Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today, we are talking about a book that I was really, truly looking forward to Frankenstein and Baghdad by Akhmed Sadali. Sorry if I'm pronouncing that wrong. I was interested in this book not because I'm a huge Frankenstein fan, but just because of the synopsis. I really enjoyed Victor Laval's retelling of the comic book series, His Frankenstein. This one sounded like it was going to be on par with that a literary take on not really the Frankenstein mythos, because it has very, very little to do with Frankenstein. I'm going to read you the back cover copy and then we're going to go from there. From the rubble strewn streets of US occupied Baghdad, Hadi, a scavenger and an oddball fixture at a local cafe, collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognize the parts as people and to give them proper burial. But when the corpse goes missing, a wave of eerie murders sweeps the city. Hadi soon realizes he's created a monster, one that needs human flesh to survive. First from the guilty, and then from anyone in its path, with white knuckle horror and black humor, Frankenstein and Baghdad captures the surreal reality of contemporary Iraq. I'm going to go ahead and say it didn't deliver on any of that. It was also a Man Booker International Prize finalist, and I have no idea why. The translation here, it was originally written in Arabic, translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright. The writing was so plain and so boring, and the entire book is a telling, almost like it's very simplistic fairy tale style writing. And that's fine if you like that kind of thing, but I like a little more in the way, and I know I've said in the past that I like a certain simplicity to prose, but only if it carries the deep connotations or the poignancy is what I like. Something that seems surface level simple and is actually very, very deep. This book didn't do that for me. I think the biggest part that I was disappointed in was this first bit about how he collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. The book opens up with him putting one final piece on the corpse and then the corpse disappears. It was very disappointing that we didn't actually get to follow him throughout the city scavenging and doing these things that the back cover copy promised. And another thing was I did not feel any white knuckle horror or any black humor. I could have completely missed it of course, humor is subjective, but I didn't laugh at anything. In fact, I was very, very bored the entire time. I'm someone who enjoys literary fiction. I really enjoy literary takes on genre material. And that's what I was hoping this would be. Unfortunately, it wasn't. It's a very bland, not even a retelling of Frankenstein, a very bland kind of magical realism that didn't do anything for me. I'm not going to give it one star because this isn't hot garbage. This is well above hot garbage. It just wasn't to my liking. So I'm going to say that it was okay, which is on Goodreads that's two stars, or two stars means it was okay. I don't recommend it, of course, but I always recommend that you read a book for yourself, and I would especially love to hear from anyone who has read this and liked it, or like me, didn't like it. But I would love to hear from someone who has read the original Arabic, the native tongue that this was written in. I would love to know if it's considered beautiful in its native tongue, or if it was supposed to be as good as it was in the translated version. I was very shocked that this book was up for a man-booker international prize, and it was a finalist because it is so plain, Jane. There's not much metaphor. The horror is very, very dumbed down to the point where if I had to compare it to something like watching, you know, if you're looking for porn, you end up with basic instinct.  That's how non-graphic it was. It did have some pretty, I don't know, it had some pretty severe violence, but it was all written so plainly that I didn't do anything to me. It definitely didn't shock me. So yeah, I'm very, very disappointed in this one, and if it wasn't for how bad elevation was by Stephen King, this would probably be my biggest disappointment of the year. So have you read Frankenstein in Baghdad? If you have, please let me know. If you're planning to read it, let me know. Leave all those comments down there in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!


I can move it forward a second or backwards a second to get the exact start point or I can go point one seconds or even frame by frame and I can also add end times if I want my moment to have an end time not just play to the end of the video I can click plus end time and again I can tweak it so I can get it exactly to the right end time or I can just cancel it there


I prefer liberate, or procure. Been slain, has been slain. An enemy has been slain. No way to predict it twists and turns ahead. That's why I wing it.


TLO, what's pop? We are on twitch we are live But if you can't join us just leave a like comment subscribe turn on your post notification But let's continue to grow the family from Chicago to the UK Don't forget we do got the patreon you can join to that and we also got the discord the links to all of that will be Down in the description if you have any business inquiries My email for work is in there as well This is from the shy historian He's a UK. This is a UK channel. He is called the most inbred family. How inbred are the widow with Whitaker's with with takers with takers. I Wasn't even gonna do this. I was I started this I got this far in By right here minute in and I was like, you know what now I think I got a lot to say So I'm gonna lie the world's most inbred you can recap when this story broke back in 2020 I knew that this needed to make a spot on my own channel Previously if you've been watching my content for a while, you will know that I feature inbreeding and incest fairly often That's crazy. The usual topic will focus on royalty today and in the past However, today's video will be slightly different. This ain't listen. Okay I didn't even know That there was a possibility that these type families Was involved in those things of that nature Rolty today and in the past However, today's video will be slightly different. The whitaker's or Whitaker's depending on your accent are not royalty by any stretch of the public imagination But they may possibly be more inbred than the Habsburgs or even the ancient Egyptians In today's video, we'll be breaking down how inbred the whitaker family truly is How inbred are the whitakers? This will be the primary question in today's video To do this, we will split today's video into two sections and I have section one I had asked the stream like Like what what what drives somebody mind the one day wake up be like yeah, my cousin looking like Ten out of a ten.  Like what what drives a human do that? That's weak. That's for me For me I can't speak for most people but I can speak for me That's weird We'll outline the context of the whitaker family from origin to today We will cover the named members of the family and some more important details to take of note Section two addresses today's question by using our contextual information Alongside a potential family tree or bush in this case Bro is deep into it alongside a potential family tree or He didn't bro. He didn't He didn't pull it up a shot shot a shot chart this is I'm gonna be real with y'all. I'm gonna tell y'all something about me I don't I do not discriminate when it comes to dating But when I used to live in Chicago like I used to live in a specific area in Chicago I refused to date anybody from there because I don't know who's my cousin Look, I'm being dead ass with you right now I refuse like almost didn't date black girls because I didn't want to I didn't want to mistake it for my cousin or something like that Like I'm not doing it because I'd be seeing too many couples And I'll be looking at them like, yo Are y'all sure y'all not it's not a possibility y'all second cousins or something Like are you positive like and I just don't want that for myself like I would be devastated You know what I'm saying like no He'll know By using architectural information alongside a potential family tree or bush, but don't get me wrong like I'm dating now. I'm in florida You know, I'm dating It's whatever But back where I was from In this case We can count we damn near had to take a DNA test to make sure calculate the consanguinity coefficient of the wittaker family Essentially calculating how inbred each family member is Who is the most inbred and what the average inbreeding of the overall family truly is How inbred each family member is what family member is most inbred like come on, man Am I I might be overreacting now with that all out of the way. Let's move on to today's video Why were the wittakers even cared about until 2004 the family lived a relatively obscure life Although the locals of the Appalachian region in Virginia knew about the family's problems There was no indication nor knowledge that the family was conducting in interbreeding In 2004 mark later snapped. He's now in Now watch out, I mean I want everybody to see The most image of a few members of the wittaker family Danny Timmy and Freddy were siblings in the supposedly final generation of the wittaker family In 2004 mark later knew that this generation was suffering from the ill effects of inbreeding Timmy for example suffered from facial and mental deformities and I'm not stating this to disparage him his cousin Ray who is not included in the family tree directly, which will be displayed later Was reported to be the member of the wittaker family who was suffering from the ill effects of inbreeding the most When mark later visited the family again in 2020 Ray the supposed cousin of the family was unable to communicate with mark Instead showing him objects inside the wittaker's family lodge with grunts So why are ray and timmy victims of intense inbreeding? In order to see this we need to go back to the year 1887 In this year identical twins henry and john married two non-related women at this time Nothing looked out of the ordinary. Okay looking real average real average. Okay And a snapshot of the family tree does not indicate anything amiss This is until we look at a few generations back Henry and john. Okay back. You see john did not marry a non-relative His wife aida was his first cousin as she was the First cousin though not second not third not distant First that means your mama's brother or sister's daughter or Daughter of john's auntie Was his first cousin as she was the daughter of john's auntie confusing. Don't worry Things are going to get a lot worse very shortly Both of the identical twins managed to produce children including a son and a daughter The daughter who was the child of john and aida was unfortunately the product of inbreeding Since her parents were first cousins However, first cousin marriages do not stop there. In fact while john junior and gracey were growing up They fell in love with one another Mark reports that their courtship was not only encouraged by their parents despite them being both first cousins But also that their relationship started before gracey had reached the age of 18 As she gave birth to her first child before this This occurred in the year 1937 with john so it wasn't like an accidental like dang i just accidentally you know i'm saying This was encouraged Before this this occurred in the year 1937 with john and gracey reportedly marrying in 1935 when gracey was only 15 years old Their first child named aileen was the first of 15 children named who? No stop It's not funny stop stop stop old Their first child named aileen was the first of 15 children born to john and gracey Their next child born 10 months after aileen's birth was sickly and lasted only a few months Over the next 23 years the couple produced 13 more children Many suffered from the ill effects of inbreeding their eighth child mary passed away aged one month due to inbreeding complications While many of her siblings survived now Isn't there laws against this now?  There are no laws back then or something. I mean it's presumably I guess not They passed away from heart attacks or complications of long-term illness with mark commenting that inbreeding was a likely cause of this However disturbing details do not end there Timmy shown in the image earlier is not the brother to freddy nor danny In fact, he is their nephew being the son of their sister lorraine mark could not find out conclusively whose timmy's father was but later on in the video We will uncover some disturbing possibilities Out of all of the 15 siblings Danny known as ray was apparently the one who suffered the most from inbreeding Out of the 15 siblings betty was regarded as the most capable and became the family matriarch When mark visited the family in 2020. He asked her why there were so many abnormalities and Ancetricities in the family She commented that it had nothing to do with genetics and could possibly be due to coal mining Critics stated that the wittaker family who lived in west virginia Were in one of the most poorest counties in the whole of the usa and at this would count as exploitation However, later's documentaries sparked a go fund me page for the family allowing them to finally break their cycle of poverty Part two how inbred are they so one side of the family was you know had a normal thing going on and then A cousin and a and a cousin and another cousin and then from there their son and daughter just got together and it just The whole line of family is gone Stop stop Suffering from the ill effect Using the family tree it's obvious that the family is suffering from the ill effects of inbreeding caused by successive generations of intermarriage Unlike the Habsburgs who experienced first cousin marriage frequently Many of the children born to the wittaker family experienced more of Not bad My bad my bad my bad often the not negative Unlike the Habsburgs who experienced first cousin marriage frequently Many of the children born to the wittaker family Experienced more often than not negative effects both physical and mental of inbreeding So how inbred is the family to do this? We need to consult a simple equation known as the coefficient of consanguinity relationship Using this table we can see how this works Take yourself for example if you were to have a child I don't want to take myself I'm Let me move myself so we can all see the chart If yourself you can see how this works take yourself for example if you were to have a child with yourself Yes, I know this is impossible But theoretically speaking the child would have a consanguinity coefficient of a hundred percent or one Which is the highest level of inbreeding Someone could possibly have in contrast the lowest would be zero percent or zero which is ideal But very few people have this since almost everyone on earth is considered to be related to one another if you look far back enough Don't Okay, I know that but the fact that you just said it out loud I'll do that to me, bro Fortunately, we can look back to a certain extent of the wittaker family since we have the family tree available If we presume that the first ancestors had a consanguinity coefficient of zero We can accurately calculate the inbreeding levels of all known descendants The first culprit of inbreeding was through the couple John and Ada Whose daughter Gracie was a product of the first cousin relationship This means that Gracie's consanguinity coefficient is zero point one two five Unfortunately for Gracie She went on to have her own first cousin relationship with her first cousin John Who may have had a zero percent consanguinity coefficient since we cannot detect any signs of inbreeding in his ancestors However, because of this first cousin relationship The consanguinity coefficient between these two actually increases to zero point one eight percent Meaning that their children would be more inbred than Gracie This is unsurprising given the images we have of the wittaker generation With ray and freddy being examples This means that all of the 15 children had a consanguinity coefficient of zero point one eight percent Since they were all four siblings Now this might not seem too high But keep in mind Charles II of Spain who is infamously regarded as one of the most inbred people to have ever lived Had a consanguinity coefficient of zero point two five So they're not that far off the high level of inbreeding is likely responsible for the premature demises Of some of the wittaker siblings such as Amore and Mary in infancy As well as some of their long-term health problems of the other siblings who passed away from heart attacks in their 50s and 60s However, the true story does not end there. Remember Timmy The son of one of these inbred 15 siblings who had an unknown father If Timmy's mother Loreen had married a non-relative Timmy's consanguinity coefficient would have been as low as zero point zero eight percent But looking at Timmy it's safe to say this is unlikely In fact, Timmy appears to be suffering from inbreeding My bad. Nope. We've got to see we can't really miss nothing Because this is crazy I But looking at Timmy it's safe to say this is unlikely In fact, Timmy appears to be suffering from inbreeding either to the same extent Or even higher than his supposed aunts and uncles. What does this mean? Although Loreen had Timmy when she was 33 There is a possibility that Timmy's biological father is a close relative to Loreen Eight cousin is a probability since the town they live in only has 800 residents With almost a hundred of these being from the Witte family line However, there is also the grim possibility of something else Which I wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait They live in an 800 town 800 people town 100 people from that the same family line That you got to move How they moved with their 45 dollars, huh? I will not elaborate here since there is no direct evidence nor even rumor from any member of the family With that said we must conclude that the Wittaker family has a consanguinity coefficient Better known as an inbreeding extent of 18 Ranking them as one of the most inbred families to have lived on earth And there we have it how inbred the Wittaker family is What detail in this video did you find surprising? Make sure to the whole 10 minutes and 48 seconds was surprising I don't understand why anybody would think any less of this was surprising See a little bit like comment subscribe


Good afternoon, you are with the Vermont House Government Operations Committee. We are meeting this afternoon to go over another draft of our pension governance and task force bill. I believe committee members you'll be able to access version 1.2 up on our committee page. Becky Wasserman who drafted the bill is needed in another committee. So we have Damien Leonard with us today and he's going to help convey any decisions that we make about the language in front of us back to to Becky. So thank you Damien for being here today. Happy to help out. So Rep Gannon has has been working with Becky to incorporate some of the changes that we believe are are responsive to some of the testimony that we heard last week. So, before long I'll ask him to to to begin taking us through and pointing out the changes. I just want to make note for the benefit of the committee that over the weekend, or actually yesterday, we reached out to the chairs of the three retirement system boards, who all send representatives to be pick. We wanted to make sure that the the recommendations that VP had made originally, as well as the revisions that they presented to us late last week were were were well received by the three system boards, because it is after all their retirement system funds that VP is investing and we want to make sure that they're comfortable with the changes so we met with two of the system board chairs yesterday the third was not available but he did email us. We were done meeting and said that he had had a conversation with the chair of VP and felt very comfortable with the direction that things were heading and so I wanted to make sure that you all knew that we had done that that additional step to make sure that we got their perspective on the changes that we are looking at here so if there are no other questions I will wrap Hooper. So you talked to the chairs but the boards have not taken a position is that correct. That is correct. So chairs not having the ability to speak for the boards. That's the root of my question I guess. I'm not sure when each of the boards is planning to meet. Rep Ganon may have a better recollection than I because he tends to have a memory like a vice in remembering what what people might have mentioned but this is this bill isn't going to be coming to the floor tomorrow so I'm sure that if the board is going to be able to make sure that they need to revise the statement that their chair made there will still be time for us to hear from them and have a conversation with them if there are helpful suggestions that they make to the way we're moving forward. My last question is that at lunchtime instead of walking around I was on the phone with one of the board members who called me who said that there was a request to endorse V picks action and they could not even get a motion brought forward so that kind of throws things into a soup that I don't know where that is. And I expect that folks will be following along on our YouTube stream and if they have a desire to come and testify before the committee they can certainly get in touch with our committee assistant Andrea Hussie and we will do our best to hear from folks anytime between now and when the house moves the bill out of our chamber which I expect won't be until late this week or early next week. Rep Higley. I'm having trouble finding the document I'm looking under today's day. It is under Damien Leonard's name because he's led council who's with us today even though he didn't draft the bill but he is. Okay, thanks. Rep Dan and anything that you wanted to add to that since my memory is like so cheese. So, so two things. One, you know, the chair reviewed with each the chair of the stars and viewers, the legislative process and that there was plenty of opportunity to chime in, either on the house side or on the Senate side. She explained that process I think fairly well so they understood that there's multiple opportunities to be heard with respect to the bill. I think the committee visas is meeting this week. If that's my recollection, I do not know about the other two boards. State Board event this morning. Great. Rep Higley did you find the document okay. I did not I'm under Damien's name, but on our committee page under today's date, if maybe you need to hit refresh. I'm seeing it, but it just got posted so you probably do have to hit refresh. Okay, thanks. First where he lives up there they have to import sunshine. It may be that that that little data signal had to ping through Montreal before it came down to your house. Rep Higley, my apologies for the long transmission time. All right, I'm going to go ahead and ask Rep Yanan to help the committee understand what we're seeing in the draft in front of us that's different from before. Right. Thank you madam chair and just to remind people we heard testimony from both the VSEA the teachers union, the pick, and we had I think a fairly healthy committee discussion. In addition to that some members reached out to the chair or myself with respect to suggestions about how to modify the bill and we've tried to incorporate what we thought was things that were good ads and that were consistent with the overall structure of the bill as we see it going forward. So I really appreciate all the members who who chimed in helped and, and all the people from outside the legislature who had had good ideas about how to improve the bill. So as you'll see, all the changes are highlighted. And so I'm going to move through some of them quickly. We've named the task force the pension benefits design and funding task force. And then I'm going to move to page two of the bill, where we have a new and improved definition of what independent means. And so there are two aspects of independence. One is that an individual has a director material interest in the plan if that individual or his spouse or first spouse parent child sibling, or in law is a beneficiary of the plan. And then two, the individual or the individual spouse parent child sibling, or in law has been within the past five years, an employee director officer consultant owner consultant manager, or had an other material role with an entity servicing the plan. So an example of that would be the investment advisor or the actuary. So those two and then in be there, we just define. What ownership in a publicly traded company is, which is owning 5% more directly or indirectly in any equity security registered under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. So that's the new improved definition of independent. Basically what it did is I took out the negatives and said, you know, when is somebody have an indirect or direct material. So that was the interest. And that was based on some input from VPIC. Then, further down on page two, we're referencing VPIC as an independent committee. This is consistent with the testimony we heard from VPIC about their direction of becoming independent from the treasurer's office. So we'll see a couple changes in this section of the document with respect to that independence. Then the, then we go through the list of the 10 members of the VPIC. And an alternate is elected by the Board of the Vermont State Employees Retirement System. One member and one alternate is elected by the Board of the State Teachers Retirement System of Vermont. And one member and one alternate elected by the Board of the Vermont Municipal Employees Retirement System. And then two members and one alternate who, and this is the important change who shall be a financial expert in independent appointed by the governor. So those are independent financial experts that will be on VPIC. Next we have the state treasurer. And then one member appointed, that's, you know, how the chair is elected. And a change is in seven is instead of the commissioner for finance, we have the commissioner for financial regulation. And this is a suggestion by rep Anthony, who thought that this would be less political and, you know, having looked at the commissioner's experience as an attorney at Scandin Arps. And as the securities regulator for DFR before he became the commissioner. He seems to have the correct experience to play a good role on VPIC. So we have one municipal employer who's appointed by the executive director of VLCT and one school employer who is appointed by the Vermont School Boards Association. So that's the makeup of VPIC. So then we move down. Oh, and I should say there was one thing deleted. Originally we had the, the municipal and school employer appointees to be independent. But in discussions. We learned that would eliminate superintendents and town managers from potentially serving on VPIC so we eliminated that independence requirement for those two positions. Rep Hooper has a question. John, the number nine, the school boards association that you might have just answered that while I was waiting but there's the school board association. And not the superintendent's association or something like that or they meshed enough that a superintendent could serve or is it just somebody from school boards, or is it anybody in the world. Well, it says one school employer so it have to be a school employer which could be a superintendent. Okay. Or a school board member. I mean, it's, it's obviously the Vermont School Boards Association will make the determination of who's best suited to fill that role. And when I was on the school board I was never considered an employee or is that vague. I mean, we could modify that language to include a school board member because they would not. Well, I mean, sometimes they're, well, Damien would be an expert, maybe on this. You know, would a select board member or school board member be considered an employer for this. It really depends on the employment law. Some employment laws go to go all the way back to management members others look at the entity. You could potentially address the concern with something saying one member. One member representing the interests of school employers or, you know, who, you know, I mean I think representing the interests of school employers or representing school employers would kind of get at what like the school boards Association is doing, which is kind of representing the school employer's interests in terms of their financial interest so that that might be a better way to get around it. You don't have a question of, you know, the superintendent who's also an employee of the school district. Are they technically the employer and in some cases yes, for example, if they allow discrimination to occur at their school. If they don't like having knowledge of it they could be considered the employer, but in other cases they might not be so that that would be my recommendation is just to use the one member. And then I'm not sure what the best way to phrase the second part is but I would leave that up to you and I can make a note to Becky here, if that makes sense for the committee. I'm not suggesting you could refer to that person as being involved in superintendencies governance, and then you would avoid the conundrum of trying to fit that into either employer or employee pigeonhole. Thank you I have replic layer with a hand up. Thank you madam chair. I'm a little confused here the the one school employer, when I was on a school board for 10 or 12 years. I was always considered the employer. And whenever we were in contract negotiations or whenever even had a signed contract so I'm not sure what the problem here is with the current language. I think the question is just an issue of clarity so when you were on the school board you were considered part of the school employer. But you were negotiating, if you for example were in contract negotiations, you were negotiating on behalf of the school district as a member of its governing body. In the same way that management negotiates on behalf of the employer. In some instances, employer, I mean, and this is one of the difficulties coming from my branch in some instances the word employer doesn't mean the manager and other instances and includes the manager or the board, or the other governing body of that employer. So from your, from your standpoint, it, it may be clear, I'm just not familiar enough with this but I think you could make it, you know, just saying one individual, you know, who is involved in the governance of a municipal employer, or one individual representing municipal employers. That sort of thing the problem if you go with one individual representing as it could be the executive director of VLCT appoints the deputy director of VLCT or something like that, which maybe that's not your intent maybe your intent is to get a select board member or something like that. Or maybe your intent is to leave it open ended so that's kind of a question of, who do you see serving here. And then that might be a better way to phrase it. You know, for example, if what you want is a school board member, then you would say one member who is a member of the board of a supervisory unit or union or school district appointed by the Vermont school boards Association. And then for the municipal employer you might say one member who is a member of the select board or city council of a municipality. So going back to your example Damien I mean like for the school. School employer meaning you could have a superintendent. You can have a business manager. I mean I could see a few different scenarios there so. Yeah, so if your goal though is to have the superintendent, the superintendent, a business manager or a school board member, or maybe just a superintendent or a business manager. It might make sense to spell that out. Because right now it's the concern I would have is so you know your school employer could be the Burlington school district. Or it could be the members of the school board of the Burlington school district or perhaps you want the business manager because they have a better understanding of the financial affairs of the school district than the school board members do. And in that case you might want to say, you know a member who is, you know fits these criteria, because otherwise you could end up with someone. You know who maybe is is not what you're intending to have on this committee. And so that I think that's, you know, my, my advice here is that right now employer is vague, or my, my observation so if your intent is to leave it very open ended, then it's probably. Okay. But if your intent is to specifically directed at certain individuals who have specific expertise or experience, then you may want to spell that out. Just following up on that. So, in both these kids, the municipal employer is going to be a town or city, correct. I mean, Yeah, so municipal employers is a town or city. And for school it's going to be the school district. Yes, or the supervisory union. Right. If we said a representative of a municipal employer or a management representative of a municipal employer with that help fix it. Yep, or you could say. Yeah, it you could say representative of a municipal employer or representative of municipal employer employer with knowledge of, you know, municipal financial concerns I'm not sure the best way to put that again we're talking outside of expertise but you know with knowledge of for example municipal budget issues or municipal finance or something like that but you, if you say a representative of a municipal employer it's it's pretty clear you want an individual who can represent a municipal employer. If you say you want a representative of municipal employers that might be steering you more towards someone who's got statewide experience. But it could also be someone who's very knowledgeable from a particular municipality who can speak on behalf of a broad range of employers. Okay. I think that's going to complicate this. Not, not at all. That was responsive to the question. So committee I think it's worthwhile just refocusing our, our view on this is the makeup of the investment committee, who will be making the investment decisions in the hopes of growing our public employee pension funds and so in that standpoint, you know, we should ask ourselves whether we think we need to be more prescriptive or less prescriptive in terms of giving those entities, the ability to appoint somebody who can effectively help make those decisions representative Well, just, I mean the reason I asked and I did not intend to complicate it this much is when I started on the Berlin School Board we basically, except for certain purely academic things considered ourselves to be agents of the city. The teachers were members of the city, retirement system, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, a municipal employer and a school employer seem to be synonymous in that context I have no idea what anybody else does. That was the root of the question and I don't mind moving on. Back to you rep again. Thanks. The next change is on page five. This was a recommendation from Jeff Fanon that we put removal language into this section of the bill with respect to VPIC. And so here members of the board may be, maybe, maybe be removed only for cause. And the board shall adopt rules pursuant to three vs a chapter 25 to define the basis and process for removal. And I believe three vs a chapter 25 is the administrative procedures act. And, or at least that's that was what my intent was when I suggested this, this change based on Jeff Fanon's suggestion. I hope he has a question. Sorry. No worries. Thank you. I just got my hand up. So I noticed right underneath that that the chair of the VPIC still has the 20 year term instead of a 12 year term like the rest of the members and I recall we heard significant testimony that they should be the same 12 year term. Why is that still 20 years what's our rationale there. So that is certainly open to a discussion for the committee to decide. And I, I think the rationale for setting it originally at 20 was simply to say that if somebody had already served as a member of VPIC and then was selected to become chair. We, we wouldn't want them to be termed out from to do that. So let's have a little committee discussion at this point about that section too so we can decide whether we want to change the, the term limit for the chair. Sam was a replica save go ahead. Thank you. Tonya asked my question, and I was just hoping for more clarification on. And I apologize if I have missed it but can people serve like as you have just explained and then take a break and come back or is it just those are the absolute amount of years that you are allowed to be out there. I believe the way it's drafted. The language is hard and fast. Three terms but that is certainly open for committee discussion. Rep Ganon, do you want to weigh in on that. No, no, you're absolutely correct madam chair. It's hard and fast rule three terms that that could be modified we could say people could take a term break. I've seen that language and other bills and other, you know, board governance structures. So it's something we could consider. I generally think that we have to keep in the back of my minds that it's going to be hard to get people who are willing to make this commitment so I know that people have talked about the ability to eliminate people from getting stale. And I think we have to put that encumbrance upon ourselves in the legislature. And it, the unintended consequence of this is you may have very good people getting off I generally think a term limit is called an election. And that should suffice. Other committee discussion. And just in response to that, given that all of these seats are appointed and not elected, that feels a little bit like it's not quite the same like we're comparing apples and llamas. I just I, I'm not opposed to the sort of term break language I'm just, yeah, I just think this is worth some more thought it doesn't sound like people have huge thoughts right now but I do know we heard multiple people testify that this was kind of problematic. And I guess my space in that is if we don't have strong opinions, perhaps we go with what we heard from testimony, because some people did have strong opinions. I would have no concern bumping that from 20 years down to 12 to to match the others, especially if you have staggered terms. And if the member from Burlington was advocating for term limits I would probably have to agree with him. Other committee observations, committee discussion about the issues around continuous term limits versus taking term off, or the term of the chair. The only other thing I would say madam chair is that this language came from VP was part of the proposal. And just knowing that that Tom Galanca has already served for I think four or five years that may have had something to do with the extended term. And I think most people on the committee would agree that he's done superb job in managing VP over those years. And I for one would hate to see him go. But I just throw that out there for context. I agree with you Mr Vice Chair and and rep Hooper. Yeah, just a point of information while I would agree with john and that sort of speaks to me about term limits might not necessarily be appropriate at all. But are we starting the clock over here with this new commission or is, are you guilty by past history for time already accrued. It's my understanding that time already include will be kind of toward your term limit. When we address this with the liquor control board when it became. I think actually when we modernize those statutes before it became the board of liquor and lottery we were, we were clear about whether or not we were going to include prior time. Otherwise we were very clear that we weren't including prior time because the assumption was otherwise that those term limits would apply. And there there was some institutional knowledge that they wanted to keep on the board, because otherwise they were going to lose a significant portion of that board at the time, because of the new term limits. And I would say if you're looking to make prior time not apply you should be very clear about that. But otherwise I think assumption is that the term limits apply going forward as far as not more than three terms and so forth so if you've already served multiple terms. You should be clear if you're not going to count prior terms. McCarthy. Yeah, I guess I don't have discomfort with the longer term for the chair, because in this language the chair serves at the pleasure of the rest of the committee and is elected by them. And it's different in that way than the rest of the members of the new VPIC so I don't really, you know, I think that in that way, since the rest of the committee has a lot of power that they wouldn't have over each other, but they do on the chair. That's a big difference to me in this particular instance. Rep Anthony, you are muted. I thank Damian for illustrating that there is a parallel example for being very explicit. And I would suggest that we do be very explicit. Because the newly constituted group will be significantly reconfigured. I really think we ought to start at ground zero. I'm comfortable with the 20 year chair or going to say 16 but I really think the chair is Rep Hooper said because it's selected. It is different than the folk serving. And if they select a chair, which has proved that person has proved out to be very successful and helpful. I don't see why that person should be removed. So I would start at ground zero. The term limits start when this new body is constituted, and the chair gets to serve longer whether it's 20 or 16. That's okay. Thanks. Rep Hooper, your hand is still up. Is that from before? It is, Madam Chair. I apologize. No worries. Thank you. All right, back to you, Rep Ganon. We will flag this as a decision point that we need to make as we move towards final passage. Also highlighted on page five at the very bottom, which is not a new change, but it is highlighted and it's a decision point for the committee is that no legislature who is currently serving the General Assembly shall serve on the committee. I think they did not take a position on that as their memo pointed out. But obviously this is a decision point we need to address. All right. Then I'm going to move down. The next change on page six is, oops. Representative LaClaire. There currently isn't an active legislator serving in that role now, correct? There is a legislator serving on VPIC. There is. Representative Hooper serves on VPIC. Oh, sorry. I'm just regarding that question. Okay. Moving down to page six. We've slightly modified the quorum requirement. So a quorum would be five members of a 10 member board. So, again, modified is there needs to be five concurrent votes shall be necessary for a decision of the committee at any meeting of the committee. So that's up from four. Then going down to the bottom of page six and the top of page seven. The chair of the committee may be constant compensated from the funds at a level not to exceed one third of the salary of the state treasurer is determined by the other members of the committee that is not a change, but I think, and I may be incorrect about who said this, but I think was rubber representative Hooper's who suggested that the compensation should be higher. And the treasurer should be higher than the treasurer. No, the treasurer also suggested that. And the treasurer did thank you. Sorry, works far harder than the equivalent of one third of her salary. And have a opinion they want to express on that question rep Hooper. You know, it's, it's a weird thing because just, you know, I think we're making this decision based on an individual. Because Tom puts in, I think an inordinate amount of time and does an excellent job. I don't have enough top my head I don't know what a third of the treasurer salary is. But I would expect it's probably in the $50,000 range to get somebody to do this outside state government. Pretty sure you would consider that somewhere between highway robbery and a bargain. So, I would have absolutely no problem with recommending I go up. Thank you madam chair do we know what the present value of the treasurer salary is today. I think it's pretty easy to find that out I don't have the number off the top of my head, perhaps somebody else in the room knows where to look that up so hang tight we'll see if we can come up with that number. Madam chair I think we'd be in the pay act. Yeah, it is. Okay, I'll go look thank you. I'll go look at the list on the list. Rep. Just a point of clarification is the job of being chair of the VPIC a full time job. Okay, isn't supposed to be. That fair point. The past couple weeks it may have felt like it. Any other opinions or thoughts with respect to the highlighted section at the bottom of page six on top of page seven. Thank you. I just processing on the fly here. It feels to me and I certainly can't can't speak to what standard within this world because it's not a world that I work in but it feels to me that $50,000 is a pretty decent some for a supplemental person that isn't full time so I certainly am hasn't I just it just. Yeah, like I said I can't speak to this work but that does seem like that I mean that's more than I make in a year in my full time job so it certainly feels like a sizable amount. Damian Leonard thank you. I just wanted to note that under 32 vs a 1003 a the treasurer salary is 116,745. As of January 5 of last year. So, 116. Not 160 116 745. Yep. And that's as of January 5 2020. I don't know if the pay act put in an interim pay rate above that. It did. Okay, so I'm not sure what that would be but that's the one that I have probably quickly. And a third is 40. Okay, so I'm going to go to the committee discussion on the question of the recommendation by a few folks in this conversation to increase the salary of the chair. Okay. Nobody has a strong opinion. Well, almost, almost none of us have a strong opinion at this moment.  Now that may be a full time position but I mean, some of these positions are highly compensated because they involve the need for a lot of financial and investment expertise. Prim has taken in a lot of its investment management inside its house instead of, you know, hiring outside investment managers. So it is a slightly different model. However, you know, if we are truly interested in this, I mean, maybe the solution is a compensation study so that we're not just shooting in the dark as to what the salary should be. I believe that's a great suggestion. Is it okay to move on, Matt? Oops. We've got a couple of hands. Are you suggesting John that get added into this charge to the committee? I think lower down there is a charge for a report with respect to independence. We could look at seeing if we could add it there. Thank you. I again, I'm just sort of processing out loud, but I wonder if rather than linking the salary to the treasurer salary if linking it to the performance of the fund makes more sense. Well, again, using the model of Prim, I believe there are financial incentives tied to performance. And I guess in the context of this conversation, I feel a little bit more comfortable with suggesting that the VPIC in their study of moving towards independence also consider the compensation of their chair in that conversation and come back to us with a recommendation. Rep Hooper, how are people feeling about adding that language further down where we ask VPIC to do a study? Definitely. Okay. That looks like near consensus. Thank you. Okay. Moving on. Still on page seven. Then this starts to get into the independence of VPIC from the treasurer. I mean, there's language here. The committee shall have the administrative and technical support of the office of the state treasurer. Again, this is new language. The committee may collect proportionately from the funds of the three retirement systems and any individual municipalities that have been allowed to invest their retirement funds pursuant to subsection 523a of this title any expenses incurred that are associated with carrying out the duties and expenses incurred by the treasurer's office in support of the committee. This is a slight tweak to the language that was in the bill before, which is focusing the committee getting compensated versus the treasurer's office. The language right under that is not new language the attorney general shall serve as a legal advisor to the committee that is already the case. I think it was just called out because it's now in a separate subsection. Now moving to page eight. You will note that the reports. Where is it. Okay, so you will recall that VPIC and making recommendations for some tweaks to our recommendation asked for more time to complete certain tasks. And this is one of the places where those changes were made. I believe we had it in 90 days and now, following the recommendation from VPIC, they have 180 days to conduct an asset allocation study. And that study will be submitted to the general assembly and also posted on the treasurer's website. And that's on page nine of the bill. So let's move down to page 10 changes to the actual rate of return. As was already in the bill, this is determined only by the VPIC and not the retirement boards. So that's just not sure why that's highlighted. So the VPIC has a question. Yeah, I am actually curious as to this piece because I know we we heard testimony from one of the unions that this should be retained as a decision made in conjunction with the retirement boards. And I mean in my view when we're making big changes like this that impact the unfunded liability we certainly want to have in depth conversation and come to an agreement and not just unilaterally be able to decide that we can make these changes. And I guess why this didn't change back to being a conjunction decision. I can speak my view of that and then Rep Gannon if you have other thoughts, the rate of return is determined by decisions that are made at the investment committee level, and we are looking for making changes overall to the governance of VPIC that will cause a little more clarity and a little more transparency for folks to understand whether we're meeting our expected rate of return. And so, giving the body whose job it is to obtain a certain rate of return, the ability to set that rate of return makes perfect sense to me. This change is consistent with the more independent nature of VPIC. And it also focuses the decision of setting the assumed rate of return based on VPIC analysis of the securities markets. Rather than looking to see whether we should set the assumed rate of return to lower our ADAC payment or some other reason that does that if you look historically, not only at Vermont but many states they have set highest assumed rate of returns which lowers our unfunded liability, but ultimately leads to us not meeting assumed rates of return. So I mean, you know, Representative Higley cited the Reason Foundation website a number of times they actually do have a terrific tool there that allows you to see what the assumed rate of return is at various states and whether it was met or not. And you can see that most states have set unfortunately overly optimistic assumed rates of return. And so one of the things is to try to take out of the picture here focus on how a assumed rate of return may impact the ADAC payment or the unfunded liability but to make it truly recognize what market conditions are and what market conditions are expected to be in the future. Representative Anthony. Thank you madam chair and thank you john I. I don't know where it's appropriate for me to pipe up and take ownership of the suggestion, given the fact that the assumed rate of return just had a cold shower so to say, and it's gone down to 7%. I suggested and I continue to suggest where it should be inserted in the document is another matter, but I think it ought to stay where it has justifiably been moved to for some period of time. So the people focus on other aspirations in their work on the whole issue of pensions. Thanks. The other committee discussion. All right back to you, Mr vice chair. Okay, then moving down to page 11. It talks about beginning on January 15 2022. The committee will provide the House and Senate go box committees with a report on the performance of each plan. Versus its demographic investment other actual assumptions for three, five, 10, three, five, seven and 10 year periods, and the funding ratio of each plan to each plan beneficiary at the end of each fiscal year. The report of the status of the funding and investment performance of each plan and any relevant information from the asset liability and scenario testing completed during the fiscal year. So that's, that's not really changed the committee shall send written a written copy of the report described in subdivision, one of this section to the participants and beneficiaries. That is new language. So not only would the legislature get it, but the participants would too. That's what I was suggested by a member of the committee. Representative Cooper. Thank you again madam chair now john defined plan for me are you covering my aspect or are we just saying there are two plans. Two plans. That's continues to be unacceptable for me. We do deal with in the task force cross subsidization. True. We always maintain that trying to figure out where the unfunded liability is actually coming from. And that might not be viewed as the same thing. I guess I would throw in there that transparency about any cross subsidization is is also important to me but I'm not sure if it makes sense for it to be a part of the snapshot that people see every single year. Perhaps more important to understand trends over time but you could imagine a scenario where, for instance, a large number of judges perhaps retired and all of a sudden, the benefits drawn out of that part of the system are higher than a year. Then say the state troopers, part of the, the plan. And so, certainly open to having that conversation in the future but since we don't even have a sense at the moment of what that potential cross subsidization looks like I wouldn't support putting it in the annual report that goes out to beneficiaries just yet. That's not the section actually that I was talking about. I'm talking more about section a, where the performance of each plan the demographics, all the assumptions, very few of these things are done on an annual basis. Frankly, any of this stuff that gets sent to members would probably be left unread anyway but again, the fund each one of the state employees plans are aggregated. And you devise a funded ratio from the three. It just seems, again, unfair, unequitable to say to somebody that they'll be supporting somebody else's plan. One, and two, it seems like we're missing a vital piece of information if we don't require somebody. And this is going to be the eighth time I've asked to designate where the holes are. I think that's something that Task Force is going to look at. So there's still a question of whether there is in fact cross subsidization. We don't have any information one way or the other with respect to that currently the task force is going to tackle that and could make a recommendation that we change this part of the statute if they feel that that's important. Are we coming to the part where we've mandated that happen. That's in the task force section. We're still in the big section. Thank you. Representative Anthony. Yeah, I having been a maven on the issue. I think it's it is best left for the tax task force, simply because snapshots and annual reports may, you know, one year go one way and another year go another way. I think it's incumbent on the tax force task force to if they believe that something ought to be tracked and changes to be made. They're the body to make it not be any way. Thanks. All right. Any other questions back to you, Mr Vice Chair. Okay, then the next sec change is at the bottom of page 11 and the top of page 12. And this is the transition language with respect to members terms. The final language that we had in here would have a lot of terms expiring in 2021 and 2025. And the, the attempt here is to rebalance that so that we don't have so many people having their terms expire in one of those two years. So this would more balance the terms and let me I'm going to find an email from Becky that explains and practice how this works. So what this provision would do is there would be three members members expiring in 2025 to expiring in 2026 and to expiring in 2027. And that sort of more equally distributes when terms are expiring and so that was the goal just so we didn't have so many people expiring in two years representative Anthony, and going back to the previous discussion that Damien flag for us namely, do we start at ground zero or do we use accumulated time. I'm assuming that would not throw off what you just read. Am I right Mr Vice Chair. Right. Thanks. I think so. Yeah, I think the only thing about time served is when you have completed your 12 years of service. And actually getting, or I hope to get that data from Eric Henry, as to the current members of the pick and how long they have served. That was my intuition I just I think that's right and I still vote for disregarding the past. Other questions from committee members. All right. I know there's something highlighted on 14 but I think that was from a previous draft. Same thing on page 16. And 17. So now we get into the pension benefit design funding task force which begins at the very bottom of page 17 and continues through the rest of the bill. So the first significant change is on page 18, which is that there will be three members who shall be appointed by the President of the Vermont NEA that's up from to moving. Now, the VSEA still gets to appoint two members. However, there's an addition in that one member of the Vermont Troopers Association who shall be appointed by the President of the Vermont Troopers Associations at it. So that is a new position. And I should note that there is no longer a business person on the task force, nor a school board member. Those were eliminated. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm looking at this and one of the calls that we have heard from over and over and over again is about the importance of balance. And I'm still seeing that this is a nine to six labor and non labor representation, which still strikes me as not balanced. I really hope that we can have additional conversation about about potentially eliminating some of the non labor representatives or adding additional labor representatives so that we can truly strike a balance. I would argue that this is very balanced. I mean we have union representatives, we have representatives of the employers, and then we have the legislators I think grouping the legislature with employers or the administration is absolutely incorrect. I know that there, we are all receiving a lot of emails with respect to that. But I don't think that is a fair division. I would say that I share Representative Gannon's point of view on this wholeheartedly. And that I think that when I read some of the messages that I'm receiving, there's a lack of acknowledgement that there are even legislators on this task force, there's a lack of understanding from many of the folks who are emailing me what appear to be you know form letters about this very issue. The, the fact that there are employer representatives employee representatives and the representatives of the public the legislators on our task force proposal. I think the inclusion of the VTA representative is in response to testimony that we heard and I think that that's a really positive addition in this draft. And, you know, I think we heard the concern about the business person and the appropriateness of having that member of the public there. And, and so I think, you know, we've taken a step in the direction that some of the folks who testified wanted us to go with this updated draft but I just, I think that the question of what is balanced. This is a very balanced proposal now. I think that some of the folks who are calling for balance are lumping the legislature in with management and I don't think that's a fair characterization of how the legislature who ultimately will have to take up the recommendations of this task force is going to behave moving forward so I appreciate the updates in this draft and I think they get us to a place of really good balance. Cooper. Thank you. You know, if we look at it in terms of management and worker. It's very difficult but at this point, you know, you're somewhat talking about beneficiaries and managers and a beneficiary and manager. I think that's a little out of whack. I mean, that's what I would kind of point out and would also agree with rep the husky that this is not what I would like to see. Closer, not there. Rep Higley. Thank you madam chair. I guess I would like to have to agree with Mike McCarthy and on in regards to the makeup currently. Again I think the three members being appointed by the speaker and the three members being appointed by the committee on committees at least at this point in the political realm of things in the state and for what I can see the community near future as well. I think that that would definitely be slanted towards. Towards the unions. Thank you. Representative Leclerc. Thank you madam chair I find it's hard to believe but I look at this quite differently and that I don't think that there should be anything around a collective bargaining agreement about this. This is exclusively to talk about the oversight of these pensions. And I would look at this more from skill sets and what the people bring, rather than it's looked at as a collective bargaining agreement. Other committee discussion on this point. Brett Marwicky. Figuring it out. I think I'm adverse to figuring all this out because I don't want to keep doing the zoom stuff. But I just wanted to weigh in here and I don't want to miss the opportunity to agree with rep Higley. But I get it when people might say legislators. I heard it said in part of the testimony that legislators are management. And, you know, as somebody who's who's been a union member who's who's fought for labor issues for a long time it's it's hard to hear but I get it when they might perceive us. Anybody as on the other side of an issue but I look at the makeup of this this this committee is as as equitable and balanced and I think the the suggestion that any legislators necessarily leaning towards management is not really accurate. Rep Anthony. Thank you madam chair. I want to thank the chair and vice chair for going quite a ways and more than quite a ways to try and get the committee to to sort of hang together and support this and I will. And like my friend representative Ricky said I consider myself a labor person I've been a member of three unions over my lifetime. A retiree of two of them. And I just, I find the discussion off base just talking about are you management or your labor. I'm not sure about skill sets because as I once said, in the context of how we were expanding VPEC. I'm afraid that politics is not and should not be a dirty word I have to explain to my constituents why I supported a particular proposition. And they include many union members and many management members, and all taxpayers, and that's who I have to answer to. So I'm, I'm not sure even skill set is the right way to do it. It feels like it will work. And I Lord knows don't want a future chamber to have to go through this pressure cooker that myself and my colleagues did. And that force works and I hope it does. Nobody will go through this in another 10 years. And I think we've made great strides to to create balance although it's not balancing the in the, in the nomenclature that certain interests would like to frame it. So thanks. Thank you. I want to be clear I didn't use the language management I use the language of labor and non labor I wasn't referring to anyone as managers or non managers. I am simply thinking of who is coming to the table and what is their goal and right now the goal of and who benefits and so really thinking about the lack of voice of those who are directly benefiting or being impacted from the pension plan there is not balance there. The people who are going to be impacted by the changes that we make are not equitably represented in this conversation, as opposed to the people who will not as directly be impacted by and so it has nothing to do with management, but everything to do with impact. So I just wanted to be clear that I I never use the terminology management and didn't intend it to seem that way. I appreciate you clarifying that and, and also clarifying the interests in this conversation of people who are impacted. Mike McCarthy. At that point, Madam Chair. When I think about having equitable representation of the people who are impacted on this task force. I want to make sure that, of course, employee groups beneficiary groups have strong representation and this proposal really does that. I also want to make sure that my constituents who aren't planned beneficiaries. Are shouldering the lion share of the annual cost to maintain the health of the funds at this point are also represented and and so I want to make sure that the employees and beneficiaries have a strong voice but the taxpayers need to have a voice through the legislators on the as well and I think that when we look at that lens of what's equitable and what voice is there. It's not just about having a number of labor plan beneficiary folks and management folks because otherwise legislators could just go home. You know we're there to represent the public and the legislators who are on the committee I hope will bring all of that conversation and all of the voice of everyone who's part of the task force and the power of all of that to our body and the other body. When they come back to us and you know I see that this is a very equitable proposed task force through that lens and I think that they're there you know I know that there's this campaign right now. I'm not saying the form emails that we discussed earlier but the the lens that they're looking through is just labor non labor or management employee and I just think that if we're really truly trying to be equitable we need to look at who's paying for these plans who is impacted by them and as we heard in testimony from the employee representatives themselves. These plans aren't just plans that benefit the beneficiaries they benefit all of our monitors I'm really concerned about saving these plans as a legislator and making sure that the retirement system survived so that's the equity lines I look through. Thanks. Any other committee discussion on that. All right back to you Mr Vice Chair. Thank you. Moving to page 19. There's a new change which says upon designation and approval, any member appointed pursuant to subsidize subdivisions one D and E of this subsection shall only be shall be the only representative of the designator to participate in the task force proceedings so let me put that into plain English. All of the appoint appointees to the task force are hold certain positions like the commissioner of human resources and in those positions says or designee. What this is just saying is that if a designee is is named, it can only be one designee and that person has to serve for the entirety of the task force. We can't just have multiple people showing up at different meetings. This was a suggestion by representative Anthony. Any questions on that. All right. Thank you back to you. So now we get into the powers and duty section of the task force and there's been a number of changes to this. I'm going to skip over the first highlight because about benefit provisions to appropriate funding sources. There are the recommendations that the task force has to make and the first one is setting a pension stabilization target number for the state employees retirement system and state teacher retirement system that and I'm not going to go into this language because we discussed it on Friday. You know, it goes through B is a five year review of benefit expenditure levels, as well as employer and employee contribution levels and growth rates and three and five tenure levels of rates that's not new. Benefit and funding benchmarks proposed new benefit structures with the objective of adequate benefits within the established cost containment benchmarks, including an evaluation of a shared risk model for employee contributions and cost to living adjustments. An estimate of the cost of current and proposed benefit structures on a budgetary pay as you go in full actuarial accrual that on basis, evaluating the intermediate and long term economic impacts to the state and local economics a proposed changes to benefits were contributions and their potential impact on retiree spending. That is new language that was recommended by Jeff Fannon. He evaluating any cross subsidization between all groups within the Vermont state employees retirement system and adjusting contributions amount to eliminate any cross subsidization. G evaluating alternative plan designs, such as hybrid or defined contribution plan options were a combination of a defined benefit plan and a defined contribution plan. This is a discussion from representative Higley and representative Lefebvre. Examining permanent and temporary revenue streams to fund that the Vermont state, state employees retirement system the state teachers retirement system. There's a question there about keeping this language. Let me just finish and then I see there's a hand up a plan for prefunding other post employment benefits with an evaluation of using federal funds to the extent permissible. That's existing that was existing language a plan to lower other post employment benefit health care costs including reviewing health care health benefit design innovation state regulatory measures and alternative methods of providing pooled health care benefits. That was another suggestion by Jeff Fannon. And then down below the task force.  I had rep Hooper. Thank you both. There's a vast difference between the state employee health care plan and the teacher health care plan I just say that in passing my question though john did you up in D. I think it's a great inspiration to not only impact of retiree spending but I mean the significant part of this is how many people decide they're going to stay in Vermont to maintain your standard of living. A lot of the chatter on the Facebook pages is I'm going south. When people take their entire retirement check and go someplace else with it. It's significant. I suspect we should maybe consider adding that in as much as it is determinable and I don't know if it is representative Anthony. Thank you Madam Chair, as it's come up a couple of times and rep Dan and vice chair had sort of ticked off the possibility of revenue sources. I think that's one of the things that I think rep Hooper has brought out, and I'm not sure I almost favor putting it in there, because it's not well known. And that is to say, any savings in the health care plans for either group that has arisen recently. We could define that or or in future from a premium holidays. And that essentially would also be a revenue source towards any recommendation for. Okay. Thank you so much and thanks for all the work on this. One of the things that I think it may be sort of encapsulated in the piece around impacts to state and local economies I think is the economic impacts. Sort of included in there but I think that these pieces deserve to be more spelled out here. I think that we need any changes being made need to be assessed for their impact on the ability to retain and recruit state employees and teachers. I think we also need to look at that sort of, we need to ensure that we're creating a sustainable system and not simply cross subsidizing by forcing, you know, making sure that any changes wouldn't push people into other state benefits and then again I come back to the school budget piece of, you know, does this have a local impact that causes our taxpayers property taxes to skyrocket. Sure, it's not included in the general fund but it is still a tax that is being just sort of shifted to a different bucket so I want to really be careful that those are laid out pretty clearly as important pieces to look at as we're evaluating possible plan options. Any discussion. You just say agree. I would welcome folks at this point and maybe I should have said this at the beginning. But if you have ideas such as that to jot your ideas down and work with legislative council to put them into bill language form so that we can consider adding them to the bill. I'm chair this goes to representative host keys concern a little bit maybe under see I propose new benefits structures with the objective of adequate benefits, I mean, adequate benefits, I would hope would mean adequate to attract and retain employees, you know, so maybe it could be elaborated there but I would, I would say that's that's what that means to me. I appreciate that suggestion of where where a few keywords might help to make a finer point, as opposed to adding a new section. So would welcome folks to keep working on that. Any discussion on the duties of the task force back to you Mr vice chair. Okay, thank you. So, Subsection two on page 21, the task force shall not make recommendations on adjusting the assume the rate of return. This was a suggestion by representative Anthony. You know, under V picks control. It would sort of be financial gamesmanship in some ways for for the task force to come back and make a record recommendation with respect to changing the assume greater return. So, that is off the table for the task force with this language. I think we leave powers and duties and get into stakeholder input. And so there's additions here solicit input including through public hearings from affected stakeholders, and identification of a specific group, which is consult with group D members of the state employees retirement systems and members of the state employees retirement system employed as state correctional officers. So this is to get specific information with respect to them with respect to group D, which is judges and correction officers, which are typically part of that representative Hooper. Is this the group G coming in here. It's the consult with them. Any questions, comments, right. We'll just reminding folks to, to sit with that stakeholder input aspiration and feel free to reach out if you have thoughts on whether that captures who you think the task force needs to be calling in. All right, back to you, Mr Vice Chair. Page 22, a simple but important change at the bottom of that page is the start date of the task force is moved up from July 15 2021 to June 15 2021. So that adds a month to the task force. Maybe we're getting to this and I'm just a little ahead of myself which would not be the first time that has happened. Are we considering adding time on the other end given that this task force is making recommendations that we won't take up until January are we expanding the length of time on the other end of the task force as well. Well, let's fast forward here and see when we are not in this draft. Oh, Rep Colston, we need you to unmute yourself. Thank you. Thank you, Madam chair. When we were having the conversation about equity. I think the other side of the coin is skills and competencies. The powers and duties, it's a tall, it's a tall ask, I think, in such a short amount of time. And I don't see any language here that references anything about skills and competencies needed in order to do the work so I don't know. Is that an assumption that the appointing authorities will be seeking out those with those skills and competencies to be effective. I'm just wondering where where does that play into this. Yeah, it's an interesting point to consider. I guess we, we can assume that that each entity who who is an appointing authority will will choose based on their belief on what what the appropriate skill set is, but happy to happy to have a committee discussion about that. And if I could add, you know, when we're talking about how much time is required for this body to do to do an excellent job. I just go back to the powers and duties I mean how much time will be required to produce the work that produces the report. And I think that to me is is where the questioning should be. And not do we just add on another month or two but trying to be a little more. You know, just systemic about it just in figuring out, you know, how's this going to work. And will there be enough time. It's complicated. Yes. Yep. See, Rick Merwicky. Thank you madam chair. Thanks to the timelines here. There are situations I've been in many times where I feel compressed deadlines are both inspiring and even liberating. And my concern is that if we keep pushing this back, things tend to get pushed back even more and and I think a tighter timeline can inspire members to get the work done. Representative Cooper. Thank you madam chair I don't disagree with my friend from the southern part of the state expand a little bit on what how said though I'm interested in quality here is as well as speed. Do we have the facility to. I mean as it's written, it becomes law. It starts it ends. So we have the facility to put a release valve in committee on committees or somebody that could have the power to extend if necessary. And secondly, if people who are working for a living get appointed, do they get release time we talked about that at one point particularly for the state employees, not saying that anybody will I would imagine the legislature will get some kind of release time but there are people who might serve here that work. Thank you. I would agree that we should specify that active employees who get appointed to this should be granted leave time I thought we had some language in the original draft that maybe wasn't quite as explicit as we wanted it to be.  I believe of that had to do with the VP committee members. Blood underpick, yeah. And not the task force. But I can, I can add it to the task force, if that is, we do a straw poll on that committee that we want to specify that active employees who are appointed to the task force should be granted leave time. Okay, I'm seeing enough requisite thumbs around the zoom screen. The release time thing was more important to me though. If I made energy or not the release time to release valve. Too many releases. I'm not sure I know what you mean by release valve. In case the committee is in the midst of.  I don't have enough time to bring things up and say, you know, we don't have enough time to do. Can we have another 20 days? Somebody should be able to grant it. I don't recall seeing that in other interim study groups, but I'm happy to be pointed to a precedent. If you can find one. And who the releasing authority was because I don't honestly know what it was. Okay. I'll do this again. I'll do it a little more time. Does the committee on committees usually have that. Power. Sort of thing. Committee on committees. It has jurisdiction over the Senate. Committee makeup. I'll look. Thanks. Representative Anthony. Thank you madam chair. I, yeah. Again, reflecting the tightness. tight is okay. Everybody understands that this is a sort of you better do it now kind of calling. I would suggest from the testimony we've heard that we be a little bit directive in two respects. One respect is to say that the task force is urged to initiate its work in respect to the state employees that leaves the state teachers aspect of this for the second bite, so to say for reasons that have already come up in testimony. And the second suggestion I have for us to make some policy suggestions goes to representative Colston's observation. And namely, it may sound a little sentimental or a little naive bordering on prescriptive, but we should say something like it. It is an understanding on the part of the proposing committee, us that we have faith that the appointing authorities will respect their view of the competence, expertise, and dedication to a sound outcome that the appointing agencies take that to heart. Other committee discussion on that or any other points? I'm not seeing any hands. Representative Higley. Thank you, Madam Chair. So looking at that September 1st deadline, how was that arrived at? Basically, what's the significance of that September 1st deadline? I think there was at some point some talking committee about the urgency of getting to a solution on this in short order. I don't know that I recall any magic about September 1st. Thank you. Rep Higley again. Yeah, thank you. Sorry. If we're done going over it all, if I could just jump back to page 11 under the written copy that goes out to everybody. I've just been thinking about that and I'm wondering maybe Rep Hooper mentioned it as well. How many copies are we actually talking about? And is it more favorable to do it on a folks that request a copy? Again, I guess a little clarification on just who we're talking to or talking about and how many that might be. How many reports are we talking about sending out? And this would be in the mail, correct? So it's page 11 number two. The committee shall send a written copy of the report described to the participants and beneficiaries of each plan. So we're talking how many? 800 and something, more than that? Oh, more than that. I would assume. The way I read that, it would go to active employees who are vested in both plans. And is that something that's being done now? No. So I guess again, I just would throw this out there. Is that something that people in the past have requested? And I'm sure they could probably get it. But to send out that many and just have them deep six, is that really a favorable thing to do? Just a question, I guess. And maybe that, let me see. Yeah, I don't know. Happy to enter into a conversation about more efficient and respectful use of resources in order to get that information out to beneficiaries. I think it's a good point, because that could be a lot of mailing cost for a lot of sheets of paper that end up in the recycle bin. If you have ideas, you know, feel free to throw them out. Rep Hooper. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think we're probably talking 22,000 of those reports. If we're talking members and being a lover of trees, there is a report that goes out to members that it used to be on paper. Now I think it's electronic. So depending on how liberally we use the word printed. And how about the joint fiscal committee? Throw that out. You mean have them take a look at the cost, Representative Hooper? No, that was the question I got before about who could give the leave to continue, since it involves money, basically. So committee discussion about written copy of the report versus leaving that to the discretion of the VPIC to send a link to a website as opposed to sending the entire report in physical hard copy. Representative Anthony. Yes, thank you. I just wanted to piggyback. I had a constituent who said, and I believe, as it were, she is a teacher. And she said she receives an annual report as to what's going on with the teachers pension already. And I just was hoping that some folks who could figure out how we could piggyback on something that goes out automatically already, and whether it would be complements of a partnership with the representative unions involved, I did not know. But there must be ways to piggyback so that rep Haley's worst case scenario can be avoided of 22,000 trees or whatever sheets of paper and trees. Thanks. Rep Vihosky. Thank you. I sure hope we don't need a full tree for each report. Anyways, I'm wondering if we can do some sort of opt in or opt out. I think of my retirement plan, I save a couple dollars on my membership fees each year if I opt in to electronic reports. So I wonder if there's a way to structure that people, because some people really want those written reports and they could opt in or out as a way of, because I think a lot of people probably do want them to be electronic, but then also thinking about how they, how we structure that in a way, and this is way above my tech capacity. But so it hits their actual inbox and not their spam, because I know that sometimes my retirement ends up in my, like information ends up in my spam. And so thinking about how, where that comes from, so it would actually hit people's inbox if they opt in to electronic or out of paper. Rep the phase. Thank you, Madam Chair. That was my exact comment, comment, because every time I go on to like my billing statements for anything, they try to encourage me to go paperless. And I am someone who uses a lot of paper. So I am fine with something being emailed to me, but emailed in a way that I, you know, can obtain it and I'll have it go to my spam and then print it out myself if I want to read it that way. And having it more accessible, you know, or links more accessible, or making it so that way people have problems troubleshooting, they can actually get it resolved fast, not have to be sent down rabbit holes would be my biggest ask of this is if it's going to be electronic, make it so that way people have, you know, no problems obtaining the information they need. Good points. And I wonder, Becky, if you might have the ability to put some creative thought into how to express this that that specifies that the committee may offer electronic delivery or Yeah, I can do both some option of a lot electronic or or hard copy delivery, and then also specify that it has to be sent out sort of consolidated with any other reports that are distributed by the committee. Yep, that would be helpful. Thank you. Right. One note that I would flag for possible amendment is in the last on the last page of the bill with respect to compensation. We're specifying here not more than six meetings. I suspect if we're starting in June, and we're asking them to complete by September, they may want to meet weekly. And that is more than six weeks. So I would think that we should make that any limits on on meetings reflect that they're meeting at least that they have the ability to meet once a week. I agree. Representative Hooper. I agree with you, Madam Chair. This is going to get into the weeds pretty quickly and conversations will be intense. Would 12 meetings work? I don't have my calendar up, but as long as there are 12 weeks, then yes. Rep Higley. I was just trying to figure that out. Wouldn't it wouldn't it be 10 weeks? I think it's 12 weeks. It's 12 weeks. Okay. Rep Vihosky. My question was sort of answered, but if it's a not more than my, they don't need to use them all, but they could use them all. So I think that potentially offering a little extra buffer room for meeting, given the enormity of the task at hand is probably better than them not having enough. Rep Higley is off camera. Maybe that's a hand from before. Rep Hooper. Following up on what Rep Vihosky said, I think we should give some acknowledgement to the fact that there may very well be subcommittees to bite off a little bit and take it someplace else. That's the way we've handled this before. Representative Anthony. I suggest to put the limit of no more than 15 exclusive of committee meetings in the interim. Mr. Vice Chair. I know with the law enforcement retirement study committee that there were subcommittees that worked. They're very small. It was like Senator White, myself and the treasurer staff and another member too. And I'm not sure if we got compensated or not, but I know subcommittee meetings did go on with respect to that. And I don't think it was contained in the statute. So just just move. Representative Leclerc. Why do we need to limit the number of times they can meet as long as they're within the timeframe? Let's just say I can recall having some contract negotiations on the school board where it was one of those times where we were able to meet a couple times in a given week. So I'm more about the timeframe than I am, I think the number of meetings. I guess I would just answer that with respect to drafting is that typically we put in a number for budgeting purposes. In this case, some of the funds are coming from the legislative budget and some are coming from the treasurer's office. So you're not making a specific appropriation. So I don't know if it's as necessary, but if you were making a specific appropriation, you would need to specify the number of meetings such that the appropriation would be able to pay for the per diem and reimbursements for those members that are receiving them. It's one of those things that you get asked when you report a bill down the hallway in the appropriations committee. All right. There are committee discussion on this or other aspects of the bill. Madam Chair, I just said, am I missing it? Wasn't there 200,000 bandied about here for this task? I think there was an appropriation for actuarial and legal services, I believe. So I'm referencing the appropriations on page 23 for attendance at the meetings. That's where it has the not more than language of the number of meetings. And so the payments for the legislative members are coming from money appropriated to the general assembly and then the payments for those members who are in state employees are coming from money appropriated to the state treasurer. Does that help answer your question? Are you good? All right. Representative Hooper. I would agree with my friend from very, I think if history is any indication, slow meeting at the beginning when you're formulating the stuff that you want the actuary to work on is appropriate. But towards the middle to end, when the actuary starts throwing information back at you, putting a week between those meetings could be detrimental. You don't get the option to say, well, what if and then come back in two days and talk about it when it's fresh? Other committee discussion about either the appropriation or generally about other parts of the bill. All right. So I guess we have on our committee agenda, we have a scheduled breakaway from the screen for a little while. And so I guess what I'd like to suggest is that we come back at 3.30 to take another look through the bill. If you have areas that you want to make specific recommendation or amendment on, please have that ready and articulated so that we can have some committee discussion about that. And so we will be on break now until 3.30 unless anyone has a burning question about the assignment for what to do between now and then. All right.


I can't really describe it in a word, it's an overwhelming feeling and it's great to be honoured by some of the biggest names in the industry, so yeah, it's a great feeling. Absolutely not, I am from the creative line so most of the times I don't get that sort of an expectation but of course it finally does lead to numbers, it's great because then your creativity is working, so no, it's a perfect balance actually.


Way too many civilians are caught in crossfire. We have a very big problem of improvised explosive devices that are affecting, that are maiming, injuring, killing civilians. This is something that has to end. We have problems when armed actors fight against each other. What is called ground operations. Very often civilians get caught in crossfire in between. They are displaced by the conflict. And also they are hampered to reach basic services across the country because of the ongoing fighting. The problems that we keep on seeing is the disrespect of international humanitarian law that is absolutely unacceptable. The very simple humanitarian basic principles that have to apply also in war are disrespected in the country. We have attacks against mosques. We have targeted attacks against civilians. We have indiscriminate attacks throughout the country. And an element that is pretty much and will be a focus of attention will be to try to convince and to engage armed actors in ensuring that particularly medical facilities, medical transport facilities and medical personnel are protected from the effect of armed conflict because we see that there is an ongoing high number of medical personnel, doctors and nurses who are directly targeted during the conflict. Hospitals come under attack. Health posts come under attack. There is attacks against ambulances. This has to cease. We need to work and keep on working on acceptance by armed actors. Acceptance for humanitarian work for all of us humanitarian actors. This is a dangerous environment for humanitarians. But I would not like to focus too much the attention on the danger for humanitarians. What is really concerned to us is the effect of this conflict on the Afghan population. We remain committed to Afghanistan. We have always to strike a balance between risk-taking and action, either direct action or action through our colleagues of the Afghan Recreation Society who are giving us an enormous hand in trying to reach out to the population in need, to the population that are most remote from the public attention. Thank you for your attention.


We train alongside our partners and allies in peace to be ready to fight alongside them in war. And exercises like ARC-21 are the best examples. So ARC-21 is a multinational exercise involving the United States, Japanese, French and Australian forces, both ground, air and maritime components. The exercise is designed to increase interoperability within the Indo-Pacific region, as well as strengthen our partnerships with these close allies. We routinely exercise with partner nations, which gives us the familiarity and proficiency to conduct exercises in realistic scenarios. It's been enlightening to be able to observe how both nations conduct planning, as well as execution of their tactics in support of this operation and to be able to share how we execute such operations.