SmartTranscript of House Commerce - 2025-04-16 - 2:00PM

[Speaker 0 ]: Love is here. We're live. Welcome. Good afternoon. It is, still Wednesday, April sixteenth. It's two zero three in the afternoon, and we are here at the House Commerce Economic Development Committee with senator Allison Clarkson, who is chair of no? [Senator Allison Clarkson]: Yes. I'm chair of senate economic development housing general affairs. [Speaker 0 ]: It's economic that's what I needed. All those words. Thank you, Allison. Thanks for being here. [Senator Allison Clarkson]: I want you to memorize that. Sure. We got haircuts the same weekend, clearly. [Speaker 0 ]: To introduce s one twenty two, guys. [Senator Allison Clarkson]: Right. It is such a pleasure to be with this committee again. I so appreciate our complimentary work, and, Kirk and I really appreciate it when we present in Bethel. It's always a pleasure to have both sides of, both chambers represented in our discussions. S one twenty two is our economic development bill that we send to you, and inspired as I am sure you were by our wonderful small business Wednesday. I just sort of wish we'd had more of them, But, really, this bill is heavily inspired by our small business Wednesday that we shared. That was just a terrific day, and, I think, anyway, it it it inspired much of this bill. So in addition to small business, supports, because we really feel that we heard about a a number of great resources, offered to our small businesses of all stripes and varieties. We and and feel that they need further support. This bill also invests in our very successful downtown and village tax credit program. It also invests in continuing to build out our international trade, Vermont to Canada, Vermont to Asia, Vermont to Europe. Particularly in this time where the feds are not supporting us in this arena at all, and in fact, only putting up barriers to economic development. They seem to have landed in the eighteenth century fully, and incapable of seeing all the global benefits of a global economy. We feel very strongly that we need to be further investing in our Vermont, our very specific Vermont trade projects and relationships, quite frankly. It also and in addition, we create the first trade commission, and we we create the Vermont Ireland Trade Commission in this bill, which I know there's a house counterpart to it as well. In fact, the house, I believe, passed it last year and we failed to take it up, or I can't remember how we failed, but we failed to pass it. And in addition, we create a task force to address another piece that we have long wanted to address and has been addressed in various different aspects, which is a a convention center, and, a major performance venue. These are we, a number of groups have done very good work. There's an RFP out on it now, but we really think it's time to pull all those players together, bring all the material that's been addressed to address this issue. Is this something that we can that we actually, how can we move forward on it? Should we? Should we not? We had asked for a task force, but we ended up scaling it back to a request of ACCD. But this committee could consider, creating another task force, which is, on access to capital. One of the things we heard loud and clear from the small business Wednesday was businesses need access to capital at different stages in their development. And we've asked we did not create a a second task force on that, but we did charge ACCD with coming back to us with their their understandings, and because they have a huge they have huge knowledge about the capital that's available in this state, but we also need to be looking broader than this state. So I think, you may want to look at that again as a task force. So the first section is about the downtown and village tax credits. I hope I don't have to sell you on those. Every one of our communities has benefited from it. It leverages more money than almost any other program in this state. I think it's sixteen to one. It, it used to be seventeen to one. I don't know why it's gone down. But this is a program that, every one of our housing projects, every one of our downtown and villages have have benefited from. So I hope I don't need to, sell you on that. We absolutely support the governor's recommend to move it from three million to five million. I know there are budget constraints at the moment, but, we this just gives us such a big bang for the buck. And it's one of the very few tools we have in our economic development toolbox, this and chip and our TIF proposal, which, I could cannot support more fully than to say I support it fully. Section two expands services for small businesses. So this section has the six has six, recommendations for investment further investment in the incredible, resources that we have for small businesses. As you'll recall from our, Small Business Wednesday, ninety three of Vermont's businesses are considered small, not by federal standards, but by ours, because of course you'll be reminded that federal standard is I think fifty or fewer, or maybe even it's five hundred fewer. It's five hundred and fewer. [Speaker 0 ]: Ninety three percent or twenty [Ellen Chikowski]: or less. [Senator Allison Clarkson]: Exactly. That's what I'm about to say. Ellen has trained me so well. Five ninety three percent employ twenty or or fewer people. And there are over twenty seven hundred twenty seven thousand businesses which fit this profile. These businesses employed seventy seven over seventy seven thousand people, and they support one point three billion dollars in, wages. And most of these businesses have benefited from the resources that I'm about to walk through, and you guys are gonna get there. Many of the strong, leaders in these areas, are with us today. The first in section a supports, an expansion of our investment in Vermont small business, law center, seventeen community partners funnel their needs, their legal needs through the Vermont, small business law center. And, while it has not is not in the governor's recommend, and wasn't in the house recommend, we we encourage you to continue to support this, this terrific piece of work, which is anchored in the at the law school. And Nicole is here on my left. The legal clinic has consulted with a hundred and sixty small businesses and has made, thirty five presentations. And while the legal clinic is currently federally funded, through June of twenty six, its intakes are are exceeding current capacity fairly substantially, and they are asking for three hundred thousand dollars to meet the demand. And you will hear from Nicole, and she's a much more articulate advocate of it than I. Section b is the Vermont professions, professionals of color network. This is embedded. This ask is a piece of this ask is embedded in the governor's budget, made it, through in large way. We actually support their additional request for a hundred thousand dollars and supported it to the tune of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars This, this helps our our a whole range of our businesses, our BIPOC businesses and, our our non well, our our new and immigrant businesses, new businesses to Vermont. It has supported over in some capacity over eight hundred businesses, and their current two year contract with ACCD expires, I think, this April, maybe this month. And this will continue them to do their incredible work, which was particularly appreciated after some of the flooding, some of the translation work they did with the small businesses that were just not able to access some of the programs that we had, made available to business section and Weiwei's here, so I don't need to say anything more because she's also, its best cheerleader. Section c is the really one of the the key pillars to our small business economy, which is our, Vermont small business development center, our partner with the Small Business Administration. This is just our most trusted small business, resource. And in many ways, everybody else feeds into it. I mean, everybody comes to comes through its portal in some way. It was founded in nineteen ninety two, I think. And it provides as most of these do, no fee one on one expert advice and counsel. And they, this would be our ask for, they are in the budget at three eighty eight, and we're asking for another three hundred thousand dollars. And with an additional increase, they can serve many more businesses, I think, over two hundred businesses. So, I urge you to hear from them because they are they are in many ways our most important small business partner. They're the go to place for almost every new business that's beginning, except maybe micro businesses, which I'll get to. Section d creates a resource guide. We we heard from small business Wednesday that what they really need is a guide where a go to guide, online guide that, anybody thinking about creating a small business, any entrepreneur can go to and get all the resources they need or identified there. Section e is one of my, just I've always loved the micro business program, which takes our our most vulnerable, our lowest income people who have an idea and help them grow it and build it into the lawn care businesses, the cleaning services, Switchback began. It's the poster child for for this program. But every one of our community action partnerships has a micro business, advisor on deck. And this is really begins so many of our most important service industry businesses and just other great businesses that have come out of it. And, we're asking for an additional eighty seven thousand dollars over the governor's recommend, but you will see that. And section f, last but not least, and we think this would avert a number of the problems we see downstream and have to pay for in terms of employee employer relations, better education for our small business owners. So many of them have had a great idea, but have no idea how to manage it, no idea how to grow it. And this is a proposal to help educate and, develop, enable owners of small businesses to really develop more skills and become better business owners, better managers, and just better business people. So that is that program. And again, Ellen is here to talk more about it. The third section is the Vermont Arts Council and our creative economy ask, The arts council really we have it in here just because we wanna advocate for the creative economy, and this is such a key piece. It has its own budget line, because as you know, it's some grants to a lot of our arts arts organizations, but it is it is here just because we wanna make sure everybody that the creative economy is, advocated for it. We have an additional ask in here for one hundred and twenty thousand dollars to create a film and media resource guide. We, as for most of you, are new members. Actually, all of you are new members since we have the Vermont Film Commission. So my husband, along with several other people, helped create the Vermont Film Commission in the late nineties, I wanna say. And it what it was quite successful at the beginning. We were we're one of the only states without a film commission. And what became clear is without a we just didn't don't have deep top pockets to really be a serious player in this field. So what we can offer are other resources we can offer editing, we can offer, sound, we can offer, we can offer a lot of other, pieces that help in post production in, in all aspects of, of film creation. Also, we have such an important film industry here in Vermont that needs more support. So this is, money that goes to supporting a resource guide for that, and that we would work with the Arts Council creating that. Our Outdoor Recreation Business Alliance is in section four, and this is a growing sector of our economy, as you probably all know. It's developed into a really seriously big economic engine for us, over two billion dollars of economic impact, and it has over sixteen thousand working in its workforce. So it's everything from all our big ski areas to our mountain biking trails, to hiking and, and all sorts of outdoor recreation. So we encourage you to look at this. Unlike many of our other businesses, these businesses are heavily impacted by our natural disasters. And so both preparing for them and recovering for them, is And so this year they're asking for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to expand training that targets skills needed for high demand, highly skilled, and high paying jobs with technical service and workforce development in occupations that range from ski, technicians to bike mechanics. The fifth expands what I referred to earlier. It expands our international trade. We've had a very successful consultancy office in Quebec, that has resulted in investment in Vermont for Canadian investment in Vermont and Canadian businesses coming and anchoring, having a Vermont, an American presence in Vermont. We are asking, and Tim Tierney, who is, better, on this than I, we're asking to expand that, those relationship builds and trade bonds to Asia and to Europe. So, I will I know you'll hear from Tim, but we this is a three hundred and fifty thousand dollars ask. Some of that is to continue the work in Quebec. Some of it, and most of it is to create relationships and consultancies in Asia and in Europe. Section six through eight are the Vermont, Ireland trade commission setting it up, and, how it would be, populated. We felt very strongly that it's not a boondoggle. This isn't a giveaway for legislators. This is a working commission on how we can build trade improve our trade relations with a country. We, therefore, instead of having it all all the money to finance all the members and their meetings privately raised, we actually did it by per diem and made it a much more, sort of like normal legislative business. Section nine is the area I would ask you to consider, doing a task force instead of just giving this to ACCD to do, and it's access to capital issue, which I talked about earlier. And section ten creates the convention center and performance venue task force, and just asks us to look at the feasibility of constructing a convention center and major performance venue, which we without the the oh, I'm punting. What's the name of the place in Burlington that used that used it? The Memorial Auditorium. What's it called? The one on [Ellen Chikowski]: right across from the slant. No. Across from the floor. [Senator Allison Clarkson]: Go on Burlington people. [Rick Seibel]: I remember the Memorial Auditorium. [Senator Allison Clarkson]: That's it. Memorial the one that's closed. Yes. The one that's closed is like a white elephant. [Rick Seibel]: Yeah. The there are many rock concerts. [Senator Allison Clarkson]: Exactly. So so does Thomas Tittenden. So our committee we and as a former theater producer, I think this we would love it would be wonderful to have a major performance venue. It is another economic engine. So this task force would be exploring all those things. A lot of work has been done on the convention center idea. And so it would be bringing all those people with all those thoughts and all those RFPs into one room and trying to make figure out a path forward. And the vote in our committee was four one, and we encourage you to take this. Feel free to do more. And, but we are I think it represents a lot of our, well, it it it supports and it supports our small businesses in big ways. And I think this was a realistic economic development bill for this year. So, it doesn't have major asks. I mean, compared to our housing asks, which we were just going through prioritizing everything for our senate appropriations committee today. You know, we had over thirty five million dollars in asks and housing, and this represents under three million in asks. So I, anyway, I wish you well as you explore all these opportunities, and I leave you in such good hands on the lap. You have [Speaker 0 ]: a minute to take this question? [Senator Allison Clarkson]: Oh, sure. Oh my God. Look who's here. Absolutely. Questions coming from He has survived unscathed. [Representative Herb Olson]: I'm not. [Ellen Chikowski]: And then it [Representative Herb Olson]: has he's [Senator Allison Clarkson]: locked him intact. [Representative Herb Olson]: That should go again. [Speaker 5 ]: I I I thanks very much. Herb. And I I wanna sort of repeat something that I think you said at the beginning around some of the joint hearings that we've had. [Ellen Chikowski]: I think that the eight [Speaker 5 ]: you you reference a small business day. We had some joint committees last week, I think it was. Three. [Senator Allison Clarkson]: We did on trade and on tourism. [Speaker 5 ]: And, the focus on that, you know, or a lot of folks presented a lot of concern, a lot of, pretty much fear around the tariffs. And, just to follow-up on that, we had a meeting in this committee early in [Ellen Chikowski]: this [Speaker 5 ]: week of lenders, both public and private, concerned about especially small businesses having some resource, some facility could get information, answer questions around tariffs. You know, what do you do? You know, what resources you might have? Things like that. And I'm I'm wondering if you think, this might be a place to, sort of encourage or address that that that type of thing. I I don't know what sort of entity would be the best to do that. Maybe that's something we could talk to Tim about, for example. [Senator Allison Clarkson]: Well, I I think it's a critically important piece, that we need to be able to help our small business all our businesses, not just our small all our businesses navigate. We have the lumber deal tomorrow. We all have the lumber dealers. They're gonna be heavily impacted on, on this. I want to answer you, Herb. I think we have an opportunity in our joint I'm hoping it will be a joint resolution. Mike and I have talked about this a little bit, but our joint resolution on the Canadian resolution. And we also have it with our Taiwan resolution because they, of course, are our second most important trade partners, and they have been even more impacted. And I think some of your concerns we can deal with in that joint resolution, perhaps. Then in addition, I think it's an additional call to all the resources that currently advise our small businesses to to be sorry. To help them appreciate and understand what some of the options are for their advising. And I think that's gonna have to come from ACCD, probably. [Ellen Chikowski]: Thank you. [Speaker 0 ]: Thank you so much. [Senator Allison Clarkson]: No more questions. That's it. Okay. I leave you with people who are can amplify on everything I have just spoken about. Thank you for your work. I really look forward to seeing what comes out of it. And, we're just for your info, we're beginning our discussion on the Canadian resolution on Friday. I haven't had a chance to chat with you about that, but I'm hoping that we can, do that as a as a joint thing, at least, you know, introduce it jointly. And same with Taiwan. We're doing Taiwan next Wednesday because they're coming April thirtieth. [Ellen Chikowski]: Okay. [Senator Allison Clarkson]: They're coming Yes. They're coming oh, they're coming to hear our resolution. You guys did a resolution, but you did it before the tariffs hit. [Speaker 0 ]: Yeah. We're just being discussed. [Ellen Chikowski]: Yeah. [Senator Allison Clarkson]: Right. So we I think that's the opportunity we have with the Canadian resolutions to update it and improve it. [Ellen Chikowski]: You probably became a resolution every weekend. It's a [Senator Allison Clarkson]: way to keep us engaged with each other. That's what he's trying to do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. [Ellen Chikowski]: Thank you, madam j. [Senator Allison Clarkson]: Thank you. Have fun. Enjoy. Back to damn upgrades in senate governance. [Ellen Chikowski]: So, like, why are you wearing glasses? [Speaker 6 ]: Funny. It's funny. Shrinking. Yeah. [Ellen Chikowski]: That's that's. Thank you. Well, hello. How are you, committee? Good. [Speaker 7 ]: Rick Seibel, office of legislative council. I just didn't know I did economic development too, didn't you, to my portfolio? My portfolio is just [Ellen Chikowski]: varied. I'll put it that way. [Speaker 7 ]: Workforce, economic, IT. I'm missing commerce, UCC. Alright. So I'm gonna share my screen and pull up s one twenty two. That's passed by the senate. So you got a very thorough walk through of the bill. One thing I wanna point out is I'm not gonna to detail the appropriations quite quite well. Sections one through five starting with the downtown tax credit and ending with the international trade office, those are all contingent upon appropriations. So you'll you'll see this money being thrown around, three hundred thousand, two hundred thousand. These are contingent upon appropriations being made. In fact, the per diems were also struck, and I'll go through that because senate appropriations were they were uncomfortable, and even including the per diems in this bill. So I'm gonna get quickly go through this first part, then I'll kinda slow down with the Vermont Ireland Trade Commission and a couple other things towards the end. The section one is the downtown tax credit, downtown village center tax credit program. The current, maximum amount of tax credits is three million per year. This bill, it's this is in statute. This would increase the, maximum to five million. This isn't the governor's recommended ask, but also contingent upon appropriation. And I know you're wondering, is this an appropriation? Apparently, it is. So, I had that question with the Appropriations Committee. I talked to my colleagues about it. And so there would be an appropriation for it even though it's just extending the amount of tax credit available. If you have questions about this program, I'm not the person for that. I talked to Ellen Chikowski, one of my colleagues. She could give you information about this program, but all we're doing is increasing the annual maximum of three million to five million. [Ellen Chikowski]: And he remembers you did hear about the debt tax credit program a few months ago. [Speaker 7 ]: Yeah. Then sections two through five, I think senator Clarkson, went through this quite quite well, quite thoroughly. Do I need to answer any questions about these appropriations? Some are in the governor's recommended budget. Some are increasing the governor's, recommend. The chair you weren't here, mister chair. I can go through these for your benefit. [Ellen Chikowski]: Yeah. Okay. [Speaker 0 ]: I also have people from representing those items [Ellen Chikowski]: to talk. I mean, you Okay. [Speaker 7 ]: Then I'm gonna skip down to section [Ellen Chikowski]: When you're talking about the appropriations that are in here, Of course. I know the appropriations. I haven't gone through the appropriations bill yet, so [Speaker 7 ]: they're all contingent. Yes. In fact, there's language in here making that abundantly clear. K. Yep. Section three is the Vermont Arts Council. I'll skip that. Section four, the outdoor business outdoor recreation business. Again, senator Clarkson detailed that quite thoroughly. Section five is the three hundred fifty thousand to the International Trade Office contingent upon appropriation. Okay. Section six. This is the Vermont Ireland Trade Commission. This, as senator Clarkson said, did pass the house last year, stalled in the senate. The language is very similar. And I'll since most of you weren't here last session, I'll go over what this trade commission would do. So this would be the first legislatively created trade commission, and I created it in a chapter to hopefully allow for others. If you at some point, if this does pass and you wanna create a trade commission with South Korea, you know, whatever other country you deem appropriate, you would put it along this trade commission. It is a commission of two members appointed by the governor, two members appointed by the speaker, two members appointed by the senate committee on committees, and the state treasurer or designee. So that is seven members. The purposes of the Trade Commission are to advance bilateral trade between Vermont and Ireland, to initiate joint action on policy issues of mutual interest, to promote business and academic exchanges between Vermont and Ireland, to encourage mutual economic support, to encourage mutual investment in an infrastructure, and to address other issues as determined by the commission. So the members ordinarily, serve four years. However, in order to have a staggered commission, so not everyone leaves at the same time. This is something that we do, to ensure you're not losing all the experience and knowledge of the commission. The two members appointed by the governor shall serve initially two year terms. The members appointed by the speaker shall serve, terms I'm sorry. Yes. The governor's members serve two year terms, and the, the speaker of the house, their appointments serve two year terms as well. A member serves at the pleasure of the member's appointing authority, meaning if the governor or the speaker is not happy with that member, that member can be removed. Now more than two members serving on the commission may be members of the general assembly. Vacancy shall be, filled within ninety days by the appointed authority. Subjecting d is very standard. You select the chair. You can create subcommittees. The quorum is a majority of the members of the commission. Okay. F. The commission shall submit a written report with its findings, results, and recommendations to the governor and general assembly within one year of its initial organizational meeting and on or before December first of each succeeding year for the activities of the current calendar year. The report shall also include a disclosure listing any in kind contributions received by specific members of the commission through their work in the commission in the current calendar year. So we'll talk about this. One of the things that the committee commission can do is raise funds through fundraising events. And the senate, wanted to ensure that any of these in kind contributions are recorded and produced in a report. Subsection g, the Vermont Island Trade Commission is authorized to raise funds through direct solicitation or other fundraising events alone or with other groups and accept donations, grants, bequests from individuals, corporations, foundations, governmental agencies, and public and private organizations to defray the commission's administrative expenses and to carry out its purposes as as set forth. The funds, donations, grants, bequests received shall be deposited in a bank account and allocated annually by the state treasurer's office to defray the commission's administrative expenses and to carry out its purposes. Any money so withdrawn shall not be used for any purpose other than the payment of expenses under this chapter. Interest earned shall remain in the bank account. So I wanna make also clear this is in commission under the state treasurer. So not only are they going to manage the funds, they will also manage the commission. That's where they're gonna be housed. K. [Speaker 8 ]: Is that set up anywhere else? Is there anything like that set up anywhere else in statute? [Speaker 7 ]: This subsection at g, this is pretty unique. And the [Representative Herb Olson]: Super super unique. [Speaker 7 ]: It's pretty unique. [Ellen Chikowski]: Unique. Yeah. The the [Speaker 7 ]: the the reason is, these members of the commission aren't paid, and there's no appropriation for the commission to carry out his duties. So this was the way to allow them to operate and not cost the taxpayers money, by being able to raise money. That's the idea. But, yeah, it's pretty unique. [Speaker 5 ]: So Yep. [Ellen Chikowski]: Provide administrative The treasurer's The treasurer? Yeah. [Speaker 7 ]: It's so early on. Established from the state treasurer's office. Yeah. [Ellen Chikowski]: We have the trade. I hear it. [Speaker 8 ]: Do we have trade commissions for any other country? [Speaker 7 ]: Not through the legislature. Not not the nothing that the general assembly has created. [Rick Seibel]: Has this trade commission been done in other states? Yes. [Ellen Chikowski]: And New Jersey. Several. [Speaker 7 ]: And the language is pretty similar, and I'll say that too. This is kind of the and that's how we got some of this subsection g. The raising money is been done in other states the same style. [Speaker 0 ]: Do do you know, you may not know this, was there any discussion about how this would or would not interact with the sister state program that's currently being investigated? [Speaker 7 ]: It I think senator Hardy brought it up briefly. She was concerned that there'd be a conflict with the two. I was never asked in committee about that. I don't know. You know, the it's it's the sister state is currently a working group, right, to come up with legislative language. And, if this were to become law, the working group, you know, could certainly consider this and maybe find a way to make this part of their program. Maybe you have some larger trade commission, not just sister state, maybe you call us. I don't know what you call it. But but, to answer your question, no. It was not discussed. Yeah. The next section is the, just appointment deadline, October first twenty twenty five. That's when the first, appointment should be made to the trade commission. Section eight, this is if you haven't seen this before, this is called a, future repeal where, the general assembly is actually, repealing something on a certain date. So on June thirtieth twenty thirty, this commission would cease to exist. And part of that is kind of a check back to it kind of forces the assembly to review the commission to see if it's working or not. And then you would need to save it by striking this or changing the date to twenty thirty five, twenty forty. You don't have to do it, but it's it's something that is becoming more common. Questions about the trade commission? Okay. Section nine is the access to capital, study. Senator Clarkson asked that it'd be made a task force or, you know, working group. It is currently just a study done by the, ACCD. And this is a lot of this came from the small business Wednesday testimony you've received. Basically, this study would would solicit testimony from startups, that struggle to raise capital, identify additional mechanisms for the investor lender community to connect and learn from each other, evaluate the state's role in accessing capital, identify ways to offer investor education to high net worth individuals interested in investing in Vermont businesses, and evaluate any other issues related issues as determined by the agency. They would submit a [Rick Seibel]: So can you I see a list of things that this task force or study would do. So what would a task force do with these things versus a study? So, and that would be probably [Speaker 7 ]: a question better for the sponsor, but it would allow more voices to be a part of the final report. In this case, you're just having one agency determine what goes in the report. If it's a task force, you would ideally have, you know, probably ACCD involved, but then you'd probably have other entities that are not necessarily state government, that would be able to kind of help the working group be able to figure out a path to actually get the capital or, you know, what needs to change. [Ellen Chikowski]: Yeah. [Speaker 7 ]: A study was chosen because a study is cost neutral to the channel. It's pretty blunt about it. That's what's happening. So the report would be due on November first of this year, which is pretty quick. If you had a task force working group, you might wanna push that back a little bit because you're gonna have, let's say, seven people on the task force. That's probably not enough time. This is also pretty quick. If the law is effective July first, ACCD would have the summer to, you know, do their work [Ellen Chikowski]: in a little bit of the fall. It would [Speaker 7 ]: come to this committee and the senate committee, with findings and recommendations for legislative action. Section ten is a task force to explore the development of the convention center and may and performance venue. This does have members from the house, the senate, the secretary of ACCD or designee, the president of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce or designee, the CEO of the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce or designee, and the president of the RDC's designee. So this task force would determine the ability of the state to support the projects through appropriations, bonding, tax instruments, and other financial assistance identify infrastructure improvements needed for the projects, including water, sewer, transportation, lodging, and food consider management and operational options for ownership, maintenance, staffing, and related items for the projects, research attributes of convention centers and performance venues that have been recently and successfully developed in other states, and evaluate the economic impact and anticipated return on investment of having a convention center and a performance venue. [Speaker 9 ]: And does that imply they are colocated? [Speaker 7 ]: No. It does not. Yeah. In fact, it can be discussed that that they don't have to be the same in the same town or in the same building. It can be separate. Yeah. [Rick Seibel]: So you just, in the last section, implied that a study is cost neutral. Yeah. The presumption would be that task does have a cost. Right. But I see no cost for this task. [Speaker 7 ]: You're correct. The corporations took out the per diem. So, normally, you have a per diem in this kind of thing. And there was a per diem when it came out of senator Clarkson's committee, and appropriations removed it. So and I I said, so you're gonna have people work in this commission group and aren't gonna be paid? And they said, yes. I said, okay. [Rick Seibel]: So you can have a task force that's cost neutral. [Speaker 7 ]: Yes. No. Are people Are people going to want to participate in that task force and produce good work that I don't know? And, again, it could be added back in. You know? This could be something that you you could suggest. It'd be added back in, and then it'll go to house corporations and that conversation can happen there. The task force will have the assistance of ACCD because it's kind of in their ballpark. So there's an interim interim report due on November first of this year. And then November first of twenty twenty six is when you have the final report because it's a task force. Like I said, you want more time for them to meet and submit a report. The first meeting happens on or before July fifteenth of this year. They shall cease to exist at the end of their work, December first twenty twenty six. As I said before, section ten a is the contingency on funding that that's you know, those appropriation sections are just contingent upon appropriations made being made in fiscal year twenty twenty six. Okay. Section ten b was added on third reading, and it is a kind of response to the Vermont Ireland Trade Commission. And so we currently, in statute, have this international trade agreement sorry. This commission on international trade that is somewhat inactive. And the chair might be able to speak to a bit about this more than I can, but you do have this thing that was created years ago that is governed through the governor's office, and it has several members that get appointed by several different people. And the purpose in statute currently is between the federal government and a foreign country and how it affects Vermont. That's the idea of this commission is that it's supposed to look at various trade agreements and how Vermont will be affected. The amendment, which the Senate adopted, would add not just those agreements, but also between Vermont and a foreign country. So if Vermont enters into some kind of trade agreement with a foreign country, this commission would also have some type of jurisdiction over it. They'd be able to review it and provide feedback to the general assembly. I would suggest the committee take testimony over this. I did not have enough time. The the senate committees did not have time to take testimony over this. I was hesitant to support this language because I don't know what this is doing. So I would just ask the committee take testimony over this commission. If it's active, is this going to be problematic to add Vermont to the list of entities that it should look at foreign trade agreements with? You see, we're striking out the next sentence that would previously have prevented the commission. I'm guessing there was a reason for that. So I I would ask the committee consider that. One last thing, this is all standard language that we're not changing. Subdivision five at the end is new language. This commission shall be consulted when a trade commission pursuant to nine VSA one eleven b, that is where the Vermont Ireland Trade Commission is housed, is proposed to be established by the General Assembly and shall provide a recommendation as to whether the Trade Commission shall be established. So if you do decide to establish Vermont Ireland and others later, that this commission would be consulted and provide a recommendation. [Speaker 9 ]: That commission currently exists with people on it or is a dormant thing that does not? [Speaker 7 ]: It is a dormant thing. [Speaker 9 ]: But it does have a I'll shorten the station. It's not part of this bill. There is language for who is on the who composes that. [Speaker 7 ]: Okay. Three VSA twenty three. [Representative Herb Olson]: Yep. Pulled it up and [Speaker 0 ]: it's craft meeting. I have no idea. [Ellen Chikowski]: Mhmm. That's the meeting. [Speaker 7 ]: Yeah. So title three, chapter one, the commission on international trade. So you see you you saw subsection a that's already in the [Ellen Chikowski]: bill. Oh, yeah. [Speaker 7 ]: I wasn't gonna put the chair in the spotlight, but I [Rick Seibel]: did mention he he shouldn't [Speaker 7 ]: he should know about this. [Ellen Chikowski]: I don't know about it. So it [Speaker 7 ]: would be I see. And the senator Clarkson that was just in the room. And you have a nonprofit environmental appointee of the governor. [Ellen Chikowski]: I went for one meeting years and years ago. [Speaker 7 ]: So it's ten people. And if you if you look up this commission on the governor's website, like, it lists the current people. [Ellen Chikowski]: It says the terms [Speaker 7 ]: end in twenty seventeen, so that should that should end. [Ellen Chikowski]: Wow. So I'm partying. [Rick Seibel]: So, again, I I I don't know. So I'm still trying to wrap my head around how we can have an international trade agreement without involving the federal government. [Speaker 7 ]: Well, it'd be Vermont, right, and and another state. It'd be between, like, you know, Vermont and Ireland. You can have that type of agreement without the feds being involved. [Rick Seibel]: That'd be they we can skip their tariffs. [Ellen Chikowski]: That's [Speaker 7 ]: me. Next question. [Ellen Chikowski]: Oh, no. Wait. What is that? Why subsection five? [Speaker 7 ]: Oh, on the bill. Yeah. K. [Ellen Chikowski]: And the RO and Trade Commission. [Speaker 7 ]: Mister chair. Mister chair, you brought up something I've thought about too, and I I told the senator that it's probably okay. But you're right that if this they they they're both effective on the same date, July first. So would this commission have to approve or be consulted, on the Vermont Island Trade Commission? That's also becoming effective on July first. I would say no. But if you wanna be super clear about it, you could change the effective date to July second for this commission if you think there's a conflict there. Or you could ex you could exclude. But I [Ellen Chikowski]: I Or you could put the effective date for the IRON condition out a year. Yeah. [Speaker 7 ]: Oh, so do you want the commission to be involved? [Ellen Chikowski]: Yeah. Yeah. And that's what this is proposing to do. Right? Right. [Speaker 7 ]: Yes. Yes. There's right. I wasn't sure which way you're going there. But, yes, you can mess with the effective date however you want. [Speaker 9 ]: It seems tricky to imagine composing two commissions at the same time without having any can problematic overlap of just the all the people from which you might draw through each of these commissions may not have the narrowest Venn diagram slice, and so it would be nice to have one sorted before the next is sorted. [Ellen Chikowski]: Well, the International Trade Commission is just dormant, so it's been established already. Oh, didn't there terms on it? Well, it's dormant. It's dormant. I think so you'd have to the governor, everybody would have to be reappointed. Okay. Yeah. So the governor, except for the chairs of House and Senate economic development. So the governor would have to appoint somebody from all the other [Speaker 9 ]: Yep. So dormancy okay. Except for the attorney general. I'm trying to make sure that I understand it correctly that by dint of being dormant, this we have a process by which these individuals are so determined, but it's not the case that people in those roles right now would automatically remain in those roles outside of the Right. I mean, the the the governor's appointees. Right. They've all lapsed. Their terms have lapsed. Okay. [Speaker 7 ]: Yeah. So so so by doorman, there's nothing legally significant about that term. It's just that the governor has not appointed the people to fill out these new terms, which, you know, the new the c assembly did this thing. You created this thing, and it's not being fulfilled. I'm trying to gauge your level of upsetness with that, but it [Speaker 9 ]: seems to be [Ellen Chikowski]: seems to be low. Well, it's coming in. [Speaker 7 ]: So, again, so there's that. There's also the piece of I don't quite know adding Vermont to this. Evans Commission review Vermont trade agreements is new, and I'm just not sure what that means to this commission. If that was the intent behind creating it, you know [Speaker 9 ]: Is the inclusion of this commission in one twenty two because it is on paper or because it would obviously view that it's beta link? Could one twenty two proceed with the Ireland thing without addressing a dormant [Speaker 7 ]: So on the floor excuse me. On second reading on the senate floor, senator Lyons mentioned this commission, as being used to be very good. They did a good work. We should bring it back. And I said, what is she talking about? And I and I went back and I was like, okay. This thing does. And then senator another senator talked to me about putting this in the bill, and my issue is that I didn't have time to fully vet this commission. [Ellen Chikowski]: Question about earlier part of the conference center piece and composition of the of the commission the committee, the task force. Would there be any value in having the the planning regional planning commissions involved in that since presumably regional planning would [Speaker 5 ]: be something one would take into consideration? Something to consider? Since they're they're talking about putting a big thing into the middle of a community. [Ellen Chikowski]: The PRDC should be. The RDC is on there. The RDC is because the RDCs if if they're worried about the the numbers of who's on there, there are two two representatives from Chambers of Commerce there, state and the Champlain Valley or Champlain Lakes Region, whatever it is. Lake Champlain. I don't know that we can don't generally name people that are not a like, the chambers that you can't force and to be on a password. I was just gonna say the one argument for keeping that is that, I mean, any large event venue, there's two criteria that are gonna be critical to any of that being cited. One is a busy airport with flights to lots of places and a lot of hotel rooms. So, realistically, it's going to be in Chittenden County. And so having local expertise and local business connections, I think I think makes sense. But I mean, if we did something like that, I think it we will create the task force and they just consult with some UVM on the air. Yeah. True. So I think, you know, the RDCs, RPCs, it could be part of the task force, and then we just give them some examples of who they should consult with. Sure. I mean, I I support. I think we need something. A logical place is gonna be in Chippen County and use that. You know, we heard from we heard one example from BCIA, you know, their captives where they come and they're running out of space now. So and I'm sure we just want you know, if we have it, there's gonna be others and they're gonna wanna come to Burlington different in the area that mentions here. So I think it's worth exploring for sure. Yeah. And if there's gonna be a lot, we've got another hotel going in in Burlington. There's gonna be a lot of weekday capacity, which is exactly what the convention said. Anything else for Rick? [Speaker 5 ]: Great. Thanks, Rick. Can I mention one one thing? I'm not sure that you were were you in for we had some a hearing on Tuesday, I think it was, with bankers. [Ellen Chikowski]: How about the private lenders? No. It's not. [Speaker 5 ]: Okay. So one of the issues that they raised was around tariff and a need for, or, yeah, the need for some sort of clearinghouse or facility around information resources. Can you imagine? And and I they didn't suggest any any agency or entity to do that. And I'm [Speaker 10 ]: wondering, you [Speaker 5 ]: know, where that where you think that might fit into this this bill, just maybe heads up with anything else. Okay. [Speaker 7 ]: That was on Tuesday? Yep. So yesterday? [Speaker 5 ]: Yeah. And they talked about tariffs are just, you know, so much uncertainty, you know, for the businesses, extra small businesses. And talking about some sort of there's some sort of research clearing out someplace where people could get good answers to to the questions, like a lot of people. I'm not this is public community discussion, but I just wanted to [Speaker 7 ]: As as a proposed amendment potentially to [Speaker 5 ]: the Well, that'd be up to the I think [Ellen Chikowski]: those are questions we need to ask with the agency of commerce and PRDCs. So, yeah, I think we may have some people here who could speak to that as well. Anything else for Rick? Rick, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. [Speaker 10 ]: Oh, great. Nice to see you all. Your record, Ellen Kaylor, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund. I don't have much to say because I think you've got other folks that can speak to the individual section. So I guess what I'll just do is to tee up sort of the context of this bill to pick up where senator Clarkson left off. So after we had the small business Wednesday, I, Senator Clarkson grabbed me in the hall and said, hey, can you put together some ideas for legislation? I'd really like to do a bill. And so I worked with the crew that helped put, the day together that we scheduled with you in January and came up with seven concepts we called. They were just ideas, things that came up during the course of that conversation and just a known needs. We gave that to the Center for Economic Development, and then they took the pieces of that concept paper that they liked and put it together in what is now one hundred and twenty two and added a number of other pieces. They could have been coming from other standalone bills, whatever. So what you have is definitely coming from that January twenty ninth session that we had with you. I will just mention a couple of pieces and then hand it over to the others. I'm gonna speak specifically to section two because that's where the concepts that we had that we provided to the committee, came up. So, you'll be able to hear from Nicole, who's here from the Vermont Law and Graduate School about Section 2A. Weiwei Wong is here to talk about section 2B. Linda Rossi is on the Zoom someplace, who can speak to section 2C. And, on section two d, Mieko Ozeki is also on Zoom. But I will say since the Sustainable Jobs Fund is named in this, the intention is, she had put forward and she can provide the details. And I believe Anna Grace, there was a document that's on the webpage that, from no, from Mieko Ozeki. Yes. It's on your webpage, which talks about what's in two d, which is a resource guide, because, it's a group of organizations that are going to be putting this guide together if funded, they needed some place for the state funds to go. That would be easy. And so we raised our hands at the job fund to just say, if you would like to fund this, we're happy to take the hundred thousand and pass it through a hundred percent to the group. So we are just a conduit, for that, if you would if you like the idea of of, two d. The, two e was something that, senator Clarkson, put in on her, and it was not part of our initial concept, but totally supportive of it. And then, two f, originally, I I had put forward a suggestion of making some slight changes to the Vermont training program, legislative language, the statute to broaden the definition of who could receive training. Because I think if you recall, what I offered during our session, in January was that we have some because we have so many small business owners, ninety three percent, you know, that are under twenty, the business owners themselves are most often working in their business alongside their workers. And yes, they're owners and they have other responsibilities, but they are really working in their business day to day and they need training just like individual workers do. And so my initial thought was, could we expand some of the statute language of the training program to enable those funds to also be used for business coaching, like through our business coaching program at the Jobs Fund, to support business owners with strengthening and improving their skills as business owners with the idea that if they have greater skills and leadership abilities and executive business skills to be able to strengthen and support their businesses, that's going to have a very positive, effect on their workers in terms of potential profitability of their companies, as well as pay and benefits. And, Representative Duke spoke to the kind of programs that she's taking advantage of through her catering program over the years and how that has impacted the her business's ability to grow and expand, add workers, improve wages and benefits, and all of that. In the course of that conversation with the Senate economic development, the Department of Economic Development was not comfortable with the suggestion of changing that statute language and suggested that, that was sort of the, not the right vehicle. And so in the course of those conversations, we came up with the idea of some dedicated funding going to the small business development center. And here it's, in two F, it's one hundred and twenty thousand, which would be it would go to the small business development center and then they could contract with the Jobs Fund or VMAC or other entities that provide business coaching, executive business coaching, and, and do it that way as opposed to fund it that way rather than having it go through the training program. So that was the compromise that we had come up with and why it two F is worded the way that it is. And then I will just suggest that if you jump to section nine around the study to address business growth and access to capital, as Senator Clarkson said, you all heard about the challenges of there being insufficient funding and also just navigating where funding of businesses at different stages of development could come from, where people tend to access capital to grow their businesses. [Ellen Chikowski]: And, Senator Clarkson had expressed interest in there being some kind of [Speaker 10 ]: a task force or had expressed interest in there being some kind of a task force or study committee that could look at that more comprehensively. It's a conversation that's happened before, but it tends to go in like, I don't know, five or eight year chunks. There's a bunch like, Oh, we really need to do this. And we study it, and then some new things get developed or greater awareness happens. And then eight, ten years down the line, we really need to do this again. So I think it's a feeling that this is sort of one of those times when getting a better handle on what capital does exist, where there's gaps, and what a a summer study committee, that included entities that are capital providers, a couple of bankers, a couple of small business owners, some folks from state economic development who have a knowledge about that and then invite testimony, but that there would be a group. It wasn't just agency of commerce staff. It would be a group of folks that would come together over the in between the two sessions to be able to really understand what is the level of need, where are their gaps, what's working well, And present back to you then a report on that. I was not in the room when the final decisions were made around going, stripping out, having that kind of a task force or summer study and just giving it to Agency of Commerce to do, I would strongly encourage you to think about reestablishing it as a summer study committee, because I think that having multiple entities, heads in the more heads in the room together, and then also taking testimony, it would lead to a better outcome in terms of the quality of the report you might get. Just having more named people actively engaged in the process. And if the per diem is a concern, I would say that the entities that all were named are probably entities that a fifty dollar per diem is not a make or break to participate. So if that was really the main reason for changing it up, I would just encourage you to take a look at that. More heads are better than one on on this. [Ellen Chikowski]: So that's all I've got for today. No. Think so. Yeah. Thank you. [21 seconds of silence] [Speaker 5 ]: There's Linda. [Linda Rossi]: Good afternoon. Are you ready for me now, and can you hear me okay? [Ellen Chikowski]: Yes and [Linda Rossi]: yes. Okay. Well, wonderful. And thank you, Anna Grace, for your patience, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the invitation to join you today. For the record, my name is Linda Rossi, the state director of Vermont Small Business Development Center. I look forward to providing you with information about the increase in base funds for Vermont Small Business Development Center as described in section two c of s one hundred and twenty two. I will say also I so appreciated the time that you spent with us on January twenty ninth, to discuss the state of small business in Vermont. So the request is for a three hundred thousand dollar increase in base state general fund support for the SBDC starting in FY twenty six, which will have transformational impact for small business owners. The increase will go directly to business advising and education, allowing us to serve an additional two hundred Vermont entrepreneurs and small business owners with no fee, one to one, confidential advising as they start, grow, add employees, increase sales, reaching new customers, and prepare succession plans to transfer ownership to the next owner as they take the reins. A little bit of information that will be helpful, hopefully, to the committee. Our current annual base budget is seven hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars in federal funds from the US Small Business Administration and three hundred and eighty eight thousand eight eighty nine from the state, and that's through the agency of commerce and the Department of Economic Development. SBDC is a nationwide model. It's built on a partnership of government, education, and business, and the funding is from federal and state dollars and often higher education. The fiscal sponsor and the host of the Vermont SBDC is the Vermont State University, which is part of the Vermont State Colleges system. In our case, they do not contribute any cash funds to our operations, but provide shared administrative services and on campus offices that we pay into out of our budget. Given their focus on financial sustainability, the percentage of our grant funds going to those shared funds going to those shared administrative services has increased. And the SBDC is not allowed in statute, to charge for our services. So we're not in a position to add revenue to offset increases. SBDCs have to have a one to one match that's nonfederal to federal with at least fifty percent of that being in cash. And so right now, our current state to federal funding is exactly half. We have three hundred and eighty eight eight eighty nine, which is half of the federal amount, the seven seven seven seven seven seven. We greatly appreciate the funds we receive from the state without question. The base, however, has remained relatively unchanged in the past ten years. It's risen thirty one thousand dollars in that period. While, as you know, the demand for services to small businesses has increased and the costs associated with delivering that advice has also increased. Let me get to the heart of the matter, which is really what we can do, what we have done, and how we have a proven track record for you to feel confident in. That proven track record of economic impact has been around for over thirty three years. We're nationally accredited every five years, and any impact that we claim in our annual reports and information we give to stakeholders has been verified and attribution to SBDC given by our clients. We currently have six point five FTE business advisers serving the entire state and its fourteen counties with that budget annually of under one point two million. Last year, we served five hundred and thirty one individual business owners in one on one advising who created or retained two hundred and thirty nine jobs, started twenty five new businesses, and secured over ten million dollars in new capital to either start, grow, or buy their business. There's a lot of background that we provided to senator Clarkson and the committee. I'd be happy to follow-up with anything at the end of this or to provide you with that same background and and data if it's helpful in any way. But just to to give a sense of our scope and scale, we serve clients from, like I said, every county. The percentage of our clients pretty closely aligns with the way the population by county is in each county of the state. So twenty five percent of our clients are in Chittenden County. Seventy five percent of our clients are in the rest of Vermont. Our clients come from all stages, all sectors, from retail to services, hospitality and food, professional manufacturing, arts, health care, outdoor recreation, construction, and agribusiness. And, really, as you know, the last five years have been particularly challenging for small business owners between surviving and coming out from the pandemic and then two back to back years of flooding, along with the demographic backdrop picture that we all know very well. And certainly, as we sit here today, since we met with you on January twenty ninth, small businesses are experiencing increased challenges due to the current economic conditions, including the impact of tariffs. The demand for advice from business owners comes from both mature business owners that are, like I said, preparing to sell their business. When we met with you at the end of January, we talked about that striking percentage that fifty eight percent of Vermont small business owners are owned by baby boomers as compared to thirty seven percent of small businesses nationally owned by baby boomers. The advising on these topics is in-depth. It's refinancing current debt, long range protecting your business and planning for disasters, external threats like cyberattacks. And, again, right now, how many businesses are coming to us for support with regard to their supply chain and their many vendors from countries around the world as we've become a global economy. Our team has certified advisors in international trade, cyber, and AI, as well as we have initiatives that really focus on youth entrepreneurship. We believe that the next generation of our Vermont business owners are in our schools today, and it's it's never too early to start to foster the entrepreneurial spirit. With small businesses at the backbone of the Vermont economy, this funding increase would allow us to support more entrepreneurs and owners with advice at all the critical stages of business development. Again, thank you for your consideration and your time today. I'm happy to answer any questions as well as provide you with any additional information or data or background on who we serve and anything else that you might be interested in. Thank you so much. [Ellen Chikowski]: Thank you, Linda. Questions for Linda? [Speaker 0 ]: Just a quick question, Linda. The not being able to charge businesses for the services you provide, is that a federal law? [Linda Rossi]: It is. The SBDCs were formed in the Small Business Act back in nineteen eighty, and that's in statute that we do not charge for our advising. [Speaker 0 ]: Thank you. Sure. [Weiwei Wong]: It's alright. Just to clarify, you don't charge for advising, but do you charge for any classes or any workshops or anything like that? [Linda Rossi]: So pre pandemic, we would charge occasionally for in person workshops on a variety of topics just to sort of have commitment for, business owners to come and to, you know, take the seat. We have not since the pandemic. We have found that with the increase in online resources of a variety of sources, It has been our practice so far to not charge for any training that we do. We don't do as much training as some of our other partners, and that is intentionally in the spirit of focusing on what each of us does best and how we leverage the strengths of each service provider organization. So even our starting your own business, live webinars that happen twice a month, we do not charge for them because we really want to provide access, and that opportunity for people to get, more information and to learn from them and not have to have a cost be a barrier. Occasionally, I will enter into a contract with a trade organization or another entity if we're providing some detailed subject matter expertise. We for example, we do with the childcare providers here in Vermont where we have a multi session program, and for that we are able to and do charge. [Weiwei Wong]: Okay. Thank you for the clarity. [Linda Rossi]: Yes. Thank you for the question. [Ellen Chikowski]: Any questions? Abby? [Speaker 13 ]: Do you have any, signal or concerns about your federal funding? [Linda Rossi]: Thank you for that question. At this point in time, we do not have any indication that there will be a change. We certainly know that, what you believe and have a solid track record of forty five years nationally and demonstrated return on investment does not necessarily mean that that, will always be the fact, but we have continued very strong support on both sides of the aisle in Washington, DC, on our federal funding, and I keep in close contact with our partners there. And so far, because of our wide ranging services and advice to all business owners, all stages, we have not had any indication of risk to our federal funding at this time. [Ellen Chikowski]: Anything else? Glenda thank you. [Linda Rossi]: Thank you so much. [Ellen Chikowski]: Wait wait. [Speaker 6 ]: Good afternoon. Thank you, chair. Thank you for the committee for having me. So for the record, my name is Weiwei Wong. She her pronouns. I am co executive director for the Vermont Professionals of Color Network. Really appreciate the time and energy here today. I'll be speaking on Senate Bill one hundred and twenty two, Section 2B. So for this, we are written into the bill for three hundred and fifty thousand dollars And I wanted to note that these are one time dollars. So the governor recommended us into his budget at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars And then we did ask for an additional one hundred thousand dollars specifically to support business technical assistance. And I wanted to, just give you an idea of what the money would be used for. So, in our last contract, it was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars as you know. And so this three hundred and fifty thousand dollar request would give VTPOC the ability to maintain our current level of support and provision of access to statewide resources and VTPOC resources to the community of color, as well as other businesses that we support, which is across the state through our different partners. From the BIPOC community, we've been paying attention, and they're saying that they're learning a lot from BTPOC resources, website, other communication methods, and they would love for us to expand so that they have other information or access points such as WhatsApp, TikTok, etcetera. We're also noticing that right now, a lot of folks are very vulnerable, feeling vulnerable at least, and especially with the BIPOC, business community. And we're seeing them turn to more trusted organizations like BT POC, like ALB, etcetera. And so we're concerned that some folks might lose out on support that they desperately need if a resource like ours is not funded through this. We're also hoping to improve our outreach to the immigrant refugee community. So we have done that. But we've been partnering with organizations like ALB, like BT, Vermont Language Justice Project and CBOEOS community ambassador program, and we recognize that our reach is not enough. We conducted, our focus groups in the fall, as you know, and part of that was, this desire to learn more about BT POC for the immigrant refugee community across the state. And so we're hoping to expand that to contract with some of these organizations because their community ambassadors know their community the best and can have those sources of outreach to support us getting our word out. We're also hoping to update our evaluation methodology for, this contract. Last contract, we allocated only nine thousand dollars towards evaluation reporting. And as we grow as an organization, as we continue to do more across state, we want to provide better evaluation and impact metrics to the state about what is happening around the BIPOC business and workforce community. So we're hoping to add to that. We also want to create greater awareness campaigns, and this goes within our outreach piece of the contract about state of Vermont resources. And I think I've mentioned this before. A lot of folks, especially in the community of color, aren't aware that the state actually has incredible resources, at no charge. And we want to eliminate that. We've done that a little bit already in twenty twenty four. We want to continue to expand that ability. We also want to work on dissemination and socialization of the data that we collected last year. We learned with the CMPP program that it's really important to have a longevity like more time so that the data can be socialized to to more than those that we interact on a day to day basis. We wanna take the next two years at least with the one time contract to bring this data to more places. We want to, create that report, to disseminate it widely, to have that dedicated function. And finally, we want to and most importantly, our community support coordinator who is supporting, this technical assistance, we want to bring that position up to one FTE. Currently in our, twenty twenty three contract, it is only written in at about, point five FTE. And what this has meant is that, this position, it's really critical to fifty and November twenty twenty three through the ACCD contract because it was really important that we did given the flood, recovery efforts. We were also able to receive additional funding from the Vermont Community Foundation to bring that position up to one FTE from for the, December to end of November twenty twenty four period. And through that period, from July twenty twenty three to November twenty twenty four, we served seventy businesses through that position across the state, primarily in the flood affected areas. So what I I've looked into our, technical assistance log, and since December twenty twenty four where the VCF funding went away, and, because this position had to be reduced since we took so much of the ACCD contract, to pay for this position, early in on the contract, this position has granted it was the holidays, since December, we were only able to support six businesses to that same level, as before. Included in this position is resource navigation, so making sure that we as an organization are connecting with business and workforce service providers, making sure that we know what they are offering to the community and being able to share that out more widely. So I bring that up just to convey one aspect of what we do and why it's so important that we have this three hundred and fifty thousand dollar budget that we're asking for. So, I did share my testimony with Anna Gray, so it is posted. And I did include as well in appendix our original contract deliverables so that you can see as well as the original, budget allocation for the contract in case you are interested. And I'm happy to take any questions. [Ellen Chikowski]: Thanks for. I think house appropriations reduced your amount to two hundred thousand. [Speaker 6 ]: Yes. And, I believe the Senate Economic Development Committee today made a recommendation to send appropriations for two hundred and fifty thousand. [Ellen Chikowski]: They also include extra hundred thousand? [Speaker 6 ]: I'm I'm not actually clear on that piece. I was trying to watch the video, so I can definitely check out. [Ellen Chikowski]: Yeah. Yeah. [Speaker 6 ]: Well, I wanted to share that. [Ellen Chikowski]: Anything else for for you? Thank you very much. [Speaker 6 ]: Thank you so much. Really appreciate your time. Good [Ellen Chikowski]: afternoon. [Representative Herb Olson]: Good afternoon, everybody. I'm the director of Vermont Small Business Law Center at Vermont Law Graduate School. I have some information that I wanted to share, but Zoom is being fun today. So I think Anna Grace has it and was gonna post it. I guess I'm gonna tell you to advance the slides. I'm sorry, Anna Grace. It's like one of my presentations. Go ahead. [Ellen Chikowski]: Sounds like it's a big. Yeah. [Speaker 0 ]: Got an email, but it's not, like, a house. So to see [Representative Herb Olson]: No. I love living in twenty twenty five. Can also just run through it if you want me to dump a bunch of information on you and save time. [Speaker 10 ]: We all have I'll be able [Ellen Chikowski]: to We all have access for [Representative Herb Olson]: You should have access. I actually just [Speaker 5 ]: provided this, so I apologize. It's Oh, okay. [Ellen Chikowski]: Just pull it up. [Speaker 6 ]: Just pull it up. [Ellen Chikowski]: Just do that. Okay. Go ahead [Representative Herb Olson]: to the next slide, Kate. Awkward. Okay. I'm not gonna, not gonna take too much time here because I have met with you folks before. I'm happy to answer any questions if you have any about what we do. This is what we do. You wanna go ahead to the next slide? We primarily provide access to legal services. We also do public events. We provide a lot of public materials as well. Our aim is to educate the public about the law, specifically small businesses and nonprofits. We work with the our association, which makes it difficult for local bills. Sorry. They may it's okay. It's totally awkward. They maintain a panel of attorneys, firms that take referrals. We they take a low dollar rate, seventy five bucks an hour. We'd like to raise that a little bit, but they take a reduced rate. They take a client on, a small business client. They have gone through our program. They've gotten an education. They understand the law. We've spotted the issues that they need to learn about. They go to the attorney. The attorney gets paid, that reduced rate for up to ten hours of services. Business gets that relationship started. They get their needs met. Ten hours covers quite a bit as it as it turns out. Coordinated by the Vermont Bar Association, they are our primary partner. We could not do this without the BDA. They're absolutely critical for the successful delivery of legal services here. Go ahead. If you could scroll down, please. These are our community partners that, senator Clarkson mentioned that worked with us last year, a number of development partners, and also we work with Incubator and accelerator programs across the state. We do a lot of programming and content. We have relationships with several several of them to take directed referrals from them. This is the people that are sending people to us, and they're also the ones that we're doing a lot of public content with. Scroll down, please. These are the numbers we served last year. Had almost three hundred intakes from businesses that are asking for legal education. We did hundred fifty consultations, placed, almost a hundred seventy with attorneys or our end process being placed. A plus educational presentations around the state. And there were thirty nine that were signed up for an educational consult through the middle of this month in addition to the ones that we had up there. This is the entities that are asking for services. Most of them, as you can see, are LLCs. There's a little column here that's uncertain. That's mostly people who are sole proprietors who are thinking about becoming an LLC. We serve a lot of nonprofits, and you can see there's sort of the alternative business entities down there we serve fewer of. Mostly LLCs, though. How many employees do they have? You can see the spread here. The number here does not match the previous number on the screen. I apologize that for that. I'm not sure why. But fifty one percent of the people that we tracked here that we had information for had at least one employee that requested services. These are the topics we talked about. We are all over the place. This is fun for my students because they're law students or master students, and they do a lot of issue spotting. Here's a real live person with a business. What do they want to hear about? So mostly contracts and entity. You can see there's also contracts, entity, liability, intellectual property. These are big ones. These are the ones that most businesses have questions about. They don't understand. They need a basic education on to stay in compliance to make sure that they're protecting their assets. We cover everything, though. We really don't hesitate to to cover any legal topic if we can educate the public about it. I'm not gonna go through these in detail, but I bring it up because these are the areas of need we have seen in our consults. These are the areas that the public could use some additional education in based on the questions we've received, repeated questions, focus on concerns and and anxieties from business communities. This is where we're sitting in the last year. Go ahead. Next few slides demonstrate that we have a lot of intakes coming in. We have the the need does not seem to be slowing down. The public is learning about us. Our partners are referring, and the consults and the requests are just going up pretty steadily. So, current operating budget, we are currently on a congressionally directed spending grant that expires in twenty twenty six. We have a small contract through BTS BDC for the state small business credit initiative. That's about ninety four thousand dollars We have a very slim operating budget would allow us to serve about one hundred and sixty one hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty businesses a year, thirty five presentations per year. That's six hundred thousand dollars We're asking for half of that. Half of that allows us to open up matching funds. It allows us to access things like Northern Border's Regional Commission to try to expand our services, to try to meet need, really allows us to continue this programming for the state. I'd be happy to take any questions. [Speaker 5 ]: I think you probably mentioned it maybe before or earlier, but what what's it matching to? What program is would would it match with? Currently, we have [Representative Herb Olson]: we had one point two seven four million for a three year program from through CDS. We're coming to from from congressionally directed spending funds. Oh. That's administered through SBA. So that was something senator Sanders' office let us help us get that helped us for three years. And so the we're sitting on the last year of that. We also have that ninety four thousand dollars contract from SBDC. That's the end of our funding. We have to fund ourselves through the law school. As it turns out, a clinic, which is what I run at the law school, is extremely expensive. They can't carry our budget. So we have to fund ourselves. We can we can hopefully get some state funding, and that would open up matching funding for other grants is what we're hoping to have that baseline. I want to mention tariffs because that's something that we have seen come up as well. Okay. Representative Balance Office contacted us asking if we had any experts. We don't currently, but that is an area of content we would like to be able to fill [Ellen Chikowski]: Yeah. To be able [Representative Herb Olson]: to educate the public. The webinar or some sort of event. What is a tariff, how does one get one's products registered for favorable treatment, all that stuff. So to answer your question earlier, we are uniquely positioned to be able to address those issues. We're in a neutral position. We can provide neutral information. We're not the AG's office. We're outside of the government. We can and we have the ability to probably access some more funds to be able to meet those needs. So we're we're in a position for that. [Ellen Chikowski]: Okay. Other questions for the call? Great. Thank you. There you go. Good afternoon. [Weiwei Wong]: Good afternoon. For the record, my name is Nyako Ozeki, and I am the cofounder of Vermont Wimpreneurs and owner of Readiness Studios. So, good afternoon, chair and members of the committee. And thank you for the opportunity to speak more, today about our proposal for the Vermont Small Business Resource Platform, which is section d, two d of s one twenty two, as described by Senator Coxon. And a detailed proposal has been submitted for the committee's review. And this is a one time ask of one hundred thousand dollars And we want to thank, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund for taking online funds if this is project is approved and received. So I'm gonna provide a little bit of background information about how this concept came about and what each component entails as well as updates on additional collaborations to support this, proposed resource guide since actually s one twenty two passed through this set the senate. So a little bit background about us. In twenty eighteen, I cofounded a group called Vermont Entrepreneurs with Bethany Andrews Nichols, and we've built a thriving for profit network that connects women business owners across Vermont through forty plus both in person and virtual meetups. And I probably can count on my thing like, probably about five hundred attendees over that time, in that in a year. And our summit, which we have annually, draws over two hundred and fifty attendees. We have a social media following of over fourteen thousand followers and three thousand newsletter subscribers. So we've naturally evolved into an information hub for the small business community. As a quick side note, this week, Vermont entrepreneurs just won the Citizens Bank Small Business Community Champion Award. And this was in recognition of our efforts to support women owned businesses in our state over the past seven years. Vermont has so many excellent business support organizations as in is in this room, but they are perceived to operate like islands without clear connections. There's no central map on play in or place where business owners can understand what's available to them. One of the things I see often in our forums is kind of everything from the questions of how do I start a business? How do I get registered to oh my God, how do I do my finances? How tell me about getting an accountant. When's the right time to get an accountant to I am in a contract and I don't understand how to go and deal with this. Who do I ask? So I find myself kind of acting as a human switchboard, and I direct people to Vermont Small Business Development Center, CWE, Vermont Law School, Vermont POC, because I have years of insider knowledge. Not only have I been a person who has reutilized those resources, but I've also built relationships with those organizations. And so most business owners don't have those connections and this affects all entrepreneurs across different communities and business stages, whether they're starting out, growing steadily, or planning succession. So in terms of research, the This Way Up survey from the Vermont Women's Fund validated that what we've observed. Among three thousand four hundred and thirty two women business owners surveyed, only two percent had utilized the business resources available in our state. And when asked what they needed, these entrepreneurs wanted connections with industry networks, experienced mentors to guide them through challenges and support networks of fellow leaders. The demand exists, the resources exist, but the connection between them is missing. So I'll mention some recent developments since S-one hundred and twenty two passed through the Senate. Since our testimony with the Senate Economic Development Committee in February, we've made significant progress in building partnerships. The first one is we've initiated conversations with Will Jeffries and the Vermont ecosystem collaboration whose mission aligns perfectly with our goal to facilitate collaboration between organizations that share a common goal and unlock significant opportunities for entrepreneurs to build and thrive in Vermont. The second one that we've built is the UVM's, Lakey Institute for Rural Partnerships. They've off have provided a tangible, offer of support, including resources for convening participating organizations and internship assistantship to help collect and organize information. And last, the Vermont Women's Fund has indicated interest in financially supporting a dedicated project manager who would coordinate with various contractors, oversee comprehensive project management to ensure this platform as stated in s one twenty two, launches by December first twenty twenty six, which by the way is a pretty ambitious thing if you look at the components that I'm about to describe. These new partnerships strengthen our proposal and demonstrate the broad support for addressing this critical gap in our entrepreneurial, ecosystem. So part of how this concept came about is after the twenty twenty four This Way Up report, Meg Smith, who's the who was the former director of the Vermont Women's Fund, brought key organizations together to address this challenge. And with Vermont Works for Women sharing struggles to connect women with, with our mentorship program and others expressing similar challenges, we collaborate with Game Theory on a discovery workshop. And our solution has three integrated components. The first is the kit. It's an annual magazine style publication that orients business owners to Vermont's business support system ecosystem. And it will do it will do that through the following. They'll provide in-depth profiles of service organizations, success stories, highlighting diverse entrepreneurial journeys, practical guides and resource directories, and provide strategic distribution through partner networks and community hubs. In this case, I think about not only libraries, but also other places where information can be distributed. Then compo the part of that the next part of that is an integrate an interactive website, a digital hub that transforms the kits kits content into dynamic user friendly, experience, including real time updates and searchable resources, seamless integration with existing state platforms, mobile responsive design with accessibility features, and potentially of multi a multi language support. And the last one, this is pretty much what I think what makes this a little bit more unique is having an AI empowered platform, which would be embedded an embedded system creating technology enabled collaboration. So it would automate and aggregate time sensitive events, grants, programs with privacy focus for the user experience and intelligent resource matching and curation as well as a structured pathway for going from here seeing this this list of resources to getting them to talk and attend and to connect with a human at these different resource organizations. We have tested a kind of a concept of the AI model. And you'll see in the proposal, there's an example of what it looks like in terms of a prompt and asking chatbot that kinda searches through business organizations' websites for information about workshops and services and contact people. And what we found from that, just initial task, is that it that it revealed certain important requirements that organizations need regularly updated websites. Privacy protocols have to be robust and that AI must serve as a starting point that ultimately connects people with human experts. And get a little bit more into detail in regards to those support organizations that I mentioned before. So the work with facilitating with the Vermont ecosystem collaboration and the Lakehead Institute, the they were looking at doing an annual convening of all of these resource organizations. And the intent of this will be to collect comprehensive information from each organization on their mission, target audiences, and service portfolios, help organizations contextualize their place within the Vermont's broader entrepreneurial ecosystem, create visual mapping of the resources to improve visibility and understanding, and develop standardized organizational profiles for use across all of the platform components, and provide structured opportunities for organizations to update their for their communication platforms, I e, website Okay. Print materials and also social media. So this approach ensures consistent accurate information across all touchpoints for Vermont small business organizations. We also we've got we were asked about sustainability plans. So in this case, what we're looking for is, a one time request of a hundred thousand dollars, to just go towards building this platform with a clear sustainability strategy. We're looking to expand our coalition of business service organizations contributing to the kit. We're looking to develop guidelines for, for organizations to maintain current website information within, that would work with the AI assistant. And for ongoing funding, we're exploring con content sponsorship similar to what you would see in seven days or Vermont public. We're also investigating a licensing model with where other states or regions could adapt our platform. And if you're familiar with, Edible Vermont, if you've seen that magazine, there's something they're part of a family called, of publications called Edible Communities. So they like Edible Communities license their publication style to, Edible Vermont. So that's an example that we're looking at. What we believe is the impact of the the platform will reach more than twenty seven thousand small businesses with under twenty, employees. We would believe we can increase resource utilization by fifty percent in the first year alone. And most importantly, we'll be removing barriers and making resources more accessible to everyone, especially those who have been historically excluded from business support systems. This platform alone isn't just a website or a publication. It's a system designed to transform how entrepreneurs find and use support or services in our organizations in our sorry, support services in our state. And we're combining storytelling with technology to create infrastructure that advances economic equity for all Vermont business owners. In addition to that, I think what it also does is it gets all of us small business resource organizations in the same room so that we know what each other does and also work more collaboratively. So, I appreciate your time. And if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. [Ellen Chikowski]: Thank you. Questions? I think we're good. [Speaker 0 ]: Thank you. [Ellen Chikowski]: Thank you very much. Thank you. So I think because we I need to have some conversations with Appropriations Committee to see how we advance any of this possible, and and we'll move we'll go from there. I think right now, Chester, a piece on our minds right now. Once we start once I get a better understanding of how we can move forward, then we'll we'll go from there. [Speaker 10 ]: I was in the senate appropriations committee room last Friday when they were doing the walk through all the one top and the side of the base changes, and chair Perchlik did mention s one twenty two that he knew that this was something you were all gonna take up and that there was a dollar amount that was be going to be requested. So it it it is on their mind. Yeah. So [Ellen Chikowski]: I just gotta put it on. You see, maybe And, you know, I mean, in the end, if anything happens, it might just wind up going right into the budget. So we'll see how how this all works, but we have more questions. You know, we'll certainly be in touch, and, hopefully, we can do something. It it would be nice if we haven't had the luxury of spending much money on workforce this year. So see what happens. Thanks. Thank you very much. Committee, I think we're done. So I'll take back fifteen minutes. Tomorrow, back on to first, we're gonna hear from the lumber dealers. They wanna talk to us about different issues, technical education, tariffs, all of that stuff. So they're coming in at nine, ten in here, More on tips but more on a proposal that they're trying to all of them is for Wellington, bring a lot more housing. Did you hear about that as it relates to our kids' discussions that we've been having. And then at eleven, we're gonna we will have a our trust fund report, UI trust fund report that we have every year. I think it's important this year that we understand where the trust fund is, how it's sitting, because we do know that there's a possibility we could go into recession. And, generally, during recession, we have high end employment. We wanna make sure our customers up to the task of taking care of people and state who have jobs so no fault for their name. And we'll have the have lunch, and and we'll be having lunch across the street. They're invited so are those view. But in a grace note, you'll be there. Let's see. We'll do a walk through of two zero five tomorrow afternoon, which is the non compete bill. There's a possibility that we could merge that with this bill one twenty two. We'll get a get a feel for that as we speak with it. So that's it for today. And Friday, the plan is that we're done by noon. Good Friday, it's generally our what we do. Additionally, at least we get done working as we need Good Friday. So and

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