SmartTranscript of House Commerce - 2025-02-21 - 8:45AM

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[Chair Michael Marcotte]: Good morning. Today is Friday, February twenty first. It is eight fifty three. This is House Commerce and Economic Development, and we are here with our insurance, Margaret. Good morning. [Helen Argraves]: Morning, everyone. Good to be back with you guys again. I will go ahead and get started. My report Again, oh, for the record, I'm Helen Argraves, the legislative intern for the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee this session, and a senior at the University of Vermont. I'm reporting this week on the activity in the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs. And overall, a lot of work this week focused on specific bills, particularly related to law firm. New bills in committee include s sixty seven, an act relating to increasing the state minimum wage based on the livable wage, S seventy, an act relating to data brokers and personal information. S seventy one, an act relating to consumer data privacy and online surveillance. And S seventy eight, an act relating to the creation of the Vermont Ireland Trade Commission. In terms of the bills discussed in committee this week, they started off with Bill s six, which is an act relating to repealing the Commissioner of Labour's authority to recommend a sub minimum wage for individuals with a disability. That is something that it does not seem poses any difficulties on the end of the Department of Labour. So they are going to move forward. I believe it's going to be included in the Department of Labor's technical adjustments bill. I don't know if that has a specific name yet, but it was something that was discussed. So I think it's gonna be rolled in to that. One of the things brought up, the original intent for the ability of the commissioner to recommend a subminimum wage for disability historically was based on post World War two veterans, who came back with a disability, and it was a way to introduce them back into the workforce and encourage employers to take them on. So senator Weeks just wanted to make sure that there won't be an adverse effect down the road. I think he was looking for some testimony to that effect. But as of right now, it's continuing to move forward. S thirty seven was next, and this seems to be it was originally discussed, I believe, two weeks ago with the BTNEA, and it's the one that is related to unemployment insurance eligibility and benefits, particularly for support staff, in Vermont schools. There are two key parts, and I think the first part came as somewhat of a surprise to the Senate committee because it it sort of enlarges the the groups implicated by the bill. It would allow employees protected by it to continue collecting unemployment insurance during seasonal unemployment even if they were working another job. So if, for example, they were an independent contractor during, you know, summer months or off season months, they would continue to collect that payment, and I don't believe it would affect their ability to collect unemployment insurance during that time as well. So and this goes beyond just support staff. It includes any seasonal workers. I think there's some concern around that given the fact that it would imply far larger costs than just the support staff part of the bill. So senator Chitman in particular said that he has some reservations and would like to hear from JFO on that. Senator Brock as well was hesitant. And I think the the general consensus among the committee that the original intent for that bill was just UI for support staff, and so general hesitation on the first part. But the second part, again, it continues with what the BTNEA discussed two weeks ago, which is allowing support staff to collect unemployment insurance when they're not being employed in schools. Further discussion later on in the week also included the senators requesting to hear testimony from support staff and to hear testimony to the effect that whether paraeducators would be included under instructional staff or the support staff. And it seems like the Department of Labor will be inclined to include them under the definition of instructional. And in addition to that, Michael Harrington from the DLL did recommend that it should be part of the larger conversation around school reform because it it increased cost to schools and therefore to taxpayers. The JFO on Thursday estimated that it would cost about between five point five and sixteen million a year, to schools and therefore taxpayers. And the committee is moving forward to the extent that they are requesting to hear from the people in Minnesota who have enacted a similar bill. And then S-sixty seven was brought up, but briefly that Senator Clarkson, Chair Clarkson is enthusiastic about the idea of raising the minimum wage to, a sort of in between between the urban and rural livable wages. But Senator Rem Hinsdale and Senator Brock both expressed that that would be much too heavy a lift. The committee has some history. They've tried to do something like that just for staff within the state house, I believe. And even then, they couldn't get it very far. So they Roehm Hinsdell and senator Brock both had strong opinions on that front. I don't believe it's going to go anywhere this session at least. Bill s thirty four was also discussed that pertains to allowing tenants of the best unit of mobile home park lots to contest landlords or the owners of the lots that they're renting, raising rents above one percent above the CPI. Currently, there's no limit, and tenants can contest at any any amount that that rent is raised. This bill would essentially cap that raise to that one percent above CPI. But there's discussion among the committee as to whether or not that would limit tenants to only being able to contest if that was raised above that one percent above CPI mark. In addition, I believe the rest of the bill and commission that was discussed was all a part of Senator Ron Hundstedt's workforce omnibus, which she briefly introduced a couple weeks ago. So there were sections twenty five-six fifty two Or bill currently proposal twenty five-six fifty two, which would have to go into compensation, workers compensation, unemployment compensation and wage requirements for state construction projects. They did a walk through of this, and this would essentially remove the exclusion of agricultural workers from the minimum wage exemption in Vermont state law. It would also allow anyone making below fifty eight thousand six hundred and fifty six dollars a year in salary eligible to receive overtime payment. One of the issues brought up was that it's difficult to get accurate data on what what farm employers are paying some minimum wage and who is not because they're not very willing to testify if they are not. So all the information that they have says that farmer farm employers are paying minimum wage or above, but I believe somewhere I think it was thirty to forty percent of, migrant justice workers have said that they're paid below minimum wage. Section three of that bill would give employees the right to receive compensation for unused vacation time, even if, I believe, they were dismissed for calls. See, it would also include health insurance in the wage equation. It requires employers to include that in the wages that they pay employees. And there is concern that that would inflate the cost to employers by a high amount given health care costs, health insurance costs in the States. Bill Proposal twenty five-six fifty three, an act relating to employee rights was discussed briefly. David Mickenberg from Working Vermont went through the bill. He essentially describes it as a a recruitment tool for the state in terms of workforce development. The bill includes three main components, and it requires that, there must be a legitimate business reason for dismissing employees because there's currently, an at will state for employers to dismiss. This is modeled after a bill in Montana, which is the only state that has done something similar, but it has been in place for decades. The second requirement would be a ban on non competes. This is anticipation of the FTC rule being struck down regarding that. And the third is that it's essentially the right to sit at work. So, essentially, if you have the ability to sit at work, you have the right to sit. And this is not currently enshrined in law in any way. So that is something that I believe the committee is fairly strongly and enthusiastic about as well. And finally, Senator Ramon Scales Bill twenty five-six fifty four, an act relating to labor relations. And they had David McQueen, assistant attorney general, in to testify. And he essentially described the motivation for this bill is for him the fact that many assistant attorney generals are, as he sees it, very underpaid for their work. And it ultimately is a retention issue for not just the attorney general's office, but the state house in terms of legislative counsel. The idea that they can't necessarily provide a competitive wage for private industry. And the bill would essentially allow the unionization of supervisory legal staff, I believe, if I've understood correctly. It would not sure if I've understood completely the concept behind it, but the goal is essentially to protect and support the staff at the attorney general's office, those attorneys, and provide, you know, stronger ability for them to advocate for themselves to form a union. And there is a component where currently, unions, in order to certify one, you have to have a petition of fifty percent plus one of the union. But to decertify, you are only required to have thirty percent of the union, petition. So the bill would also include a provision that put those on equal footing. So to decertify, you would also need to have fifty percent plus one. And this, David McLean says, would be to allow unions to focus on their work as opposed to constantly having to deal with, decertification petitions. That is all I have to report this week. I'm happy to take questions if there are any. Thank you for listening to me. [Chair Michael Marcotte]: Any questions for coming? [Vice Chair Edye Graling]: That's Yeah. Go ahead. I think you mentioned, did it do they take testimony in h thirty four or or Oh, which [Chair Michael Marcotte]: is different issue? I think it was s thirty four. [Vice Chair Edye Graling]: S thirty four. There we go. [Helen Argraves]: Yes. Not h thirty choice. H thirty four, I don't believe, is Yeah. [Chair Michael Marcotte]: Other questions? [Speaker 3 ]: Okay. Thank you. Thank you. [Vice Chair Edye Graling]: Everybody had their name pulled, so what's going on in other committees? Excuse me. [Speaker 3 ]: I talked to transportation. They are currently looking at the budget and trying to figure out how to rebalance the expectation fund. So they don't have really much that's crossing them for a reason. I don't have to know. [Vice Chair Edye Graling]: I was thinking, well, health care community is you know, I think we're, like, working pretty hard on, you know, addressing some of the health care inflation issues. I think the agency had again, I wasn't there, but, you know, just to buy the agenda, focus on reference based pricing. So not nothing specifically related to this committee, but, obviously, we've heard a lot from businesses of their of the pressures, cut to inflation and their ability for business. So, you know, I think they're right away. [Chair Michael Marcotte]: Other committee reflects? [Speaker 3 ]: Human services spent most of the week working on h ninety one, which is replacing the GA, you know, with a new homelessness emergency homelessness program and environment, I have connected I never got, like, an official liaison, but I've assigned myself Kate Logan because she's really interested in climate workforce and also land use. So they did seem to do some work, and I'm connecting with Kate later today. Did some work on sort of forestry forestry businesses. And so I should have more to report next week. [Speaker 4 ]: Ag, food resiliency, and forestry. I'm in a similar situation. I don't have a a formal liaison. I work with Greg Burt, among others. They had took budget presentation testimony from secretary Tebbetts for the overall package from Vermont Food Bank. And today, they will be hearing from Forest Parks and Recreation on the budget. They've had an introduction to a bill that will create changes to the structure of when you can take land out of current use if you're using it for sustainable housing. And there's a another bill that does similar things too. So they're, they're gonna be taking testimony on both those, I believe. One thing that may be of interest to us is the an act h two twenty nine that would it relates to the establishment of a farm and forestry operations security special fund to provide grants for losses to farms and forestry operations due to weather conditions. You know, last year, they only were able to log something about three days or something because lack of ground x adequate ground conditions and things like that. So there may be economic and commercial developments related to that. [Speaker 5 ]: For judiciary, h two two three is actually one that rep Arseneault and I had worked on together because I had submitted a car kind of, like, a digital kind of, like, data access bill, and she had submitted a domestic violence tracking into the stalking statute. So there's potential right now. It's going into the stalking statute, but there's technical requirements of car technology as when it comes to data that they might have to edit the bill, and then it would become like the more of a consumer protection bill, which is what I had originally submitted. So they're trying to navigate that. And then in energy and digital, they're continuing to work on the bill I mentioned a couple weeks ago, which is the energy transition report. And then they're also looking at just what agency of digital services as far as, like, more of a transparent reporting mechanisms to their IT projects. [Speaker 6 ]: I've got ways and means, and it's that's what they're doing that we're interested in in in them, but more that they're interested in what we're doing. And in particular, they're they're curious about how we're going to come down on the TIFF Spark hit issue. You know, TIFF TIFF and TIFF alternate. So my my fault is made of alternate. So there's a number of options that are loading, and I'm we're just curious where we're gonna come down, though. And I believe I'm gonna have a meeting early next week to to to discuss that. So I hope we have some answers, [Chair Michael Marcotte]: you know, at some point. Yep. Michael, do you have a committee report? [Speaker 7 ]: So I spoke to my counterpart, and she indicated that there was nothing that she thought would correspond except for it's not maybe elections, but I didn't I didn't think that was the case. However, I'm looking on here, and it looks like they were discussing an act to professions and occupations regulated by the Office of Professional Regulation. So that's probably gonna gonna touch us somehow. That would be my guess. [Vice Chair Edye Graling]: I haven't looked at it. [Chair Michael Marcotte]: Okay. If you apologize. You can get some more information. I know there yeah. I'm I'm connecting with Erin about the work the, education continuing the, oh my gosh, loan forgiveness for teachers. Just trying to see if they're even looking at that. [Vice Chair Edye Graling]: Yeah. [Chair Michael Marcotte]: They're kind of heads down in education. Perform. [Vice Chair Edye Graling]: Yep. Hold on. We get there right now. Yep. Anything else? Great. Oh, thank you. I have a question about next week. Just good time to bring it up. So I think Wednesday, I think you said. We're gonna have a meeting on budget kinds of issues. Yeah. We're gonna hear a little bit more. We need to hear from working plan. Mhmm. Right. Then we'll have a discussion, try to formulate our thoughts on our letter to approach Right. Wednesday morning and the afternoon, where it will come in. We'll I think I think, like, the weather. Right. I'm thinking about doing my homework kinda thing. Over the weekend, we've heard a lot. I don't [Speaker 6 ]: you know what I mean? You know, with requests and things like that. Is there any [Vice Chair Edye Graling]: you know, I could go back over my notes and try to make a list, but there's other one. So You know, there's a budget, obviously. Integrations have something that she's she's been taking notes as we've been having those discussions. Here we go. That's where that's how we're made for. And she has posted. Yeah. Oh, she has posted. Okay. I'm sorry. Yeah. [Chair Michael Marcotte]: In the in the budget folder that you have. Yeah. [Speaker 5 ]: Okay. Sorry. That would be very helpful. [Vice Chair Edye Graling]: I don't think that over the weekend or just send it to everybody. Thank [Chair Michael Marcotte]: you. There used to be a spreadsheet that we could pull our things out of, and they didn't create one this year. [Vice Chair Edye Graling]: Yeah. I remember seeing something like that. So We build our own. [Chair Michael Marcotte]: We would have to build our own, which I'm not sure which one of us has the time to do that. [Vice Chair Edye Graling]: Correct. You know? So this would be great. This would be super. Thank you. Yeah. Anything else? K. We're on the floor. Nine thirty back here. Ten minutes after the floor. We can hear from the link to that. I'd say Page one. Page one thirty seven. But we are from the health care advocate on the Medigap piece that we're thinking about doing. And then who else? I did up on the next Oh. Oh, do you know what I mean? [Helen Argraves]: First one. [Vice Chair Edye Graling]: Right. So we're learning in our validation. Yep. And yeah. And, like, Carolyn, we are we'll be here. Probably more of a discussion on the needs, though. K. I think that's it. In fact, it's ten minutes after the fourth. And that that won't work. The fourth is gonna be very long. Yeah. And then shortly after we hear from, like, Patricia Watson, maybe discussion on one thirty seven as we gear up to get that ready just to move next week. And my entire for the following week and then the week after we come back.
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