 We are now live on YouTube. This is the Vermont house government operations. We are scheduling some time this morning to. To connect on, on what we've been working on and to spend a little time planning for our next several weeks. And so the first, the first thing that I wanted to, to go over with committee members. S3 44 is coming over from the Senate. That's the bill that we have already spent some time looking at, which would allow municipalities to. To change their tax rate by act of the legislative body as opposed to. To change their tax rate by act of the legislative body. And that would also allow them to. To relieve some of the penalties and interests that might be. Typically charged for late payment of property taxes. And so this morning at 1030, right about now. The houseways and means committee is looking at the language in that bill. And I'm not going to go into that. Because they want to be sure that it's not. Going to have the effect of impacting. State education fund revenues. And so. We, we may get a recommendation from them, which is why I asked Rob, if he would sit in with that meeting and report back to us. I'm not going to go into that. I'm not going to go into that. I'm not going to go into that. I'm just going to make any changes to what the Senate has done. JP, you've got your hand up. Is that because you have a question? Okay. Marsha. Thank you, Madam chair. I just want to press the. Importance of acting quickly. On this bill. I know from my town of Richmond, I've heard some rumblings of some opposition. Which doesn't give the towns. A lot of time to decide how they might. We pass some legislation. Great. Yep. Good point. John. I've heard some rumblings of some opposition to S. 344. From towns. And at least in one email I received yesterday evening. I think the. The VLCT may be ginning up towns to oppose 344. Because it doesn't go far enough with respect to the issues that towns are facing with having to pay the education property tax. So I don't know what they're doing, but. I mean, they definitely seem to be meeting with towns. And I mean, I think obviously I would like to see some relief for the town. But we have to make sure that we don't have to pay the education property tax. That's not going to happen in this bill. That's not really in our jurisdiction. But it may be worth reaching out to Karen horn and Gwen and just making sure that. We're going to have. Not have a tough time on the floor. I do know that from talking to Jeanette that she had a tough time in all Senate caucus on the bill. People I don't think really understood it. I don't know. Tell me more about that. Yeah, was there pushback because senators had been hearing from their towns? No, people didn't understand it. You know, and I didn't participate in all Senate caucus, but I just heard that it was lengthy. And, you know, there was that Jeanette had to spend a lot of time explaining the bill. That's the end was there and can better explain it. So I was not there. I'm not handling that one. I don't have a lot of information to provide on this one. That's Tucker's bill. So I apologize. I can't give any more info. And Tucker is with ways and means right now. Working on helping them. Understand what the bill does. JP. So your hand is down, but you're still muted. Perfect. So apparently there's another option of the. Going through your. Abatement process through your board of civil authority board. Abatement board, I guess it's called. In fact, we are looking at that. Which. Anybody that feels. They need to, can request a hearing before the abatement board and discuss. Their taxes that way that, that. I think that may. Call for several meetings of the abatement board, but I'm really not sure how many there would be. But there's another option and as well, I understand. And that's, that's something we're researching anyway. But I don't know, I just sort of add out. I think everybody knows about the abatement process. So. Jim. Yeah, I think, um, and I got, I heard from one of my towns yesterday, the concern is. You know, this is all fine and good to. Delay tax deadlines or penalties, but the concern is they still got to pay the state education. Tax, which is the lion share. I don't have a good answer for that. I don't have a good answer for that. I don't have a good answer for that. You know, as the bill has passed by the Senate. We may be given authority to the towns, but it really may be. Authority with really without authority because. They would open themselves up into a real pickle. If they. Delay tax filings and then have to pay the state in the interim, which money they don't have. So. It's going to cause additional problems. So. So. Also delay in the state education payment, but if we do that, then it's going to cause additional problems on the Ed fund. So. Catch 22. Yeah. Yes. That is the challenge that we're in and the conversations that I've been a part of with, um, with the chair of the education committee and the chair of ways and means, um, you know, both. You know, I think that, you know, I think that the dangers and the threats that can be, um, that the state could, could have to endure. If we all of a sudden create a scenario where, um, where we inadvertently make it easier for people to delay payment of their property taxes. So, um, I think that what the, what I understand from the. Conversations with those other chairs is that, you know, I think that we should make sure that, uh, that the town as the entity who's responsible for chasing down delinquent taxes, um, is, uh, is going to work just as diligently to collect those taxes as they, uh, as they would in normal circumstances. Um, So that means not creating some sort of perverse incentive for people to, um, to, um, to, um, on collecting taxes. Um, Jim, your hand is still up. Do you have something else you want to, I have sworn to stop putting people's hands down so that, so that we don't have any of those mishaps on the floor. Uh, Hal. And then Mike. Uh, thank you, madam chair. Um, if I recall the last time we heard from Karen Horn of BLCT, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, about what flexibility there might be for cities and towns to forward whatever they collect in terms of, uh, those education, um, funds and forward them accordingly versus being on the hook for the entire amount. So I don't know if it came of that conversation, but I do recall that. Yeah. So, um, I'm going to hand down first. Um, I represent three towns and one of the town managers I heard from is, um, asking if whatever we can do to help school districts past the budgets, because they can't set a tax rate without that school budget. We have talked about voting by mail or where did I hear something about setting up drive, drive by voting? Yeah. So the Secretary of State's office for school. Yeah, I think that maybe Betsy Ann, um, has been been keeping up on this as well, but the Secretary of State's office has, uh, has issued some guidelines, some, um, some options out there for, uh, for municipalities who have outstanding votes that they need to have happen, um, during COVID-19. So that's the end of you have the ability to rattle off what some of those provisions were. I was going to see if I can pull up, uh, the Secretary of State's guidance. Um, but essentially they use the authority from the elections of the COVID related elections act that General Assembly enacted recently, uh, to allow municipalities to use alternative methods of voting, including the drive up voting method, um, a collection of ballots outside of a polling place where people can just deposit their ballots, um, outside and election officials go and collect them, uh, to make it easier to perform these municipal meetings, um, that do require a vote of the electorate. I'll see if I can find the, uh, guidance from the Secretary of State's office and send it out to the committee. Great. So I'm hopeful that that will help these, um, remaining districts that, that don't yet have, um, don't yet have school budgets. Um, one other distinction. Oh, go ahead, JP. I seem to remember when we had a discussion a while back with, uh, with some people from the elections, uh, division of the Secretary of State's office that they were going to be paying the additional cost for mailing, uh, ballots on these elections. Um, and now I, I could be mistaken on that, but I, I know they said that they were going to be covering the additional cost. However, the, um, the guidelines and the directive that came out in the last couple of days from the Secretary of State's office, uh, specifically stated that they were not going to be covering, uh, costs such as postage for the local elections that it was going to be the talented responsibility. So maybe, yeah, maybe I was incorrect. I think, and I'm thinking it was both, but I guess maybe it's just the, the, um, the, uh, general election in November because they did specify on the directive and guidelines. Uh, in the last couple of days that it, the federal funds that they were going to receive would not pay the local taxes or excuse me, the local, uh, expenses. So it would be up to the municipality if they had just a local election to cover all in any cost, including the mailing. That is correct. Um, the, the Secretary of State's office has help America vote act money that they can use to, um, to help pay for mailing the ballots for the primary and general election. Um, because those are statewide elections and the, the local elections that need to happen by, um, by mail ballot will have to be, um, paid for by the municipality themselves. Welcome Rob. I'm Madam chair. How was your time in ways and means. I missed this committee immensely. Um, it was, it was good. Are they, are they done with their, um, uh, job through and consideration of three 44 at this point? Well, for the most part they are, they're obviously going through trying to figure out, um, as you can imagine, there's quite a, a fiscal hole that we're facing. Um, depending on what math you're using, it's somewhere between 200 and 250 million dollars. So it was clearly more of a discussion around. Um, what we're going to do to what some of the potential, uh, cures are to that problem, whether it be somehow finding new money, um, having a per parcel flat tax, it looks like we're in a neighborhood of about 22 to 23 cent tax increase to try to address that issue. So, um, over above the tax increases that we were going to have. So it was, I mean, it was, um, there are long ways away from having any really proposed solutions on what, what to do. Uh, Warren. I was wondering, Rob. Has there been any discussion about, uh, you know, Vermont has always had the reputation of living within our means and. Not, uh, Borrowing money, but these are unusual times. And I just wondered whether they are considering. In deadness in one form or another, rather than massive rate of. Tax increase to the citizenry all at once. Uh, That's. Yeah, go ahead. That's a very, that's a very good question. Warn and it did get mentioned. As to whether that would be a potential solution that we would have to go, to borrow some of the money. Um, this, uh, the care packet, the care's act here. It doesn't appear that. that they could use that money directly. So they're trying to figure out a work around here on how that would play out. So that is certainly in discussion, part of the discussion. Thank you. Marsha. So as far as the CARES Act money, I've also heard that states are getting back to the federal government and asking them if it can be used to fill tax holes. So there may be a change there, but I have a question for Rob and just wondering what the discussion was on S344 specifically. Is there talk about separating out municipal taxes from education taxes? If you can tell us more about that, I'd appreciate it. Well, to be really honest with you, when I got into the conversation and as long as I stayed in there, it's always been around what to do with the education fund. I suspect based on the conversation that I heard that if they have a path forward, tentative path forward, that would in turn dictate on what they're going to do with the education fund money. You know, like for instance, like in Berrytown, we actually pay the schools directly quarterly. And some other communities, it's my understanding might do it a bit differently. And part of this is also to figure out the yield rate, what number do they use, whether they used the December 1st yield rate number that they had tentatively worked up or some sort of a new yield rate based on the reality of where we are today. So they did not get into the details of that, Marsha. All right, any other questions, thoughts, observations? All right, well, stay tuned because that will be a part of our next consideration of a bill out of committee. We have a joint meeting with Senate government operations scheduled for tomorrow. Did you all receive an invitation to that? It's an extra, a bonus committee meeting this week, right? Because you didn't get enough already. But the Secretary of State's office is gonna do an update on their thinking with respect to elections. And so I asked Jeanette if we could do that together since it doesn't really make sense to have them come and say the same thing twice to two different cases. So we will talk a bit about elections tomorrow. Mike, do you wanna talk a little bit about what you were hoping we would also discuss at tomorrow afternoon's committee meeting? And we can maybe talk as a group about how we wanna proceed. Sure, thanks. Well, when we looked at elections, I had considered it adding an amendment to the bill that would, the bill that is in place now, which precludes the use of having to gather signatures for petition to become a candidate. And I had considered an amendment to that, which would limit the number of offices that any one individual could run for. I withdrew that cognizant of we wanted to get that other bill passed and have something in place. And hopefully we could discuss this at a later time. And I still would like to discuss that idea that at least during the time where these emergency considerations are in place, that we limit the number of offices that somebody could run for. I'm not ready to, I understand there might be limited support for that and I'm not ready to stand in the way of any bill, but I would like to go on record for this. I would like to at least put a flag in the ground to say that we're watching and maybe some discussion or an amendment that then gets withdrawn. But I'd like to hear what the committee has to say too if we have some time for that. So I think that let's have a little round of thoughts, observations, suggestions from the committee. And then I think I'll ask Betsy Ann if she can update us on other conversations that have been happening around this issue since we talked about it several weeks ago. So I've got Jim, Rob, and then Warren. Go ahead, Jim. Yeah, thanks Madam Chair. I agree with Mike's kind of view on that. I mean, I think if you're gonna run for office, you should pick the office that you really are interested in not do a staggered approach. And I appreciate some of the concerns that have been raised from a constitutional standpoint, although I thought Representative Moerke's amendment might have addressed some of that. I don't know, I just think you should pick your medicine, pick the office that you really want and not try to confuse voters by getting yourself listed on multiple ballots. I know we had a candidate for statewide office last year, last election. And I remember people coming out of the voting booth asking me when they came back outside and said, who is this guy running for five offices or something? And it was embarrassing in some respect. So I just think pick with what you want to do and whether we can do it or not do it. I guess I would like to learn more about that, but that's just where I am. So I would be supportive if we can do it. Warren? Well, I agreed with Mike when this was first raised and I believe Jim agreed with him at that time. So I'm still with that group. It's silly. I think if we put some sort of a limit on it, maybe say no more than three offices, I'd be willing to accept even that as a partial, but I'd prefer to have them pick one office and run hard to win it. I said, but I'll support whatever limits we can come up with. Great. Bob Hooper. I would assume we're talking about offices that conflict, like you can run for sheriff and run for governor and still be legitimate. I wonder, Betsy Ann and your synopsis, if you look at different branches of government, being exclusionary or inclusionary or whatever. I mean, it seems like it's, you can't run for several administration offices, but I would find being treasurer and being a state rep to be kind of weird, but I don't necessarily know how they would bar. Thank you. Betsy Ann, go ahead. Hi, just in regard to that issue, there is an incompatible offices section in the Vermont Constitution. It's chapter two, section 54 entitled incompatible offices. And it lists the office that a person cannot hold at the same time. And that list is governor, lieutenant governor, justice of the Supreme Court, treasurer, senator, house member, and sheriff. So just as you were saying, Representative Hooper, a person cannot be a house rep and treasurer at the same time. Now we do have case law, at least on that section that makes clear that it's holding the office at the same time. It's not a prohibition on running for the office at the same time. It's just that under that case law, if a person were elected to two incompatible offices, they would have to choose which one they wanted to hold because they could not hold two at the same time. So like state attorney or something like that, it's far enough down the list that... State's attorney is not an incompatible office. Rob LeClaire. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I chair, sorry. Chair, yes. I'm using my iPad here, so I'm still trying to figure that out. I do agree with what Mike's concerns are and it doesn't make sense. I can't believe that the founding fathers would have envisioned anybody running for more than one office. But it is my understanding, isn't it? That they shortened that up to a two week window to hopefully try to limit that. Is that my understanding? And that should help the problem. Some shouldn't it? That's Ian, go ahead. Yes, that was in your COVID elections bill. On the one side, it said no candidate needs to file to collect any voter signatures because under the current law, otherwise a person depending on the office has to collect between 30 and 1000 signatures depending on which office you run for. So in that elections bill, that COVID elections bill that you enacted, the signature requirement was eliminated but just as you were saying, Rob LeClaire, then it also shortened the period to file candidate consents to about a two week period in light of eliminating that signature requirement. So I believe it is what mid-May, starting sometime in mid-May where those candidate consents will be due. And it is a two week period to file candidate consents. Right now, that bill does not place any limit on the number of candidate consents that could be filed. Or Wiki's amendment that you discussed would have said that a person could not file a candidate consent for more than one office and either the primary or general election, but that a person could still win by write-in. For example, if they did file a candidate consent for office X, but they won as a write-in candidate for office Y, they could win that office Y by write-in. You good, Rob? I'm good, thank you. All right, Jim. So just in response to that, I think the Secretary of State's office after the last election cycle, prior to that, you could do one petition, get your 500 signatures, and then you could enter as many offices as you wanted, which is exactly what happened. So I think they were planning this time to change so that you had to do a different petition for each office, which obviously made it much harder. So if you're intent was to run for five offices, you had to get 500 signatures times five, and people would know exactly what you were running for when you did that. I don't think the two-week window this time is necessarily a deterrent to putting your name on multiple places because you're gonna do them all at the same time. It's the same form and you just change the office that you're running for, the disclosure, everything else is the same. So we've shortened it, but the reality is I think we've made it much easier to run for multiple offices. And again, I would support some kind of limitation as long as they weren't, if they were conflicting offices and that state's attorney, I mean, we used to have a state senator who was also a state's attorney at the same time because where he came from, it was a part-time position. And I don't think, I think that was fine, but should I put my name on the ballot for state rep and for state senator, this go around because I can? I don't think that serves the interests of the voters when they're trying to make a decision. What does this candidate really, really want? So that's just my two cents, I'll shut up. All right, so Betsy Ann, why don't you fill us in on what new information you have about this issue? Okay, just before I do real quick, the General Assembly did add 17 BSA section 2353 B2 last year to say that a single petition shall contain only one office for which a person seeks to be a candidate so that a person had to file separate petitions for multiple offices, but that's under the current law that requires all the signature collecting of voters. So you did address that, but here in the 2020 elections, under the COVID elections legislation, a person can just submit, all a person needs to do is submit a candidate consent so they could file a candidate consent, a separate candidate consent for each office that they wanna run for. When this idea of prohibiting a person from filing more than one candidate consent was raised during your deliberation of the COVID elections bill, I just did raise the concern about whether this was constitutionally permissible because it's never been done in Vermont before. There's never been a prohibition on filing a petition or candidate consent for more than one office. So it was uncharted territory on how our Vermont Supreme Court would view that. The question is on the one hand, whether it's an unconstitutional attempt to add a qualification for office being that you're not running for any other office or whether on the other hand, it is a permissible regulation of what's called ballot access and states can have ballot access restrictions such as the requirement to gather a certain number of signatures and file them by a certain date. I just raised it since we didn't know since we've never had this scenario here in the state. And at the time I couldn't tell you and I still can't tell you a certainty whether it is constitutionally permissible. But I wanted to make sure that the AG's office is aware of this issue or this proposal because if it were enacted in the law, that'd be the office that would need to defend any challenges to it. So you should definitely hear testimony from the AG's office if you do wanna pursue the idea of prohibiting a person from filing a candidate consent for more than one office. I've been in touch with them just so they're aware of this and I can't speak for them as I understand it. If I'm accurately passing on to you what I am aware of, I don't think that they have the same concerns that it is unconstitutional as I understand it. You should hear directly from them. It seems that it would be permissible ballot access regulation, but I'd highly suggest that you hear from them directly on this issue since they would be the entity that would need to defend the law if it were enacted. And the court, I just note our Vermont Supreme Court at least from some of the language in their case law does appear to have a view of wanting to protect access to the ballot so that people can have access to the ballot. But again, we don't know for sure what they'd say. And also it's a very, the way that Rupert Ruickie's amendment was drafted, it was limited just to the 2020 elections during this time where there's not a voter signature requirement. So if the court, even if the court did have concerns, perhaps they would consider that these unusual circumstances because essentially a person just needs to file a consent to have his or her name printed on the ballot. Right, and given that we're looking at mailing ballots, in an ideal world, we wouldn't have to mail a 17-page ballot because so many people decided they wanted to run for everything because there's nothing stopping them from that. I've got Warren with a hand up and Bob Hooper, your hand is up still. Did you wanna say something again? Yeah, I wanted, we're drawing a distinction between conflicting office and others in this conversation, right? The way that Rupert Ruickie's amendment was drafted, it didn't make the distinction. It was just that a person would not be permitted to file more than one candidate consent for any office, regardless of whether the constitution considers it an incompatible office. I'd be a hundred percent in favor of conflicting, I don't know about the rest of it. So I wonder how that would work if I decided that I wanted to run for governor and run for state rep at the same time. I'm turning my state rep petition into the district clerk's office. Where am I turning my governor's petition into and who would be the one to know whether I had filed for more than one office? For state and congressional offices that gets filed with the secretary of state's office, for a legislative office, it's with either the senatorial district clerk or the representative district clerk. Okay, so that could be functionally challenging if petitions or candidate consent forms are heading to two different entities and somebody has to make the call. Warren, go ahead. Okay, well, I very much agree with Mike on the idea of limiting the number of offices. From a very practical standpoint, I believe petitions can be turned in starting tomorrow and have to be turned in by the 14th. That's a very narrow window for us being able to actually do anything about this. And I think Mike pretty much recognized that saying he wasn't going to make too big an issue by this right now. I think this is something that we should look at in the future, but what would we do if somebody shows up at their representative district clerk's office tomorrow with petitions for several other offices and maybe turns in more at the senatorial district office and with the secretary of state. And then 12 days from now, we actually enact something that says they can't do that. Well, they were doing something that was perfectly legal when they did it and what do we do then? That's going to tie it up well through the election period. So I don't see any real value in jumping on a bandwagon to pursue this right now. I just, I don't see it working out well. Betsy Ann. I'm just going back to the COVID Elections Act which is act number two or 92, pardon, in section two, subsection B, the primary petitions for major party candidates cannot be filed any earlier than the second Thursday after the first Monday in May and that's Thursday, May 14th. So candidate consents can't start being filed until May 14th. So there is that amount of time from now until May 14th to enact legislation to put a limit on the number of candidate consents if you choose to pursue that. Go ahead, Warren. Well, so they can't be turned in until the 14th? That's correct. It must be turned in by when? The 28th. Oh, okay. I had my two week period sort of shifted there. Sorry about that. Well, the point is well taken that we are fast approaching the time when it would be too late to enact a change like this. I think it would have to be pretty well agreed upon by both the House and the Senate and pretty well greased in order for it to make its way through the process. And I'm happy to make a stab at it if the committee wishes to go that way. Jim? Would it be worth raising that tomorrow in our joint meeting? You're absolutely right. It would be done real quickly. It could be too late already, but it would be interesting to see if they have broad support for it in the Senate. If they don't, then it's probably a new point and maybe we have to let it go. But I think it's worth raising the question. Marsha? In my mind, running for office is a serious consideration. And somehow when someone runs for five offices, it trivializes that in a way. I don't think the candidate should have a, let's throw it up against the wall and see what sticks kind of attitude. So I support this. Thank you. Well, I'm happy to bring it up tomorrow when we're all together and see how it goes. If you have a relationship with any of the Senate members of government operations, I would highly recommend that you have an initial conversation between now and tomorrow at one o'clock in order to see if you can encourage some open-mindedness on the part of your favorite Senator, Jim. Yeah, just not to belabor it, but I would agree with Representative Hoover that it should be spelled out in compatible offices. And if they're not incompatible, then yes, you can do that because there aren't gonna be offices like I think JP is on the Justice of the Peace is on in the fall, some of us may be JP's right now. So I think that has to be spelled out if we do it. Thank you. Okay. So does the committee want to pursue finalizing some language to present to the Senate tomorrow? We can just do a straw poll with that. So if you wanna give me a virtual thumbs up or an actual thumbs up or a thumbs down if you do not want to, and I can't see JP and Rob has gone back to, all right, Nelson's got a virtual thumbs up, all right. Rob has gone back to sit in and listen to the Ways and Means Committee. So he's got his video off because he's doing two things at once. JP's got a thumbs up as well, great. Okay, so let's work on that language. And Betsy Anders, do we need to make some tweaks to that language in order to reflect what Jim was just suggesting about the incompatible? Yes, is the committee's position to have this prohibition only apply to the constitutionally incompatible offices? It's up to you committee, Mike's wavering. Mike, go ahead and unmute yourself and give us a pitch one way or the other. I'm good with that. What Bob, what representative Huper said made sense to me. So I'm good with that qualification. All right, anybody else have a strong feeling on that? Go ahead, Bob. Well, just to emphasize, I think it also draws less flies from constitutional challenge when you narrow it to something like that. And I could be completely and totally ignorant of that process. All right, Betsy, and do you have any other questions for us about what we're looking to propose? It's okay if I discuss the potential language with the Secretary of State's office. I always find it's good to run it by them to make sure it will work from an administrative perspective. The Director of Elections is really good at pointing out some potential tweaks to help strengthen the language administratively. Great, thank you, Mike. Should we copy the AG's office on it too? Or does that be mature? Well, the AG's office will need to weigh in on it if we get to the point of moving it forward. But probably for the first blush go around with it, it's really critical to have the language reviewed by an elections administrator so that they know whether there's pitfalls there that we could solve with some tweaks to the language. Betsy, and do you have a connection at the AG's office? Yes. So would you share that after you've talked with the Director of Elections, would you share that with the AG's office just so that they can be giving some thought to how they would weigh in on it? And we will see if we have more work to do on it going forward. Great. Any other questions on that topic? All right, seeing none. So I wanted to talk a little bit in our committee discussion today about other bills that we might consider working on during this legislative session. And the Senate had neared completion on a couple of OPR related bills. And I just wanted to draw your attention to them and invite you to take a peek at where those bills were left off because some of them, I think do have a compelling need to be passed at this point. In particular, the nurse compact bill that is a priority for the nursing board and also could help with the administering of healthcare services by telehealth during the emergency. So that is S125. S220 is the more typical annual OPR bill. And there are many parts of it that would be helpful, I think, moving out of the COVID shutdown. There are a couple of parts of it that perhaps we might want to ditch in light of the fact that we are all on a stay at home order for the foreseeable future. And so I think I would like to suggest that we hear from the director of OPR to help us understand which parts of that bill make sense and which parts of the bill perhaps could be set aside until next year. So that's S220, I believe. And then there's S233 and I don't recall where that bill left off. Betsy N, do you recall where that bill left off? Seems like an eternity ago. I believe that a Senate GovOps voted out S233 with an amendment, just looking it up. That's uniform licensing standards, yes. I believe they did vote that out and that applies to professions across multiple professional regulatory entities so that they would have more uniform processes in professional regulation. And I believe that did get voted out. So either at the beginning of March or maybe end of February, no, it was mid-March. It was shortly before the State House shutdown. Yeah, so that bill I think would also be a compelling one to pass because it creates a sort of a fast track licensure for people who are moving into the state from somewhere else. So it's of particular benefit to military personnel and military families, to new Americans who may come with professional credentials from another country and might be able to practice to the fullest extent here in Vermont if they had a more of a fast track to licensure. This is part of a multi-state process that has been facilitated by NCSL for a number of years and the Secretary of State's office had us attend a conference last October, I guess it was. Seems like years ago at this point to learn more about how fast tracking licensure can be a benefit to folks moving back and forth between states. John Gannon. So I was just looking, all three of those bills are in Senate Finance right now. So I'm just wondering if they're gonna get out of Senate Finance so that, there's a full Senate vote on them and they come over to the House. I would hate to do a lot of work on all those bills if they're just gonna get stuck in Finance. So there have been ongoing conversations that I understand are happening between the House and the Senate about just what is COVID related and what is not COVID related. The way the Speaker has asked chairs in the House to look at things though is, yes, prioritize your COVID response bills. So the elections bills and the municipal bills that we've been working on are directly emergency related, but the next step is to think about what do we need coming out of this COVID shutdown in order to help our economy and our neighbors rebound from this. And I think anything that we do that helps facilitate licensure for different professions is in many ways an economic development, economic stimulus kind of bill. And so I don't know at what point the Senate will decide to give a green light to things that aren't directly COVID emergency related and instead start forward thinking about things that can help us when we come out of this. But these are bills that I think legitimately should be on that list of things that we move before we adjourn for the biennium. So that's why I bring it up. Are there other pieces of work either that we voted out of our committee or that you understood the Senate was working on that you feel there is a compelling case to be made that we should prioritize passage? Jeanette has asked me a couple of different times whether any of the things that we sent them are priorities. So we've had a few conversations about that but I did wanna make sure that you all knew if you had a strong feeling about a bill that we had passed that hasn't yet made it all the way through the process that now it's the time to make that pitch. So Jim Harrison. Yeah, thank you. I just, the charter issues we've gotten a couple. I know there's a couple others coming. I don't know that they're priorities but they may be for those individual towns. And I don't know if we should schedule a meeting sometime to hear from the respective representatives to make their case. A couple of them are local option taxes. Obviously budgets are gonna be tight at all levels and probably some are looking at a renewed interest in local option. So those bills would have to go to ways and means anyhow. So I just raised that as to whether or not we wanna put it on our radar and hear from sponsors. Yeah. Yes, I think we should probably do that. So we should work with Andrea to get a list of who the reps are who would like to be included. We should probably invite all of them but hopefully towns that have multiple reps don't need to have each rep speak at all on the same issue. But yeah, I'm happy to schedule a day on charters next week. John Gannon. Yeah, no, I've heard from Representative Christensen about the Perkinsville charter. She would like to see that move forward. Yep. And that's one that is already over in the Senate. Yeah. And it's just dissolving the village of Perkinsville. It's pretty straightforward, but I think it's important. If I recall correctly, she's on the Perkinsville village council or something and she's dissolving herself. She's trying to shed parts of her job description. Yeah. All right. So I think we can get some work on that set up for next week and we'll also work on finishing our consideration of 344 next week. Rob, are you back with us now? I am Madam Chair temporarily because of the good work that the very talented and hardworking government operations committee has done and continues to do. Miko, sorry, that was my talk. I don't anticipate they'd spend some time obviously talking about that as far as what the language meant. One of the questions was, does this give the legislative body some powers that say the voters don't have, meaning as far as addressing the tax rates and the penalties. And it does in that the voters could give themselves that power, but they'd have to hold a special election to do that. But it's very clear that it only goes to the end of the calendar year. So I don't anticipate it based on the conversations that I've heard and they're continuing to have. They're being much concerned about that. The one question that has been floating around out there that, and I know it was with our committee as well, is the education monies that are collected and what happens there? If the legislative body makes the decision that they can't pay the school district, who borrows the money to make the school district hold? Does the school district borrow the money? Does the municipal body borrow the money to make the school district hold? And I know each community is gonna handle this differently as far as the tax rates or the collection of taxes is some are maybe gonna push back the collection of the taxes, some like us in Berrytown are gonna look for them to be on the date that they're due but then have the board of abatement go back through and address any penalties and interest immediately after on a case-by-case basis. So I think that that's it. Madam Chair. Great, because anybody have questions for Rob about what he has heard in ways and means? Excellent. I'm gonna duck back in there. Okay, thanks for doing that and let us know what you learn. All right, so we are coming to the close of our time here this morning. Does anybody have any other questions or comments or requests for different issues to be elevated in the coming weeks? I'm not seeing you all jumping all at once but Alexa is reading something off to the side. So I'm gonna give Alexa a moment. Mike, go ahead. I don't know if this is accessible to Andrea but if we could get an updated list of what we've been working on. My brain is a little fuzzy with everything else that's going on. That would be helpful for me. So a list of bills that are out of our committee or a list of bills that what specifically are you looking for? I think what's on the wall, I don't know that we're gonna start something fresh but it would just be helpful for me to just get a sense of what's on the wall still. And especially what's come over from the Senate. Almost nothing, that's the problem. They had a slew of probably three to five bills that they were set to pass right under the wire of crossover and they didn't get them across. John, Gannon. So just to sort of answer Mike's question, if you go to our committee page and look at bills, you can actually find bills that are in our committee and also bills that are out of our committee. So you can get a list of what's in our committee and also what's out of our committee. I mean, we actually get a lot of work done, especially compared to the Senate, which is very frustrating. I mean, that they waited until the very end to pass out bills and because of what happened with COVID-19 didn't get anything done. Yeah, I mean, I agree with Jim, we should look at these charters. There's a lot of charters that got passed and try to think if there's anything else that's desperately in need of work, but I'll keep looking. So I believe that our committee meetings for next week are the same time blocks that we had this week. I think that that's what I understand. And there have been several chairs who have asked if we could please start scheduling our own times and not have to abide by the master schedule, but that is still a request that is being processed at this point. For next week, I believe that means that we have only three hours of scheduled committee time, two hours on Tuesday and one hour on Thursday. Tuesday, we will need to dedicate to passing out bills that we can then be moving on the floor on Wednesday and Friday of next week. So we should probably plan to spend the hour next Thursday, I think, working on charter related issues since those are not necessarily urgent to get to the floor ASAP. So that sounds like a plan. All right, I think that's all for today. And I hope that you all have a lovely weekend. It's supposed to warm up a little bit, maybe, be nice. You have a full house, eh? I do, yes. Yeah, my two younger daughters came home and my middle daughter's boyfriend came with them. And so we've been pretty much holed up and we're gonna spend two weeks in relative quarantine and then probably the middle daughter will go back to California. She's a little stressed though because she has no money and no job prospects and she's about to graduate from college. So, which she'll have no graduation ceremony, of course, but she's a little stressed about what life looks like when you graduate from college into a pandemic. Welcome to adulthood. If I were her, I'd stay in school, but I don't wanna tell her that because then I'll have to pay for it. All right, anything else that folks would like to bring up before we sign off? Madam Chair, they took a head nod straw poll and it was unanimous to support the excellent work that the committee has done. All right, so no red flags there. Good deal. All right, super. So I will see you all tomorrow afternoon with Senate government operations. Won't that be fun? Oh, gosh.