All right, we are live. Great, thank you, Matthew. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Tim Briglin, the chair of the House Energy and Technology Committee. It is Friday afternoon, April 9th. And this is our 1 o'clock hearing. This afternoon, we are going to be talking with some members of the Climate Council, which was the think tank that was set up as part of the Global Warming Solutions Act that passed last year. We have four folks with us today, the Secretary of A&R, Julie Moore, as well as two members of the Council, Liz Miller and Chris Campany. And Jane Lazarchek, and I apologize if I didn't do your name justice. But Jane is the relatively new director of the Climate Council. And happy to have you here. Thanks for being with us. The last, I think we had heard from Secretary Moore, was back in late January, early February, when we were going through the budget adjustment process. And as part of that process, some more money was appropriated to support the work of the Climate Council. And we got a quick update at that time. A couple of months later, I think it's a helpful time, especially since we're down to our final weeks in the legislative session this year to get an update as some of the goings on of the Council. I think all the subcommittees have been fully populated and are working, so I'm interested to hear about that. And maybe it's an aside, maybe it's a headline issue. I think it was of interest to many people this week that the governor had come out with some recommendations as to his priorities for the spending of ARPA money. And certainly, some of the climate work of the Climate Council was incorporated into that work, or at least that was my reading of it. So that might be something we talk about as well. So with that as a little bit of an introduction to our discussion today, I first wanted to turn to Secretary Moore from the Agency of Natural Resources to hear from you. And then, Secretary, if you want to hand it over to Jane, I will just mention, I believe that there are a couple of documents that have been posted to our website that I think Jane has passed along to us. So members might want to refer to those either during the discussion today or afterwards. So welcome. Thank you for being here, Julie. Thank you for having us. I thought maybe I could start, Matthew, if I can share my screen. We have a presentation that provides an overview and happy to turn it over to Jane and have her tell you all a little bit about herself. She did start in this role at the, I think, the end of the first week in February, not soon enough, in my opinion, but I'm glad she is fully on board now at this point. And then, yeah, welcome, Liz and Chris's input. They've seen the presentation I'm going to share, but all and all of us would be happy to answer any questions the committee might have. And I did throw a slide in at the end just to summarize what the governor is proposing in terms of climate-related investments through the American Rescue Plan funding. So happy to put that up on the screen as well. Let me, I discovered last that this goes better if I start. Just to be clear, Secretary, is this something we have on our website that members can pull up individually or is this? I believe it, I believe it is. Okay. Yeah, Jane sent the presentation. She's saying, well, that's convenient because mine's locked up. So. Okay. All right, I'm still going to share the screen, but it'll be the smaller version in my apologies. So this is just, this is an update. And as a reminder to folks for where we've been from or where we've come from, the Global Warming Solutions Act became law on September 23rd, and we held our first meeting of the Climate Council on November 20th. There was a brief annual progress report that was submitted on January 15th, which was part of what I covered when I was last with you all. And we are working towards having a complete first draft of the Climate Action Plan or the initial Climate Action Plan available for public comment by October 1st of this year. And that leaves us with about 60 days to both take in public comment and adopt the Climate Action Plan by the December 1st statutory deadline. Just as a reminder to folks, there are sort of seven key elements that the Action Plan needs to address. Probably the one that's gotten the most attention is developing a set of programs initiatives and strategies to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions consistent with the 2025, 2030, and 2050 targets established in the act. In addition, the Climate Action Plan is tasked with encouraging smart growth, achieving long-term sequestration, achieving net zero emissions by 2050, paying particularized attention to rural and marginalized communities and the energy burdens that might fall to them, seeking to limit the use of chemicals and other substances that may be accelerating or contributing to climate change. And then a book of work around resilience and adaptation. To date, the climate councils met seven times. We are anticipating monthly meetings at this point, but had meetings with considerably greater frequency during the first two months as we really formed the subcommittees and steering committees necessary to support the broader work. The steering committee is comprised of six members, two from the executive branch, so myself and Secretary Young, and then four from the legislatively-appointed members, two from each body. And so Chris and Liz are the legislatively-appointed representatives to the steering committee from the pool appointed by the House. And we've identified a series of roles for the steering committee. The steering committee is now meeting twice a month and one of its primary roles is to set the agenda for the council meeting, but it's also providing framing and structure for the larger work of the council, including developing a framework. Eventually, we believe it'll probably look like a template to guide the subcommittees work and how they report back to the council. They're also working with Jane to serve as that clearinghouse for thinking about how we utilize the contractor resources we have available to support the work of the council. And then a key role of the steering committee is to make sure that we remain on track. This is an incredibly aggressive timeline. And it's important to make sure that we not lose sight of that as we get into some of the more detail-oriented work within the subcommittees. And we all had agreed to this principal statement at the bottom that the purpose of the steering committee is to help organize the work, but not necessarily to control the work. Apologies for the phone. So the climate, within the statute, there were four subcommittees that were officially established, rural resilience and adaptation, cross-sector mitigation, just transitions and agriculture and ecosystems. The statute also provided that the council could establish any other subcommittee that we felt was necessary to our work. And we did choose to establish a fifth subcommittee, the science and data subcommittee. Each of the subcommittees has a fairly specific charge. And that is one of the documents that Jane provided to the committee. They worked on them themselves. And we've gone to fairly significant efforts to make sure that they match at the edges, but don't overlap and also don't underlap so that when the work of the subcommittees is complete, it will form the full book of work necessary to develop the action plan. At its most basic, the subcommittees are charged with making recommendations around the initiatives, programs and strategies that are necessary to achieve those goals. The first step in their work has been inventorying existing efforts and then thinking about what kind of contractor support they're going to need to complete their work. We had given each subcommittee a target of trying to have eight to 10 members. It's a mix of both council members and non-council members. And the selection of non-council members was really guided by expertise, as well as trying to achieve a little bit broader balance that which was available to us from just within the council ranks in terms of the sectors that are represented and the geographies that are represented. Each subcommittee is also supported by a handful of state of Vermont staff from relevant agencies that have expertise specific to the work of the subcommittee. And then a number of the subcommittees have actually appointed council members to serve as liaisons to make sure that some of those important connections are made. And an example would be the agriculture and ecosystem subcommittee has an important role to play in an overall conversation about landscape resilience and it needs to therefore match with the rural resilience and adaptation subcommittees work. Each subcommittee has at least two co-chairs, one from the executive branch and one from the legislatively appointed members. In addition, the just transition subcommittee brought on two additional co-chairs from outside of the council to share in their work. And really the key attributes that characterize those co-chairs are that they have substantive expertise or knowledge in the area of the subcommittees work have expressed to know willingness to work collaboratively and had sufficient time available, frankly, for the next three to six months to lead these charges. And it's been no small undertaking and Jane I think will be in a position to give you a little bit of a sense for the magnitude of the subcommittee work. Each council member was given the opportunity to rank order their preference for which subcommittees they wanted to serve on. And then we did have a broad solicitation for additional non-council members to the subcommittee and received more than 300 nominations in total. Each subcommittee sifted through those nominations or the council members of each subcommittee, I should say sifted through those nominations and identified a slate, which was then confirmed by the steering committee. And just to give you a sense of the membership of each of the subcommittees, we do have the cross-sector mitigation subcommittee which does have a fairly broad charge that ended up with 11 members. But everyone else is in that eight to 10 member range. And we selected that just for frankly, some of it is the logistics and needs around scheduling the weekly meetings that most of these subcommittees are engaging in. As I indicated, all subcommittees have drafted a charter and have now turned their attention to a work plan. And Jane can give you a little bit more information on that if you're interested. And the way we're going about the work is this as I indicated, the inventory of existing programs and then looking at new strategies that are needed. Ultimately, we will be turning our attention to financing strategies as well as when we get to developing the programs, how we're going to monitor and assess their impact and efficacy. And finally, the rules and legislative changes that may be required to support the implementation of the recommendations of the council. In terms of our timeline, we are sort of here in this middle box where the subcommittees are doing their hard work, their heavy lift. And we are anticipating that we will have the first of sort of a concerted stakeholder and public engagement effort following the completion of that initial work by the subcommittees, likely to take place in June. The subcommittees will then take in the information received during that public engagement process, bring forward a more final set of recommendations to the council, and then the council's work really begins in earnest and knitting together all of those recommendations into the draft climate action plan. Once we have the complete plan, the intention is to go back out and have another period of stakeholder and public engagement, use that feedback and finalize the plan late this fall in order to be able to adopt it by December 1st. I've mentioned a couple of times during my presentation this sort of piece around contracted work. And I think it was just in its infancy last time I was in front of this committee, but we have three contracts that we are in various stages of standing up. The first one is for facilitation and process support services. We've contracted with the Consensus Building Institute and they are helping facilitate the council meetings, the steering committee meetings and are available for on-call support to the subcommittees. Some of which are using more of that than others. We are in the final throws, even as we speak of finalizing a public engagement and outreach contract and look forward to having those folks on board in the near term. There is work that is already being done in this space, particularly to make sure that we understand the outreach activities around the comprehensive energy plan that's being developed by the Department of Public Service as you probably know, the comprehensive energy plan will be delivered in early 2021. They have a fairly similar timeline to the one the climate action plan is on and there's also some overlap in the areas that we're both interested in and focused on and so making sure that we are truly speaking in one voice within both these efforts. And then finally, it's a technical support contract and we had issued a request for information back on January 11th to help guide us and inform our development of the request for proposals. We received 15 responses. Frankly, it was a bit overwhelming to receive those many responses, but also welcome in that we benefited from the expertise that people were willing to share, have taken time since those responses came in to develop this RFP. The core pieces of the RFP are around emissions modeling, economic modeling and then monitoring and program evaluation. And this RFP is anticipated to be issued imminently. We have been doing the heavy work with the science and data subcommittee and the cross-sector mitigation subcommittee to make sure we are going to have the tools at our disposal that we will need as well as aligning this important piece with the work being led by the Public Service Department for the comprehensive energy plan. And we feel like we have all those ducks in a row. I'll leave it to Jane to say when, but I think we're hopeful that this one will go out probably as soon as maybe today or early next week, but we are making really significant progress. We anticipate that we'll have to give folks a couple of weeks to respond to that and it likely means we won't have a contractor on board in this space until mid to late May. And maybe I'll pause there. That's sort of the end of the council presentation. I'm happy to talk about the rescue plan funds, but maybe either answer questions representative Brickland or let Jane weigh in and cover things I may have missed. Sure, thank you for that. I have a quick question and then I'm gonna get out of the way and let committee members hop in. The last slide that you had up and you don't have to pull it up again, but the last slide that you had up that talked about the outside resources that you've been looking to contract and those were in three distinct areas. Are those three different contractors? Oh, okay. Yeah, that wasn't, yeah, okay, great. And the concept is that at roughly the same time those contractors will be coming on board are any of those on board yet? The consent, so our facilitation and process support contractor is on board and has been for, I think just over a month now, the education and outreach, we've made a contractor selection and are just in the process of finalizing their contract. And we are just about to issue the RFP for the technical services one. So that one is lagging considerably, but in some ways was also the first one out and that we did the request for information that helped inform the way we put that request for proposals together. Great, thank you. Representative Sebelia. Great, thank you. Good afternoon, thanks for your testimony. I have a couple of questions just around public engagement, two pieces. How are you finding the public is engaging this process so far, including these hundreds of folks who wanted to be involved in this? So what is that looking like right now for the council? Sure, I'll start. And then maybe Jane can back clean up behind me. So we have all of our meetings are on teams. They're all publicly noticed and warned and we welcome and encourage members of the public to join them. They're all also recorded. So people can go after the fact to view the meetings if they're interested. We have taken the names and contact information for everyone who expressed an interest in participating in one of our subcommittees and have various means for communicating with them. And then the other piece is we have created on the climate council website. I guess I would call it an intake portal although Jane probably has a better word for it, but an opportunity for people to reach out to us through the website to provide input and feedback. We recognize there's some challenges in this remote posture that we're in and our ability to get out and engage folks who aren't in some way seeking to engage with the council and look forward to being able to do more of that work this summer. I don't know, Jane, if there's anything you'd add. Thank you, Secretary Moore and thank you for your question. So yeah, I'll just highlight that the contract that we have in place as of today with climate access as the main vendor there has three main components to it. One being public engagement, one being outreach and educational materials. And then the third being the website and standing up a more robust website for both public input as well as educational materials out about the work of the council. And they'll have a substantive role in working closely with one of the subcommittees which is just transitions to articulate and discuss a framework for how we engage with the public both at those milestones and points in the process that Secretary Moore articulated in June and October, but also even earlier to get feedback often and iterative throughout the process of the upcoming year and then setting a stage for a long-term process with the public to inform the work of the climate council and both this first climate action plan and then the updates to it every four years that are due. And so we're thinking really thoughtfully about public engagement, both in recognition of what the statute calls for but also in recognition of how to really barely and equitably create a plan that engages with Vermonters far and wide in the process. And the Just Transitions Committee will be thinking about that and Chris Campany serves on that committee who's here today, as well as working outward to communicate and work with all the other subcommittees who really will be needing to get public involved in the formulation of their recommendation. That's great. Thank you. That's helpful. Thank you. I am also looking for a sense from you all about the level of engagement that you are getting. For instance, do you know, like are you getting a lot of views on the meetings or a lot of folks joining? A lot of questions. Yes. I think we've all been pleasantly surprised at the input that we get at all the meetings. And so there are the handful of folks who come to every meeting and they'll be there all the time, but I also will speak to the diversity of folks who tune into the different subcommittee meetings as well as the council and steering committee. And then on Wednesday night this week, we had our first forum where we went out for had an environmental justice forum hosted by the Just Transitions Subcommittee to think about the role of environmental justice with our climate work. And that had more than 100 participants from the public because we went wide with that, with inviting people into that conversation. So that was great. And the public input forum that Julie spoke to on the website also is getting probably 20 to 30 hits a day right now on comments that folks are doing for input into the subcommittees. And that public input forum is open and live all the time. They can register their comments both specifically to the council, the steering committee or specific subcommittee. And so now the thought comes in, how do we communicate that to the subcommittees in an effective way so that they can digest and use that information in a timely manner? So certainly thinking about that. And I have one more. I guess this is a question, but also something to keep in the forefront here. With the pandemic I had some older constituents who are not connected reach out. It was kind of like they had come out of a cave to basically say what's going on, how do we get help? And actually Chris and I worked with our local newspaper to do a mail out of resources, literally printed for folks who weren't connected. And so for rural areas, this committee knows that not all of our folks are connected. They don't all know how to access resources. And so I'm definitely interested in how, if there's one example that you all could give me if you have this already in mind of how you might reach those folks that I just spoke about folks in their 70s in a rural community that don't even have a computer. So do you have in your mind some way that they would be informed about this process? Well, I would like to raise that we share that concern really thoughtfully and had a big discussion about it last night actually as we embarked on the process for engagement with the Just Transition Subcommittee after reflecting on what we learned at the forum on the night before and heard. And we talked a lot about meeting people where they are not actually in like ideology but physically meeting people where they are and bringing it out to them. What that looks like in practice is still to be determined but it's certainly something on the front of our minds. And next week the consultant will be meeting with us with respect to the Just Transitions Committee to think thoughtfully about those practices that we put in place to get this out beyond just public meetings on the internet. And I'll also say that our contract with Climate Access includes the ability to pay people to participate in stakeholder groups and public input forums, recognizing that sometimes that extra providing for extra resources as through funding as well as childcare and other thoughtfully thought out factors to get people to participate who normally can't is something that we're also thinking a lot about. Thank you. Representative Rogers. Thanks, yeah. I think I'm not finding the slides on the website. There's a couple of other documents there. So I can't go back and reference it but I guess I was just, I saw the slide with the names of everybody on the subcommittee and I was wondering if there's somewhere where it might have either bios or at least kind of a delineation of who was on the climate council versus additional members. Thanks for bringing that up. The slide, hopefully the presentation Secretary Morgate will be available to you. I know that it's sent. So hopefully that'll get posted with the slide. What that slide does show is a delineation of a council member versus additional member added to support the diversity that Secretary Moore spoke to for those subcommittees. I will say that we are in the process of standing up on the climate council website bios for all of the subcommittee members. Similarly to what we have for counselors on the website right now. And that was a request I sent out to subcommittee members at the end of last week or early this week. And I have about half of those. So stay tuned, but in the next week or so the website will include bios for all the subcommittee members. Okay, thanks. And then my other question was just if you could tell me a little more of the process of what you were looking for in deciding the additional members from all of the applications you received. Thanks. Sure. So the nomination process was first put forward by the council members. So the council members had a chance to nominate additional subcommittee members. We then decided to go farther and didn't feel like that was capped in a net wide enough to think about inclusion with Vermonters. And so through networks, through websites we went wide and far with a nomination process that any Vermonter could participate in nominating themselves or others to serve on subcommittees. And through that process we asked folks to speak to their affiliations, their locations where they live in the state, their time and availability to complete the work. And then thought specifically as we ranked and reviewed those nominees about geographic diversity, BIPOC diversity, income diversity to the best of our ability to create representation there. And then really thought about how to feed that into the technical expertise that we needed to staff all of those five committees to represent the charges that they were working to develop at the time. And I will say that those subcommittees are small in nature in recognizing the weekly meetings and needs to coordinate in a timely manner, but that they're in no way inclusive of our representative of all the folks we want around the table. And we've been thinking a lot about sort of concentric rings of engagement with the subcommittee work. You know, first being the subcommittee members themselves next being inviting folks in that have a technical expertise outside of what's sitting on the subcommittee and widening the net when specific areas are being discussed whether it's transportation, agriculture, reaching out, inviting folks into the subcommittees. And then obviously having a thoughtful and robust public engagement process to get more people involved in formulating those recommendations for the climate action plan. So hopefully that answers it. But yeah, there were more than 300 nominations collected and obviously couldn't take everybody in, but I think we did the best of our ability in getting a diversity of folks to have their voices heard as subcommittee members. Representative Yantuchka. Yes, thanks for the opportunity to ask you a question. So a couple of years ago, a couple of biennial ago, maybe the legislature funded a couple of ACE study or more than one study, one of which I think the regulatory assistance project took part in and developed some analysis on what it would take for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in terms of weatherization and electrification and all. And I'm wondering if you're using those reports that were done in the past as a source of any information, I imagine they could be updated but pretty much the analysis that was done I think was pretty comprehensive. Yes, I mean, to the maximum extent possible, we're seeking to draw from and build upon existing bodies of work and you've identified a couple that's part of the reason we've started with the initial inventory and asking in particular the technical subcommittees to make sure that they're looking at the resources that already exist. Another piece of that is direction we heard very clearly from Susanna Davis, the racial equity executive director about making sure we're not building new policy on top of bag current policy. And so we'll be applying a racial equity lens to all of the existing policies as well and data and evaluation, frankly, as well and making sure that they are current and aligned with the priorities and the overall vision for the state of Vermont's work. That's commendable and I think you do seem to be doing a good job so far and get this off the ground. Thank you. Thank you. Secretary Moore, I don't know if we wanted to go back to your presentation after that kind of interlude of questions, hopefully we didn't steal too much of Jane's testimony. No, I mean that that was, we went through the vast majority of my presentation. I just have one slide related to the rescue plan funding, but we'd be happy for Jane if she has additional remarks or if Liz or Chris would like to weigh in to turn it over to them at this point and we can come back to that at the end unless you'd like me to share that now. No, that's fine. Jane, so I don't know if we wanna turn things over to you at this point.  I like that term, thank you. So thank you very much for having me today. Jane Luzorchak, I am the director of the Global Warming Solutions Act and really for my testimony today just to compliment what Julie said, I just wanted to speak specifically to my role and how I see my role evolving over the next six to nine months as we advanced through the process of marching towards December 1st for the Climate Action Plan. So first and foremost, I've worked in state government, I've worked for the Agency of Natural Resources for 16 years, so this is a nice shift into a new role but I'm familiar with state government and state government processes. So I see myself as having an active role in both facilitating and advancing the work of the climate council. That has meant first and foremost, most recently in helping to stand up the subcommittees, I participate in all of the subcommittees meetings as well as work closely with the co-chairs of those subcommittees to think about and plan for meetings in advance. And we do that in concert at times with the facilitator where they can bring value with respect to thinking about work planning and process and allowing the co-chairs to step back and participate actively in the meetings. But it's been a lot of work to stand up those subcommittees in a thoughtful way and to move into work planning and implementation of that work. Most recently that has led to also the thoughtful development and collaboration with the subcommittees to advance the contractual work that Secretary Moore spoke to. Most recently that's the RFP for the technical services needed to advance the work of the climate action plan has been led thoughtfully by the agency of natural resources and technical staff within the agency of natural resources. But we've taken deliberative and thoughtful input all along the way by the subcommittees that have a stake in the realization of the work but for being provided by those consultants, whether it's the greenhouse gas reduction targets that will help us meet the policy and planning targets that we will have modeled through technical analyses as well as taking a critical look at our greenhouse gas inventory and the development of a carbon budget. So that work has been really thoughtful. We also, I work very closely in the liaisoning between the state of Vermont staff who are supporting the subcommittees as well as coordinating their efforts amongst each other. And so that's been really exciting to see how many state of Vermont staff have stepped up to support the subcommittees and the work of the climate council. And then I feel like my job has been to thoughtfully think about communication of work with the climate council that the climate council has been embarking on. And that's been in partnership with climate council members as well as with the public. I serve as the repository to get all of those public input forms as well as email for the climate council and have been thinking about how I communicate those messages and the input that we received from the public to and from the subcommittees. I think as we advance forward and march towards the development of the climate action plan, my role will really be in helping facilitate a clear and deliberative process for the subcommittees to feed up and into with respect to right now working on a framework for what the climate action plan will look like with respect to meeting the specific statutory requirements of the 2025, 30, and 50 greenhouse gas reductions, but also thinking about how the broader work of sequestration and resilience fits in and complements that those statutory requirements for this first plan. I'm thinking about the templates needed to support the work of the subcommittees to feed into that process in a timely manner. I also want to draw your attention that we're also hiring a Global Warming Solutions Act coordinator right now to help with the administration of the work. Right now, we've been supported by the Secretary Young's executive assistant in managing all of this work, which I will say is no small feat just setting up all of the meetings, coordinating the in-between meetings, and really at times it feels like we stood up a separate department of government to advance the work of the Global Warming Solutions Act. So we're excited to have additional staff capacity. A&R has also brought to bear legal service staff that has been helping provide support to the subcommittees in meeting open governance rules and regulations, as well as feedback on the contractual work in RFPs. So right now, we're at this critical phase of having the subcommittees stood up, thinking about the development of a framework for the climate action plan, and then moving into sort of the real meat of the work for the subcommittees, which will be between now and June and thinking about how they frame and put forward recommendations to test with the public in order to feed up into the climate council for development of the plan itself. So it's been really exciting work, and I'd love to hear from Liz and Chris about their role on the subcommittees themselves and how they see things working, but I'm also here to answer any questions that representatives have with respect to the work that we're doing right now. I've got a couple of quick questions, Jane, before we turn to Liz and to Chris. When the legislation was kind of going through the final phases in an appropriations process was an important part of that. I think the legislature envisioned, in addition to your work as director of the council, at least a couple of other positions affiliated with the council, one more legal oriented kind of in skill set, one technical oriented in skill set. Obviously the legislative process long preceded the work that you've been doing. I'm curious if those two hires are still on your radar screen, what the timing of that might be. 2022 is obviously gonna be a huge year in terms of the rulemaking as this turns more to ANR and just anticipating the enormity of that work. Do you envision that those staffers will be hired this year kind of as the, as kind of the run up to that work? Yes, so the coordinator position I just spoke to will be that technical support person that you just alluded to. So they'll have this administration function, but they'll also provide technical support with respect to the rollout and implementation of the climate action plan, as well as support in-house for ultimately implementation of the climate action plan. As far as the legal staff, Secretary Moore can speak to this also, but we've decided at this point in the process, we can have that supported through lawyers already within the agency of natural resources. Our general council, Matt Chapman, has been supporting the work as well as a staff attorney for the air quality and climate division, Megan O'Toole, who has tremendous expertise in this work. And she's been supporting the development of the contracts as well as sitting in on the subcommittees to be available for legal support. I believe the expectation is that we will hire a full-time attorney or move a shift in the attorney. I'm Secretary Moore can speak to this as we move to the implementation phase of the climate action plan and need them on board full-time. Exactly as Jane alluded to at this point, we don't need a full-time attorney and in fact need a little bit different skill set than we're likely to find wound up in a single individual. I would describe Matt Chapman's role, who's the agency's general counsel as really sort of state government 101. He's been helping answer questions regarding conflict of interest and open meeting law, directing people appropriately to resources with the attorney general or secretary of state's offices. And then Megan O'Toole, as Jane indicated, has been providing some of the more kind of hands-on and technical support to the work. I think we're envisioning that sometime during the month of June, we will actually fill the attorney position and probably have much closer to a full-time book of work but have been taking this approach of drawing from existing resources within the agency in the interim, which gives us a bit more flexibility in who we're accessing for what. Got it, thank you. Another question I have, and I think we talked about this briefly back in January or February, Secretary Moore, which is there are a small handful and growing actually with Rhode Island now of states that are doing this type of work or are at different stages of completing it. And this also might be a question that Liz and Chris might wanna comment on, but to the extent that some of the work done in other states might inform the work that we're doing or even more than inform, give us some very clear directions as to places to turn. I'm curious to the extent that that is relevant and to the extent that Vermont is unique in terms of the challenges that we face in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing and upgrading our resiliency or are the other things that are going out in Maine and Massachusetts and other states, how relevant are they to this work? I'd say that they're very relevant. We had the opportunity at one of the January council meetings to hear from officials from Maine and Massachusetts and New York about their work, definitely also have had offers of assistance for them. I know Jane has reached out to essentially her counterpart in Maine and the Consensus Building Institute, our facilitation contractor is engaged in both the work in New York and Maine. So we feel like we have a lot of those connections certainly benefited from some of their lessons learned and also their process pieces and thinking about how we wanted to stand up and organize our own work but would welcome others to weigh in and share their thoughts and ideas as well. Thank you. Secretary Morrigan, most of what I would say and I'll just say that we're finding even as we move into the details of the technical analysis that supports from other states is critical in thinking about how we do this work and implement it and it's been great to have relationships outside of the city. Great, thank you. I don't see any other hands up now and Liz, I'm gonna turn to you next and I didn't mean that to be the leading question for you although I'd certainly welcome your comments and thoughts on that but thank you Liz for being here. Thank you for serving on the council and it's good to see you again. Sure and I'm very happy to be here today. For the record, I'm Liz Miller and I'm the lead at Green Mountain Power for sustainable supply and resilient systems. I am a house appointed member of the Climate Council representing specifically as required by the statute, the utility sector. I'm also a member of the steering committee as Secretary Morrigan indicated and a member of the subcommittee on cross sector mitigation. So those are the various hats that I am wearing in this process and there are a few things that I want to address with you all today but first just on Chair Brighlin's last question in addition to the education process that Secretary Morrigan discussed looking at what other states around us have already done the processes they've used and the goals they've come up with. We are also at the cross sector subcommittee and I imagine the others would look similarly determining what parts of our regional partners we should be most paying attention to and what I mean by that is we know that Vermont shares much with its neighbors and also has some unique features that we need to keep in mind particularly when it comes to emissions if you look at Vermont compared to the nation as a whole we know that our emissions come more heavily from the sectors of transportation and the buildings specifically heating than on average nationwide. And while that's true of some of our New England neighbors such as Maine, it's not true of all of them. If you look at a place like Rhode Island for example where there are more industrial processes and more manufacturing than Vermont their sector challenges will be somewhat different. So it's important to coordinate and draw where we can from neighboring states. It's also important as usual to know where we are unique or different unusual if not unique. And I think in our subcommittee we're seeing that develop by putting a focus where the greatest emissions challenges are and where the greatest progress needs to be made. So on that specific question that's how I would frame it. Thank you. Yeah, unless there are questions on that I thought I would just hit quickly a few thoughts that I have just sitting in the various roles on this climate council. The first being that in the setup process that you heard about it was not just a series of many meetings and hours I think it was also a very important process for us to go through quite a bit of education has been done since the start of the council process to ensure that everybody has access to some of the materials that representative Yantachka for example referenced that everybody has heard about what other states around us have done that everybody knows what the ANR climate emissions inventory has looked like to date and just really to make sure that we're all starting with a really solid foundation as we now embark on the subcommittee process which is turning toward the details of what more we can do to make sure that we achieve the 2025, 2030 and 2050 goals. So it has been a many meetings lots of hours and it will be from here on out but in no way has that been wasted time in fact it's incredibly important work that's happened so far and from my perspective work that needed to occur to get us to the point where we are now. So that's the first thing. The second thing I wanted you to know is that in setting up the way the council is operating I know I heard and I imagine Chris would echo a real need to ensure that the legislative appointees are a key and integral co-equal is a term I've heard part of the process with the folks in the administration and the administration has been supportive of that and the structure that has been put in place I think reflects that. Specifically you see in the steering council really strong representation from the legislative appointees. We also recommended and the council has adopted a structure where the subcommittees themselves are co-chaired in a partner sort of fashion to make sure that we have the administration's expertise and perspectives at the table along with the legislative appointees. I think that is really good for trust building and it's been a very good process to date to ensure that we're not just sort of each in our inevitable bubbles as individuals or even as sector representatives such as myself. And then third, I think the road ahead I heard Jane say a couple of times marching toward December 1st. I really think of December 1st as a first stop given that the council as a whole is meant to be a continuing ongoing process and the report from December 1st is the first report of course to be followed by rulemaking potentially additional legislative process updated reports from there. I think it's important for at least my stamina and I think probably for other council members to keep that in mind because December 1st is very important but it's only one step in the process which must be followed by other work and it's really that framing that I think will help us as we engage with the public and with each other on the set of recommendations that December 1st will embody because we'll almost certainly have to also note in that December 1st report all of the areas where further work is also needed and that's a good part of the process too. So with those three points I would open it up to any questions. I'm happy to address specifically what the cross sector subcommittee is doing although I don't share that subcommittee. I'm a member of it and sitting on the steering council as well. So if anyone has questions on that I'd be happy to attempt to address them. Liz, I would welcome if you could offer just a couple of minutes of commentary as to what that subcommittee is working on now. What are the sticky wickets and kind of the high points of that work? And I understand it's early but I'd welcome to hear about that. Yeah, absolutely. So far that as Secretary Moore put up on screen there's 11 members of the subcommittee but there's a much larger audience that has come to our meetings and I didn't mention but on the public process part Secretary Moore's slide where she had the two points of public engagement at least from where I'm sitting the public engagement has been throughout in a really good way. I mean, I get on these meetings and always click to see the participants and how many and all that and it's been really great actually to see there's drawbacks and advantages for the virtual world that we find ourselves in right now. And as Representative Sibylia noted the drawbacks can be significant for those that don't yet have good connections and we can also have greater participation from some because of the lack of need to travel and really the better ability we all now have to live stream and make sure these things are available to a larger group of people in real time. So that's been happening throughout including with the cross sector subcommittee when we made our selection of additional subcommittee members we specifically on those meetings asked all of the folks who had come to weigh in on the subcommittee process to continue to attend to continue to give us comments and so far that's been going really well. We've broken up our work to account for the charge of our subcommittee which without reading the kind of technical language just breaks down essentially into building systems including eating, transportation systems both personal and public transportation and energy sector including electricity and then industrial processes, non-energy emissions that also can create greenhouse gas impacts. So taking those four broad areas we've divided our work by putting groups again paired groups of folks in charge of organizing the work and bringing forward recommendations and ideas for the subcommittee. So for example, in my role as the representative from the utility sector I've been paired with Ed McNamara who is a policy expert at the Department of Public Service working on the comprehensive energy plan to make sure that the electricity sector recommendations are well organized, well researched, well vetted and brought forward to the subcommittee. There are other pairs of individuals on our cross sector subcommittee working on buildings on transportation and on non-energy industrial processes and other emissions. And we are also coordinating with the other subcommittees in that sort of what I think secretary Moore called it overlap and underlap. Most critically I think just given the nature of our work with the agriculture and ecosystems group also with a rural resiliency because so many of the things that we'll be looking at really have to be targeted toward are they gonna make our communities more resilient in addition to making sure that we lower emissions overall. So I can talk at any level of detail folks want what we have not yet done is turned to recommendations. So far our two co-chairs, Peter Walk and Rich Cowart have set the table I guess is how one could put it asking each subgroup to talk about broad areas of potential recommendations and each of us have done that and shared it with our subcommittee members as well as the members of the public who have attended those meetings. And now we're organizing our work so that in the coming meetings we will have focused discussions by sector. And there's also been last thing I'll say just really good recognition on the subcommittee that we need to not only look at all of those sectors that I mentioned, but make sure that as we do so we really achieve the goal. So that will mean focusing particular attention on the sectors with the highest emissions and the most kind of need to make progress which again in Vermont happens to be transportation and building systems and heating. I'll stop there. Great, thank you, Liz. That was helpful. I don't see any other hands up at the moment. And so why don't we turn to Chris next? Chris, welcome back. It's good to see you again. Thanks for having me here. Thanks for the invitation for the record. I'm Chris Campany. I'm executive director of London Regional Commission and was appointed by the speaker of the house to represent municipal interests on the council. I'm serving on the steering committee, the just transition subcommittee and I'm the liaison or where I have to co-lead is on from just transitions to the cross sector mitigation subcommittee. One reason I'm doing that is the cross sector. And I haven't been in the meetings yet but the cross sector subcommittee is identified municipal and regional planning as a major topic to look at as far as future land use and the process there. So I would echo everything that Liz put forward. I think Jane and Julie did a great job laying out everything that's happened today. The sheer volume of hours that I think all the council members and subcommittee members are putting in is remarkable. I think we've built a really solid foundation now from which we can start the public engagement and the real kind of more in-depth policy discussions. One of the things I've been very happy about is we got started kind of the way we needed to get started as far as like the administration providing the administrative support convening the council, getting the ball rolling. But I think it's real important to know the council has really come into its own. The council is now, it's owned by the council and the people of the state of Vermont. It's being driven by the council members and all the subcommittee members. And that base, I don't know if Jane said how many total subcommittee members there are but I mean, we grew from a council that was already pretty big to a much larger cast that's involved in all these processes. So hopefully, once we're literally able to start getting out it's not gonna be probably the entire group but as we start hopefully getting out to literally where Vermonters are people will see that these are other Vermonters who are engaging in this process. And it's not just a technocratic process that we're taking the benefits and impacts of the council's charge very seriously. And I think it's all coming together really well. I mean, it makes me very proud to be living in and working in Vermont. I think it's kind of Vermont at its best. And it's worth the time. People are trying to be very aware of, you know, we have a large number of people who participate in the council on the subcommittees who are not, it's not their paid time to be here and recognizing how much they're giving of themselves. And I think, you know, now, but also looking ahead. You know, one of the things that Just Transitions recognized early on was we need to have fair, just and equitable engagement to council throughout the entire life cycle of what we do. So not only the conversations we're having now and the development of the reports and the presentations, but also after that, you know, as I think Liz is absolutely right, you know, December is kind of a starting point. And after that, we need to make sure that there's fair, just and equitable engagement in rulemaking processes, legislative processes, implementation, the entire life cycle. So I'm hopeful too that maybe some of the work that we're doing with regard to public outreach and engagement, you know, that process is, you know, the real heavy and death public engagement is going to get going here soon. I mean, I think we're already off to a good start, but as far as like getting into the nitty gritty on council deliberations, I mean, hopefully we will have even a good model for other future councils to draw from. And we have been looking at what other processes have been used by other climate councils where, you know, in New England, the Northeast and around the country. And I thought Wednesdays work group, work session on environmental justice and climate justice and what those things are, what they mean, how are they achieved, the history of why they exist and research that's already been done and mapping that's shown, you know, the areas, you know, what environmental justice looks like in Vermont in terms of impacts on communities and, you know, exactly how that should be defined. I think it was really eye opening. And, you know, of course, these are discussions left to, you know, open to the public as a whole. And, you know, I don't know, it's, it also just, it's important to, what always brings to mind to me is not only the work of the council, but just the work we're going to need to do as a state at all levels, at the local level, regional level and state level to make sure that we get this right in all of these aspects, right? Because once the council does its work, it's going to, you know, ultimately, there are going to be lots of other people and entities and, you know, select boards, planning commissions, regional commissions, state agencies, I would say the interaction with federal agencies, a lot of work to be done. And, but I think we're laying a good foundation of just kind of understanding what the values underlying all of this are going to have to be just a quick note about the Just Transition Subcommittee because you've heard a lot about us. We have a pretty, pretty daunting responsibility. It's just that the Just Transition Subcommittee will develop principles to guide and evaluate the work of the other subcommittees to ensure that the initiatives, programs and strategies necessary to achieve the state's greenhouse gas emission reduction requirements and build resilience and climate adaptation of Vermont communities and natural systems for all residents of the state fairly and equitably. Furthermore, the Just Transition Subcommittee will rely upon an environmental justice framework to ensure the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all Vermonters while working to undercover any underlying assumptions that may have historically contributed to and produce differential exposure and unequal protection of the state's climate policies. Future policy decisions must acknowledge past harms done and seek a path forward which is reparative and restorative. Through the environmental justice framework, the subcommittee will promote tools and strategies to eliminate unfair, unjust and inequitable conditions and policy decisions. And there's more than that, but that's pretty heavy lift, but we're glad to take it on. So I'll stop there, but happy to answer any questions you've got. Just a quick follow-up, Chris, on the charter that you just read. Is that a charter that the committee itself generated? It sounds quite a bit. Yeah, I think that's a real important point. You know, one of the things we... It may look like there were some, I haven't heard any concerns about this from any of you, but one of the reasons why some things may feel like they're just getting rolling is one of the things that the steering committee to deliberate upon was it was important to get the members onto the steering committees to get the council built up to actually inform the RFPs that went out and what the needs were to actually support the council. And each of the subcommittees developed their own charges. So that's what I'm saying. The council really is its own entity now. There's no body driving it, but the council, with a lot of input, I think we've gotten good input from the public and including reaching out to the public to say, would you like to join these subcommittees? And then as Jane noted, there's this concentric circle concept where you've got the subcommittees, but then there are other people who may have time and inclination to work more directly with those subcommittees and then maybe less directly. But the idea is I think to keep building this cadre of people who are engaging regularly with the council and then I think that'll bolster us even further once we go out and do the public outreach more broadly. Jane, I saw your mute button go off. Did you want to add something? I must be the only person who doesn't know how to raise their hand on Zoom. I was trying to look through my hand. Well, if you were in the Senate, you would just do this. That's how you raise your hand. Okay, so I just wanted to follow up since you do have the subcommittee charge documents and Chris spoke to them. I wanted to just speak to their development briefly so you could go. Secretary Moore first and then further refinement by the subcommittees myself and our facilitator work to make sure that all of the work put forward in the statute was put into a home of one of the subcommittees. And that was the initial flushing out of what the charges would be for each of those subcommittees was the statutory requirements from the Global Warming Solutions Act. The subcommittees then further refined those to ensure that if they wanted to do at least what was required of them, but then could go the extra mile with respect to the work put in front of them in those charges. So you have those with you, I shared those and I encourage you to take a look at how they were drafted but the intent was to meet the statutory requirements of the Global Warming Solutions Act as well as just further refine what that work would look like through the experts that sit on those subcommittees. That's good clarification, Jane. We didn't go rogue. Yeah. Great, thank you. Representative Sims is with us by phone, I believe. Catherine, did you have a question or comment? Yeah, I did. First, just really appreciating this update and about the incredible structure that's been built with all the subcommittees and the opportunities for the public to engage by viewing and submitting testimony and joining subcommittees. I'm curious if there are broader efforts about sort of storytelling and updating Vermonters more at large who may not be as sort of deeply engaged in following along with the committees but building general awareness about the work that's happening and that's timeline so that the work of the council doesn't come as a surprise in December or later. So are there broader sort of regular press releases or other efforts to communicate the work that's happening? So that is very much the goal and intent of having the contractor in place with climate access. As I mentioned earlier, there's three components of that. One, standing up a more robust website to both communicate regularly with the public about the work and also get public feedback through the website. And then two, outreach educational materials. And three, the public engagement process to think through that. And so in addition to that, counselors are doing their own forms and education through their own networks. There's one next week that BNRC and the Nature Conservancy, both who have representatives appointed by the House and Senate on the council are hosting. We have been doing those regular communication within our own agency of natural resources as has other state agencies with their staff about the work of the climate council. And we hope to do that more regularly with additional capacity brought on through the contract. Great, and it's certainly something that I'd welcome the opportunity to engage my community with more fully. And so I don't know if sort of talking points for legislators to share on their local front porch forum is something on the list, but if there are ways that we could receive shareable information for the general public, that's something I'd be interested in pushing out regularly. Yeah, this is great. That's a great suggestion. You know, I'd be happy, Chris, I'm looking at you virtually for a nod, but I think we could bring that back to our steering committee compatriots who are also legislative appointees. It's a great idea and we could just make sure to have a way to push out to, you know, your committee and your counterparts in the Senate, something that representatives and senators could use with their constituents. That's a great idea. Are you good representatives Sims?  Oh, okay, great. Thank you. Representative Sevillea. I think actually Liz may have just solved that what I was gonna ask, I think that that would be fantastic if legislators actually should be copied to the extent that we can be on any communications you would be sending out to the public. I don't know if there are protocols around that sort of thing, but I definitely think we all should be copied. And press releases, making sure that we're getting pieces out into, you know, what's left of print, print newspapers, I think important, you know, when we think about these communities way, way out and not just communities that are really engaged in understanding that they have to undertake this work, but, you know, specifically folks that don't understand that this is really not optional, this is happening and we need to make sure you are aware of it. So, and along those lines, just thinking about unconventional means of making sure that we are reaching out to those folks, right? So when we are reaching out to constituencies, you know, environmental groups or groups that are stood up around climate change, I mean, those folks get it. And so, you know, they can be very helpful in terms of maybe helping us put together the plan, but making sure that we're really thinking about the folks that are resistant to this because they don't have a choice. So, you know, any and all means that we can use to push out information, really appreciated and happy to help troubleshoot that or be conduit for that or anything in that regard. So, thanks. Secretary Moore. I just, I need to apologize. I have a 215 commitment that I need to drop off for. I'm sorry. I didn't know if you wanted me to just quickly walk through the- Sure, if you have another minute. That's great. I do have another minute. Let me just bring that back up on my screen. So, as you had indicated, Representative Briglin, in the beginning of the session, the governor did include $200 million worth of proposed climate investments as part of his recommendations for the allocation of the approximately $1 billion of rescue plan funds that Vermont has slated to receive. The two highest level buckets, one is what I would term no regrets policies, which is really those four items on the top of the list. And then second is holding in abeyance $100 million to support the initial implementation of the climate action plan, recognizing that we have through the end of 2024 to use these monies. In terms of what falls into those no regrets policies, it includes $25 million to continue to build out electric vehicle charging infrastructure, combination of level two and level three facilities at state facilities and along state highways, along with businesses and multifamily housing locations. It proposes $21 million for weatherization. This builds on the recommendation the governor included in his FY22 budget to allocate some of the one-time monies that are available to weatherization work and would allow sort of the office of economic opportunity within AHS to maximize their throughput of weatherization projects for low income Vermonters through the end of 2024. It includes $29 million for electrification incentives, looking at both load management opportunities that take the form of storage and beneficial electrification as well as some fuel switching work. This work would be led by the department of public service and would seek to target areas of the state in particular that may be challenged by transmission capacity. And then it includes $25 million for hazard mitigation, which is really focused at some of the highest priority recommendations contained in the 2018 state hazard mitigation plan. And specifically the idea that Vermont establish a state level buyout program for properties that are routinely and adversely impacted by flooding and are ineligible for FEMA buyouts. And so taken together, that is work that's proposed to begin as soon as we have access to those ARPA funds. And then the additional $100 million we anticipate would be taken up with recommendations from the climate council following the delivery of the climate action plan at the end of this year. Thank you, Secretary Moore. And I will let you go, but I'm not gonna let the other three folks go because I've got a quick technical question that I wanna throw out there that is ANR related and will probably come to you after this meeting, but it's something I wanted to get out there, but thank you for joining us. Okay, thank you. Jane, this might go directly to you. If possible, Chris or Liz have a perspective on this through their work in some of the subcommittees. It's a question that's come to me, but it's also really kind of has broader implications, I think, in the two and a half years, roughly that I've served on this committee, usually at the beginning of the legislative session, we will have a hearing and a discussion where the annual emissions inventory is laid out for our committee. We haven't had that yet this year. And again, I think each year because of the, I know it's highly technical to pull this information together. I think the next inventory we are do is for 2017, I believe. I think we've already had the 2016. So this is gonna work its way to a question, but just general concern about how long it takes to produce this information, obviously not only for legislators, but it really informs the work that the council is doing and will in future years, that when we're kind of driving the car, looking in the rearview mirror, three or four years, that's a delayed effect. And I'm hopeful that part of the work of the council can look at potentially how to accelerate that work. Just in the coming years and decades, that's really important information to have as quickly as possible. So one question I have, and this is probably more for the deputy secretary at ANR, is what the timeliness is gonna be at the next inventory that we're gonna get. I'm not sure if that's right on the horizon or if that's still a ways out that we're gonna get that information. That's one question. And related, I've had some questions come in from constituents and I think folks who have followed the work of some of the subcommittees closely that they have either concern or maybe there's confusion that the council is in a process of changing how the emissions inventory work occurs, maybe not paying as close attention to out of state emissions that are relevant to in-state energy consumption. And again, it's a little bit of a technical question but I've gotten that question repeatedly from folks in the last week or two. And so I'm interested, and again, we don't have to discuss this now but it's something that I wanna get out there. I'm interested in work that's being done there and how different ways of measurement are being looked at and hopefully enhanced. So I welcome any thoughts you have on that now or maybe that's something we can follow up on in the future days and weeks. Yes, thank you for that question. And I'll try to answer it point by point a little bit. So the greenhouse gas inventory for the 2017 is currently being drafted. I especially through the development of the RFP for the technical analysis muted to support the climate council work have been working very closely with the air quality division, air quality and climate division around review and understanding of the greenhouse gas inventory recognizing that there is outside critique of the way we do it in Vermont and rightfully so we haven't evaluated it closely in a number of years and I know commissioner walk if he was here would say that he support the work through the technical analysis RFP to look at and examine how we do the greenhouse gas inventory as a standalone component also recognizing that the technical analysis analyses will also look at other ways of tracking information. One of the core components of the technical analysis is a carbon budget or carbon inventory to look at how we both track emissions and sequestration together. And then another component of the technical analysis also gets that a monitoring and assessment framework longterm for the implementation of the policies and strategies that we put forward with respect to the climate action plan that will certainly be informed by the greenhouse gas inventory but we'll also need to look at quickly when you pull one policy lever what implications does it have over here and vice versa. And so those are all questions that we're looking to get answers for and considerations for with respect to the RFP that we're putting out. And so the greenhouse gas inventory and the carbon budget specifically will be key components that will sort of hit the ground running as soon as we have that contractor in place, that third party critique of the greenhouse gas inventory as we do it now, as well as looking at lifecycle emissions and the way we could or could not incorporate those into our greenhouse gas inventory and then the carbon budget as well as another component of that. So those are things that we'll have data and analysis for it on a relatively short order. And then we're also making sure that those whatever changes we make to the greenhouse gas inventory if we make any at all because just to highlight that we do do it very similarly and in compliance with our neighboring states but any changes we make would have to be supported by A&R who would be the long-term implementers of those changes as well as that carbon budget will be a moment in time. And so that will also need to live within likely agency of natural resources in order to inform future recommendations and climate action plans as well as be able to be replicated on a relatively routine basis. So those are key components of the RFP that we're putting out now as well as sort of pathway, sectoral pathway analysis and economic modeling, programming type modeling of the ideas and recommendations that we put forward through the subcommittee work. And that RFP will be posted and be final as Secretary Moore alluded to, likely not today but likely by Monday or Tuesday of next week and that'll be an open public process for folks to look at. Okay, thank you for that background. It's something that I'm really interested in. It was something that this committee spent some time talking about in the process of putting the bill and the legislation together. One, interested in accuracy, two, interested in comparability in what Vermont looks at relative to other states and also what we look at historically and what the process would entail as we change our measurement methodology to make current measurement relevant to what we've done in the past. And the whole criteria here is a relative criteria. What are our missions today relative to 2005 or to 1990? And so just having a very clear understanding from my perspective of if we're gonna change some of these bars, if we're gonna change some of these goalposts what does that really mean? So I'll be very interested to hear more about that. Representative Yantachka. Thank you. Jane, the last slide that Secretary Moore put up showed was it $29 million going into weatherization or was it 25? I believe it was 29 million. 29 million. So that's a really good thing. There's also money being allocated in his proposal on the governor's proposal for housing, building more housing. And I'm hoping that one of the requirements will be that high efficiency building standards would be a requirement for any additional housing that's going to be subsidized by the state. You have any reflections on that? I don't, I cannot speak to that proposal in a lot of detail. Secretary Moore would be better suited to that, but I do understand and have heard out of subcommittees and consideration of those funding that they have a larger climate goal around all of the work being put forward. And so I would expect that that mixed-use housing that's proposed through that funding would likely have a high bar with respect to efficiency standards. Okay, great. I'm not sure if Liz Miller or anybody, we spoke about that briefly in cross-sector mitigation, but it'll be interesting to see how it's developed. Yeah, it's certainly on the list of the building sector and not a subgroup, but I can't speak specifically to the way it would intersect with the governor's recommend on housing in the ARPA. Yeah. Okay, well, I hope it gets done. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Mike. I don't see any other hands up, which is members of my committee know is the cue for everybody to raise their hand, but it being the nicest day of the year and a Friday afternoon, I'm gonna just slowly pause in my thanks to Liz and to Jane and Chris for joining us and also Secretary Moore for taking time to update us on the work. Clearly a ton is going on and look forward to our next discussion. Representative Sebelia. No question. Yeah. Just also wanted to express appreciation to engage and hear from you all. You know, we a lot of work, we did now you are doing a lot of work. So great to connect with you and look forward to continuing to engage with you all on this. Thank you for your work. Thank you again. I'm gonna hold a class after school very briefly here. And again, thank you, Liz and Chris and Jane, you're welcome to take off. Just a couple of parting. Thank you. Just a couple of parting comments for members looking ahead to next week. On Tuesday afternoon, and this is your homework assignment, on Tuesday afternoon, I would like to block out some committee discussion time. I feel like we don't get enough of that. And what I would like to spend our time on is talking about two kind of two different areas we're working on. One is I'd like to carve out some time to talk about S1 which is the raggate plant and just get people's thoughts on testimony we've taken where we might wanna go with that bill. So what I would ask you to do is frankly, just, you know, read the bill, the bill's quite short and reflect on some of the testimony. And I'd just like to have some committee discussion. We'll invite Ellen Tchaikovsky to be with us for that as well. And then the second part of our discussion, I'd like to reflect on some of the AI testimony we've had so far and the two bills that we have before our committee and, you know, kind of a potential path forward there. And again, what I would just ask is that folks take a look at those two bills, you know, read them and, you know, think about, you know, one idea is to potentially bring these two bills together. The testimony we had on Thursday, I think, talked about different things we might do with those bills that are in there. There's an appropriation in those, in certainly one of them. I can't remember if there's an appropriation in both. So that is somewhat a little bit of a sticking point in terms of that going through the process. But anyway, I'd like to spend some time as a committee just discussing those. Becky Wasserman is the legislative council on those two bills and potentially she'll be able to join us as well. So anyway, I just want to give folks a heads up that, you know, if you've got a free half an hour, read over those bills, you know, let's, you know, as a committee collect our thoughts the path forward on those two things. And another thing that I just wanted to let committee members know, just as a process point, if you will, I had a conversation with the Senate appropriations chair, Senator Kitchell yesterday, as well as Steve Klein, who's the director of JFO, just about questions around the rearages and the need in the, you know, in that area. And essentially I shared with Senator Kitchell, with Senator Kitchell, some of my own personal interest in seeing resources being directed there. I also emailed to her some of the testimony that we received in our committee so that she could benefit from that as the appropriations committee in the Senate does more work on the budget. I also shared that with Senator Cummings and the Senate Finance Committee because I know that they are going to take some testimony on this as well. Obviously the budget is not in our court right now, it's on the other side of the net. So we don't have kind of direct, you know, we don't have, you know, kind of a direct effect on that. Obviously the budget will come back in our direction at some point down the road, but I wanted the folks in the Senate to know that we had taken some compelling testimony and that we're happy to serve as a resource if we can. But I think that's an important issue and you know, you should certainly be in touch with your Senator, you know, with regard to your interests in that. Trying to think of other things that I have for folks looking ahead to next week. I don't know if it is scheduled yet. We're going to take some more testimony on kind of the concept of telecommunications taxes broadly from the Department of Public Service. I'm not sure if that's going to be Wednesday or Thursday next week. And then I'm hopeful that we will have kind of our typical Thursday morning AI testimony but I have not scheduled that yet. So that's just kind of a preview for next week but most importantly what I hope we'll do on Tuesday afternoon. So any thoughts or questions before we adjourn? Yeah, do you have any idea about what time we'll start on Tuesday? So I had asked Matthew to schedule us for two o'clock only because I feel like Tuesdays have become more precarious and they're going to become even more precarious as we get later into the session. I know that we have a couple of bills that are going to be on the floor next week or at least I'm anticipating that are going to be going to take a lot of time. So I'm a little cautious about scheduling too much time and kind of outside witnesses. So Tuesday I think we're going to try and start at two o'clock and hopefully that will be late enough in the afternoon.


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Bed up with the everyday grind Tired out from the summer heat Want to get away from it all we offer you escape? Escape designed to free you from the four walls of today for a half hour of high adventure You are trapped in a remote valley in the Andes walled in by sheer rock precipices and Surrounding you closing in on you is a band of blind men who want your eyes Tonight we escape to the mountains of Ecuador and to a remarkable world where sight is unknown as Hg Wells imagined it in his gripping story the country of the blind My name is Ibarra. I'm a mining engineer in Quito, Ecuador high in the towering Andes Up until a year ago my chief sport was mountain climbing My last climb was an attempt to scale the remote and forbidding peak of Paris, Ecuador pedal a 20,000-foot crag Unconquered by man It is unconquered still 3,000 feet from the icy summit we turn back and fled for our lives All of us escaped except one a guide named Nunez who slipped over the frightful precipice And disappeared in the vast chasm Yawning 10,000 feet beneath us The horror of that man's fall has terrorized my dreams for a year Because of it, I've forsaken mountain climbing for the rest of my life and that decision still stands Even though today I Have seen Nunez He was sitting on the steps at my shack when I arrived at the mine this morning At first I didn't recognize him he was so much changed. I thought he was some weird ragged beggar Is it you senor Ibarra? My name is Ibarra. Yes, what do you want? You do not know me senor No Well, you look like a man. I knew once but he he's he is dead Dead on the slopes of Paris go to Petal. Nunez Or not couldn't be Nunez. That is my name senor At least that is the name. I remember you fell. I saw you fall. Yes It's impossible that you could have lived perhaps the gods of the mountain had some reason to spare me Nunez if we had if we had any idea that you were alive, but you went down thousand Thousands of feet we couldn't even attempt to find your body. I know I know I do not blame you You could not have reached me and if you had I should not have welcomed you at first But then later Yes, what do you mean? Senor You will not believe what I have to tell I can hardly believe that I'm seeing you Nunez and talking to you You remember that night the night I fell. Yes, we had been toiling all day Inching our way up a steep ice wall and as darkness came we found a narrow ledge barely three feet wide It's not very wide We can get our shelter wall up cut off some of this wind. Well, that will be welcome. Yes, but first we'll rest a moment Look at that icy devil up there glistening in the moonlight. Yes There's another three thousand feet of sheer ice wall We'll have to cut our own holes from now on what even be ledges like this for resting places I can see why no one's ever made it Do you think we should go on? I don't know Nunez, what do you think? It is not my place to say senior. I was hired to go to the top I agreed, but what do you really think if I believed in the guards of the mountain as the Indians do I Should be frightened now. Why? Because we have invaded the forbidden circle This part of the Andes is unmapped and almost unknown senior It is an easy thing to believe strange things in this white loneliness some of the legends Fascinating I've heard of one something about a Hidden valley called the country of the blind. Yes See it is supposed to be somewhere down there below us a Fertile valley which was settled many centuries ago and then cut off by the great landslide of a rocker Yes, but why the country of the blind even before it was cut off the people developed a strange illness All of them slowly went blind and after that their children were born blind The legend is that the valley was the home of the mountain guards. It was too beautiful for human eyes It's odd, but then of course it's all nonsense. Yes. Yes, of course. It would be pleasant to find it though You know the old proverb in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king I doubt if we should ever find it or even doubt if it exists. Of course not. I was only joking. Yes Now if you're rested we'll make the shelter wall, right? Huh? I'll give you a hand at a moment Believe me a barra for two pesos. I'd give up this climb. I never realize Fell perhaps a thousand feet and then I felt the heavy stinging impact of snow I'd fallen onto an almost perpendicular slope and once again I was sliding down down tumbling over and over But now under me around me over me in immense avalanche of snow was rumbling sliding with me Suddenly I realized that my own motion had almost stopped and it was the snow that was moving I was riding the avalanche and at almost the same moment. I went over the second precipice It was higher than the first much higher perhaps four thousand feet I I fell with the snow for what seemed minutes every second expecting the terrible final impact, but the impact never came Miracle of miracles that shear wall blended almost imperceptibly into another steep slope and again I was sliding and gradually as the arc of the slope curved away. I felt myself slow down I was whirled along on top of the avalanche and then as it subsided out onto the gentler snow upon a gentler slope And finally I rolled to a stop and lay still When I awoke it was morning and I was covered with snow. I Shook off the cold white blanket rolled over on my back and looked up My heart almost stopped as I saw from where I'd fallen the mountain tower day 10,000 feet above me Carefully I felt myself My clothes were torn. I was bruised and bleeding. I ached in every muscle, but I had not a single broken bone I lay there and offered up a prayer to the gods of the mountain Far below me lay a lush valley sparkling in the morning sunlight I could see the stately trees and green meadows fresh with dew. I started down, but it was still an arduous descent The farther down I got the more I realized the beauty of the scene Well, this was a hidden paradise I'd fallen into and I was the first man ever to see it. So I thought But I was wrong. I realized at first when I saw the cultivation in the meadows and then the walks Well-kept stone walks laid in a symmetrical pattern all over the valley and then I saw them There were men and women lying under the trees resting Nearby a collection of windowless huts marked a village and the plastering of the houses was done in a wild variety of colors. I thought to myself The plasterer who did that must have been blind as a bat Then I saw the two men who were quite close to me. They were standing on a bridge over the little stream They were dressed in odd loose clothing and there was a strange look about their faces They failed to notice me as I approached until I shout and suddenly they looked up attentively in my direction I waved wildly at them, but they took no notice Where the fools must be blind? Blind Could it be I'd fallen into the legendary country of the blind in the country of the blind a one-eyed man is king Hello there, it is a man or a spirit come down from the rocks Oh, I'm a man. All right, just like you, but I've had a miraculous escape and now I find myself here in your valley Valley Valley come hither Let me feel of you.  Yes, I feel careful you you feel the eyelids flutter He is but imperfectly formed some strange bulge there Unseemly no no your eyes are shrunken in but mine are whole I can see see see Pedro he's a strange wild one where does he come from down out of the rock No from over the mountains out of the country beyond there where where men can see From Bogota where there are a hundred thousand people and the city stretches out of sight sight What strange words he uses without meaning And feel the costness of his hair like a llamas and you have come into the world into What no out of the world the big world beyond the mountains the world that stretches 12 days journey to the sea Our fathers have told us Men may be made by forces of nature It is the warmth of things and moisture and rottenness. Let us lead him to the elder. You don't have to lead me. I can see See yes, of course.  He is a clumsy one. I'm sorry. I fell down. I couldn't see in the darkness Who is this and what is he saying? He is but newly formed. He has come down from the rocks He stumbles as he walks and mingles words that mean nothing with his speech He is a wild man out of the rocks. No, I come from Bogota over the mountains. You hear Bogota He uses wild words. His mind is hardly formed. He has only the beginnings of speech Bogota Yes, I come from the great world where men have eyes and see that must be his name Bogota he stumbled twice as we came to the must be taught. No, no, don't you understand? I can see but not in the dark To you darkness or light is all the same but to me to to us outside in the world beyond the mountains What are mountains? Oh very well then beyond the rocks. There is nothing beyond the rocks That is the end of the world surely you must realize the sky above covers more than this valley There is nothing above but the roof of rock He's very raw my children. He shall have to be taught from the beginnings.  Do not fear father. I Shall guide him myself and feed him very well Come take my hand. Thank you It will it'll be a pleasure to get outside again out of out of this darkness come this way. Yes What is your name? Medina Sarote Medina Sarote at minus one one new nose and oh Oh Sunlight oh, this is better and now at that Senorita You're beautiful. I cannot tell what a wonderful thing you are to see please I'm afraid for you afraid. Yes If you do not learn quickly and see speaking such strange words They may not be so kind to you They might be angry Might even destroy you This thought had not occurred to me before and suddenly I had a twinge of fear Still the proverb kept running through my mind in the country of the blind a one-eyed man is king But try as I would I could not make them understand my wonderful gift of sight. They simply could not comprehend it Worse, they were not impressed.  I'll show you I'll leave the path Trampol not on the grass. It's not loud. I How did you know I stepped on the grass? I heard of course heard, but I didn't make a sound Why do not come when I call you? Can you not hear the path as you walk? I can see it. There is no such word as see Seize this folly. Follow the sound of my feet.   I must warn you just keep quiet and learn and stop this nonsense about Nonsense is it? I'll show you I've taken enough of your insults unformed mind got no sense I'll be king here. I can see and I'll be king. Oh God. Ah stop it.  But it won't do you any good now. I'll show you. I'll strike. Oh No, I can't do it. I cannot hit a blind man Bogota pick up that spade do not leave it lying on the walk someone might stumble pick it up yourself Do as I say take your hands off me. Take them off I finally lost my temper and shoved him over and ran The next half hour was a nightmare before I reached the fields They were following me 20 or more of them armed with sticks and spades fanning out across the meadows following my trail like bloodhounds At first I wanted to laugh but on they came swift inexorable and the laugh froze in my throat They didn't need eyes. They they could smell me feel my trail On they came closer and closer and circling me closing in Bogota there must be no violence you must come peacefully by heaven. I'll hit you if you come any closer. I swear. I will You don't understand you. You are blind. I can see I can see grab him. I'll hurt you I swear. I will leave me alone I hid his arm turned and ran over the wall outside the valley back to the rocks to the precipitous cliff I'd come down but when I reached that sheer rock wall. I knew there was no place to go For two days and nights. I stayed outside the valley hungry and cold and then I I Realized the hopelessness of my position. I was trapped.  I uh, I admit. I was only newly formed that is better And do you still think you can see? No No, that was folly. The word means nothing less than nothing and what means overhead Rock is the overhead There is a roof above the world a roof of rock and very smooth very well now before you ask me anymore, please Give me food or I shall die very well. Give him food I shall and after that give him the most menial tasks in the village guard him well and perhaps Perhaps he shall learn yet. Thank you Thank you. Oh That is better You are kind Medina Cyril T. Very kind. I Am glad you came back.  I should never have run away What was that word you said I was Beautiful It means something nice or something very nice Medina Sirotaid Why is it you have no husband? I Have a disfigurement These long hairs your eyelashes. Oh, but they're beautiful. You're considered a disfigurement You're the most lovely girl in the valley, but they wouldn't know would they And so you have no lover No Medina Sirotaid What do you think of me?  Well, you have much to learn but you will learn it. I'm sure And you are kind and gentle Your voice is soft.  I could see around me It is a beautiful valley green with grass and yellow with sunlight and flowers Bright flowers dotting the hills and in the cool of night the stars gleam like diamonds in the sky Word sound lovely But what are stars stars? Why they they are but No No, you wouldn't understand and what do you mean in the cool of the night? You still get that confused one the night is warm the day is cool No, notice you here who have them backwards because the darkness means nothing to you You work in the cool of night and sleep in the heat of day teasing me. Oh, no. No, I I'm oh What does it matter? All that matters is you You here beside me Medina Sirotaid I love you I love you.  No, I like to hear you speak then will you Would you marry me?  He has delusions. He cannot do anything right But he's getting better. He's better than he was and he's strong and kind stronger and kinder than anyone in the world And he loves me And I love him. No, I will not have it a great sire if you please. Yes, what is it good doctor? I have examined Bogota and the case is clear to me I think very probably he might be cured. And how might that be done?  He has great lumps Consequently, his brain is in a constant state of irritation But what can be done to cure him? Oh, it's a very simple surgical operation Remove the cause of the irritation.  My world is sight You would not want me to lose my most valued possession I do not know There are so many beautiful things to see the flowers the far sky with its drifting clouds the sunset the stars you Why just to see you it is good to have sight and I would never see you again I wish sometimes you would not talk like that like what I know it It's your imagination. I love it But now now you want me to do Medina Cerote If I were to consent to this if you would if only you would What else can I do? My dearest one. My dearest tender voice.  Goodbye, Medina. I suppose I knew it then when I said then I Only meant to go up on the rocks and look out over the valley To spend my last day feasting my eyes and the wonderful beautiful world of light and color But when I got there it was too beautiful too lovely This valley this home of the mountain gods Beautiful and forbidden I Drank it in the green of the fields the blue of the gently curving stream The orange of the lichen in the rocky crevices I Climbed higher to see the great snow-capped peaks towering above and away to the distant sky and Higher still as the shadows turn the snow to purple and crimson and deep blue The valley was far below now and as beautiful as a painting But like a painting it looked unreal Medina Sarote was small and far away a distant dream and The world of sight was here all around me overpowering Wonderful, I turned and began to climb up that sheer rock wall How many months it took me to make my way out over those mountains over glaciers and snow fields and sheer precipices I cannot guess how I lived through the cold and hunger of it. I cannot tell you But I'm here at last Back from the country of the blind Heavens man, what an experience terrible and Wonderful, you aren't sorry you came back. Sorry I See her face clearly now It is the only thing I see Noonius Come you need food here take my hand. Thank you Where is it? senior a bar Noonius You are yes The guard of the mountains has had this revenge Those months of crawling over the snow and ice with the sun glaring down yes, I Am blind Escape is produced and directed by Norman McDonald and tonight brought you the country of the blind by HG Wells adapted for radio by John Dunkel and featuring Paul Freese as Noonius very Kroger as Ibarra and Peggy Weber as Medina Sorote with Wilms Herbert as Correa and Byron Kane as Pedro Music was conceived by Psy Fuhr with Ivan Ditmars at the organ Next week You are spurring a lathered horse through the darkened streets Trapped between two hostile armies with a bit of magic in your pocket and the American Revolution in the balance Next week we escape with Stephen Vincent Bene's delightful fantasy a tooth for Paul Revere Good night, then until this same time next week when once again we offer you escape This is CBS the Columbia broadcasting system