 So, Senator McCormick, we are dealing with Proposition 2 here, which is referencing slavery in our constitution. And we all carry our little constitutions with us everywhere. And for anybody who doesn't have one of these here, we have a stack of them over here. You're welcome to help yourself to one of our little kind of constitutions. We give them out freely. Would you like to address us? Thank you. First of all, for the record, I'm Richard McCormick. I represent the Windsor County Senate District. And I come simply as a concerned colleague on this matter. But also, I have taught Vermont history in the state college system. And I have taught as well state and local government and national government and the state college system, obviously dealing with constitutional issues as the fundamental underlying issues of everything we deal with. I would ask, I am opposed to the amendment. For one thing, I compare the language in the Vermont Constitution prohibiting slavery. And the fact that it remains, even though it hasn't been law since the passage of the 13th Amendment, and is meaningless as law, but it is an historical artifact. And that it remains in the Constitution to me as a Vermont person. I say the term Vermont for people with generations in the graveyard, but as one of the people of Vermont. This is a point of great pride. And having taught Vermont history, the fact that the 1777 Constitution prohibited slavery so early in history is a point of great pride. It's part of other aspects of the 1777 Constitution that had universal male suffrage. And of course, male suffrage is not admirable. But the fact that if you were going to have a male suffrage anyway, to have it, the universal was a recognition that the hired man had as much dignity and right as the farmer. And it also was a step towards woman suffrage. It was one of the earlier steps of broadening the franchise. Similarly, the fact that the Vermont prohibition on slavery is badly flawed and that it allowed for slavery's people under 21, that it was a step towards a better future, which has been, and I think probably put best by Martin Luther King that the Ark of History bends towards justice. And this is one of those little moments of the larger bend. The fact that it is not law means that though we keep it there, really as an artifact, and I think it would be unfortunate to take it out, I compare this to taking down statues of Robert Lee in the South, of removing the Confederate flag from state house laws. This is 180 degrees the exact opposite of doing that. Because those are celebrations of the Confederacy, which was by its own definition of slaveocracy. If one reads the founding documents of the Confederacy and the secession statements of the Confederate states, they say that the purpose of the Confederacy, the purpose of secession was to protect the institution of slavery. You don't need liberal college professors to say that. They said about themselves. So you are removing a celebration of slavery, a celebration of Jim Crow when you take down a statue, a statue of Robert Lee, or you take down the Confederate flag. Here we would be removing a prohibition on slavery, a statement for freedom. But then there comes the question that is what? Is that a reason to remove this admirable source of pride because it's flawed? Because I would put it to this committee and I would put it through to the Senate that all of our great step forward, step forward, are flawed. The Magna Carta is not a document of freedom. The Magna Carta is a document of protecting the special privileges of a wealthy landed aristocrats even. But it put conditions on the service of the King. The King got to be king by the permission of the lords, which meant shows off centuries later in the Declaration of Independence, the principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the government. And so it is a tremendous step forward for all of its flaws. The Declaration of Independence is flawed. And yet I don't see anyone suggesting that we change the wording. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal. So it would be better if that is what he said. One wishes they had said that, that they didn't. One wishes that in the list of accepterity of the King of England that they had not included the prohibition on stealing any more land from the Indians. Even though the prohibition on stealing land from the Indian was one of the accepterity justified by the Constitution, one wishes the Declaration of Independence did not refer to the savage Indians. But it does. And there's a question for history of not favoring history that makes your country or your state look good, or not favoring history that makes it look bad. But just tell them the truth. We wish the founders of Vermont had not allowed slavery for people under 21. But that's not what happened. And to go and to leave the prohibition on slavery, and just take out that objectionable language is basically putting a smiley face on history. And saying, well, here's the artifact. And we're just gonna clean it up a little bit. We're gonna take out the part that we wish we wasn't there. So I think it would be unfortunate to delete the entire slavery right. Because the entire, the slavery reference in its entirety is something of which we as the founders should be extremely proud and which we should preserve as part of our history. To leave the good stuff and just conveniently delete the bad stuff I think is actually dishonest. And it is writing, it's creating a second that's not true. So that's my thing. And I am dreading the fact that I'm gonna be followed by a witness with far more expertise than I. But nevertheless, that is my position. I thank the community for hearing me out. Thank you. Sorry. No, it's okay. I realized, we all realized it was a quite a great pride even if flawed and maybe not fully informed pride. Because I think if everybody was asked in Vermont whether this included that flawed aspect almost nobody has talked to us where we still allowed slavery under 21. My question for you is, it remains as a historic artifact. I mean, it's always a piece of history. It is a fact that goes with us in forever. No, I mean just history, I mean yes, that's no question for them. And for me, a constitution is a living document and should reflect living values and current values and current, well, current values and current law. So nothing will be taken away from our history if we don't include it. So I'm just, I'm curious. I mean, I guess it comes down to how you view the constitution and how it is applied current. Well, of course the constitution is a living document and a living document. And were this law or this functional law and not just an artifact, I would of course support amendment. I have supported constitutional amendments in the past. Not quite as cheerily as most of my colleagues. I've been a conservative on constitutional amendments, but I have supported it in the past. But this is a place of honor. This is an historical artifact that it doesn't just remain in the history books, it actually remains in the document. And to take the entire packaging part out would be in my view to remove it from that place. Do you have proposed language? He doesn't want to do anything? Oh, right, right, right. That's it, that's it, that's it. Yes, Senator, my proposed language is the constitution law. Well, I mean, there aren't people who are against it. Ah, right, right, right, right, okay. Thank you. I just want to add my thanks to my colleagues. I was one of the signers on when the email went out asking who would be interested. Because it seemed like, of course, why would you not want to support that? Your logical argument escaped me at the moment. So I just want to thank you for at least bringing another perspective. Thank you for that, Senator. Chris. So I'll argue against my own position on this. Do you think there's ever a case where the provision in the constitution is so egregious in some way that you would say regardless of the fact that you might detract from the historical continuity of the document, you would want to make a change? Absolutely, I would say that's analogous to removing the statue of Robert E. Lee or taking the Confederate flag down. Yes, but I think this is not, I think prohibiting slavery is not an egregious thing. And the fact that it was prohibited perfectly, well, that's our issue. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. What is this? Sorry. I just read that it was great. I apologize, and I'm not gonna stop. We can talk, okay? We have other people's minds. Okay. Yes, go do harm. The governor told us this morning when we came in, go do harm. So Professor T. T. out. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Peter T. Chown. I'm a professor of law at Vermont Law School. My areas of interest and expertise are US constitutional law and history and Vermont constitutional law and history. I have published articles in both areas. I appreciate the opportunity to testify before Senate Government Operations Committee today on whether Article 1 of Chapter 1 of the Vermont Constitution should be amended to eliminate references to slavery. At the outset, I would like the chair's permission. I have submitted written testimony, but I'd like the chair's permission to depart from my written testimony and basically track it in my oral comments. But at the same time, invite, as I go along, interruptions, questions. I like to try to be helpful when I come up here, but sometimes there are questions I am not anticipated. And I am best served if you press me with those questions, sometimes driving back toward the South throughout, and I say, oh, I blew that question. But it really helps me think through dimensions of a constitutional issue that I simply have not given sufficient consideration to before. I think that makes perfect sense. And because this is a very, we're taking this very seriously, but the Constitution is very serious. So we want to get as much value out of you as we can. Thank you. OK, now, first of all, let me say that I very much appreciate and share 99% of Senator McCormick's comments. He might have added to the list of what ought to be left, what ought to be celebrated, what ought not to be celebrated, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which, in fact, only emancipated a relatively limited group of slaves in this country, but leaving slavery expand and operational in many parts of the country. And yet every year, we celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation because it is in Senator McCormick's words, it represents an important half step in the right direction. And we don't want to obliterate those half steps from our understanding of how we got to where we are today. The second preliminary comment is that I'm not opposed to amending the Vermont Constitution. I've done it before. I've supported it before. And I am currently supporting, or at least supporting, consideration of a couple of amendments that are currently under consideration. I think the Vermont Constitution might be improved if they were added. I don't think of the Vermont Constitution, which has been amended more than 50 times as kind of an old jalopy that is strapped together with duct tape. But it's like a seven-year-old Chevy that's been to the shop a few times. It's not a virgin document and to try to be historical purist about it, I think, is being mistaken. There are things that need to be changed. In response to Senator Bray's question to Senator McCormick, I would say Representative Siebert and I were the prime movers in recommending that the Vermont Constitution be amended to make it gender neutral from that. We felt it was extremely important, even though the historian, part of me, kind of cringes sometimes at what they did to the language of some other provision. For example, the classic hardcore term freeman, part of our tradition, has to go, OK? But in any event, that's my basic position toward amending the Constitution. Now, I said I shared 99% of Senator McCormick's review he expressed, but the one point on which I want to disagree, and it's extremely important to me, is I want to challenge today the assumption that underlies Proposition 2 that Article 1 of Section 1, in fact, only prohibited adult slavery, that the framers of that article intended to acquiesce in or condone child slavery. I have ransacked the history of Vermont, and I cannot find a single piece of evidence to support that conclusion. So that's the fundamental radical question I want to raise with this committee today. And I think we have to be just good detectives and ask, in fact, is that what the framers of Article 1 in Chapter 1 intended? Did they intend to prohibit only adult slavery and not slavery generally? My view, as you will see, is that their clear intent was to prohibit slavery generally, and they did not in any way intend to condone the institution of child slavery at that time. That is the way Article 1 of Chapter 1 has always been understood until the consideration this year of the possibility of amending it. Now, I don't know how much time you've got. I apologize. We have until 3.45. Well, I apologize to Gail. I said, the committee is not going to be grateful for the fact that they asked for a couple of bales in the A. And here I've delivered them a whole haloed. You heard Gail's response. A haloed and a wagonload of hay is welcome if you don't have any. OK, well, we may run out of hay before that session's over, so. We also understand that professors are trained to speak and think in 45-minute segments. So we've got a couple of them. Don't find out how long their classes are. And I also apologize for the late delivery of my written testimony. I really wanted to get it in earlier. We had a little incident over the weekend. My daughter's house in Middlesex burned around. Oh, no. I'm sad. And I don't worry. Nobody was hurt or injured. Well, that's terrible. Sarah? My daughter, Woden, was often wronged. I had with four of their six kids. And so it was her husband and their other two kids who were around. Nobody was injured. And the town of Middlesex has been absolutely extraordinary in providing incredible support. But in any event, that occupied me a little this weekend in ways that I hadn't anticipated, which is why I'm running a little bit late. Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. OK, so can we begin? I say the first place to begin is just to try to understand the historical background of Article 1 as it appeared in the first Vermont Constitution. There are two phrases in Article 1. I put the whole thing there at the top of page 2. The first phrase begins that all persons are born equally free and independent and runs through and obtaining happiness and safety. Then there's a semi-colon. Then there's a second part, which has therefore no person born in this country or brought from overseas ought to be holding by law to serve any person as a servant, slave, or apprentice after arriving at the age of 21. Now, where did that come from? Well, the first part was borrowed directly, word for word, off the shelf from the Pennsylvania Constitution, all the way up to the semi-colon. OK? Now, it's interesting because the Vermont Constitution supposedly is the first state constitution to ban slavery. Why didn't, since the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 preceded it, why didn't people say Pennsylvania Constitution? Well, the answer was that the Pennsylvania Constitution did not make clear that slaves were considered persons within the meaning of that first part. All persons are born equally free and independent. So what the Vermont Framers did, interesting, is they added the second part. That's original with the Vermont Constitution. That's the part that deals with if you are serving as a servant, you can't be holding by law to continue to do so after you reach the age of maturity unless you agree to by your own consent. And that applies to indentured servants, to slaves, and to a prince. So they added that. But notice how that operates. The first word is, therefore, no person. And then it goes on to include within the meaning of person slaves, slaves who are employed as servants, within the meaning of article one of chapter two now. Now you take that, and you bring it around, and you say, what does all persons mean in the Vermont Constitution? Who are these all persons who are born equally free and independent? And you say, in the Vermont Constitution, that means that slaves, in fact, are considered all persons. They are all born equally free and independent, and they're all entitled to the same respect and dignity, the same freedom, the same equal treatment as all the rest of us. An enormously significant constitutional development occurs when the Vermont Framers added that second trait. Does that? I hope I'm not worrying. I'm not making this stuff up. This is true, OK? We believe you. Yeah. OK. But in any event, so when the Vermont Supreme Court, I'll come back to this case in just a moment, first addresses the question, what does the Vermont Constitution say about slavery? It's the case of Windsor versus Jacob, which was decided in 1802, roughly within that first quarter century after the Vermont Constitution was adopted. It had gone through a couple of minor iterations in the meantime, but OK, this is a contemporaneous view of what Article 1 of Chapter 1 means. And listen very carefully to what the court thinks it means. The court in Windsor versus Jacob, this is the Vermont Supreme Court concluded without any hesitation, without any complication, without worrying about child slavery versus adult. It concluded, this is on the top of page 3, our state constitution is express no inhabitant of the state can hold a slave. It didn't say no inhabitant of the state can hold an adult slave, but they can hold child slaves. It said no inhabitant of the state can hold a slave. Now, as a constitutional scholar, this is extremely significant. It means that at least the Vermont Supreme Court that that is what Article 1 of Chapter 1 dated prohibitive slavery generally. It did not simply prohibit adult slavery. It did not condone child slavery. I would say, if you have a question, just please ask. You have time for this more conversational then. Thank you. It's simply so formal. So in this construct, how is in the second phase of the section of the first article, how is it that someone could be a slave if all persons are actually born free and independent in the preceding section? I mean, I don't know how you could actually have the status of slave in a system that doesn't allow for such a status. I think that's an excellent question. And if you will allow me to put it just a little bit too on the back burner, we will come to it. But isn't that really the important question? Yes. Why do they, if slaves are, in fact, equally free and independent, if slaves can exist in the state, if no inhabitant can hold the slave, then why do they include the word slave? Right. Or that's what seems to imply that maybe the framers at that point in time thought, no matter what we say, maybe there are slaves in the state. And this is, when we get to it, is the problem that we encounter regularly, which is constitutions take principal positions. Reality is complex and complicates our lives. The reality often does not correspond perfectly with what the Constitution requires or commands. In fact, I think if you look at the history of slavery in the state, you will find that there were de facto slaves during this time. In the same way, there are probably de facto drug dealers in the state, which is not. But that's different from saying the framers intended by Article 1 to condone slavery. They're just trying to, I call it a double safe. They're trying to make sure that when we talk about, you can't continue to be holding by law as a servant after you reach the age of maturity unless you're bound by your own consent. I think they wanted to make doubly sure that that did not just include indentured servants. It did not just include apprentices, but slaves were entitled to the same equal treatment to respect of that particular relationship. That's my, but I've struggled with that in the Senate duration. I think it's an excellent question. Come back to that in just a little bit. So the second thing I looked at is, well, what is the proposal to Madam Chair? I like to call it proposition two, but I see it referred to in the bill as proposal two, which is right. It's propped to, we open the propped to it. Let's see, which is it? Our standard template is to use proposal. Okay, okay, and anyway, we can refer to it as proposal two or proposition two. It's the same thing. It would amend Article 1 of Chapter 1 by eliminating reference to slavery in that article. And specifically, what it calls for is striking the entire second part of Article 1, this great original creation of the framers by striking that from Article 1 and basically returning Article 1 of Chapter 1 to the form it took in the original Pennsylvania Constitution. Right, okay? So I can just interrupt you here to say that all five of us, if you'll look at the proposal itself, all five of us signed onto it. All five of us are now, well, I shouldn't say all five of us, but many of us have started rethinking not the intent, but the words of the proposal. So, okay, okay, and that's what this process is about, right? You are not precluded from having signed. Right. The proposal just puts it in place. Yes, Pratt. So, if I could just go back, and I need to, I feel like I'm delaying some, like there's a place we're gonna get to and focus on this, okay? But to Senator Bray's question, I read that first article a little differently, I guess, up to the semi-colon, I'm fine, and I see that therefore no person after that has more of an explanation or an expansion of the definitions that have been used prior to that. So that you're saying all persons born there for what that means is, and it continues as a sort of a further... Like an interpretation? Yes. A modification. No, I think that is also perfectly legitimate way to read a constitutional provision. And, you know, the problems that US Supreme Court has in reading the Second Amendment, where you go along and sort of, you've got to write to bear our arms because a well-regulated coalition. So how do you read those two together as one intended and then the other, or again, so I think that's... So what I'm gonna suggest is we go back and say, well, maybe that's true, but how did contemporaries back at the period of this time read Article One of Section One? Did they read that second part as a limitation on the meaning of who was covered, who was going, who should be treated as born equally free and independent, or did they read it the way that I'm trying to say, which is what they're trying to do is put the book, saying persons, equal slave, persons therefore, include all slaves and all slaves are entitled. So, but anyway, that's a good... That's a perfectly fair bottom, so look. So the next thing we do is we say, this is the approach that's being taken, and then I say, well, what's the purpose of the approach of taking this... Well, I eliminate the second part. And as I read Prop Two, it says, the reason is that Article One affected, and here's only a partial prohibition of slavery. And you see that repeated again. Even though the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution had long since banned slavery and involuntary servitude, the Vermont Constitution, quote, continues to contain only a partial prohibition on slavery. And you have to forgive me, but it wasn't instantly clear to me what partial prohibition meant. That's the only language I could find explaining why are you doing this stuff. And I think I feel comfortable in saying what that means, even though it runs counter to what I think has been the long-held understanding of the article, it means the sponsors believe that Article One banned only adult slavery and not child slavery. I think that's what it means. I'm wrong about that, but that's what partial prohibit. Okay, it attributes to the framers of Article One of Chapter One, the view that they condoned child slavery. The acquiesce and then it condoned it. They might not have liked it, but at least they acquiesced to the institutional challenge, which is a pretty heavy indictment to put on the framers if in fact that was not their view, if that's not the view they held. So my task as a historian is to go back to history to find out if it wasn't their view or it wasn't not their view. And as I put it at the very last paragraph of Section Three on page four, but does it necessarily follow from the fact that when you're talking about employment relations as a servant, you are after you reach the age of maturity no longer holden by law, bound by law, unless you agreed to by your own consent. Does it necessarily follow from that that the Vermont framers intended to prohibit only adult slavery and not slavery generally? That's the question I asked, okay? Does it indicate that the Vermont framers condoned child slavery? Does it mean that Vermont is generally during this period so understood the meaning and importance of Article One? That's really the crucial question, okay? So what did I do? I looked at four different things. I started off with Vermont Supreme Court interpretation, understanding of Article One, Chapter One, and as I indicated before, you can read that opinion backwards and forward. I've attached it as appendix too, because two short pages, and you will not find the court at any point indicating hinting at Article One makes an important distinction between adult slavery and child slavery. Top of page five, again, holding from the opinion by Associate Justice Tyler, our state constitution is expressed, no inhabitant of the state can hold a slave, not an adult slave, but can hold a slave. And then the court goes on to say, and though the bill of sale may be binding in some other state, yet when the master becomes an inhabitant of this state, his bill of sale ceases to operate here. There again, you don't say the bill of sale for adult slaves ceases to operate, the court went after it with a sledgehammer, right? Okay, the bill of sale ceases to operate here. I don't care whether you're talking, nothing court doesn't spend any time making any discussing prohibition of adult slavery, prohibition of child slavery, but what you find that's significant is the court didn't seem to think that was a significant distinction when it's deciding the case, okay? I also, by the way, looked at the arguments of the lawyers for both the plaintiff and defendant and they both agreed, interestingly, that slavery cannot exist in the state of Vermont, does not exist in the state of Vermont, constitutionally. They disagreed over the bill of sale not to be admissible, but they didn't disagree over whether slavery existed in the Vermont state of Vermont. What was the case of, I mean, who brought the, who, why, why was there a case if they all, I mean, oh, I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, it's a great question. So Jacob, it turns out, was the justice on the Supreme Court of Vermont. Oh, you're good. He had to excuse himself from this case because of a slight conflict of interest. So basically what he does is he brings into the state a slave who was in his employee for a substantial period of time. Not a good people of Windsor go up and talk to the slave and guess what? They enticed her to leave his employee by, according to the argument of God, by holding before her the enticement of liberty and equality. So she leaves poor Jacob alone. He's now gonna cook his own boiled eggs and no more, right? Okay, not long after, because she's obviously not a young slave, she becomes old, she becomes infirm and penniless. So the town of Windsor sues Jacob and says, look, you brought her here, use your problem, you pay for the cost that we've incurred or have to incur to keep her going. Okay, so that's what the suit was about. So a little bit of intrigue enough for a nice soap opera, right? And then the town of Windsor gets money to help support her? Well, so the attorney for this town of Windsor tries to introduce the bill of sale, saying, look, Jacob bought this woman, she's a slave, that's against their constitution. He ought to be paying for it. And the court says, bill of sale is not admissible in the courts of law and in this state because hope is illegal. Right, but okay. It cannot be enforced. What's the court say? The bill of sale ceases to operate here. Right. So anyway, that's the... Thank you, well, you know, there might have been a little screw scratch my back and I'll scratch yours involved. I would hate to ever ascribe that to the Vermont Supreme Court, but obviously one of their brethren might have been liable for the cost of upkeep if the court had admitted the bill of sale and the court in that case then refuses to do so. Okay, so anyway, really interesting case, but it's the only case in which the Vermont Supreme Court addresses the whole question and not a single word about does the Vermont Constitution prohibit only adult slavery but condone child slavery? Not a, that distinction simply doesn't appear or operate. Okay. Anywhere. The argument of counsel in the opinions of the two justices. The Chief Justice by the way was named Chief Justice Robinson. It was not the same Chief Justice that is currently sitting. She may be of advanced years, but she's not that. And she's not chief. Okay. Does it help that this ruling is only 25 years after the Constitution itself was written? I mean, you were able to establish that they might have actually talked to framers. No, those framers had conversations with the people who wrote the Constitution that they were eventually interpretable. Well, generally as a matter of constitutional interpretation, if there are phrases we don't understand or provisions we don't understand, we often ask, well, what was the contemporary understanding and how far back you go with contemporary understanding? But I'm just saying, you're talking within a 25 year period of the time, the first Vermont Constitution was done. That at least is a reflection of contemporary understanding, which I think actually for them are understanding, if not of Article I, at least of what the framers of Article I, of what lawyers and judges understood Article I to do and what the general public understood, and what they all understood perfectly consistent and possibly they understood that Article I banned slavery in Vermont, not at all slavery, not only at all, but banned slavery. Which is sort of what people feel today. I mean, when you ask people out on the street, that's what everyone is doing. That has been a consistent view from the last 240 years in the state of Vermont. That's what, if you look at that, just the bracketed head notes to Article I, you will find after the colon, a semicolon, slavery prohibited, consistent understanding. So when I look at Proposition II and I say, well, why are they doing this? They say, well, Article I in fact, only prohibited adult slavery. I say, where's this coming from? And I can understand where it's going. But we've talked about it. It comes from how you read the relationship between Part II and Part I, Article I itself. So now I am embarked as a history detective looking for, as it turns out, the dog that doesn't bark. I say, okay, I got a supreme, I got one supreme court decision and that's a pretty definitive statement, okay? Right. But if Vermonters during this time thought that child slavery was perfectly legal, wouldn't there be at least some court decisions in which bills of sale for child slaves were introduced? And there was an argument about whether they were binding or not binding. But I have done the best job and I may have missed something, but I have been unable to find a single case in which the bill of sale for a child slave was ever introduced in court, say nothing about enforced in court. Now if child slavery was perfectly legal, then a bill of sale could have been introduced and it would have been enforced by the court. I think it's kind of significant that you don't find any cases to that effect. I think that reflects the general view understood by everyone in Vermonters that article one ban slavery and ban slavery, child slavery, in the same way that it banned adult slavery. If you can't introduce a bill of sale involving an adult slave, you can't introduce a bill of sale involving a child slave. I say it's the dog that doesn't bark because I couldn't find anything. I wake up, I wake up right listening and there's gonna be a case out there saying, I'm almost prepared to say I'm putting five bucks on the table. If you find me a case in which the court allowed admission of a bill of sale for a child slave in Vermont, that five bucks is yours. However, if you wanna take up that bet, you gotta put your five bucks on the table. Cross and center. Well, I apologize. I have a really rough snow day this afternoon. I'm starting my drive. Anyways, you may have already talked about what I've been asking about, but I mean, I hear what you're saying with that. I just keep on back to why did they put those words in after arriving to the age of 21 years? Where they just, why would they put those words there? Okay, now that's great. We're always just gonna raise this whole thing to begin with, obviously. I have the same question and I don't know if I've got the answer, but I'm gonna answer that question to the best. If the purpose was not to say only adult slavery is prohibited, child slavery is permitted, why did they bother even to use the word slave in the second part, right? If slaves don't exist in Vermont, you don't need it in the second part. Okay, I'm gonna come back to that with your permission from Senator Tupole. So look, I looked at two other things and these are not unimportant. There's a wonderful book, I think, Professor Wigfield at UVM about slavery in Vermont during this period of time and he really complicates our understanding. It makes it impossible to come away from the feeling that Vermont was some sort of idealized slave-free republic during this period of time because what he demonstrates is not withstanding whatever the law is or not withstanding the Constitution, people brought slaves into Vermont and kept them as servants, okay? Pay your unpaid. Kept them as servants. Kept them as servants. And the rule for indentured servants interestingly in slaves, the rule of the game were pretty much the same. Don't have to pay them compensation, but you have to provide the basics. Food, lodging, holding for as long as they are allowed by law to be in your service, okay? Same rule for indentured servants. And some were, they weren't brought up on charges. Those people, I mean, surely they would have been outed by their neighbors. Who? The people who brought the people into Vermont and then he used them as slaves. What about if Ira Allen's brought slaves into Vermont and kept them in Burlington as servants? He did, right? As he did, yeah. Hey, look, the Allen's are not Paragon's approach. They start to make work. There's a provision in the Vermont Constitution very important, you can't confiscate property for public use without paying compensation. You think Ethan cared very much about that when he was going on the South confiscating Yorker's property, right? Okay. So it happens, look. But you would have thought. But the fact that the practice does not conform to the constitutional requirements does not constitute, it seems to me, basis for concluding that the framers of the Vermont Constitution condone slavery. Child slavery, adult slavery, it just is to say life is more complicated than you would understand if you just looked at the constitutional text. People kept slaves as servants. You can look at census records and they're on the reference to House Olex servant Y. We just don't know whether that servant was in fact a slave or a servant who was actually in the paid employee of the household. You just can't determine that. But I suspect that in not a few cases those servants in fact were slaves. That's, I think, a fair, I think it was exceptional, but still it happened. And it's important that we recognize that. So, but what's the significance of that for our inquiry? And all I could say is, hey, I've looked at the instances we know we're servants, in fact, we're slaves. And there's no clear pattern that somehow most of them were child slaves. In fact, the primary examples we have with maybe one or two exceptions are examples where the servants were adult slaves. So the actual practice also is kind of a dark side, murky, actual de facto practice. Doesn't reflect the view that Vermonters had that somehow having child slaves was okay, but adult slaves was not. I would say most of those cases probably do involve adult slaves, but de facto slaves, okay? Now, in part, this may begin to set the stage for responding to Senator Polina's case because I think the framers during this period were probably aware that whatever they say, some people in the state were brain slaves into the state and we have to figure out, should we include them in part two or should we not include them in part two? What if we don't include them? What would that be? What if we include them? What would that be? Okay, the last thing I looked at, you'll also find that you see, Wefield found a copy, a recorded copy, in a town archive of a bill of sale for a child slave. I can't remember what town it was, but it was in that Vermont town, okay? And I say, well, does that mean then that the framers of Article I condoned child slavery? And my answer to that is, you know, if you want it, the way to answer that is to ask if bills of sale for child slavery were ever legally enforced. It's not whether they exist. All the time, every day in Vermont, people make contracts to do illegal things. I know this probably comes as a surprise shot. Well, I could offer you $2,000 to supply me with a pound of high quality Canadian marijuana. You deliver the marijuana to me. We entered it, we actually signed an agreement to that event. You deliver, and then I said, I'm not paying you. Okay? Do you think if the supplier were to bring that contract into court, the court would enforce it? The answer is no. There's a whole body of 19th and 20th century law where courts refuse to enforce contracts that either involve illegal actions or involve actions that are clearly contrary to state policy. Some states enforce surrogate mother contracts. Other states refuse to do so. So if you've got a legally binding contract in one state, you try to get it enforced in the courts in the state that doesn't enforce it. You won't be enforced, okay? I could, I know you're not gonna like this example, but if I had a piece of property and I said, hey, look, nice cabin out in the woods. I'll rent it to you for $50 a month. If you promise to pay me $50 on the first of every month and provide certain sexual favors on every other Tuesday night now, we may know of people that haven't engaged. Okay, okay. Could I walk into court and enforce it? So the simple point is the mere fact that you discover a bill of sale, recorded, stamped, sealed, notarized, and delivered in some town records doesn't mean that the framers of the Vermont Constitution endorsed child stuff. This happens to be a bill of sale for you. What happened to that case is really interesting. So the guy takes his bill of sale, which proves he owns the slave, and the slave goes out to Quebec and sells the slave up there. Couldn't move in Vermont because none of this stuff would be legally enforced. But that's the way that story ends. So those are the four things that I looked at. One, what did the Vermont Supreme Court say? Two, is there any evidence in the courts of the state up until the Civil War of anybody going into court and enforcing a bill of sale for a child slave? No. The actual practice, illegal practice of holding slaves and there's no clear pattern that somehow child slaves were more prevalent than adult slaves. And finally, the mere existence of the bill of sale proved nothing. So I'm about finished, Senator Brace, I'll hang in there. Hey, look, I know what it's like. Okay, in short, and I'm going to page eight. In short, there's no evidence that an adopting article on the framers of the First Vermont Constitution intended to ban only adult slavery. There's no evidence that the framers intended to condone child slavery. There's no evidence indicated that they intended the prohibition of slavery expressed in article one to be only a quote partial prohibition in contrast, all the evidence that I was able to discover uniformly supports the view that in adopting article one, the framers intended to ban slavery generally in the state. That's the way article one was understood by early Belongers. That's the way it's been consistently understood and interpreted from the earliest days of the state's history in the prison. Which brings us to the difficult question why did they put the word slave in the second part? Why do you need to do that if slaves don't exist? If you're already free, right? I made a stab at that, trying to understand what might have motivated the framers to do so. The first possibility is, unlike the Pennsylvania Constitution, which you said that one paragraph, they wanted to somehow make clear that the word person included the word slave. And if you read the first part and the second part together that flows almost logically and that's how why the Vermont Supreme Court decided as it did in the Windsor versus Jacob case. If you just had the first part, that's what the Pennsylvania Constitution had and nobody thought that that Constitution, the first part, prohibited slavery. The Vermont framers nailed that baby down by adding the second part. Whether they did so clumsily, effectively, we can debate. Okay, what's another possible explanation? Another possible explanation is that despite the constitutional prohibition of slavery across the board, the reality in practice was that sometimes slaves, in fact, had been brought into the state and were currently serving as servants. Now, the way I analogize it and you may not find it helpful is it's the relationship of a slave to a master is not unlike in some respects, the kind of abusive relationship that people sometimes have with their husbands or their wives. And you can't just walk up and say, hey, look, you're free, get out of there. Why? I mean, you can, but oftentimes it isn't very effective. Why? Because people are locked into those relationships and you can imagine the same way that a person who's been abused is locked into a relationship with an abusive part, a slave, hey, here I am, and Bell wills fall for a moment. And my family's all in a specific. Yeah, so what am I gonna do? Walk down to the diner and say, have a, have a, you know, molted milk. Have a practical application. But look what this does, look what this does. It makes clear that if you happen to be one of those people who is still being treated as a slave and you're a servant, when you reach the age of maturity, you have exactly the same rights as indentured servants do. And as apprentices to say, that's the end of it. Unless we work out some agreement that I agree to, I am no longer gonna stay in your employee. So it's a kind of signal out there to those de facto slaves that you've got the same rights. And that brings me to the third possible explanation, which is what would you do if you were the framers of Article One? Do you leave slave out of the second part? Do you leave that word out of it? So now it reads, and no person who serves as a servant can be beholden by law to continue to do so after reaching the age of majority, including indentured servants and apprentices. And so the implication is then that maybe slaves are not prosaists, right? I call that a double safe. It's like some people have a double lock on their door. They lock the, overlock. We've never locked their doors once. I don't think we have a lock, but some people have a double lock. It's like a double lock. You say, there's no such thing as slaves, but if there are slaves, this guarantees that when you reach the age of majority, you can walk. You can negotiate your own relationship with your own. So those are the three I know, Senator Colleen, I see through your eyes and your eyebrow, you're not terribly convinced, but I'm trying to understand why it's in there too, and it seems to me it's got to be either one of those or a combination of those. They could have technically left the word slave out of the second part, but the consequence would be just the nagging question, are slaves entitled? People who are de facto, are they entitled to the same emancipation when they reach the age of majority, or are they not? They would have left that question. I suppose somebody does, like while they're doing the legislature, they threw the word in, hey, this does the work we wanted to do. Professor, I think you've actually hard to answer the question, that parenthetical phrase after arriving to the age of 21, if that phrase was removed originally by the framers, it would indicate to me perhaps that at that stage in those times, in that era, the age majority was much more important for a lot of reasons that it may be today. We've tinkered with 18 being an age that certain things can happen for people, 21's an age that can be, 26 apparently still the age that you can rent a vehicle, I'm not sure why it's 26, but. So I think- The brain has developed, man's brains are fully developed at 25. That's amazing. Thank you all. I thought it was 47. No, that's good, no, that's good. So if you didn't have that in there, however, some of these indentured service contracts carried you up to the age of 30. Yes, but they were individual contracts. I mean, they were legally binding. You got launching, you got food, you couldn't marry, you couldn't decide to leave without permission of your master. If you were an indentured servant and half the labor force in America- Not indentured. Were indentured servants. That's not allowed. A lot more in the south than they were in the north, but half the labor, and how did this work? You know how indentured servants system worked? Because it was a labor shortage in this country, office owners would work out deals over in England or Europe, and they'd say, I would carry your son, Axe, who's 16 years old, over to America. But what you've got to give me is something like a transferrable document that says when I get to America, I can agree with somebody to allow your son to be used as an indentured servant for the next seven years, if you pay me enough to recompense me for the cost of voyage, and a little bit of profit on the side. So the shipowner's got this document, he arrives in Boston, somebody comes down for a month, we need a servant, you work out a deal. How much do you want, okay? And then you get an indentured servant for the next five or seven years. Okay, that's the way the employer paid the shipowner and then the indentured servant had to pay back the employer. And this is how we got many of our immigrants. No, sometimes the indentured servant would independently work out a relationship. It worked a lot in different ways, but employers, they often refer to the employer with indentured servants as the master, not the employer, but the master of indentured servants, just the way you talk about it. So there you have it now. I'm gonna, if I could manage here, I would just conclude. I know I abused my time. No, you haven't done it at all. We wanted to give you lots of fun. Why I think this is so important. When I come up to the legislature, I'm gonna give you an example. For example, testify in favor of legislation that legalized same-sex marriage in this state. I feel that in doing so, I can say to the legislature, you are carrying forward the great constitutional traditions of this state. It's not the court doing it. You are carrying forward the tradition, the constitution, because this is yet another step in a process by which constitution shapes and grows over time. But I have the same sense when I do that, that in thinking that way, that all of us are standing on the shoulders of earlier generations of our mothers who provided the pillars for those constitutional traditions. And I thought Senator McCormack was very effective in saying one of those major pillars that stands for liberty, stands for equality, is Article One of Chapter One. That's an incredibly important pillar. And so anyway, I feel that response, and I feel much differently. He talked about the feeling of pride. I feel a sense of responsibility, but also pride, in saying Vermont has a very special constitutional tradition. It has been at the forefront of protecting liberty and equality from the very first constitution. Article One is one manifestation of that. There are other provisions in the constitution that are other measures. But when we act, we are carrying forward and we build upon the achievements of earlier generations. Now if this committee, or if the Vermont legislature, takes the view that Vermont Framers only wanted to protect adult slavery, they condone child slavery. I think that is a denigration of what, in fact, was their real constitutional achievement. I think it's a kind of defacement of the monument in constitutional law that Article One stands for. It's not gonna change what happened, as you said before, Senator Clarkson. It's not gonna change the past. And it's probably not gonna diminish what, in fact, they achieved. But I think we are not greater for it if we denigrate the achievements of the Vermont Framers. I think we're lesser for it. That doesn't work. So we're lesser for it if we change it? Yeah. If we change it, say no, we're lesser for it if we change it on grounds that the Vermont Framers condone child slavery because they did not condone child slavery. If we attribute that to them, that is wrong. I get that. But if we made more explicit our understanding, seemingly for generations, that all persons are free, why not just say it and believe it at all persons are created free and equal? And why not just make it explicit and believe it made explicit for the next generation? So I don't think it will end if you just left it that way. I am just telling you, if you do it because you believe that the Framers condone child slavery, that is in the bill. That is in the bill. And if you do it for a little bit of a backstab- But if we change our understanding of it and still want to make it explicit and get rid of language that may be confusing and is slightly archaic, what is the harm in making it simpler and more straightforward? I think you could do that. I might be inclined, I think I'd suggest it in an email to Senate Madam Chair that, hey, if you want to drop off the second part, what about just adding something to the effect that recognizes the enormous achievement of the Framers saying the Framers do this provision, prohibited slavery gently and that's the way it goes. Oh, this is the intent. Even quoting from the Windsor versus Jacob case. The court has always understood this provision, just the first part, to prohibit slavery in the state of Vermont, making Vermont the first state ever, the first state constitution ever to ban slavery. So perhaps that would be a good source. Well, you can fool with it. If you just, I don't like leaving off the second clause. I love to. Senator McCleary doesn't either. He described it as an artifact and, hey, look, can't you really, it's always important for him to be able to see this and understand where we came from and what it was like and what kind of achievement was important. So what if you, apparently the angst that's been produced out there is the section about after arriving at the age of 21. I mean that, it seems to me that, and I have to say that the sentiment out there has been drummed up in such a way that even the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, which is a relatively conservative organization, has supported changing the constitution. So what if you just left off arriving at the age of 21? So that you left in there, therefore no person born in this country ought to serve any person as a servant, slave, or apprentice, unless bound by the person's own consent or bound by, and left all of that except just took out those six or seven words. I mean, does that negate what the French people are saying about their neighbors? I don't, no, that's a good question. Let me think about that a little bit more as a possibility. You know why it was in there upon reaching it? That was considered a liberal progressive statement because it put a top end limit, which if you didn't have it in there, it wouldn't put a top end limit on indentured servant contract. If you're under 21 now, can you sign a contract? Well, that's a good question. Yes, that's a, so is it implicit that the age of, I don't know the age of consent is if you're probably 18, but maybe it's... You could be subject to a contract though, and that the contract was not with you. It was with... How if you're more free, how can you be subject to a contract? Mom sent it. Yes, because if it's signed in England by your parents, that progressed all the way to your owner or manager or employer in Vermont. Yeah. Well, I... Let me just... You were subject to a first version of article one provided that no male can be bound until reaching the age of 20, after reaching the age of 20, and no female can be bound after reaching the age of... 18. 18, which meant that female servants could go out and get married when they reached the age of 18 without having to get their master's permission, that they could go out and work if they wanted to. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I have two questions. Article one has never been amended. Well, you should have. I should have. You should have. Because of the language, the other language. Right. To equalize the age of females and male servants. To equalize the age of females and to get the gender language too, although that didn't apply so much here. So we have had a proposal that we change it to just the first sentence. Who's that from? I think it's ACLU. And included as the second sentence, slavery and involuntary servitude in all forms are prohibited. I actually like leaving as much of the original language as is possible instead of... See, I think the original language, although I now understand it, and I'm delighted at the illuminating aspect of this afternoon's testimony, but I still think it is not clear to a modern public. And that's who this is serving. It's not serving dead people. This is serving people who are alive now and who need to understand now what our laws are. I'm, you know, this will always live on as what was. But I would really love it if we could be simpler and less historic or confusing. That would do the same work that the 13th Amendment does. It would be redundant of the 13th Amendment, but we just say our Vermont Constitution's like the 13th Amendment. It would adopt the position of the 13th Amendment. Slavery and involuntary servitude are prohibited by the United States of America. They're prohibited under the Vermont Constitution. So you could do that. That would at least be better, I think, than just dropping. Yes, exactly. And some people have asked that because they are proud of that tradition. So think about just dropping the after-riding with the age of 21 and leaving all the rest of the language, what that would do. What did you say then? It would say therefore no person born in this country or brought from overseas ought to be beholden by law to serve any person as a servant, slave or apprentice unless bound by the person's own consent or bound by law for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like. It would just take out The 21. After arriving at the age of 21. I think that's possible. I don't know. I'm embarrassed to say what the age of consent is for entering into a legally binding contract in this state. I suspect it might be 18 years old. I'm not sure. I think the age of, I did a whole study on the age of consent in this state about what it means, and it is all over the place. You can become an emancipated minor at 16. You can, if you are- That's a process. I know it is. If you're a child and you're an ungruelly, or I remember what the term is, the parent can't control it. No, it's not. Way more than that. And they take you to the retreat because they feel you really need to be in an institution. I mean, we have little kids who are chewing up glass and swallowing it. So the age at which the child can refuse, five. Yes. A treatment. A child at age five, the mom brings him to the retreat and says this kid needs to have some help and they need to be in a residential area. At the age of five, the kid says no. Madam Chair, those are good and helpful questions. And I just really need an opportunity to reflect on the various alternatives to the proposal I was asked to respond to in my testimony today. And I've just explained to you why I think you just throw out the second part. You are losing something, you're losing part of our history, but you're also losing the whole way in which Article One was supposed to operate in banning slavery across the board. And if you want to get rid of the second part, at least don't do it by attributing to the framers of you, right, they never held. That is not fair, it is not right. Except that's the way the public will interpret it, no matter what it is that we say. That is the way it will be interpreted because the way it's being promoted now is that that's, it was only a partial prohibition. But it's our job to message it. Correctly. Well, we can message it all we want, but that's going to be the public understanding. I told Madam Chair, I felt I was going to be swimming upstream on this one, but I have done what the best I can to share with you what I've been able to do. That's a great job, Peter. I think everybody in this room thinks it's really important to be honest and true about what we're doing rather than to base a constitutional amendment on something that we're falsely attributing. Right, that's a false attribution, I think, but that has been incredibly helpful. But I will say that I believe that the sentiment out there right now is that we just got another letter that was just posted from the Episcopal Church supporting the amendment. Yikes. They didn't ask, they got to ask their Episcopal member of this committee. And I mean, we've done it from everybody. It is interesting that, I don't know if you know Curtis Reed who, okay Curtis Reed was in here and testified and he thought it was extremely important not to just get rid of that second section, but to keep the reference to the prohibition of slavery. He felt it was very important. Yes, but he felt that for, I thought, a very odd reason. Oh, it's why he, because it helped further promote the Freedom Trail? No, he said that it is for the black community that is trying to increase our, right, but it's also for the whole black tourism that he's talking about. I think at a political level, it is hard to explain to people why those words are there, even though you had the explanation, but I'm just trying to think if you put this out for a public vote, unless you can explain it, it'll just send you to talk to every individual and say, I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, but it's not an easy message to put out. Well, we're not, if we do something, if we don't do anything, we don't put it out for a vote. So it's just there, we don't put it out for a vote and if we have to figure out- If we don't put it out for a vote, we're going to have a lot of explaining to do. Right. If we don't put it out for a vote, that means this committee condones child slavery. Right, and now we go out and say a vote on that or fine with child slavery. So, thanks so more about some possibilities of how, what kind of language would uphold the historic intent and the fact that the framers intent, I believe, really was to prohibit slavery and then to, and how we could do that in the best way. Because where I will tell you, I don't know about the rest of the committee, but I'm not wedded to any of this, the purpose or the language itself. That came from somebody else and we just all signed on because we thought it was a good idea. I'd be happy to put my mind to it. It would be helpful to me, Madam Chair, if you would forward to me the various proposals. Okay. Alternative proposals. They should be on our website. They're on our website. There. Okay. It's good to have you. But I will, I will, I will send a link. No, it's on the committee, it's on the committee. Okay, I can look that up. Aren't they all there, Carol? Yeah, I'll send that in here. Okay, so. Can I ask you one more question before you go? The other thing that's come up from the main sponsor of this is that in the Constitution, in our little one, it's found on page 28, it says, qualifications of free men and free women. And her suggestion in the article, it would be right before 42 in chapter two, 42. So what is the expected court for that? So it's been determined that the headings are actually part of the Constitution. And so the suggestion is should we change that to qualifications of voters? Why not? Okay, I just wanted to. That seems to me to be very, very simple. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. It says voters qualifications. No, it says qualifications of free men and women. Oh, at the way top? Yes. So that was a suggestion I just wanted to hear. That's interesting. But we did with a lot of political resistance to eliminating the term free men because it sort of invokes the yeoman. The yeoman, don't you? Democratic. And the court, the spring court, and trying to find ways around that really struggled at times. Yeah. They ought to have King James come back and do that work. Thank you so much. Well, thank you for the opportunity to say, I really enjoyed testifying and I appreciate your questions. And I don't have, as you know, all the answers. I just have said, I will tell you what the answer is not. Right. No one, that really was a moment. And I'm very appreciative. Thank you. That's great. Thank you. So when we get some other, some proposals, proposals from people, we'll keep forwarding them to you and then we'll have you come in and talk about... Your proposal, the teacher proposal. What the best option would be, yeah. Okay, send me all the mail from the mail until we get a wagon loaded. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. No, I, it's really great. I, for promise, is just... We are lucky. We are so lucky. This is the one place in the world I think where democracy really, I know you don't always feel that at seven o'clock at night when you're going home for one hour's a lousy day, but it is relative to a way to... The opposite of the legislative process works anywhere else in the country. It's true. I'll just exactly what you would want the democratic process to be, but all it's flaws is just, I just appreciate the opportunity to participate even from my distance. Thank you. Thank you. So, I explained what the kind of background for where this came from, and as if people didn't know, but I did it anyway. Thank you. And so, when I'm passing you out, everybody's interested, just a section by section, summary of the bill as passed the House. Oh, please. Oh, sorry. I was, was, was, was, was. That's it for the record, Betsy and Rasmus Legislative Council, Madam Chair, it sounds like you already explained the origin of this bill, the Sunset Advisory Commission. And so the bill is introduced, set forth the Sunset Advisory Commission's recommendations. The House made a couple adjustments before passing the bill out of the chamber. So, we first begin by amending this bill to amend the section that requires the Secretary of State to maintain an inventory of the state board's commissions because as part of the bill from the special session, the Secretary of State would be required to take the whole inventory of all the state's boards and commissions and put it online in a searchable format. And it will provide information in regard to board members, their term length and expiration and who appointed them. So, part of the Sunset Advisory Commission process during adjournment was to take testimony on not only the boards and commissions, but how that inventory would look. And so, some of the testimony from the Secretary of State's office was, we need a better definition of what we're talking about here when we're talking about state boards and commissions to make it more specific so the Secretary of State's office knows what they need to have in this inventory. And so, section one of the bill would amend the definition of what we're talking about when we say state boards and commissions. The prior definition was based on the per diem statute for state boards and commissions, but this would make a clearer definition of the whole realm of what we're talking about state boards and commissions. So, they would be defined as a board or council or similar entity that is either created by state law, created by federal law and contained state appointees or created by executive order. It's established as or it's attached to an executive branch entity. It has statewide jurisdiction or it carries out a state function and it can't be composed of members appointed exclusively by regional county or municipal entities. For example, it will include a thing like a regional planning commission because that's just a regional entity. So, that would be the realm of what we're talking about when we're saying state. So, it's like their state's office has to keep it in the store as we state boards and commissions. One of the things that's noted on this. So, go for page two. Are you working from the age 16? Yeah. And this? As past house. Yeah, this is just a summary. Okay, so I'm just curious. These aren't ours. So, would you be kind of? It's an ant. Mm-hmm. It's an ant. It doesn't mean all of these criteria. Yeah, well, so how does the women's, the Vermont commission on women fit in? It's not an executive branch entity. It does carry out a state function so that would strike me as an or. It is created by state law. It is an executive branch entity. It has to fit somewhere in one of the three branches and it's an executive branch entity. Oh, is? Yeah. I thought it was independent. Well, it has to fit somewhere in one of the three branches. It's enabling law might even specify that it's an executive branch entity, but it has to fit somewhere in state government and it's certainly not the legislative branch and it's certainly not the judicial branch. It's executing the law. It's enabling law. That means it's an executive branch entity and it's carrying out a state function and it's not composed of members appointed exclusively by regional, county, or municipal entities. So, what about commissions that are created serving the judicial branch or the legislative system? It would not be included. It makes it, for example, the Judicial Conduct Board, which regulates the disciplinary, provides disciplinary authority over judges that would not be included in a state order commission because that's an arm of the judicial branch. Okay. So, and this is basically just exactly the branch. Yes. Yes. Okay. I have not understood. And that's good because it shows how the former definition really didn't get to the detail of what we're talking about. So, it really is just executive branch entities. So, section two is in regard to the date by which the secretary states start maintaining its inventory of state boards and commissions. And the bill from last, the special session, said that that had to happen starting January 1st of this year. Next. Oh, yeah. The sensitive advisory commission, we haven't, they haven't come up with all of the state boards and commissions and all of the inventory data. And also a big question that you're probably gonna, or an issue that you're in here about from the secretary state's offices, what is this inventory supposed to look like? How detailed do you need it to be? And if it's going in the direction of where people think it might need to go, it's probably gonna take a while to come up with an IT format or a platform that will handle it. It might cost some money. So in order to get all those details ironed out, the effective date of when the secretary state's office has to start maintaining its inventory is extended. It won't happen until, need to happen until January 1, 2023, which is also, by that time, the sensitive advisory commission is to have completed its work. So work fills the time available. I mean, really, we're gonna put off doing this for four years. I mean, for years. If I can explain from the commission's perspective, we did not have a definition. We did not have any idea what went into the inventory. We have to make those decisions first and the Sunset Advisory Commission doesn't meet again until next summer. I mean, it isn't a- Oh my God, God. So your timeframe is sort of extended. Right. So section three amends the, well, I'm gonna call the standard per diem and expense reimbursement statute. It's 32 BSA 1010. You'll see it all over the statutes. It'll say, members of the state board will are entitled to receive per diem compensation, reimbursement of expenses as provided in 32 BSA 1010. This is a statute that provides standard per diems, reimbursement of actual necessary expenses for board members. That standard per diem amount is 50 bucks. What's going on here in amending this statute is to use standard entitled to language that the General Assembly has been doing throughout the statutes that provide compensation. For example, it's just been recently that the salaries of state officers, the statutes that provide those salaries have been amended to read that the state officers are entitled to their salary, not that they shall receive it just in case they don't want to accept the full amount. Similarly, that change is being made here to use entitled to language. I'm just cleaning up the statute a bit. You can see it's funny how it's crafted. Subsection A of the statute says, all right, this specific list of boards and commissions get 50 bucks. But then subsection B goes on to say, okay, and everybody else, that's a member of a board or commission that's entitled by the General Assembly to receive per diem compensation is entitled to receive 50 bucks. So anywhere you see in statute that a state board or commission is entitled to compensation and reimbursement, this 32VSA 1010 provides that per diem is 50 bucks. And that's important to remember as we go throughout this bill because you'll see in a few places where it's amending the enabling law for specific boards and commissions, it'll say board members are entitled to 30 bucks. Well, no, by 32VSA 1010 because it's the more recently enacted law. If they're entitled to receive per diem compensation, it's 50 dollars unless the statute says it's more than 50 dollars. So given my bill of a biennium ago, yeah, there was no discussion of raising this rate which has not been touched for decades. I believe the Sunset Advisory Commission is going to turn that to the issue of per diem at a future meeting. Yes. Good. It's about bloody times. It's unbelievably behind the dimes on that. So guard, what's your answer? All right, then the bill gets into amending the enabling law of specific boards and commissions. So here we are in section four in regards to the enabling law for the travel information council. You, it's just cleaning up this language, talking about adopting rules instead of making them referring to the council just as the council instead of having to repeat travel information council in every location. And then on page seven, what's going on with the strikeout is first saying, using the more formal phrase that the members are appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate. That's just a formal term. And then you'll see that on page seven, the language is being struck out is in regard to the initial appointments. And when statute says initial appointments, they're really talking about the very first appointments in order to stagger when the people are first appointed to a boarder commission. So this travel information council's been around for a while. So it was an opportunity to clean up the statute to say, all right, yeah, there's six board members and they serve two year staggered terms with three members appointed annually. That's supposed to reflect current practice. We'll see on page seven that it looks like it's adding a per diem, but it's not. Travel information council members already get a per diem, but the issue was that their per diem was set forth in old session law. And so this is just putting it into the actual statute itself to provide that members of the council get the per diem and reimbursement of expenses as permitted under 32 DSA 1010, which is that $50 per day. Another thing that's going on when, and what we're trying to do when drafting and what legislators are requesting more recently is that to specify where those per diems come from, who has to cover them. In this case, it was particularly important to specify who has to pay the per diems of the travel information council because this council really straddles the jurisdiction of the agencies of transportation and also commerce and community development. So the decision was made and proposed by the Sunset Advisory Commission to specifically state that the per diems are paid by the agency of transportation. This is partly due, you can see in the notes, due to AOT providing the administrative support to the council pursuant to statute. Also, AOT has a bigger budget than ACC. So who is currently paying? I don't know who in practice is currently paying. So what kind of hit on AOT budget is this and what did they say? I don't recall. In fact, I think they were supportive of it because it makes it clear. So, break up. Section five is amending the statute for the travel and recreation council. And it's just adding first in subsection A, it's adding reference to designees after a few of the commissioners to commissioner or secretary of ACC and commissioner of tours in the marketing because you can see or designee appears elsewhere and it just was not provided for those other two. So that was just to make that consistent. And then on page nine, you'll see on subsection E, it's using that entitled to language and then specifying the payments come from ACC. And in section six, we move on to the remote. I don't want to ask in each section, but in every case, did the agencies or departments that are now tasked with paying for these testify? Yes, in fact, the agencies, anything that's dealt with in here by from an agency or department, they were there testifying on the content, the changes, the eliminations. Okay, so in your committee or upstairs? In Sunset Advisory Commission. Okay, this is a bill that's just been passed on the house, so I'm asking, so did they testify in the house? Oh, I have no idea about that, but let's see. But this is the bill that came to the house from the Sunset Advisory Commission. And I recall that committees of jurisdiction were made aware of this bill. And the governor's office has been following the bill throughout the process. So one thing, if I may. Just identify yourself. Hey, new voice. Yes, governor, thank you. I believe that's the answer correctly. Committees of jurisdiction that were affected were made aware. And I think in a few instances they requested that representative Gannon, who was one of the co-sponsors of the bill, come and present the idea. And I think in almost every case, they said, okay, that makes sense. The committee of jurisdiction signed off. There's a couple of places where there were some changes made by the house that Betsy Ann notes in the summary document that we'll get to a little later on. But as I understand it, the standing committees did have the opportunity to weigh in for some points. Thanks. Section six is in regard to the Vermont Community Development Board. The change here on page 10 is using that standard and title to language and saying as permitted under 32 BSA 1010, note here again on page 10 under subsection D that it currently in statute says members get a $30 per day, aka per diem. But because 32 BSA 1010 was enacted, that applies and so they actually are getting $50 per diem. So this is just cleanup language to make, to actually clarify the statute. On page 10 in section seven, there is a repeal of what it was called the state and regional economic development and planning services oversight panel. Wow, what a long name. If this was created in challenges for change, it served a discrete purpose, but it was never explicitly repealed. So this makes it completely final that that council or oversight panel is repealed. Was that your first abolishment? No, it's the first one that appears in the bill, but I don't think it was the first one that we did. Must have felt good. On section, excuse me, page 11 in section eight, this is a repeal of the development cabinet, which was made up of the governor's secretaries. It was deemed no longer necessary, in part because the governor can meet with them at any time where she chooses. So the decision was to repeal. Well, that takes care of a lot of the bill. Yeah. Page 15, in section nine, this would also repeal the commission on international trade and state sovereignty, the rationale being that it's deemed no longer necessary. It hasn't met recently, it was a testimony, and that its purpose could be met in other ways. Sorry, that's page 16 of our bill. It's on page 16 on ours. Yeah. Doesn't start on the bottom of page 15, section nine? No, section nine starts in the middle of page 16. Are you, oh, do you have the official version of the bill? No, as introduced. You should be looking at the as-passed house version. I don't really get that. Oh. We just have as introduced. Okay, correct. Well, I'll alert you where there's changes from okay, let's introduce them. So if you do want to mark the one change that you do want to mark then, I'm just for your notes is in section two for that effective date from the Secretary of State. Yeah, when the Secretary of State has to start maintaining that information. So 2020, what gives the other document just 2020? Correct. Yeah, I thought that was going to be a pure later on. Yeah, the house changed that to give the Secretary of State's office more time. And the big picture is the Sunset Advisory Commission's work would be completed by that time. And that's why I highlighted that in your section by section summary. Okay, I'll be able to note where there are other changes. No problem at all. Are we then? Film and media. Yes, okay, great, thank you. Repeal of the Film and Media Advisory Board. It's not been constituted since it was enacted in the law. It's been at least through two different administrations that when census was first created it has never been constituted and therefore is deemed unnecessary. So a repeal. Vermont Rehabilitation Corporation would also be repealed. Yes, it says Family Farm Assistance, but testimony indicates it is not being used. Actually, if you look toward the end of this whole sub-chapter, there's even a section that provides what the funding will be in fiscal year 1986 that shows its age. So this has not been used and it has the proposal to repeal it. The first reference to a time is 1935. All right, that takes us to section 12. And this is in regard to the Stat State Natural Resources Conservation Council Board of Adjustment. The proposal is to repeal the Board of Adjustment because it's not being used. And so you'll see that this section amends this one sub-chapter. And what's going on here is that this Board of Adjustment essentially exists as an appellate level to address disagreements between natural resource district supervisors. We have these natural resource districts in the state. And this Board of Adjustment was supposed to address disagreements between the district supervisors and landowners who are not complying with district ordinances. And as the summary provides, under current law, when a landowner fails to enter into a stipulation with the Board of Adjustment, the supervisors can appeal to the Superior Court. So because this Board of Adjustment is deemed as not necessary, what this section would do is provide the district supervisors with the authority the board currently has, which is an ability to authorize variances from district ordinances and to request that a landowner enter into a stipulation that provides the conditions that are agreed to between a landowner and supervisors. And then the supervisors would maintain their current authority to appeal to the Superior Court when a landowner refuses to sign a stipulation. So it's just a pretty much eliminating the Board of Adjustment and transferring its current duties to the district supervisors. Just noted here in this section by section summary that you probably want to run this by the committees of jurisdiction. Just keep them in the loop, but there were no issues raised on the house side about this. Okay, then you'll probably see a full text. So noted, did you get that Chris? Oh, yes. Community jurisdictions. You're at committee of jurisdiction. Roger. Okay. You've been notified. Notification check. Okay, so you'll see in your bill as introduced that section 13 would repeal the pesticide advisory council's annual report requirement regarding the state's progress in reaching pesticide targets because the report requirement was not being followed. So that section after further review in the house was repealed, or excuse me, deleted from the bill. So the house proposes to make no change so that the pesticide advisory council would still be required to submit this annual report requirement. But again, there was quite a bit of testimony on the house side about the pesticide advisory council not submitting this report lately, the reports that it does have. There seem to be some confusion about this specific report and what it meant. So just to put that on your radar. Such an important subject right now. The reviewer's pasticides are not. So I would have thought they would have been very well. We will take some testimony on it. Similarly, section 14 would address a report that the Vermont bill commission currently is required to provide to the house and senate committees on ag annually. And the suggestion here is to allow the commission to report as needed. So in its discretionary may report as needed. The rationale in reporting has been syskin. So again, it's just noted here that committees with jurisdiction should be made aware of this proposed change in reporting. Section 15 is in regard to the sustainable agriculture agriculture council. There would be a repeal of this council and the repeal is set forth in subsection B of this section 6BSA 4701. But you'll see the subsection A, which sets forth the purpose of having sustainable agriculture. And subsection C, which is the secretary of ag's authority to apply for grants in accordance with the purpose of a stable ag would be left intact. So that the ag's secretary can still apply for grants for the purpose of sustainable agriculture. But the council itself is being unnecessary and the proposal is therefore to repeal it. So in Europe. What's that? It's aimed at an era, this was a sort of pioneering group, a lot of work, like organic and alternative agriculture. So if it's done so much work recently, I think it's been subsumed in some other things. So what has it been subsumed into? Probably it was like farm to flay. Working land. Working blends and then the ag's in agriculture does some stuff as well. UVM has a whole program, so I think it just. Got it. So the work is being done, but just under other umbrellas. I think so. Section 16, you'll still see it appear in your bill. The proposal as introduced would be to repeal the transportation alternatives grant committee because the recommendation was the functions could be performed by AOT. So throughout the section in section 16, the committee itself would be replaced by AOT, but the house decided to delete that section. So when you're as past house version, you would see deleted. I think AOT might be taking house A, excuse the house, video on transportation might be still considering whether to repeal this council, but for now it's out of this bill. Section 17 would repeal the whole chapter of the Vermont Transportation Authority because it's not being used with the rationale. The authorities generally empowered to operate transportation facilities. Just noted in the summary that most of the chapter has not been amended since it was added in 1974. It's also just noted that if at some point in the future this does get repealed and the legislature wants another transportation authority, it would just need to reenact a chapter like this or whether changes were necessary. And then finally, section 18 is in regard to the Capital Complex Commission. And big picture what's going on here is that the commission would increase by two members going from five to seven. And those two new members would be appointed one a piece by the House and the Senate. You can see though that this section 18 would specifically provide in subdivision two C that none of the employees could be a legislator. So the two chambers could each appoint a member of the Capital Complex Commission, but nobody could be an actual legislator on the commission. One thing to note was that under current law, it says that not more than two members of the commission shall be residents of the city of Montpelier. So you can imagine because city of Montpelier has to appoint one member. So you would think that they're going to appoint someone from the city. And so that rationally that left the governor with the ability to appoint one other person from Montpelier if he or she so chose. Now because there are two legislative appointees proposed to be added, the question was, well, what do you do about people from Montpelier? How do you divvy up the Montpelier appointees? And so the House decided to say, instead of saying not more than two members of the commission shall be residents of Montpelier, just not fewer. So if you expect that the city council will appoint one, then you would just expect that either the governor or one of the two chambers would appoint another Montpelier resident. So it could take some coordination behind the scenes to ensure that at least two members are Montpeliers residents, but probably work that out, right? Well, I don't think the city council would appoint a non. So that's one, yeah. So actually I need to amend on the section by section summary because I forgot to revise that because the House wanted to thank, yeah, they wanted to change the transportation. They want actually, so the pesticide advisor council just about reporting requirement, but the House deleted the section that would have repealed the transportation alternatives grant committee. So it's actually under the House pass version, it's eight, not nine, sorry about that. I'll correct that for the record. It doesn't repeal the pesticide board, it just repeal, it just tells them that they don't have to do an annual report because they're not doing it. And the information is still there. I mean, eggs are still asked for it, so we've still got it, yeah. In your discussions, how many, this bill represents eight, once that you suggested repeal, being repealed, how many did you, how many did the commission actually? Review, specifically, we reviewed, we maintained one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 31, 32, 33, 34. This is great, but it's wonderful to see had a lot of boards. Yeah, they're 265 of them. So you did about a third of them this time? No, no, we did. So you looked it over. Well, some of them we maintained because they're required by federal law. Some of them we retained, maintained because they, like one, I think listed in here were regional planning commissions, we just, Yeah, you weren't coming. So you looked at it like almost 40 and you recommended eight, you never saw about it. Yeah. So almost 20%, that was what I was trying to get a sense of is you looked at how many, what was the universe and how many are you? So almost 20%, you suggested we retire. And there were a lot of them that we said, we really don't have enough information on this or we need to review that, or committees of jurisdiction need to do some way again on these, so. Any more questions for Betsy? I will say. So thank you, I'll correct this dog and I'll resend it to Gail for posting to show that it's actually, total boards proposed to be repealed is now eight under the as-passed house version. I have a meeting at 4.30, I'm sorry. You're fine. Okay, you're fine. Gail, if I run around. So Tanya and, Don, you're gonna both have a chair, you have to take a last. Okay, do you wanna join us? You've not been in this committee before, I don't think. Perhaps for the facilities report, I couldn't testify, what was in the room because I've heard the report the last two years. Okay. For the agency. Okay, I don't remember. I don't ever remember hearing of the facilities report. Doesn't that go to institutions? It does, but we testified, we were in so many committees over the last two years. So maybe if we, I don't think you actually said right here. Okay. Went to the institution. Okay, well welcome. Well welcome, yes, thank you. So I understand you have a couple suggestions. I do. For the record, my name is Don O'Toole. I am the Chief Operating Officer for the Agency of Human Services. And I'm here to talk about B-Turb, the Vermont Tobacco and Evaluation Review Board. I have five boards under me, including this one. And two years ago we lost the funding for the executive director. So the chair of the board did her best to keep things moving along, but it was very difficult for her because there was no one to do the administrative work. And she resigned. And the board really has been in hiatus. It's really not functioning as a board. There's no one to keep it together or do the work. Our recommendation is to change the statute to call it an advisory council. It's very important work, and they do advise Commissioner Mark Levine. And it's really important work around tobacco cessation, but it just, it's like it doesn't exist. It's almost silly because there's no one to keep it together. The Department of Health has offered to provide the administrative support they would need to keep it going as a council. And they would be able to continue to advise and recommend the commissioner. They play a significant role in advising policy changes. They approve the media campaigns. There's a lot of work going on, as I'm sure you know with youth and vaping, so it's a way to preserve that work and make sense of it with, right now it might as well just might exist. And what's it called again, John? The acronym is V-Turb. It's Vermont Tobacco and Evaluation Review Board. And then there's a lot of language that we'd have to strike out because it talks about doing an annual evaluation and annual report and they wouldn't be able to continue that work, but really it's not necessary. If you think back in time, there was so much tobacco money and we were able to do a lot with it. We don't have that anymore. And so the work is much more focused on cessation activities and trying to stop this considered crisis with youth and smoking. And so we would, there's no money actually to pay for that evaluation anymore and we don't really think it's a necessity. So we would want, we've made recommendations on changes in the language to reflect and advisory council role. So do you have the language that you can share with us? Yes, I just have the one copy with me here. Yeah, but you'll get it to us so that we can absolutely look at it. Yes, okay. So you'd be a council under DOH, is that? Under the Department of Health. Yeah, okay. They have a whole section that works on tobacco cessation. So the administrative support would come through that particular group, Rhonda Williams leads that group. But they have the administrative staff that could help because you really, you need to warn, post the minutes, set agendas. And there's just, no one has been around or available to do that work. They just tried to get together to improve a media campaign and they weren't successful. So it really just is either abolish them entirely or preserve the work by making a shift to an advisory council. And you want to preserve the work and shift and take on the burden of administering it and shift it to being an advisory board? We're more than willing. Right. Yeah, seems like a good compromise. Any questions? Okay. Thank you. So if you think that language to us, we'll consider it that. Certainly will. See if there's any more testimony that anybody wants to give us on that. Curious, one of your other four boards that you oversee? Parole Board. Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council. Can't wait to go ahead here. I'm Sarah Ramon, which is the American Board of VISTA. Right. And... Is the Medicaid advisory board? If you'd like to do Medicaid, no? Chew those. Your board. Your board. Your board. Your board. How could I forget them? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, Miss. I'm Rachel, the state office of Chief Records Office. And I'm also the director of the Office of State Archives and Records Administration from the Office of Secretary of State. My testimony was that they provide detail specific to Title III, 116A, regarding the inventory of state boards and commissions, all their identities and their terms. Just by way of background, the Secretary of State's Office currently does not collect any information related to boards and commissions. We are appointee, so this is the new Secretary of the Department. In addition, there's no use in particular division with the Secretary of State's Office or our personnel to support this particular inventory. I did participate in the commission's work and that part of that process came to understand a little bit more about the concerns of the appointee authorities, for example, in terms of identifying appointees and being able to manage that process. Also, and the committee that did the testimony in the Governor's Office, you know, just that the diversity of the different kinds of work to be done there. We did provide an example to the commission of another state, and I did provide, if you haven't been trying to do, the State of Minnesota has a very comparable amount of charge in terms of the Secretary of State's Office. We did look at, I think, about 227 boards and commissions, 70 appointee authorities and a full year rule for 3,000 appointees that they managed. And going through that, we do recommend recommendation to the commission, which we also made to the House, is that in order to support this particular statute, the Secretary's State's Office is requesting for the House, because it is a brand new function. And we also understand that if it is available with a more public, that this would lead to one more kind of currency in the boards and commissions, but also a kind of currency in the appointees. On my testimony, which I will read to you, we've spent a lot of time looking at whether it would take to collect this information. I know that the commission has compiled or through another reading of this spreadsheet of just the boards and commissions, but this particular charge also requires us to have the appointee information and as the appointee's changed, making sure that there's a mechanism to have it reported to the Secretary of State's Office to make sure it's updated. If you look inside different parts of the bill, you'll see that one particular board or commission may have up to 14 or more appointees, and they may have all different appointees and some of the criteria, which isn't currently in the requirement or the requirement for Title III and 116A, will have perhaps that someone has to be up in the front pillar of residence, for example, or someone has to have experience in tobacco, or someone has to have that, and we think that's probably going to be generated as part of that interest in the inventory. So in terms of looking at the administrative needs on top of that, and then the platform there, we do have a term remuneration for personnel. We have looked within the Secretary of State's Office. They have selected my division, the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration, because we do publish and try to get out as much information that does come to us through current needs, but this is a very new requirement. So it does not fit into our office of professional regulation. It does not fit into our elections division. It doesn't fit into our corporations division. And in order for me to incorporate is appropriately and resource it, it does require some personnel. But it did outline, it's cool, it's just a lot of work. And so the House postponed it, but to me, that's not actually what our need was. Our need was actually a resource to make sure that we're doing this. I was going to say, you need personnel and IT and a lot of, have you put a figure on that? So we have. We put a figure on it that we reported to the Commission. You know, if it's extended, we might be able to do that. But we did collect information from Minnesota. And Minnesota had a number of development on. They actually have their staff, IT, and they also have personnel that have been doing this. Their statutory mandates go back to the 70s for this particular function. So they had already evolved over time. They entered into a new platform that they developed internally, which is something that we already have little parts of it through the Vermont State or Price and Work Administration, but not the level that this which inventory would require. So the recommendation came for two FTEs to support it. If it's extended, we may be able to do one FTE, but we definitely would need an administrator component or allow us to figure out different resources in that. But it would be very little to do with no resources. And you need IT resources too, right? Right. Well, we have a web developer internally. What we don't have is a programmer. It did come into the house. It's a recommendation to use ADS in their different services, but that is a charge to us. So either way, it is a charge from the Secretary of State's office. As we've kind of evolved into our platforms, one of the things that's one of the reasons why we invested in the web developer recently is that we have been using external third party sources, but that ensures every single charge. This one, we feel like we can leverage much more agile functions for that by having a resource internally, particularly around some of the commissions on discussion. For example, one commissioner had asked, would you be able to add minutes? So is this a platform that eventually could be providing more resources and terms of boards and commissions and how many minutes would be that is possible? That would be something that would be an additional resource if we're well-resourced in this process. It is very much a registration. Minnesota has to register with the Secretary of State's office as a body. Our current law does not require that, but we did identify that somebody is going to have to be responsible for, as the General Assembly works through its work each session, knowing what boards and commissions have been created, what kind of seats have been created, what is the criteria around that seat, and then moving forward through it. Is there space in the office for this new FTE? Yes, we do. We have, we've been undergoing construction for since the final 10 years with the Secretary of State's office. We're located in Middlesex, and so one of our recent construction projects that started a couple of years ago was to swap space with print and poster, which is also in the same facility. So we have opened up, we have currently three vacant office spaces within the facility and flexibility for a joint office. Some of our positions to, with Don O'Toole, who was previously here, we will collaborate with them in the records management front, so we actually allocate a position into her staff. So we have some rotation of staff occurring as well through a partnership that we do for the records management program, but we currently have three office spaces. I have to say that Atanya was very helpful over the summer in helping us because we didn't have any definition of what boards and what we were talking about. We, no, I mean, we just- I don't mean to laugh at that, but it just said, boards and commissions- This isn't as complicated to you actually look at. And we looked at definitions of boards and commissions and everything else. And she was very helpful in helping us kind of focus that and start to focus on what would need to be collected and reported and who was going to do that. So, thank you. In terms of what we do have as part of the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration, there's not currently no statute, for example, because we do have the state archives. We collect a lot of information about agencies and departments and boards and commissions in terms of what their charge is, what's their enabling statute, when did they dissolve, because we have records that need to be associated with them so that people can search and research them. But that's one part. So, if the charge had been originally just boards and commissions, it might have been doable, but they appoint T-part, you know, is a whole different, so to speak. But in looking at Minnesota, their original legislation was based on transparency. How do individuals know that- I don't know if these even exist. That, I don't think the board doesn't exist, but there's an opportunity to be participating. That's an opportunity to serve. So, we do think that if there was something that given the opportunity with the resources that we may see administrative costs or at least the ability for agencies and departments that are providing some form of support or doing it on its own, including our Office of Professional Regulation and trying to post or trying to make these available, we would, all the information that we have to collect and compile would essentially create also the mechanism to show it when there's positions available. It's the same process involved, which is the benefit of that particular mindset of going in and having it, so that we could actually provide a lot more than what the current statute requires, because we would still have to collect and do the same information. I'll say you gotta hand it to the Minnesotans. Yeah? In many ways. I'm from the Minnesotans. How are you? Okay. She is their biggest cheerleader in this building. That she leads the Minnesotans. I would be in St. Paul this July. It's your beautiful state. Where did you go? I'm gonna be in St. Paul. Oh. The answer is I've been there several times. I've been up for where all the lakes are. Yeah, the lakes are all over the state. There are 10,000 named lakes. I've been up for many lakes. Up in the northern boundary. In the boundary waters? Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, I was on the boundary, but to the west of that, no water there. Well, thank you. I, congratulations to all of you guys on this. You're on it too, right? Yes. Mm-hmm. And Hayden worked with us. Yeah, I know. I'm acknowledging Hayden with my arms. It was a, it was a good group. Yeah, it was a good group. So the view of Zeller was very, very helpful. So the three house members were Gannon, Leclerc, and it was just two, two, two house, two senate, and two governor appointees. And that was Zeller and Matt Krause. So they just got you. What's that? They just got you by virtue of your interest in that. Yeah, I was just there to help out the best I could. He was, the governor said, go for it. Pretty much. Yeah. So just in closing our recommendation, I did put at the end of what I handed out was personnel, but we also know that in 2023 deadline, I knew that the house had thought maybe by extending it, we may be able to find personnel, find some kinds of, that's not actually what's happened, but we feel we could do it much sooner. Interesting. Yeah. I think we can start that process with boards and commissions if we have the resources. Do you argue that you have that in your budget this year, that one position? I don't believe that they put that into the budget because they should. You might tell us that they should, okay. Just because, I mean there's no, if we want to get started in that, that position wouldn't start so next to a lot. Yeah. Right. So the existing boards, part of the process of understanding and getting it kind of set up. Right. That resource was used initially for the platform and the secondary part was the administration part. Minnesota reported that although they transitioned to a much more robust system, it does report about a 75% FTE, even though they've had this long history. So we're figuring if there's this brand of function for government. So the recommendation from the committee would be to ask for us to put it into the budget. Yeah, it won't happen. I mean we have to include it in our bill, shouldn't we? Well if we include it in our bill, it will go to appropriations. Since they put it in their budget, it'll still go to appropriations. No, but then their budget goes to appropriation, our bill doesn't. Right, got it. Mr. Budget's gonna go there anyway. Yeah. I mean I don't think we want to put any budget. But your budget's done, isn't it? Well they testified last week. Yeah, I mean, they can amend it. That's for an amendment. Is there a reason with us not wanting this to go to appropriations? I don't care, I just don't. Because it's a little late to be adding to the Governor's budget is all, I mean to the state budget. Right, because the law was not passed until the summer and say the preparation that we had and the right was based on wanting to see how the bill, and that's so in terms of what we need to work with my agency management. Let me talk to Jane and see what makes the most sense. Because if we can get this out of here and done, yeah, I'm going to grant. So am I just missing the actual ask? Is it a hundred for this year and another hundred the next year? What's the actual amount? We, our recommendations to the commission, which I did not include in here, was two FTEs continuously. Right, but what's the dollar amount? The dollar amount we had, and I don't have it in front of me unfortunately, but I can provide that to the committee. I probably have it in front of me. And the attachment for that. This would be an adding services coordinator position that we would be looking at, which runs between around $40,000 to $50,000. And then a developer that can either run the same and be on what position was chosen for state government. So it would still be two even more percent of the data? Well, the date is not really the issue as much as the resources that are not currently within the office is the same as supported. So, if you're probably looking at $100,000 to $150,000. Oh, well, if you're looking at $40,000, and $40,000, that's good. If you look at the salary thing, it'll be about $40,000. Yeah, percent, would you like me to provide that? Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great. I can't believe you get anybody to do this work for $40,000. That's okay. I mean, we'll look at the work we do for $13,000. Do you get a pay raise? I got the same thing you got. Which was, I think, closer to $11,000. Anyway, yeah, the amount of development hours that are combined was still about over $2,500, or about that by Minnesota, just to kind of move itself to a new part. Thanks. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. Thank you for your office talk.