 So committee, we have some time here today with legislative council to look at the house version of Canvas for consumer consumption and the Senate bill. So we've got Michelle Childs here to walk us through a comparison of S54 with the House Bill 196 which is currently across the hall. So, Michelle, thank you so much. Good afternoon. I'm front of right here, Michelle Childs, Office of Legislative Council. And I also just wanted to mention I have with me Gordon Merrick, sitting over here at Legislative Council desk. So Gordon is one of four law students who works in our legislative clinic as interns during the session. And so you'll probably see a rotating cast of law students who might be subbing for me if I'm double booked or on some of the testimony because I'm trying to have somebody in here on all the S54 testimony so I'll just sit you over there. So we have a chart here for S54s passed by the Senate and H196 as introduced. And I tried to hit most of the substantive things. There might be little tiny language changes or things that are different in the two versions but there is a lot that is very similar. So we're gonna start out looking at the Cannabis Control Board. So both versions have three members. They are appointed by the same folks. So you have one by the governor, one by the Senate Committee, one by the speaker. In S54, it specifies that the chair is appointed by the governor. What's different in the House bill is that the chair is elected amongst themselves rather than being designated by the governor. In the Senate bill, there are specifics with regard to those particular positions. So you'll see that the governor appointee has to have a background in business management or regulatory compliance. The Senate appointee has a background in agriculture or agriculture science and he's the member appointed by the speaker and he has to have a background in systemic social justice and equity issues and there are no such requirements in the House for Social Work. When it comes to salaries, the chair in the Senate proposal has a different salary than the other two members. So the chair is at two thirds that of a superior court judge which would put it at about 105,000. We talked a little bit about those numbers when you tried fiscal within here last week. And then for the other two members that would be half that of a superior court judge at around 80,000. And the House proposal is 60% of a Windsor County probate judge and I'm sorry, I asked Stephanie for those numbers on Friday and she sent it to me and I forgot what it is. But I will let you know shortly. So with regard to the executive director, there's a specific requirement. This was added in Senate appropriations that the executive director being an attorney with experience in legislative or regulatory matters. I think you guys know the initial structure for the board is pretty lean at the beginning. It might be a little top heavy but it's not, they do the recommendations for the build out for year two and three that come back to you with recommendations in January of next year. And one of the things that Senate appropriations was discussing is did you need a general counsel to be assisting with all of the rules that have to be developed in that first year of the board because remember they have to adopt rules from the commercial system for the medical system as it would operate under with the existence of a commercial system and also for the dispensaries. And so they thought one way is to have the required the executive director to be an attorney who has experience in those matters that can be assisting the board with the rulemaking. So the salary is specified for the executive director was in a proposal at 106,000 and the executive director there's no requirements with regard to experience for the salary is not specified. So as I mentioned in January of next year the board is supposed to come back before the general assembly. One thing that is the same in both is that they're gonna come back to you with a recommendation for license fees. So remember there's no fees that are set in either bill but they're gonna come back to you and say well for cultivator licenses we recommend that there be 10 tiers and here's the different types of tiering and here's what those fee recommendations would be for an application or for an annual license or for renewal license. And so that is the same in both proposals. In the Senate bill they're also gonna come back to you in next January with recommendations on resources necessary for implementation for the next fiscal year. So that was when they might come in and say well we're gonna be processing applications in the fall of 2020 and to do that we need an additional position that's gonna be maybe doing processing those applications or maybe we're gonna need a plant inspector or an enforcement person or maybe they're gonna recommend that they partner up with other agencies that might be doing similar tasks within those agencies or it might be with agency of agriculture or we'll come back to you in January with those proposals. They're also gonna come back on a proposal work with agencies to develop outreach training and employment programs focusing on providing economic opportunities for individuals who have historically been disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition. They're also gonna come back on experience of other jurisdictions allowing retail cannabis deliveries. Delivery is not allowed in the Senate proposal. They would allow to continue to allow it for dispensaries but not for retailers. And then they're gonna come back and recommend whether tax money should be allocated from the general fund to the cannabis regulation fund to cover costs of running for grants. It's Jensof Archive. What's the intent behind the delivery? Is there some security reason? Around prohibition for delivery? Did you say it was prohibition for delivery or that there was a delivery aspect in one of them? Well, the Senate bill does not allow commercial delivery. So right now medical dispensaries can deliver to patients. That would continue under this but it doesn't contemplate under the new commercial system that deliveries would be allowed. However, most jurisdictions that have these types of programs do allow delivery and so senators were like, we're not really sure how we feel about deliveries. Let's see maybe what the board might recommend about what's the experience in other jurisdictions around deliveries or things we need to think about. Do we wanna allow commercial delivery is not? Thank you. Jim? So as I'm reading this, it really sounds like something happens this year and next year they come back with a whole series of recommendations. Yes, well, not to be argument, but I would say stuff does happen this year in the sense that you have to kind of get this whole group up and operating and then you have to initiate all of this rulemaking this fall. So they do have to start that work. But because any way that you slice it with these programs and why it usually takes at least 24 months to go from date of enactment or passage of an initiative to having the first retail sales is you have to really adopt, go through the rulemaking process, which I would say tends to be 10 to 12 months that I don't think you can really cut it any shorter on something as complex as this with a lot of moving parts and a lot of people who wanna be publicly involved in the rulemaking process. And so I think the idea was that because you're gonna have that year-long process of rulemaking, which is gonna take up a lot of time and effort and a lot of folks are probably gonna be involved is that the fees and things like that would just wouldn't kick in until the fall of 2020 that you can have that's more appropriate for them to come back with more detailed information for you on how to set fees or things like that. But I'm sorry, I didn't- No, no, no, no, no. Without that, this is helping. I'm just trying to, when we, last year we had a study commission working on this and it came back with a bunch of recommendations, and I will certainly agree that they want to work in full time on it using people with other lives to take care of, but I'm just wondering if we're duplicating some of that by, but the rulemaking is obviously- I would certainly expect that this board is gonna look at the work of the commission and the data that they put together, the looking at the other. They're gonna do a lot of that, they're gonna use that, they're gonna be working with a lot of the same people and that's gonna be, I would imagine, a starting point for them about whether or not we can get those to that. Are there any other boards in the system that are this small that are projecting to have this much work to do? That having the one- I don't know, I would maybe, I know I could check with Betsy and see if her- Utility board. It seems like, you know, getting something up and running around, one person goes out sick for a while, you're kind of stunning. I think there is a general acceptance, it's a heavy lift for the initial outset and one of the things that the Senate proposal does is it says, and I think I have this later on, is it has the auditor look at a few years out whether or not the existing, the structure that's set up makes sense continuing out into the future or should it be, should it have a different structure to continue on as you start to build in and maybe add additional employees for doing enforcement, for doing plant health, for doing all these other things, does it still work that you, that makes sense to have a three-member board with an executive director and or should it be something different? All right. So for the cannabis regulation fund, in the Senate proposal, it's composed of all the fees, but just the fees and there is no tax money in the cannabis regulation fund. So it's all the fees and it goes, the money's from the fund to go for implementation administration enforcement and then the difference is that in the House proposal, that fund also includes... Jim. Where did the taxes go? It's they all go into the fund as well as the fees and then the monies are used for implementation administration enforcement of the programs. There's not a separate part. At this point, for introduction... In the Senate bill, you said that the Senate bill... Well, the taxes go to the general fund. The taxes go to the general fund. Right, I haven't gotten Jim, you skip to the taxes or? No, that's fine. We just, if you're looking at the taxes and the House proposal, and that was just trying to understand the difference. I mean, obviously there was a tax in there, so I was just wondering where it went. Yeah, let's skip down to the end. Taxes. So in the Senate proposal, it's a 16% retail tax on cannabis and cannabis products and that all goes to the general fund. There's no sales tax. There's no automatic 6% sales tax on that. There's a 2% local option. In the House proposal, there's 11% retail tax on the cannabis and cannabis products and then there's the 6% sales tax which now goes to the education fund and then there's a 3% local option. So there's a smaller tax that goes into the campus regulation fund that is the retail tax for the Senate proposal. Do I dare? Just say that right, Jim. Okay, so on the House proposal, they have a traditional sales tax and then a 3% local option tax. Does that take the place of, because usually we have a sales tax, you've got the 1% local option that's available to some communities. Right, this takes, in my understanding, this takes the place of it, not in lieu or in addition to the impact. All right, thank you. And when you want to get into talking about the local option taxes, whatever you feel we should have, Anthea, come in and talk about it. So the next difference is with regard to the temporary early sales to the public. So this is something that is not contained in the Senate proposal but is in the House bill. So because this is one of the really big differences in there, I don't know, do you want me just to talk to you just briefly conceptually or I thought it might be helpful if you looked kind of at some of the language that's in the House bill. That's, if you have the time, then you're here from the dispensaries later on in the week. Right, I think that would be helpful for us to see the bill in English next week. So if you, I will pull. You need to do it. I want to go in 96. I don't think you need to just print this, but. You got 196. Yes, 196. Side by side. No. But thanks. Those of you who are on your targets, whatever, so page 13 of the bill is introduced. So temporary licenses for sales to the public. So we have currently, there are five registrations that have been issued in Vermont. They are allowed to have basically two points of service to patients. So you could have a maximum of 10 out there but you don't have 10 now. You just have five licenses and a couple have the two locations. The proposal in the House bill, and remember that this is currently regulated by the Department of Public Safety, is that in the House proposal would allow the, anyone who has a valid registration on for a medical dispensary to sell cannabis and cannabis products on a limited time basis. So only until July 1st of 2021, which is when essentially you would start, you would anticipated have starting to have some of the retail commercials of starting to sell. And so they would have a period of a, a shortened period of where they would be able to sell cannabis and cannabis products to the public. And when I say the public, I'm always talking about adults 21 years of age and older, I'm never talking about anybody into that. So then nothing is ever contemplated under for under sales or possession. And so there you start out in subsection B with some intent language about the ability for them to sale into the, to sell to the public under temporary license line 11 dispensary license for early sales to be required to meet the needs of its designated patients and caregivers during that time and should not reduce access by patients and caregivers to products or services. Subsection C, so this is not withstanding the existing chapter that regulates dispensaries and those rules, dispensary would be able to apply to the department of public safety for a temporary cannabis establishment license that would allow them to make those sales in accordance with provisions that are set for here. So there would be an application period from August 1st of this year to October 1st of this year. They would submit a letter of intent to the department of public safety that they would like to obtain a temporary license, letters to contain a detailed explanation of how dispensary plans to implement the temporary program while continuing to serve the needs of patients and caregivers, departments to work with the dispensary applicant on meeting the criteria and compliance with the provisions under the dispensary rules now. And then the department is to issue a temporary license no more than 60 days after the letter of intent is received by the department. Sales to the public can start January 1st of next year and then they expire as I mentioned in July 1st for 2021. So it would be essentially an 18 month license. And remember, they're vertically integrated so they're doing everything from starting to grow to doing it on a service. Thank you. Matt, when you say dispensary, as the, you get a temporary to start selling, are you referring to a current, let's say, this distribution point where people can pick up medical marijuana or are you referring to a girl facility that doesn't sell in that site? So you're talking about like whether or not they could do service customers at the Milton facility as opposed to the Burlington one or two weeks, right? I don't think this is specifically addressed here. I think it's contemplated that it would be where they're serving patients currently, but that may not be doable because of the particular location or wanting to preserve some confidentiality for patients or traffic flow or parking or things like that. So I think that's not really addressed in here. Marsha. So these are temporary licenses. What's the vision after this temporary license has expired? Would the dispensaries continue to be able to continue to sell as part of the retail structure? If they wanted to do that, they would have to participate just like anybody else in applying for a license under the new system. So what they would do is if they obtained a temporary license, and let's say it's February of next year and they have a temporary license and they're doing sales to the public, but they anticipate that they want to continue doing that on the expiration of that, they will have had to apply for whatever licenses they would need to. And remember, the commercial system is not automatically vertically integrated. So if they wanted to do something of all five of what they're doing in one registration for medical, they would have to apply for a cultivator. Oh, I like it. Every single one of those. And they would have to obtain those and go through the application process, pay those fees and obtain those individual licenses and then get those approved in order to sell after July 1st, 2021. So you'll see in subdivision two here in line 12 after they're approved for the temporary license, but before they begin operations, they should pay a one time fee of $75,000. And that fee is deposited into the Canvas Regulation Fund. So right now, dispensary fees go into a marijuana regulation fund that's administered by the Department of Public Safety that in that those funds are used to run that program. It has run at a surplus for a number of years. You know, JFO can probably come in and talk to you about how that's worked over the years. Last year, the legislature took $300,000 out of that fund and transferred it to General Fund. So, but I do know that over the years it has, it's composed of patient annual fees and caregiver fees and a dispensary fees. And so that has been sustaining that fund. And so this new money would go into the new Canvas Regulation Fund to fund the work of the board in getting the program up and running prior to those new commercial fees coming in in the fall of 2020. So remember, is that you're gonna have the board operating for over a year before any monies that are gonna come into that fund to pay for the work of the fund. And we'll talk about a little bit later about how there's an appropriation in the bill for the board and the operation of the board, but it's spending and anticipation of receipts. So $75,000 per, so if you had all five, then you have that money in there. Subsection E, these are the things they can do. They can cultivate package, label, transfer and test cannabis, use cannabis and cannabis products to produce cannabis products and package, label and testing them and sell them to the public for consumption off the registered premises. So Subsection F is an exemption for the cultivation limits that are currently in chapter 86 right now. Although there is a bill that passed the Senate that would do away with the cultivation limits for mathematical programs right now, there is a, the cultivation limits are tagged per patient. So under your current law for medical, patients can grow two mature and seven immature plants on their own. And so the way that it works for dispensaries is because patients have to designate one particular dispensary that is like their dispensary that they'll buy from, they're not allowed to go to all the dispensaries, is if a dispensary knows how many patients has designated it as their dispensary, and then you take that number of patients and you multiply that times two to get your mature plants and multiply it by seven to get your immature plants. And so F is just saying that doesn't apply here because we're exempting of that because we're gonna allow them to grow to serve the public. John, this is the question. So Michelle, the $75,000 fee for a temporary license, for that, it seems like a lot for a temporary license. Is that amount of money gonna be able to be applied to a regular license once the licensing fees are set up by the new cannabis control board? I mean, would they get a reduced fee for the new retail? Exactly. Nope. Okay. Because the special one-time offer. The annual fee right now for a medical dispensary is $25,000. You know, and this is obviously something that's, there's a lot of different opinions and a lot of debate about whether or not to allow dispensaries to go first. And so I think the resident was trying to find the balance there and say, I'm trying to figure out where that two-spot is to provide an incentive to get the early sales, to get the money coming into the fund to fund the work of the board before there are sales on the new program. So subscription, G is a dispensary may sell only to the public on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and patients shall be entitled to make appointments on those days to avoid any significant wait times that are not required to make appointments. So there was a concern about, how do you ensure that the patients who are being provided these products and services now are not negatively impacted by this dispensary starting to sell to the public? And something that we've seen in some other jurisdictions when we first open up a retail commercial market is there's a lot of excitement, there's a lot of people going and it can be long waits. Sometimes there are supply issues, so when Quebec brought online and Montreal opened, it stores, it was only after a couple of weeks they ran out of product. And so they shortened there, and I don't know if that's been lifted yet, but they moved to only selling on a few days of Thursday, Friday and Saturday. So we were looking at that and saying, well, how do you kind of try to put in some safeguards there to make sure that you don't negatively impact the medical program? So I understand that other jurisdictions where medical dispensaries have started adult sale, that essentially medical patients got the front of the line. Right, and that's one of the things here, which is that, so like if you had, if on a day that you had retail and you had a patient, they could make an appointment and say, I'm gonna come in at two o'clock and I wanna meet with somebody that they therefore, so there's a line out the door and cars down the street for the retail, but the patient gets served and doesn't have to deal with all that. So age, so in a single transaction, dispensary can provide a half an ounce of cannabis or the equivalent cannabis products or a combination on showing the valid IDs. I'm sorry, we're rudely interrupted by somebody saying happy birthday. I'll go to the festivity of the rest of the bar. And no food's coming this way. Well, maybe. Maybe, yeah, if he was, he'd be really mad. There's a provision here, CNH2, that cannabis and cannabis products sold to patients and caregivers should be priced at least 10% below the same or similar products sold to the public. On I, that cannabis and cannabis products sold to sections shall be subject to the tax provisions. And so what will happen is that you will have the $75,000 fees going into the Canvas Regulation Fund and as soon as they start selling, you will also have tax revenue going into that fund to be able to fund the work of the board. Before again, you won't see any fees until the fall of 2020, other fees from the commercial applications. Is the amount of marijuana cannabis whether that a person can get on medical, that's a little limit on that, right? Yes, two ounces a month. Right, and a person can get out of fulfilling their two-ounce limit once more. Now they go to a public, a public store or a store where they buy a public, how can they get the amount that the public can get on top of their medical? And if not, how do they track it? There's not provisions in here about tracking all of that. I would say if somebody is in right now, the possession limit for an individual who's not a patient is an ounce, or a patient, it's two ounces. If they exceed that, they are in violation of the law and it is a crime. So, but there's not, the language here doesn't contemplate or require tracking with regard to the sales to make sure that someone does not exceed their personal limit. So if they decide that they want to break the law and go over the limit, acquiring it, whether it's from a dispensary or their neighbor with a wagon full of pumpkins and cannabis, or however it is, that's, there are provisions in law that punish that. Okay, so currently they do not track, excuse me, currently they do not track the amount of marijuana that somebody would get on medical. Right now, for the medical program, you're required to designate one particular dispensary and the dispensary has records of what they have sold to you and so they know how much they have sold to you in a month. My understanding from DPS is they are in the process of updating software and having a program coming online and that that will allow them the capability to do some more tracking if people are going between dispensaries because again, S117 as it passed the Senate would allow a patient to go to any dispensary, they wouldn't have to, so if their usual dispensary is in Chittenden County but there's a product that is a carry by the dispensary agent in County but the Montpelier dispensary carries it that they could go to either of those and my understanding is that the new software will allow them to be able to track which one and so I don't know what that means in terms of a commercial market but I would imagine that's part of when you look at what's required for rulemaking with regard to the board, things around record keeping and all of that kind of stuff is a part of that and. Okay, thank you. Nelson. I was gonna read my question, how they're gonna track because one person could go to one place and the next place and the next place but it sounds like they're working message and track where people purchase stuff and who they ask. I think that there's the capability for that when you probably wanna talk with Jeff Ball and BCIC about their software updates and what that means. So there's nothing in here that says that retail purchases have to be tracked but they couldn't as part of the rules, eventually, no. They, they, there's nothing in here specifically with retail that says that the board has to develop some type of system for tracking, you know, if person A, how much they buy when they go. I don't know how they necessarily do that in other states or if they do that in other states, that my sense generally is that they don't track person to person, they regulate the businesses to make sure that the businesses are in compliance with the rules to make sure that your car transaction is within a certain limit, that you're being, you know, you're carting people, you're doing all of that but I don't think that the other states, and you know, we should find out, I don't know, definitively, I don't think the other states go and say, okay, Michelle Childs, you know, can I track her specifically to see how many stores she's gone to or what she's done. I don't think that we do that with regard to, I mean, other than certain types of prescriptions with N-Plex, I don't think we do that with most things. No, no, I mean, a few years back and I don't think we're much unique from past legislation that you go in and buy certain types of cold medicine. Right, that's the N-Plex system and we do have that for those types of products but that's a, yes. I just think we need to be careful about tracking individuals when they're still for prohibition for the person since then where I wanna, I think that's something we should hear testimony on if we're going to go down that path but we need to be careful. But we're tracking it for medical. Right, and the question that I have about that is, I'm presuming that that limit of two ounces for a medical patient was put into the original legislation because we were coming from a place of prohibition, universal prohibition and that this was a small opening of people being able to have access to marijuana. I don't know if you were part of the development of the medical marijuana legislation way back when. Presumably, to correct me if I'm wrong, it was an effort to make sure that you could differentiate between somebody who was possessing marijuana because they needed it for their own medical use versus somebody who was maybe feeling marijuana. Right, I mean, I think that originally when this came out conceptually and Vermont did it up their medical registry in 2004 so it's been a while and it was a very different landscape with regard to cannabis. We were the ninth state to come online with a medical program so still kind of early in the process and Vermont was then and continues to be one of the more kind of tightly regulated programs compared to a lot of the other states and I think the concern was that we didn't want because it was at that time still a crime, we didn't decriminalize possession until 2013 is that we want people being able to buy an unlimited amount of cannabis and then potentially divert it. Now that everybody can possess an ounce plus their plants and anything that they harvest from their plants, the question is whether any legal states in the area, the question is whether or not somebody's gonna go around to stores and buy a lot of cannabis and then divert it. I don't know that there's a lot of profit margin in that necessarily if it's as accessible. It's helpful to understand that what we're looking at is transitioning away from a prohibition model and into a retail market and that's the best way. So I'll go back, so any more questions about the early sales? At one point we were talking about trying to give the medical end of the spectrum a leg up to so speak to preserve its viability. I haven't heard anything that really does that beyond early sales but then that disappears when everything else comes online, is that correct? Yes. So we're not really protecting our medical market and in either of these bills. I'm sure witnesses would have different opinions on that. I don't know that. There's nothing specific with regard to the direct protection of the medical program other than in both bills in different ways. The house bill that allows for the early sales talks about the value of the, well actually both bills have it in the later provision but the house bill talks about how important it is to preserve the medical program and then when retail sales come on they want to make sure that it's not negatively impacted and certainly having the dispensary be able to go first might be able to keep them going and know that they're suffering some. Docking somebody 75 grand to sell for 16 months. We will have the opportunity to explore that with some of the dispensaries. I'm going to watch the bill now. Okay, she went to that bill? Yes. Okay. Okay, great. All right. You know I'm embarrassed I didn't want to do that. Okay, appropriation. There is not an appropriation in the house bill. You know, it wasn't that they forgot but they figured that's going to come as it percolates on its way through. The appropriation in the Senate bill is $810,000. You heard from Joint Biscal on Friday about that so it's been much time. It's made in anticipation of receipts in the fund. And there is also a contingent provision in there that if at the end of FY 2022, if proceeds, if there's a negative balance continues to run a negative balance based on these are already coming through and certainly through but it's still not enough to run the program. Then whatever the deficit is in the fund, money from the taxes would shift over and fill the hole in the fund. There's also a member going back was the looking at the recommendation from the board about whether or not they're going to need some of that tax money or whether or not, because the board will be coming to you with the recommendation for the fees but they're trying to find that level, right? So one of the goals of both the legislation is to bring people from the illegal market into the regulated market. And so they want to find, you know, they want to have a lot of different layers and options for people to choose because they want to bring people in, encourage people to be in the regulated market. So you don't want to have fees that are so high that somebody that's currently participating in the illegal market is like, well it's not going to work my time. I don't want to comply with all this regulation and I'm not going to do any better under this and I'm going to pay all these fees. So I'm just going to stay doing what I'm doing. And so, you know, maybe when they come through with the fee recommendations, they say, well, here's what we think is reasonable, what makes sense, looking at other jurisdictions, what we think the market here is in Vermont. But even with these recommendations, we don't think that it will generate enough money from those fees to be able to bring us full on in FY 2021 or whatever for the staffing that we need in order to properly run the program. And so then they may come to you with that recommendation saying, and we think that a certain percentage of the money that comes through that goes to general fund should be redirected back into the regulation fund. So auditor of accounts, this is I mentioned a little bit earlier, so this would have the auditor coming back to y'all in April of 2023 regarding organizational structure of the board and whether it still makes sense now that everything's up and running and what it's looking like at the time. Curious time for them to report to us. April is a bit late for us to do anything. Yeah, you know, I honestly, I did not take that date. I don't remember why, but that was out of my appropriations. So maybe they figured they'll have the budget in hand and they can figure out what they're gonna. I don't know. Excellent point. That's curious, we might want to flag that. That's true, Mark. So getting to the cannabis establishments and the regulation. So first, so we'll talk about regulation by local government, both have opt out provisions. So essentially if a municipality does not want to have a licensed cannabis establishment in the municipality, what they would do is they would put that before the voters either it could be, and we might want to tweak the language. I think when I was talking with the chair, we're thinking about and make it clear that you could have the fall presidential election, they could maybe put it on the ballot then in addition to your town meeting election there or they could have a special election if they wanted to do that. So they would essentially put it on the ballot and put it to voters and say, and they have the option of either saying they want to ban all cannabis establishments. So basically none of the five different types or they could just say, particularly when they could say, we're okay with all of them, but we don't want a retailer. Or we know this nice little lady over there that makes creams and she wants to keep doing that and we let her and so we'll ban all the rest but we'll allow product manufacturers or whatever it is. So they can decide and then they could that be for the voters and then that's how they would prohibit a cannabis establishment within the municipality. There's the ability under both proposals for the select board to establish a Cannabis Control Commission similar to the way that they view for liquor control. There's a small difference in that. The way in the house bills, it says that that Cannabis Control Commission shall be members of the municipal body and the Senate put it in that it may be. So it doesn't require that it essentially be that body that's already together. So it could be somebody else that comes in there. That's also what that would be on the commission. And again, there's not a lot of differences between the two. Just a little kind of language differences here and there because they spent some time working on the Senate government operations. Spent some time, they didn't take jurisdiction of the bill but they held some hearings and spent some time and then they made recommendations to Senate Judiciary and Senate Judiciary Incorporated recommendations of Senate GoVox into their amendment. So the commission, the local commission can issue local permits and condition of permits on compliance of bylaws and ordinances. It requires the board, the Cannabis Control Board to adopt rules relating to the municipality's issuance of local permits for cannabis establishment and all applications for and forms for the licenses and permits are to be prescribed by the board which is my understanding of what they do for the court as well. There are, there's this last bullet here is kind of Belton suspenders. It's so saying that it specifically prohibits a municipality from banning cannabis establishments through bylaws or ordinances. You already do that by saying, you have to do the opt out by a vote but there's specific language saying they can't do that. It prohibits municipality from conditioning local permit on any basis and not specified in the section. So this is the Senate was concerned about something that Massachusetts does which is, Massachusetts requires a cannabis establishment to have a host agreement with the municipality where it's located and they basically come up with a, they negotiate a contract with that municipality and they had received testimonies in a judiciary about, I think Senator Sears mentioned in here about certain things like, okay, you're gonna, in order to get a permit from us you're gonna make a $25,000 donation to the Boys and Girls Club or you're gonna do this or you're gonna do that and the senators didn't like that. So they prohibited that. But again, these are not things that you guys have granted to the power for municipalities to do anyway, but they wanted to be specific and very clear that these things were not allowed. On the opt in opt out, so it looks like they're both opt out. Do we have any idea of what other states have done? Are they opt in or opt out? I think they're mostly opt out, but the politics, I think that's some of the questions. And on the opt out vision, the Senate added, looks like quite a bit of, you know, bumper guards on what you can and can't do, but can you give me some examples? Like, say for example, after a resale establishment was erected in your town, you didn't realize how much traffic it was going to generate. And you had some concerns about the traffic and you needed to put up light or whatever. Is that within an ounce for you to say, look, we've gotta make changes here and you gotta help pay for them or is that not within their purview because they didn't opt out before the weekend? Well, the state license is conditioned on you having the appropriate local permit. And I would say, and I don't need to be quiet about this, but not being the expert on what towns can do and require with regard to local permitting under their bylaws. And I'm saying once they have it. Once they have it. I would say, I would imagine that your permits, your local permits are coming up for renewals on a period on some type of periodic basis. So when you're coming up for renewal of the license, I would say you probably want to talk with the municipal. Yeah, I thought Senator Shears gave his permission that once you were in, you were kind of grandfathered. Well, you can't do, I'm sorry. If your question is, if you have, let's say you have a retail establishment and you're operating and you have chosen not to opt out and then you say, we didn't like that. That's a bad idea. We're now going to put it before voters and we're gonna ban retail establishments. That one would be grandfathered in. It doesn't mean that they can do whatever they want and not comply with whatever you're requiring for the conditions of their local permit or anything like that. But you can't, after the fact, after a business comes in and invests and sets up camp and gets all, as long as they're in compliance with everything, you can't then put a vote and plan out. How can you change any of your rules? Any of your rules. If it's within the municipalities authority, yes. But you can't ban it through the vote once it's there. But you could ban in future ones from coming in. Yeah, I don't know. I'm thinking of like your parking is not adequately as open or required. Isn't parking one of the things that they can regulate? Yeah, but can they do it after the fact? I would say that they could based on their local municipal authority for their permit. You can't after the fact. They can't deny them the ability to operate under this but they could, I would assume that they're, well, maybe Nelson has a thought on this. Being the zoning administrator of my town. It's based on what the board that grants the permit what's on his conditions. Because a local permit will allow them to have their business and usually when they grant that business, they grant certain conditions on that business. And if they were saying parking has the actual traffic control, it'd be excellent. And when outside of that, then they would be great in their permit and they'd have to come back. But as long as they were within it. But when they come up for let's say, that's not in that. A lot of towns do not have reviews of once they've issued the permit to give them the permit for life. Is that, is that, do they have to do that? Or is it the authority to do an annual permit? Apparently we have a recycling facility that's going through a five year review. It was a condition out of the permit. All permits did not have that. It's based on the development review board to decide how that permit should be handled with the future. I mean, it seems as though that you would have, when you'd issuing these local permits, you'd say, here's what we think, here's what you're gonna do, but that you have periodic review to make sure that everything's working. And then when you have your review, you say, well now, actually you need to accommodate more parking because it's affecting your neighbors. And that's a condition of renewal of your local permit. And then the state permit is conditioned that you're in compliance with your local permit. Okay, give me 10. Really quick. Right, okay, so that's what we have on the list for rulemaking. Substantially the same little language tweets, things we've done here and there. I just kind of hit the highlights around kind of some of the differences. So one thing that the Senate has that the house bill does not have is the board has to adopt policies and procedures for conducting outreach and promoting participation in the market by diverse groups of individuals who have been harmed by cannabis prohibition that's not in the house bill. Senate bill has specific limitations on the amount of THC that are in the products. There are limitations, we're talking about the board has to adopt those, but it's not as, doesn't set the limit, which is, there is a limit set in the Senate proposal. Senate proposal has just a little bit of a language difference around prohibition on products or packaging design to make the product more appealing to persons under 21. And so they just added it that it's not just the products, but the packaging being designed to be appealing. So just again, kind of just a little finessing there. I also mentioned to you is that both bills as introduced talked about, it talks about children oftentimes are minors and the Senate changed almost all of that to persons under 21, since that is the legal age of possession in Vermont. And then also in the Senate proposal, there's a requirement that if a retailer is going to sell both cannabis products and hemp products, so you may see all the CBD stuff that's being sold in different places, that that be clearly identified in the retail, in the retail store about what is a hemp product, hemp derived product and what is a cannabis derived product. So we regard to criminal history records. Again, very similar, just a little bit of a language tweak in the Senate version, so right now, so recall, remember that anybody that's going to be associated with a cannabis establishment, whether it's going to be the applicants and the owners, it's going to be the financiers, it's going to be the employees who are working there that they have to have a criminal history record check. And so that's a Vermont check records, it's also a fingerprint supported FBI record check. And so that's done in both proposals. But then the board is going to adopt rules for basically determining whether or not if somebody comes back with a criminal history record, what would be a disqualifying criminal history record? And states do it differently, some states do a point system, some fall into certain categories, but it leaves it to the board to come up with that system. And to see the highlighted language there, the Senate added that the board in the development of the rules is to consider the record based on factors that demonstrate whether the applicant presently poses a threat to public safety or the proper functioning of the regulated market. And you'll see there is the last sentence in both of them is that nonviolent drug offenses shall not automatically disqualify the candidate. If a member of a diverse group that had experienced discrimination in the past, and if they're going through this process, they're experiencing it again, what's their group course? I'm sorry, experiencing? Well, if when you're talking about groups that were harmed by the prohibition, I think at root it's discriminatory because of their color of their skin or what have you, but if they're going through this process and they feel that they're being discriminated. You mean with regard to the review of the criminal history record or me, the process in general? The process in general. What would be their recourse? You mean that as in like they're filing to be an applicant, do we see them as students? And they feel that they're being, if they're not being accurately considered. What would they do? I don't know, I have to think. Because it's more than likely, it could be the case. So just wondering. Right. So for public records, very similar, just a little bit of language differentiation. So in the Senate proposal, so the filing records are exempt from public inspection and copying, and this just breaks it out to make it clear that it's any records in either an application or once somebody's been granted a license, and we didn't make a distinction in the house bill, because I think we just haven't thought of that distinction yet. So it's any records relating to security, public safety, transportation, or trade secrets, and then also employees added for once you have a licensee. So I think most of those kind of reasons are kind of obvious. An example would be that when an applicant is applying for a license, one of the things they have to submit is a site plan, and you're planned for security, and you're planned for moving money, and all of those things, and you probably don't necessarily want those things to be. So priorities. So both bills have a statutory list of priorities. There are really not many requirements for applicants in terms of like getting in the door to be an applicant, you have to be 21 and you have to submit to having your criminal history record checked done. But there are a list of priorities for the board to consider and there to adopt rules that don't, this list isn't exclusive, but both bills provide a list of things that were important to them for the board to consider. So the first being whether the applicants are residents of Vermont. So I will say that in past proposals, there have been requirements that applicants be residents of Vermont. So this is a shift. The governor's commission made the recommendation that it be a preference for Vermonters rather than a requirement for Vermonters to allow folks to be able to partner up with folks who may have expertise in other markets. I think we haven't discussed it much this year, but we haven't passed years, earlier years about whether or not you can just say Vermonters and a preference for Vermonters. And I think in any other context, you would be saying it's protectionist and couldn't do it, but we're talking about a federally illegal substance. And I think there are arguments on both sides as to whether or not you can provide a preference for residents. My recollection is that most states with a legal commercial market do have residency requirements. That's not just preferences, but they require people to be residents of that state in order to be applicants. So I don't think you're going too far out on a limb with regard to the way the other restrictions are doing. Second one is whether applicants have an existing medical cannabis dispensary license. So here's one where there is a little bit of a leg up for existing dispensaries. So that would be, as long as they're in good standing with their registration for the medical dispensary, that would get some extra points there with regard to their application. Whether the applicants would foster social justice and equity in the cannabis industry by the minority or women owned business. Whether the applicants propose specific plans to recruit higher and implement a development ladder for minorities, women and individuals who have historically been impacted by cannabis prohibition. Whether applicants propose specific plans to pay employees a livable wage and offer benefits to those employees. Whether the project incorporates principles of environmental sustainability, including energy efficiency. And then the geographic distribution of establishments based on population and market needs. So that's something that exists with regard to the dispensaries now is that if you've got five licenses, you don't put them all in Jenin County. You know, I mean maybe they're based on population or the patient size, but generally they're supposed to be distributed in order to serve the market needs. So they're to consider that as a factor. So if everybody's applying for Jenin County and nobody in other words they're supposed to consider that. And that would also help protect medical marijuana dispensaries perhaps. Is there already locations or narratives? They are, they are, they are, they are stand out processes. So if they apply for retail licenses then that would have to be taking consideration and granting other. Right, although they would not have to have their retail and medical dispensaries co-located. They could have a separate point of service for serving the public versus serving patients. Because they know that some of the, and I think of one in particular, the place where they serve patients is quite small. And by not being amenable to having a long line or a lot of cars coming or that sort of thing. And so it may be that they wanna keep that location for serving patients somewhere and then have a different location for serving potentially much larger group of folks. And that's not, and there is language in both bills that says that requires the board to adopt the rules around how to address that particular situation if you have a dispensary that also has a retail one and that if they're gonna co-locate how should they address that situation to ensure that patients do have maybe a little bit of confidentiality and access to the same services and counseling that they get now that isn't gonna kind of be overtaken by the commercial market. And that's all I got. And then we're back to taxes. Back to taxes. We've already talked about. Committee, any other questions for Michelle with respect to differences between House introduced version and Senate passed version? As far as taxes, is there any discussion about dedicated funds for public education surrounding cannabis use or rehabilitation programs? I see some money dedicated to education coming to this, that's it. Right, well that's just in the House version right with the sales tax. You're talking about was there talking to Senate bill around dedicated funds? There was, the senators who put forth this proposal and which had passed was that, while they certainly recognize those needs and is that they thought that what was appropriate is for that tax money to go into the general fund and for them to be making those decisions the way they make all those decisions about whether or not to dedicate money to those things rather than have it specifically tagged for certain programs which is the way that previous bills on this have always kind of said a certain amount is gonna go here, here's the priorities, you know that, but so rather than have dedicated funds as they said, let's do it like we do everything, the money will go in, we'll know how much money's coming in and then we can make a decision about funding those projects. Thank you. Any other questions on the comparison between the two bills? Excellent. Thank you for being with us. Sure, thanks for having me. Let's see if we can get into it. So we are going to shoot ears now and take S107 and that's what we're gonna ask. Betsy Ann, welcome. We need a little introduction to S107. Sounds good. You're Betsy Ann Ras, but is it a council? The committee has posted for you this overview here of S107 as passed the Senate. Let's take a second look. Use this as well as the bill itself as we go through, but first this document provides just a general summary of what S107 would do. S107 is called an act relating to elections corrections and this general summary lists the topics that this covers. So big picture, as you'll see throughout this bill, there is use of the gender neutral term voter instead of free men and free women which appears still in a few places throughout Title 17 or elections title. It also covers using DMV data for voter checklist maintenance purposes. It addresses major political party organization as well as candidate primary petitions and statements of nomination. What happens in the case of primary recount ties. It also allows for the electronic delivery of early voter absentee ballots for voters who are ill, injured, or have a disability. It would allow the use of vote tabulators during early voting in some fixed office. It also addresses standards for defective ballots and retention time for unused ballots and the date of a special election to fill a congressional vacancy and campaign finance reporting dates. So big picture, those are the topics. So we can just throw this against the wall like a crafters. So I was gonna press every man Harrison. All right. All right. Okay. So then this summary provides a section by section summary. We can look at both the bill itself and the summary as we go along. So you'll see that this bill covers a lot of different topics and each of the topics are set off by those three asterisks on each side of the topic. So first you'll see it deals with this chapter in regard to ratifying articles amendment to the Vermont constitution. And this is a whole chapter in our title 17. And throughout this section one and throughout the whole bill itself, the bill would substitute that gender neutral term voters with a phrase free men and free women that still use in some places. And as we have talked about before in this committee, the Supreme Court justices made that same change to our Vermont constitution, except for that one place above the qualifications for free men and free women, but otherwise our constitution uses that term voters. And because free men and free women was used in a few places still in T17, this would just use that gender neutral general phrase voters as it's used elsewhere in title 17. So that's what you'll see is going on here in this section 1842 and 1843. You'll see a lot of cleanup happening in this bill too. So you'll see here in this section 1843, the summary notes, this cleanup here in subsection C is just substituting the language that polls open at a certain time instead of ballot boxes open at a certain time. And it's just making a cross reference to the section that currently exists about what time our polls have to open. So that's a cleanup change. And you'll see a lot of cleanup language throughout this bill. You also see breaking up subdivisions and subsections takes up a lot of space in the bill, but that's what's happening in a lot of places. There's just another change to use the term voters. Section 1845 talks about who gets to vote on proposed amendments to the Vermont Constitution. And our statute already provides that it's the voters at a general election that vote on proposed amendments to the Vermont Constitution. So this is just cleaning up this language here. Section 1845 to eliminate unnecessary language to just be more concise in saying that the elections provisions relating to the vote to ratify an amendment are the same as those in the general election. Just getting rid of unnecessary language instead. You also see what I've done in this summary is to highlight in some bold italicized text some potential revisions as I've gone through the bill. And here's one here in the section 1845. It just seems that now that this language the unnecessary language to be removed you can potentially revise the title of this section because now you'd be getting rid of reference to checklists, booths and clerks. And so a proposed amendment or a potential amendment you can do is just to revise the section heading to have it be conductive election or something similar. Just missed that on the Senate side. Found it on this side. Just goes to show we do better work on this side. There you go. Just some more cleanup here, voters. And here this is about posting a checklist and just it's the same as what's already provided on this other section. So the cross reference is just updated. And so just cleaning up unnecessary language, more voters changes. This section 1849 is interesting because right now the statute provides that the governor to issue a proclamation after it's been ratified. And it refers to that once the amendment has been ratified it would require all magistrates and officers and all citizens of the state to take notice thereof and govern themselves accordingly. Well this reference to magistrates is proposed to be struck since now. We only have magistrates in the family division of the Superior Court, that's it. So the reference to them just seems to be updated and they could be included within the general term officers. And here in section 1850 this is in regard to the requirement for the Secretary of State to send the ratification chapter to town clerks and this is just providing when the Secretary of State would need to do it. And here the suggestion is the Secretary would need to send it out at least two months before the vote on the ratification. We're moving into section two in regard to reapportionment and these are technical corrections. Here on page six in sub B there's an elimination of language that refers to senators as county officers because they're not technically county officers. And in section three you've already made the same change in your S11 bill that the Senate subject to reapportionment they are by the Constitution that's just clarifying language to add reference to them. So you'd have two bills if this were to pass as is. You'd have two bills saying the same thing but it's drafted the same way. Section four is just using that voter's term again and just substituting chapter for title which you'll see throughout as well when you're referring to a specific chapter. Sections five and six get into voter registration. Here in section five it would explicitly provide that the Department of Motor Vehicles would be required to share its motor vehicle driver's license, driver privilege card and non-driver ID card customer data with the Secretary of State's office for the Secretary's use in conducting voter registration and voter checklist maintenance activities. And Madam Chair, I'm happy if anybody can interrupt me as they want and I know the Director of Elections is here too however you wanna run it if you wanna have the Director chime in as we go along or whatever is good for you. Thank you, do you have a question? So this section here we already get I assume elections already gets information from DNV because unless you opt out you get registered to vote that way or you can't get registered to vote, right? Yes. Would this just expand it so that addresses could be updated? This might be time to refer to the Director about the Secretary's intent on using this language. Does that make sense? Yes. Sure, well-signing Director of Elections for the record. Director, that's a good question. We get two files from the DNV on a daily basis. The first is everybody who didn't opt out and who has sent my information to the Secretary of State that covers new registrations and change of address. Both. Other file we get from DNV is actually we already get the file that's being described in this section which I like to call their underlying customer file. That's all their applicants for the things listed there in the driver's license privilege card, non-driver ID. We already get that file. That's their big baseline file. Essentially everybody who's done good in the DNV. We use that file right now for the limited purpose of verifying driver's license numbers that are given to us, say, on paper form. Some of the applies at the town clerk's office. It says here's my six-digit driver's license number. To walk back a little bit, under the NBRA, the National Law and Registration Act, the DNV is required to give us that file for that purpose to match driver's license numbers that are provided to us on applications. But that's a pretty simple use of that file, right? It's a yes or no and then we look into it as a no. What we've asked the DNV to do is to let us use that file for an additional purpose which is essentially sharing it with other states for comparison against their DNV files and voter checklists to primarily identify people who've moved out of state in Vermont and the dual purpose, that's sort of the list maintenance side of things, which is the second of two references, voter registration and voter checklist maintenance activities. Maintenance is compared to other DNVs across the country and tell me if you have a more recent DNV record for a person who's on my checklist so that they can be asked whether they still went to Vermont or not. It also will be used through that same service to do a one time outreach to people that they can identify using that file as eligible but unregistered. It's that one piece of outreach that's part of what we wanna do with this file that for those of you who weren't around last year and seeing some of the history of this that DNV was concerned about and they essentially asked me to author some language to this effect which says that we can use it as a clear message from the legislature that we can use it for these two purposes. And so I think the most important thing for the committee to know is after about a year of working with them, both the MD and the governor's office have reviewed and are unborn with this language to let our office go forward with this sort of nationwide system of comparing voter checklist and DNV records. So I wanna just make sure I understand. So right now, I just got a renewal registration for car. If I had an address change and I change it up, would you get notification of that? If you don't check the box that says don't send this to the Secretary of State then yes. Is there a box on there? Yes. I know on the license there is, but there is on the... Yes. Okay. So if I don't check it, you will get it. Yes. And then hopefully that helps you keep up with address. Spend more really really good for us. Okay. This will help you on the... So if I moved out of state, I assume when I registered in another state, they would send something back to Vermont. And then Vermont would take me off. The clerk is meant to. Doesn't always happen as you might imagine. Right. This will also help picking up people who moved out of state. But may not have even registered to vote, but have gotten the driver's license in a new state. Okay. So just I wanna... Sorry if I'm being slow here. Yeah. It's been suggested that a number of people who do not live in Vermont, are not residents of Vermont, register their car in Vermont because the car, the auto insurance is cheaper. They have a second home here. How does this call play? If that person is currently registered in another state, and does what you were talking about, right? Gets a license or a registration. Registration. I'm not... A kind of a registration. The license might be a little different. No fact. It won't have any effect. We don't get registration information under this language or recognize it. These aren't equal by-per-licenses or report charges. Okay. Awesome. If I heard that correctly, then I had a home in Florida. I could have a car here registered in Vermont, even though it's a second home. And I had my regular one registered in Florida, without even knowing either one of those. I honestly don't know the answer to that question. That's for me and the... But I think that's... But you said earlier, you don't, you would get information if I might order vehicle registration and I change addresses. You checked. You checked. I should have been clearer than if you were talking about a change of address on your registration for my vehicle. For my vehicle? That's different. I'm not gonna get that. You won't get that. Sorry. I thought you were renewing your driver's license. Right. I'm just... JP? Thank you. I just needed to clarify that because I knew that wasn't true. Yeah. Sorry, Bob. Y'all were probably looking for us. What Jeff was asking, to answer some of the questions, but... So if you renew your driver's license, let's give you a scenario. A guy from Burlington moves to Bennington. Doesn't notify Burlington about he's moved and a year and a half later he renews his license. So your Vermont DMB renewal application comes through it and somehow you'll be notified if both songs are forwarded and it also goes there. So anyway, you have now officially notified DMB that you're now living in Burlington. And you check off, or is there a check on our license renewal as well as an initial license? Yes. Okay. So you check off the UES, you can send this to Secretary of State. Your office then gets that information. How does the city of Burlington find out? Because the guy that went to Bennington, don't care, he's not gonna notify anybody. He don't care. I'm just making a scenario. How does Burlington now know that this gentleman that moved to Bennington is not allowed to go to the right side? Doesn't live there anymore, so they can take him off the Burlington checklist. Is there somehow something generated to Burlington? Excuse me, there is. Through your office. Yes. Through our election management system. Okay. Which farms those out to the appropriate place. What would happen in your scenario is the Bennington clerk would get the notice of a DMB generated application to be added to the Bennington checklist. Okay. And when he or she approves that, oh, this goes to Burlington. It's the thing is. Oh, so I mean, John, good, good. That's recent, Senator. Well, that's good. That's good. Keeps the voter checklist updated and current. Thank you very much. Can I ask you another question over here? Moving on to section six. Oh, so Jim has a question. No, I'm sorry. This is for Willie, and so I'm reading back. We, if someone was not a U.S. citizen, we did something to give them a driver's license. Yes. Would you get that as well? We get that information in this big file and we already do. And how do you separate that out? We don't. So they get registered to vote? No. Okay. That's a big file. Not in the, I have the opportunity to. I described right at the beginning, we get two files. One is everybody who did not doubt and disqualified the vote. That's the only file that's ever used to update voter records, add people to any list, remove people to any list. And we get the underlying file that is for use solely of verifying jarms. So even if that includes these non-citizen driver ID numbers, they just essentially don't ever get looked at because they're not on your other thing, not applying any cross records. So there was a section in the original S107 that the Senate committee chose to remove because they hadn't had time to jump through all the hoops. Would this be a good time to talk about that? Oh, sure. We can talk about S107 as introduced that would have allowed automatic voter registration at what are called voter registration agencies, the 100s. Here is the language. This language no longer appears in the bill. But as introduced, this language would have allowed the secretary of state to designate voter registration agencies that provide qualified applicants with state services or also can provide services to inmates in the custody of EOC with automatic voter registration on the application forms that those agencies use. Let me just define for you a voter registration agency. It's a defined term. I can just pull it up real quick in the statute. So you can all see what I'm talking about. Voter registration agency is defined in our Title 17 election definitions that apply to all of the Title 17 unless a chapter provides otherwise. 17 VSA 2103. A voter registration agency is defined as all state offices that provide public assistance. All state offices that provide state funded programs primarily engaged in providing services to people with disabilities. Any federal or non-governmental offices that have agreed to be designated as a voter registration agency. And any state or local agency designated by the secretary as a voter registration agency. And those can include department of taxes and labor and offices that provide services to people with disabilities other than those with state funded services. And so this language in the bill is introduced would have allowed the secretary of state to designate certain of those voter registration agencies so that those agencies would provide automatic voter registration as part in the applications that they have for people who apply for the benefits at that agency. And so you know what we have now for automatic voter registration is when you go to the DMV you have to opt out if you don't want your DMV registration application to also serve as an application to register to vote. It's an opt out now. So this would apply the same principle to voter registration agencies. It would allow the secretary of state to designate which ones would include automatic voter registration on their application forms. The idea being when people apply for that agency services they would also need to opt out or otherwise their application form would be considered an application to register to vote. The language provides that prior to making any designation the secretary would need to consult with the secretary or the commissioner of the agency to determine the feasibility of how well it would fit in with the services that they provide. There's additional language. I won't go into all of the details but it essentially allows the secretary to designate which agencies would serve as automatic voter registration agencies. This language was removed though from the bill and I can tell you part of the discussion and committee and public committee discussion was part of the concern going to the citizenship that we were talking about because to register to vote for all of our elections now you must be a US citizen. So ultimately there was some discomfort with the idea of requiring people who are applying for these agencies benefits to also reveal their citizenship status. Big picture is why they're the committee discussion as to why that was removed from the bill. Going back to the statute, it sounds like we already have a lot of some of this. Or DMV, your automatic voter registration at your DMV and this would expand it to other voter registration agencies. Would you allow me to start on that a little bit? I would love for you to do that. Thank you. The way I will describe this provision, Betsy did a great job. We did automatic voter registration two years ago when it affected 2017 at DMV. You guys did a lot of hard work on that understanding what it meant. Automatic voter registration in general has been a very effective policy across the country in very broad terms. It's been a real sort of bipartisan policy success in the way I would describe it, and acted in red and blue states across the country. It's primarily limited to DMVs like it is here in Vermont. The other way I saw this interesting chart that I was looking at the other day, though, which did identify about five or six states that already have a provision like this on the books, too, that, oh, wow, and that's why I'm fully supportive of this provision as how it sort of permissively has written them. It was written with an understanding of the practical difficulties of implementing this at some of these social service agencies. And if it hadn't had been written in a way that acknowledged those difficulties, I wouldn't support it. If it was mandating us to implement automatic voter registration at any of these agencies, I wouldn't be supporting it now, because I don't know enough about whether they're ready to do so or not. So the way this language is written is it says the Secretary shall explore this essentially with these other agencies. And it is, as Betsy described, at baseline, the approach change is to say you have to, from taking an action, from saying, yes, I want to register while I'm applying for these benefits, it's an odd-out method where you would have to take an action that they don't want to. All these agencies are already doing voter registration when their applicants come in, but the basic method at them is at some point in the application process to say would you like to register and vote. And at these, even unlike DMV, even back when DMV was on paper, they typically just hand you a voter registration application and then on a monthly or five-monthly basis you'd be able to folder full needs from the Department of Health through these various agencies across the state. So to get to an odd-out method where you're not, you don't have to do sort of an active other question. The way that AVR works is you have to look at the agency's current application, like we did with DMV, and say are they collecting all the information we need to collect to do, to determine the eligibility to vote as Betsy Ann said, the key one there, the critical one is always citizenship. And AVR and voter registration in general from these agencies works much better and much more efficiently if you can transfer the data electronically rather than pay reforms, which we're also doing with DMV. That gets you into the questioning whether that agency keys or stores that citizenship data off of the pay reform. That's what became the difficult rub with DMV is they actually collected it on the pay reform when we were asking them to go to electronic transfer, they aren't currently keeping it into their database. So those two reasons, whether they're collecting citizenship and whether we could get to a place where we did an electronic transfer to the data would be the main two things I'd be looking at with those agencies before going forward. The bill requires us to list once a year any that we've designated to go to AVR, but certainly allows for, in my reading of it, for us to say we haven't designated any this year in Phil's view. And so for all those reasons, I was supportive of it and my impression was that the Senate of Ops Committee didn't fully understand it. They didn't have a chance to do what I just did. And that's why we need that for them. Questions for Will. It's a good example of where an advocacy group brought a policy idea to us, but then said how can we do it in a reasonable way that makes sense. And this is what we're doing. We are back to the bill as past Senate and we're on section six. And as your summary indicates, all that's going on here is just breaking up a subsection that has been irking me because it's so darn long. It goes on for pages and it's just breaking it up in a subdivision, so. All of this language is just providing subdivisions to make it easier to read and understand. So that takes us through a bunch of different pages. We'll add to page 13 into section seven. And this part of the bill gets to changes in regard to political party organization. It's my understanding that Secretary of State's office consulted with parties as these updates were being considered and this is the final result after the Senate had reviewed it. So many of the proposed amendments overall loosen the restrictions on what statute requires for major political parties to organize. So here your summary indicates aside from stylistic changes, you can see that the first substantive change is in section 2303. This is about the town committees and specifically in 2303 B2, there's a special notice that's required right now for town committee meetings and right now it says if your town has 3,000 or more population you have to provide this special notice. First thing it would do is it say, okay, for larger towns, 5,000 or more population you have to provide a special notice and here the authorization would be to say that this notice could still be in a newspaper or under current law, it's still being a nonpartisan electronic news media website but here the proposal is to say or an online forum that specializes in the news of the state and the community. So is that saying that anyone who has a town population less than 5,000 no longer has to post that? Those are just provided in B1, just saying at least for those smaller towns it's just posting a notice in the town clerk's office and at least one other public place in the town. So everybody has to do that, but if you're a larger town you also have to publish a special notice. We've just got some more breaking up of subsections, 2304 and 2305. Here in 2306, what's going on? You can see the section right now just says that town committees have to perform some things in the manner above and in statute we like to specifically say where in statute are you saying that? So this would just name the specific statutes that it's referencing in this chapter and just some cleanup language. Here in 2307, it's requiring a town committee to submit to the county and state committees information regarding town committee members and also a requirement to provide phone and email contact info. Big picture what's going on now is that town committees have to provide this info not only to the chairs of the state and county committees but also the secretary of state's office. So the secretary of state's office is getting all the party town committees organization papers. And so this would eliminate that from the town and county committees and just say instead, don't give it to the secretary of state's office just provide all your membership info to the secretary or excuse me, to your state and county committee. And then what you'll see at the end of this chapter is that finally the state committee submits its certification and organization of the secretary of state's office, lists the town and county committees that have been organized and then they're considered certified. So that the secretary of state's office is not collecting all these organization papers from town and county committees.