 Committee, since we don't have a chairs meeting and we have five whole minutes. And I am starting to feel very pressured by trying to get all the bills we're going to need to get out of here there is a end of session planning tomorrow. I'm also organizing this week joint fiscal starts at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. So, that we might we had some discussion, I sent you home with homework. Senator Bray did his homework. Well, I'm wondering if there's one way to deal with it is to screen share it. I know that face. Senator Pearson, you are now host. So if you make Santa break co host. What's this message it says installing virus on your computer now. I have no idea. This person is in charge he is now how I think you can now code or post your whatever share. Do you know how to do that. Yeah, I think this is going to work. The weird thing is coming up. Okay, looks good. I can't see what precisely what you see. I see some principles for 2021 broadband program. Big enough, big, a bigger smaller. I can read it it's got some stuff around the edges but if I can read it I think most people can. So, I know you were thinking about I mean there's so much stuff going on. For me I was just trying to boil it down to have some principles to make decisions by and I think we actually talked, they turns out a lot of them came up today in the region already but you know utilities have a very conservative approach because they reliability is the one of the most important things they ever that they're they're responsible for and they get rated on reliability safety and reliability are first and foremost and so it made me think about well how, although we've talked about CUDs is sort of this more homegrown grassroots thing was really trying to put a, a engineering utility mindset to the whole thing so building for durability, like that 30 to 40 year investment, and I don't know if that only means fiber, or there's, you know, someone might say oh well don't just think fiber, you should think of cable as well I don't know the answer to that but whatever it is something that is long lived and, and then the be adopt an appropriate industry standard and require to use by any entity funded by the program. So that we end up with, you know, Christine Halquist said it a couple months ago there, there was when the RE, when the Rural Electrification Act came through, they published a standard and he she said that there is even today, sort of a handbook that spells out all the standards and if you're building stuff you build exactly to that standard from the wires to your house to the substation and so it provides for stability across the system as opposed to getting islands of different solutions delivered. Can't. Which I don't think. Yeah, I interrupt here. I was thinking today as Irv was talking and we were talking about overbuilding. And then the discussion we had with consolidated. Yeah, that you can't just hook fiber up the cable. So if there's cable downtown, and the he wants to go from this isolated road to that isolated road in the fastest ways through downtown, they have to double string. Unless that you know it's, there's also a whole set of backup. So that you want it so that no matter who owns it. At some point you just splice or plug it together. And you can have a united system which is this this engineering standards. I don't know if I mean. So, or didn't know if we have such a thing that's guiding the development of all the CUDs now but it'd be interesting to know. And I'm just borrowing that from Christine's visit two months ago. D is really I think, in part what you're talking about you know requiring interoperability so that no funded entity becomes an island so that you. Because these things, who knows what the, what will happen to them over time, we wouldn't want things that didn't work well with each other and part of the way to make them work well with each others have a common standard. C is required the ability to evolve and upgrade the design at the design and engineering level so that our investment lasts and keeps on evolving with our own needs. And then second is the other thing we've talked about more and more lately which seems like a good role so the state becomes a technical assistant center for design engineering, permitting legal marketing at thrown in today. I was thinking about it as a turnkey solution so we can lower the cost for everyone by basically creating a little bit of I don't want to imply something too simple when I say cookie cutter but something where we get to use the same expertise and information over and over again with as little fundraising as possible, then the state becomes, maybe it's handling federal money as well I don't know our other role becomes funding. A fourth thing here state provides a mechanism for managing the entities and the questions relating to rights and responsibilities that they have, as well as relationships between them. There could be quote unquote border conflicts, things like that. And then fifth, thinking really longer term like five and 10 and 20 years out. State ensures the entities have provisions for mergers acquisitions and closures including to the degree possible recoverability on the part of the Save Vermont of its investment, if it's not already fully depreciated. Could be two CUD say, you know, this is great but we could save a lot of back office expense by just becoming one bigger CUD and we'll do all the building. So then maybe they merge. And I don't know how you structure them from the get go to make that easier, but I don't know that in 20 years from now we want to have 14 CUDs maybe, maybe by then it's two or three who knows. But it would, it might save us money and help save cost over the long haul, if they were designed with that thought in mind from the beginning. That's all. So that was, that's my, that's what I just wanted to chip into the conversation. A lot of thought. I told you the adrenaline would drop, Senator. I'm super tired, I'm sorry. I'm super tired. I think outline the entire budget for health and welfare this morning she has done a tremendous and all the bills, and all the asks that have come to the committee. It was a tremendous job of work which he did on her own. And yeah, my eyes started to cross by the end so it was, it was a lot of work. So, and I have a feeling most of us have kind of hit that tilt point as anybody else got anything you want to kind of throw out on the table at this point. Not on the table, but a question, Maria, forgive me if you've already given us this. Do we have a section by section for this guy for the bill? Is it already, is it on our website? Do we know? You do for age 360, you do. And you also have and it is on your website and you also have a comparison summary of age 360 and Senator Brock's bill as 118. I appreciate that the reason I ask is a lot of what we've been talking about is actually in the bill. And, and I think I now that the concepts are generally a little bit in my mind. I'll just say for myself that I'm going to look at that and see what I think might be missing. So, might Maria be helpful if we did something with, we do it with miscellaneous tax as proposed House Senate. We do that third block. And then we can go through and we can say, okay, section one or, you know, issue what this is, this is the version we're going to choose or we're going to choose to do something else. And we're not, you know, we're not there yet but go through and decide what we've decided, and then just keep working our way down to what we have to do and then somewhere in there and Senator Hardy maybe you wake up. And because we did all the other bills and there are other proposals that have come to us we had a couple today from the affordable housing people that could get pretty broad. And if we want to do that, especially in the area of telemedicine. So that could be a really helpful model. And then we can if you're there there's also somebody that can assist you at getting on and on muting and being seen. So, we've got that we've had a couple more suggestions. I know her. It's going to take me a while to sit down and read through herbs ideas. But I think if we could get at least the two bills and then a block and then maybe a list of other things inventory is. Yep, I can, I can work on that. And I also, and I think you're sounds like you're too tired to go through it now. I did start to put together a very high level overview of decision points, very high level and it's I sent it to faith I don't know if she's posted it. You know, but I think I could even pull it up now just to like show you what it is and it that might be something as you're individually thinking about where you want to focus and what needs to be fleshed out that could be helpful and And I think we've got time. Thursday afternoon and we have all day Friday which I've been reserving for this so I think Friday. You can put this up and we will look at it. I mean, you can put it up now and just give us the 10,000 foot walk through, and then we can spend the whole day on Friday delving in Senator Brock. And one of the things that I've done is I've just asked some questions of department and a couple of other sources, because I want to also try to just put in perspective what we're talking about we're concentrating on CDs, we're concentrating on But how much is that part of the overall landscape that we're dealing with, as far as the future. And so I've asked just several questions are there any statistics on how many locations currently have internet access available by source, in other words by name, and by type of provider. What's the total universe we're talking about. Second, are there any statistics that would show that of those locations where access is available at how many of such locations have the occupants actually subscribed or connected. And here I'm trying to determine the number of locations listed as served. The number of homes that have actually collected to versus those that have not because that will show you the number of unserved locations that really aren't counted in this total that we've been talking about. Thirdly, are there statistics as to how many additional unserved locations would be served if we may broadband available universally. And then lastly, of the latter, how many of such locations are in areas, not currently served by a CD other question. In other words, we're talking, I'm not sure if we're talking when we're concentrating on the CDs. Are we talking about 80% of the internet. Are we talking about 20% of the internet. And I'm not really sure. And that I think will all should also drive, perhaps, some of how we look at the approach. I think, and I'll try to play with this a little bit more is is backing up because we have this tendency to jump in with our boots on into the swamp and go attack each and every alligator in it. When, in a way, that notion of backing up to the 50,000 foot level and look at what the swamp looks like. How do you deal with alligator control overall, which means things like strategy and planning and the 10 year plan, which I know is not dealt with at all and 360 it's left the department. And that whole issue of planning of all the stuff that we're talking about here, it's the plan and the strategy that to me is the most important driver of what we do. And I think our approach in handling it seems to be that we've got to take that into account. I'm just concerned that we're fixing the problem by tightening a lot of screws here and there, but we're not looking at the overall problem. Yeah, and I think we thing that struck me the other day when consolidated was in is the city of Montpelier, and probably most of the other built up areas are running on 253. If they're lucky. We had that map. I remember all the red lines those were the cable lines and some of the CUDs are using those, but those cable lines aren't so it's not. We are served by federal standards at 253 but if we're going to do 100 100 for everybody. We have those large flat areas that are not outside of EC fiber and maybe Burlington telecom. They are not getting 100 100. So, that's another just thing we need to keep in the back of our mind Senator Pearson. Can I just add one thing before I finish up about the other thing that we have a big divide on is that issue of an obviously going to ask her this if we had had had time today. Because what do you tell the person who has no internet access and won't get it for four to five years or perhaps longer to get to that 100 100 standard that we're insisting on what do you tell that person who has nothing now, and who's taking her child to the parking lot of the school at night in the wintertime in order to connect. What they would have told us today is that we think we hope crisis period seems to be going to be behind us if we're going to have everybody vaccinated. That's assuming that we don't have another pandemic for 100 years but if things go as plans say they're going to go some of that urgency hopefully will be gone by the next school year but the potential is there and with the world as open as it is. The potential is much more there than it used to be when you know you had to sail on a ship and it took a week to get here. And then we knew if we had to isolate you when you showed up. So I did I have I had Senator. Donald and then Senator Pearson I think I did see Senator McDonald first. Thank you chair. Maria or someone double check on the most one of the most recent PUC orders of the last, maybe two or three weeks ago having to do with power's role in having a fiber strong along its poles. And I think there was something recent and it would play into our decision. That was my question. Sure, I'd be happy to look into that. And secondly, those of you that are not in the Times artists area there. The witness who we don't mention my name had a long, long editorial and what Senator Brock send it to all of us. Thank you Senator Brock. And I spoke about it over the weekend. It's actually seen it before that it was said to me. It looked forward instead of backwards which is where we need to be. We look backwards for lessons not for for correcting her feelings and we look forward to what will work in our, in our, in our strategy so thank you. Senator Pearson. I, I, I hope we can focus on some of the big goals we have since I've been on this committee which is seems like a lifetime but this is my third year. I have wrestled with this 25 three versus 100 hundred and what do you say to the poor Joker that is still on DSL and, and is is 200 yards from the cable line, and we're saying no we'll only pay for your perfection. Senator, you're right that we're, we're, if we're moving out of the pandemic and let us hope that it is a different question and what the structure so far has been, and I think it's the right one is not how do we get everybody broadband. Although that's a question and we should be moving in that direction, but how do we take care of the unserved and the underserved and so we haven't, we haven't, I've never heard us talk about how do we upgrade the 25 three people. That doesn't interest me right now we've got a lot of money, but we don't have, you know, unlimited get everybody fiber money. But to me, it then things flow from there then then things flow from there like, we don't actually have to decide should we be buying cable or buying fiber. We can just go to fiber because we're basically go to go where people haven't been willing to build and in those cases, you might as well make the marginal investment to make it future proof. And I think I found it one of the things that's come up today or brought it up. I've heard other people bring it up as the way that we wrestle with this independent telecoms how do we help the Franklin telephones. I've said it well, as long as they're willing to commit to serving every address in the territory and I do think we need to figure out how to define territory. But that immediately then if that if consolidated wants to be that I'd even be open to that but they don't want to do that they've made that very plain that they they've had decades to do that they won't do it Comcast won't do it. And if that and that hits at our need to deal with the parallel to rural electrification, rural electrification wasn't for most people. It was for everyone. And that's, that's to me the posture and once you, once you hit that, once you accept that we're starting with unserved and underserved, then you've answered some of the very basics. And, and I think we can quickly move beyond that and and and try to get into the more controversial nuts and bolts stuff. But I also want to say, in terms of engineering standards and things like that. I hope that won't be in the bill. I hope that will be baked into some of the expertise that we're trying to set up as resources. Because we typically don't do a great job when we're, we're as lay people trying to to craft that. But anyway, I don't, I'm not that worried about how do you deal with the Montpeliers that are. I'm not, I'm not worried about that because consolidated is stringing line through my backyard as we speak, they're going to take care of that. Where I've heard something different is there's probably a couple roads down route 12 that could use or somewhere else in a for profit providers area that yeah they are not going to do it on their own dime because they're for profit. They'll do it on our dime and pretty much that's what we've been doing with the connectivity and there was a fair point, you know requirement before the PUC that they string so many lines and lower fines, I think it was. I can see that somewhere in this state. There are those last nine miles if Franklin telephone was a, well they are probably hopefully a for profit that lies now last nine miles. If we gave them some money. I had run it because she's got nine hard miles and two customers who may or may not sign up. That I think is where the hard never, you know, over my dead body comes in you I can see where there are places and one of the CUD was working with one of the for profits. And it's the south of me, and I'm not remembering which one but I think you're right Madam chair, you, you, it's a Franklin telephone company if we're going to provide money for them to hook up to the end of their territory. We do not wish. And they, Franklin wants to hook up to a consolidated fiber hookup. We don't want to have the consolidated people who were unwilling to what that road and unwilling to spend their own money to earn a profit on that Franklin connection they should be able to access where you can go in and use their fiber and allow the, and the Franklin folks who invested in it to make the money on it and that's, that's maybe tricky and be. We've got two telephone telephone. Landline telephones are regulated utility. They have districts, and they have requirements within their districts. So I don't think you're going to see consolidated running through Franklin. But there are places where you've got PUCs and the best way to get up that other nine miles is to pay the guy that's at the bottom of the hill to run it up the hill rather than. And I think that we leave to the PUCs. We just cannot imagine all that is going to happen before this is over. That's what we have to work out. But, but I always, I only mentioned that not to solve that problem. But to say that that's the type of solution we have to deal with and I didn't think you wanted to say afternoon to. We need to make sure that we get some interconnectivity and that will probably be part of a rules process. We have to make sure that we get it to everybody and we're going to have to figure out a way in getting it to everybody that we also make it possible for them to afford. And that one's going to be hard or we're going to say, well, we're going to run it by your house. And we'll deal with that later. There's a couple proposals out there. But maybe that's one where we might want to endow a fund, capitalize a fund with some of the ARPA money if that's permissible. So we're going to go down that or the interest on that to have an ongoing source for subsidies. I have no idea but we've got an awful lot of cash and the push to spend that lot of cash in three years could lead to some poor decisions. So we're going to work our way through this. Okay, Senator Bray. So I think part of what the stuff I wrote up that first section that's pretty engineering oriented was in part to end up with a durable solution for the long haul that was reliable but also to steer clear of the sort of choosing who gets money and who doesn't get money. You know, it's like leaving the personalities out of it. If you're willing to meet the standard, then you become eligible and whoever you are and so the one thing that I heard today that I thought was a pretty great idea that's not an engineering standard but it's that commitment to serve every customer as another test. And then I think a third test we've talked about was open access so we don't build a public highway that only one company can drive on. Although those things. So I agree with Senator Pearson not to write that into, not to write details into the statute, but we could write the high level description of our interoperability and upgrade ability and interconnect ability and all, all those kinds of things serving every customer. And then the rulemaking could get there we put the guard rails on it. Anyway, so. You know, Irv was talking about open access. The one thing he was very clear on is that if we required CUDs to offer $25 a month service that you're in the bond market and you've got to, you know, you've got to show that you've got the profit to pay the bond it's got to be dedicated and to do that especially in higher low in higher low income areas people places with more people with higher incomes. They can't do that, which is one thing to be said for the for profits, because they can do that because they make a higher profit. And they have been doing that so they also cherry pick where they go and yes they do. They do. I mean that's, but when you are, you know, offering a public service. And it gets harder to do those extras at least in the beginning, if you can grow enough and get enough customer base and make enough profit then you can do it. But that takes time. Okay. Anything else. Maria, thank you for putting that together. I think we'll do better when we're more awake. No problem. That's fine. It is, I think it will be posted and the, I guess the only other thing I'll say is it's definitely a work in progress and if you look at it. And there are particular areas. Donald, you need to mute. You want to add or other things. You can just let me know, and I'll revise it. So, okay. Oh, I think I want to be host I can mute people. I admitted Maria. Okay. I think it works really well when we can have a full day. I think we'll have renewable energy Vermont in on Thursday if they can come to talk about the battery storage and then then we'll, you know, work our way through that bill. And if no one objects will stick on our little tax section and that's one I think we can. Sounds like everybody agrees on what we should do with that last piece so that's one I think we can get out and get moving. The bill might be a little more difficult. And right now miscellaneous tax is a piece of cake but it might not be before we finish. Okay, so to Hardy. Yeah, I'm speaking miscellaneous tax I said you an email heads up this morning about some potential amendments I have which I'll send you when I have them drafted. Okay, I haven't. That's okay to my emails last night and there were 200 more this morning. I know it's crazy they never stop. But I also wanted to ask you mean because this came up in in health and welfare this morning. What you're hearing in terms of the timing on things do you know, there is a planning meeting for the end of the session at noon tomorrow but everything I've heard is that. I believe the 15th of May is our last budgeted day. Somewhere in that second week of May. The goal is to get the budget out next Tuesday but then the budget usually goes through a week or more of negotiations. Not just with the House and the Senate, but sometimes efforts to keep it from being vetoed. And then other committees are throwing other things in to be added on so that usually I, there's a set number but I think it's, it's usually about two weeks after it comes out. The budget is the last bill to go it is usually preceded by the miscellaneous tax bill, because, depending less now than used to be but I can remember being told you know we need a quarter of a million dollars raise it. So, that those are the usually the last two bills to go out the door. Right, okay. I just wanted to know because the budget, it surprised me this morning when I heard that they were trying to get the budget out by next Tuesday. Well they've been trying to get 315 out since. January 1st, their point is not January 6. So, things, you know, getting them out doesn't mean it's the end. We didn't do it. We did it the year before and I don't think we did it the year before but normally they will cut, they will suspend morning committees a week to two weeks before the end so that this committee in a probes can work all day. You know, all these bills remote not a health and welfare will end up in a probes if not here. We've had a lot of energy and economic development bills at the end. And there's been less of a volume this year than other years but it's still going to take us some time to get broadband put together and then negotiated with the house. So, we need to have time to do that. That's a good question. Well, do you, is it your understanding that when budget, when a probes tries to vote the budget in a week, that it would include our money. I mean, I'm surprised, for instance, in my morning committee, we haven't been asked to suggest ideas. What about as economic development or healthcare have you got the money in the budget as it came from the house. Joint fiscal committee is meeting tomorrow morning because ARPA is a grant and joint fiscal has to agree to accept the grant. Right. So this year what we did is we accepted the grant with these conditions. A certain bucket was just emergency funds the administration could use them then there was another bucket. They could use with joint fiscal approval but the bulk of the money was went through the appropriations process. So this year, I think we're still trying. You know this planning meeting is putting off the money chairs meeting and things are just moving quickly we're still trying to figure out, ARPA is not coming to the state is one huge pile of money. It's more designated and so we're trying to figure out exactly what's there and how it's going to be managed. So it is a working progress and hopefully we'll know more by the end of the week. But we're looking at a world in which on March 31st the feds changed the tax code for the previous year, you know, in that's like 15 days before the taxes are supposed to be filed. This is not the normal world. So, so I'm looking, looking forward to the meeting tomorrow Chris. And ask specifically for suggestions to give the Senate Appropriations Committee but we're very much working on recommendations to give the Senate Appropriations Committee with the ARPA money. I think health and welfare is looking, especially at the childcare bill because that is a bill in play that has some serious implications for ongoing funding and some serious money attached to it. And just a year ago, Senate Ag dreamed up $50 million sort of and then we were told well you can, you can play with 30 and so a bunch of time though, you're, I'm hearing folks say maybe we'll have three or four days that's frustrating but I did just get an email from representative and voted out the S53. Yep. It has a new exemption. It has the exemption for menstrual products, but also major restructuring of Vermont's corporate tax structure, the cloud tax exemption of income tax for first 10 grand of military retirement and change a mutual fund DFR registration fees so we've gone back to that one. So, we may, we may, if I had a guess, we might want to consider just tacking on the menstrual. I think that one I did tell you that representative Ansel did tell me that that's what she thought she didn't tell me about the 10,000 in the. So we're going to tax the state employees pension but not the generals off. I think we might get some pushback there but that's out of committee but it's not off the floor is it. Yeah, so we'll have to I, I, at this point, can't see us doing the cloud tax they always send that to us usually on miscellaneous yeah, like the last two weeks of the session. I don't see us passing that one out. I think if we want to take anything off it, it'll go on miscellaneous tax, and then they have spent all year on this corporate tax and I think a good part of last year. This is their, you know, major work for the year, and we'll look at that and we'll look at the cloud tax. But I, I can't see how we're going to get anything out and I don't think when you send something over three weeks before committee in our major bill that you can expect that we're going to do it but we'll see. Are we ready to end the. We're ready to end live stream. I think everybody's ready then everything will be back tomorrow. We'll see everyone.