely clear that's what you're going to be willing to use this is talking about telecommunications advisory board the connectivity advisory board yes are they involved in this planning process or should they be partly supposed to be it's by statute my memories that this came up in a meeting last friday I think and I don't see any reason why they can't can't be appropriate discussion one of the issues that we come across is many of the members of the board are also folks who would like to be recipients or would like to apply for recipients of funding in order to do a bill that's no like and so yeah exactly but the telecom plan itself is it's a planning document and it seems to me that that is another stage at the department but the law right now is a stash I know there's some advocates who are suggesting that the telecommunications plan being taken away from the public service department and sent to the agency of commerce and community development do you have any perspective or thoughts on that well I'm really hoping to draw a line over last year I said I recall sitting in this room doing my confirmation hearing and having a different time I think you asked me how to grade myself and I gave myself enough by the time I was done talking I adapted that to a scene I would tell you candidly that was painful for me because in my heart of hearts I feel personally that I'm never adequate to anything I do my work as commissioner I think has been very the plan that we did did not satisfy the legislature the laws were passed to hold this additional work to do and I'm happy to do that you will have no fight for you on that but I think we did a good job for the 2018 plan and I'm very confident we're going to do a good job for the 2020 plan and so in that sense I very much I think this is the right place to give a clear instruction is it correct then that in the event if you do not have the plans to hire someone outside the department will produce the plan and we'll produce it on time you have my my commitment on that and it was never my intent to do anything else okay I'm going to have to wrap this up because we're getting next so I'm going to finish up the question Senator Pearson and then Senator Soran can because we've got lots of folks coming in either this week or next week to go into more detail is there an update on an update on the broadband media proposals I want to get into you specifically I'm happy to do that with the specific data but there hasn't been at least one loan that I'm aware of that has been processed and I have very high hopes for that program so everything I've seen so far is going to be good we can get a specific answer and we'll have a week and a week to intend to talk to us we just had before you talked to Betty with the Redmond forecast and his report notices the telephone property to the client does that touch on your department I'm sorry can you repeat that the telephone property tax which is a declining source of revenue and he blames it on statutory clarifications are needed in terms of how utilities the value I guess their assets I would say that's not depreciating excuse me it affects the utilities that we regulate but the topic of jurisdiction I will say that the declining revenue piece I can second that does that lead to funding for the department or is that just going to the I don't think that piece does where the declining revenue in that sector doesn't need to funding issues in this okay tax department okay okay thank you thank you this was just an initial hi how are you what's going on it sounds like a lot we'll get into more details we'll do it