 Wednesday, September 9th. And this is Senate government operations. So we are looking at a bill that we have been calling lessons learned. And I think what's really important to remind people that we are not making any permanent changes to the statutes. What we're doing is putting in place some provisions so that if we find ourselves in the kind of emergency, or as Tucker has put out different types of emergencies, we can have ready responses. As Senator Clarkson said yesterday, it is meant to keep us functioning in a more efficient way so that we don't have to, if we come back in January and find out that we are once again in the middle of some kind of emergency or next May or next June, that we have some provisions in place that can be put into effect. And so we are not making any permanent changes to the permanent statutes. When there isn't an emergency, we revert back to the permanent statutes. So what I'd like to do, I think, is we have some issues around the open meeting provisions, which I understand. But what I would like to do first is go to, I see that David Hurley, he is here with us, and just make sure that because one of the provisions in there was around the executive director being able to act in consultation with the commissioner of health for the board if the board was unable to meet. Did I say that right, Betsy? Okay. I'd just like to make sure that David is okay with that and that everything is okay so that he doesn't have to stay with us if he doesn't want to for this entire meeting and then get to him for his little tiny section at the end. So David, that's fine. It's actually with the authorization of the health commissioner. I think the consultation is with regard to OPR. But yeah, we're good with that. Okay. So we can cross that section off. We're fine with that. Good. Okay. Thank you for joining us, David, and you certainly are welcome to stay. But I suspect you have other things you need to attend to, so feel free. That may be David. That may be David's briefest testimony ever. I'll keep you guys in the background and just let me know if you need anything. Thank you. Thank you, David. And then I think that the other one that we've pretty much settled on is the OPR issues. So I'd like to go there next if that's okay with everybody so that we can kind of also let Lauren leave if she wants to or she can stay. I think she's also representing Chris Winters today. But let's go to the other OPR sections so that we can make sure we're okay with those. Lauren, good afternoon for the record. Lauren Hippert, director of the Office of Professional Regulation. Is my internet being wonky? No, you're fine. I in no way can represent Chris Winters and his excellent hair. So I can't I can't do that, but he did ask me to step in for him. The elections changes he felt were good and he supports the public records changes I think he felt comfortable with, but he thought that there would be further lessons learned that may need to be explored in January. Yeah, okay, but can you can you address the OPR issues first? Oh, sure. Yeah, sorry, I apologize. The OPR issues. I believe that the draft has written works for OPR. I've just been reviewing it and I don't see any problems. I don't know if there's any specific questions that this committee has for me, but it looks good. It looks like it has everything that we were talking about earlier. Good. No, thanks. I don't think we had any questions necessarily on, but we just wanted to make sure that it was okay because our intent hopefully is to pass it out tomorrow. Yes, that's so we wanted to make sure that you were okay with with what was there so we didn't have to review it again. It does look good. And I actually just, yes, it looks good. I was about to move on to elections again. Not yet. The OPR sections look great. Thank you very much. Good, thank you. And we have the inspection sections around tax. I can't remember what they even called, but around the in-person inspections for the tax abatements. To go and look at properties. So who, Gwen and Karen, are you guys okay with that? Yeah, this is Karen. Yeah, I think we're good with that. Okay, so we can cross we can check that one off is okay. Okay. Yeah. So then we have the municipal elections issue and I think we have a new version of that, I believe. Do we have it with do we have it? Can we put it up on the can you share it with us, Betsy Ann? I'll tell you, I'm beginning to think that one of the things that happens with Zoom meetings is that there's some kind of a the screen has some kind of a sucking capability and it's been sucking my brain power. And I don't I don't know where it's going, but there isn't much left. It's the inertia. I mean it's intellectually so stimulating, but it is so inert. We are so confined and I think our conversation is somewhat constrained. And my brain is too. Yeah, and our brains. Well, I think that all goes part and parcel. So do we have it here? Is it on our website? And I think it's going to be right there. Okay. Oh, okay. Yes. So the elections. And what draft is this that we're looking at? 3.1 still? I don't know. It's on the screen. Well, I know, but I can't see this way. I'm going to our website to see if it's there. Okay. So are there just some Karen, Gwynne, do you want to weigh in on this? I'm not sure what am I looking at Betsy Ann's most recent draft. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be looking at. Sorry. Is it 1.2? Is it draft? I have draft 1.2 at 11.58 this morning. That's what I have anyway. Section seven. I'm sorry. Yeah, okay. These days just get away from you. I was trying to talk. I couldn't get unmuted. Oh my gosh. Okay. That felt really, I felt, I was struggling there. Okay. I'm here. I'm sorry, Karen. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but it was like my mouth was shut. No, that's fine. So yes, this would provide that during a declared emergency, which I think, as you mentioned, Madam Chair is important for all of these provisions. It's only during a declared state of emergency that's been declared by the governor. The municipality may move the time and date of the annual meeting or special meeting. Right. And the town may, the town being the local legislative body to be specific, may decide to apply the provisions of the Australian ballot system. So I think that both those sections work. Section seven and section eight. Okay. Does anybody else want to weigh in on that? I don't think that that was addressed at all in the letter from Lisa Loomis. She was mostly talking about open meetings. I don't think she addressed that issue, but does anybody else want to weigh in on that at all? Lauren, did you have some comments? Yes. I just wanted to say that I did hear from Will Senning, the elections director, and he agrees with how this bill is written on the election section. Okay. All right. Committee. Any concerns, comments? The experts are in agreement. Okay. Anthony? I'm good. All set. Brian, did you say you're good? Yes, all set. Sorry. And I don't see Chris with us yet? No. Okay, I didn't see. Can I say, actually, we stuck with the 60 days in advance. So you have to have an emergency that went on for a while before we even got to this kind of situation. Yeah, it's saying that during the state of emergency, the legislative body can vote during that emergency to apply the Australian ballot system to an upcoming annual or special meeting, not less than 60 days in advance of that meeting. So I think that the timing in which that they could vote to apply Australian ballot is happening during the state of emergency. And it would be for a future meeting that is not less than 60 days in advance from when they make that determination to allow them to meet all of the deadlines that they'd have to meet to ensure that the meeting can be held by Australian ballot. So obviously, you already just said this, I'm just gonna say it again. But if there's a meeting that's scheduled a month a month out, and there's an ice storm happens or some catastrophe happens, but the meeting's only a month away, we cannot change it for that meeting, which is only a month away. We only change it for meetings that are 60 days out. They can correct, but then they would also be able to use if something like that were to happen. And there seems like there will be an issue with that meeting that's now 30 days away. They also have that extra section seven authority that lets them move the date and time of a meeting. So if they can't meet that, yes, I could see how these two sections would work in concert. Yeah, that's good. Appreciate it. You might need to, in an ice storm, you might not need to use the Australian ballot provision, but you might need to change the time to later on when the ice storm was over. Okay, I got it. Thanks. Okay. Madam chair, yes, let you know I am here, but sorry I was late. I ended up having to go to the rules committee to try to get a bill released. And did you get it released? No, actually, I didn't because the chair of the meeting left so abruptly that the rest of the committee, we didn't get a vote. And they didn't want to go ahead and vote. That's all. All right. So we can cross this section off because we're okay with it. Or both of them, seven and eight. Yeah. I mean, that's the part dealing with municipal elections. Okay. Let's go to the section on highway funds. And it looks to me like a Tucker and Betsy and have been very busy here combining these into what looks like a real bill. No more XYZs. Yes, it's got numbers. So sorry, what's going on, Jeanette? I will let Betsy say the page. Section six. The repeal. Yes, on page nine. This is the Tucker section. Okay, Tucker, you want to weigh in and just remind us what it is so everybody can agree. Sure. 19 VSA section 312, established a requirement that municipalities segregate their town highway funds from their general fund. This was tied to a time when municipalities were compelled to collect a highway specific tax, a town highway tax, and appropriate those tax proceeds to a fund specifically for town highways. I did pass this repeal by the transportation expert in our office who commented that the repeal would not have an impact on state funds that are granted and held by municipalities for highway projects that this repeal would not have any impact on the management of those funds. She did note that there are still some requirements on minimum allocations for town highways in the budget. And, you know, there are still going to be some constraints around how the town goes about approving its budget. So for example, if the voters in a given municipality do determine to allocate a specific minimum amount to the town highway, there could be some legal question as to whether those minimum funds could be mingled with the general fund in the case of an emergency. But other than that very specific concern, this is good to go. And if you remember when we did this in the COVID issues, the Transportation Committee was okay with it. Yeah. And I want to apologize. I want to just go back one second to the municipal elections issues. Betsy Ann sent it to Senator Baruth to have them look at it. And the House Education Committee has apparently sent over some issues around for school boards around Australian ballot, but it's very complicated and has a lot more in it. And he was going to just make sure that it jived with what we were doing here. And he'll let us know this afternoon. Okay. So we're basically okay with that. I think what remind me if we have stuff left other than open meetings. You still have water and wastewater disconnects? Yeah. Where were we with that? And where is it in this new bill? Betsy is about to bring it up. Page seven, section four. Page seven, right back. So this version of the section has one a new look and two some additions that you requested yesterday. First, as you may recall, the version that you looked at over the last week had separate subsections dealing with each of the entities that provides drinking water or wastewater services to ratepayers. I found a way to combine all of these entities into one subsection to make some of the subsequent drafting U.S. need to do a bit more easier and fluid and hopefully easier to interpret and read for those who are going to be applying this in the future. So subsection A now goes step by step with each of the entities. So it sets aside not only this chapter but any provision of law to the contrary and then says that a municipality, any of those entities that are permitted under 10VSA chapter 56 and any of the PUC regulated entities. And if you go down that gets us to line 16 which sets up our state of emergency clause that we use throughout the bill that any of those entities during a declared state of emergency are prohibited from disconnecting any person from those services. And then we hit the trigger that you asked for yesterday. Provided that first, the state of emergency is declared in response to an all hazard and recall that's the term that we've been discussing that comes from 20VSA chapter one that will cause financial hardship and the inability of ratepayers to pay for water or sewer services. So there's the first trigger that you asked for. This has to be a disaster that causes financial hardship and the inability to pay. Moving on to subdivision two and these are conjunctive so they both have to happen. The second is that the all hazard does not require the municipality to disconnect water or sewer services to protect the health and safety of the public. So when you first looked at this, this was a blanket prohibition that would get triggered. These utility providers would not be able to turn off water or wastewater at any time during a declared state of emergency. And Senator Bray brought up a very good point which is well what if the state of emergency is because of contaminated drinking water? Shouldn't they be able to turn off the potable water system? And the answer was of course, yes. So that's what this subdivision does. It ensures that if the all hazard requires that the water or wastewater gets shut off that the utility provider can do so. Subdivisions B1 and 2 deal with the enforcement provision. Again, because we combined all of those previous subsections into subsection A, we had to get creative with some of the enforcement provisions to make sure that the language was still there, but that it applies to this new structure we're using. We can move on. Subsection C is the last new piece that you asked for. This is the piece of states that during the state of emergency, while the disconnections are prohibited, that the rate payer is still going to remain obligated for the bills that are accruing during the moratorium. So subsection C states that a rate payer shall remain obligated for any amounts due to a water or sewer service provider that is subject to this section. The rate payer shall have a minimum of 90 days after the end of the declared state of emergency to pay the amounts due. So this is setting up a minimum 90 day buffer for the rate payer wants to declare a state of emergency and they have to have at least 90 days to get the money to repay the amount due. Chris? Yes? You were the kind of the impetus for this. Does this sound okay to you? Yes, thank you. Okay, was that a short yes, thank you? No. I said yes, thank you. That's what I meant. Were you going to add more? Am I going to add more than yes, thank you? No, just it sounds as I said, sounds just like what we need. So thank you. Karen? That sounds good to us as well. Anyone else? Okay, we're done with that one. There was one other section, I mean I'm trying to make sure I get all the sections here. So remind me when I, if I skip over them, one was the municipal, the deadlines for permits and licenses from the state to the municipalities. And from the municipality to the individuals. Right. So would you like to, I think Tucker, I think that was you? Yes, so this is in section five and Betsy, is that on page eight? Yes, at the bottom of page eight starting online, 18. And to bring you back to yesterday, this is being added to 20VSA chapter one, which is the chapter that contains all of the emergency declaration provisions and the powers, procedures and operations during a declared state of emergency. So would adding new section 47 there, it seemed like the right place to put this specific municipal authority that is only triggered by the state of emergency? And I will put one note in here, which is important. Madam Chair, you said that this section deals with both the state licenses, permits and deadlines that are applied to municipalities and the municipal deadline licenses and permits. In fact, this only deals with the municipal permits and licenses. So the trigger here again is during the declared state of emergency, a municipal corporation may, important word, this is optional, extend any statutory deadline applicable to municipal corporations provided that the deadline doesn't relate to a state or federal license permit program to extend or waive deadlines applicable to any licenses, programs, plans, permits that are issued by a municipality. There is a default extension here that during a declared state of emergency, any expiring license permit program or plan that is issued by a municipal corporation that is due for renewal shall remain valid for 90 days after the date that the declared state of emergency ends. So this subsection, if it's triggered by the declared state of emergency will automatically extend any of those licenses, permits, programs or plans for 90 days after the declared emergency is ended. Okay. So I guess originally, or is everybody okay with this section? Yes. Yeah. Karen. Yes. So I think originally we did have a section in there about the state issued permits. But I guess from Suzanne, Secretary Young's testimony yesterday, they don't want anything in there dealing with the state. So I, my feeling is that I don't want, I think that it should be in here. But I guess we can have that conversation in January. I don't want anything to tank this. That's Ian. Hi, thanks. On that topic, I didn't know what the committee's, committee's final decision was on that issue. So I will just note that the draft currently contains starting on page 11, that section nine, specific authority of the governor to extend professional licenses under the office of governor, I left it in. But if you would rather remove it, I can take that out. This is in regard to the professional regulation section relatedly on page 12 and section 10. I granted that this draft would grant that same authority to OPR to extend professional licenses for the licenses that OPR issues. So if you don't want to include those two sections, I could remove them. I wasn't sure what the committee's final decision was on that issue. Oh, I think we want to leave in the OPR part to grant the licenses. I don't, you know, I don't think that the governor has any ability to grant licenses under OPR. And I looked at the Constitution other day, I mean, yesterday. Actually, I look at it a lot. And it's right here. And it does say that the governor can, where is that? Chapter two, section 20. Yes. The governor can do to can and make appoint officers and shall supply, let's see. May grant such licenses as shall be directed by law? Yeah. I was, I had it here, but it's in a different, I underlined it in a different version of the Constitution. I have, unfortunately, I had them laying all over at every place I sit. But yes, it says. So I don't think the governor has any ability to grant licenses under OPR. And so I think we need to keep that provision in there. Does anybody else disagree with that? Keeping the OPR provision? Absolutely not. Keeping the OPR provision in there? Absolutely. Okay. Chris? Oh, Lauren? I would ask that it remain as well. I don't see how the authority is there without it. And you know, Act 100 expressly included the extension of plumbers and electricians licenses and those, I think in the conversation around Act 100, it was decided that we needed that language, that plumbers and electricians need that language. And they are under the executive branch and OPR as my boss is likely to say is he's a separately elected constitutional officer. And the fact that OPR is under the Secretary of State, I think creates those constitutional issues that you're referring to, Madam Chair. So I would ask that this be included in this bill. Thank you. Anthony? Yes. Brian? I guess I'm okay with that. I think again, regardless of what position or I guess what decision you make regarding, you know, the supremacy of the executive branch. At some point, OPR probably needs to still have it, even if I know what I want to say but I'm having trouble forming the words. Let me try it another way. If the emergency is such that the governor is preoccupied with much more serious events, I think it is a wise decision to allow OPR to still function this way and not have the governor have to worry about it, so to speak. Does that make sense? It makes sense to me and I think that I would actually like to leave in the section about the administration, like the plumbers and electricians, since they were the ones that came to us. It was the administration that came to us and asked us to put that in there when if they felt they could have done it by an executive order, they could have just done it. They didn't have to come to us. I don't want to take the chance that anything in here will tank this bill. So I'm willing to take that out and deal with that at another time. Right. And I think this bill is going to inspire other committees to get, you know, to begin thinking in these directions. And I think this bill and a subsequent bill that we would hopefully the government operations committees would do for everybody will in January just be a much more, you know, even bigger because, anyway, I'm thrilled we're leading the way on this. Okay. So let's take out this, that section. Section nine. Okay, I'll remove that one. Okay. And that's the one that Suzanne testified about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's not at this point, not worth it. There are other things we'll be battling about. So are there other sections in here that I've missed now other than open meeting? Yeah, I'll just go scroll through from where we were. So the, you'll see the OPR's emergency provisions, there are several, and then it goes to the Board of Medical Practices, emergency provisions of which there are several and those two are mere essentially near mirror images of each other. And we've already said I understood yes, that the the two entities gave the okay to those, but they can always chime in if you want to further discuss. The last provision in this bill is in regard to the emergency share of funding and I think you did already Madam Chair discuss that yesterday with Judge Anderson and the language remains unchanged. So I'll just scroll through to the front of the bill. What remains is the open meeting law provisions. We got the quasi municipal quasi judicial proceedings. And I think maybe you already mentioned those. We already discussed the moratorium on water disconnection and the municipal deadlines. So looks like you are good to go for the beginning with the open meeting law provisions. Betsy, can I ask, I'm sure we've gone over it, but I just don't know what section it's in, the ability of a municipality to extend deadlines for payment of taxes. I'm going to leave that to Tucker, because that would be a section that he handled. I know we talked about it. We talked about it, but I actually don't think we know. I think it's in here somewhere. So it is not in the bill. It's not specifically in there. No, it's not because we talked about it. But it's implied somehow. Tucker will tell us how it's implied. The ability of a municipality to alter the time and method of a tax payment to waive interest and penalties on late payment, things like that, exists in statute currently. The reason those came up during COVID was because many municipalities, any municipality could not meet during that time to allow the voters to approve that action. So with Betsy Ann's wonderful elections and Australian ballot provisions, specifically around local elections, municipalities and their voters will now have the ability to hold those votes and use the current statutory system to change those deadlines. There doesn't need to be an emergency provision triggered there. Thank you. Will you lose our chair? I think we did. Yes, she's gone. She's gone. Where'd she go? I don't know. She disaparated. Went to Kansas or to Minnesota. You're up, I think, Anthony. I guess I just hope she's okay. Gail, would you be kind of to reach out to her? I sure will. I know she was having connection issues earlier, so maybe it's just that. Comcast statewide is having issues. Yeah, as always. Anyway, the next steps we were going to talk about had to do with the open meeting laws, right, Betsy? Betsy? It's a bogger. It's the Comcast bogger. I'm here. Yes, that open meeting law is here. I think the last topic for you to review. So why don't we do that? I hope we'll find Jeanette somewhere along the line. Mr. Vice Chair. Yes, Chris. I don't see any members of the press in the room at the moment. I don't know if they're... I understand it. Join us or not. Well, Gail can correct me if I'm wrong, but they were invited. Correct, Gail? They were invited, and if you look on our webpage, there is a letter from Lisa Loomis that you may want to take a glance at. If I could just mention you have Ross Connolly on. Right. I don't see Lisa Loomis right now, but Ross Connolly is here. Thank you. I did not... I miss the name. Thanks. Ross is a former editor, right? Publisher. Correct. Right. So I don't know whether we should go through what's in the bill first and then talk with Ross and others about how they feel about it. That would seem to make the most sense to me. Sounds good. Maybe. Would you like me to do a brief walkthrough of the language? Okay. Great. So section one of the bill adds a new section to the open meeting law. One VSA section 312A will be added to deal with the meetings of public bodies during a declared state of emergency. We'll start in subsection A with some definitions that are added here, and this ultimately constrains the application of the section. So first we define in subdivision A1 an affected public body. This is going to be the type of public body that is capable of exercising these provisions during a declared state of emergency. You asked for two triggers to be added here. The first is that the public body is one whose regular meeting location is located in an area affected by a hazard. We define hazard next. We'll leave that as it is for now. Second, that the public body cannot meet in a designated physical meeting location due to a declared state of emergency pursuant to 20 VSA chapter one. So recall part of the issue that came up that cued your work in open meetings is that meetings of this nature and size were prohibited during the declared state of emergency. So the hazard that may come up is in all hazards as that term is defined in 20 VSA section two subdivision one. The committee had looked at that list in the all hazards definition and ultimately determined that rather than constraining the type of hazard that would trigger this, that it was more important to hone in on one, the public body's meeting location being in the area of the hazard or emergency and being affected by it which is the trigger and two that they cannot designate a physical meeting location because of the declared state of emergency. Subsection B it contains the temporary open meeting provisions that you enacted during COVID. It adds them here so that during the next state of emergency these will be automatically triggered. The first in subdivision B one states that a quorum or more of the affected public body may attend a regular special or emergency meeting by electronic or other means without designating a physical meeting location where the public may attend. As you recall from your work on this in the spring the deviation here is not in allowing an electronic meeting to take place that is already permitted in the underlying open meeting law. The deviation is in not requiring a designated physical meeting location. Right. The open meeting law allows for electronic meetings provided that the public body designates a physical location that is accessible under the state's public accessibility statutes and that a member of the public body or a staff member be at that physical meeting location. There are other requirements in section 312 around electronic meetings including that the technology that's used has to permit the public to hear the meeting that is taking place and allow the members of the public body to identify themselves and second that the members of the public body can hear and be heard. So essentially I'm sorry to talk about basically you have the meeting electronically but one member of the board or whatever it would be the legislative body would have to be in a room with the speakerphone for example so the members of the public could go to that room and listen in on the speakerphone. And be able to participate in the meeting. Yeah okay. So what this did is it said ultimately you do not need to have that physical meeting location during the state of emergency. You do not need to designate it. All of the other requirements around electronic meetings stayed in place and under this language will continue to stay in place. And I'll put a pin in that because we'll come to some things that you added as requirements that are not required normally under the open meeting law. Subdivision two we just discussed the members and staff of an affected public body shall not be required to be physically present at the designated meeting location. Subdivision three this dealt with the posting provisions that you put up and it deals specifically with municipal public bodies. It states that an affected public body of a municipality may post any meeting agenda or notice of a special meeting in two designated electronic locations in lieu of two physical locations or in any confirmation thereof. The cause of this was a separate open meeting bill that you passed during COVID and the trigger for this was that under the open meeting law the municipality is required to post in two designated physical locations in the municipality and at the clerk's office. And the problem that many municipalities ran into there is that their designated physical locations as would be expected were in places where a lot of people are congregating and seeing the notice. So that would require the municipal officials who go to a place of public congregation to post these and there was concern around that. I thought there were other examples where people would post something that said a town clerk's office but the town clerk's office was closed so nobody would see the posting because nobody went there at all. So you either had large congregating people or nobody at all. Right. I mean one of our locations is the library. The library's been closed. Thanks Anthony. I have no idea what happened. I got kicked out. I think it's Comcast because yesterday Sears and Ryan both got kicked out of this floor session. Yeah I did too actually. Did you? Yeah. And Sorotkin and Hooker there were a lot of people that were kicked out. Okay well I just got and I kept trying to read in and it said I didn't have any internet but I guess it's back. So keep on because I don't know where you are. Well Tucker's open meeting special pieces. Subdivision 4 has its own additional trigger before this can be used by an affected public body. This subdivision is triggered by a staffing shortage. So in the event of a staffing shortage during a declared state of emergency the affected public body may extend the deadline for the posting of minutes to not more than 10 days from the date of the meeting. Under current law that requirement is five days. Moving on. So these are some of the additional elements that you put in when you were authorizing these electronic meetings without designated physical meeting locations during COVID. So the first and let me do some work on my screen here. The first piece that you put in required that the affected public body use technology that permits the attendance of the public through electronic or other means. Second that whenever feasible the technology allows the public to access the meeting by telephone. And third that information on how the public may access meetings electronically be posted and that that information be included in the published agenda for each meeting. Subsection D requires the legislative body of each municipality and each school board to record any meetings that are held pursuant to this section on less unusual circumstances make it impossible for them to record those meetings. Finally in subsection E an affected public body of a municipality shall continue to post notices and agendas in or near the clerk's office. This is something that is already required in the underlying law but you added something to it. You added that they shall provide a copy of each notice or agenda to the newspapers of general circulation for the municipality. So the way that this section is laid out just to give you the overview again. You provide some authority for an affected public body to hold electronic meetings without a designated physical meeting location and by posting electronic notices in lieu of notices posted in physical locations and you require some additional guardrails around the conduct of those meetings which would include using technology that permits the attendance of the public through those electronic means which is also required under the general open meeting law to allow the public to access the meeting by telephone that's in addition that you've put in to post information about how to access the meetings to record each meeting at the municipal and school board level unless there are unusual circumstances that make that impossible to do and finally to post notices not only at the municipal clerk's office but also to provide a copy of each notice or agenda to the newspapers of general circulation. One of the things that did come up during the discussion of the temporary COVID provisions that we could do here to further constrain and guard this is if we go back to subsection A here we have not withstood generally my apologies we're actually going to look at subsection B Betsy. In subsection B we have not withstood generally section 312 and there was some concern at the time that we used this language during in the COVID provisions that this would trigger from some of the public bodies the impulse to ignore section 312 in its entirety rather than just conflicting provisions and what we did was we called out specific subsections and subdivisions that were being not withstood as a way to point those public bodies to we are not setting aside the entire open meeting law we are just setting aside these discrete provisions we can do that again here we cannot withstand a chain of those specific subsections and subdivisions in section 312 to make sure that we are pointing out specifically these are the areas that are changing when we have a declared state of emergency if we did talk if we did that that wouldn't change things on a practical level it would just make things more clear right so I had a question when we were talking about what normally happens Tucker mentioned that as long as there was a speakerphone and one of the members or a staff person from that local legislative body in attendance the public could come in and actually participate by speaking I don't see any of that sort of language in the ones that we adopted temporarily or by presumption if you are attending by telephone is that I'll assume that you can can you speak or can you just hear it I thought Tucker was clarifying that they had to be heard and to hear they have to be able to participate I think yeah thank that requirement in the open meeting law that is that the members of the public body can hear and be heard um oh let me see if maybe we can pull up am I authorized to screen share here maybe I can share some of the um open meeting provisions I am not I am disabled from sharing uh you Gail could maybe make you able to be shit to share okay yeah I has anyone attended a select board meeting during COVID because I have and I was able to raise my hand and speak I mean it was very easy I mean it was it weren't more than 50 people attending so it I guess made it a little easier but it was very easy to participate yeah same here for me so if we go to the open meeting law one vsa section 312 in subdivision a two we have the rules surrounding participation in meetings through electronic or other means so uh similar to the language we're using here this allows uh the public body to hold their meeting through electronic means um without being physically present at a designated meeting location uh however if one or more members attend a meeting by electronic or other means the members may fully participate in discussing the business of the public body and vote but any vote of the public body that is not unanimous shall be taken by roll call there's a requirement that still exists that we have not went out with stood um it requires that each member who attends identify himself or herself when the meeting is convened and this is the piece that we are just talking about here in subdivision a to see romanet two that they'd be able to hear the conduct of the meeting and be heard throughout the meeting right the supplies to members of the public body in subdivision d here this is where the rub was when we were dealing with uh trying to allow the public bodies to meet during the stay at home order if a quorum or more of the members attending the meeting without being physically present actually this is not the piece yeah uh they shall designate at least one physical meeting location where a member of the public can attend and participate in the meeting so that's the requirement there when we were dealing with the underlying law you had to designate a physical meeting location and that member of the public had to be able to attend the meeting so i'm assuming you're the meeting potentially c meeting and be able to participate at least one member of the public body or at least one staff member had to be physically present at that physical meeting location so my question was when we adopted the temporary provisions it seems like we left this part out about a member of the public being able to participate let's go i didn't know we didn't put it in the provisions which means that it's still in the open meeting law the underlying open meeting law right okay yeah they i thought that's what drove a bunch of our the measures that we adopted was to enable what's already in the open meeting law the temporary provisions very specifically call out and if you go to the language that you're using now in subsection c in subdivision one and this is what senator column or is potentially flaggy here a used technology that permits the attendance of the public through electronic or other means right i can't say that i recall any of the specific testimony about why we left out the ability to attend didn't call it out but the reason that the telephonic access got put in there the reason that you made some of the choices that you made around electronic access was that not every municipality had the same level of technological capability to ensure both attendance and participation or you know there was even some discussion around whether every municipality would be capable of ensuring access by telephone which is why that whenever feasible clause got put in there but at this point having gone through the experience you may have some insight on whether you do want to require municipalities to permit participation yeah and that was my question talker was the phrase attendance presuming participation and i say it doesn't you can be in attendance at something and still not be allowed to talk can i anthony can i sure not good good sure i um the ability to participate uh in a select board meeting or a public meeting is somewhat up to the chair of that meeting i mean that the there are select board meetings where um people readily participate when i was on the select board in patney when people would come we would just kind of all sit around the table and just have this general discussion they couldn't vote but they were part of the discussion there when you go to a braddleboro select board meeting it's it's big and they have a lot of people there and people can't just throw out comments and participate they there's a public comment period where they can participate but they do not participate in the general discussion because it's a meeting of the select board it isn't and and there are times for them to participate but you can't just raise your hand and say hello i have something to say that isn't the way most meetings work but when they ask for public i mean when they open up to ask for questions yes or or if public then then it is essential that people be able to participate as well as attend right and i thought that is in the open meeting law so i don't know didn't do anything to negate the open meeting law right i i thought that this was still the underlying the default i thought so too because it was all our efforts with the telephones and with everything else was to ensure that the public could hear and be heard okay thank you um may i comment this is karen yeah sure um if you look at um page two section c and then following um item three on page three says you need to post information on how the public may access meetings electronically so not only with respect to telephone that's two and then three is electronically um and i uh you're you're a correct madam chair that an awful lot of select boards they have a public comment period at the start of the meeting for 20 minutes or something and that's posted on the agendas very well thank you so do we need to add anything there or do we just this part of the open meeting law is the default Tucker so i will um set up two pieces here and say that it's complicated and if you want to go the prudent and safe route you should if this is the policies policy decision you're making add the ability to participate into that c one so first the reason that i would say that's necessary is that c one is more specific during this state of emergency than the underlying law that you are setting aside it parrots the same language but it intentionally leaves out the ability to participate it is not there so if you leave out that ability to participate um that subdivision could be interpreted to not require the public body to provide the opportunity to participate it would only allow the ability to um access the meeting attend the meeting so to speak so if i can add a comment oh i'm sorry Tucker um now remember we're already dealing with something more specific here which is the attendance through electronic meets generally we fall to this subsection h that requires and i think that i've put it up here for you guys that add an open meeting the public shall be given a reasonable opportunity to express its opinion on matters considered by the public body so there's the participation requirement as long as order is maintained so the public body can adopt some rules around how that comment period plays out practically reasonable rules and further that those uh yeah the public comment will be subject to reasonable rules established by the chairperson of the public body that would be the general requirement when we're dealing with an open meeting we then get more specific in the general electronic meeting provisions but still in those general electronic meeting provisions we call out participation in that subdivision a two or a member of the public can attend and participate um if you want to ensure that the public without a doubt must be given the opportunity to participate in these meetings during the state of emergency you should likely add and participate to that subdivision c1 so here's where i'd like to throw in a comment that we need to be the select boards need to say this is how you can participate just as right now how you can participate in a select board meeting in a non-emergency is by going to the select board meeting that's how you participate so the select board or whoever need to say this is how you can participate but i don't think we have any ability to say to select boards that they have to guarantee that the person who lives on the dead end street at the end of four miles of town trail and has a phone has the ability to participate by picking up the phone and calling in i i think that there needs to be a provision for to tell people how they participate but right now i mean the comment that in the letter for example that said that people have to buy a new phone or a computer in order to participate right now they have to buy a car i mean they have to get to a place so i don't think this is any more onerous and i would hate to see us say that every every meeting has to allow anybody in any form to the ability to participate at all because i i don't think that's reasonable right now that's just a comment i know that other people feel differently i think that um my example feels differently and i know that lisa feels differently that i think they feel that everybody should have the ability to participate regardless of where they live or how they connect to the meeting so well that isn't you're absolutely right that isn't true now i mean there are many town halls that are not accessible for the disabled or i mean there are lots of there you cannot at the mall at this very moment guarantee that everyone can participate but i think if people want to when it's a high priority we can make it as accessible as possible and i i think this i think this is good i would also say that we also cannot even imagine every hazard so i was just thinking as we're talking about electronic that you know what if the hazard is the grid has gone down in north america it's like well we're back to meeting in person in daylight and everyone you know if they're all in electronic cars they're all walking it's like you know it's a we we cannot even begin to fathom some of the hazards we may be facing um anyway that was just an aside so i think that we need to say that that the agenda needs to be needs to tell people how they can have the ability to participate right but not necessarily guarantee that every single person who who um doesn't every single person has the ability to participate from wherever they are because they don't as allison pointed out they don't have that ability now i mean they have to drive down to the town hall right get out of their car so somebody um who doesn't have a car can't participate now or an old person who doesn't drive at night right right exactly so i i think that we need to allow for them to say how you can participate and it's up to the individual to figure out how to access that participation could you refer to some kind of reasonable means of participation or something like that i'm sure i see tucker sitting there writing i'm sure he's coming up with wonderful language and gwen just had a suggestion i know i don't have a suggestion i'll just say that uh the legislative bodies have reasonable rules of regulation already in terms of public participation and they can be really um broad or really narrow and some you know you mentioned braddleboro they have very specific regulations in terms of limiting not limiting participation but just keeping it in sort of um a format where the order is maintained because it's a meeting of the public body that the public can attend but it's really the select were still has to do their work right um so a lot of the um rules that you read through that are already in place cover a lot of those nuances where you say you know the first order of business or the last order of business were allocating this amount of time for public participation and i will say anecdotally i'm the chair of my planning commission we've been doing our meetings via zoom and we've had more public participation we had all of maybe one or two people in an entire year show up to our planning commission meetings for changes to our zoning bylaws we've had public attend all of our meetings um virtually so it's actually increased public participation in a lot of municipalities right thank you madam chair i the order i just want to make it clear i wasn't necessarily advocating one way the other i just brought it up because i read the language a lot and and i thought that it was just slightly different in terms of what we adopted as temporary provisions i didn't see that word participate and so i was just bringing it up to note that um it may have been something we wanted to consider yeah no no i i got that but it's come from other sources too that's why so anthony where where were you had you started taking any testimony from now we've no we had not taken anything well ross hasn't spoken and we were i was going to suggest that we hear from both ross and from dl cc from carol and donahue is with us now too oh yes i didn't know that so we see it from those folks yes okay so i would suggest that um well chris i think has a question or are you just waving your hand no i was just going to say that i'm sorry that i hadn't noticed that ross came into the room and earlier on when we were talking about is anyone from the press here and um also just wanted to um congratulate mr connelly on his uh international journalism award the survey award that he was just just received so um an old thing on the hardwood cassette so sorry i didn't see you come in the room thank you congratulations thank you what's the award what was the award the uh Eugene survey uh award from the international society of weekly newspaper editors which was actually 2018 i think that i received that award thank you very much thank you congratulations thank you so who who how do you want to do this now because we have the letter from lisa who i realized couldn't be here and there were some specific things and when you um speak to us one of the things that i would like you to she pointed out a number of things like meetings are not being properly warned um they're not putting their agendas up things like that and i when you talk to us i would like you to address the issue of whether it's worse now than it was before this um in terms of i mean we always have rogue select boards out there who don't play by the rules and is it worse now um because and remember we're not making permanent changes to the open meeting law this is still only in the case of an emergency right so ross and mike you can figure out how you're going to go here actually before you do that i just want to mention that that's one thing that's pretty clear but in lisa's letter she starts off by saying that we shouldn't consider making permanent the temporary changes made to the open meetings law when i read that my first thought was that we're not really making these things permanent we're making them relative to another another emergency so this won't be clear on that okay um shall i go ahead madam chair sure okay um thank you my name is ross connelly i'm uh kind of wearing two hats or removing two hats if you will last march i was elected to the board of trustees of the judivine memorial library here in hardwick so i'm a public official um and uh up until 2017 i was the editor and publisher of the hardwood cassette my late wife and i bought the newspaper in 1986 and um i sold it in 2017 so i um my thoughts are are based on my experiences but i'm not here speaking on behalf of the hardwood cassette nor the judivine library board of trustees um and with regard to um uh the the question of the access to public meetings um my concern is um how that access is given and specifically uh with the agendas um is the agenda going to be required to uh list um the means of electronic participation or access um talking about zoom is it going to have the zoom link and is it going to have the password because there have been boards that have listed both and so then it's just up to the member of the public to download a zoom program and hit the link and put in the password and go to the meeting other boards have said if you want to attend the meeting you have to call the municipal office the electric department the library or whatever and get the access information and um so i would like to see something that required uh the body municipal board of whatever it is to um that it shall provide that information um and in in the um um discussion um the word information was used i think it would be better to perhaps give um some specifics to regard what information means uh does it mean the password the link um the telephone number whatever and um uh when a meeting is a zoom meeting um if the zoom link or the zoom password changes from week to week or month to month whenever the meeting is is meeting that's essentially a new location and so if the board um needs to put the location of the meeting then it needs to put the password because that's the actual location um my understanding of zoom is you can just have a permanent zoom link and password so at the beginning of the year when you post the time and place the meetings will be held um you know you're fine but if you're not using the same zoom link for each meeting you've changed the location and the public needs to be informed of what that location is and so that's part of what information um the the word information i think needs to have some specificity um one of the other um aspects if i might jump on to some of the other sections within the proposal um and i just ask a question say something madam chair or uh mr vice chair yes from both of us yes we agree ross thank you uh for that i think in woodstock we embed the zoom link but um for our public meetings but you know there is a lot of concern every time practically people are concerned about being zumba and so you know there has to be kind of a it's a you know a funny thing when you publish the zoom link uh you're also opening yourself to a hacker uh and and zoom bombing so it's for me that it's a it's a challenge i mean that's what we're doing now in woodstock but it does make us very vulnerable right and that has occurred here in hardwick not i don't know about the zoom bombing but that concern has been raised um but i i think that um that's something that has to be dealt with by the board um as madam chair said um it's up to the chairperson of the board to maintain the decorum of the uh what happens at a meeting and so if we're at a select board meeting or a library board meeting or something in person in the library or in the town offices um and somebody walks in off the street to attend the meeting which they have a right to do but then gets out of hand starts shouting um you know won't wait until called on or wants to speak beyond the public time the chair has the means to address that situation from calling the person out of order to having somebody from security come and remove the person and so i think if um there's a situation where um a zoom meeting is zoom bombed it's got to be held dealt with when that happens i don't think it's right to go in uh um as a cautionary measure to avoid that happening to deny the um uh access code to that meeting i mean the you know as a member of the public if i'm going to go to a planning commission meeting i don't have to call and find out get right go to the meeting i just go to the meeting and where i told you not there's there's a difference though because uh in the physical meeting if somebody's out of order and it gets really unpleasant and security has to come or whatever and remove that person the meeting can continue when you're zoom bombed the meeting has to end and the only way they can come back into the meeting is that they get re-invited so you would immediately limit access to just the select board the manager and the clerk because that's all you know who were present at you know so anyway that's taking a little too far but that is what happens when you're zoom bombed you can't you right and is is that a question of technology or is that a question of public access and i think it's a technological question a very legitimate question and we should look to the technology to solve that problem potential problem we shouldn't look to um uh closing access to the meeting i will say that in the um it is probably a technology question but with the technology that we have right now we have to make we have to set up our provisions acknowledging that technology and we when we have our meetings when we have our meetings in the state house anybody could walk in if there's room in the room if there isn't room in the room then they can't come in but if there's room somebody can walk in whenever they want a committee meeting when we're on technology they we don't publish the um the link but if anybody when people read the agenda items if they ask to be invited we invite them but we so we're doing the same thing and so we are limiting access in a way too but we're having more people having access because they don't have to drive from Hardwick to Montpelier to walk into the room so i think chris had a question yeah i mean i know that the legislatures response so far has been to end the meeting it's sort of an absolute secure way of ending the zoom bombing but um i think there are other options and we should as you're saying it's a technology issue i wouldn't want to lean too heavily on that for instance i think the person managing the meeting can um mute the person for sure and i think they can actually even turn off their their video feed so you know there may be ways to basically forcibly remove someone from the electronic meeting without blowing the whole thing up as in shutting it down and making people log all back in again and maybe losing people so i think it'd be good to not count too hard on that interpretation of what how these meetings run right right right thank you um but ross i think you wanted to um address some other issues is it other issues aside from the open meeting no i wanted just to make a couple other comments about the um open meeting and and the minutes if i may provision in the bill under consideration calls for the release of minutes up to 10 days it's currently five and i i just wonder about why there would be a need to extend from five to 10 days um 10 20 30 years ago when we were taking minutes on a yellow pad with pen um that that and then the minutes had to be re-tight that um perhaps had some reasonableness but i think it's pretty much of a reality that today minutes are being taken on a laptop or an ipad or something i know on our library board our secretary who's a board member sits there and takes the minutes while we're meeting and the meeting adjourns and by the time we all get back home we've been sent the meeting minutes and um it's to me um the technology here offers us that opportunity it's basically you take the minutes and you hit send and they're available on the town website or wherever um the uh um need for extra time um i just don't see it and and one other aspect about meeting minutes that um have been raised over the years is well they're they're there may be inaccuracies or they may need to be corrected or whatever well the fact is any minutes that are taken are draft minutes they only become approved minutes at the next meeting and uh um when the board um has the opportunity to make additions and corrections to the meeting that occurred previously and so um the fact is we release minutes um draft minutes from a meeting and so i i think that the time frame in which those draft minute are released um should be as close to the meeting as possible rather than moving it farther away from the meeting so that's just a concern i have about that and the only other um issue i had back on page one um where the it said the um um um board may um post um the electronic meeting agenda and whatever um i wonder if that shouldn't be shall post the meeting the electronic meeting and agenda um because again um how's the public going to know if there is an emergency um you can't go to the post office or the library or whatever to see a paper agenda hanging there the only way to get it might be electronically and so i think the the firmness of shall um would would strengthen that so thank you thank you any questions or comments committee or i think that we should jump to um mike and then um and i have to say that i have no problems with the with the five days or ten days i don't feel strongly about that one way or another but did you know that there isn't even a requirement to have um approved minutes you just have to get out yeah and that sometimes happens when you have a like a three-member board two people leave they elect to a town meeting and they're not available to uh approve the minutes a majority that were there at the last meeting or something so um i'm glad to let the league go ahead of me i've been a little late to the party here so i guess i'd be interested in hearing what the league might have to say if they've got anything to add okay thanks karen uh thank you uh so we um are okay with the provisions that are in section one regarding open meeting law in emergency situations again i have to emphasize these are only in declared emergency situations uh i think it's reasonable to add in specifically that you need to say how uh the public can participate in the meeting as part of your posted agenda i do want to refer you to two articles recently about zoom bombing one was on august 5th and brattle borough they tried to mute and they tried to shut down the video of the person and um it was kind of uh uh it was a mess and very implant and then august 9th the um ruttland town select board was also zoom bombed and they eventually did close down their meeting um having said that uh zoom is not the only electronic means that towns use there are a lot of other platforms out there that different towns have elected to use uh for their meetings during this period when you don't want to have people um assembling in one place and i hate to say this is just my prediction but i think we're going to get back there before the winter is over so um i i would be careful about um changing those requirements regarding physical locations too much and with respect to minutes i just have to say so i'm vice chair of my planning commission i take the minutes um and during this emergency it it's been completely chaotic not only because you're taking minutes for a municipal committee but also in all the other aspects of your life so we felt that it was very um that it was helpful and in fact mildly considerate to allow um for up to 10 days to post those minutes it need be uh i'm not sure how everyone else feels but it seems like every day there's a new crisis so i'll just say that about the minutes thank you karen would you comment on the last comment that ross had was about the may to shall post the agenda electronically and well it does say that um they may post it in lieu of posting it in physical locations um and the underlying law is the two designated public places physical places so um i think that what what you're trying to do in the language of the bill is give towns the option um of either physical locations or electronic notices you can't just not post them i think that was the the um if they if they continue to post them into depending on the emergency um they may be able to post them in two places and that would still be the best way but they have the ability to to replace one of those right an awful lot of towns already did as a matter of course post on their websites as well meaning notices okay tucker was that right yes that is correct the the word may was used to allow municipalities the option of posting electronically in lieu of the physical locations or in a combination of electronic and physical locations there is still the underlying obligation to post in two locations right and list is and list serves have been used a lot for this during the course of the pandemic and ross actually brought up something in his comments on the electronic postings made to shall recommendation that's important to note part of that was a concern about how does the public know that the municipality is going to be posting in a given electronic location we discussed this during the temporary provisions we specifically put the word designated in there the municipality has to designate the electronic locations that they are going to use so there the public will know if they do in fact designate what those electronic locations are going to be which is what they do now with their designated they have to say it's going to be at the funding general store in the library or wherever but yeah mike thank you madam chair just a couple of points one thing about the public notice the issue is and i think secretary senator clarkson made reference about list serves and things like that i'm not sure that list serves is a proper designation public notice is designed to be placing it where the public will notice it and you have to sign up to be on a list serve and so to have a private group that may or may not have this the town clerk send you an agenda that's a positive thing to get get on those but a lot of people don't have computers a lot of people don't know they can sign up for for those kinds of things it's they're designed to put the notice up in the supermarket in the library at the post office in the town hall so when people walk in to pay their taxes get their dog license they see that their meetings being held and everything like that so but mike mike during a hazard during a hazard you know people are barely going to town hall so i would dare say during the pandemic more people have access the list serves than they have town hall i i i do think that mike i think you're right i don't think that a list serve is an appropriate designated site but it would be also on a list serve but i i don't sure the more people that the more away you spread these notices of meetings i mean we favor that whether whether you have electronic whether you have the hard post the sending them to a newspaper and anything else you can shout from the highest mountain said we're going to select those meetings this week i didn't mean to imply woodstock was using it as its formal notice it's just been doing being used additional it's been great more people i think tucker could i ask you before we continue this would how is it worded there i i don't think that a list serve would be considered an appropriate public electronic posting site so in that subdivision three and this is for everyone's notification on page two and line 11 the affected public body of the municipality may post any meeting agenda or notice of a special meeting in two designated electronic locations electronic location is not defined for this purpose and again at the time there were some objections around how the public would know where to go and the requirement that you put in there was the designation that it didn't necessarily matter what the electronic location was so long as the electronic location was designated and therefore the public is put on notice we are putting our agendas here in this location this is where you can find them i think it would be perhaps more difficult to find them in the list serve but the language does not define or spell out what the electronic location must be just that it should be designated could you could you add the language publicly accessible so that it's clear that it has to be it can't be my email yeah i think that's important i don't care i think you know it's one thing to go to a website but it's another to try to get into a listserv especially if we put publicly accessible well but in all honesty listserv is a totally public thing i mean anybody can sign up for it yes but you have to sign up for it i can't just go to your listserv right now if i wanted to look at the woodstock i need to know where i can go to see the agenda i don't think a listserv is an appropriate designation yeah okay mike do you want to continue i'm sorry i no no no i was a rabbit hole i introduced i accept you have good rabbits you have good rabbits down there with suck i know so um the password thing that ross mentioned i think lisa mentioned i mean obviously you don't want to beat a dead horse but we did get several letters from reporters editors in windham county where there's been several problems lately including a school superintendent who put up the wrong numbers or access codes whatever and it was a hot meeting about in school learning and i think we've got to be careful i think the the code's ought to be up there there is zoom bombing there is ways to shut it off and uh i think the league mentioned two cases over six months out of 250 towns um their work there are ways to control that and the legislature controls it so i'm not sure that that's as much of a serious issue one thing that we do hear a lot of complaints about is that some of the uh municipalities set it up so that there is like one whatever camera one camera angle and apparently one microphone and so when they're in a huge meeting hall um people aren't heard they can't be seen they have no idea who's speaking there is no introduction of people they're not required to say who they are the chair doesn't introduce them and people at home and it's not just reporters but people at home are complaining that they have no idea who's talking who's proposing things who's talking down something opposing it whatever so there's got to be a better way to address public access so that can i ask you a question about that sure yeah if you're if you're in a public meeting and the public is there in the meeting is that what you're talking about you already have you're already in a public setting with people in the room with you is that what you're talking about well but there's a lot of meetings i was on one the other night where the select board was what is what was a bingo hall essentially and they're sitting spread out in the audience there was audience but the meeting was also zoomed because they were afraid there wouldn't be enough seats and space and social distancing so they zoomed it so all these people are talking and and there was one second camera or whatever angle showing the select board three of the five i think and uh you couldn't see anybody else and there's all these people talking and there's essentially i believe probably was one microphone and a lot of times people wouldn't step up to the microphone they'd talk from their seat and so maybe the board's hearing them but the general public there was you couldn't hear it there was no transparency with no understanding of what was going on in the in the meeting so that that is a problem and i know i think lisa mentioned that in her letter of that being a problem in washington county quite a bit at at different boards and commissions that she brought up um the 10 day issue i can't let it go by without making a comment you know that's near and dear since you've rejected that four or five times in the last six years i think um i guess i'm not so not sure i i understand karen's busy lady and she may be vice chairman of the of her planning commission but i do know there's an awful lot ross gave a perfect example of of a secretary cranking out minutes in one hour after a meeting so uh it's an issue of commitment and that's always been if you're committed to doing the minutes and and i know somebody who's a school teacher who takes the school board minutes and she's got three kids and she's active in the community and she can she cranks those out it's a thursday meeting and they're out by saturday at the latest saturday morning so it's an issue of commitment 10 days is too long because i think lisa put in her note they're coming up on budget time i agree with her it some of the towns have budget meetings a couple times a week or once a week so if you're going to wait 10 days you're not going to know what's going to happen especially in the light of what she said was defunding of police or other cuts that may be happening so the public may not know for 10 days that the woodstock the select board or village trustees decided to cut the police budget in half for whatever so i think it's really important especially coming up in this time frame for the budgets and our economy the way it is people know what's going on in those budget sessions maybe the other thing i skipped over when we were talking about zoom bombing perhaps the league of cities and towns can offer training to the towns of how to avoid zoom bombing and how to overcome it you know that's that would be something that probably all the towns would be interested in being proactive and and having some training so uh but the training might be zoom bombed well then they could do it first hand they could see it first hand and see how they react and see if anyone effectively can mute or exactly so uh i will uh i know uh lisa lumas was hoping to get on today i know she's on deadline uh but her letter i think speaks for itself i mean there's i'll try to answer any of the questions if you had any about any of her points i know some of them we did send a note out to some people and and again it seemed like there was a major problem in windham county washington county had some issues well i think windham county had a problem with one superintendent i mean that was the problem right and that was that came from one person but let me let me see if i can but there was the issue of being able to hear people is uh something that was was sent to me by one of the reporters down there i i i think that um some of these are are are issues that need to be worked out i'm not sure how we address that in a bill that we say that it is essential that every time you have a meeting you have enough microphones um i mean if you go to town meetings sometimes the little kids that run around with the microphone don't always get to the person that's speaking until they're done speaking and they shouldn't do that but i i don't know how we address that here and say that every single meeting has to have enough microphones and enough cameras so that everybody who speaks can be heard and seen and so my my question here is a lot of these are technology issues that have to be worked out i understand that but other than the three suggestions that i've heard here changing the minutes from 10 to five and putting publicly accessible electronic sites and putting the the access information into the agenda itself i don't have i haven't heard any specific language to change this and remember again this is not permanent this is only in an emergency so none of this applies we go back to the original open meeting law which i would guess probably in january will be addressed because there will be things that we've learned from here that might be might make permanent changes to the open meeting law but that isn't our goal here so i i'm i don't know where we are here in terms of the bill itself except for those three um suggestions well i i i found part of the response in answer your question i'll just read this paragraph another thing the boards were granted a big delay in posting minutes they now can take weeks to post minutes which i must say have deteriorated in the last six months and that's what we did he he ross did suggest changing from 10 to five days that was a very specific request that and but i you asked me about windham county that was a response from a windham county reporter above and beyond the one with the school superintendent issue and there are probably some towns that are taking that long but that was true when we didn't have this kind of this was true before also that there were people that didn't there were people who shut down their websites when we said that they had to post them on their websites so you're always going to have those those issues i just don't know if they're more serious and more prevalent now than they were before i'm tucker i'm sorry just to note for the discussion around the 10 business day permission that is constrained to when there is a staffing shortage and when that extension was discussed during the covid response the concept was if there is no staff to post minutes then the public body should not be obligated to meet the default five-day timeline they can have an extra five days and it would be 10 but again if you read that subdivision it opens with the clause that says in the event of a staffing shortage the public body may have 10 days and and i guess we're one of the questions that i think got asked i think in lisa's letter maybe not but i'll ask it is who determines the staffing shortage i mean you know i i just had a public records request from i won't say which agency the other day and suddenly said well our guy is on vacation well i'm not sure there's an exemption to public records law for that and so any clerk can say well we're short staff and who's to say whether they are i just that that intro phrase was bothersome i think too karen yeah i think that um a number of the issues that were raised in lisa lumas's letter are really best practices and for instance introducing who's at the meeting and asking people to announce themselves when they speak and certainly those are things that can be covered in training we do training on a regular basis for select boards and and public bodies i would also just mention that on page three in section e it requires that um you continue to post notices in or near the municipal clerk's office and shall provide a copy of each notice or agenda to the newspapers of general circulation for the municipality and that's actually new um in the emergency provisions that you put in place so they should have copies of the um agendas and notices of the meetings and i can tell you that you're not complying with that but we can't we only write the rules we can't we don't we can't go out there and beat them over the head and enforce the rules somebody if they're not complying with it then there has to be a complaint or or something but i don't know how else we how we make it clear it says they shall do it well there's no fine in there there's no fine or anything listed in that there's a there's a um cure for open meeting in the open meeting law there is a section that we put in about five years ago as of a cure for it so if they aren't doing what they're supposed to do and they make decisions at those meetings there's a cure for that it's called elections and raw no there's an actual cure oh really ross has a we put it in about five years ago am i right tucker yes there ross has a question yes thank you um i'm not sure what the definition of um staff is i mean so many towns in vermont um the select border volunteers the town clerk may be the only paid position in a town um but you know i'm i'm just not sure if the staff isn't available what how that works broadly i mean my thought is take the minutes publish them on the town website and um so they're there and that doesn't necessarily require a staff again um at the library board here that the secretary of the board who's a voluntary board member sits there with their laptop types the minutes and then sends them and um i don't know whether she only sends them to the board of trustees or whether they're on the library website but they could be with you you know a keystroke and um i don't know but i'd be willing to guess that there are probably more municipal boards of all stripes uh taking minutes with ipads or laptops then there are municipal employees staff throughout the state and so i just don't see the the hurdle to prevent um publishing minutes in a very timely manner um after whatever board meeting commission meeting whatever on the municipal level can i suggest that we have really three issues here i mean we have there are a lot of issues around compliance and people doing it and and maybe there are issues that we need to take up in january but we are not making any permanent changes to the open meeting law now we're not doing that right i'm or the ability to do that so we're only doing things in an emergency so it looks to me like the three issues are posting the minutes within five days or 10 days or some other number of days um getting publishing the access um in the in the agendas how people access and publishing how they can participate so that people know what they have to do to participate do they have to go someplace do they have to borrow their kids laptop what is it that they have to do in order to participate publishing that it seems to me that those are the issues that we have right now and i'd like to just focus on those so that we can come to some resolution does that make sense committee yes i see two thumbs up and i see three thumbs up and two thumbs one thumb up and one pen down i'm not sure what that was all about okay so let's go to the meeting the minutes first and have a discussion about that committee where are you on that issue i i am happy with 10 actually because i don't think everybody is as efficient as the two examples that have been shared with us i also think people who didn't have uh uh children at home also you know now have kids at home working more than they have been i think there are more distractions i think there's i i don't know i i feel like there it's life is much more stress and much more is on our plates but you know that's just me so i would vote to keep the 10 days i don't think it's uh i think the issues of the days has always been an issue and five days you know we we were asked a couple years ago to move to calendar days rather than i mean to move to business days rather than calendar days um you know it's the the day's been an issue from the beginning brian well i'll be glad to take the opposite view um i would favor going back to five i think whatever situation we are in right now has become pretty normal for most people and i think five days is plenty of time to uh be able to put minutes together chris uh i too prefer the shorter time and and practically i mean i think two practical things one is for others who are going to rely on that to do the reporting if you're out 10 days and now the reporting takes some time then to distribute the information you're you're verging on two weeks behind um and then practically having taken minutes many times there i think you write better minutes when you write them closer to the time of the event while you still remember things right you know two weeks later it can be pretty hard to remember uh the details of what you recorded well we we we adjourned for um a month and we already forgot who we all are so your point is well taken anthony i would go five days i think that five days i mean i don't honestly have a strong feeling about it but i think that five days should be enough i think that kind of bouncing a little bit off what senator bray was just saying but ten days is a long time you might forget to do it after ten days it seems like ancient history so i think making it well doing it when it's more fresh in people's minds is better and i think five days is doable even during an emergency i i'm okay i'm actually okay with five days i have um sympathy for the people who are taking them and in caron's situation i i understand and people who have kids at home who are trying to teach their kids and everything i i do understand that our town clerk when we first um uh passed this i mean our town manager when we first passed this that said they had to be submitted electronically and people were just going crazy she said she takes her little scribbled notes that she has and scans them in and posts them that's her minutes i mean it doesn't say they have to be nicely typed up and submitted so i i'm i'm okay with um five days caron or gwen i'm sure you're not okay with that but would you like to comment oh thank you okay i'm left hanging i hear your arguments you're all make good points well i i just wanted i think just to chime in when we when you sorry when the legislature put this together um the state home order was in place and we had a lot of towns that were furloughing staff and we have a lot of towns that weren't allowing staff into their offices where sometimes computer access to web postings was that was the only place i know that's true for my town um so like the one or two people that may or may not have access to that um would that would be the reasoning that the 10 days made sense because it was just not chaos but pretty darn close to it so um now that we're you know five four five months out it's it's you're looking through it with a different lens um so um it's i i think i don't think we're gonna fall on our sword over the 10 days obviously but in the there was a really good reason for having that 10 days when we put the when you put the 10 days in initially okay all right so settled five days sounds that way okay so the other one is putting the um adding sorry uh madam chair it's five business days no five calendar days right field aren't it's always been which is it it was calendar days yeah i hate that yeah okay right there we are knocker it does say count calendar days okay um so then the next question is do we add um the to the uh part that says the for attendance and do we add the word and participation the ability to participate i think that was senator colomores suggestion where are we with that committee well obviously i'm for it i i i think it's important that people know that they have the right to participate and that they do have the right to participate i thought that early on when tucker was talking to us about it that it was sort of implied into current law so it wouldn't necessarily need to be explicitly said in terms of what we're doing now but i think that there has to be we have to we cannot we have to expect and enable empower people to participate at meetings so i think if we have to say it then i would be supportive of saying it okay chris uh i agree thank you i think you know it's a different time so once upon a time just showing up to a physical meeting you knew if you're called on you could participate but if you're not if you don't have the right kind of invitation to a meeting then you can only observe it you know youtube versus zoom that kind of thing allison sorry i had to take a family business call and i missed the question just say yes yes okay thank you um out of chair yes mike i'm sorry allison i was calling on you because you weren't calling on yourself no it's access versus uh right ability to participate right there's a there ryan suggested just putting and participate how that they yeah perfect yes and then the third question is i believe does that information get put in the agenda automatically and um with the of how how they connect whether it's the zoom address the telephone call the number does it get put in there automatically or do people have to call to get it that i believe is the other question well when you put out a notice to a meeting you'd say the meeting's going to take place at town hall let's say or people know where town hall is you don't say it's like we're going to have a meeting come and look for us you know if you can find us it's up to you i mean you normally know where the meeting's going to be and if we're talking about electronic meetings zoom meetings for example i think people need to know where they are which means that what we call the access code i don't know what you call it the link should be there so people can see it and know that's where the meeting's going to be it'd be like saying it's going to be a town hall or you know 14 main street instead of being 14 main street it's basically a zoom link so i think it should be on there yes ryan so thank you manager i'll just chime in on this because senator polina and i were in the committee which to my knowledge is still the only time that's happened to the legislature it happened very early on in this situation in senate agriculture when i don't know who it was i think i know but it doesn't matter it was one of the other senators of the committee gave the zoom link to someone else and they gave it to someone else who gave it to someone else and all of a sudden halfway through we're just besieged with this pornographic thing that was happening and right yelling and screaming so we had to close the meeting because at that time we had no knowledge of how to do this so that said it's only happened one time uh to my knowledge in the legislature but we are very careful about whom we send the address to that said i know the administration branch uses a different platform something called teams which has a little bit more uh security built into it i guess and it's harder to hack into it um to mike donnie who's point and i think chris mentioned it to senator break um there are ways to stop it if someone does zoom bombing without closing the whole meeting off from what i understand so i guess i'm in favor of posting the link right along with you again thank you yeah allison oh yeah i mean we we've been doing it here in one second it's worked well so yes i i agree with brian garen and i would ask that you um leave some flexibility to municipalities in this regard i mean yes post the electronic location of the meeting but if they find if if a municipality is using zoom and they want to have you ask them for the code to get into that meeting which is the same thing we do in your committee meetings that that would be permissible um and there are as i mentioned before other platforms out there that towns use i think you don't want to get into the business of designating platforms but um i would ask that you also leave some flexibility in this regard mike i'm chair uh i guess we would disagree with that uh i think the issue i think in lisa's letter spelled it out pretty clearly that the people have to call in or or get permission to participate in a meeting and if you don't call in by four four thirty when town hall closes and they have a meeting that night at seven or seven thirty then you're out of luck and i think anybody can walk in this at the last minute to town hall to go to a meeting and if you've got to give three or four or five hours notice and get permission to get the codes that is not transparency that's i agree with that and i think senator polina really um stated it very clearly that um we're going to have a meeting tonight at seven come find us you know where do i look and uh if you don't have the the link the access code and the meeting um is an electronic meeting because of an emergency how do you find it and um if you come in you've been out of town you come back to town you hear there's a meeting tonight how do you find that meeting if you can't find the link and as mike just said that the office is closed great sorry is a way that you go and look and find it chris well i i don't i don't know what the answer is i'm trying to think of something that provides that kind of general access because i for all the good reasons we just heard from um people on the call and uh at the same time i'd like to make sure we don't um inhibit the town's ability to maintain a secure meeting just like ledge it is very security conscious on our behalf and we figured we figure something out so i'm just i don't know i would want to read and think a little bit is there a way to both guarantee that access but make sure that we don't do anything that fouls up a town from saying okay now that we've been zoom bombed twice we're going to do something a little differently and and then we put them at odds with the law i don't i am sure none of us want to do that i just don't know how to craft something that uh achieved that yet allison so um i i think that karen's suggestion about the lct doing some further training uh maybe next time they start they do their trainings uh it would be great to be able to train in both in the two platforms that are used mostly team google teams and zoom uh it would be great to train for control because you know i it publishing it in the agenda is an easy simple way to do it it gives you the electronic uh access and the telephone access it's so straightforward but you also need to be able to control the meeting and so i think further training is is what's called for here for the towns and um but i i i think it's working well in the towns that include it in on the agendas i think that um i i think we need to allow the select boards to have some security and i i but i think that if if we've really only had two or three incidents since march in at select board meetings and and planning commissions and it isn't just 246 meetings because there's 246 towns and they each probably have five or six meetings a month i mean it's it's a lot of meetings and and it's and it's all the other meetings it's i'm uh chair that's what i that's what i just that's what i just said yeah okay that that they have a lot of other meetings other than select boards and so if we haven't if our experience has been horrible as it was in bravo bro um that they really don't have that much of an issue the uh it seems to me that the balance then goes to allowing the participation and shutting down if you really have to and doing it again i i don't know how and chris seems to think there are ways of of shutting down of doing it now without doing it and and i and i have to say we have um our the technology is so is advancing so fast that and our tech people are so great we had a conference the first conference committee on zoom and we were in the conference committee which was public and anybody could watch and listen and um be there when we went into and the comparable thing here would be going into an executive session if you needed to go into an executive session we just were moved into this separate room so the senate conferees went into this room over here and the house conferees went into this room over here and it was just us it wasn't and the whole the rest the public part of the meeting was just put on hold and it was just there so it was very easy for us to just slide right into what really was an executive session and i think the same thing could be true it's going to take training and it's going to be really hard for towns where you have three volunteer select people that meet once every two weeks it's going to be difficult but i think that i'm i'm fine with publishing it and i don't know how you allow that flexibility um for towns without saying they don't have to publish it hi chris um i'm just wondering if we're not done i don't know if we're going to talk about this after today or are we wrapping up this today yeah my hope my hope is that we if we can come up with some language for tomorrow that everyone can agree on because my hope is that we can pass this out tomorrow because if we don't it's not going to have time to get through to the house anyway sure okay well since we are going to come back to it um one thought might be to have kevin moore from ledge it talked to us and just he seems to be very very knowledgeable about uh all this electronic meeting format stuff and he might just be able to answer some of our questions yeah i just need to know how what language we put in here i don't need to know how to do it i just need to know the language we put in here well i'll tell you some flexibility but my guess is tucker if we give that task to tucker my guess is he can rise to the occasion tucker could you maybe um have some a conversation maybe with karen and ross or mike and when and see if you if we can figure out some compromise way of doing this is that possible i i know it's a very short notice but i will certainly do so we may run into issues of interpretation i'll read to you the language the way it stands right now and the way that it was included in the covid response the public body is required to post information on how the public may access meetings electronically and include the information in the published agenda for each meeting so there the requirement is that the information has to include how the public may access the meetings electronically and that it has to be in each agenda i haven't done a comprehensive look at how every municipality in the state is doing this right now but i know that the town that i live in posts information on you know how i can access it through zoom and by telephone in each agenda for their meetings um we can say that more narrowly tailor this or constrain it to make sure that there's no room for interpretation um and for that i assume that Karen, Gwen, Ross, and Mike might have some suggestions from their practical experience on how we can really make it clear that there has to be information on accessing the meeting in the agenda because it does sound like an interpretation could be that um the information on how you access is that you call the town hall to get the to get the access information so Mike to attend a public meeting call us and we'll let you know and some people get a call back some people don't read away so i wonder if in what Tucker just read uh whether you add the words including access codes or something like that well that's if we can get that worked out so that everybody is okay with it um tomorrow is it possible to and nobody will um be 100 percent agreeable to it i'm pretty sure but if we can just work on it look we have five brilliant minds here okay Gwen, Tucker, Mike she's not including us yeah no not us i mean i thought that's who she was referring to are you kidding you get the final word though no no no i meant the five brilliant minds that are going to work this out plus it then goes to the house if you come up with a brilliant solution between the senate and the house you could write that is true yeah yes let's hear it for the house chris okay Tucker i think you had raised that last piece as the last issue that the committee had to discuss but there was actually one more suggestion that you had brought up during the course of the meeting and that was whether to add the term publicly accessible before designated electronic location i thought we already agreed on that one i everybody took their heads yeah got it thank you okay you have to it's harder to read body language on zoom but i've learned to pick up body language from the committee members pretty well here and i think everybody agreed on that one yeah we did okay all right so i think that i think we have a pretty decent bill here i i do too i'm i'm really delighted that we're the first in the state house as it were to do a lessons learn bill i think this is great thank you madam chair for taking the lead this so i want to point out something here you know when we're going through a bill and you go do section six and then a and then blue and then um little i little two little eyes tucker use the term romanet and i just i love that term i've never known what to call those little things and they're romanets perfect just like goddesses goddesses or romanets too i'm a genet madam chair yes one one question ross did did bring up a question i think it was ross the issue of staffing that phrase shortage of staffing well we changed it to five days right don't bring us down like so that whole that whole phrase is struck then it we changed it to five days okay but i'm i just want to know i just want to know if the that phrase in the event of shortage of staff that phrase is totally struck because it's irrelevant and then the five is made to i mean the ten is made to five okay okay okay tucker just is the drafting note that entire subdivision will just be taken out because we want it to default back to the general law which requires posting in five days so there's no need to call out the staffing shortage and there's no need to enumerate the five days because that's the standard good call good yep anything else no i i'm gonna thank the league for sending out a blast to their members on the other particular issue i'm working on right now so oh you're standing that means we'll all suffer no hopefully oh well yes i hope you get calls from all of your every single town yes it requires a proactive yeah okay yeah i'm on to you okay is it is it fair to ask what the topic is generally take a guess sure how clever i'm on a conference committee yeah what conference committee is she on marijuana 54 that's 54 okay okay anything else committee members or anybody else there's already text chris chris chris is trying to say something i think your wish has already come true chair white while we've been meeting uh emails have started to show up from adison county towns okay well i encourage your counterparts on the other side of the because that's where the holdup is well i always like hearing from folks so i know okay anything else betzian are we all set okay and tucker we're all set and lauren and david have been their names are still there i'm sure they've paid attention to every word we've been saying but um so thank you um so i guess we'll see you tomorrow at one and i look forward and i believe that um they're doing we have set set it floor at one well then after senate floor uh i believe betzian that they're doing 220 on the floor tomorrow i think but listening in and um it hasn't come up yet it's on notice calendar today and they didn't do uh do it in all house caucus so i think they'll just do it second reading tomorrow okay good so that's yeah i just want to keep us aware of the bills that um and so tomorrow we should have a little bit of time to walk through their final drafts and we make sure that we're okay but i don't think there are any surprises since last time you walked us through it okay so and 124 do we have any update on 124 uh house gov ops is continuing to take testimony on it and i expect that uh at least go through next week i'm not sure how long they'll be discussing it but it's it's definitely not going to be done by the end of this week all right thank you everybody we do you have a rough time here for these meeting tomorrow what you have a rough time when the committee is meeting tomorrow um well we're on the floor at one i mean at 11 30 no what just tomorrow we're on floor one and we have migratory birds we have migratory birds and maybe one or two other things it's not going to be long is my guess i would say a quarter to two at the latest okay is that right chris we have migratory birds yes flapping his wings but you can't hear him okay okay anyway isabel all right okay hi isabel oh is isabel there hi isabel oh isabel's so excited because she gets to go for a walk now and eating and eating goodbye everybody all right four quarters of the day chris we have a cherish meeting