 No worries, thank you. So we'd welcome you to give us an introduction on 207. 207 and 206, I think I was asked in for two bills. So 206, so I beg your pardon, do you just want 207? Be happy just to do 207. We would like to focus on 207 this morning. I beg your pardon, yeah. Thank you. One of these are the bills. Is that all kinds of bills? Yeah, you do have. Senator Tucker. Senator Tucker? Yeah. Well, Senator Tucker. So, good morning. Thank you. I'm Mary Hooper representing Montpelier and here to address H207, which is your, the reader note on this refers to it as an act relating to an approval of an amendment to the Charter of the City of Montpelier regarding non-citizen voting. I would prefer to think about it as all resident voting. And so way to think about how to engage all members of our community in the civic process to me, the ultimate portion of that being the right to go to town meeting and say I support this or don't support that through my vote. And that is what the citizens of Montpelier passed on this past November. The vote was a 2,857 people in favor of it to 1,488 of them. So about two to one margin saying we think this is a strong, this is something that our community wants to commit to. They thought through the process of no, we're just asking for all of our residents to be able to participate in the Montpelier civic process. We're not asking for the right to vote on statewide or national elections. We understand that we'll have to maintain a dual checklist, walked our way through that and essentially want to say we want all of our residents to participate in our civic community and to welcome them to be part of our community. And this is the culmination of that. This is their request to us to amend the charter to allow that to happen. I would note that in a few other states, political entities do allow this. Canada allows it, parts of Canada allow it and places in Europe allow it. It is not an extraordinary thought in the world community. And until I believe the 1920s or so, it was pretty common tonight to ask about residency. You know, if you showed up at a polling place and wanted to vote, you voted. Or everybody knew that you were from the community and they didn't ask to see your ID or whatever. But it's only been in the past decades that we have changed what is more of a cultural habit rather than a regulatory habit, if that makes sense. So thank you for your consideration. Questions, go ahead Jim. If I were a resident of Montclair, but I find resident, but I really was only here five months and 29 days and I spent the rest of my time elsewhere. So I wouldn't vote in the state elections because I'm not considered a Vermont resident. But in Montclair, I still wouldn't be supreme. But through my property taxes, they prep the city. So could I vote under this? I believe that Montp... So it gives the city the authority to set up a system. And so they would have to think about the sort of date cut offs, I believe. And I would assume, so this is a question that you should ask of the city. And I think the city clerk would welcome an opportunity to come in and address this. But I would assume that they would follow kind of the same residency requirements. And if I may, you mentioned taxes and I don't think of this and this is just my personal point of view. It's not, I'm not excited about this because it allows taxpayers to vote on tax issues. To me, that's not the nexus or the important point of this. It's to allow residents of our community, regardless of whether or not they pay taxes to support this. All of our residents pay our taxes in one way or another. But I just don't think taxes are the important issue here. That may be a side of the conversation. No, no, no, I don't know. I don't know if I could be renting a property for five months. If I considered the resident, I guess is my question. Yeah, yeah. And I think that would be part of the regulations. The city would set up. But I defer to the person who wrote this. Betsy Hens. Betsy Hens. So for the record, Betsy Hens harassed legislative council. I didn't draft the bill, but I know that the bill will not change the definition of what it means to be a city resident. It says the fine, the site is to 17 BSA 2122B. And that's the definition of residency for any voter in the state. And I can read it to you if you would like, but that definition doesn't change. It essentially goes to where the person is domiciled. And it goes to their intent to maintain a principal dwelling place in the town. And definitely in return, they're temporarily absent, coupled with an actor acts consistent with that intent. So that's the standard residency definition for any voter in the state if they're to be a resident of their town, which does not change over this bill. It doesn't currently. It does not. We're gonna know in case we could amend it if we wanted to. Yes, you could amend the statutory definition of residency. Thank you. I have a question. Thank you. Thanks very much. Do we both spend some more? I bet you will. It's a complicated question. I really appreciate y'all picking it up. I think it's an important conversation about civic engagement. So thank you for considering it. Betsy Ann and Tucker, I have you both on the agenda. Are you coming up together? Are you in a arm muscle pool? Are you in a body for scissors? Madam Chair, if it works for you, Tucker, I was thinking that Tucker would do the walkthrough. And then I'm just here to address the election law question. So perfect. I'll go up after Tucker if that works for you. Sounds like plan. Do you need a different document? No, this is the document we'll be working with. Thank you, Representative. Welcome back. We've seen you in forever. It has been 30 minutes. Good morning, Committee. Tucker Anderson, Office of Legislative Council. I'll start this morning and give you a walkthrough of the Charter Amendment. Note some things for future discussion, including your discussion with Betsy around election law. I will start by noting that the Charter Amendments contained in this bill were raised by petition of the voters. Under 17 VSA, Section 2645, Sub-A, Sub-Division 5A, the City Council is prohibited from amending or adjusting the language of a petition Charter Amendment. So the language that is contained in this bill is the language that was brought by the voters in their petition. A note on some of the procedural or as Representative Harrison has described them in the past pro forma aspects of the Charter Amendment. To keep in mind for later about the intent of the Charter Amendment, the ballot phrased the question that the voters voted on in this way. Shall the City amend the City Charter by adding Sub-Chapter 15, allowing non-citizen legal residents to vote on Montpelier City ballot items? I will begin skipping over Section 1 that states that the General Assembly is approving these Charter Amendments. In Section 2, which adds the new Sub-Chapter 15, the supplemental voting registry in the City of Montpelier. Section 1501 starting on page two, the eligibility of non-citizen voters. This section describes, of course, the eligibility of those voters to vote in local elections. It states that this registry will be in addition to that contained in 17 BSA, Section 2121. So this is in addition to voters who are otherwise registered. Section 1501 provides that any person in a register who on election day is, one, a legal resident of the United States, two, a resident of the City of Montpelier is defined in 17 BSA. Section 2122, Sub-B, and Betsy stole my thunder. I had that section ready here to tell you what the definition of a resident is, but you've already heard it. Third has taken the voters of, and fourth is 18 years of age or older. Section 1502 describes the city clerk's duties under this charter amendment. It requires a city clerk to place non-citizen voters on a separate voter registry, which will be maintained in the same manner as voter registries under general law. The clause here states that it shall be treated and maintained in the same manner as a voter checklist under 17 BSA, chapter 43, sub-chapter two, that sub-chapter deals with voter registries. The next clause is more specific. It states that the city clerk shall develop all necessary forms and procedures for the implementation of the sub-chapter. This is more specific than that sub-chapter dealing with voter registries. And in specific, I will highlight 17 BSA, section 2145. That section states that all forms of application for voter registration must be approved by the secretary of state. And in sub-section C, there is this mandate. It says a board of civil authority or a town clerk may not require a person to complete any form other than that approved by the secretary of state, nor may the board of civil authority or the town clerk require all applicants or any particular class or group of applicants to appear personally before a meeting of the board or routinely as a matter of policy require applicants to submit additional information to verify or otherwise support the information contained in the application form. The two notes that I'll provide here that may have been too much to go through that specific sub-section is that you have the officer named here being the city clerk, adopting not only the forms, but also the procedures. We can tell from that section that I just read that this more specific clause would already state that the city clerk is going to be able to provide these forms outside of what is provided in general law. The question that I would raise for your future consideration is what procedures will the city clerk be adopting? We will get to some definitions later because that's the last section of the bill. But also to note that when we get there, the city clerk may be making a determination about the citizenship status of an individual and that these procedures that the city clerk may be adopting could also include an appeal if someone's registration is denied. So you may want to hear some testimony specifically about what the procedures are going to do. Moving on, section. Sean, does it. Oh. So just a question. So this is looking at section 1502. It says in the same manner as a voter checklist. So this will not be a voter checklist as defined under Vermont statute. Because there are certain protections provided to the voter checklist. Right. I think I will reserve questions about the checklist to the known expert who is in the room. Betsy, if you want to, do you want to interject at this point? I think it's a great question. What does the city intend to mean when they say in the same manner? Is it just actually what they mean just a separate checklist just for these city elections? That I think that's a great clarifying question. I should follow up with the city about what they intend by that. I don't have the traditions there. Right. I don't know. Man. Jim and Rob. So going down that line of thought or questions, does this become a public document? The Secretary of State's voter checklist or any voter checklist is a public document. Does this become a public document? If it is being treated and the term used here, more specifically to your question, maintained in the same manner, then yes. And that is also a consideration that I think Betsy may discuss later. But keeping that in mind, that may be a question that again you want to bring to the city to discuss this bill. I may be reading something to this, but they would have like a separate list for these folks. Is that primarily because they're really eligible to be on the statewide voter checklist now? Yes, and I would assume that that was the intent in drafting it this way. Section 1503 provides that at any election involving state, federal, or other extra municipal outside the municipality issues, the city clerk shall provide non-citizen voters with a ballot that contains only city questions in candidates. This is another concern that you may want to discuss about whether having an individual ballot for a limited number of voters could potentially violate the privacy of those ballots. And if there are only three registered non-citizen voters and you only have three ballots, then they will be. This also allowed someone to vote on local school budgets which are part, maybe part of a union district. The phrase that is used in the charter is city ballot items. So as long as the issue is contained within the city ballot, this would authorize those voters to vote on an issue contained. Not as long as it is not a, let's go directly to the phrase, state county special district or school district office or question. So contained within the city, they are allowed to vote on it. Any of those other issues, federal state county special district or school district office, they are not allowed to. So I mean to know it? No. So, but if, and I have no idea, Montpelier's school structure, but if it was just Montpelier, would that be allowable or is because the school is separate from the city? My hesitation right now is because I recall that last year as the, believe it's Montpelier Roxbury Union school district was being formed, Montpelier amended their charter. And I cannot recall whether the city has exclusive voting rights for certain city members that then go represent the city on board. So I can't answer your question appropriately right now because I cannot recall whether those individual members are voted strictly within the city and represent the city. My understanding from talking with city clerk and other, I think I had a discussion with the mayor as well, that these non-citizen voters would not be allowed to vote on anything having to do with the Montpelier Roxbury Unified Union School District or whatever it's called, because it goes outside of the city limits. That's not strictly a Montpelier question, it's a Montpelier Roxbury question. So I believe, I believe I'm a pretty firm ground there, but I'd like to have you hear it from the mayor or the clerk too, or Betsy Ann Brandt. Another question to keep in mind. As promised, we arrive at the definitions section 1504. This defines certain terms for purposes of the charter, specifically the sub-chapter. Legal resident of the United States is any non-citizen that resides in the United States on a permanent or indefinite basis in compliance with federal immigration laws. And as I brought up earlier, there is some question here, does this mean that the city clerk is making a determination on someone's status? And is there an appeal if for some reason their registration is denied? Non-citizen voter means any voter who registers and qualifies to vote in city elections, they shall not be able to vote on any state or federal candidate or question. Supplemental voter registry means a voter checklist kept separately from other voter lists that contains voters who qualify under section 1501. That is the walkthrough of the charter amendments as proposed by the city. This doesn't change anything by reference to people who may or may not have been able to run for office before, by designating them now as voters or anything like that. Do you want a short answer now, or this I will cover that issue? I think it's probably more efficient if we try to let you say that once. Since it's part of your presentation. As you've heard a few times, Betsy will touch upon that later. All right, any other questions for Tucker about the words on page? Great, thank you Betsy Ann. Thank you. I'm first gonna start by passing out these three, they're not gets unhelpful. On this and other constitutional questions. I have one for Kelly, I have one for Kelly. I have one for Kelly, I have one for Kelly. For the record Betsy Ann and ask legislative counsel. I have for you this document that's posted on your webpage. It's an overview of this question. I'm here to talk about the constitutional issue of whether it's constitutionally permissible for the general assembly to allow non-citizens to vote in local elections. And the bigger question of whether the general assembly overall is able to have different voting qualifications for people in local elections than it does for our general elections. I have other documents posted as well. Thank you so much to Kelly, posted a bunch of docs here. These documents are referenced in this memo that I'm going to go over with you. So you have access to many of the voting related documents that I'm going to review with you this morning. But I'm going to start by just going through this analysis that I've drafted for you. So overall, the big question that I'm here to talk with you about is whether in our constitution chapter two, section 42, which provides the voters qualifications and oaths. And I haven't looked over here behind me. This is chapter two, section 42 of our Vermont constitution that provides that every person of the full age of 18 years who is a citizen of the United States having resided in this state for the period established by the general assembly and who is of a quiet and peaceable behavior. And we'll take the following oath or affirmation shall be entitled to all the privileges of a voter of this state. And there you see the voters oaths that all of us have to take to vote in this election in any elections to say that we swear or affirm that whenever we give our voters suffrage, touching any matter that concerns the state of Vermont, that we do it as in our conscience in judge to conduce the best good of the same, meaning the state as established by the constitution without fear or favor of any person. And also we've amended our constitution to allow 17 year olds to vote in the primary if they will be 18 by the general election. Our related provision of our constitution is chapter one, article eight. That's in the chapter on our rights in our constitution. And chapter one, article eight states that all elections ought to be free and without corruption and that all voters having a sufficient, evident, common interest with and attachment to the community have a right to elect officers and be elected into office. Agreeably, the regulations made in this constitution. So the question that we're discussing today. Yeah. Sorry, I know you're on a roll here, but did this bill, this charter change allow non-citizens to be elected like mayor, city council? All right. I'll have that answer at the end, but okay. Suspense. The big question here, the overall question is whether those two sections together provide the qualifications to vote and hold office in all elections of the state or whether the general assembly's authority set forth in chapter two, section six and 69, which respectively provide that the general assembly has the power to constitute towns and to control municipal charters allows the general assembly to provide different qualifications to vote and hold office in local elections. So this question applies not only to this charter amendment that you have before you today that would allow non-citizens, legal residents, to vote and won't kill your city elections, but it's also whether the general assembly could enact a law such as that proposed in H418, which will allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote in all local elections. I've just provided the definition that we're talking about. When we say local election, we have a definition of that in general election law. It means an election that deals with the selection of people for public office to settle public questions solely within a single municipality or the election to settle public questions, several municipalities, if they all have to unanimously concur. Before I move on, I will note that those two provisions of our constitution, chapter two, section 42, the voters qualifications and chapter one, article eight, the rights of voters to elect and be elected. We know those do apply to our constitutional offices. So in chapter two, section 42, these are the qualifications to vote in our general elections and to be elected into office in our general elections. Those are the requirements. For example, we do have a minimum age requirement to hold office for our constitutional officers. The question we're talking about today is whether the general assembly can deviate from those qualifications in local elections. And the short answer that I provide here is I can't tell you with absolute certainty the general assembly can vote and hold office. The general assembly can provide qualifications to vote and hold office and local elections that differ from those that are constitutionally required for general elections because we just don't have current case law adjudicating this question under our existing constitutional voting qualification standards because our voting rights have changed over time. Currently, the voting qualifications in Vermont are the same in general and local elections. You have to meet those same requirements that are now set forth in chapter two, section 42. And those are repeated in statute in title 17. Those apply to any election in the state. But this was not always the case. It was a statutory change that was made by the general assembly that brought local election voting qualifications in line with the constitutional voting qualifications for our general elections. And there's no known case law to suggest that the requirements that these voting qualifications be the same has somehow now become constitutionally solidified. So I believe the change, the statutory change was made in 1977. Do we have any statutory attendee from that change? So I'm aware of the 1974 act that did that that brought them in line. I have tried to research if that is the exact moment when they became the same and I just did not have enough time to confirm because the two statutes, they used to be in different statutory locations. And I just, I didn't want to bring to the table. I just don't know for sure. But it's at least in 1974 that it became exactly the same. I can go back to that 1974 act that provided a site to it. It's 1973, acts and resolves number 172. I'll go back to look to see if there is a finding section. I don't recall seeing one, but I might have overlooked it. Jim. Do we know what the difference was before that? Yes. For example, we know that the timeframe that these, there were different standards in between state and local. For example, and local elections as we'll get to, women could vote and hold office in local elections before our constitution was amended so that women became freemen and were allowed to vote in general elections. So that was one difference. We'll also get to other differences as we go along in this summary. Because for example, we'll get to a case from 1836 that while to vote in a general election, a person had to be a US citizen that was not required for local elections and our Vermont Supreme Court upheld the ability of a person who was not a US citizen to vote and hold office in a local election. We'll get to that. So we don't know, going back to the second paragraph, we don't know, we don't have any case law to suggest that that statutory policy decision that the general assembly made has now somehow become a constitutional requirement. I have not been able to find any case law to suggest that now it's constitutionally required for general and local election voting qualifications to be the same. And instead, as I go on to note here, the Vermont Supreme Court, the SCOVY as I call it throughout this analysis has stated on at least several occasions in older case law when voting qualifications differed in general and local elections, that the qualifications to vote and hold office in local elections are an issue within legislative, not constitutional control. And these cases still appear to be good law because they have not been overruled. And I'll review them with you. To overall assist you in examining this question, the analysis that I set forth here in this document summarizes the changes in voting qualifications on the state and local level. It provides an overview of the scope of constitutional legislative power and canons of constitutional construction which you've already reviewed when you had our intro and it also sets forth a timeline of applicable constitutional provisions in case law. So let's head into the summary. First, we gotta take it from the very tippity top federal law because federal law and the supremacy clause controls everything. But federal law does not appear to control this question since the Supreme Court of the United States has held that non-discriminatory voting qualifications in state and local elections are within the discretion of the states. And I provide here for you in footnote three, a couple US Supreme Court cases that discuss the ability of states to decide the qualifications for voting in their elections. Those are recent cases from 2013 and 2015. For example, a state here in footnote 25 of this 2015 Supreme Court case, the court noted that a state may choose to regulate state and national elections differently. For example, that's a state prerogative. So the only question that remains then is whether it is constitutionally permissible for the general assembly to establish voter qualifications and local elections that different from those in our general elections. Because the only thing that controls the general assembly is a constitutional provision. We've already reviewed what chapter two, section 42 provides, I'll repeat it. Every person who was taken the voters oath and who was at least 18 years of age, a US citizen and a Vermont resident shall be entitled to all the privileges of a voter of this state. But that voter oath requiring a person to swear or affirm that they're giving their voter suffrage, touching any matter that concerns the state of Vermont. And that they're doing so with the best good of the state in mind without fear of favor of any person and allowing 17 year olds to vote in the primary. And relatedly, as we've already discussed, chapter one, article eight provides that all elections ought to be free and without corruption and all voters having a sufficient evident and common interest with an attachment to the community have a right to elect and be elected in the office agreeably to constitutional regulations. So reading these two together, these two sections provide that a person who meets the qualification of a voter has a right to vote and be elected into office. And the question again is whether those standard provide or do apply to all elections or whether the general assembly has the authority to provide different qualifications and local elections as part of its authority to control municipal government as set forth in chapter two, sections six and 69. Now notably, while those two sections of the Vermont constitution now use the terms voter and voters, those terms were substitutes for the prior terms freemen and freeman pursuant to the Supreme Court's 1994 gender inclusive revision authority which pursuant to that authority set forth in chapter two, section 76 was required to not alter the sense, meaning or effect of the sections of the constitution. And the Supreme Court made this substitution throughout the constitution. They made those substitutions throughout our constitution except for the subject title that precedes section 42. And there the Supreme Court maintained qualifications of freemen and just added and free women. You can see that here. That's the only use of freemen in our constitution now. Free women was added. I provided for you as one of the docs that Kelly posted, the Supreme Court's gender inclusive revision authority. So you can see where the constitution referred to men. They changed it to people and throughout wherever you see them referring to freemen they change it to voter except for that one location. So freemen was one term used in the original 1777 constitution but it also referenced inhabitants and denizens. Freemen had rights, had voting rights. The inhabitants did not. Freemen were defined in chapter two, section six of the original 1777 constitution as men who were at least 21, who lived in the state for at least a year and who took the voters oath. There was no requirement for a freemen to be a US citizen in our original 1777 constitution. In fact, Vermont didn't join the union until 1791. Freemen could vote for state and county offices described in the Vermont constitution. The original Vermont constitution did not provide for the election of any local offices and I just note that the only local office we have now in our constitution, under current constitutional language, are justices of the peace. But I note in the original 1777 constitution those were established as county offices. So freemen voted in freemen's meetings, which our Supreme Court of Vermont later discussed means what we now know as general elections and it provided the case site to that. While statute used to provide different qualifications to vote and hold office in local elections than what was required for freemen's slash general elections, statute was later amended so that voters in local elections had to meet the same qualifications as freemen set forth in the constitution. Those qualifications are now repeated and statute. I referenced that one 1974 act that moved up all elections no matter what election you have to meet the same qualifications, but I need to just pinpoint for you the exact time when that happened. I know it's within a timeframe of at least no more than 50 years when women got the right to vote in 24. But during the time that statutory qualifications, the vote and hold office and local elections differed from the constitutional qualifications and freemen's general elections. The Supreme Court of Vermont stated on at least several occasions that the legislative branch controls the qualifications of the vote and hold office and local elections because the general assembly controls municipalities. First, specifically in 1828 when the Vermont constitution was amended so that a freemen was required to be a citizen or naturalized and they're born here or naturalized. The Supreme Court in the later 1863 case would caught the bolster, distinguished constitutional freemen from the statutory voters and local elections. If he was a tax paying male of at least 21 years of age regardless of citizenship, you were allowed to vote in a local election. You didn't have to be a US citizen. You just had to pay your taxes. Going back to representative, what representative Huber was referring to, that was kind of the focus at that time on you have a right to vote in your locality if you're tax paying. That's really not the whole picture of local elections now. Similarly, in an 1886 case, the Vermont Supreme Court held that the Vermont constitutional requirements for officers to take oaths does not apply to municipal offices. And while it's not directly at the question of local election qualifications, the court plainly said, the chapter two in a Vermont constitution in its provision of our plan or frame of government both has no reference to the plan or frame of town governments, nor to the election and qualification of the officers thereof. Towns are not created by the constitution. They either exist by virtue of the charters that were granted by the sovereign before the adoption of the constitution or by acts of legislature since then. And they derived their powers not from constitution provisions, but from you, legislative enactments. And then finally, prior 1924, when women gained the right to be freed in under the Vermont constitution, a 1915 Vermont Supreme Court case called State v. Foley cited legislative acts as early as 1870 that permitted women to hold school district offices. And in that case, the Supreme Court upheld that election of a woman to a school district office. So you can see at that time the Supreme Court was permitting an expansion of voting rights even though local election voters could not, not all of them could vote in the general election. This was in particular a right to hold office. Correct. But they also referenced women being able to vote in those school district offices. But it is true, Madam Chair. It's voting and holding office. And as we'll see in these cases, if you go back and take a look at it again, it's a package deal. But the general assembly has the authority, these cases indicate that the general assembly has the authority to not only control who may vote in local elections, but who may hold office in local elections. Ron. So going to this Woodcock versus Bolster, has there been any subsequent legislation that would, I guess, nullify that particular language? Language? So, well, statutory, yes, because now by statute to vote in a local election, you do have to be a U.S. citizen. You have to meet the same exact qualifications to vote in general election. But the big picture is I haven't been able, statute doesn't bind the general assembly. Only a constitutional provision does. And since this 1863 Woodcock case, I've not been able to find any case law that says it is constitutionally impermissible for a person who's not a U.S. citizen to vote in a local election. So, well then, going back to that, so for instance, I'm a 21 year old male. I mean, I'll look at what I am. And I do pay my taxes occasionally. So would I be allowed to vote then in a local election based on the Woodcock versus Bolster? Back in 1863, those were the qualifications. Sure. Yes. So has anything changed? Yes. You, it's constitutionally impermissible now to make the qualification to vote contingent upon paying taxes. You can be a tax scoff law and still vote. Okay. So big picture. The legislative branch controls by statute what a constitutional provision does not. At this time, there's no known case law that would constitutionally require Vermont to have the same voting qualifications in both state and local elections. If none exists, then that's Vermont Supreme case law that we just reviewed indicates that the General Assembly has a constitutional discretion to enact H207, H418, or similar legislation, and that this is a policy question, not a constitutional one. If it was a constitutional question, and some of your testimony suggests there could be issues because this was a petition given to the city council to put on the ballot. I mean, let's just say it was blatant, unconstitutional. I mean, even me as a lay person could figure that out. It was put there because it was truly signed by the necessary. Would it still, could anybody prevent it from going on the ballot? I don't know the answer off hand. I don't think so. I don't think that it can be under the petition. Tucker Anderson, do you have any thoughts on this off hand? 2645 only provides that the city council shall not revise. And I believe that it is subsection B under 2645 that says that after it has gone through the Charter Amendment procedure, it shall be presented to the voters at the next annual or town meeting. So my off hand interpretation of that section would be that when a petition is raised, it may not be revised and it shall be presented to the voters at the next annual town meeting after it has gone through all the warnings and hearings. So even if there is a constitutional question, there's no stop cap measure from preventing it to go on to the ballot. The stop cap measure may be just the public hearings where that would be discussed. But if the will of the voters is to present something to the general assembly that is unconstitutional. They have the right to do that. They have the right to do that. And has been discussed many times, I'm sure, with the members in the room. The legislature may also, if it is the will and wisdom of the legislature, pass an unconstitutional act that then gets challenged and struck down. And who gets challenged, the state, because the state gave permission for the city because it's unique to the city? The challenge would be to the act itself and the entity that is carrying it out. In this case, the entity that is carrying it out would be the city of Montpelier. And the challenge would be against the statute. So the state would have to defend the statute if it were a challenge? That I am not certain about. That's something that I have not looked into. Who would be responsible for it? I mean, I think we're all cognizant of any action we take one way or another on any issue. That there's costs potentially involved, whether that's hiring a new employee or whether it may be defending a lawsuit. And we have prepared to, I mean, fund the Attorney General's Office to defend that lawsuit. That issue is, if you have any desires that I look into that, I can. I will say that the issue of whether the state's duties and responsibilities is the sovereign. It extend to chartered municipalities where the General Assembly has approved a charter amendment is an open question not only for my greenhorn legal mind, but also for the treatises that guide much of this area of law, neither McQuillan nor Dillon have in their treatises come to a definitive conclusion whether the state's role as sovereign requires the defense of municipal acts in a Dillon's role statement. But what I am hearing today is through action of the General Assembly, we have one uniform statewide voter qualification that's in sync with our constitution. Yes, that is accurate. And if we were to approve this charter change, we would be deviating from that. Yes, that is accurate. Thank you. So now I'm going to get into, oh, sorry, another question? Yes, sir. I also think there's at least precedent from the 19th century which says that we don't have to follow constitutional language, that we can, through statutory change, or in this case, a charter change could change the rules or the guidance for local elections. And there's a long history in Vermont of having different rules for statewide elections versus local elections and allowing non-citizens to vote. And that's why I note here at the end of this paragraph that it appears that this is a policy question, not a constitutional one. So I'm just going to go into some of the big picture things we've already reviewed when you had your introduction to government operations. First, let's just briefly talk about constitutional legislative authority as you know, the Vermont Constitution controls you, the legislative branch and the other two branches, but that's the only thing that restricts you. The Constitution is not a grant of power, it's a limitation on your powers. Your power is practically absolute except for constitutional limitations. And this Supreme Legislative Power that you wield establishes policy through police power. The chapter one, article six of our Vermont Constitution provides for police power and you exercise police power. And the only thing that limits your exercise of police power is a constitutional provision. A state legislature except for constitutional limitations is authorized to pass measures for the general welfare of the people of the state and the exercise of police power and is itself the judge of the necessity or expediency of the means adopted. What you think is the right thing to do. And this includes legislating for the common benefit of the people for their public health safety, convenience and morals. And this defines Vermont as a sovereign entity because all powers that the states are permitted to exercise under our federal government makes each state unique. And that relates back to that language in footnote three of this analysis that talks about how states can set different voting qualifications. And you have the power to control municipalities. You have the chapter two, section six authority to constitute towns, borough of cities and counties. And the chapter two, section 69 authority to control municipal charters which are to remain under the patronage and control of the state. And the Vermont Supreme Court has stated the power that is exercised by you is the people's power delegated to you by the people. And it expressly commits to you the power that constitute towns, boroughs, cities and counties. And this power is essentially a trust and requires the exercise of judgment and discretion and its execution. And you can't delegate this authority and therefore in deciding these municipal questions it's up to you. You have to exercise your own judgment and discretion in that exercise and the execution of municipal law as far as necessary to discharge the personal trust committed to you, to the people. It's up to you to make these decisions. I just provide an overview of constitutional construction to help you read the Vermont Constitution. Our Vermont Supreme Court has said generally we have a number of tools to construe our constitution, our own decisions, a wording of the text, historical analysis, construction of similar provisions in other state constitutions and sociological materials, but the plain language always controls. We've got that canon of constitutional construction expressio unis, exclusión alterias, meaning when the constitution says things one way, you don't have to say and not any other way. Saying it one way is enough to mean that's the way that it shall be done and not in any other way. The court says it also looks at context for the words and phrases that are used and that specific provisions control over the general ones, but the legislature fills in any details that are not covered in the Vermont Constitution because constitutional enactments delineate the framework of government so working details are left up to you. The court says when it looks at the Constitution it tries to understand its spirit, essence and core values and the reason that it's important to know how the Vermont Supreme Court reads our constitution is because they're the final interpreter of what it means. So the last thing I'm just going to provide here for you or one of the last slides is just a summary of our changes and voting rights. We've already talked a little bit about the original 1777 Vermont Constitution about Freeman having to be at least 21 years of age, males residing in the state for at least a year and the oath, no citizenship required. I won't in the interest of time go through all of these provisions, but the power to constitute towns, boroughs, cities and counties was in your original 1777 Constitution. It talks about all elections being free and voluntary. And our 1786 Constitution made no real changes to those voting qualifications. One thing that has been helpful is an old 1789 case that said when the Vermont Constitution referred to all elections, it was really only referring to those Freeman's meetings. What we now know is general elections. The court's 1789, just 12 years out from our original 1777 Constitution said that the framers of the Constitution were forming a plan for the general government of the state. They do not appear to have had an eye on the internal regulation of lesser corporations. So that was the first indication that town government is not provided for and the structure for it is not provided for Vermont Constitution. 1791 is when we joined the union. 1828 is when Freeman had to start to be a US citizen. To be a Freeman in the state, you had to be a US citizen starting in 1828. Prior to that time, you do not have to be a US citizen in order to vote in what we now know as general elections. There's that 1863 Woodcock v. Bolster case saying that while you have to be a citizen to be a Freeman, that requirement was by no means synonymous with that of a voter in town or school meeting. We fail to see how it would follow that a change in the Constitution in relation to the qualifications of Freeman should work a corresponding change in the statutes regulating voting in town and school meetings. It has not been questioned, but that is actually within the power of the legislature to regulate the right of voting in such meetings and the right of holding office, according to their pleasure, and that there's nothing in the Constitution restraining this exercise. Yes, sir. Yeah, in the 1828 thing, it's nothing that happened on the federal level that trickled down to incur statutory citizenship. I don't think it wasn't federal because states get to control their own elections, but what I've been reading is that this was a period of time when perspectives were changing about people who were not US citizens voting in elections, and this is about the time when Vermont was not the only state to start to require US citizenship as a requirement to vote in its general elections. Building any walls. Technically. My understanding, at least the War of 1812 sort of kind of fueled the changes in perspectives. Then there's a movement, xenophobic movement, movement started after World War I, and that's when we started to see changes to require US citizenship again in some statutes. So there, you know, we have, as Betsy Ann, we've gone in waves or cycles with respect to requiring US citizenship. Is that the no-nothing movement? I've also provided, I'm sorry. 1868 is when we ratified our 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. It's important because another case refers back to that. 1870, when we had the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution, so voting privileges cannot be denied when they can have race, color, or previous condition of servitude. In 1886, we had the Vermont Supreme Court case where the court held that the requirement for officers to take oaths doesn't apply to municipal offices. We already referred to this case with the court saying our constitution does not provide a plan or frame of town governments nor do the election and qualification of the officers of towns. 1915 was that important state need polly case. This was before women had the right to vote. This case acknowledged that even back in the 1870s, General Assembly allowed women to vote and hold office in local elections, particularly school district elections. They also referenced town elections, women holding the important town offices of clerk and treasurer, and in this case, the Supreme Court upheld the election of a woman to a school district office, even though women were not allowed to vote yet in general elections. There's our 1916 case where the court said that the term general election is now what used to be called Freeman's meetings. 1920 was when on the federal level, the US Constitution was amended by the 19th Amendment to say no one can be denied the privilege to vote on account of sex, and similarly in 1924, Vermont amended its constitution in accordance with that requirement to grant women the right to be Freeman so that women can vote in general elections. Here in 1943, I just provided, it's a sad, so in my case, attorney general opinion, where, and it's posted on your webpage where the AG responded to a request of, maybe it was the speaker of the house, asking what can be done at, here we are at the beginning of World War II, and our man, our 18-year-old boys are going off to fight, but at the same time, 21 is the age to vote in a general election. And the AG said at that time, it's not possible for the legislature to grant any relief toward making it possible for youth between the ages of 18 and 21 to vote in any Vermont election. I noted it because this AG opinion did not acknowledge any distinction between the state and local elections. However, AG opinions are also not binding, they're advisory only, so I don't, I included it, it might be relevant to your decision-making, but it's not binding on what you're considering today. In 1964, the 24th Amendment was made to our US Constitution, saying in federal elections, you can't be denied a vote for failure to pay any poll tax or other tax, tax golf laws, and then, even though that 24th Amendment only applies to federal elections, we then had a 1966 US Supreme Court case that said states can't do it either. You can't, under the Equal Protection Clause, you can't make the affluence of a voter or the payment of any fee in electoral standards, striking down things like poll taxes. 1970, our Vermont Districts Court struck down our one-year residency requirement as an unconstitutional limit on the US Constitution's right to vote and travel interstate, and that judgment was affirmed by the US Supreme Court. 1971, under the US Constitution, anyone at least 18 years of age was granted the right to vote anywhere. So then in 1974, our Vermont Constitution was amended to allow people to vote in the general election if they were 18 years of age, rather than 21, and then it just said, instead of a one-year requirement, just for the period established by the General Assembly, and that goes back to that, now what we have for residency in our statutes, defining residency. This 1984 AG opinion has tripped me up before when I have been looking at this question. In this AG opinion, AG's office opined that a proposed charter amendment that would have imposed term limits for town and town school district officers is an unconstitutional limit on the right of Freeman of this state to be elected into office. That really goes against what we're saying otherwise in the three cases that we provided, the General Assembly does control qualifications to vote and hold office and local elections. I don't know how to rectify the two. AG opinions are advisory, not binding. There may be a way to read the two together, but this AG opinion is not on point to this question, but I flag it because it is something that has made me question this at first until I started to read more about those three cases. And then finally, not finally, in 1994, we had our Vermont Supreme Court gender inclusive revision as we already noted where they changed free men everywhere to voters except for that one place. And then finally, in 2010, we've got the ability of 17-year-olds to vote in the primary if they'll be 18 by the general. I'm gonna leave you with just a couple election notes on H-207 specifically, and it goes back to this question that you were asking about the ability to be elected into city office. I note that while it doesn't seem to be presented in this way pursuant to the petition, that because H-207 would allow non-citizen legal residents of the US to vote in city elections under that proposed section 1501 of the charter, it does appear that those voters would be qualified to be elected into city office under current section 509 of the charter. And I'll pull it up for you in a second. Section 509 provides that at the annual meeting, Montpelier voters shall elect from among the city voters, a mayor for a term of two years, a city clerk, city councilors, and other elective city officers. And then also it makes reference to electing the members of the board, school directors of the Montpelier, Roxbury Unified Union School District. However, I do note here that because section 1503 of the charter does appear to state that these legal resident voters would only get city ballots of city questions and candidates that appears to preclude them from voting in that Unified Union School District, just something to flag for you otherwise. If that sounds like it was the intent, I believe representing Kits Miller said he would follow up or city officials can follow up with you. So to go back to this question, can these legal resident voters be elected to city office and reading those three cases from Vermont Supreme Court, the General Assembly may establish the qualifications to vote for and be elected to local office with the understanding that these are still good law. It would therefore be constitutionally permissible for legal resident voters in the city of Montpelier to vote in local elections and also to be elected to city office. The other thing, the last thing I was going to flag for you is the issue of ballot secrecy. So proposed section 1503 of the charter would provide that in any election that involves both city and non-city questions or offices, such as a general election, quote, the city clerk shall prepare and provide to any non-citizen a ballot that contains only the city questions and candidates. And I would just flag for you that if a city election is held on the same day as a primary general or other election like a school district election, normally the questions for that election it is possible to combine them all onto one ballot. The charter does not address whether the city would continue to use such a combined ballot if this were enacted in the law. But as a practical matter, a combined ballot for everybody, but the legal resident voters seems to have the potential to infringe upon the secrecy of their ballots if they're voting in very small numbers, you know, if there's under 10. And here's everybody else's ballots that are all combined, but for these specific ballots, here's all this small group of people but seem to at least have the potential to infringe upon the secrecy of third ballot choices. Thank you. So, we will come back to this with other folks who are interested in joining with us in this conversation this afternoon. And so we have a change of subject here at 11. So we will, yes, Jim. We have five. Can you have five? Yes, can you make it five? Yeah. Four, four, that would be awesome. Thank you. Underneath, Jeff, is the Medical Marijuana Registry where we register both patients as well as the dispensaries. And with respect to the dispensaries, we're responsible for ensuring that they follow over the rules that have been set out, whether statutorily or regulatory, you know, our rules. And then they renew every year AFP into the state for that renewal. And so we do periodic inspections, ensure inventory control and other such things are up to standards. And then we also issue the registration cards for patients. I know Jeff will get into a little more detail, but I know that there are actually a number of bills floating around right now. There's the large bill that the Senate is likely to pass out today on tax and regulate that does down the road impact the Medical Marijuana Dispensary and how it's gonna function. I also know that there's a separate standalone bill that's in the Senate Judiciary that makes some changes to the way the Medical Marijuana Program is run. And I'm just gonna highlight a few of those that are a specific concern to the Department of Public Safety. One of them being currently you have to have at least a three month relationship with a physician before they can issue the prescription or allow you to become a registrant. And this bill would apparently remove that requirement. And the concern about that is there might be an influx of pot doctors, folks who can just come into the spit and issue prescriptions for marijuana because coupled in that particular bill is a, there's currently certain conditions that are defined as allowable under the program. And this would essentially allow any doctor to determine for any reason that Medical Marijuana is in so the concern. Is there any specific criteria that a provider has to meet in order to be able to prescribe Medical Marijuana in order to have a certain certification or? They have to, well, they have to be a licensed physician and then there's another provider, that's right. And then they also have to have this three month relationship with a patient. But so there's no special training required of the provider to issue prescriptions? No, no, that's right, okay, thank you. And then I will say that there's another area of the bill that's concerning is the testing of marijuana products in the bill that has been submitted without consultation with the Department of Public Safety. It's written into the bill that testing may be done by Agency of Ag Lab, which we have no problem with, but it says that the Department of Public Safety will pay for that testing. Nobody consulted with us and asked us if we would agree to that. And so that's an area that we don't support. We believe that the testing of products that's required of the dispensaries should be at their expense. So I think it's probably, I could go into a number of directions, but it'd be better if we maybe heard what your questions are. And I probably would ask Jeff to maybe just sit next to me because he is more of a subject matter expert. If that's okay, Madam Chair. So while we're talking about testing, is anyone doing testing now? Yes. And who was that being? So I'll let you answer that one. For the record, my name is Jeffrey Wallen. I'm the Director of the Vermont Crime Information Center. And first of all, I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to come speak with you today. I'm currently testing as handled primarily by the dispensaries themselves. They have a number of different types of equipment and testing paradigms in place. And they do do that testing. We've been reviewed the results. And a number of them actually test each other's product. They have a system in place where they will test each other's product as a sort of backstop. So they're simply not just self testing their own information. But that's who currently handles most of the testing as the dispensaries themselves. Is that required by law? I'm not aware of any testing requirements in this statute. So are there rules that delineate what the testing criteria are? And what's the labeling issue? It's more of a labeling issue as the deputy commissioner said. They are required to label certain information on the label, including potency. And so in order to come up with that, they have to do a test to determine what that particular piece or what that is there. So that's squared away with the exact, as with anything, and I am not a plant scientist, a biologist, a chemist, anything of that nature, but there are different tests that all can be legitimately run that may come up with slightly different answers to that. And there isn't a standard required test or metric that they have to use. So if we go out of the path of that's regulated, and I think there's the expectation that something would be a commercial part of this work, or a retail, would there still need to be the medical component to it? Or would an essences just make that need to go away because you're gonna have a relationship with a provider that's gonna prescribe it, and I would assume that you're gonna maintain that relationship with a provider that's treating whatever hails you. But if I could go to a commercial establishment and get what I need, why would I need to go to a medical? Sure, and I can speak to that somewhat broadly. There are probably others within the medical community and the dispensaries who can speak to that, but just broadly that the products that may be of most interest in the commercial market recreationally, I'm gonna use that term, may not be what folks who need it for therapeutic use need. And so that may fund themselves in a desert where there's lots of product, but not what they need. I know virtually nothing about marijuana except what I've learned through in this job. I joked that I didn't know what it smelled like until I walked by the evidence room one day. I literally had no clue on it. But marijuana is not like Tylenol or ibuprofen or it's not a single type of product. It's a series of plants that can be distilled, processed, et cetera, and grown in different ways. It can yield significantly different, real products in the day from a chemical perspective. So what the recreational market might be interested in may not be what folks need for therapeutic use. And without a dedicated market to manage and protect that in some capacity, folks may find themselves back where they were a number of years ago and it wasn't available at all or they were having to try to purchase less regulated, shall we say, products than what they purchased now. Got John and Jen. So getting back to testing for a moment, I believe that they're testing for propensity. How about for purity? Because I mean, I think one of the things between the black market and having a tax and regulate market is that we can ensure the purity of marijuana, which means testing for, you know, pesticide, it's fentanyl. Yeah. We're not aware of any requirement like that, while pesticides or anything other than what is the for the labeling purposes online. So that is a potential gap. And I would refer maybe to carry a gear from Ag to discuss testing and what they could results they could give at their lab. That's their area of expertise more so than ours. Do we have any idea what others do in this area? I don't. I'm not familiar of what. I can speak just from general knowledge that the dispensaries, when they do their testing, they do look for impurities. They do look for mold, et cetera. But it's at their own as the sellers at their own discretion. There, of course, they have a desire to sell product that's going to be well received. People are going to come back, purchase, et cetera. But there isn't a standard where X has to be below X and Y has to be above Y. Otherwise, it doesn't mean a state standard. So are we taxing, anticipating taxing, medical side and commercial side in any way that's comparable so that market differentiation might very well be priced? So as far as medical marijuana goes, there is no tax. There's no tax on the medical marijuana side on the tax and regulate. That's going to be up to the body to figure out what that would be. In terms of pricing, it's hard to tell right now. It's going to depend on the market in terms of where the retail is going to come in in comparison to the medical marijuana. Did I answer your question? You look a little confused. No, I was on to the next one. Oh, really? Next one. Are you going to, that's a point for that? That's a cheap one. So the residuals that are in the stuff that aren't good, that's where your gas chromatic graph and other very expensive pieces of lab tech stuff comes in testing class. I'm not in a position to talk about the testing because we don't currently do it. And my comment was to see if there's other things in it. Big deal. Money watch. You're right. So when we went to the dispensary, one of the things I learned was how much each plant is trapped. I don't know what happens when a plant wilts over or dies because it wasn't watered or something. But there's a pretty regulated process for that, even if they wanted to fill a need at another dispensary, they got to track all that. If we were to go down the road to a tax and regulate market for retail, would you envision a similar type of tracking into other states that do this, track each individual plant? I mean, how does that... I can speak to this second better than the first, other states. I do know in other states, and unfortunately, I can't give you a definitive list, but I'm talking with folks in other states, that some of them do have what we would call a term of art, a seed to sail. So once something starts growing, it moves from a seed to actually it begins growing, that it's trapped through its life. Whether that be it's destroyed because it's a bad harvest or the plant is not growing in a way where it does get mold or some kind of thing where they want to remove it from circulation, or it ends up becoming, whether it be an edible product, a dried flower, which is what typically is smoked, or some type of salvointment tea, take your pick. It is tracked through, so you can say plant number one went through as harvested, X amount was harvested, and that product went into these specific products, and it should be not the type, but actually batch one, batch two, batch three. We do see in a number of states that type of tracking, it's going to vary from state to state because of the way their rules and statutes are constructed. So we do see that now, and we've worked with the dispensaries to try to track information with as much specificity as possible because one, it helps meet our mandate to minimize diversion. If you don't know where something is, or where it went, how do you know it wasn't diverted, unfortunately. It also, I would argue, and the dispensaries may or may not agree with me completely on this, but it helps them manage their supply chain very effectively because they have an estimated amount of product they're trying to deliver to a specific number of patients or clients. So by having that data, it allows them to better track that. And due to some changes that were enacted in the last few years, it does allow them to sell products. So if one of them is particularly good at growing one thing, they can sell it to another dispensary or vice versa, where at one point they could own a barter product, which is somewhat problematic. As far as what any kind of potential tax and regulate system would envision, I would defer to others on that. I do think that the market may drive that. I think folks are going to, customers may demand that. Well, I'm thinking more probably from the tax aspect. We tax alcohol, but it's a volume measure. I don't think we track the rowing of the hops or whatever else goes into the final product. I don't know how we get our arms around that. Obviously, I think if we go this way, we ought to learn from what other jurisdictions have done. I would also recommend that you get somebody from tax department is here to talk about that. They actually have been involved in development. I'm going to encourage the chair to send me to British Columbia to do some investigation. So far, that would second that motion. It ought to be a coming in truth. What do we take away? You're going to be like, I fell into the mess. The other question I have is, and this may be premature because we don't have a Senate bill and we don't know exactly what it looks like other than what we've read. Are there recommendations? You also do public safety. What are the recommendations that we should look at if we start to go down the path of marking up a bill? So with respect to the bill, that's likely to come out of the Senate. I know that the Judiciary Committee has taken a lot of testimony, but what we've tried to do is not even address public safety in that bill. That doesn't mean that public safety is not a concern. Highway safety is one of our largest concerns. And I can tell you that the House side has a bill that's in transportation on oral fluid testing. And so we would ask for some support of that. It's a very complex issue and I don't know that we have the time or the expertise to sit here and talk about it today, except to say that it is an issue we're very concerned about, increased driving under the influence of any substance, whether it's alcohol, marijuana, or other drugs. This is one more piece in the puzzle, if you will, to try to make the highways safer. We are very concerned about the potential that will have more people driving under the influence. Thank you. Marcia, I have another question. Thank you. Who sets the pricing on products that are sold in dispensaries? Are they uniform from dispensary to dispensary, depending on the type of product that's being sold, or do they set their own prices? That's a great question. The dispensaries set their own prices. The program does not tell dispensaries how much or how little they may charge. The only area where we do somewhat get involved is they are required to have a sliding fee, a scale fee for individuals who have limited ability to pay, but there's no declaration of what that must be. Each one has their own. As long as they simply have one and they follow it, whatever that might be, that's the only area that we really get involved in the pricing. What handle complaints if there are any made against the dispensaries or the products they sell? So you handle the complaints, you receive them in your office somewhere and respond to them. Can you tell me if there is a general sense of what those complaints are about? Are there any general categories or are they pretty spread out with no common theme? They're fairly spread out. I would say just a couple of very stepping back and very high level. I wouldn't want to get into this because I'm not prepared to discuss specifics, but just over the last couple of years, you see is occasionally, because these are products that are grown, not purchased, that the product that I want, this month isn't available or I can't get as much because it's either the growing cycle or there was a stunt or any number of things because it takes a number of months to grow these from seed to sale, so occasionally folks have concerns about the product they're looking for isn't available at the moment. They're being told it will be available in two or three weeks or a month. So that is an occasional area of frustration. That's something where I think the legislature tried to address that by allowing the dispensaries to sell product to one another to address some of that issue. The other big area I would say is there is the opportunity dispensaries may sell clones which are water bound. I can't grow anything either, but basically water brown. I have one staff member who keeps my plants alive and I appreciate her dearly for that. Otherwise my office would be a desert. But they are apparently very hard to grow and so these are not easy plants to grow. Occasionally folks who say they bought something, they took it home, they can't get it to grow and we just try to refer them back to the dispensary for any advice on how to grow. These are, as I understand and have been told, very difficult plants to grow with any effectiveness to get it on the product. Whether that were soil bound, whether you endured, et cetera, but they're not just sort of a, you go to gardeners or what have you, put it in your window and it sort of does its thing. You have to really manage these very, very tightly. So we do occasionally hear complaints about that. It's really not a complaint about the product necessarily, but more of just these are difficult to grow and maybe not as easy as sometimes folks might hope sometimes. Okay. We have a lot of people who have an accident and Bob, Robin, Warren. So if the dispensaries are responsible for testing the product, how do we know that the equipment is calibrated and accurately functioning? So that's a great question. We do require them to provide that information. So when we go in and do an inspection, one thing we'll look for is when was your equipment last tested? Is it certified by any body, et cetera? And may work with either the agency of agriculture or others to make sure that those are legitimate testing standards that they're holding to. We don't require any particular one, but because there are so many different types of equipment there, gas, kind of chromatography brought up as one, but there are others as well. And just to make sure that they're certified or managed appropriately. So we do, you've got a device. When was it last tested? Is that within that device's testing cycle? Some devices mainly need to be calibrated every couple of years. Maybe it may be annual. So we'll review that to make sure they're staying on top of it. Additionally, they have to submit their testing methodology. So this is how we've derived this percentage of ingredient existence. Just for clarity of the record, did you just state you have someone growing cannabis in your office? Oh, no, no, no. Heavens, no. Thank you. No, I haven't. I haven't. Thank you for that, Clara. Okay. Yes, no. And for the record, I have a money tree and an African violet. And I purchased it. Don't tell them you have a money tree. They'll come get it. And when you're sitting around in the evening with your cohorts from around the country, actually have, I can go out the day and buy a pair of $500 sneakers for 20 bucks. Do you have any guess that you're going to make a significant dent in the secondary market if we go to this? No, I'm going to take that. Yes, sir. We're not proposing the retail, the tax and regulate. So whether it will... Do you have experience from people that haven't? Do they estimate that it has...? I'm not sure I understand the question. I want to make sure I'm answering the right question. This is going to make a dent in the... Imagine it will to a certain degree. I mean, and this is speculation, but if there are marijuana retail stores where it's more regulated, I'm sure there are many people who would rather buy it there than from somebody else who's less reputable. What percentage or what dent, if you will? No idea. I wouldn't have any way to speculate on that, but I'm sure it will have some impact. Rob, you had a question? A couple. One kind of follow-up on this. It sounds like the set aside of the tax regulator looking to put a 10% tax on it and the justification was to be competitive with the black market. So my question is, is how do you do a market analysis to find that if you're competitive? And the other question I had is on the medical marijuana, is there any insurance reimbursement associated with that when it's deemed to be medically... I want to go the first part of that question. In terms of the market analysis, I don't know how to do that. I would... might be worth asking the Senate how they came up with that number. And I think they're also looking at additional taxes. This is the local option tax. And I think Senate finance may have added a 6% tax too. I don't know how that ended up coming out. So it may be a total of 18 now. I don't know that for sure, but that's the last I knew. In terms of the insurance, I don't believe so. No, I'm not aware of any insurance reimbursements for it. It's still viewed as a substance that has no therapeutic value by the FDA, so therefore it doesn't need any kind of reimbursement requirement. I would hazard to guess that you would need to see a change at the federal level, given that list insurers operate in a federal capacity or a national, you know, regional capacity. Before that, that would substantially change. Is that? Yeah. Warren? Going back to the concept of dispensaries being responsible for setting their own prices and adding to that the other comment about how particular patients might find their drug of choice not available at their local dispensary, are people free to shop whether for price or availability between the various dispensaries around the state without going through a whole process of registering with a particular dispensary? The short answer to that is no. They're not able to do that. Currently patients must select a dispensary that they wish to utilize. A number of dispensaries make certain information available, just that large, so I don't want to say they have no ability to do that. And certainly if a registered patient were to call one dispensary than the other, they might say, I don't have a product like that, but you need to switch to us to do that. So I don't want to say that they're operating in a complete vacuum, but they can't simply go, oh, you don't have this here? I'm going to go to the one in two towns over and pick up that there. They can't just do that. So there's someone locked in, but there is the ability to gather additional information. Thank you. Nelson? In my question, we've been talking about the medical dispensary, but you also talked about looking to have like an open market like Michael Brewey's or something where they want to sell and charge taxes on through the state with this bill, or is it just strictly, you know, the medical that you're talking about? It sounds like you initially talked about the fact that it's going to be other things that's current. I believe if the Senate votes it out today, it's on their calendar a tax and regulate mechanism where there will be retail stores outside of the medical marijuana world where anybody's, I think you have to be 21 in their bill, anybody's able to go and purchase marijuana, but it would be taxed. Would there be a controlled environment? I'm thinking like, you know, we have liquor stores around the state, but they're controlled where they're sold. Are they going to license people through this, or are we going to have an open market? No, there will be license and there are a number of licenses and that's part of that bill. I think the bill is 64 pages or something like that and some of that's outlined. They're also creating a cannabis board and they're going to create rules as well because it's not, I don't believe, I don't believe, and if I'm wrong, I apologize, but I don't believe it would allow for the retail sale this year. It would be in a subsequent year so they have some time to develop these rules that you're talking about. Well, I've seen with the Michael Breweries that they're expanding all the time and I'm hoping that this isn't the concept they're looking at with this product. Yeah, I can't speak to their intent. Jim. Do you know if the Senate bill is under, this board is under your department? No, it's not. It's an independent board that there are different appointees, some are appointed by the governor and some are appointed by the legislature and a couple other entities. And does medical marijuana still stay under your shop? I believe in the last version of that bill, it would fall under this cannabis board so the answer appears to be no. Okay, so you would lose that? Yes. Okay. The bill is in the same account today with the number of amendments from the various committees that reviewed the bill as it went through the Senate. So the final version, even coming out of the Senate, then it's going to come over here but it's worth reading. It really is. Of course we've been following it very closely. But thank you for that update. Yeah. Any further questions from anyone? Anything you all would like to add? Are there certain things that you really recommend that we take a look at if we get possession of the bill? Well, I've had the opportunity to speak about the oil fluid testing, which is not in this bill. It's in Representative Potter submitted it in the transportation. We really would appreciate support on that. You know, if we want to legalize this, we need to start looking at a way to ensure the safety of everybody driving on the highways. And then if you do take up the bill, we certainly would like the opportunity to come in and answer any particular questions you may have. As far as the roadside testing, the saliva testing, is there any progress on that? I know that there's an issue with testing for marijuana impairment specifically because THC can stay in the system for quite a period of time and would show up in the saliva test. So I'm going to answer your question partially. And defer it as well. The thing to remember about the testing is we're not going to have a number where we can say like alcohol. But it's part of the puzzle that can put the case together in terms of this person is impaired. It's not like the alcohol test. However, to get into the specifics, you want people way smarter than me in here like Lieutenant Flanagan and Dr. Conti from our lab who can explain that and explain the actual process by which we would find somebody consider them to be under the influence of marijuana or whatever the substance may be. And so I think I answered your question. Well, I understand that the test is actually pretty good for a number of other substances that may be in the driver's system but it was still pretty tricky with THC and marijuana. Yeah, I mean, I think that it indicates different levels of the active THC versus latent. But again, I'm not the expert on that. It would be great if we could have the opportunity to explain it and how it would actually be used to build a case. It's not the linchpin of a case. I think that's important to remember. But it is one more thing that helps law enforcement make the roads a little safer. My question was going to be how do you test now? I see in the paper you read everyone's file where they picked up a driver under the influence of drugs. How is that test done now to come to that conclusion? So we have drug recognition experts and so that's a law enforcement officer specifically trained to identify signs and symptoms of somebody who's actually under the influence of a substance. So there's certain symptoms you look for? Yeah, I cannot articulate that but we certainly would be willing to bring a DRA expert in or a tenant planning it from the state police oversees that program and he could explain it a hundred times better than I'm going to even attempt. So what I'm hearing at this point is there is some testing that you're doing but you'd like to have better testing. I've never understood why this test was so important. Marsha's question being informative but there's a dead person on the floor and you've got gun residue, powder residue on your hand. The preponderance of the evidence is a standard. You're talking about a conviction? It's beyond a reasonable doubt, not a preponderance of the evidence. When you're pulling somebody over your alcohol or other things you're looking at their driving behavior which brings probably the camera video stuff back into conversation but it doesn't necessarily seem like it's a huge piece of the puzzle. That's an interesting point and I agree with you in as much as it's not the linchpin but it is another facet, another piece where we can help clarify the picture of what's really going on and that's really what we're talking about. In some respect you are making my point in that we're not saying, if you give us this we're going to be able to tell you exactly how much THC he has in his system and how impaired he is because of that. We can't even do that with alcohol, we can tell you how much out but I don't know how, some people can drive but I'll be careful what I say but some people can have a conversation when their alcohol level is higher than others and so, but this would help us narrow down they've got this, they also were driving in this fashion they're also, we have this, we have an order of this and it helps build a case. So you're right in that it's not the most important thing but it is another piece of the puzzle. How many drug recognition experts are there in the state? I don't know the answer to that I can get it for you. Last I knew I thought it was like 75. Is that split between Vermont State Police and other law enforcement agencies? I think there are municipalities but I'll get that answer for you. I know there's at least one where I live in Dover, which is right up the street from Wilmington so I mean, it's on the wall. I will find that out, the answer out for you. Do you think we'll need more if we move to a tax and regulate? I don't know the answer. It's going to be like calling in the dog. Well, it's kind of, you know, they come in and they have to be there. They have to, they can't do an evaluation over the phone, they can't do it. So they actually, I can't speculate on what the impact of tax and regulate is going to be except to say that we probably will see more impaired driving. I think it's a logical conclusion but that's not based on any empirical data that I'm familiar with but having been on the planet as long as I have and understanding how people behave generally, I think it's clear to say that if we make it legal we'll see an increase in the behavior. Anyone else have any questions? Well, thank you very much. Well, we appreciate your time and opportunity and both Jeff and I are available anytime you need us to come back and clarify or answer any other questions we might have. It's a complex issue with a lot of different issues in front of it so we appreciate you taking the time. Our pleasure. Thank you. Have a good day. Thanks. I'd have to pan too. Mayor Watson, please join us. Thank you. So just for your, just to get you all oriented to where we are, we took some time this morning with our legislative council to do a little job through history and that you can ask. And Tucker Anderson have done a very thorough job of putting together a memo for us to help us understand the history of voting rights and the evolution of voting rights so that we could understand where this concept fits. And so we would love to hear from you and then as I've noted we have a long list of folks who would like to testify. We can stay a few minutes past 4.30 but committee members have obligations at 4.45 to have a hard stop. Well, I won't take too much time. Perfect. Yeah. Well, thank you. So my name is Anne Watson. I'm the mayor of Montpelier and I should just apologize briefly for my appearance. I got hit with a Frisbee the other day but it looks worse than it feels sometimes. But anyway, thank you for giving me some time to speak to you on this today. So I'm here representing both the city council of Montpelier as well as the residents of Montpelier. So both the city council and the public voted in favor of allowing green card holders to vote on local issues. So it was unanimously approved by the city council and the public voted two to one in favor of the measure. So the yes votes were 66%. The logistics of this measure should be approved would mean that the green card holders would be able to vote on just municipal issues. So like most people, I used to think that it was simply not legal for non-citizens to vote, period. But as you may have heard from your legal council, there are no federal laws that expressly prohibit non-citizens from voting in local elections. So we at the city of Montpelier would like to extend this privilege to our legally documented non-citizen tax pain permanent resident green card holding citizens. There are our friends and neighbors. This is for me this calls up the sentiments taxation without representation. Because indeed these green card holders are paying taxes. Their children are in our school systems. There are our friends and our spouses. And so extending this limited ability to vote feels like an appropriate and kind way to enfranchise them as members of our community. Undoubtedly our national dialogue has played some role in people's decision about this charter change. So during a time when the status of immigrants is very much in the news we are just hungry for ways to welcome and enfranchise immigrants. And so I hope this body would see fit to honor the wishes of the residents of Montpelier. So I understand from your legal council report that there are no constitutional impediments for allowing non-resident I'm sorry resident non-citizens to vote on local issues. So this becomes a matter of policy and if it's not a constitutional should not the wishes of the public be honored. So it's important to consider that when we use the phrase taxpayers that that phrase is not synonymous with the word citizen. It is right and appropriate or is it right and appropriate for permanent resident taxpayers to have some degree of voice in their the use of their tax dollars. I think it is and the people of Montpelier think it is and I hope that you will agree as well. So that's it for my prepared statements. So thank you for your time. And I'm happy to answer any questions that I can. There's been a lot of talk around about how many people would be affected by this. And I know it's that's been a hard number to pin down. We assume it's fairly small. I've heard like 12 to 15. So I don't know those numbers actually. John you don't know either. Right. It's not an easy number to find but it's very small. Yeah. So the concern was raised earlier about if it is a small number. Say three five. How do you not hide what they have a vote. I mean. So there are some logistic mechanisms that we are thinking about. It's not all nailed down yet. And this is actually a better question for John our city. John our city clerk. He's the one who facilitates the voting process. So I'll really let him answer that question when it's when he's up but that is a consideration we're thinking about. So it'll let him answer it more thoroughly. Is that fair. So when we reviewed with legislative council this morning this bill one thing that was noted is that based on your charter not only would non-citizens be able to vote but they'd actually probably be able to hold elective office. Do you understand that and you're fine with that. That seems fine. We actually there are very few offices in our city government that require residency even. So having someone who is a non-citizen but a resident seems like a equally as an appropriate extension as having non-residents participate. Thank you. I just want to make sure that I'm following the distinction here is this year when we used taxpayers you know for instance how do you look at and say I'm not a resident but I am a real state mob player. I can't vote. I can't vote on any budgets therefore do I have taxation without representation. That's fair but you probably are residents somewhere in the areas you're probably paying taxes or I'm sorry you're probably you're probably the voice in some other ways. But you're not a mob player. Right because we're only talking about their issues here. So what's the distinction? So I guess my thought would be that you know if someone lives in Burlington but owns property in mob healer they have a voice in Burlington but these people would not necessarily have that voice in the same way. But in mob healer they have to pay taxes without representation. Yeah fair. So what was your process to engage the community and hear what they have to say about this. So we had a number of meetings that invited public discourse and I'm not sure how many people showed up to those but you all over there may know better. And so there was a group of citizens that were very involved in advocating for this and helped get the word out and we're there on November 6th when we had the vote and yeah I suppose that's it. Thank you. We'll stick around and we'll have time for a more open discussion at the end. So Professor Teach-Out would you join us? Madam Chair my name is Peter Teach-Out. I'm a professor of law at Vermont Law School. In my areas of expertise are U.S. constitutional law and history and Vermont constitutional law and history. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to testify this afternoon. I think I can make my testimony fairly brief because I'm going to be basically where in my written testimony I plow much of the same ground that I believe Betsy Ann Rasch from the Legislative Council already covered this morning. And it's rare on constitutional issues that you will find virtual agreement about what the rules of the game are in terms of the Vermont Constitution. So I'm going to if it's okay with you Madam Chair I'm going to distribute my written testimony which people are free to consult at their leisure meetings. I could pass those around. The testimony is also on my written testimony. Do you want me to put that up on the screen? You can. I don't think I need to trace your written testimony. I see there are a lot of people here and I know you've already had a long afternoon so I'm going to basically with the chair's permission I'm going to distribute my written testimony. And the rest of my memo really is devoted to covering the same cases that I believe Legislative Council Betsy Ann Rasch covered this morning and I'm happy to elaborate on them but let me tell you what my judgment is and this is a judgment based on really excellent research done by Betsy Ann Rasch for the Legislative Council and a local attorney named Dan and I'm delighted in large part. I like to do my own research and my judgments are my own but we really have looked at the same basic historical material and that we've arrived at pretty much exactly the same conclusion. So the basic trust of my testimony is that under the Vermont Constitution the legislature has discretion to authorize the City of Montpelier to allow non-U.S. citizens to vote in purely local elections. That's true notwithstanding the requirement in Section 42 of Chapter 2 of the Vermont Constitution that in order to vote in state elections voters must be U.S. citizens. To those who've become accustomed to think that voting in state elections must be exactly the same requirements for voting in local elections that much seem like something of an odd claim but the fact is in state constitutional law that the distinction is made that's a distinction that is regularly made and the courts not just in Vermont but elsewhere have consistently held that the constitutional requirements for voting in state elections do not limit legislative discretion in setting the qualifications for voting in purely local elections. So I'm here simply as a constitutional scholar that is my judgment on the constitutional issue. There is one case which I'm sure that Betsy Ann Rask discussed with you this morning which is the Woodcock versus Bolster case in which exactly this issue was addressed you had an Irishman who was not a U.S. citizen who was elected as a school district tax collector he attached a guy named Woodcock's property because he hadn't used taxes and Woodcock objected and he said you can't this is after under state constitutional law you had to be a U.S. citizen in order to vote in state elections. He said you can't do that because you are not a U.S. citizen and the courts squarely addressed the issue and they said simply because in order to be a voter in state elections you have to be a U.S. citizen doesn't mean the legislature does not have discretion to set municipal elections and upheld the statute in that case which allowed Bolster not just to vote but also to hold office locally even though he was a non U.S. citizen and there are three other cases in which the court has addressed a similar issue to the rules of the game that apply to state elections also restrict legislative discretion with respect to voting in local or municipal elections and in every one of those cases the court has said no the legislature does have discretion to depart from the standards that are set forth in the Vermont Constitution for voting in state elections. So that's the basic trust in my testimony and I feel very comfortable in saying I think it's highly doubtful that if the Vermont Supreme Court were asked to address the question again if a challenge were brought for example to legislation authorizing Montpelier to allow known citizens to vote I think it's highly doubtful that the Vermont Supreme Court would reverse those long and well established precedent in this state saying these two are very distinct distinct requirements. There you go. So if we can differentiate from what the state voting is in this case you're suggesting that we could grant permission to non-citizens to vote. That's correct. Could we also grant permission for non-residents to vote locally? You know the second homeowner I mean isn't it the same issue I mean they're voting I think so but it seems to me you've got that latitude unless it violates some provision of federal constitution and I don't know that it does or some other provision in the Vermont state constitution and I don't know that it does it seems to me the legislature might have discretion to allow for example taxpayers in a community that are not residents in that community to vote in local or municipal elections. I guess I then if you start picking and choosing you one could argue maybe you're discriminatory in like I want this block because they're going to vote to perhaps more often than not the way I'd like them to vote in this block of second homeowners may not vote that way because they're not here 12 months. That's true. So I just worry about this. I think that's a legitimate policy consideration. Your policy issue for us to wrestle with do we do something statewide basis is the same for everything which we have today or do we differentiate? And that's also a legitimate question. Both of those are legitimate questions. They're policy questions however rather than Vermont state constitutional questions. You've got the discretion in terms of the Vermont state constitution. The question is this wise policy or not wise policy? Thank you. It seems to herald back to the days when you used to have to be a male white non-Catholic landowner to vote of that's another point. When I seem to recall when I'm registered I signed something that says I am not registered to cast my ballot in any other jurisdiction. Is that something that is I hate it when you already have the book out. Well isn't that a fair question then too to say that you would have to ask the question of whether you want to allow people to vote in more than one jurisdiction, right? You're not absolutely prohibited from doing so under the Vermont state constitution but I think that you would have to ask whether that's wise legislative policy. So going back to 17 BSA 21 22 which provides the residence requirements of all voters that all voters are subject to. Right now it talks about that people only being able to vote in the town in which they are a resident and specifically at the end of the subsection B provides a person may only have one residence at a given time. So there is the limitation right now under statutory law that you can't vote in two local elections for example. So that's a statutory provision and the question I was asked whether it would violate the Vermont constitution if you change that statutory provision to allow residents to vote in more than one jurisdiction. That was my question as well. You start letting people vote in numerous I mean the suggestions coming from Representative Harrison what was that assertion that people vote in multiple communities. They could be more often than not probably a non-resident might be a resident in another state but it certainly could in the state and being a non-resident we wanted to tweak that we could. We're tweaking this through the charter if we choose to do so. That's a statutory change. I don't know if that's Anne Rashford shared this with you this morning but other states to allow non-U.S. citizens to vote in local and municipal elections Maryland for example and that is really consistent with state constitutional law in Maryland and has never been challenged on constitutional grounds. So it's not a practice unique that would be unique to Vermont. It's been done elsewhere and it's been unchallenged. As a matter of fact we have next on our witness list we have a phone call with the city clerk for Tacoma part Maryland where they have had non-citizen voting today. I do all coordinated this very well. I'm impressed because I made up the order that you all were talking. It was a form of residence in part Maryland. For the dialing does anybody have a follow on question for Professor T-Champ if they do have a chance to ask? A quick comment. The concept of voting in multiple jurisdictions isn't in this bill but I would personally think it's highly likely that anybody anywhere would advance that as being a good idea. So I hope we don't dwell on that too much because I think there's no most chance. More of an intellectual exercise. Thank you. Thank you. Good. Hi Jesse this is Representative Sarah Copland-Hanses and you are here with the House Government Operations Committee and a number of Montpelier residents. We would love to hear if you have a few minutes of comments that you'd like to make and then we would love to be able to ask you some questions. Wonderful. Well thanks for having me. I will be brief. I'm Josie Carpenter City Clerk for the City of Tacoma part Maryland. I've been asked to provide information about non-citizen voting in the City of Tacoma Park. Tacoma Park is a city of around 18,000 located just outside of the District of Columbia in Montgomery County, Maryland. Every two years we have elections for a mayor who is elected at large in six city council members. They're elected by Roards and all serve concurrent two-year terms. Our elections are non-partisan. Montgomery County manages full board, county, state and federal elections. Tacoma Park administers its own elections for mayor and council. All residents of the city who are on the statewide voter registration list at an address in the city are eligible to vote in our elections. Maryland municipalities may also maintain a supplemental list of residents who are qualified to register to vote only within the municipal corporation. This is the last innovation in local elections such as extending voting rights to non-U.S. residents and 15 or 17 year old. The city council adopted non-citizen voting in 1992. The first election in which non-citizen voters participated was in 1993. At this time there are around 11,500 registered voters in the city. Of these around 300 are on the supplemental voting list. Non-citizens who wish to register to vote in city elections complete a city of Tacoma Park voter registration for. At the time of registration or at the time of first voting the applicant provides proof of identification. Is that me? Not sure. We didn't do anything to change. You're better now. Thank you. At the time of registration or when they come to first vote the applicant provides proof of identification and proof of residence in the city. Once registered the voter's registration is maintained as long as the voter continues to reside in the city and as long as they have not become registered in the state. My office receives these voter registration forms and maintains the supplemental list of Tacoma Park only voters. In preparation for the election I'm trying to pick up the phone. Can you hear me? Yes. Maybe that will solve the problem. My office receives the voter registration form. In preparation for a city election the supplemental list is combined with the list of voters received from the state of Maryland. When voters check in to vote there's no apparent difference between voters who are U.S. citizens and voters who are non-citizens. We work really hard to make the process seamless for our residents. Our resident applies for naturalization if requested my office can provide a letter explaining that non-U.S. citizens who are residents of Tacoma Park may register and vote in the city of Tacoma Park for municipal elections. And we're going to have some changes in 2020 that I briefly want to mention. Up until now our elections have been held in November of odd numbered years and we've only had one polling place for city elections. Beginning in 2020 the date of city elections will change to coincide with state and federal general elections. So the current mayor and council elected in 2017 are serving a three year term and two year terms will resume in 2020. When the change to even numbered years happens the city's election will be co-located with the county elections at five precincts within the city so we will continue to have a separate ballot for city elections. Voters will check in and vote in the state or federal election and then check in again to vote in the city elections but in the same location. So voters on our supplemental list will only check in and vote in the Tacoma Park election but again we think it will be pretty seamless and won't be obvious who the citizen and who isn't so everyone will continue to receive the same Tacoma Park ballot will continue to have our own ballot. And that includes our remarks and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have. So this was a non-citizen voting was adopted statewide or permissible statewide and then municipalities adopted their own procedures around that? No, it was non-adopted statewide. It's been adopted in several municipalities and one of the first, one of the earlier ones was the city of Tacoma Park. Okay. So the state provides for allowing a supplemental voter list but not. The state doesn't designate who can vote in municipal elections, that's completely up to the municipality. As long as we let voters registered with the state voted for them. Okay. Thank you. Questions committee? Has there been any additional costs to Tacoma Park for having this process? No, it would be minimal. I'll take the feedback. Any additional costs is minimal. It takes a little more time because we have a separate list and separate forms but it's not something we track in this process. Thank you. Thank you very much for being with us this afternoon. I would offer to have you stay and listen if you wanted to but I'm not sure with the feedback whether that's a good idea. Sounds fine. I'll be happy. I get a report from the folks that want to fill your afterwards. Thank you for your interest. I appreciate you sharing your experience with us. Thank you. Happy to help. Bye. Sounds like another road trip. Alright. So I shudder to think about whether we can get Amanda on the phone. I can try it. I think that was on her end. That's my only guess because I've never encountered that. So I thought we would go with Amanda and then I have Britt Garland. Okay. And then let John Odom back. They know. Like a plan. This is Kelly with House Government Operations. I'm doing well. How are you? The committee is ready for your testimony. And I'm about to put you on speakerphone. Yep, of course. Hi Amanda. This is Representative Sarah Copland-Hanses chair of the Government Operations Committee. We have the committee assembled and we have a robust group of Montpelier residents also with us here. And we would love to hear your perspective on the H-207 Charter Change to allow non-citizen voting in city elections. Thank you so much. How are you? Are you still there? Is that okay? That's perfect. That was a little glitch on our end. But we can hear you now. Hello, I cannot really hear you. Can you hear me now? I hear you a little bit broken. Okay, well why don't you go ahead because we can hear you very well. Is she on speakerphone? Okay. Thank you very much. Madam Chair and distinguished committee members. My name is Amanda. I am a Montpelier resident. I thank you for allowing me to testify for H-207 and act relating to approval and I recommend to the Charter Change. As an immigrant there's nothing more beautiful than deciding on choosing the community with your children if you decide to raise them, work and stay put. For many of us, eventually, there is a day when you realize how the place where you live feels like home regardless of the nationality on your passport. It's only because you're creating lasting relationships with your community. For me, planting roots in this community means that I am committed to supporting the schools that my children attend and supporting local initiatives that enhance the quality of life for all Montpelier residents. Our families pay taxes, contribute to the local economy by going to restaurants, shop the locally and work in in town. I am fortunate to be part of a thriving Latino community in Vermont. We have top-logs, parties, great days with our children, dance together, relax together and contribute to the Vermont economy together in a variety of ways. We have a community of immigrants who make Montpelier's drive. To give one example, my daughter Scott enjoys the richness of five languages and I can go on and on about how many other things we are bringing to Montpelier. I know community members and friends who are not US citizens who have been here for a lot longer than I have contributed in the same way and involved in local initiatives. Therefore, I am fortunate to support this change and allow non-citizens to vote in our local elections. As an immigrant rights activist I have been around many people who have championed similar bills in other states and the benefits are beautiful if only to give our community members a sense of pride and an acknowledgement of their contribution. The question in people's mind is always why can they become citizens? Well, the immigration process is not as simple as people imagine. A variety of reasons can present someone from becoming a citizen. Not all countries have dual citizenship. Immigration processes are expensive. English proficiency is needed if you are under a certain age. There is a long backlog of citizenship applications around more than 700,000 applicants are waiting patiently to become citizens. People have to wait three to five years after you have to say you have your permanent residence to become a citizen. And some people just don't want to. I know because I know people and family members who fit one or more than one than those challenges. I have also witnessed how this initiative was built from the ground up in Montelier and witnessed the courage of the community members getting signatures to get this in the ballot. Many of them and I support them and I hope they do too because they contribute in the same way but without representation. Let's say that I am a natural citizen and I there's nothing more satisfying that seeing my friends really wanting this and being able to become citizens but that are contributing in the ways that you can begin to imagine. Thank you so much. Committee, do you have questions? Amanda, I very much appreciate your testimony. We also have it on our committee's page as well so if folks want to go back and refer to it they'll have it in front of them. Thank you so much for being with us this afternoon. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Have a great day. Thanks. Bye. OK, Britt, please join us. So Madam Chair and Committee I'm thankful that you're willing to listen to me. My name is Micke Garland and I have lived in Montpelier for the last 25 years. I came here 30 years ago February 30 years ago from Norway to live here with my wife who's sitting over there with our child, our daughter I am not a citizen I'm a citizen of Norway still I cannot vote in local elections in Norway because I'm not living there and I cannot vote here because I'm not a citizen and this has been a big loss for me. Most of the year I don't think about this at all I participate in my community I'm very happy to live here I like living in Montpelier we own a house we have taxes but it is difficult when that voting comes around and I have no say I can understand that I cannot vote in federal elections but for my community that I am part of I really wish I had a voice there like Amanda said you might ask why am I not a citizen then for a few different reasons first it took more than ten years before I got my green card those ten years I lived here and worked there and was an active participant so then it would have taken another five years after that before I could apply for citizenship but applying for citizenship would mean that I would give up my Norwegian citizenship and even though I have roots here I love living here I just have not been able to do that I still have roots in Norway I have my family in Norway I go back every year so I have chosen not to do that at this point I could apply it would take a few years but I could apply for citizenship I'm hoping that Norway will change their laws to make dual citizenship legal it is legal in the United States so it's not the U.S. that stands in the way so I hope you will consider this and if you have any questions on me thank you very much thank you could I give you one more test go back though we could not make it last time I was in the hot seat it was a very different set of faces I'm there a few times that's true I'm John Odom I'm the city clerk of Montpelier I will keep this as quick as I can I may be able to preemptively answer some of your questions just really briefly this was something that has been brought to my attention every year I would have Roberta or someone else call it's always my spouse why can't my spouse vote and I always took it as a question like why can't we paint the city hall pink just like well that's nice sorry but then come to find out actually through classes I'm taking to be a certified election administrator that it's done and it's not just done in Maryland we heard but there's non-citizen voting that can occur but it's very common through European countries and it was as I think you've heard until 1915 it wasn't an issue here in Vermont so it is done and I think the question on the table really is whether you can be a citizen of your local community without being a citizen of the country or state and Montpelier has only decided that yes we consider these folks to be citizens of our community and we would like them to have any other citizens I think this differs from for example what Burlington was speaking about or tried to pass a few years ago which would have been a a statement asking the legislature to make a change that would allow all municipalities to do this this is just about Montpelier this is just about Montpelier and how Montpelier wants to run its own affairs on its own city and municipal business it really was it doesn't make any statement about the rest so I think I think that's really important to remember as far as implementation goes this was modeled with the help of Dan Richardson who you heard Professor Teichot refer to after the Tacoma Park Maryland specifically their laws around this so it would create a distinct voter checklist that would not be commingled at all with the state voter checklist we would have a distinct voter registration form that would not be commingled as far as the implementation in terms of ballots I think one of the great things that we will be able to do since it's going to be a whole year before the next election I would like to bring the community that did discuss this back in to talk about some of the details of the implementation if there are concerns over any kind of stigma over having a second ballot or another alternative would be we could take the current ballot we use and essentially sabotage it if you overvote on the other elections on there it can be pushed through the machine and those votes simply don't count so we could have some pre-sabotaged ballots that could be handed out with the school board and the central public safety authority which is the other entity that shares our ballot with us simply sabotage it anyways I already spoke more than I said I would and I'm sure you all have questions so I'm shutting up go to Steve you know what we have into the poll vote it's all over the map for annual city meeting it can be anywhere from about 2,000 to about 3,700 are you talking about how many people here oh that would be affected I don't know it's a very small amount I have tried to find out that number you know I think we could be talking a couple dozen people 20 something like that but I can't swear to it seems like having it done down to me this morning when Betsy Ann was going over the historical Supreme Court framework and every now and then poking the stick at us for when women were allowed to vote that maybe it's time to make the jump I certainly you know I was involved in helping facilitate the conversations I feel it's my responsibility if somebody wants something to get on the ballot to help lead them through the process since it's now passed and passed by such an overwhelming vote I am extremely comfortable to you know champion the citizens and take it up as a cause Jim Warren how so earlier I asked a question about you know only five people that are on this separate checklist show up how do you get the integrity of their ballots so that they're not you know known to you as to gosh did they vote for me or not I mean whatever the you know whatever the issue is how do you get at that? Well first of all let me say when I have a contested race I refuse myself from certifying the final tell but other than that I think honestly I think that's going to be a question for the community since we have time it's sabotaging the ballot sabotaging the ballot the way I spoke certainly would hide it it would be camouflaged within the other ballots that would be my first choice a separate ballot as they do in Tacoma Park would be an option too but it might you know there might be community concerns about just what you refer to but I would defer to the community ultimately on that. Okay I guess my second you know obviously this would be breaking new ground because we have one unified uniform voting qualifications for the state in my town your town I mean we have to meet certain criteria be a resident A18 and we can vote so this would be breaking new ground and one of the things that we have to wrestle with is do we do something for a community or do we do it statewide and I'd be interested in your thoughts as to maybe it's getting back to Burlington the way they asked a question I don't know but should we give this should we just make a change for the state or should we give each community the same authority you're asking for first of all as far as new ground I think if you actually look at the overall history this is we've spent more of the history of the state allowing this than disallowing it so it would be a return to more traditional ground as far as anything beyond this particular act beyond the decision of the citizens of Montpelier I mean that becomes policy and I wouldn't be a little uncomfortable speaking to it I would of course you know remind that only so many municipalities have charters so there's only so many that it could even come up for not if we change this for a blanket that would seem that strikes me as an extraordinarily robust policy and it would be it would strike me as a different question this is really from our perspective it's about how allowing Montpelier to run its fairs when it's affairs allow its neighbors to participate as the citizens would like more to answer how's the earlier question I believe that this question on the November ballot had 2800 votes in favor of it and approximately 1400 that's roughly 4200 bigger than power 3732 that was a lot that was a general election so would a distinct voter list be considered a public document yes so what would prevent an entity like Homeland Security from an exploit nothing although it does specify only legal residents so presumably there would be nothing there for them to exploit in terms of what their own mission is but the group the working group and then the greater group that talked about it very specifically looked at that question and that was why they specifically chose to include that language about legal I can sort of answer that last year we did pass a voter checklist protection law which would have limited access by the federal government to our voter checklist so I mean one thing I think we do need to look at with respect to this charter or if we expand it beyond the city of Montpelier to all towns and cities of Vermont is that we make sure that this supplemental voter checklist receives the same protection as all voter checklist today do under the statute that we passed in the last biennium but you know I think we should remember that there has been a long policy since before Vermont was a state to allow non-citizens to vote in local elections and you have to ask why we changed that policy was it for good reason or bad and I think it was for a very bad reason so thank you so much for being with us this has been a fun a fun exercise in getting a little more knowledgeable on our constitution and on case law that pertains to voting rights it's been fascinating I think and so thank you at least for putting this idea in front of us and asking us to consider these questions we will continue our work on this and so feel free to keep an eye on our agenda for coming days and weeks to see if you have the ability to send someone to come and listen to committee discussion and any more work that we do on the bill so I apologize for having a somewhat hard stop I've already gone past what I said I was going to do for a stop but we do have folks who have things they have to get to so I appreciate you being here thank you