 You don't have to pay for that, do you? Most of the time, I want to hear from Joyce Manchester. But I want to start off, and you don't have to leave your seat, but I want to start off with the commissioner because I distinctly remember you saying you had a lot of concerns with all the unknowns, and I asked you to get something and write it to me on Friday, and I haven't received anything yet. Is that true? I apologize, it wasn't submitted to you on Friday. Cameron is here with it in hand. He has about four pages of notes. He was away at training last week, so my apologies. Okay, let's see how we can count this. Joyce, how much do you come up? And I know you've been on the phone with the department and with Washington State. Okay, thank you. What I'm passing out here, don't read too much into this. There's some yellow stuff on here, on some issues we've talked about briefly that I asked Amy to put in here, but there's a lot of variables in hospital that we haven't discussed yet and are not changed in this draft yet. So the fact that there's things like who's covered or issues of length of time and percentage of pay, that they're not changed from the house bill does not mean that we haven't anyway decided those issues yet. But don't pay too much attention to this yet because what we really want to focus on this morning is the administrative costs associated with this bill because we got some information last week that was very different apparently from what the house was told. And I'm concerned that we're not necessarily approaching this from the size of this program and the projections of how many people are going to come on and we may be designing a system that's far more elaborate than we need at least in the short term. So tell us what you've learned from the last one together. Thank you for the record I enjoy. It's Manchester from the Joint Fiscal Office and I have a new fiscal note that I can share in just a moment with the committee and this is based on the house passed version. So this is the version that was passed in May of 2017. So it doesn't have any of the amendments in it. Mostly what it does is to update the IT costs for developing a system to handle the paid family leave system. So I'll give you just a little bit of background on why those IT costs have changed. So last year, ways of means, House General, we're very focused on the benefits, who was eligible, all of those details and we were relying very heavily on the Vermont Commission on Women's Study. That study was done in the fall of 2016 and relied on the three states that then had an existing paid family leave system. So in those three states, there was also a system for short term disability insurance, temporary disability insurance. So for the most part they based their IT system on the existing IT system for temporary disability insurance and therefore we had an estimate of $2.5 million. Now we have a time that Vermont didn't have temporary disability insurance system. So we thought, naively, that we do have an unplanned insurance system and surely we could build on that system in order to add this program. It was at the Department of Labor. It seemed like similar kinds of issues and collecting taxes and paying up at this. So this March, I guess, April, we've talked more sensibly with the Department of Labor and have learned that Vermont is part of a three state consortium that is developing the unemployment insurance IT system. It's called UI modernization and because we are part of this three state consortium that is fully federally funded, we don't have the opportunity to make changes to the IT system that's being developed and that means no additions, no modifications, no changes. Just a minute, what are those two other states? I don't know, and North Dakota? North Dakota. And then also you referenced that the study that the Pyrschina women did referenced. Three states. Yeah, what were those three states? So Rhode Island, California and New Jersey. Okay. I guess. Yes. Right, so we now know we should not count on building on top of the UI system. That's not going to work. We have learned that it might be possible, perhaps possible, but it would take a tremendous amount of time and effort and MLUs with the federal government and so forth in order to maybe allow that to happen. So we're not going there. So instead we've looked at the state of Washington. That state had a paid family leave law on the books, but they never funded it. So they passed the bill in 2004. They never funded it until 2017. So in the summer of 2017, they started an implementation plan that would allow them to pay benefits starting in 2020. So we found a fiscal note, which is an amazing fiscal note. Pages and pages and pages. Their cost was about 80 million for setting up the system. It's not just 72. Well, so they're different estimates. This fiscal note is very voluminous, yes. So the 80 million we've now learned covers all the costs of operating the system for the first three years, including the startup of the IT system. The IT system alone is 57 million. Right. So that made us very nervous and we sort of told, well, we told the legislature that this was an issue and we knew the 70 million or whatever. We knew it was a big, big number. So we've since had conversations with Washington state, paid family leave folks and the IT folks working for the paid family leave program. It turns out that the Washington state IT system is very sophisticated. It is meant to be an all-inclusive system for paid family leave, but it's essentially an integrated eligibility system that brings in lots of information for many different programs. And so it's much more complex than we probably need in Vermont. The Vermont Commission on Women study updated for various tweaks in the Vermont paid family leave program is estimating about 6,100 claims paid out and a deferral rate of about 15%. So that means a total of about 7,000 claims per year that would be received for evaluation. So we then went to the JFO IT consultant, Dan Smith, who's here and we'll talk about his memo. But he has come up with an estimate of between 10 and 15 million in order to develop the IT system for Vermont that would be more of a basic system, that would not be integrated eligibility, it would receive the contributions, it would pay out the benefits and would require more hands-on by people. So the fiscal note that I can pass around is based on the House bill as passed in May of last year, but with this update for IT. So why don't I pass that around? I'll give you a second one to share that as well. So it's a two and a half million that you're using, is that an annual cost of admin? No, no, the two and a half million was just the cost of developing the IT system. So that theoretically is going from two and a half to 10 million? 12 and a half, 12 and a half, right. So the number that I've reached for the fiscal note is the midpoint, 12 and a half million. Thank you. I've also learned that benefits for state employees are 50% of pay, not 30% of pay, so that makes a difference when you're hiring a number of people. So I've incorporated that in the estimate. And the bottom line is that I'm now showing a payroll tax rate of 0.18% of payroll that the last year's fiscal note was saying 0.141. Now, you should realize that under the 0.18% of payroll tax, the trust fund would be in deficit for the first four years. And that's because we have that big upfront cost of 12 and a half million. And the fifth year, the trust fund goes into the positive territory and then it accumulates at sort of a faster than needed pace. So that's based upon the rate of 1.8 more, right? It's based on 0.18%. 0.18%. Yes. So whatever we set that out, that could change. Absolutely. Fast and near for sure. Absolutely. According to the bill, the commissioner of labor, I believe, makes a recommendation to the legislature about what the payroll tax rate should be. So I just want to be clear about, you know, we'll get into the alternatives here, but if we assume the number of 12.5 is correct, that's rolled into... Yes. But it's assumed that that's going to be paid up over several years. And you just decided how many years and then you backed into the rate that went. So what I did was assume that two thirds of the 12.5 million would have to be paid in the first year and one third would be paid in the second year. And remember that under the house pass bill, there's a year of development of the system and taxes start in the second year and benefits start in October of the third year. Okay. So I've put all of that into the spreadsheet that sets out the personnel costs, the rent of the space, the furnishings, the IT, all of that is rolled into this spreadsheet. And then I show the contributions coming in, benefits going out, administrative costs, and the house pass bill requires a reserve of 100% of the following year's benefits. So you have to have that low amount sitting in an account somewhere. I'm just wondering where on here are the bottom lines I'm having a hard time finding the conclusion. So let's see. On the first page, you have the timing and then you have, where does it say 018? Well, for example. There's one, right at the third bullet. What it is. And then to the taxes bullet. Got that. Okay. But I'm just wondering when we're talking about the costs. Yes. So benefits are 16.3 million. That's under the taxes bullet on the first page as well. Yes. And then estimated IT and administrative costs of course are changing year by year by year. So I've not put those numbers in. I do say that administrative costs, if you go to the bottom of the first page, it says feasibility study suggested 7.5% of benefits are about 1.2 million. So I'm coming up with higher administrative costs, about 10% of benefits are about 1.6 million. And that's in part because we have fewer claims but there's some fixed costs that just have to be part of the system to set it up and to run it. I'm just wondering if there's a place where everything is totaled up. That's my spreadsheet initial startup. Start up, I'm not showing you my spreadsheet. No. I'm not showing you my spreadsheet. Oh, okay. It's massive and I can show you what it looks like. Yeah, it looks like this. So it's lots and lots and lots and lots. I still don't know what the cost is for this. I can't be doing it. 16.3 million for benefits is right on the top of the first page. But then it goes on today. 12.5 in startup and then annual administrative costs. 10% of benefits. I'm happy to walk on this spreadsheet by this time. I don't see 16.3 million. So it's 28 million plus. I see, okay. So it's 28 million plus. Oh, well, no, no, no, because in the first two years you've covered the 12.5 million, right? That's part of the IT development costs. And we've got personnel costs there because of course people in the state have to be working with the contractors who are developing the 12.5 million dollar system. You've got some policy people who are setting rules for the program, dot, dot, dot. So in the first two years you've got personnel costs, IT costs, and maybe buildings and whatever, rental space. And then in the third year you start with the benefits. A third, that's right, for the last, yeah. So, sorry, we're just a little bit dense this morning. So if you could just give us what's the total for the first year, the second, and the third. So you want total costs? Yes, yes. Total costs for the first year are 9.6 million. Total costs for the second year are 21.9 million in large part because you have to have the reserve in your head, right? So the benefits start in year three but you have to have the reserve in year two. Is that on the sheet? That's incorporated in the 0.1% payroll tax rate. So I guess that's what I'm looking for, the breakdown. Sure. And then the third year that we're getting. Third year, the costs are 18.3 million. And then so, and then they continue 18, 19 million by the third time. But so then help me understand your 9.6 million figure when you've said it's 12.5 million for the startup. Right, so remember how we understand that. So I'm assuming two thirds of the 12.5 million has to be paid in the first year. Got it, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. And whether that's realistic, I don't know if we can ask the IT folks, but it seems like you could spread out the cost perhaps. Thank you. A bit. So, and your running costs, your guests are making our way on 12 million. No, no, no. 18, 19, put 18, running up to 19 right now. Right, that's what I thought. That's what I actually wrote down, 18. Right, and payroll tax revenue is coming in at something like 21, 22, it's, so under the house bill, the 0.18% is applied to all wages up to $150,000. And we've looked at the growth rate of wages up to 150,000 in the state, and it looks not very good as you would expect given the greater income inequality, wage inequality over time. So it's only growing at about 1.2% per year. So if you stick with that wage base, only up to 150,000, the wage, the tax base is not growing as fast as you would expect benefits to grow. If we increase the wage base to 200,000, it would grow faster. It might grow a little faster. So we believe that the big growth is in the top, right? So if we took it all the way out, in regardless of income. Right, it would grow faster. But just raising the wage base to 200,000 would mean that the tax rate would come down because you're looking at a bigger slice of wages, right? So that's the legislature's decision. I think it was ways and means that chose the 150,000 to cut off last year. Which is smack dab, sort of, you know, actually it's... Do you have any ballpark figure just using these numbers as if we applied it to all wages as opposed to just up to 150,000? So I can do that, I haven't done that. I know that wages up to 150,000 are 88% of total wages in the state. Up to 200? No, no. 150,000 is 88%, I may remember that up to 292%, but don't quote me. Was there some talk, I mean, we're in this, there was some original thought about going through the UI system. Yes. And ran into some hurdles. And I thought I heard some of the hurdles were because we're in this development period. Is there any potential of your discussions that you've seen where once that system was fully developed on the UI thing about moving this system over to there? I believe the answer is no, but you should talk to the Department of Labor people. So my understanding is that the system is fully developed using federal funds as part of this three-state consortium, and for want as a partner in that consortium is not able to make changes. But you should ask DOL people. Okay, so, all right, well, we will ask. Yes. And please. So I'm looking at, you know, if we paid the state dollars, and we just did an add-on or something like that, it seems kind of bureaucratic to not take advantage of that and to say it doesn't sound like it can do attitude. It sounds like it can't do attitude. So you'll have to talk to them. But I would like to note that there is a footnote on the fiscal note, which is my attempt to say what if we only use an IT system to collect the payroll taxes and then handle the claims by hand manually. What's the next year? Oh, right, so you understand that I'm an economist and you're asking me to think about setting up this personnel system that's gonna handle claims by hand. But anyway, so here's my best guess. So I'm assuming that a fully manual system would require 10 more people. So the current system has seven people who handle claims as they're coming in the door. Oh, the current system? UI? I'm sorry, the system here. That's what you're talking about, yeah. But how's it passed? Sorry, which clients? Is there different UI clients? No, no, no. Seven people. We pay family leave. An additional or total of 10? Additional, 10 additional people. 17? 17 claims handlers, yes. So in that case, I'm going back to two and a half million because we had a conversation with the tax department and Dan Smith, our IT consultant, and the thought was that as a rough ballpark estimate and knows if this is actually going to hold up, but that they'd collect the payroll tax for about two and a half million or set up a system that could collect the payroll tax for about two and a half million. This is the department taxes? Taxes, yes. So you're saying two and a half million to collect that payroll tax? Yes. And then the rest of the system would be done on paper, manual. And that would be by 17 people. Right, right. All of the claims handling. So 17 people, what, $75,000? They're closer to $40,000, actually. 40,000 times 17 is what? Okay, but there are many other people who make the system go, right? Right. So again, I'm relying on that study, right? But there has to be a director, office manager, policy development, communication and outreach, a physician to set up the program, not once it's set up. That those people are totally unnecessary if you put them in a computer? Oh, no. They're already necessary. They're necessary, yes, yes, yes. So the only addition I made was 10 more people to handle the paper claims. And we're keeping many of the, there has to be a clinical consultant on the medical side and all of these things. So, forgive me if I'm being simple here, but if we take 10 more people and we multiply that by 40,000, that's 400,000 more annually on top of- Plus their benefits. Plus their benefits, whatever it could cost. Plus their space, what more? Right. That is an upside. The downside is we removed $12.5 million in upfront IT costs, right? Well, you removed 10. You still have 2.5. Right. The 2.5 is what the tax department says they need to collect this- To set up the system that would collect the benefits and- Is it the tax department here? Yes. Don, can I ask you a question? Yes. What do you see needed to be done? I mean, this is a payroll tax. Why can't we change some sort of percentage or something on our collection system right now? Could you defend the $2.5 million you need to do this? It's like a pretty straightforward collection process. So for the record, that was foreign policy record for the tax department. So I was just looking at the implementation estimate from our IT and I believe if we were just talking about only bringing the money in the door with a simple form that that is $300,000. So I think maybe some of the wires got crossed. Two and a half million would be our IT costs for building, coming in and sending the claims out of the system on both ends. So that would be writing the checks and paying the benefits as well? That's what I'm looking at from my systems project manager. He says- So correct. Yes. Correct. Okay. I mean, this understood that. So yes, the answer to your direct question is just collecting that money for most simple, not many fields, if it's just pulling in money, we can put those simpler taxes in for about a quarter of a million. And that doesn't include ongoing. I haven't asked what we need for ongoing. But most of our miscellaneous taxes we only need one or two people. So it's $300,000 for that. And I guess somebody, there's wires got crossed and someone says just two and a half million when you include the payout as well. I'm wondering what's left for the 17 people to be doing. No, right. So that's my mistake. Because I felt, I thought I understood that the two and a half million was only collecting, right? So that 10 more people would handle the paper and copies. So if they're saying two and a half million, then I can just, I think I can just replace the 12.5 million with two and a half million, which would be 10. Yeah, I'm looking, I just wanna, I don't know that that's a formal quote from the vendor because a significant portion of that cost would be from the vendor. I really appreciate this because I was getting a little concerned, I have to say in terms of how much it was supposedly costing just to collect the payroll tax when I'm down the hall in finance and hear about all these massive changes in the whole income tax funding and education funding. And I've never heard the tax department ask for any administrative dollars associated with those changes. Right, and my testimony later, I can get into it later if you want, or I can mention right now that we do have a lot of things floating around, which would accumulate. So we might have to start asking. We're avoiding it, we can absorb a certain amount. Okay, so one of the things that I guess we're gonna hear from the department as to why there are all many other outstanding questions that may be not included in this projection, but I would like to revise note if we do it either that way or if we do it just, well that's the easiest way, but if we did just the manual, we did the manual portion of it in addition to the $300,000 of collecting taxes, how much would that cost? So now we're getting closer to what the Governors Commission on Women Admin Cost looked like rather than, and that would lower the rate. Great. I appreciate that, because I didn't know when I wrote you and I said, this sounds crazy to me, because we have only 7,000 claims, maybe we should just do a manual. We had the same problem with the short term rental bill. People are coming up with these incredible cost estimates that everybody in the community volunteered to do the work because it seems so simple. It's not a perfect off-session work. I'm an income off-session. So you took my note to heart and actually tried to look at the manual thing. And that manual thing, I realize manual is not the way to go in the long term. That's why I'm interested in exploring whether in the future there's some way we can bring in a more sophisticated system. Starting out, it seems to me that there's a will, there's a way to get the administration cost down. Yes. So Joyce, the people, where do I start? I guess my first question is to Dan, I assume all IT people were communicating together that the agency of digital services was working with you as well because they have resources to bring to bear. They've helped us solve some IT issues on our one stop portal that we're working on and they're gonna be putting resources to bear so we don't have to actually ask for an appropriation on that. So I'm just curious how well coordinated is tax IT with Dan with John Quinn's craft? Right, so we've not talked to John Quinn's craft, is that correct? No, and Dan Smith with the John Fiscal Office. I did not talk to John because I'm pretty well aware of what his resource capabilities are. I've been speaking with them for other projects so I don't think that's an issue. I have talked to the tax department, I've been talking with the Department of Labor, I've been familiar with the Washington State and Washington DC, that's the inside. I feel I'm reasonably comfortable in holding the back. Well, it's just that we're, as you know, trying to move away from a fragmented IT system to a coordinated, integrated, everybody makes sure everybody has clear on the resources we have. Try and keep it, keep it. No, and it's a choice because the people are gonna cost just under a million dollars and it's my rough estimate. I mean, there's a bunch of people who are not gonna be paid 40, no, if that was when they're gonna need more than some of the paid more, obviously. So your guess at two and a half million total, if you include the tax piece and some other stuff and space, isn't so far off. Right, so if I used two and a half rather than 12 and a half, it's definitely gonna bring that 1.8 down. Yeah, yeah. But if we, but if we take it to all wage earners, which I actually wouldn't be opposed to because my guess is they'll be less utilization in the higher brackets and it would make sense for everyone to keep paying in. It's a benefit for everybody. Why put the burden also on lower wage workers? So if you take a run, you are taxing high wage earners up to 150,000, you're not letting that off the hook. I just said though, but for everyone, I think it should, you know, the, yeah, but they'll- The concept point where you're, even at this low rate where you're paying so much in taxes and the benefit's not that great. So I mean, I mean, a lot of the payroll taxes we have do have caps on them in other cases. Right, but even if we took it up to 200,000, it would incurb things, it would lower the rate. So I believe that- The rate is the least of all problems. No, I don't. Well, the rate is- They're still considering eligibility and other things now. Right. And I would argue that for people with kids in- Yeah. We're talking about a penny and a half on a minimum wage worker per hour. Charles, I'm talking about who can take advantage of it. So- What happened? One of the things you'll see in here, just a few of you have to see some of the talking points in this draft is you've tried to make the administration of this thing even simpler by making eligibility tie into the same as for UI and making benefits a percentage of the UI benefit check. So, you know, I don't know whether one would get more information from the tax department, whether they're two and a half million dollar how sophisticated the vendor looked at it for the try to find ways of making it information that's already available just to be a simple math calculation about it. So, it doesn't exist any information. So, I mean, I was looking at the ad and saying, okay, we need a system to collect the money, we need a system to pay it out and then we need a system to whereby somebody receives the application and very simply we're told this is the case for on a federal level and I guess also the state level for paid for unpaid leave is, you know, you gotta like bring in a doctor's note and you say an E four weeks and that's pretty much the end of it in terms of we'll hear from the department, I'm sure they'll have other, you know, problems but I think for the vast majority of people you come in with a doctor's note you come in with a statement that I'm pregnant and I'm having a baby in all four weeks off and then they look and see that it's a universal program, people have paid in their eligible and they look and calculate their benefits and then checks get issued. So, it's not an overly complicated, even if you find some complications I think you can try to get to yes and figure out, not let the complications drive the other 99% of the other situation here. Thank you and I assume we'll await a new fiscal vote. Right. Could I ask that when we do get one, we have just some of the costs per year. Sure, I can put in costs per year. If you need your gear, it's fine. Your space is fine. I still can't collect the numbers you gave us for the first, second, third years, yeah. Right, that would be, I think that's what I'm looking for. And how many years do you want to look at? The first five. The first five years. So, Joyce, here's a question on it. It's hopefully less relevant if we can get to a lower number, but I don't know if you're the right person to ask. How do we get this money, the upfront money? Is it, does the Appropriations Committee have to do a one-time funding in the first year or do we borrow against future contributions? So my understanding is that in the bill, there needs to be something that says that the trust fund has the capability of spending in the red for so many years. And then we'll just use the state's cash flow. Right, right. So that would have to be added to the bill. I would also note that in the bill, as passed by the House, there's a statement saying that any appeals have to be handled within five business days. And in our conversations with Washington State folks, they said that's crazy. Is not there any more? No, so its determinations have to be made within five days. Right, not. There's no timeline for the commissioner to issue a redetermination. It's 30 days to file the appeal, but it's five days to process a claim. I see. Okay, so, again, so Washington State was saying five days is too fast, right? Right, so that's fine. But on the front end, it's not too fast. In fact, it's essential. I mean, in some cases, you have a, you know what she got to go take care of. Right. To get the process done quickly. Good, thank you very much. Thank you. Commissioner. Thank you, darling. Let's see. I think I'm gonna try to, on this side. Okay. Thank you. Good morning, Commissioner. Good morning. I'm fine. Here we go. Thank you. For the record, Lindsay Curley, Commissioner of Labor. Thank you for being here. Thank you. And I have some notes, but we've talked about a lot of it. So, you know, I think our big concern was tacking this onto the UI system. And I appreciate your comments about the, the can do versus the can't do attitude. And, you know, when you've worked in it and see all the intricacies of the UI system, it's not that we don't want to do it. We just understand that it doesn't make sense. And even Washington confirmed that. I'm hearing different numbers going around. I'm anxious because I'm not sure where we really landed. Okay. Okay, go ahead. So let me help by asking some questions. So the can and can not do attitude. One of the questions I have, I think eventually down the road, I mean, maybe we found a solution where we found the right fit for a computerized system already, but if we did, if we needed to ultimately tap into the UI program, is there something in your contract or something that says, you can't like have a, I think of like a famous pizzeria in New Haven that has an annex off on the side where they get some overflow. Just like another piece that can borrow on that, that doesn't affect the other states down the road. Once you're up, a different module, yeah. I don't know the answer to that, to be honest with you. And I think that when Cameron, if Cameron has the opportunity to speak, I think if, last time I was here, we talked about sort of eligibility, looking a lot like the UI eligibility and whatnot. And I guess it's. Could you, could you? Worth a conversation, I just don't need to. You have an answer right now to that question? Yeah. Okay. I'll turn to you. You can answer anything's possible, right? Yes, ma'am. Cameron Wood, Unemployment Insurance Director for the Vermont Department of Labor. The concern with tacking it on to our unemployment insurance system is really at the federal level. So US Department of Labor funds the administration of unemployment insurance across the country, including the IT costs. The US Department of Labor were in a situation where the majority of states have aging mainframe computer systems. US Department of Labor is not interested in funding the modernization of each of those states individually. The vast majority of the unemployment insurance program is covered by federal law. There's, you know, state specific provisions. So the US Department of Labor is really pushing for states to join together to co-develop UI systems in order to drive down the cost of maintenance. So when you add something as state specific as paid family leave into that system, US Department of Labor is going to be very reluctant, I think, to want to fund that because all of a sudden your administrative costs have gone up based on one state's modification of that system. I don't know if I'm not being clear enough, but I can't say strongly enough that no one has ever suggested anything funding is other work other than the contributions that the employees are putting in. All from that fund, nothing from federal funds. No, I completely understand. And I think, you know, I don't, I can't sit here and say that it would be an absolute no. But I think the US Department of Labor is going to look at it and say, although that is funded by state specific dollars and we can make an argument that the maintenance of that piece would be funded by state dollars, what US Department of Labor wants is for each state to have one code, one system that sits in one place. And so although it's funded by the state and maybe maintained by the state, you still have driven up the maintenance cost of that system. And when you get to that point, it's really difficult to differentiate. Well, the cost has gone up because this state specific piece or this state's piece or this state's piece. So they really want the system to be as common and uniform as possible. Again, I'm not saying that they would not agree to it. I just, I know that they are very impressed. Okay, so would I need back very quickly from you is a more detailed answer as to whether you think that can be done in a way of significant. But absent that, here's what I'm hearing now. The tax department could contract with an independent vendor that could set up a system. But it's $2.5 million, whatever the thing is, to almost do everything from suit to guts other than collecting the paperwork on filing a claim. This version here, suggestions had both the eligibility for this program, which I consider attachment to the workforce, proof of attachment to the workforce. The house did 12 out of 13 months, which in here is essentially the exact same system that exists for UI. If you're eligible for UI and you have that, you meet the criteria for a certain amount of earnings over a certain amount of money, that's what we would use. In terms of benefits, what it says here is use the exact same benefit level that you would calculate for your system for a worker for an unemployment check. Generally speaking, unemployment benefits are only 50% of the person's wages. So we would just multiply that if we wanted to go to 80%. We would multiply it by a factor to get there. So that's information that's in your system already. I'm assuming that if we'd go with the independent vendor, the easiest thing would be for the independent vendor to talk to them about labor and say, what are the numbers for this person? As opposed to them having to regenerate those numbers on their own and do that. Is there any impediment to sharing that data with a, whether it's a vendor or if it's a tax department by itself with another agency or state government to make it easier for us to bring this together as a system? I think that would make it more feasible. I will be completely honest. I'm not very, I'm not expert in IT systems, but I think if you're going to have the eligibility determinations be the same, I think it would make building a system easier because you would be able to leverage what's there in our UI system when that's developed, but that would not address the employer side. One thing I was going to mention, the differences. We'll hear about those. So in addition to the long-term about being part of your mainframe, whatever it is, I'm also asking the question right now, let me bring it down to the granular. If Aaron came in and applied for maternity leave benefits, the vendor there says, I want to know whether Aaron has had a long enough work history and I also want to know what I should pay Aaron for her weekly check. Is there going to be any problem and we're going to base it based upon it's already in the system for UI. Is there any problem with you giving that information over to the vendor so they can cut the check and process the claim? Can you get back to us on that? I don't think there would be a problem, there would be a cost associated to it and I- Well it's far less of a cost if they had a redevelopment on their own. So all that data is already in your system. So I would want to go back and talk to our IT staff about this who are more familiar with the system that we're developing. I think what you're describing would be more feasible and it wouldn't be having to build an entire new benefits portion of the system on its own. I think the questions I would have is, would we run those through the UI system and calculate a cost estimate per calculation that we do or would it be, somehow would we be able to just take the code that's there and provide it if it's the same type of ability to do the calculation? Okay, okay. I wouldn't think it's, I understand that you don't have the information right now but I wouldn't think it would be a long-term project to get us the answer to that. Sure, no, no, I'm happy to go back today and try and have some pre-discussion. Matt just asked a question for, you're developing a system in Cameron that's going to take three years, write the UI project, it's a three-state three-year project. If at the end of that three years, I guess I interpreted your question as being at the end of the three years, if we attach this as a state program onto the final work, would that be different? Would you think the Feds would do that differently? Because then it would be a state-run, state-administered program that you were attaching on but after all that work and after all that initial focus and goal on solely UI was? So I think it depends on how an ultimate, if the general assembly passes the paid family, I think it would depend on how it's structured. So I think it's, again, I think it's potentially more feasible if you're having the benefit eligibility be the same type of eligibility determination. So we still have to keep the UI instead of the six months? Because I think USCOL is going to be concerned if you go into the UI code and you, within that, start coding state-specific modifications for state-specific program, that I know they're going to be extremely reluctant to want to go down that road. But if you have a eligibility determination process that is the same, then it's more of a question of, okay, are we simply going to pay to run these through the system and get a benefit amount out that you can then ship to someone else and just say, pay this. So I think that is much more simplified. My concern, though, would also be on the employer side as well, though, because that is, at least as the bill is currently written coming out of the house, much different than how we administer the employer side in UI. So we still have some work to make that consistent. I'm a little, what are the concerns on the employer side? In terms of, what does the employer have to do other than hold the contribution? The way we administer unemployment insurance, so you're familiar, it's on the taxable wage base, it's based on experience rating, so it's just the calculation of it is different, and we would have to build that capacity into the employer side of our UI system. So again, I know USDOL would be reluctant to do that, but if you have a benefits system that is similar, now you're only talking about having to build a new tax system to administer this program, your costs would go down. Let's just try one more time, I don't know if other people may be able to see it. What's the concern from the employer doesn't have to do anything different with the Department of Labor as far as I can see, do they? Well, so we would have to build into our UI system the capacity to take in an entirely different set of finances based on an entirely different set of tax programs. You're assuming that this is in the long term where it's all in your shop, and you're taking the contributions, and you're writing, and you're correcting the contributions. Yes, sir. Which the long term is the whole. Yeah, I think maybe I'm viewing it too simplistically, but I think right now we may have to start out with a vendor through the tax department that gets the information from the Department of Labor that makes the vendors work simple and less, but at some point, you might as well be looking for a vendor that has the state do it right in the same place as opposed to shipping out information. I'm not sure if it would be that much different, but that's how we view it, simply. So do you wanna, you said you had a four-page meadow or a herd? No, no. Okay. Yes, no. Okay, do you wanna talk a little bit more with the commissioner about other administrate, and we've painted a fairly simple system here, which I think we should strive for, for efficiency and everything else. Plus, we're only looking initially in such as 7,000 claims. Are there like bells and whistles or glitches here that you see in this administration? Second state year, sir? Yes, sir. Next to the commissioner. My instincts are strong here. I feel like, I get it, you really, really wanna do this, but I feel like we're falling and jamming, and we don't need a Mercedes, like we don't need the best or nothing, but right, but like something really reliable and efficient would be helpful. And my concern that we're trying to piece it between different departments, and a lot of manual, it's just making me anxious, and I'm feeling like we have, we already have short-term disability programs and insurance companies runs, and again, this administration I know you all know is not in favor of a mandatory pay family leave, could probably get behind a voluntary, and I just, I'm like, why are we not looking at the option of utilizing the short-term disability programs that are in place that would be so much less expensive? Well, first of all, just quickly to answer that, is to make something like this work, you need universal contributions, I think just like you do for Medicare or health insurance and stuff like that, but second of all, your short-term disability doesn't cover a lot of the leaves that are proposed in this bill, and we have a short-term disability system in place right now that the marketplace is not taking care of a lot of people, doesn't like me, it's just. Okay, and I mean, I haven't studied in New York, but again, I'd go to New York where they have a pay family leave insurance policy that they're using, there's this mandatory, but I'm just, I just hope everybody will look at that because I'm just, people's aren't about the expense. Oh, good, I'm going to start. Well, I think we're working on trying to keep the administrative costs down here. Okay. So let's hear some of the concerns that the department might have. Yes, sir. And this would assume, I guess, that it was being housed within the department as opposed to finding a vendor who might be able to do a termicking operation in particular, how they were shown. So I apologize, I was not able to get this to you last week, I was out of state at a conference in Houston, so I kind of drafted these up, I'm more than happy to type them up and provide them to the committee. I administered the unemployment insurance division and I envisioned this program very similar to how we administer our division, maybe not in scale, but at least in what we need to have in order to effectively administer your paying up benefits or taking in tax dollars and what happens. So what I did was I kind of went through the unemployment insurance statute and made notes on things that are in that statute that are not in this current bill, and I won't walk through every single one, but I'll try and hit the highlights. I think I did this based on the House pass version, which I know you've been speaking this morning about changing the eligibility determination, but there is still the piece on the employer side. So we, as I mentioned earlier, the difference in what you're asking us to collect in the UI system versus what was passed in the House, the House version was based on employment in 12 out of 13 months, it wasn't based on a monetary eligibility determination, so one thing that's not in this bill, anything as it relates to confidentiality of the information provided by these individuals and what we're allowed to share and who we're allowed to share it to, there are very specific provisions in the unemployment insurance statute about both confidentiality of claiming information that we receive and employer information and what we're allowed to share that information with and who we're allowed to share that information with. There are going to be situations where an employer willfully, negligently, aren't, they're not going to provide us with the information we're seeking, either through reports or they're not going to provide us with the contributions that are owed, even though it's not a tax on the employer, it's a tax on the employee. We're going to get into situations where they're not providing us with that information. There's nothing in the bill that directs us, department, as to how you want us to address those situations. It's a tax that's actually paid by the employee but it's remitted by the employer. Who do we go after in that instance that the tax is not remitted to the department? So I just want to say that I think the drafts that I've seen or I've been working with Damien and where that would be a good example of where we might want to say what the 99% is and we cover it and then we leave to rulemaking as opposed to saddling the bill with every possible scenario of non-payment and stuff like that. Recognize that that's an issue and then leave it to the department or the vendor or tax department whoever's going to want it to come up with the procedures or rulemaking to deal with those with the 1%. Yes, sir. And I acknowledge that in the bill as written coming out of the house, it did give the department rulemaking authority. My concern there is Vermont being a Dylan's rule state if we don't have express authority from the legislature to administer in some of these manners, then I think it just opens us up for challenge that the department has gone too far and creating the program without explicit authority. Jordan, you've got your back there. So just some other things, again, I mentioned kind of failure to provide reports or not in there. Another big thing I noticed is and I believe the commissioner touched on this last week and in her testimony, how do you want the benefits to be paid out? Are we paying them out in a lump sum? Are we paying them out in weekly payments? What is the weekly certification that you would like us to ensure someone provides the department to make sure that it's still... Another thing, do you have an expectation that someone who is on a paid family leave, receiving paid family leave benefits, do you have an expectation that they're also able to collect other similar types of benefits at the same time? So what I'm thinking is, can someone be... I don't think it could be on Vermont unemployment. I mean, there's not a requirement that you're looking for work, you're actually not working, but if you're receiving unemployment benefits in another state that we're not aware of, do you want us to be examining that and making deductions on the benefit amounts that we pay? The house bill did have a provision on UI, right? It just prohibits them from collecting from on the client at the same time, okay? And similarly with the self-employment, other benefits that people receive, I mean, is there an expectation that we deduct their benefits for that amount? A lot of this I captured from the employer side, again, just as the bill was written, I was looking at it as you really can't mirror what we do on UI, so we would just, there's a lot of provisions in our unemployment insurance statute that employers are required to provide us information or collaborate with the department or work with the department in making benefit eligibility determinations that aren't in this bill. So one thing I'm really nervous about or would be nervous about, you give us a five-day turnaround and that is extremely restrictive for us. So for instance, in unemployment, we receive a claim for benefits, we then have to reach out to the employer for information. Granted, the system would be set up differently for eligibility, but we have to give the employer in that instance 10 days to respond. So it could be very time restrictive if we're having to go out and get information to determine eligibility. And I don't think there's enough information in the bill for you to tell us how you want us to make those determinations. It's really just, did you work 12 out of the past 13 months and do you have all of my illness as a family member, there's nothing in there that tells us about what type of documentation you would want us to seek to make those eligibility determinations. Going back to, I mentioned unpaid contributions. Do you want interest attached to unpaid taxes and what would that be and who would the interest be to? Would it be to the employer, would it be to the employee? There's a lot of information in the unemployment insurance chapter about what we can do if an employer fails to provide us with taxes. We can file a civil action, we can require them to bond with us. We can have a little... Was there just a very basic question I don't know if the house considered this or not, but was it envisioned that the contributions would be coming to the Department of Labor, such as so similar to a UI contributions, going to their trust fund there or is it going to a separate fund or go through the tax department? There's a separate special fund set up that would receive the contributions that are paid to the Department of Labor. So we can't mix outside funds into the UI trust fund. So this sets up a separate special fund that is set up for the sole purpose of covering administrative costs and benefit costs and providing a reserve. So, and that's set up in the bill. I think that, is there anything else about that that you'd like to talk about? I just said that I don't know, beauty is sort of like it's a very small payroll tax. We talked about payroll tax to the past, I didn't know that it would necessarily, I don't know that how you follow the dollar when you rate those, your tax, when you get all the withholdings on your weekly paycheck, where does the money go into all these different scattered directions? I guess with UI, that does. I mean, when you withhold any kind of, or is that a whole different? With UI, I mean, it's a little different. It's just that they pay quarterly, right? Yeah, I was thinking about the payroll tax that comes off your, instead of you being in a state income bracket of 3.3% of income tax, you have a more, more, more, added on to every single payment. So it would be collected by the tax department and then they would somehow do the accounting and send it off. I didn't see a separate check when we walked into this fund, but I don't know if that was talking about it. I mean, the fund just holds the dollars that are coming in. It's a state account. So the special funds, I mean, we set these up for all sorts of arrangements. So a massive year separate check going out to this? No, when the state receives it, so the way the special funds work is it's a, it gets a little complicated, but essentially it is a giant bank account with something like 500 different sub accounts within the account. This special fund would be one of those sub accounts within that larger account. And so it would come into the state, get deposited in that account and credited, deposited in the larger group of special funds and credited to that specific special fund. And then as far as the mechanisms of tracking my individual social security number, that's really a question that I think the tax departments better qualify to answer than I am. It will, so you can hear us. Yes. So just to that point though, I think one thing to be clear if it's gonna be with labor is what would you like us to do in that instance? More than happy, a few more highlights if you would like. Okay. There are kind of more narrow limited provisions that I just wanna make sure I highlight for you. So, and there's a few other big pieces I wanna mention, but in the UI, if a general contractor in the state hires an out of state subcontractor to come in, the general contractor is liable for the contributions if they're not paid by the subcontractor. I would like to see something similar in this bill if it were passed. There's a statute of limitations on adjustments and refunds. So I think you need to understand that there will be adjustments. We get the payment received and the wage information from the employer just by nature there will be adjustments to that and there's a statute of limitations on the UI side. Is there, I mean in an effort to similar to what is in here in terms of trying to parallel the eligibility and the benefit of that, are there things that are jumping out of you and you may, and they ask you to work with Damien as part of this, these kinds of concerns that you have. Would there be the vast majority of these things if we just parallel what you do for UI? Just say whatever the rules are for that, they would apply to these contributions. I would say there's probably half and half. I think there's a lot of provisions that I think you could simply copy and paste into this to make sure it's at least addressed. But I think the big things would be that I don't know that you can simply transfer over that I think you would look for more information on how you would want us to administer would be the benefits, how is eligibility determined, how are we paying weekly certification and then on the employer side, if we're not receiving reports, if we're not receiving who do we go after interest and again the remedies that we have to ensure that we are able to collect that. And then the other piece I would mention is the appeal process. In UI there's a very specific appeal process with time frames about you go to an referee then to the employment security board. We'll take care of that. So, and then disregarded earnings as I mentioned earlier, you know, in Washington I think there's a provision where two people can't be on paid family leave for the same condition at the same time. There's nothing in this bill related to that. And the same employer. I believe that, I believe it's attached to the same employer list. But also if you're receiving income, are we deductible? Can't always plan these things or coordinate them with your fellow employee. I agree, absolutely. But I think just the committee, what would you want us to do in that instance if we have two individuals who make a claim for benefits for the same condition? Are we paying out benefits to both? I think it's entirely possible that in the business two people could be pregnant at the same time or two people could have parents dying. No ma'am, that's not what I mean. If my child is sick and I'm taking paid family leave to take care of that individual is my spouse allowed to do the same thing at the same time? Oh, is you're spending within the same house? Yeah, yes ma'am. Okay, I was gonna say the other way would be possible for them. Right? Oh, yeah, we both, right next to the camp. The one other thing I would just mention I would prefer to see would be if a claimant owes the state money, whether it's they have an unemployment insurance over payment or they have child support obligations giving us the authority to deduct that amount from their paid family leave before it's paid out to them is something that I would ask for. And again, let's kind of go through this just because we spoke about IT earlier. These are layers that you would have to add onto an IT system unless you want it to do it manually but these are layers that would be features you would be asking for that would drive up that cost. I don't wanna go to the 12 or the two, you know, but just mentioning it. Wait a minute. So when you gave the examples of what would be deducted from the paid family leave benefit, it was one of those child support benefits. So you're saying it's something that's high down their child support, that's clear for paid leave, that the state would take their paid leave benefit. So then in effect, other people are paying their child support. That's what we do with UI. There are specific provisions that say. I understand not giving them the benefit. Just seems unfair to the system to satisfy their child support benefit with. In effect, premiums paid by their neighbors. Well, I think the thought being that, you know, if they apply for paid family leave for UI and they're determined eligible, so you're going to give them the money. It's either you can give it to them and allow them to do with it what they want or you can take it from them at that point to satisfy obligations that they have. Yeah, thank you. Understood, just fill this out. That's all very helpful, I appreciate that. So you put the stuff in writing? Okay. Doug, what are the good things for the committee to know is that if this bill gets out of here, it has to go to finance. It's just some of these weedy things we're talking about payroll collections. You could punt on that and let us deal with that in the finance committee. Oh, we're not going to let go of David. Poor gorgeous. It's short term disability. We're going, doesn't everybody think we're short term disability? It's a long term disability. It's a long term disability. So Doug, you've done some research. It sounds like we've got some preliminary estimates. Who have you been talking to? So the preliminary estimates come from discussions, like initial discussions with our vendor. And sorry, that's some. One vendor that you use for almost everything or do you have multiple vendors? Correct, so well, we have a primary vendor. So five years ago, we started the, we got a contract for creating an upgraded tax system at the tax department to do 29 of our tax types. So the vast majority of our work, over 90% of our work goes through the system called GenTax. And it's used in 20 other states. It has a very robust architecture that as long as you're not deviating or modifying that architecture significantly, we can do things pretty efficiently. So that's where my comment about a small, simple, miscellaneous tax being about 300,000, that's where that comes in, because you're only developing a certain amount within that framework. So let me just ask you something about education. If for the standard person who's had his contribution taken out of the weekly, or via weekly paycheck, would there be a line item on the analysis of the holdings as a separate one of a 1.211, or could that be combined with whatever the state withholding is or something like that? Right, so I think, and I apologize for the confusion my earlier comment created, because I think it, Joyce's fiscal note with the context of the bill as written is there's nothing wrong with that. So the bill as written would create a newer tax type, a bigger tax type of the department and may cost $2 million. But you asked me if it was a simpler payroll tax or if it was addition to the withholding. So just like with the department, our colleagues at the department of labor, if tax were to do this, the most effective way would be to align it with the withholding requirement. And that would allow us to place it on the withholding form and track that amount separately and doing the revenue accounting for that separately to ensure that it gets in the special fund. That's the portion of this that workload aside, we would be comfortable with that type of work. The administration of the benefit portion, that's a much more complicated benefit program than we do with the tax department currently. The closest thing to that is property tax adjustments. And that is really all fine. We have all of the data on hand to do that. There's no kind of going back to employers or landlords or something like that. That's not a very large program in terms of number of people. Oh, actually we spend, we recently have been, we've been combining our administrative costs, our return on investment. And we definitely spend over half a million dollars a year administering property tax adjustment claims. Mostly because of the volume between those and Homestead declarations we spend a million dollars a year in ongoing costs. So if you were to work with Damian and Joyce soon, is this vendor pretty responsive to you? Could we get a, we're talking about two and a half million dollars to do perhaps suit to nuts. No, I'm not talking about the, maybe I am talking about the filing of the claim with the doctor's notes or something like that. But outside that I'm just talking about, once you know what the amount of the checks are, you should have the checks. Getting the information in DOL to find out whether the question's eligible and how much could, I guess I'm asking, how soon can you get back to us with a ballpark figure on that? I can, as soon as I'm done here, I can go back and ask for a formal quote from the vendor and ask them for an exact timeline. I can't compel them, but I do know in other states they've been very interested in providing information to the legislature when we're requested. So I think at this point we haven't asked them for a formal quote. So work with Joyce and Damian to make sure you ask the right questions. Because there may be variations on what we're asking the vendor to do. I still might want to do some other stuff. And for more context, the quote to collect the cannabis tax was, I believe, two and a half million, three million, somewhere in that range. And because it created a new structure, because it created new issues, there's a big difference between piggybacking on an existing tax type. Right, the 300,000 versus two and a half million. Right. So, as I said, the department... But at the moment, this is piggybacking. This is piggybacking under withholding. Well, we're assuming that we can do that. Not as it's written. Oh, well, yeah, I know that. Right. I'm just apologizing. But your idea, I'm actually pretty happy to do this. But the piggybacking is under withholding. Right, instead of UI, it's with your idea. Well, by the way, I've gotten information that I think I read your memo on short-term rental and we went through that whole thing. Yes, we did. The tax department has stepped up and said they have found a way to do it a lot cheaper. Thank you, tax department. Or it would no cost. That's the best news we've heard this morning. Just for the record, that was the direction I thought we should talk about. But everybody except me voted for the $130. So... It's good to hear. Yes, I think, and that's a very different situation than this one. I know, but we're just celebrating that moment for the moment. Yes. Before we get into... Celebrate your 50,000. Right. Yes, so thank you for recognizing that. I think there are a couple more other things I'd like to mention on this topic. So as I mentioned, we're a bit concerned at the tax department, not with our technology or the price tag for the developers to modify our systems, but with our ability just to keep up with the potential changes this year. That's primarily coming from personal income tax, which although it's not a certainty that we will require system changes and absolute certainty, I think there's been a strong will express on many sides that something will happen this year and that it would likely require some system changes. We need to ensure with over 300,000 people filing personal income taxes, we need to make sure that those changes are done correctly. And there's also education finance is still in scope as far as active discussions and potential changes. So if anything happened with property tax adjustment claims, homestead declarations, between that and personal income, that's two million of our ongoing costs, our operational staff, and it's a big portion of our work. So with those things being in play, those are the big ones. And then I had that email pulled up. We also have the bottle bill being proposed, which I believe we quoted like around a 300,000 implementation for that. I don't, and- And this is all under with the vendor GenTax? Yes. Wow. Did the version we passed have any money for you in that change? You know what it requires there? So it did not have implementation costs outlined. It had the ongoing staff of one FTE identified, but it didn't quantify the implementation costs at that time. We hadn't gotten a quote at the time that it was passed. There's also changes with jet fuel and the revenue allocation of those were related to local option taxes that are being considered. And that's an area where if you get that wrong, we're violating FAA regulations. So we can sort of stop there because- So you got lots of changes coming down the pike. Being on finance, I'm a big believer in seeing the complexity of the changes we're looking at. And I was wondering, I asked you, how do you do that without any money? But anyhow, so we don't have to go through the whole- No, but it helps us appreciate all the changes coming in. Anything else? I guess at a reiterate, I did mention that the 2 million, 2.5 million, that's based on historical numbers and that could go up. And for more context, our contract value for all 29 tax types implementation was $29 million. That's balancing tiny miscellaneous tax types with personal income and property tax adjustment. So I think it's highly doubtful that we would hit that $12 million range just based on how they priced things for us in the past, but we do have to get the number from them. So. It's interesting that if you do the whole couldn't convert it with $29 million, and Washington State needs how much for just paid family? $50 million. Okay, so- But they're doing it for several years too. True. Yeah, it's not just apples to apples there. I just want to do a quick walk through here of the bill you have in front of you. Maybe five or 10 minutes and I'll take a break. Let's not ask too many questions. I want to re-emphasize that this is not meant to be in any way decision making on many of the on-standard issues we have. Senator, do you have any questions? Yeah. We're not going to ask for the memo. You can just hand off the memo. Yeah, let's do that. I mean, I think we've got the juice of the issues here. We may need to have you back. Okay, thank you. Should we hand off the memo? Sure. This is a memo from Dan. And we hope we'll get back to this remain. I raise a few good questions. All right. Thank you, committee. Oh, thanks. I'll let you pass around the memo. Kayla, is this composed of- Did you grab one? Yeah. It's the H1 and the 6th draft 1.4. Can we hold off on that? Oh. Post it until we just go through it? Okay, sure. Oh, sorry, Dan, I thought we were- Okay, okay. So what you see in front of you is a draft that I've been putting together here. It's got a number of alternatives for different ways to- Wait, we don't have that. Yeah, you do. It was at your desk when you arrived. Oh. Yeah, if you need a copy. It should be there. It's got yellow on the bottom on the front. Oh, thank you. You're welcome. I needed this. So, what you're looking at here, it's got a number of different options. All of it about we're missing one. Missing one, okay. Sorry. Okay, what would it be? 6, 196. It's 196, 1.4. Look at the picture I've ever looked at. Right? It's in a folder? It looks like this. Here's an extra one. Could we have a look at it? There's a lot of papers on it. The art set of the techniques, we've had it. Yes, that's been the norm in my opinion. Shhh. Here we go. It's on there. We got it. We got it. All righty. Good morning. For the record, for me and Leonard, Legislative Council. Long time no see. Long time no see. Wonderful to see you again. What you have in front of you is a draft that has a number of different potential pieces of language to amend the house version of this bill. So, I'll give you the 30,000 foot view of them. It's one of your schedules full. Beginning at the bottom of page one and everything that's changed or that could change from the house version is highlighted in yellow in this draft. Let me just say, I will make a couple of editorial comments as we go. I want to keep this, there's all these requests came from me. So, but I really want to keep this short because I have 200 bills I want to do. And we need a break. We need a break and this is. Long birthday flowers. Okay. Great. So, there were beginning at the bottom of page one and onto page two. Sorry, can I just make another caveat? There are, some of us have been keeping track of some of the changes we were hoping we might make and they're not reflected in here. No, we, a lot of the issues have not been discussed. Most of this is to do with what we talked about with the administrative stuff. Okay. I just want to make sure that that. Yes, I put this draft together with the chair. So, it's, there are other things that have been discussed that are not in here. I'll just highlight what's in here. Right. So, at the bottom of page one, the top of page two, one of the things that's come up is the whole, is well, one, the issue of aligning job protection with the new law. And then other, the other is the issue of eligibility for employees under the new law. 12 or 13 months being possibly more difficult to track than a monetary amount. So, option one here, alternative one would add in language. And this is the old paid family leave law. This language is also reflected in the new benefit. Add in language that an employee is someone who has earned at least $10,710 in employment in Vermont during the last 12 months. So that gives you a fixed dollar amount, which is what a number of other states with the, all of the other states with the exception of Washington do for eligibility. So it's opposed to a part-time full-time. Right. Right, so 10,710 is half-time over a full year, eight months at 30 hours a week, six months at 40 hours a week, and it's at minimum wage. So this section was designed to do two things. One is to possibly bring more in line with the UI reporting to make it easier to administer, and also you heard some, a complaint that I think nobody could disagree with that there was some seasonal workers who were full-time workers that would be cut out of this program by having to work 12 out of 13 months. Thank you. You took care of certain number one of mine. Would there be an inflator on this going forward? There could be, right? Most other states have it as a fixed amount that they've adjusted periodically. There could be an inflator. I know for one of our UI eligibility pieces, and that's actually the second piece here, for one of those, the number in statute is $1,000, but it's been inflated over time to, I think it's $2,600 now. That's my question, because if you don't have an inflator, and not that I maybe not want to do this, but with our eyes open, you increase the eligibility if you don't inflate. Right. Another way to word this is equal to 1,020 hours at the Vermont minimum wage as set, pursuant to, yeah. Yeah, we could easily put it around the first one, and then the second one, second alternative, but that's having a very, very quick decision. Yeah, so the second one is simply that an employee is someone who is eligible to receive unemployment compensation. And that's everybody. No. No. So you have to have earned, and Dirk and Cameron can correct me if I'm wrong, but you have to have earned a certain amount in one calendar quarter, and then in another calendar, you look at four out of the last five calendar quarters, you have to have earned a certain minimum amount in one calendar quarter, and at least 40% of your highest calendar quarter in the remaining three calendar quarters in your measuring period, and there are four different possible measuring periods under there, depending on your eligibility. Yeah. Did I get that, guys? Yeah. Seasonal people in large measure, which is the key craft. Yes, it does. The number is low enough that it captures seasonal people. We have a very complicated system to determine this whole thing is essentially attachment to the workforce. Right. Don't give benefits out unless there's some strong attachment to the workforce, and we have establishes just for the U.I., so one of the suggestions is let's just use that one. Mm-hmm. So if you flip all the way to page seven, the same language is repeated for the definition of qualified employee for the purpose of benefits. You don't need to go through it a second time. If we flip now to page eight, this reflects on line 11 the latest, the latest estimate of the payroll tax or contribution that Joyce has provided that obviously can change. The currently, the bill provides that the employer shall deduct and withhold the full amount from the employee's wages unless the employer elects to pay a portion. The alternative here would revert back to what was proposed in the house originally, which is 50-50 split between employer and employee. Going on to page nine, the change there is not substantive. It's just a cross-reference to clarify what contributions you're referring to. Before you go on again, just to clarify, on page eight, what was the, is that identical now on line 11? That's identical to the percentage as passed by House? No, the percentage passed by House was 0.141. Joyce has raised it to 0.18 to account for higher startup costs. That could change, exactly that could change based on any number of things in this bill. Including the discussion we had. The discussion we had there, the benefits that are covered, the amount that you pay for the benefits, a number of things can affect that number. So that is total influence. Sorry, what's the point? The next piece here on the top of page 10 is an alternative to reflective taxes were shifted over, if the collection of the payroll tax or contribution was shifted over to the Department of Taxes, and it would require withholding and administration and enforcement of the withholding in the same manner as for the withholding of income taxes from payroll right now. And then, let's see, on 573 here at the bottom of that page, the alternative here, so right now it says 80% of average weekly wage, up to two times 40 hours at the Vermont livable wage. The alternative language here is one and a quarter times the amount of unemployment benefits an individual would be eligible for, up to two times 40 hours at the Vermont livable wage. So again, same cap on the amount that you can get per week, but it's limited by one and a quarter times the amount of unemployment benefits. So this, as with all any substantive provision here, has not been discussed or decided, and one of the things that's problematic, like the idea of finding the unemployment benefits, we'll do the nail down what the average percentage of people's wages on employment provides as a percentage, and then we have to decide what we really want. The house has 80% of the average weekly wage, right? Yeah, the house is 80% of the average weekly wage. Unemployment is 57 or 58% of average weekly wage up to a capped amount, which I think is set to change next year. Is that correct Cameron? Yeah, I think it's gonna be. Or to re-rebase next year. I think it's gonna be in July this year. Okay, it's July this year. So, and I can't remember what that amount is currently. I think it's gonna be higher than the cap we have here. So basically we need to decide what the wage replacement percentage we want to be, and then we have to come up with a multiplier of 57%. So I don't think this gets you to 80%, but I don't want people freaking out on anything that's built because this is... No, I did a little bit of quick math last night and this is more like 72% and if you've seen my math grades you probably want to have Joyce check that. So, all right, on page 12, reinstatement, seniority and benefits protected. This is an alternative potentially to that changes to the job protection language early on. This would put in a reinstatement provision that's similar to what we have for workers comp right now. And workers comp and applies to employers of 10 or more in this case it would apply to all employers. And it basically says that the employer shall reinstate the employee at the conclusion of his or her leave. Provided the leave does not require the employee to be out of work for a continuous period in excess of six weeks. The employee shall be reinstated to the first available position, first available suitable position given the position he or she held at the time their leave began and then they regain seniority and unused accrued leave on reinstatement. And then nothing in this section would diminish the employee's rights to job protection under the existing parental and family leave act. So if you work for an employer that's covered by that, you have the full job protection. This just provides you with reinstatement rights if you work for a small employer. A legislator's perspective, at least as opposed to a drafter's perspective. So, the house at one point had this backup. I think to have an effective family leave program, you need some money going to the people and you need some job protection. And the house, as it came out of the first substance committee had no small business exemption. They had, everybody had the job protection. So if you took six or 12 weeks, you had your right to come back. I actually introduced the Board of Senate, which was not as protective of the employees as the house best, I had a small business exemption for businesses of four or less. We didn't have to guarantee the job. The house, the bill that came out of the house had no added job protections in it. It's, the only people who have job protection status right now are people who work for larger firms of 10 or 15 or more. So they put in an amount of money to help people take the leave, but people still lose their jobs and then probably a lot of it will still go back to work because of that. So this is very much a middle ground. It probably doesn't go into the middle, but it just does, says what we do in workers' comp, which is to say that the employer of a small business could still let the person go if they need to. But at least the person, if a job does become available in the future and the person's qualified for it, they would have priority to that job. That's what we do in workers' comp for larger businesses. And maybe the two of you can fill me in because I'm not up to speed on workers' comp. But when you say the first available suitable position, if we had a smaller business and they've got one meat cutter, right? And they hire a new meat cutter and that person stays there for 10 years. You're out of luck. So first available suitable position, one question is, does it have to be the same or could the meat cutter say I'm okay with taking a job that's stocking shelves? Is that, do they have a legal right to that? Then the next question would be, does suitable mean that they have to make as much as when they left? I think it's mostly to the pay, isn't it? It's a combination. It doesn't cover with precision every example, but this has been in the law for 15 years in the workers' comp context. So I assume there's either been cases where they work it out in a way that it's functioning. So this way? I remember being involved in this one when this first happened and from a labor perspective we were hearing about people who were injured on the job and in some cases it was the fault of the employer and they got wage replacement, but they didn't have any job guarantee. So some employers are not saying all, which I look at their situation and say, this guy's gonna be out for six months. I gotta replace this guy permanently. So I said, well, at least you can do if it's not that much of a hardship, there's a business and you have an opening for this person and it's qualified, give them the priority. So that's what this is. It's an attempt to- And it's the same language? Yes, first and foremost. I mean, it's not exactly the same. But there has to be. Yeah, I tweaked it and so the, I don't know too much about how the workers' comp provision has been construed. You may want to hear from Steve Monagham from the department on that. So, but that's the, what I did is I based this on the workers' comp provision with tweaks, obviously, to get away from the workers' disability to more of a period of relief and the workers' comp provision provides for two years out of work. This only provides for six weeks. Once you go past the paid leave portion, then it doesn't cover you, but if your leave is six weeks or less, you've got that reinstatement right here. The second page here on page 13 and actually starting from line 19 on page 12 and I'm going over on a page 13 provides caveats for when the employer doesn't have to provide reinstatements such as the employee already gave notice. Their position would have been terminated on its own terms, in other words, they're seasonal and they went out for leave for the last four weeks. This is my language from... Yeah, and that's all from workers' comp, basically protecting the employer. This is a small step. I'd rather cover all businesses or cover all businesses down to four, but I think that is going to be a challenge at this week and age. We're not deciding that. We're not deciding that. But it's just a flag issue. So for example, in this area, I'd also love to have us think about an extension with unpaid leave and what might be considered in that for another six weeks, just because ideally, this is a bill that was originally introduced as 12 weeks, is it worth considering an extension when it's unpaid leave and if there was anything else that we might... So unpaid leave already has job protection. How about you qualify for the... Oh, that's right. There's a federal and a state program. The state, the federal program applies to employers, 50 or more of the state, as written in this bill, would apply to all employers with 10 or more roughly full-time employees who work an average of 30 hours a week over the course of the year. Is that worth explicitly identifying and citing other places where it's covered? That's cited in here as one of the things that this doesn't replace those rights. Okay. So that's here on the link. Yeah, if you're an employee that works for a smaller employer under 10 employees, you don't have the right to generally protect it. Okay, so let's zip through the rest of it so that they can... So Section 576 and Section 577 address some of the concerns that Cameron raised this morning. They provide for the collection of assessments of unpaid contributions from employers, largely based on the unemployment system, and then the appeals there. One of the things that I identified in comparing our law of Washington's is that somehow drafting last year in the House, we left out what happens if the employer says, I have evidence that the employee is faking this, and they're cashing it on the leave or something like that, or the employer is aggrieved by the assessment, by the determination that someone's their employee. So this allows for both employer and employee appeals from both the assessments and the commissioner's decisions. The Section 4, beginning on page 15 and going over on to page 16, provides some guidance, which can be fleshed out based on Cameron's testimony this morning as to where and how the commissioner of labor should adopt rules to implement the program. Understanding that they having specific direction provides them with cover against being accused of adopting a rule without statutory authorization or something like that. So that could be done. And then the other highlighted sections are just changes and dates. And that's it. Thank you. Let's get back in. Let's make it 11. That's your time. Oh, thank you. Take up the housing bill, rental housing, housing standard, rental housing. It's been a while since we've... Is there anything we're not doing this session? The goal is to do anything, accept it. I haven't heard anybody bother me about the fireworks bill. So if we don't get to that, unless you want to get to it, if I'm pro- Yeah, I'm ready. Okay. There's fireworks to that. Okay. Yes. I think we can do it and follow up to your question. I think, I hope you can make it early, but I think we're gonna start all of next week at 8.30. I know you have a conflict on Tuesday. If you get here at nine, that's fine. I'll make sure the big issues get delayed. There's a lot of small bills. We should be done with the governor's to get him by 8.30. Okay. So on Tuesday, you can't come at 8.30 though. You say you're staying over. No. You said, I thought you said next Tuesday, you were, okay. We're still gonna start at 8.30. All of next week. David, can you stand like five minutes, go through the three? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm just gonna hear. And especially changes since the last. Sure. So working off of draft 3.1, 1101, that they have. Correct. Okay. Well, if you have a record for it, I am David Hall, the decision council for your committee. This is H907. You should have a draft 3.1 of an act relating to improving rental housing safety. I believe this is or is being posted and the committee should have copies. So it's a strike all amendment, 10 pages, changes relative to what you last saw in public are all in yellow. The first section is unchanged since then, but it creates this rental housing advisory board. I will say it is changed to the extended, no longer says residential rental, but it says, but otherwise it's the same charges, GHD to create this 11 person board, the duty of which is to give advice on housing to the executive legislative branch and others. I guess the other change in there is that I'm no longer staffing it. So that's good. On page three, section two, tasks of the rental housing advisory board. So you'll see some changes in here. To be consistent with the new subsection C on the next page where it said potential legislation or policy changes, I've just used those words throughout. So the board by January of next year would submit to the general assembly potential legislation or policy changes that are support decent safe sanitary rental housing that address recommendations for a one-state agency whether to retain or modify the current system of rental housing code enforcement, including statutory provisions on the subject. Under B, formulating the potential legislation of policy changes that identify pursuant to A, the board shall consider the following proposals. The list is the same since you last saw it. I think we could skip over those unless you guess. On page three, yes. On page seven, I think that's confusing because it's potential legislation or policy changes to better support decent safe sanitary rental housing that seems to be modifying housing instead of prior clause. So I would say a period after housing and then starting your sentence that says these potential policy changes may address the following issue for sure to address. Do you see what I'm saying? In other words, it seems as though the sentence is saying sanitary rental housing that address when you really have a, when you say after policy changes, you basically got a subordinate clause that's unmarked there, that's confusing. We say and after housing and which address the following issue. Yeah, okay, that's another one. Okay, we'll do that. And which address the following. Yes. Okay, so the list is the same. So we're on to page four, the bottom. Okay. So these are the check-ins, not later than September 1st and November 15th, the board shall report on progress and formulate a potential of certain policy changes to this committee and House General Page Five. Section three is the same. Section four, the bottom is the same. There's a proposal on page six here. So what we're talking about is, so when the health officer conducts an investigation of the rental housing, the officer under A shall issue a written inspection report and that shall, one, contain funding's effect, two, specify requirements and then three here in highlights, provide a notice in plain language that the tenant must allow the landlord and agents of the landlord access to the rental unit to make repairs as ordered by the health officer, consistent with the 9VSA46 system, including that the landlord may enter, blah, blah, blah. So the change in the construct here is to reference the access provisions that are already in statute in 9VSA4660 and then to have this including constructs. So as an example of the type of notice consistent with that section, including that the landlord may enter the unit either with a 10 cents, which shall not be increased with health, between 9 to 9, not less than 40 hours notice and that the health officer is notified to enter the owner access immediately. You follow that? I do. There's a similar issue here with the word in that, and maybe it's just the way you put sentences together, but the including seems to be, what you are led to expect is that it will be one of the repairs as ordered by the health officer, but you're actually talking about access previously in the sentence. See what I mean? So the including refers back to must allow access, but the way the sentence is written, it sounds like including is going to be one of the repairs as ordered by. And you can get, once you've read it a couple times, you can get what it says, but I... I really honestly had five minutes to read it. Before I came here, so do you want me to noodle on it, I'm happy to, but this is where we are at this moment. I think it should be, I'm happy to stop after 46, 60, frankly, I think that's what I'm saying. And then get rid of including and say the landlord may enter the unit. What if we just took a consistent with 9VSA, put that at the end, so including yada, yada, yada and consistent with, consistent with 9VSA, 46, 60 means that that's modifying the scope of the access. So the health department wanted the cross-reference to 46, 60 in there. Does, if you have that in there, does the rest of the sentence, is it necessary or is all that information in 46, 60 already? What about this? To answer your question, I think the rest is just trying to provide an example of what that plain language notice would be and what the basis of access would be. That said, and again, I'm just reacting to this as you are. I think the health department wanted the cross-reference because they were concerned about the scope of the access and the underlying law changing in the future and didn't want to have a conflict between these two. And I don't think you obviate that issue by having the example language here. I think you still have the same issue. My issue is, Salt, if after 46, 60, you know, period, and get rid of including, and just say the landlord may enter the unit, mine is a grammatical issue about the way those two clauses are. I understand, but that changes the, that changes the substantive effect of the law. I mean, we're talking about what's in the content of the notice, not a substantive right to enter the unit. That substantive right is already provided in 46, 60. Got it. So this is what's in the notice. Yeah, instead of saying including that, it really, the function here is to say, by way of example, the notice Must include. Could provide or may provide the following. That's really the thrust of the clause. But again, I think you could end the sentence at 46, 60 and you would have the same effect. You would lose the benefit of example language. But honestly, the scope of the access is a substantive right provided in another section of law which we're cross-referencing. So the new language here as I understand it is essentially adding a statutory reference. So I would be in favor of moving that, just taking that out and putting a new sentence at the end. The notice shall be, we'll say, and consistent with 9VSA or to say, the notice shall be consistent with 9VSA for 66. And leaving in the example, which I think is important to, I'm not talking about either the example or the reference. I'm talking about the grammar of the sentence. So does it, if you put at the end, and consistent with that as a patting in the middle, does that help? Well, we'll put a new sentence at the end. If you look at the way the sentence runs, landlord and agents on the landlord access to the rental unit. And then including modifies that part. But the way it's written now, it sounds like it's modifying repairs, including, so when you're reading it, you're expecting that it's going to delineate a repair, but it's not, it's going back to the, so all you have to do is just read, all the pieces are fine. It's just that the grammatical order leads you into a mistaken interpretation of what you're reading until you get to the bottom of the sentence. So, Good sentence. So what's your fix? My fix is to have David move on. If you want to have everything in here, that's here, but you just want to move around for clarity, let me take that back to my office and I can do that. Thanks. Thank you. I see where you got your nickname from. What is it? From Mary. From Mary. Grammar Man. Grammar Man. Oh my goodness. Well. Which is fine, you're right about that. It's the law. Solve it. I was of course solving it in a way that made it not the intent. But it was easy enough to do. Let's go on. All right. The certificate piece through page eight is all the same. And then section seven. And I, you know, I assume you've heard all the pros and cons of section six and access to it. Well, I was going to just ask, we do have the part of here. Sure. I know you're not thrilled with this section, but is there any simple change or addition there that we're looking for? My board's certificate. So the department's opposition to this is primarily on the basis of confidentiality. So if the legislature decides to publish that information, and you know, so it's, but structurally, we will need time to be ready to publish this. So the effective date of this October is a bit aggressive for us to be able to do that. We talked about that and we said we were going to move that out. Did that get done here? Yes, it's on the last page. Okay. To that verse 19. Okay. And the other part of this is part of the house pass. We're not changing the house pass version. Right. Well, the section six is as past the house. Does anyone have questions on six? Yes. All right. So on page seven, excuse me, page eight, section seven, this is the content from 831 that you have worked on with Becky Wasserman. And I have deposited it to this bill. That's her most recent language. To be honest, I haven't even read it. I don't know if it's, I assume you have either. We talked about this at last. We were pretty much okay with this. We had a question about the, on subsection two, how the best defined. Okay. Family? Well, yeah, I think it was two, maybe one had two, but whether we were going to cross reference the use of the standard that's in VHCV or CBDG. And we decided to go with the CBDG one because that's sort of like what Naval Works uses already for IR, weatherization and home improvement. So that's what she put in here. Does anybody reading this have a problem with this section? If they have any reservations, I'm happy to go back to two separate bills. No, I think there's quite a few options. Okay. So, to move us along, I would move this bill subject to the changes that David's done to make. Can we consider our vote if we don't like those changes but I'd like to vote it right now. That's what, I just wanted to question how effective dates. Oh, yes. So the effective date for the tax reporting is the new tax out of year. Yes. The database. And that was important for you guys. Yes. Okay. Right, I just wanted to note that it was different from everything else. Caleb. So, all in favor of H907 is reflected in draft 3.1 with the understanding that a gas person can change that figure out, how to write that section on page. Bottom of page, oh, page six. Page six. So we'll let have a new draft number, David, or we'll let it effectively say 3.1? Probably we'll have a P4.1. Okay, so I just need it for the motion. Okay. I'd like to do that. You're making the motion. All in favor raise your hand, please. Thank you. Other one down. Okay. No. We are rocking and rolling. Let's go to H707. And you're reporting this, baby. I am reporting this, yes. H707 sexual harassment. Julio. Yes. Get this couch. He's coming. I was thinking about what the school's got. How are you? Bruno Mars is a freshman. I'm a good freshman. What are you doing? So sad to meet you. I can always try to find you. Oh, yeah. Do you like it? I love a pop music guy. Thank you, Caleb. You're welcome. Hello, have a seat, please. Is it for me? Yeah, I'm so sorry. Did you just- On my desk, or do we already have something? We just hand it. I have my card right here. It seems to be in order. I don't think we have a new draft on this at this point. Oh, I've gotten a folder. Ready to go. As you recall, we have two large issues and then this bill, they're both actually third. They revolve around the do not dispose grievance and do not darken my door. And there's tension between the individual claimant or complainant that wants to resolve their case sometimes. And the systemic issue of not allowing these provisions and so on, the grievance of the issue. And the other thing that I want to talk about is the perk of all the witnesses is that education and resources are very important to this thing. And I have a separate computer that I may be going. This is the conversation I'm going to have when I pull this off. I may be going into appropriations this afternoon and they want sort of a wish list of where we want money. So we need to have a conversation with the committee. But one of the areas I wanted was some money for this purpose to be added to this bill. So for education and how and where would it go? Where did the bill go? Where did the money go? That's a question. Likely candidate would be the Governor's Commission on Women. But it could go to the Human Rights Commission, maybe. I don't know. Could go to some other place in the executive branch. But someone should do some PSAs and some modeling for training programs and outreach. So I'm going to have Caleb print out what the budget that Kerry sent us, is that OK? Sure. Which, by the way, that budget was some of the most specific. It was great. It was one of the best budgets we got. And what we've been asking for on all these things. Did I send it to the committee or just to pick it in? Let me just hit Caleb. So could you enlighten us on what we should do on these two big issues? Sure, let me start. I'll be my best or respond to your questions and offer some ideas, hopefully. My name's Julio Thompson, Assistant Attorney General and Director of the Civil Rights Unit. Our office, Civil Rights, we are the principal state agency that forces Vermont state laws regarding sexual harassment for all employers and labor organizations in the state of Vermont, except for the state as employer of the Human Rights Commission, has that role when the state is the employer. So we have our office, I'm going to go directly to your questions. We also have a couple of small recommendations and tweaks in the bill that I think will cover issues like confidentiality. Are you working off the house pass version or is it later? I was working off the house pass version. So I'm happy to go to your. Let's start with the big ones first. Okay, so with respect to non-disclosure agreements, in some cases they are valuable, in some cases they are not. We have many cases that come to us that involve individuals, women, often, but not always, who absolutely want a confidential resolution from the very time they call us until the very end. And sometimes those women are represented by legal counsel, Rich Cassidy and others, and sometimes they're not. And when we do our investigations, we have very strict confidentiality obligations and we have a mediation program, which is confidential, and then the parties will, with the assistance of the mediator, work out an agreement about whether it's confidential or not. Oftentimes the cases that come to us are not simply sexual harassment cases. It might be a claim that I was harassed on the basis of my sex, I was denied equal pay, I was subject or I was denied a promotion because of my race, I was denied overtime because I was misclassified as a supervisor. And sometimes the resolution is going to wrap all of those things together. And sometimes the employer resolving all of those will ask for, they'll both ask for confidentiality and the employee might agree not to apply for employment with the employer. I say it's sometimes good and sometimes not because in some cases, the complainant doesn't, it doesn't have any intention to go to the employer and if they can secure that promise in exchange for a higher settlement, that's a win for, I don't know if that's a win for, but it's value to them and in a recent case we had someone who complained of harassment wasn't sex harassment was not in a different category but that individual unbeknownst to the employer which she'd not been in contact with it for over a year had gotten married and was moving out of state and got a job hundreds and hundreds of miles away and the employer in the negotiation with the mediation we weren't a party to it. The employer, so they'd pay her additional money if she didn't work for this relatively small business concern. So when I was all done, she said well that was, that was good value for me because I don't intend to come back to her mom. In other cases, you can have someone, I think the example was Sheraton where a lifetime ban has really, really serious consequences. The cases can break down one way or the other. I think there are common threads that sometimes you see or that. When we were doing a settlement agreement we mad at concerns about overreaching of fairness. One is where the party's not represented by council. Another is if the employer's very large or if it covers a very large geographic area. We've had some cases where the agreement that's worked out in mediation is it's not a lifetime ban. It's a one or two year ban that sometimes we need to refer to as a cooling off period. So someone else has got a job, you agree. The next couple of years, you agree not to apply. And after that, let's see how things are moved on. So we've, they're difficult to classify because sometimes they are really, really fundamentally unfair and sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're a benefit to individuals. Am I correct as soon as an estate like Vermont do not talk to my door provision is in some ways less of an issue because there's not that many large employers that have different divisions other than the state of Vermont who want to go and work in another part of the company? Or do these things apply to sort of worldwide? Dependence, but right now it's freedom of contract between the parties and so it's whatever the parties. No, I know, but in terms of like a, if we were to ban those provisions from selling it. Right. It doesn't seem are either side asking for those very often? I practiced for employment law and civil rights employment discrimination in Los Angeles for 15 years. We represent a lot of big companies all over the world. We never had one of those. I only saw that. You never had a dark in my door. In Los Angeles? No. I think a lot, I see them pretty frequently. I don't know if that's East Coast versus West Coast. I was thinking big companies versus, but we don't have that many big corporations that it would be as much of an issue as if, you know, you're in California and you're saying there are not, but. If someone cleans rooms for Hilton. Exactly. Or that's body. That would be tough. And the state. I mean the state. It's our biggest. So I'm just saying it's, I wish I could give you a very clear, obvious answer, but again, the whole topic of sexual harassment we've been talking a lot about. It seems like we've been focusing a lot on the sexual advances from one person to another. But that's not the only kind of sexual harassment claim that can arise. It could be somebody who just objects to things on the bulletin board. There could be a romantic relationship that ends. And so it could be a couple with retaliation claims. They're kind of all over the map is what I'm saying. So I'm just trying to fill in the picture because we've kind of been looking in one part of the room and the law would apply to the entire room. For dark in the doorstep, the other observation I can offer. And again, I'm only offering my experience. I haven't actually seen a case where there wasn't a provision where someone subsequently reapplied was denied employment and then a lunch discrimination. And I've talked to some lawyers about that while those bills have been pending. Has that actually ever happened to you? And I haven't seen that happen. We've had one case in the civil rights unit where someone who previously complained of sexual harassment roughly 10 years later reapplied for a job and was fired. And in that case, we thought it was actually retaliation. The individual who had to just answer the first investigation who was not in the hiring chain of command found out I think a week after the person had been rehired at a different branch that it was this individual and then had her fired because she was a quote, so can you just repeat what you said before as a fact pattern you've never seen? I haven't seen cases where someone settles asexual harassment complaint or any employment discrimination complaint where that lacked one of these prohibitions on applying for employment. Where the person then subsequently applied for a new job was denied employment and then made a new claim of discrimination. Can you frame that positively so that I can understand? So you have not seen cases where the darken my door agreement as part of the NBR? No, I have seen those. What I haven't seen is a case where the employer didn't ask for one and then that employee came back, applied for a job, didn't get it and then made another claim for discrimination. So the argument that I've been hearing and I don't know maybe it's a good argument is that all we need this because there's a risk a person will later just come back over after they settle, they'll come right back, apply for a job, not get it and then we're back in court again. I haven't seen that fact pattern play out. Right, you haven't seen it but we don't want it to happen. So this is in support of removing the prohibition? I'm just saying I don't know whether that, I don't know whether that's an appreciable risk. I haven't, either in our work or talking to lawyers who work on the employer or plaintiff's side been able to come up with an example of case where that's happened. So which doesn't mean it couldn't? Doesn't mean it couldn't. David, how do you deal with this here? Do not darken my door. Those provisions are explicitly prohibited. In this field that we have. And subsection H one, I believe. So yeah, the house would be in section one, subsection H one, in agreement to settle a claim of sexual harassment, shall not prohibit, prevent or otherwise restrict the employer from working for the employer or any parent company's subsidiary division or affiliate of the employer. So I hate to ask but where are you on page three? Page three, thank you. Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't need to be 21. Daniel, yes. You know the provision that says that a complainant can't sign away their right to go to the commission on women or the Human Rights Commission? Yeah, that's the next sub division. Is that in current law or that's just in the house pass version? So current law, that's in current common law, so case law, but it's not currently in the statute, so the house pass version codifies that in statute. Okay, but under the current state of affairs, practically speaking, you can't. Practically speaking, you can't require someone to sign away their right, there have been cases at the federal level where they've struck down agreements that have done that, not every individual might know that. So what the house pass version requires is that the settlement agreement affirmatively state that they haven't given up their right to go to the EEOC or the Attorney General's Office or whatever. And the reason I ask is to go back to the argument who we have referenced it, but it was made the other day by one of the witnesses, and they were saying that people want this and they're willing to darken my door provision and they're willing to pay more in the settlement and that's good for the victim, but there are other things that I think would be attractive too that are not allowed in law, like for instance, signing away your right to make a formal complaint after the NDA is signed. So that's just not a persuasive argument to me that it would help the victim get more money by signing these things away. We're just saying there are some things you can't sign away. If you still wanna do an NDA and it's of value to you, go ahead and do it, but you can't bargain with this right that men are going to be protected as have it. We are prohibited from that to get your employment here. You can always call the cops is what we tell people. So last week we opened an investigation in a case where there was a settlement agreement because the information provided to us indicated that there might be a violation of law in the practice was such that there could be future victims, so we opened an investigation this week. It's not uncommon in our experience to see settlement agreements that say that. Sometimes when parties are negotiating settlement agreements, we tell the parties just so you know, this doesn't affect our ability to pursue and then they change the agreement. So my view is in Vermont, that provision about calling the cops so to speak is already well known and it's not very common in our experience to say that you can't do it, but that is something that a lot of individuals that don't know, so there is value in telling them in a settlement agreement that you retain this right. Does your office have a position on We're doing this to see where it's going. Danny, we're limiting. What houseboat requires that? Non-disclosure agreements. Our view is that non-disclosure. So non-disclosure agreement, I think is going to just a broad ban on non-disclosure agreement. Our expectation would be that there would be fewer settlement agreements and the amount paid out in settlement agreements would be less. And I understand that the purpose is to protect people from serial harassers. In our experience, and I'll only talk about the experience of the Attorney General's office for the last eight years, we don't have a lot of serial harassment cases where someone, or even there are many sexual harassment cases that don't even involve romantic overtures. Might be hostility towards women in the workplace, women don't belong here. That could be a form of sexual harassment. But then wouldn't that be a serial harasser? Because the allegation might be a single instance of someone saying, what are you doing driving a truck? And that person comes to us as an alleged sexual harassment. We did the investigation. To its conclusion, we would find probably no violation of statute because it's a single incident under the case law. It's not enough to create an abusive and tolerable work environment. But the employer, before they know what our answer might be while we're doing the investigation, might opt to settle that case. They might settle it for a thousand dollars. Or we just had a case that was settled. It was no monetary payment. So employers may settle those cases even though they don't want to violate the law or violate other individuals. But sometimes they're coupled with other claims that the employer is worried about, which might be, there's an allegation of hostile work environment about the truck driver comment, but there's also an allegation that the person was underpaid over time. It's the employer's gonna settle all of that. So under this bill, that would be, if it's sexual harassment claim is included, that would be a settlement for sexual harassment even though in the calculation of the employer, there was no money that was paid for that. Employers, you should typically want to release all employment-related claims. You may not have lots of serial harasser situations because it's a complaint-driven system. And if people haven't been, I mean, that doesn't mean they aren't there. And sadly, older they are, the more likely they are to have done it before. We agree that people underreport sexual harassment just like they underreport crime. What I'm saying is that other cases that do come to us in all of those cases, a standard manner of investigation is whether this person who's accused of harassment has done it before. Because the more victims, maybe those are people for whom we can get relief, or they are witnesses who can corroborate our one complaint that's claimed. So. May I tack on to that? Sure. You know, if you, do you do any additional, when you do your investigation, do you do any further investigation with other survey, the rest of the female employees? If it's a female male complaint, is there a way for you to find out in that work environment if it's happened before? Yes, so what we do typically with a complainant is to ask them, has this happened to anyone else before? Who are the co-workers? Who are the witnesses? Some organizations are large and so we wouldn't interview all the people. We would wanna identify all the people who work with the target or the accused and interview those individuals. A non-disclosure agreement that they sign with the employer doesn't prohibit them from providing it to us. The employer can't hide their settlement agreement from us. That's subject to legal process by us. So we would ask the employer, have you had prior claims? Produce those claims. Have you had prior settlements? Produce those settlements. And then when the individuals are always identified in those claims and settlements, and then we go talk to them. What I'm saying is that it's not, in our experience, again, I'm just saying, it's not representative of the world. I don't know who really knows out there. But our cases involve very, very, very good fact patterns. But the cases where you have one person and we have a line of 10 women who say this guy's been there forever. In our experience, it's both a relatively rare. I'm not saying they don't happen. I'm not gonna say that they are not there. We don't know about them. So how? But this law would apply to all of the other cases that don't apply to serial harassment as well. So are you reading G1A as essential banning, non-disclosure agreements? In the version that passed the house, there is no banning up. There is no prohibition on. This just basically says that you can't report if there's an investigation of sexual harassment and NDA can't prevent the person from participating in that. That's actually... The language is kind of weird to me. It says from proposing, disclosing, this whole model applies the investigation of sexual harassment. How do you disclose... No, participating in an investigation, I think is like all of them, compactly. You're looking at the wrong... It's two at the bottom of the page. I think Damian pointed me to two. So if I'm... You will, you're looking at G1A, which relates to employment agreements. And we're talking about each one and each two, which relate to settlement agreements. So this is a modified version of something. It's a limitation on non-disclosure. You can't stop doing the processes or participating in the process, go forward. But you couldn't go... You could sign one of these things and you wouldn't directly go out and go to the press after it was publicized. That's right. And on the issue of non-disclosure agreements, this, I just want to raise something for the committee's attention, because I think it's important. And I think that there's room in this bill to educate both employers and employees about this. Under federal and state labor relations law, employees have a right to discuss their working conditions. That includes all conditions of employment for the purposes of either working together as a group of employees, either to unionize or just to have an employee committee saying you want to talk to management about our working conditions or wages, or to provide what's called mutual aid and protection. So if someone is saying, yeah, I feel like I'm really working in a dangerous place because there's exposed electrical wires in other employee can say, you know, I brought that complaint up last year and so they already know about it. This wasn't an accident. We ought to do something about it. That's called conservative activity that's legally protected under existing federal and state labor law. That also includes the discussions regarding wages, work assignments, promotions, and sexual harassment. So if I'm an employee now, our view is that if someone else, a coworker complains about the same supervisor or about an inadequate management response, those employees can discuss their working conditions for purposes not of helping the person who's already signed the settlement agreement, but for helping other employees be safe from sexual harassment or to improve their management process. So our recommendation would be that in the settlement agreement, employees not only advise that you always have the right to call the cops, but that this agreement doesn't prevent you from engaging in otherwise protected conservative activity for mutual aid and support or for organizing employees. It doesn't matter who initiates that contact whether it was the person who was first abused or the second abused person going to the first. If the, it's really about what the purpose of it is. So if one employee is talking to another employee for purposes of gossip or some other reason that it has nothing to do with improving the workplace. I mean, there have been cases on this since the 1930s about how you separate like one things that are actually to improve employee welfare. So if you're doing it because you're trying to help protect other individuals and you're still an employee there, that's in a lot of instances that's going to be viewed as conservative activity. So a non-disclosure agreement A would not be enforceable. Some employers say, we're going to sue you because you breached that. And B requiring it in the first place might already be a violation of labor relations law. So a lot of people don't know this. I've talked to lawyers and they haven't even thought of it. They're like, oh yeah, conservative activity. I think Heather Wright mentioned it briefly in last week's testimony that there may be some activities that are already protected. So I was wondering whether we need to be more specific that that's prohibited in here. Maybe that's one of your recommendations. It is. And if we don't do it and we're passing the bill in relation to this could the court interpret it that we're trying to go against previous case law? I think if someone brought it up so if someone engaged in that conservative activity and the employer says he violated the non-disclosure agreement please pay us our money. I think if a lawyer raised the issue of conservative activity it depends on the facts of the case but I think there's, in a lot of instances we think the employee would prevail. But for us, just when we've been talking about it since this bill's been pending a lot of people aren't focusing on this issue. Now we are not the Vermont Labor Relations Board. They deal with conservative activity but employers can never enter into a contract that violates the statute. And there are cases out there it was a case last year, two years ago against Quicken Loans that had an employment agreement that says you can't disparage management in any way. And that was challenged and the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit said and you can't even chill employees' rights to discurs working conditions including lousy management. So. You said statute, are we talking statute and case law? Well the National Labor Relations Act and the Vermont State Employees Labor Relations Act and its counterparts say that employees have the right to engage in conservative activity. And then the question has become over the years what does that mean? That's state employees, how about the question? Also all employees that are subject to labor relations law not every employee is subject to state labor relations law is true but there are a lot of employees who are and they all have the right under existing law to engage in concerted activity. I mean our concern is that when employees sign in NDA a real concern of ours in all instances is if you have someone who's working there someone is on, I mean I've had this brought to me by several different people someone says well I don't know if I should complain about supervisor someone so because everybody loves him and they'll never believe him he's a family man and you have our complainant who signed an NDA who wants to say oh no they already know about this guy because I complained about him last year let's go to HR and make a complaint let's work together on this I'll support you. Our view is that that would be protected activity for the second employee's benefit not for my personal benefit because he's not bothering me anymore maybe I don't work with him anymore but I don't think that a lot of employees or even their legal counsel are aware of that so our view is that if you require them to put in that notice and then when we do audits or when we do education and say by the way employers if you do do an NDA you can't prevent people from protecting people they work with to make sure you have some working conditions that's already existing laws and don't violate those laws I would help in a serial situation or a systemic issue but it really wouldn't be new law it would be informing of their rights that you may have rights under federal law but it may be more explicit that's right and it's not just serial which is part of our education here making everything more explicit so people are better educated about what their rights are and it's not just the area of serial sometimes systemic problems yeah systemic problems which goes to why we want to actually devote some resources to it so we think that since you're already telling people that you have an existing right to go to the AG's office she should also tell the employer you can't curb someone's labor relations rights to engage in concerted activity and that is part of our outreach and education employers are going to know that because they've got to stick that in there otherwise the NDA would be a fact Senator Bell, do you have a question? I'm just concerned about the time and I'm wondering if we're going to hear from Damian on the language or what sort of what your vision is here I wanted to get into this much who we are as much time as we need it Do you have anything more you want to add? Yes, there are a couple of things I want to talk about for our office's perspective one of the most important tools would be the inspection, right? To be able to show that employers are actually doing the training our view is that Vermont ought to follow the example of states like California, Connecticut and Maine in mandate training rather than just encourage training last year Maine required in training is now required as training for employers with 15 or more employees separate training for supervisors so that they know they have those special duties our inspection right right now doesn't provide any level of confidentiality for information we receive in our audit and it's critical that that be added it's very small language maybe just a cross reference to other statutes that protect that information because what we anticipate is that several of the audits would be or inspections would be done just randomly we might survey industries but sometimes we like our counterparts and other agencies that have inspection rights might receive a tip or a complaint from somebody who's afraid to be identified and says these problems exist here and then we or if we are in the middle of conducting an inspection we talk to so many human resources who might say to us, thank God the Cavalry's here let me tell you what's going on and we're taking notes and those sorts of things we would not want the employer to be able through a public records request get that information from confidential sources so we would like provision that says information that's provided to us during the inspection is confidential not what we do in terms of outreach but in terms of information we get because we don't want us to compromise sources of information Did you raise this in the house? I did I was out of the country very marked up so I don't know what the discussion was but that is a critical feature because we every year we get people who tell us about things So we gotta go to that Okay We've got something else? And they did training Yeah, that's right So if we mandated the training maybe we could also figure out a relatively reasonable training option for smaller businesses that could make an affordable one and it would work with the commission and then find out with HR to find that I think that's right I think the other issue is a very minor tweak which is that right now there's a 48 hour notice requirement for doing these inspections in some circumstances it's more convenient for an employer to have us do it I'm sure they're going to Would you give those in writing to Damien to check today if possible? And the mandate did you raise that in the house? I was asked in what was, yes I did mention that in the house because they were asked do other states do more are they more proactive in Vermont? And I said one area where Vermont in most respects leads but one area where they have fallen out of the league is in training that other states are not mandated in training there are probably a dozen states that mandate training by statute for government employees even if not for the entire public sector right now that's not mandated Do we do that already? I'm sorry? Do we do that for government employees now? Well government employees means all government employees so I can't tell you what the states and towns are doing in terms of the state of Vermont is doing As what I've seen and I've actually thought about as opposed to a mandate which is something that's a significant step is we do frequently we try to lead by example in terms of our procurement policies I think we could look into our procurement policy in the state of Vermont and it says people who want state money and contract have to be somewhat model citizens and put some requirements there it's a big step down from mandating all employers provide this training but it is a step in the right direction have you seen any other states do that? For government contractors I think a couple of states have done that as well as for their state employees Thank you very much Thank you And if you could be a pleasure, Damien I would be great I'm a team Damien It's afternoon No I can't But look, before we read Damien let's just talk about the resource issue of people are interested in putting suggesting that we put on this bill some sort of appropriation Yes to do some training and outreach I just have a question Have you had an initial conversation with the chair of appropriations or will this be new information? Unfortunately, most of my information with the chair will be new other than to that Actually, that's not true I mentioned this in an email I wrote down a very, very vagant So to that end I have no idea I think we do not want the bill to get stuck on the wall So I want to know how we're fitting out of these I don't think there'd be danger of being stuck on the wall I think that section would be strict It could be strife I don't think anybody's going to see it Okay, do you want to make that explicit? Yes One of the things we're talking about is a cultural shift and educating people I mean, with this cultural shift the cultural shift I mean the mandated training I don't know how I miss that piece in here but this money could Kerry's done a terrific budget for us on this We could also conceivably ask Tom who's here and anybody else to get a notion of what mandated training would cost if we could come up with a model that people could use and bulk and make easily accessible to employers around the state who haven't already done it Many have done it Many haven't But if we're going to really be serious about a cultural shift and trying to affect it we need to put resources into it and we do need to mandate training in my humble opinion So one question for Damian What you've heard here is there any informational or course correction that we're totally all based on in this discussion at this point that you've heard? Not that I've heard I'm not sure all of the course corrections that might be on the table I know what Julio was talking about now and I've discussed some of that with him already So let me I want to go around the table quickly and people have thoughts I'll express my own I think I'm at a place where I want to continue where the house is on do not talk in my door I think that Julio has offered us a solution that I think is consistent with existing law but by publicizing what's the term again, Julio? The right to engage in concerted activity that will make a big difference in getting that systemic problems without necessarily banning do not do not do not dispose of agreements and I'm They're banned No No, they're not They're I thought we prohibited those agreements No, as passed by the house So to be clear Darken my door Do not darken my door is prohibited That's what I thought Yes, but do not darken my door on a non-disclosure Oh, I'm sorry I haven't heard we'd shift it to NDA Okay, sorry Yeah NDAs, I think it's important to still have we've heard very articulate and Richard both Well, I just want to make sure that we don't fast-track this in the next you know 24 to 48 hours and not I want to have time to sit down with Damien and go through it line by line because I there are a lot of moving parts perfectly reasonable Yeah, okay And I'd appreciate waiting to say anyway for us too many Okay, do I want to get Damien in a position to start drafting and I want to get a sense of where the committee is We could go we could stay with the houses on NDAs and just you know don't say anything about a conservative effort or you can explicitly say that the agreement shouldn't have anything that bans a conservative effort which is existing law right now will make employers aware of that because the practicing public is not aware of that So I think it gets at the systemic issue in a practical way that doesn't ban these agreements So I think that it's sort of an opening that has sort of given us of a good delegate solution Is this to get rid of the I'm just having a little confusion with for me the problematic thing was having another allegation offered by a third party breaking the non-disclosure agreement agreed to by these two parties So when you say concerted action you're talking about I would maybe defer to Hulia but the way I understood it is it does have somewhat factual specific if you're engaging gossip and you break your non-disclosure agreement then that would be okay but if you're you're trying to get at a systemic problem you can contribute the information of your experience to the next person in an effort to not see that repeat offender for instance but the difference between those two things could be in the mind of the speaker right what you're calling gossip might be that person saying I'm trying to engage in gossip isn't fair I think talking about it I'm sure Hulia will hear everything in law could get factored specifically you can't cover every instance to get at that so you gotta look at what's a reasonable interpretation of you know was that gossip or was it really to get at a well we had been talking about a formal procedure that triggered somebody getting out of their MDA so in other words lawsuit or something lawsuit suit to the commission on women or the human rights commission and I think that's in there at least a part of it okay those things are well this goes back to back as point so we'll spend more time on it right and what is the the term that Hulia was saying concerted concerted activity concerted activity so I think we need to see I need to see the statutory language around that right so I really understand what that encompasses and that is that protects companies that are subject to the labor relations law do you want me to prepare a short summary of the law around concerted activity for the committee I mean this is as Hulia mentioned there is there are literally reams of case law on this but I can give you a short summary of kind of this is the language we're talking about these are the employers that employees that are covered which is a very broad swath of of employees within the state both the public and private sector and then here are some examples of what they look at in a case and I'm not sure I'll look to see if I can find any cases that are specific to sexual harassment but I'm not sure if they're they're out there but I can touch base with Hulia to see if he knows of any or Tom too you may be aware of some as well so I'll touch base with them and see if they're aware of any on this particular issue that may be illuminating for the committee so you can kind of see what constitutes concerted activity because it is very very fact-based it deals with the work environment it deals with the workers it deals with how they actually approached the issue and the court looks at that or the labor board that's considering the issue always looks at those issues very closely right given labor I have a state work force development board meeting right this minute but I'm late for it go for it we'll talk some more on Tuesday I'll be back at one