 We are now live. Good afternoon and welcome back to Vermont House government operations committee We are taking a little time out from our deliberation on our initial redistricting bill to take a peek at the town meeting emergency response bill this bill will look very similar to what To what the committee passed into law during the first week of session last year So we have invited Tucker Anderson to help us understand the Version of the bill that the Senate has up on the floor. I think Momentarily, I think they're calling themselves into session right now at 1 o'clock And then I would love to go through and hear from some of the other folks About your responses to the bill so Tucker taken away Good afternoon Tucker Anderson from the office of legislative counsel. Good to see you all for the 2022 session You have in front of you s 172 as introduced and An amendment that was voted out of the Senate government operations committee yesterday It should be version 2 of the amendment and I believe it is posted for you all to view I'll start with a brief overview Walkthrough of the bill and then I'll describe what the amendment is changing within the bill as Introduced because I do not know as of yet whether the bill has been amended on the Senate floor So to start There are essentially two operative provisions in the bill here The first is a piece of temporary authority that you passed in the first week of this section last year They would allow Municipalities to adopt the Australian ballot method of voting for the 2022 annual meetings These would be typically floor vote municipalities that do not have permanent Australian ballot Voting in their municipality this would allow them to shift for this year's meeting And then the second provision is the option for those municipalities to move the date of their 2022 annual meeting to a date later in the year Section one of the bill contains the legislative findings intent and purpose These are very similar to the findings and tent and purposes that you considered in last year's bill Starting in subsection a the findings described that because of the continued spread of COVID-19 in the state of Vermont There's the potential that the health and safety of Vermonters who are voting at their annual meetings could be jeopardized It describes the types of meetings that this would cover That's your annual town meetings, but also your school district meetings Moving on in page two sub division two describes that in 2021 so last year you all passed act 60 to authorize the use of outdoor polling places and the mailing of Ballots to all active registered voters steps taken to give some of this permanent authority to municipalities however Concerns still persist because there are municipalities that want to preserve their custom of floor voting and Those municipalities need temporary authority if they want to convert to Australian ballot voting for this year The intent and purpose section in subsection B describes It is the intent of the general assembly that the citizens of Vermont be able to protect their health safety and welfare While continuing to exercise their right to participate in their annual meetings And therefore the purpose of the act is to permit first by vote of the municipal legislative body Municipalities can apply the Australian ballot system to the municipalities 2022 annual meeting and second the opportunity to move the date of the municipalities 2022 annual meeting to To a potentially safer date later in the year Moving on from section one into section two which contains the operative provisions This is the temporary authority that is being granted to the municipalities Subsection a deals with temporary authority to adopt Australian ballot voting It's states notwithstanding the provisions of 17 VSA section 2680 Subsection a and 16 VSA section 711 e and to clarify 17 VSA 2680 a covers Australian ballot voting for municipalities 16 VSA 711 e covers Australian ballot voting for school districts That require the voters of the municipality to vote to apply the provisions of the Australian ballot system to the annual or special meeting of the Municipality in the year 2022 any municipality may apply The Australian ballot system to its annual meeting by vote of its legislative body Any vote shall also apply the Australian ballot method of voting to any vote that occurs as a result of the annual meeting Such as budget revotes or reconsideration votes Essentially what this subsection is saying Municipalities by the vote of their legislative body select board city council, etc. Can apply the Australian ballot system of voting and That will carry through to any linked votes that may happen later such as budget revotes or reconsideration Subsection B deals with informational hearings that precede the annual meeting and it allows municipalities to hold those informational hearings using electronic means Would you like me to pause for questions or go through the walkthrough and questions at the end? Let's pause for a moment and representative Anthony go right ahead. Thank you Tucker Thank You madam chair in the notwithstanding paragraph just about Shouldn't charters be included in that string of VSAs Yes, if there were charters that specifically Required anything having to do with Australian ballot at the time that we drafted this last year There were no charter provisions that we found that called for specific voting provisions related to Australian ballot So the general law controlled Okay, so the dates would not be an issue because there is obviously permission to move the dates We will get to the dates later and you will know specifically that we do set aside charters in that section Thank you very much your enemy appreciate it representative Leclerc Thank You madam chair. Um, good afternoon Tucker I'm looking on page 2 section 2. I just want to understand what I'm reading where it refers to Acts and resolves of number 60 Does that mean that everything that was authorized then would be authorized again going forward here? In other words like the outdoor polling places and the mailing of ballots to all Active registered voters and municipalities So the under state is giving the municipalities the legislative body the authorization to have mail out voting as well Yes, and that acts specifically amended 17 VSA section 2680 to say that in the municipalities that use Australian ballot voting They're permitted to by vote of their legislative body And I think coordinated through the municipal clerk they can just mail out ballots to all active registered voters As opposed to people being asked using as in team voter Ballot requests right rather than having voters submit a request very good. Thank you And just to clarify this is again permissive that the legislative body could choose to do a universal Mailed ballot, but they don't have to so some municipalities might choose not to and Require people to request a ballot Since I did not work on act 60, I would have to either go back and check to see whether it's still I Believe it is permissive, but I know that will who worked on that is also with us if I could punt that question for later Sure Alright to steer us back into the corral of the bill Subsection B. We just started touching on it. This deals with those informational hearings proceeding the meeting Subsection B permits municipalities to use electronic means without designating a physical location To conduct those public informational hearings that are held to set health pursuant to 17 VSA section 2680 sub H When those meetings are held electronically under the authority that is granted in this bill the municipality is required to Use technology that permits the attendance of the public through electronic or other means so the public has to be able to attend Second to allow the public to access the hearing by telephone whenever feasible Third to post information on how the public may access meetings electronically and to include that information in the published agenda for the hearing In subdivision three that follows there's an additional requirement unless unusual circumstances make it impossible for them to do so The legislative body of each municipality and each school board Shall record any public informational hearing held pursuant to this section You may have some sense of deja vu that is because all of these requirements were applied to the temporary open meeting law Provisions that you all passed during the state of emergency So these are being borrowed from that language and applied to the electronic hearings that municipalities can hold Prior to the annual meeting moving on to subsection C And representative Anthony I'll point you to this opening clause not withstanding any provision of law to the contrary which would include those municipal charters that have specific dates. In the year 2022 A municipal legislative body may vote to move the date of the municipalities 2022 annual meeting to a date later in the year 2022 And second that the town of Brattleboro may hold its annual representative town meeting by electronic means both of these provisions were included in last year's bill And to bring you back the reason that the town of Brattleboro is called out is because it is the sole municipality in Vermont that uses the representative annual town meeting model And all of those people who will be voting as representatives at the annual meeting are known and can be identified and therefore can vote remotely Subsection D. This provides that in any municipality that decides to move the date of their 2022 annual meeting. The municipal officers of that municipality shall serve until the annual meeting is held and Until successors are chosen Subsection E. This is temporary authority for the Secretary of State to ensure that these provisions are active. So the Secretary of State may waive statutory deadlines or other statutory provisions or provisions set forth in a school districts articles of agreement Related to municipal elections as necessary in order for a municipality to apply the Australian ballot system to its meeting in accordance with subsection A of this section The waiver applies to statutory provisions that are set forth in a municipal charter or provisions set forth in a school district articles of agreement if the waiver is requested by the municipality The act is set to take effect passage moving on to the amendment that has been proposed by the Senate Committee on Government Operations. There are two instances of amendment here. The first is cleanup of My sloppy work in the initial draft of the bill where I included mention of Voters being required to request their absentee ballots well act 60 took care of that you don't need to request your Australian ballot anymore so that was erroneously included The first instance of amendment wipes out that reference in the underlying bill and condenses the findings in the finding section. The second instance of amendment is substantive And comes as a result of some communities using the prior years authority temporary authority to put items worn items on the ballot that would permanently convert the municipality to the Australian ballot system General law does not allow a municipality to use Australian ballot voting to ask the question should we use Australian ballot from here on out that is not by general law Under a strict analysis of last year's bill, it was not allowed last year either, but the Senate Committee on Government Operations is proposing here to add a set subsection F to state very expressly General law still applies. You are not allowed to do this. Subsection F states that the provisions of 17 vsa section 2680 sub e that's the subsection says you can't use Australian ballot to permanently convert to Australian ballot. That section subsection shall apply to any municipality that votes to hold the 2022 annual municipal meeting by Australian ballot. And it goes on to state expressly a bit of belt and suspenders here, a municipality shall not warn any question on whether the municipality shall adopt the Australian ballot method of voting on a permanent basis for any or all articles for any subsequent municipal elections. That's the Senate amendment. Thank you. I appreciate that representative of your ski. Yes, thank you I asked this question yesterday but my community was one that I do believe did that they put the Australian ballot question on an Australian ballot and sent it out in 2020 I believe do they now retroactively need to change that, given that they weren't supposed to do it in the first place. Do not think that is a question that is appropriate for me to answer, because I do not want to counsel your municipality on what they may have to do under the previous year's law. Fair enough. Any other questions for Tucker about the bill or its amendment. It's just since this is moving rather quickly and we are going to try to make a quick turnaround on this when it comes over to us. It will be all in one bill this this amendment that you've just gone over with us is, is going to be added before and when the Senate sends it over to us it'll. So we don't, we won't need to necessarily make a distinction about about whether it this was part of the bill or an amendment, except to the extent that we want our fellow House members to understand that most of this is something we saw last year. Representative Higley. I think Tucker mentioned it as well. The only other time that we may have to look back at this again is if they make additional amendments on the floor correct. If the Senate, working on it now makes any additional changes then then we would want to look at that again correct. Okay. Yes, and luckily we have all day Thursday to do that in the event that they do, but I'm hoping that we have been in regular enough contact with them that we would. We would know if we were expecting them to do something else. Of course they are they are on the floor as we speak so. Thank you so much Tucker for walking us through that. I think I'd like to go first to Carol does to hear the perspective of the municipal clerks. It is important to all of us that we make sure that our clerks feel comfortable with with legislation that we move through the House so welcome Carol and happy new year. Thank you madam chair and same to everybody else for the record Carol does I'm very city clerk and treasurer and the chair of the legislative committee of the Vermont municipal clerk and treasurer's association. And I watched the testimony yesterday and the vote by Senate gov ops on have read through the bill on we support the bill we support the speed with which both bodies are taking this up we really do appreciate that. We have deadlines that are fast approaching and municipalities will need to make decisions very quickly and and so the, the rapidity is, is definitely appreciated. The only section of the bill that I've had some conversations with will sending in the Secretary of State's office is the final section which talks about the Secretary of State's office, having the authority to make some waiver provisions on a case by case basis. That makes perfect sense to to us on last year you may recall that there was a blanket waiver associated with petitioning and consent of candidate forms that certainly made more sense under the emergency order. And thankfully in that position anymore, those of us who are running for Australian ballot voted offices know that know we need to do petitions. The only time it comes into play is if a community chooses to move from a floor vote to Australian ballot and wants to stick with the March 1 date. It really narrows the window for getting petitions handled. And in those instances, communities being able to talk with the Secretary of State's office about a waiver makes perfect sense and I think that that's the the intent of that section of the language. So we're, we're very supportive of the, the entire bill. And again, thank you. Thank you for being here. Representative look there. Thank you madam chair. Good afternoon Carol. Did your group take a formal vote on this, or are you just reflecting conversations with a few members of your organization. We didn't take a formal vote on it. The, the exact language of the bill has only been available for a very short period of time but it has been an item of conversation going back as far as our September annual meeting. We talked about it at length about the different options that would that would be coming down the pike. There certainly has been a lot of discussion via email over the last couple days since the draft was available. And I would say that the vast majority of the clerks that I have heard from or talked to are supportive of this. Most questions now are just clarifying questions on and the, the, the question about waivers for petitions. Depending on whether a community moves to Australian ballot has, has been the one that we have been addressing the most over the past 24 hours. But, but clerks are are understanding what the, what the process is, is looking like now. Very good. Thank you. Any questions from committee members for Carol Dawes. All right, next up we have the dynamic duo of Gwen Zachoff and Karen Horn from VLCT I'm not sure which one or both of you were planning to share your thoughts with us. Go right ahead Karen. Thank you Madam chair, and happy new year to everybody. Hopefully we'll be meeting in person fairly soon. We are very supportive of s 172. And as Carol said, the speed at which you're getting it passed. We've had a number of questions from local officials really since the early fall about how are we going to be able to conduct town meeting in 2022. The webinar yesterday while the Senate gov ops committee was debating the bill and we had close to 70 participants on that webinar. And I would say the vast majority of the questions were related to this legislation. So that that's essentially our testimony. I will mention that will sending was also on that webinar yesterday, provided the bulk of the information around town meeting. So, thank you for taking it up. The one thing that I do need to mention is that there's at least one town that has contacted me about the amendment. It would be Heinsberg, and in Heinsberg they did have a vote via Australian ballot to move to Australian ballot on a permanent basis. And the manager there said or the administrator excuse me said that they had far more people voting on Australian ballot than they generally do in a floor meeting, but I just passed that along to you. Any questions from committee members from the BLCT perspective. All right. And last but not least we have the dynamic trio from the Secretary of State's office. Secretary condos do you want to kick it off and share with us the work that you've done to inform this bill. Certainly and thank you. Representative Copeland handses and welcome committee. Again, we have worked with the LCT and many of the clerks including Carol on these issues. Carol said, starting back in the fall. We started having those discussions. And we had further discussions with House and Senate leadership, leading up to this move we actually asked the governor at one point whether he'd be willing to add that to the final session that you guys had since it was we felt it was related but he said he would prefer that with the legislature deal with it at the first week or so of the session. We are thankful and we are we're surprised that the Senate moved as quickly as they did yesterday and literally at the end of the day passed it out of committee to the floor. That was good news. In general, we've, we fully support this bill and and and the amendment, because we think it's the right thing to do at this time. I do want to raise one issue which I'm not going to push for, but on page four of the amendment at the very top it's where it says allow the public to access the tell the hearing by telephone. It's never feasible. I can't imagine a scenario where it would not be feasible if they're going to an electronic format. So, I'm not sure that those two words were necessary, but I'm not. I'm really at this point. We want this bill put into place as quickly as possible and we're willing to go with it as it is. So we support it. I don't know if Chris you want to add anything or will. Thank you guys. I don't have anything to add thank you though, Secretary condos thank you committee. Will sinning, of course can respond to any of the detailed questions that you might have for implementation of this on the ground and his many conversations that he's had with clerks about this already. Thank you very much. Will. Do you have any, any responses to any of the previous questions that we've covered. A quick response and give you a very quick spiel because I know everybody's time is limited. First I want to say hi to everybody. Great to be back and see all of you. I have a little more gray hair after a few years of coven in my beer than I have before but wish we didn't have to be here talking about this again but we are and to that point so really quickly first on the one question that was raised. It's very clearly just permissible for these municipalities to opt to mail a ballot to all registered voters or not. That's a clear may as it was written in that 60. It gives me the chance to just quickly say that I think the content of this bill, how minimal it is and how kind of targeted it is, is a testament to the work you guys did on x 60. Because as Tucker mentioned, this is in large part modeled after Act one of last year when we were faced with a similar situation right, one of the. What we did is we looked at Act one and the directives that our office issued as a result of Act one under the more broad authority that you gave us to issue directives in that act. We kind of looked at the provisions in both of those places and shows the one or two that we felt were the most effective, the most highly utilized by towns and municipalities across the state. And the moving of the date of the meeting, and the ability for the legislative body to move to Australian dollar the two main operative provisions that you see in this bill. One of the main operative provisions that was left out was that brought more broad authority for the secretary for secretary condos to just implement election procedures to conduct elections more safely during the pandemic. I don't feel that broad authority was necessary at this point. That's a pretty extreme extent extreme step right to to grant the secretary of state that authority to just kind of come up with procedures. It was very much necessary and very much appreciated last year by us and all the clerks and local election officials. We didn't think it was necessary this time and a big reason for that is because you all took the step to make permanent a lot of those options in x 60. So for example the outdoor polling places that drive through polling places, the ability for towns to decide on a permissive basis to mail ballots to all voters. The early processing of ballots, a lot of what works so well in those directives that you allowed us to make last year has now been made permanent in x 60 and so we don't have to include it here. So, I think the bill is crafted just as it should be put again placed again the most effective provisions from last year, knowing that we have everything that's in x 60 currently impermanent law in our pocket to as options for those towns. And just want to be really clear about that waiver authority in section e that Tucker mentioned and again that that is not the broad authority for the secretary of state to come up with procedures. If you read that language carefully it's, it's really that we can grant waivers that are particularly targeted at letting a municipality adopt the Australian ballot system. And the instances of that that occurred last year, or for example when the legislative body couldn't meet until week or so after the bill had come out. And they're right up against some of the deadlines the big one being that candidate petition filing deadline which is January 28. So if, if some of these municipalities get around to making the decision to switch to Australian ballot, that's such a late date that they're pumping up against the candidate filing deadline, and or a couple weeks after that the ballot printing deadline which is 20 days before the election, they could email my office and ask us explain the circumstances and say could we pump one of those deadlines back a couple days, etc. So as Carol mentioned, we'll be happy to field those requests for waivers for municipalities that are taking advantage of that provision to have the legislative body decide to use Australian ballot for this one annual meeting election. And we'll assess the need for for moving deadlines for those particular municipalities. And I think that's it happy to answer any questions though. Last thing I'm looking at my notes, keep in mind that with a lot of the more sort of specific circumstances and situations and some of these different kinds of municipalities across the state that I think the ability to move the date of the meeting operates as sort of a catch all to get certain municipalities out of sticky wickets that are coming up on March 1. So just remember when you're hearing concerns about whether even what we're doing here is enough. The big one that is the that is the easy, the easy way to solve a lot of the issues at once is just to save delay the meeting for a couple months and I know that has its own problems for communities. Looking to get everything in place for this upcoming year but I think that's an important point to remember. Thank you very much will representative Leclerc. Thank you madam chair. Will I'm glad you commented about the beard because I was going to say you're coming close to catching up with a different deputy secretary state as far as that coloring goes. One of the real questions I have is, how many minutes of municipalities. Does this apply to, and I recognize you may not have the exact number up here off the top of your head but as far as those that would normally meet in person and could possibly go to Australian ballot for one and two. Do we call how many municipalities took advantage of that last year. Well, I can't give you that right off the top of my head replic layer, but I could get back to you for sure because there's and there's actually data on our website. We did a lot of work last year to collect data from the towns after the annual meetings about who made the switches. In general it's a pretty even split between our hand count towns, and I mean our floor, floor count towns I should say our floor meeting towns and the Australian ballot towns. We read an article in BT digger where I believe Kevin had looked at that data on our website that I'm referring to. And I think he narrowed it down to only four or five towns that actually held in person floor meetings. On the first Tuesday in March last year so very many took advantage of it. Good. Okay. Thank you will. Any other questions from committee members for any of the witnesses. Excellent. Well, thank you all for being with us on short notice. Oh, Representative Lefebvre. Sorry, I have one question so last year we were able to assist our towns for those that usually have the four votes but switched to Australian ballot and mailed out their ballots with some funding. Are we going to have any availability for that this year because I know that was a no so no assistance. No assistance at all for anything. Not to pay the cost associated with performing those mailings no and then we did not pay for that postage last year either rep Lefebvre that's not the federal money that we often use to support these activities can be used for local elections that don't include a federal candidate on the ballot. And as you remember we provided a lot of PPE, for instance, and other means of support using our emergency federal funds coronavirus funds, those aren't those aren't still operative right now. So, we revert back to the standard statute which says that the municipality bears the cost of local elections. Thank you. Just to take that further rep with Lefebvre the that would take a legislative action if you remember the legislature actually ponied up a significant along with the governor ponied up a significant amount of money to our our agency to handle those reimbursements. That was our money and we don't have any of that money was is all gone. We used it and then gave the rest of it back to the government to state government. And so there is no money available. And I just want to quickly follow up to rep Lefebvre so that it's not the impression isn't that we're hands hands up and you're on your own. Just before this meeting I was on the phone with the printing company that is going to be printing all of the envelopes for these local elections. And so while we're not able to pay for them. It's a vast amount of work coordinating those orders, making sure that the towns get their quantities that they need in on time, and just slide off shoot y'all should know that paper sourcing is a huge issue right now. And just getting the appropriate amount of envelopes into the hands of the towns in the next two months is going to be a big challenge. Any final questions from committee members. Right. Any of our witnesses think of anything else they wanted to share with us about the bill as we expected to leave the Senate. I would just say, Madam Chair that I thank the committee for taking this up quickly. And look forward to once you receive it moving in as fast as you can so we can get it to the governor's desk. Thank you very much that is our intention as well. So committee just for for timing purposes we will make sure that we take a check in on this bill tomorrow after it has left the Senate because it is my hope that we can be teed up and ready to to approve the bill as soon as it gets referred to us from the House floor on Friday morning. Great. If there are no other questions I think that completes our committee work for this afternoon and we all have a joint assembly to go to in a different virtual zoom room. Great work today. Thank you folks for being with us and we'll see you.