Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? I would like to add a quick one right at the beginning about the potential of Walden. We talked about this a bit before, the potential of Walden joining. Just to get everybody's sense of whether that's something that we should encourage or proceed with or what have you. Okay. Okay. Well, yeah, we'll have an item to discuss in a moment. Okay. Hearing no other additions or changes to the agenda. Let's move on to public. Actually, you know what? No, I do have another one. I have some bills that we have to pay. We'll do that after the discussion of Walden. I'm sorry. I need public comments and items that are not on the agenda. Okay. Hearing no public comment. Moving on to Walden. I was approached or I got a call over the weekend. I only got the voicemail message today about the possibility of Walden joining. They had a select board meeting last night, so I didn't get this in time, but Michael, I heard your vote of interest. Any other thoughts, Michael or anyone? Well, oh, I'm sorry. Were you asking me or something? Yeah. Well, you or anybody else? Well, one comment I'll make is that Walden has a rec substation located in it. And for a few other network reasons, I think it's possibly a strategic town for us. And they're hesitant to join the NKCUD, but they need someone. So, and they tie in really well with Cabot. So I think we should support it if they're interested. Yeah, the other Jeremy, I talk, I talked to Lori Augustiniak, who's part of the CCA here in Cabot and lives in Walden and asked her about it. And I got some reluctance and weirdness a little bit about that, but I let her know. So I don't know where, you know, some of the people who've been been talking and expressing interest, but I think it makes a lot of sense to. Okay. Any other thoughts about Walden one way or the other? Is there maybe I should say, is there any reason why we shouldn't go with them? I mean, aside from the ever creeping larger requirement for a quorum. And that sort of thing. I mean, we needed 10 for tonight, which which we got soon enough, but any. So my hearing kind of general silent consensus that we should kind of just see what they want to do. I will, I will take that not not hearing any sort of major objections or whatever. I will give them a call back tomorrow and see what the plans are. But Jeremy, I do this is Ken, I do think might want to have a kind of a checklist with regards to what we're looking for or what some maybe threshold attributes are. You know, Michael mentioned that they, they might fit well with within our, you know, they have assets that might fit well within the system. That's great. But if we could, if we could maybe a little bit objectively prior to the next town coming in, identify what it is that is consistent with our build out that I think that's going to be helpful. Do you have any suggestions for criteria that we should be looking at in particular or just ask them to make the case. Yeah, I, there, not, I can't word them very well but a lot, but some of it's going to be system. Another words, what part relates to our relationship with Washington Electric. If we firm up that relationship, and they have significant Washington Electric distribution geography, that would be one so it would keep us from going, you know, south. I think it goes much further south than Roxbury. Anyway, so that that was that's one of them. And it may be something about their relationship to other CUDs if they, if they're geographically close to an existing one I think we might want to be asking some. That makes sense. I don't have to get it some more thought but I think God didn't give it that thought next month. The other one I have the the sort of included that or not but you know we could use that as a factor, given that it's more expensive the less dense it is. I'm sure. I do say it doesn't have to be but it was another possibility. Any other thoughts. Yeah, Michael. Yeah. Yep. The other thing is there are very few potential expansion towns left. The ones the ones that border us are either Waysfield Champlain Valley, telecom towns, or AC fiber towns, or any case CUD towns or LaMoyle County towns. There are two left that haven't joined a CUD that border us. Stowe and Waterbury are two that are still possible. And I generally am not inclined to either of those but you know if they apply we should consider them on sort of on the basis of Ken's criteria. I kind of have that many more applicants. And I think Walden has been on a tightrope for about a year thinking about which one they wanted to join, if any, because they weren't very active about it. Is there somebody on the phone that wants to say anything? I see a caller one. Jeremy, this is Alan. Can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you Alan. Go ahead. Okay, great. I came in just a few minutes late so I hope I'm not, I hope I didn't miss something, but it seems to me one of the things we want to consider is whether there are any providers already operating within a town that is also asking to join us as a CUD. That seems to me a really important consideration and what made me think of it was the example of Stowe because Stowe already has several carriers who I think are providing pretty high-speed internet there. But it's something we ought to know before we make a decision about whether to add another town to our roster of responsibilities to get high-speed internet everywhere in the town too. Fair enough. Siobhan? So Walden, I'm looking at a map. Walden is next to Hardwick and Danville. Aren't they in one of the other, like the NEK one? So do we know why they are thinking about us rather than? They're typically associated with Cabot in a lot of ways, but they must be associated with Danville. I mean, they, you know, it makes sense to be in one of the other. My actual worry is that they aren't in one of the other. They should be in one of the other. Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right, thanks. Anything else on Walden? Okay. Let's see. Moving on to some bills to pay. I will forward you the invoices at some point later tonight. Again, an invoice from Peter Blum. Let me go and find that. That was to do the work, the drafting of the wireless application. And that is in the amount of $5,387.50, five, three, eight, seven, 50. And that was approved up to $6,000 by the executive committee a week and change ago. A week ago, Friday. And then I have $108, I believe it is for the LinkedIn resumes that we got. You pay per resume. And I set it as close to $100 as I could. Unfortunately, it was almost totally a bust. We'll talk about that more in the, in that agenda item about the executive director. So, yeah, what else am I looking at? Jeremy Matt also submitted his monthly stipend for the clerk stuff that we have been paying him. And then a question about, actually, you know what, not a question, I have a note here for myself. I think we submitted the, we submitted Fred's invoice and deliverables. And we're just waiting to hear back from, we need to hear back from DPS in terms of the broadband innovation grant, and we'll have that ready to go. Fred has another invoice, though, that will be coming due for the wireless work. The wireless study was 22-ish thousand, as I recall. I have not opened the bank account, haven't looked at the balance lately. Were we going to wait until we get the 100,000? I mean, we made his contract contingent on 100,000. So are we going to wait until we receive that to write that check? We may have enough cash in the bank. It would be close. Any changes? Then what if we don't get it? It's what's our, I mean, are we guaranteed that? Yeah, well. There will be hell to pay if we don't get it. Okay, then yeah, I don't have a problem. Well, I think if the conditions that you had with him as it was contingent, then we should stick to that. He agreed to it? Okay. All right. Not only if he comes up. Okay, David? Yeah, why haven't we gotten the 100,000 from the state? That's a little weird. As I understand it, it's all like the federal rules and encumbrances that go along with doling out that money. We had to submit different documentation than we had to for the broadband innovation grant.  Correct, yeah.  As far as they've told me, they have all the information that they need from us to proceed. So as far as I know, they're working through whatever sort of bureaucracy and process that they've got on their side, but we should be seeing it soon. Okay, so I'm going to move that we approve the payment of Peter Blum's invoice for $5,387.50. And my forthcoming request for reimbursement in the amount of not to exceed $108 for the LinkedIn job advertisement. Second. Okay, moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Yeah, I think whether we told into your aisle it was contingent or not. That $100,000, that's no bearing on their work. It wasn't like to be a IG where they had to produce acceptable submission for the department before the money would be released. If we happen in the account, we should probably pay them. Okay. So I wonder if we should amend it to include that one as well. Or if you can wait, if you can wait one minute, I will just go and look and tell you what our balance is. Yeah, that's a good idea. Okay, so if you can stand by, we won't have to have any sort of contingency plan. While he is looking that up, I would just like to point out that in my short tenure on this board, there are already been a couple of opportunities that have come up rather last minute that required cash to take advantage of.  Agreed, but that $100,000 is overdue. We should see it any day now. Okay, so I'm looking at a balance of $29,449.50, 15 cents, I'm sorry. And so then minus Jeremy Matt's stipend, the LinkedIn reimbursement, and Peter Blum's $5,300. I think we would have, we'll have enough to pay $22,000, so shall I just. I have a calculator open if you want to list out the amounts. Sure. Okay, 29449.15, that's for our current balance, minus 108, minus 5387, and 50 cents. And let me look up Jeremy Matt's invoice. Stand by invoice. Hold on. $300. How much does that leave us Chuck? What was the amount on the interim? I think it was 22 even. Let me. Okay, if it's 22 even, that would leave us with $1,653.65. Okay. Right away, advance some half of it. Okay. Thoughts? So it's $20,220. I think paying half would be wise, but we don't want to bank out. Sorry, with the amount paying in in full would leave us with $3,433.65. Okay. And as I'm as I'm looking at this, there is also an outstanding invoice to give us some clarification about the RTC, which I'm still waiting on some clarification about, but there's, yeah, there's at least $5,000 going there. Do you have any idea when you're going to give that clarification? Let's see, I think I asked, when did I ask David, like last week, beginning of last week? So I don't know. I mean, we could probably pay the we could probably pay the $5,000 and then sort out the, you know, the second invoice we got, which I wasn't expecting to get. We may have been miss-built is what is what I'm saying and I'm trying to we're trying to sort that out. If we if we sent Fred a check for half, then that would still give us a buffer to pay the the $5,000 for NRTC. I will amend the motion to advance into aisle and even $10,000 towards what we owe them. Second. Second. Okay, there's been a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion on the amendment? I think it's a reasonable step. Okay. So we have an amendment on the table to amend the original motion to add a 10,000 payment to interisle again, hoping that we're going to get the $100,000 rather soon to pay the remainder. Any further discussion? Okay, all in favor of the amendment signify by saying aye. Aye. If there are any opposed or that would like a roll call on that, let me know. Okay. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. The original motion now is to pay to reimburse me for the $108 not to exceed for the LinkedIn ad $5,387.50 to Peter Blum and $10,000 to interisle as the first nearly half of the outstanding invoice. Any further discussion on that? Okay. Hearing none, all in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody like a roll call for that? Okay. Motion is unanimous and passes. Thank you very much. I will get those out probably tomorrow. Okay. Moving along, let me get back to my agenda. So the next item for the agenda is a subcontractor policy. Subcontractor policy I sent to you earlier today. I got a couple of a couple of suggestions, one from Jerry Diamantidis, who's not with us tonight. He suggested to take items kind of modified his suggestion and I took items two and three under requirements and I made them an A and a B under one so it was more of a stylistic formatting. And then I added another bit to number one. Just thinking about the different sorts of subcontract, subcontracting that might happen. And in number one, I have a line that says all contractors shall disclose any and all subcontractors and consultants quote subcontractors, and I added a phrase here material to their contracted work to the CV Fiber Fiber Governing Board. So some of this language was borrowed from a policy that Ray sent to me. And I thought that that was that was pretty good. I did get some feedback saying they disagreed with portions of it and thought that we should go more with. Let me go back more with like the language that we did with the broadband innovation grant. I don't, I don't have that feedback in front of me. So the broadband innovation grants, I'm going to paste the quote into the chat. And if it looks like we should keep this shorter, something more like what I just posted into the chat. If we should do that instead, we can certainly modify this and take a crack at it. Next meeting. Otherwise, I'm happy to hear any feedback that folks have. Yeah, Siobhan. So what somebody else proposed was that we do just this language that you pasted into the chat instead of what was in the draft that you've sent us. I think to substantially replace it with something like that. Okay, I'm not in favor of that. I like the one that has been drafted. I prefer it. Yeah, I agree with what. Why? Well, I think this is a little, my comment was a couple of them and one of them and we should have a contracting policy of which there's a subcontracting element to it, as opposed to focusing just on subcontractors. And I think I need a little more work from this. And then I took exception to the clause regarding somebody who was a CUD discipline person, never being able to get a contract. I don't think that's needed. And I think it may open us up to some issues later on, but you guys, you know, I don't want to do things in the heat of the night. But I think we ought to be careful when we do those kinds of language. So I don't think we would be adopting it, not withstanding the date I put at the end there. I don't think we're adopting this tonight, but I would like us to consider this as like a first read. So if there are edits that we have or any other feedback that I can incorporate, I would be happy to hear them. Michael? I read it really carefully. And my first impulse was to edit it, amend it. And I amended it the best I could, but ultimately I wasn't happy with it. I think it opens up a bunch of vulnerabilities for us. It also is overly regulatory for us. I mean, there are circumstances where there will be contractors who have subcontractors that we don't really need to be reviewing. And it's just adding more encumbrance on the board and on the contractors. And I know the initial impulse, I would probably eliminate that clause as well. I forget which one it was. I think it was number two. C2. Yeah, and I think making things mandatory as opposed, you know, there's a lot of shouts and musts. I think if we're going to keep it, it needs to have more flexibility. But I'm leaning towards David's suggestion that we have a comprehensive contracting policy that this is part of and is more general. Our initial concern was about proprietary information getting out. That's another issue separate from this. And there's other ways of dealing with it, I think. So I'm not, although there's lots of craftsmanship in the thing and then I amended it and made it even prettier, I'm not partial to it at the moment. Tim, I see your hand. Yeah, I just wanted to ask, would this be best to, I mean, it's a good document and good revisions, talk and everything. But would this be best with a legal expert kind of inking this in a more protective way for both contractors and subcontractors? If we want to pay someone to do that. I just didn't know if it was in our best interest to make sure it's not forgetting about anything that could leave the organization vulnerable. So if, I mean, if someone's willing to write the overall contractor policy and incorporate this in there or some variation, I think we need to have one of those. And I think we need to have one of those immediately. I mean, within the next few weeks, because we are going to be engaging in a contract, hopefully quite soon. And I'm hoping that we can have elements of this, even though it's not a current policy that covers everything incorporated into any new contracts that we sign with, for example, you know, the new, or potentially new project manager. So if anybody wants to step up and do some of that work or go find a template or modify something that's out there, yeah, please, please do that. This is, this was my, this was my crack at it. And yeah, feel free to run with this and go in whichever direction you like. I saw your handshub on. Yeah. I guess I'm going to address the gorilla. It's there. It's not just about proprietary information. It's about ensuring a certain level of comfort with the people who are going to be working on our plans and our actual work. And I think it's a valid concern that if somebody's membership on the board has been rescinded for cause. That they've kind of, that we shouldn't be obligated to work with them if we don't want to. And that we shouldn't want to work with them because they were rescinded for cause. And, and I'm concerned because it, I feel like it's naive to think that we wouldn't necessarily be targeted. Because we're unimportant or we're small or this is a little state. I think it's, and I don't see this as necessarily, but I get, I do, I appreciate the, does this put us in a strange legal situation? I don't know. I know that. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm done. Yeah, I'll be even stronger in that I don't like the document when we have a relationship with a contractor and it will use the recent experience as the example. We hired Fred, and I think the product from Fred was excellent. And I don't know if the person we're not avoiding talking about by name was contracted to Peter, but also the product by Peter was excellent. And one of the things about, about, you know, providing a contract is we want to vet that organization and the work that they do. And in both cases, if indeed he was contracted, subject to both cases, and I don't know if he was. They knew damned well who they were working with. And the product that we received was a high quality product. That's what I'm interested in. I do not want to micromanage contracts, because we had a history and I believe me. I'm not going to, I'm not going to defend the individual that we're not speaking of.   But, but contractors, you know, we're a small world, and if he can provide them a service and allow them to provide a quality product. I'm, I'm not going to get in their way. So, I, yeah, and I read this in it, and I'll say it reads petty. Because I, especially if people understand what we're trying to do, it's petty, and we got to get over that part of our history. So, I definitely do not agree with the direction of that document. So, if I can address that because I that petty comment is, is addressed to me, and that's fine. But I think, I think there's an honesty gap. I would say what's more petty is when you have behind the scenes emails saying make sure that Jeremy's not CC'd, make sure that Jeremy doesn't know I'm working on this. You know, that, that's petty. And I will not defend that individual for being petty. Hold on. But, but Ken, you were part of this. You were engaged and you were not sharing information that would have, I would have expected you to share, frankly. So there's an honesty gap. And this is, this was my attempt again. Let's massage it. Let's modify it. This is my attempt to make sure that we have, we don't have honesty gaps and that we don't have information gaps with the people that we contract with. Yeah, I don't feel that I was being dishonest in any way shape or form. I received that email as you did. And he, he, I'll say, he put that clause in there as he does so many times because he wishes to avoid being exposed. And I've seen that literally 100 times and you're right, I don't go telling everybody that the pieces of work that he's involved with. He, as you folks may know, he has crafted much of the legislation that has directed our work. And I have not told a lot of people that he is crafting that legislation because I know their reaction, you know, that that's four strikes against him and therefore four strikes against the product. I'm a great believer in looking at the quality of the product. Michael. Let's suppose that I'm going to pick on you Greg, Greg Kelly and the, the powers that be in Barry have a falling out. And they remove him from our board out of spite, even though we think Greg is a cracker jack great guy and we would like to keep working with him. This policy would forbid us from doing that. And that's what I was looking at when I was looking at it. I wasn't looking at it in terms of the individuals. I was looking at it as policy and how it works and whether it's appropriate or not. And that's what, that's why I had an objection to that. It's mandatory and it's very specific and I don't, I, I don't see the value of it in a policy. I can see when we're negotiating with a contractor, we might have certain requirements for that contract, particularly if we know of some relationships. But to have every contractor come to the board and say, I'm going to use this, this long maintenance crew and this cleaning crew and these people who look at polls and these people who do that. It's cumbersome and I don't know that it's necessary as long as we get them to promise to protect our information. And, and, and we have the right to request information as opposed to require that every subcontractor be voted on by the board. I just think it, I don't have an objection to us having some control over subcontractors. I just have an objection to going that far. I guess that's what I'm at. Okay. So I can, I can agree with that. I can agree with that. I would be happy with just clause two, because I'm talking about, we're talking about somebody who did harm to the board.  He did us harm. And that has consequences. And one of those consequences should be that they don't get to work with us. They don't get to work with our contractors because they harmed us. Fool me once, shame on me.  No, other way around. Reverse that. Can I answer that? And I respect that the problem is you're over focusing on the harm. And you're generalizing the benefit you still may get from the individual, even if they're just like, and it's hard to generalize that in a way that you do in a policy document.  We need to focus on what we're doing as an organization, the work products, and the contracts we have and generalized processes in place that lead to success and move on. I have really been struggling with how to express this in a way that doesn't immediately set all of you on edge. I've kind of touched on this in the past in meetings. But in my opinion, it is continuing to work with people and not giving them consequences for their actions that makes them continue to behave in such ways.  But boy, he does good work. It gives them permission to keep doing those things that they do. And this is not just, you know, this grant is kind of, it's not like he was talking to someone or anything. But when it was discovered, you know, I was at the meeting, several of you were at the meeting when this was discovered. And I remember what happened and what was said and what wasn't said. There's never been any expression of regret in writing for what happened or anything, no attempt at restitution. And so I see no reason to think that there's any change except so this is so he does good work, but other people do good work. Is he the only person who does good work. It's, I just feel like if there's no consequences for this, then it just it doesn't never mind. We will, yeah, Phil, and then we're going to move on to the next thing. I have to agree with Sharon about this. I think that, you know, continuing to use someone or either directly through a contract or subcontract who falls into that category is kind of like positive reinforcement for bad behavior. And it's certainly nothing that I would support and would prefer to see the kind of policy that Jeremy's actually drafted here that's that doesn't have a lot of shouts and do's and don'ts. Remember policy can always be waved or it can be modified if in fact we feel that it's too stringent but we, you know, we do have to start somewhere and I generally like that first draft is one. Yeah, the term that maybe needs to be changed a little bit, maybe needs to be depersonalized, but I think the intent of it is the right place for us to be. And I see David shaking his head. Okay. So, you know, so I, David, yeah, I just say we're all we can all have our own opinion. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I think Jeremy, as you said, this is probably a first 3D we're going to do some work on this and bring it back for final consideration at another meeting so we can all sit on it for a while. Okay. Thanks, Phil. Let's move on discussion of state and federal funding, including auctions and line extensions. This is an item that Alan wanted me to bring up and I, and I will just briefly mention. You probably all saw that the northern border grant that we applied for. We did not get that. The wireless grant that we applied for is being counted is being included in round two. If it is not funded. I was told explicitly it will be, it will be funded, it will be reviewed for round three. I will tell you the amount. I did not. I sort of collapsed exhausted after a crazy long day on Friday. Let me see if I can find. Oh, find that 425 I think 465 it had to be bumped up because the numbers that when I when I re ran the numbers with Fred's model. It was it was slightly different.  So it was a scaled down. So the project team agreed on a scaled down proposal that was not quite so ambitious and that would only require us to work with cloud Alliance. It only had us putting up our own polls so not citing any sort of actual not putting any radios up on polls or structures that were owned by other entities. These would be all all brand new. Alan anything else that you want to talk about with this I have a couple other kind of fill in the blank sort of thing but I Yeah, let me just you can hear me. Okay. Yep. So I asked Jeremy to put this on because I've begun to worry. As the VT digger article sort of suggested that the CUDs are either inadvertently or inadvertently being used as fall guys when something might go wrong with how this is going to work out for the state. I think it's a scenario that if my worst nightmare has become true, it could lead to CUDs falling apart simply because we begin to feel like we're skeletons with no meat and yet people still are going to be picking at our ability to put some meat on our bones. And I feel that way because of I think what I've described before is going on in a portion of Worcester where there's an individual who's started an effort to try to get at least 10 people together to encourage Comcast to extend their lines, pass their houses so they can connect up the Comcast and use the $3,000 incentive from the state to get $30,000 to Comcast. And those are exactly some of the addresses that I know we had hoped to pick up when we do a build out on West Hill in Worcester. So when I think about a specific circumstance that's happening in my town, when I see that VT digger has actually put together an article and they posted online that flat out said the CUDs are feeling really squeezed and like they might end up having a more difficult job than anybody realized. It really made me begin to think that is this an existential moment for those of us who are trying to use a public mechanism to see that broadband is provided to all rural areas and are part of the world. You know, we haven't even talked about what the impact of the Spacelink program which apparently is moving forward as far as I can tell what that might be on the whole thing. All of this boiled down to me. Whenever I get to a point like this, I try to make myself think if I were a journalist what would I write as a report of where we're at right now? And I think that actually would be a practical thing to do because I feel like we need to report to our communities what we've been up to, what we've learned, what we're trying to do. You know, it's news that we did not get the Northern Borders grants. It's news that we're applying for the wireless grants. It's news that we're continuing with our plans to still try to provide service throughout our area. But I think we need to get the word out and to let people know that we still exist and we're still operating and we still have the plan that we've told them many times before we have. The last thing I wanted to say is I actually didn't realize that there were two levels of auctions going on. I realized there was the FCC federal auctions but I didn't realize the state was also running auctions. And I have to tell you, I have just become so cynical about the state's ability to carry through on a mission of providing high speed Internet to all parts of Vermont. This has been going on for almost 15 years now and it just doesn't seem to be getting any better when mechanisms are set up that really make it difficult for public entities like us who are committed to the public responsibility of getting Internet to everybody when our job appears to be made more difficult by the rules of some of the grant programs or auctions that the state has set up. So I'll stop. That's why I wanted this item put on the agenda. If nothing else, I think we ought to figure out a way to have something drafted that we can all use to send out to community members via front porch forum or something like that. So I have two quick things before I call on Ken and Michael and Chuck. The first of all, the journalist that wrote this digger article was citing an old, old set of comments. This is something that we sent in in response to the emergency broadband action plan, which the department put together quite quickly. And that was supposed to inform how the legislature was going to react to this and our response to that also informed how they responded to this. I suspect Ken will be able to provide us a bit more context in terms of providing information out to our communities. Again, all volunteers, you know, last week was more than a full time job doing this for me personally, and I'm sure it was for several other people as well. And there's not that much more, you know, blood to be squeezed out of the stone. That said, Project Manager. Sounds like a wonderful first thing to get the Project Manager acquainted with the communities and say, hey, we're doing these things. Put something together so we can make sure that everybody gets this out to the community, you know, by Friday or whatever sort of arbitrary deadline we put there. So Ken, Michael, then Chuck. Yeah, so the Telecom advisory board met today and tomorrow the Public Service Department will release the first round of awardees. And I encourage you all to take a look at that list and be encouraged by it. You know, I can't provide the details, but be encouraged by it. I think it positions our application. You'll get a sense of the relationship between our application and those applications that are awarded. Second is, and I don't know exactly when this is, but hopefully within the week, the department's also going to provide a half million dollars to a consultant to help with emergency planning or recovery planning. And one of the emphasis in that activity is to support CUDs. One of the topics, and it's kind of my pet topic, is the relationship between establishing stronger fixed wireless solutions and the ultimate build out of fiber. And I'm hoping that this consultant can work with the CUDs to help us recognize a path or a strategy or some principles to allow for and encourage that medium term path where folks may be getting improved fixed wireless signal, but not to the conclusion of them getting a fixed solution, a fixed wired solution. And then in terms of the auction, the auction has no basis. I mean, the auction was an idea. There is no funding and I don't think the Public Service Department is going to pursue that auction unless they get 100 million dollars, which they're not going to get from the legislature for sure. If they get it from Congress, I think reopens the question as to what the auction auction really is in the relationship to CUDs. I do believe the Public Service Department has a commitment to CUDs. Again, the line that I appreciated Commissioner Tierney voicing was that the CUDs can play the same role that the national level carriers played in terms of telephone service, we are the carrier of last resort. And what that means is we get the public subsidy to provide connections to all of those places that are economically challenging to assist. So again, I think she carries that philosophy with her that that's a role at CUDs play. And so I think some of the pieces, you know, they're working towards but I'm not nearly as discouraged by some of the recent activities as I've been with activities a few months ago. So again, keep your eyes and ears open for the announcements tomorrow. But again, I'm encouraged by what those announcements represent. Okay, Michael. And also I posted something in the chat if you want to take a peek at that. So, I understand Alan's frustration. And, and unfortunately that's sometimes what journalism can do. The purpose of that article that got widespread view was to advance the idea that the NEK collaborative is pushing forward and wants to have some influence on some policy. And so they brought up as both Ken and Jeremy said, they brought up some old policy that may may become real at some point, and pointed out that that policy is probably not best for the communities. That it's not best for the CUDs or the small providers that it might advantage the big providers. And that's what I believe Alan was seeing and was worrying about. I think the purpose of the article was to influence the policy makers, the legislators to move away from that. And it probably had some of that effect. But it also had some errors in the article. You know, those of us who are really in the know about this stuff, often see that there's some misunderstandings. Reporters are not experts in all the fields they report on. And they do their best. And so that article wasn't a perfect representation of the situation. And I'm sorry it had a depressing effect. There may be a reverse auction. It might be really wonderful if only community based providers can participate. Or it might be even better if CUDs are exempted from it or given direct grants, which is something we recommended in the legislature. We'll see. We don't have the state, as Ken said, we just don't have that money. So it's not going to happen. That auction is not happening until Congress appropriates billions, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars for infrastructure. And until the Senate flips, that's not going to happen. So we have to wait. I share Ken's optimism. I think we are moving in the right direction. It's frustratingly slow, but we are. And I think there's going to be, it's not just fixed wireless, it's going to be a lot of fiber coming soon. That's all. Thanks. All right, Chuck. I want to echo Alan's sentiment. But in doing so, I want to point out that I was actually planning on calling together the communications committee next week for explicitly that purpose because it's high time we do another update out to the community. And so look for that coming. Those of you who are members of that, it will likely be later in the week since we do also have another governing board meeting early in the week. But I do want to get something out by end of next week. Early following that address is what we've been up to because it's been about three weeks, three to four weeks, I think, since we sent the last one out. Chuck, let me go ahead and draft up something short that could just be a starting point maybe for us to discuss when you call the communications meeting. You know, while I have this stuff in my head, it might be helpful just to have something on paper to talk about. That would be an absolutely fabulous guiding cornerstone for us to have that conversation. So thank you if you if you are able to put that together would be much appreciated. Yeah, sure. Just give me a couple of days once I get back to back in state, I'll I'll do it and it won't be long. So don't expect much, but I think it would help just to have just to have some some footing under us to begin a discussion. I can do that. Thank you. Thanks, Alan. David. Yeah, Jeremy just posted the link to the governor's budget that he submitted today. And he included in there $2 million for grants to CUDs to be used. I didn't say what to be used for, but we certainly could use it to start our force build. Yeah, that was kind of for matching instead of the NBRC money. Right. So, so kind of a kind of a whiplash of funding right now right like, oh, no, now we're depressed that we didn't get that funding but surprise, we may end up having the funding to to run it after all. So not not all this lost. All right, anything else that folks want to talk about with state and federal funding. I think it would be valuable, given the, the governor's, the budget that I posted in the chat. I think it'd be valuable if you have a favorite legislator or three, make that call. Because the budget's going to get crafted in the next, well, they get that we get back a week from today, and how long are they in session for what two weeks, three weeks, if that. It's going to go fast so get them, get them on the phone, you know, and tell them how important it is that we, that we especially CV fiber get access to this, especially because we did not pull down the northern border money and this is going to set us back quite a bit I think. So, yeah, put on your, your advocate hats and, and do that if you would please. All right, next appointment of an executive director, or maybe going back, Siobhan. Sorry, I just wanted to say, what exactly am I asking to be part of it. I didn't really understand this budget. Sure. Thank you. Sure. So, so, so the governor proposed a budget to the legislature came out today. And some of the some of the things that are listed as is quote unquote governor's initiatives. These are things that he says he wants to spend in the budget should the legislature approve it. And he has $2 million set aside specifically for and I quote from the PDF that I linked there for grant distribution to CUDs for broadband. And I think. Where is that in there, though, I'm not page two. Oh, okay, no mind answered. Sorry. There you go. So that that page two. And yeah, so they hopefully will approve that because that's going to let us that's going to let Kingdom Community broadband that's going to let DB fiber it's going to let a lot of CUDs that are poised that are close that are ready to be able to use that and really start building. So it's very, very encouraging to see that that message. I just hadn't scrolled down. I'm what a newbie error. I'm sorry. So it's all good. It's all good. All right, appointment of an executive director. And so I will turn this back over to you, Siobhan in a second. I don't think that we got the information to you all fast enough to be able to have you make a make a good decision about this. Maybe I'll just talk about how Siobhan made this work. Thank you for all of your work with that by the way that was a lot of stuff done very quickly. Siobhan called references. Siobhan set up all of the all of the interviews. And we kind of talked out all the applicants that that submitted resumes to us and Siobhan and I and Greg sort of individually back and forth or whatever kind of decided on three.  I think they were all good candidates. I think we would be served well by any of them. Siobhan has a ranking because she was the only one to have seen all three of the interviews. I saw two and Greg, you also saw two, right? That's correct. So sent you the should have gotten the the resumes and such. So yeah, Siobhan, if you want to take it from here. One question. If we're going to get into names or any qualities, we should be an executive session. That's that's true. So I was actually just about to say that. Should we go into executive session? So do we need a vote on that? Or do we say we're going in an executive session because we're talking about personnel matters? Yeah, so and then there has to be a vote. Yep. So, so I move that we go into executive session subject to one VSA 313 sub a sub three. Let me paste this into the chat to discuss the appointment employment or evaluation of a public officer employee. In this case, our project manager, we will make any sort of final hiring or appointments outside of executive session, which we may get to that point tonight. It's totally possible. My instinct is that we probably we probably won't unless one of them jumps out at you and you're like, oh yeah, we definitely got to go with them. This is Alan motion to go into executive session for the reason cited by Jeremy. All right, I will second that then. Any further discussion? Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed or that want to do a roll call? Okay, and we are in executive session. So if those folks paray are and Sam Rosenberg. Thank you, Sam and Orca. If you could disconnect now, I don't expect we'll have any action at the end of this. I will I will resume my recording afterwards, but I'm going to go stop the. All right, so we're going to give three minutes starting now to let folks. Let folks come back in. I started the recording. The meeting is unlocked. If anybody would like to rejoin us. They can. Yeah, go ahead. You're going to make sure that somehow we'll be able to see the interviews online. Solve the problem of our not being able because I agree with people who have said it's important for them to actually see the person talking in an interview. That's true for me as well. And I would not want to make a decision or even say I can't choose among them without seeing the interviews. Okay, so just to go to meeting records audio only. Yes, so that's happening there. I still want to at least be able to hear that. Just I want some I want some real contact either through voice or through visual images of the person speaking, because to me body language and the way people speak is really says a lot about them. Tom. Just a question about executive session and chat as far as if someone joins back in as the chat blank for them, but they don't see that we have names listed and so forth. I move. Good ball. I believe they only see the stuff that comes in after. I want to volunteer to drop off and join back in. Yeah, why don't you do that we got a couple we got a minute or so. If you can. I'm just getting the email out just a moment. So, David. Yeah, the only thing I think we ought to need we need to figure out as a group is does this poor person respond to 20 people or is it the executive committee or is it the director. So, so this is this is something that actually got asked in one of the interviews, and the way that the job description was was written is that it would they would respond to the executive committee and or the business development committee would probably one of the things that I said that we would need to do fairly quickly would be to make a concrete decision about a contact policy what's what's the process. So we can't have every one of the delegates sending the person things to do. I mean that happens with town administrators. That's kind of okay when there's five select board members, but when you have a larger city council or something you don't you don't just do that. What's the, what's the verdict Tom and or Chuck. Okay. Yeah, I cannot see anything. Great. All right. All right, so we will wait another minute or two. And as far as what gets recorded. Does the chat show up somewhere that we are saving that for like during regular public portion of the meeting. And so we can tabs on where to stop recording and where to continue recording. Yes, I mean I whoever the organizer is for the go to meeting or whoever the current presenter is gets a copy of the of the chat log and actually it's possible. You have a copy of your of the chat log. If you go it would be in your. It would be in your windows would be in your documents. So just your what that folder being as an rtf file. If it's not in there then it just lives with the organizers and for the record it still says the round three proposals are still set at, although they haven't updated since last week. It's August 21st question for Ken. You can. Did the advisory committee approve the CCI project in Elmore and Wolkett. If they didn't, that it has impact on our wireless project. That's why I'm asking. I can't tell you, we, we approve the same list that the public service department provided us. But take a look at it tomorrow. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm aware, I'm aware of three that were approved for so I thought maybe the list was out so. Oh, okay. Okay, so I think we've given it a solid three minutes. I think Chuck, you left or you sent that at like 738. I've got 741. So if you want to go ahead with your motion, that would be awesome. Okay, motion to table further discussion around candidates for the project management role until next week. Okay, and second, okay, race seconded any further discussion. Okay, all in favor. Opposed or anyone wanting a roll call. Okay, so we'll schedule another meeting for next week. So that is August 25th. Same bat time, same bat place, although it would be a different meeting room. All right, let's, let's, we won't bother with the round table. And I move that we adjourn. Oh, hold on. So, so it's moved in seconded David's going to get the last word. Well, I, we didn't bring up, we had a meeting with work last week and I'm saying we're making progress. I think they're getting closer. But I think they're probably going to end up just running the fiber and not doing any connections. The good news is they need fiber to go to every house so they can keep the meters and the whatever. So it's an interesting hybrid that we may end up building while working with them. Anyway, I'll leave it there. Cool. All right. Anything else? All in favor. All right. Okay. And unless they're opposed.


What's going on, you guys? Welcome to the Single Guy Channel. My name is Lloyd. Today we're going to be talking about when she says she's always busy.  Okay? So what do you do in this scenario? So I'm going to be covering three things. I'm going to be covering number one, what to do or what she actually means when she says she's busy. I'm going to cover how to reduce the amount of times that she's going to say this. And then number three, I'm going to give you how to probably escape this problem altogether. Okay? And we'll talk about how to do that. Okay? So let's get into it. When she says she's busy, is she actually busy? Well, I don't know. I can't read minds, but probably not. Okay? Usually, if a girl says she's busy, maybe she's interested or maybe she is busy, but those little excuses that if she was going for a guy that was like she was super into, probably wouldn't come up. Okay? She has to wake up early for work tomorrow. She really liked you? Do you think she could spend one day where she gets maybe five or six hours of sleep instead of eight? Yeah, probably. Okay? If she was really, really into you, could she postpone that project and maybe work on it tomorrow? Yeah, she probably could. Okay? So there's a lot of times where a girl says she's busy where she's actually not.  Okay? We live in the 21st century. People are going to be busy a lot. Now, there are times, though, where a guy is asking a girl out in the wrong way, where he's saying things like, hey, he immediately asks them out and then they just start thinking about all the things that they have to do that day and then they suddenly become busy. Okay? But there is a way to ask people out, to progress things, the relationship and a direction that's going to be positive without encountering these issues quite as much. Okay? And the first thing that you have to do is stop immediately going for a meetup with time or a date or saying, hey, let's just hang out. What you want to do is you want to get her schedule first, okay? You want to reduce the amount of nose that she get when you're going for the meetup. So what do I mean by this? The typical guy, when they ask a girl out, they'll usually be like, hey, are you free Monday? Oh, no. Okay, cool. Are you free Tuesday night? Oh, okay, cool. What about Wednesday night? He's already gotten three nos. This girl is getting used to rejecting this guy. What he should have done instead was say, hey, what are you up to this week? So ask her what she's up to this week. She says, well, I have to work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, but Thursday evening, maybe I'm free. Or maybe she doesn't say anything on Thursday. So then ask her, then say, hey, what's going on with you Thursday? And if she says, oh, nothing, then that's when you start to make the plans. And I would open with something like, okay, so you're free Thursday. Well, don't say that. You could say, so now that you know that she's free Thursday, you say, oh, wine or beer? What do you prefer, wine or beer? Another one that works, too, is you could say, how do you feel about sunshine and rooftops? That's one that I've used before. Watch my stuff. Okay. Basically, this is a question that she can't say no to. Everybody loves sunshine and rooftops. Most people do. Maybe some people don't, but like 99% of the population loves sunshine and rooftops. Okay. You ask wine or beer, that's more of either or question. It's not something that she's going to say no to. So you basically reduce the amount of no's that you get. Now, whatever she chooses, she's already kind of put herself in a position where she's probably going to say yes to the next thing that you suggest. Okay. You know she's free on Thursday.  Now you just have to come up with a plan. So, cool. Well, there's this cool wine bar that we can go to. They have happy hour on Thursday nights, and that could be a great plan. Okay. Maybe you could word it as I would be maybe a little bit more descriptive. I would say, well, there's this cool wine bar that opened up. They have this special that goes on from seven to nine. Would love to hear all about your travels during that time. Okay. So, a lot of what's preventing girls from meeting up isn't necessarily that they're busy, but it's the fear that they might miss something. It's the fear of going on a date. There's a lot of fears involved.   But the way I led into it was asking her and getting her schedule first. Okay. So a lot of guys, what they'll do is they'll go in. They won't do it by that way. So that reduces a lot of those things. Okay. So, but even if she's saying at this point that she's busy and you're going by this format and she's still not, she's still saying that she's busy at those times, you got to move on, man. I don't care if this girl has said she likes you.   You got to stop looking at your life as, oh, is this girl, does this girl like me? Can I be appealing to this girl? No, put yourself first, dude. Put yourself first and make sure that you're bringing women into your life that makes sense for you. For me, even if a girl likes me, if she won't meet up and her schedule's too inconvenient for me, she's going to have to do something to go out with me. I'm not going to break my back for somebody because I like them. Liking is easy.  So even if you don't have that right now, I encourage you to have this mentality where you can spend your time going after girls that are always busy or never making time for you or you can go after other girls who won't be giving you this objection. And I would recommend the latter far more than the former. So hopefully this helps you guys. If you've made it to the consider subscribing, I come out with videos like this every single week. I just had some one-on-one coaching spots open up. So if you're a guy who wants to get personally mentored by me, shoot me, actually, fill out the form down below in the description. There's a link to the form. Click on the link, fill out the form and if you're a great fit, we'll get back to you. Thanks a lot, you guys. Good luck out there.


Hi, everyone and welcome. My name is Courtney Collins and I'm the Assistant Director in the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law School. And I would like to welcome you to the 2021 Hot Topics in Environmental Law Summer Lecture Series. We are pleased to welcome viewers today. Today's talk is worth one Vermont CLD credit, so please keep track of which talks you are attending. There will be time for Q&A after today's presentation, so please feel free to enter your question into the chat box from where you are watching at any point during the lecture. And we'll get through as many questions as we can in the remaining time today. Today we are very pleased to welcome Pamela King. Pamela leads E&E news coverage of environmental litigation at the Supreme Court and beyond. She has previously covered energy law with the Interior Department's oil and gas policies. She has reported on the U.S. shale boom and bust and its impact on the economy, communities and the environment, and she has traveled across the country to document the ripple effects of fossil fuel extraction. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northeastern University and the master's degree in environmental resource policy from George Washington University. Pamela is one of Vermont Law School's 2021 Summer Media Fellows and has been with us here on campus for the past two weeks, and she was selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants. Today she is presenting from Ginsburg to Barrett how 2020 transformed environmental battles at the Supreme Court. We are very pleased to welcome Pamela King today and please join me in welcoming her. Thank you so much Courtney for that really nice introduction. And thank you to Vermont Law School for having me here this summer. I'm going to see if I can just jump right in here and share some of my slides. Today we're going to talk about what we know about how the replacement of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Justice Amy Coney Barrett has already or may soon affect environmental disputes that make their way up to the Supreme Court. My goal is for everyone here to get a really broad understanding of how the court shift to a conservative majority or to a deeper conservative majority will affect efforts by the Biden administration and future administrations to introduce really strong environmental regulation and to get climate change under control. But I'd also like everyone to come away with a nuanced view of how we can't perfectly predict how justices will vote in any given case based on their ideology.  I'm not a lawyer and I know that many others here aren't. So for those of you who don't know how things work at the Supreme Court. The typical case comes up as a petition appealing a decision by a lower court and throughout the course of its term which runs from about October to June sort of like a school year. The court either grants or rejects the petitions that come its way. And it takes a vote of four justices to grant a petition. The court only grants about like 1% of cases that come before it. So once a case is granted it's then briefed and it moves to oral argument which during non coven times is a really special thing for a reporter to cover cameras aren't allowed in the courtroom. There's no audio there is audio available but it comes a few days later. Electronics are allowed even for journalists, which means that we have to you know frantically write things down by hand in a notebook as fast as we can during arguments and hope that we have an unobstructed view of the justices so that we can tell who's talking. And then you run back frantically to the press room to file by deadline. It's really tough, but it's one of the best parts of the job. So, each argument lasts about an hour and the justices are talking not only with the lawyers arguing the cases, but also with each other. And all of this obviously looks a lot different since the pandemic and we're going to talk a little bit about that later. Arguments are the only public window into what the justices are thinking about a case until an opinion is issued, and lots of legal experts are really good at analyzing arguments to figure out how the justices might be thinking about ruling in the case. But you know those predictions aren't always correct. And then we wait for opinions after argument. And those opinions, opinions are released throughout the term up to late June or early July, and bigger decisions come at the end of the term. We got the Supreme Court's last opinions for the current term to this morning. Okay, so with all of that background out of the way, let's dig in. So to understand where we are now, I want to first look back to where we were last term. Last term was the 2019 term, which ran from fall 2019 to summer 2020. And during the 2019 term the court's nine justices were Chief Justice John Roberts, you can see here at the top, and four associate justices who were appointed by Republican presidents. So we have Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh. You can see their photos here in these top two rows on this slide. The four liberal justices were Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Ginsburg was the court's eldest justice at the time. And she's a liberal icon. She was known primarily for her advocacy for women's rights. But as we'll talk about in this presentation, she was also a reliable vote for environmental interests. This term was also the first time the court started conducting remote oral arguments because of the COVID-19 pandemic. And again, we'll get to that a little bit more later. So the 2019 term had a few significant cases that either dealt directly with environmental issues or had a big impact on environmental law. Environmental cases can touch issues ranging from clean air and clean water to land ownership. The parties can be environmental groups, landowners, states, the federal government, companies. So these are the cases, a few of the cases we saw last term on these particular environmental issues. County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund was a clean water act case, and it dealt with the scope of the statute. And whether it covers groundwater or pollution that moves through groundwater on its way to a water body such as the Pacific Ocean, that, you know, absolutely falls under this umbrella of clean water act protections. And the answer is, it depends. This was a six to three opinion led by Breyer. And, you know, as a side note, this was a particularly fun argument to watch. As Breyer sort of came up with his test for determining whether this pollution falls under the Clean Water Act, sort of on the spot in the case. He came up with this functional equivalent test which Robert's actually interjected during argument to ask Breyer to define. And Breyer got the chance to do that in the opinion for the case. He sort of set out these, you know, seven factors for determining whether this pollution falls under the Clean Water Act. And whether this ruling results in more regulation or less is still to be determined, but environmentalists when the decision came out really cleaned it as a win. And a surprising one at that from a court that was again, remember, dominated by conservatives was a five to four conservative majority. So they were expecting that the court could potentially say, you know, no, this pollution is not covered under the Clean Water Act. Roberts and Kavanaugh joined the liberal justices to create the six member majority in this case. Atlantic Richfield v. Christian was an environmental cleanup case. It asked whether landowners near a superfund site could sue for cleanup beyond what EPA had planned for a site in Montana. In a seven to two decision led by Roberts, the court said yes, if the landowners have EPA's blessing. McGirt v versus Oklahoma was a tribal lands case. And this is one of those cases that wasn't strictly environmental, but it could have major implications for environmental regulation. In a five four decision by Gorsuch, the court found that about half of Oklahoma is still tribal reservation land was a huge win for the tribe, and stakeholders are still sorting out what that means for regulation of say, the oil and gas industry in the the DACA case Department of Homeland Security the regions. This is an interesting one you know why are we talking about DACA and a presentation on environmental issues. Well this particular case centered on the administrative procedure act, which governs federal rulemaking and is central to environmental law. The reason the law of agency rulemaking is so crucial to environmental law is because the environmental disputes that we see in the courts really tend to be these battles over rules from EPA the interior department and other agencies that deal with environmental issues. The DACA case was a five to four decision led by Roberts, who was joined here by the courts liberal wing, and he said that the Trump administration needed to do a better job of explaining why it had rolled back. This Obama era policy that had allowed about 700,000 people known as dreamers to apply for two years of deportation protection as well as other benefits. This was a huge ruling and came as a surprise to many, again, considering the ideology, the ideological majority of the court at the time. Pipelines crossing the Appalachian Trail Atlantic coast pipeline, the cow pasture river preservation Association. This was a huge case in the environmental world, although it ended up having pretty limited impact in a seven to two The Supreme Court sided with developers of the Atlantic coast natural gas pipeline on its argument that the federal government had properly issued this permit for the project to cross the Appalachian Trail in Virginia. This refers to decision by a lower court. Thomas wrote the majority opinion, which was in favor of the pipeline and Ginsburg joined the majority in this case. The pipeline's win was short lived. The project was canceled later due to ongoing economic and regulatory concerns. So that was a lot of information to take in. And so what does this all mean. The takeaway from the 2019 term was that this was very much the Roberts court. He's the ideological center here. He voted with the majority in 97% of cases during the 2019 term, according to statistics from SCOTUS blog. Roberts had a major role as a swing vote when the court still had this five for conservative majority majority last time less term. As you saw in some cases like the Maui Clean Water Act case that we just talked about Roberts could bring along another conservative justice like Kavanaugh to build a bigger majority alongside the liberal wing. So court wrapped up the 2019 term early last summer, and it was just on the verge of coming back for the 2019 for the 2020 term, which is the current term. When on September 18 2020 justice Ginsburg died. The world was rocked by this news and questions immediately sprung up about what the loss of Ginsburg would mean for the court, especially if President Trump were allowed to choose her replacement. So before you get to get to Ginsburg replacement, I want to dig in a bit on her environmental legacy. She's also, she's obviously well known for issues outside of the environmental realm, but again for the purposes of this presentation we're looking at, you know, how did she come down in environmental cases. And I've highlighted three key cases here. One is significant ruling for the environment. Ginsburg gave environmentalists a voice in court. Standing for those who are not familiar is a legal doctrine that courts use to determine whether a challenger in a case has the power to file its lawsuit in the first place. Basically it's a test to determine whether a party suffered an injury or harm from a regulation or development or whatever it is that's at issue in the case. If a judge thinks a party in the case doesn't have standing, that judge is going to toss out the lawsuit without ever reaching the court issue in the challenge. So in the 2000 case Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw environmental services, Ginsburg led a 72 decision that said environmentalists had standing to seek penalties against the company that was spewing pollution into a South Carolina river. A lower court had dismissed the case as moot because the company was no longer polluting the river. And it found that Friends of the Earth could not show that they were suffering an injury because the pollution had stopped. But Ginsburg said that the company could restart its operations and the pollution at any time. And she said that Friends of the Earth had raised significant concerns about the impact of the pollution on recreational aesthetic and economic interests. So the ruling was a landmark decision. And it came at a time when the conservative justice Antonin Scalia was on a campaign to block environmental groups from bringing their lawsuits to court. Scalia was a close personal friend of Ginsburg's, although they were ideological opposites. He wrote the dissent in Laidlaw and he said that the majority led by Ginsburg had created watered down requirements for initial standing. Ginsburg also played a key role in two major greenhouse gas emission cases. She was in the majority in Massachusetts versus EPA, which said that EPA could regulate greenhouse gas emissions as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. This decision was crucial because a lot of our environmental statutes were written in the 60s and the 70s when climate change wasn't on our radar in the way that it is today. So while the Clean Air Act doesn't explicitly address greenhouse gas emissions, it is one of the few tools at EPA's disposal to really get at this pressing issue of global climate change. And Congress is highly unlikely to pass new climate legislation. And this issue of regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act is an issue that I'm going to keep coming back to during this presentation. So with Ginsburg's death, Breyer is the only member of the 5-4 majority in Massachusetts versus EPA who still sits on the court. And some environmentalists have raised concerns that this landmark case could eventually be overturned, although other legal experts have said, you know, that's unlikely. Ginsburg also wrote the unanimous opinion in American Electric Power versus Connecticut, which came after Massachusetts versus EPA. The ruling said that the Clean Air Act and EPA action displace any federal common law right to seek reduction of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel fired power plants. This decision, as we'll discuss later, is coming up in a growing body of climate liability lawsuits. In which state and local governments are suing the oil and gas industry to try to get them to pay for flooding, wildfires and other climate impacts that local governments are now experiencing and have to pay to address. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. So Ginsburg's dying wish was that she not be replaced until the new president was installed. And I'm sure you'll all remember that the general election between Trump and Biden was underway at this point. Some people were already recalling Senate Republican stonewalling of Merrick Garland as President Obama's choice to replace Scalia when he died in 2016. Republican leaders said back in 2016 that, you know, Garland couldn't come forward because, you know, primary was already underway in an election election year. You know, Garland was never confirmed. And Trump prevailed over Clinton later in 2016 and Trump later nominated or such for that open seat on the Supreme Court. Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett just one week after Ginsburg died. Barrett had served on the Seventh Circuit, which is a federal appeals court in the Midwest for she had been on that court for about three years at the point she was nominated. And she had been an academia before that. So because of her limited record as a judge, figuring out what kind of justice Barrett would be was a little tough. And, you know, this is the kind of prognosticating that happens after a justice is nominated. People wanted to know how Barrett would rule on gun rights access to abortion and other key issues. So they're looking back at her prior decisions and writings to see what she might have said before. Over at any of course we were particularly focused on how she could come down in environmental cases. So immediately after Barrett was nominated she's pictured here in the center comparisons to Ginsburg began who's over here on the left. You might naturally expect those comparisons since Barrett is replacing Ginsburg. But there were also comparisons of Barrett to her mentor Scalia who's pictured here on the right. Barrett clerked for him in the late 90s. And in her nomination speech Barrett said Scalia's judicial philosophy is hers too. And we're going to talk about that a little bit more in just a second. Like many Trump appointed judges. Barrett was relatively young. She was in her late 40s when she was nominated. And remember that federal judges and Supreme Court justices serve lifetime terms. So you know all of the judges and justices that are appointed to these courts are on the courts pretty much for life. And you know that includes the three Supreme Court justices that Trump appointed Gorsuch Kavanaugh and Barrett and the more than 200 federal judges that he picked during his four years in office. So that's part of what people are talking about when they talk about Trump's lasting impact on the federal courts, including the Supreme Court. So this connection between Barrett and Scalia that I mentioned just a second ago becomes a key sticking point for environmentalists because Scalia particularly later in his career. Had a really restrictive view of how far federal agencies could go to regulate, say pollution under the Clean Water Act or greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Scalia described himself as a textualist, which means that he interpreted statutes like the Clean Air Act according to the ordinary meaning of their text. While textualism is often espoused by conservative jurists. It doesn't have to result in an outcome that might be thought to align with any particular ideology. So for example, some of you may remember that Gorsuch, another Trump appointee and a textualist led a six to three opinion in this case. And this was a major win for the LGBTQ community in and of itself, but some legal experts also suggested at the time that Bostock could lay the groundwork for a favorable ruling perhaps on the question of whether the Clean Air Act can be read to encompass regulation of greenhouse gas emission. But, you know, that remains to be seen. One of the first concerns environmentalists raised after Barrett's nomination was whether she would take a restrictive view of standing. You'll remember that that's an issue that Ginsburg had a very expansive view of in the laid-law case. So environmentalists were concerned about this issue because of Barrett's ruling as a Seventh Circuit judge in the 2020 case protect our parks, the Chicago Park District. The case involved an attempt by a park preservation group in Chicago residents to block construction of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago's Jackson Park. Barrett wrote that the challenger's lack of standing pulls the rug out from under their arguments. Perhaps one of the biggest concerns that came up during Barrett's confirmation hearings was how she would decide cases involving climate change. During her confirmation hearings, Barrett received some questions about climate change, but she wouldn't make a definitive statement about climate science. And that led many people to raise fresh concerns over whether she would vote to overturn major climate precedent, like the Massachusetts versus EPA case that we discussed earlier in the presentation. As a note of comparison, Kavanaugh and Roberts have acknowledged the reality of climate change to conservative justices. So the 2020 term begins in October 2020. Barrett is swiftly confirmed to the Supreme Court and she's hearing cases by November 2020. And her addition to the court creates a 6-3 conservative majority and deludes the power that Roberts had as a swing vote. As you'll recall, we saw a couple examples of that in the 2019 term. The three liberal justices are shown here in the first row of photos, and the court's six conservative justices are at bottom. Another important reminder, it takes the vote of four justices to even hear a case in the first place, the first place. And you know, the court doesn't hear every case that comes its way. So the liberal wing just has three members now, and it needs a conservative ally just to accept a case in the first place. So you remember that the 2019 term, we very much had the Roberts Court. Now Brett Kavanaugh is the ideological center of the court. He was in the majority of 97% of cases in the current term. According to statistics on SCOTUS blog, I don't know if today's opinion releases change those numbers at all. But it's, you know, Kavanaugh 97% of the time, followed by Roberts, followed by Barrett. Kavanaugh as the court's ideological center means the court has made a significant shift to the right. So now instead of just winning over Roberts, environmental advocates have to win over Kavanaugh or another conservative justice to build a majority in their favor. There are two reasons, major reasons that a Kavanaugh court may be bad news for environmentalists. A Kavanaugh court may not vote in favor of EPA action to curb climate change, such as the Obama era Clean Power Plan governing carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Back when he was a judge for the DC Circuit, Kavanaugh actually heard oral argument on the Clean Power Plan. The DC Circuit never reached a final decision on the regulation because the Trump administration eventually scrapped it. But Kavanaugh said at the time that he thought the Clean Air Act was a thin statute that wasn't designed to address climate change. The Kavanaugh court could also be bad news for expansive readings of the Clean Water Act. Although Kavanaugh joined Roberts and the liberal wing in that Maui ruling, the Clean Water Act ruling that we discussed from the 2019 term. And again, environmental groups saw that one as kind of a win for them. But Kavanaugh did write a concurring opinion in that case that favored a more restrictive view of which of the nation's waters were eligible for Clean Water Act protections. And again, that narrow view of the statute would restrict the federal government's regulatory reach over the nation's waters. So the 2020 term, which is the current term, was Barrett's first on the court. And, you know, people immediately wanted to know how is she settling in? How is she going to rule in these big cases that are coming up? One place to start judging a first term justice is by examining her questioning style. That's been a tough task or a tougher task during the 2020 term. Because remember the court's still hearing oral argument virtually. The images you see here are screenshots from C-SPAN audio broadcasts of this term's remote oral argument. When arguments are in person, the lawyer who's arguing before the court has about two minutes to make his or her case before the justices begin peppering them with questions. It's always interesting and informative to see which justice asked the first question and to see which justices engage a certain point or hypothetical as it's being posed. In the remote argument format, the justices each have a few minutes to ask questions and they go in order of seniority starting with the Chief Justice. Arguments are no longer held at the court. Instead, they're broadcast on C-SPAN for everyone to hear. For me, all of this makes for a more organized reporting experience. I can type my notes instead of scribbling them in a notebook. I can make a recording. I can even write my story while arguments are happening. But it's much less fun. And it has made it a little bit more difficult for legal experts to sort of read the tea leaves after arguments. And in this particular term, it's made it a little tougher to get that early sense of how Barrett was really settling into the court. Although I will say there were still predictions of course after arguments and cases. I'll also say that the remote argument format has been a plus in terms of access to the court and there is a big push from some groups to keep this level of public access. During normal times, there are only about 50 seats reserved for members of the public to attend oral argument. And you'll see a big line outside of the court when a really high profile case like the DACA case comes through. And if you don't make it inside, you have to rely on media coverage of what happened. Or we have to track down a transcript of the argument or audio. And that could be hours or days after the argument. Another side note, the remote argument format has allowed us to hear much, much more from Justice Thomas, who usually stays silent during arguments. In my couple years of attending oral argument in person, I don't think I ever heard him ask a single question. Over the years, Thomas has offered several reasons for why he doesn't ask questions during in-person argument, which he says are too chaotic with everyone talking over each other. But he really appears to like the format of remote oral argument where he's the second justice to ask questions behind the chief and the justices aren't talking over one another. So what did we learn about Barrett's impact from this term's opinions in environmental cases?  The short answer is no. Although caveat that we did have two pretty big six to three conservative versus liberal rulings this morning. And on Arizona voting laws and California donor disclosure requirements. So those are fresh as of today. But again, we're talking about environmental cases here. The first case Barrett heard as a justice was Fish and Wildlife Service versus Sierra Club, which dealt with access to government records supporting a 2014 EPA rule on cooling water intake structures at power plants. Interestingly, farming and forestry industry groups that typically fight the Sierra Club in court aligned with the Sierra Club here. And they were calling. They were also calling for access to those records underpinning that EPA rule or not necessarily that rule. But they wanted access to records that could potentially inform stakeholders about how federal rules are going to affect their business. But the court in a 72 opinion led by Barrett said that Sierra Club couldn't get a hold of the records. There were a few unanimous opinions, which don't tell us a whole lot about Barrett's impact on the court, although the cases themselves were very important. There were a couple of interstate water wars between Texas and New Mexico and Georgia and Florida over river flows. Those cases don't tend to divide the court along ideological lines. I've noted both of those cases here as nine to zero. Texas and New Mexico was technically eight to zero, I believe, because Barrett wasn't on the court when that case was argued and she didn't participate in the decision. The court also issued a unanimous ruling in favor of Guam, which is a US territory in the Pacific. Guam was trying to sue the federal government for help paying with a really expensive cleanup of a former US military waste dump on the island. The US had said Guam had run out of time to make that request and the Supreme Court ultimately sided with Guam. This term, the closest the Supreme Court got to addressing climate change was in a case that really wasn't about climate at all, and this is that seven to one decision that's noted in the middle of this list on the slide. I'm going to do my best to give you all of the top line details of this case, which is BP versus Marin City Council of Baltimore, but it's pretty complicated. And if you're really interested in taking a deep dive on this one, you should check out Vermont Law School Professor Pat Parenthose hot topic last week that really dug in on this case and other climate liability lawsuits. So years ago, Baltimore sued BP and other companies in one of these climate liability lawsuits. I believe there's more than 20 of these cases nationwide. Baltimore, as other state and local governments have argued, says the oil companies owe the city money for the flooding and extreme storms and other impacts that has suffered as a result of climate change. They say, you know, oil and gas activity is a huge driver of climate change and companies should therefore have to pay. It'll be a long, long time before the courts really get to this issue of whether the oil and gas industry does in fact have to pay. First, the courts must work out where the cases will play out. Baltimore and other local governments have brought these cases in state courts. But, but, you know, because of that American electric power.  Federal courts across the country have rejected the oil industry's arguments and send the cases back to state courts. So industry lawyers went to the Supreme Court and asked the justices to consider a very tiny procedural issue that would essentially give the companies a new shot at arguing for federal jurisdiction. The companies also slipped in an argument that said all of these types of cases should automatically land in federal court, where again, industry might stand a better chance of winning. The Supreme Court didn't take up that question. But in a seven to one ruling, the justices did agree to the industry's procedural request. The bottom line is that these cases can now go back to federal appeals courts for further proceedings. This adds significant time and cost for all the parties involved. And we're still nowhere near getting getting a definitive answer from the courts on whether oil companies can be held financially responsible for climate impacts. The decision is seven to one, not eight to one or seven to because Justice Alito didn't participate in the argument. He holds stock in Conoco Phillips, which is one of the companies involved in the case. There were also calls for Barrett to recuse herself due to her father's work for Shell, another one of the companies involved in the case. She didn't do that. And she voted with the majority in favor of industry's procedural argument. But you know, as you can see from the vote breakdown, she wasn't like the crucial fifth vote or anything like that. We did get six to three rulings into environmental cases. Cedar Point versus Hasid was a property takings case that resulted in a six to three opinion that divided the court along its ideological lines. So those six conservative justices versus the three liberals. The conservative wing sided with a California strawberry grower who said Union organizers had violated his property rights when they came on his farm to recruit workers. There was a six to three ruling in the big biofuels case, Holly frontier versus renewable fuels association, but it wasn't the six to three ideological breakdown you might have expected. It was the six men of the court versus the three women. The majority opinion, which was a rule, which was a win for small oil refineries said that they small refineries could claim an exemption, still claim an exemption to biofield blending requirements that the refineries said were too costly. And Barrett rejected that argument. And she wrote the dissent in that case. Another case with a with a bizarre lineup of justices. Justice votes was pennies versus New Jersey, which dealt with a natural gas pipelines ability to seize state lands in New Jersey to build its project in a five to four opinion led by Roberts, the court sided with pennies and Barrett actually led the dissent in that case, saying that she would have ruled against the pipeline. This case was a weird mix of, you know, ideological issues so on one side of the case you have a pipeline and on the other on the other side of the case you have, you know states rights which is another huge conservative issue. This case is additionally complicated because, you know, although the majority opinion here was pro pipeline legal experts say the decision could be good news for developers of transmission lines that could support renewable energy. So, again, a lot of information but the takeaway here is that the court under Roberts leadership is trying very hard to avoid a bunch of six to three ideological rulings. Again, we saw a couple today. So remote for the most part we saw these really interesting, you know, vote breakdowns where conservative justices are aligning with liberals and vice versa. I'll also note that the cases in the 2020 term weren't these blockbuster environmental battles that people were really worried about during Barrett's confirmation. Those cases are still to come. Another point here standing as you'll recall was another one of the major concerns about Barrett's nomination. The court hasn't weighed in this term on whether environmentalists have standing, but as a quick note, the court did just reject a challenge to the Affordable Care Act on standing grounds. The prior led the 7 to 2 opinion in this case, which said Republican led states did not have standing for their challenge against the Affordable Care Act. Barrett joined the majority opinion rejecting the state's standings. But it's not clear whether this case will have implications for environmental standing standing for environmentalists could come up with a Supreme Court. If the young climate activists involved in the Juliana versus United States case end up filing a petition later this year. In case you're not familiar with the dispute 21 young people, including Kelsey Rose Juliana, who's pictured in the foreground here, sued the federal government during the Obama administration, arguing that fossil fuel should be phased out in the interest of preserving a healthy climate for future generations. The case has gone through a lot of twists and turns, but the Ninth Circuit, which is a federal appeals court on the West Coast, said last year that while it was extremely sympathetic to the young challengers claims, the courts the courts weren't the right venue to resolve this climate question. They said that job falls to the political branches, meaning Congress in the White House. This was a big blow for the younger the young climate activists, you know, not only because it was a loss for them, but also because you know Congress as we discussed before seems unlikely to pass climate legislation and while the White House may address climate, that action could be challenged in court, and it also kind of depends on which administration is in place. Many environmental lawyers have said that the Ninth Circuit loss was the best outcome the young people could have hoped for, and to let the issue rest, rather than bringing the case to a conservative Supreme Court. But our children's trust the law firm behind the lawsuit has said they plan to move forward with a Supreme Court petition if it comes to that, and they still have some time before they have to file that petition. There are also some simultaneously some lower court proceedings in which the young challengers are asking a lower court for permission to narrow their argument in the hopes of getting, you know, kind of a fresh shot at this in the lower courts and to avoid going to the Supreme Court. There was a hearing on that issue I think last week. So that's still that's still going on. And that lower court judge has also asked the young people in the Biden administration to try to settle the case. The Biden administration, which like the Trump and Obama administrations before it has pushed back against these Juliana climate claims. And during that hearing last week that I just mentioned on that issue of, you know, the kids amending their original complaint. The Biden Justice Department raised the Supreme Court standing precedent in the Affordable Care Act case as an argument for why the kids involved in the Juliana case might lack standing for their climate for their climate claims. So, again, we'll see what happens with that. Another thing to watch next term is what the Supreme Court does with a new set of petitions from Republican led states and coal companies, asking the justices to reverse a DC circuit ruling right at the end of the Trump administration on EPA's carbon rule. The DC circuit ruling overturned the affordable clean energy rule what, which was Trump's regulation, essentially gutting the Obama era clean power plan. The states and coal companies are asking the Supreme Court to review EPA's authority, excuse me, to regulate greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide. The justices haven't said yet whether they will take up the issue. Remember they don't take every case. But some folks are worried that this matter will be an attractive one to the conservative justices. And this has the potential to be one of the most important climate cases of our time if it does come up to the Supreme Court. Conservative groups also want the Supreme Court to examine sooner rather than later this ongoing question of which wetlands and water bodies are considered waters of the United States or voters subject to Clean Water Act regulation. The Obama administration had a broad voters definition. The Trump administration had a narrow one. Biden is expected to offer yet another definition. And eventually this will all be challenged in court. It has been challenged in court already, but it's just a matter of, you know, when it makes its way up to the Supreme Court. Conservative groups have said they think they might have the best shot at locking in a narrow definition like the one Trump favored if the issue comes before the current lineup of Supreme Court justices. So what is the court's future look like. There's a lot of anger from progressives about how Barrett's nomination was handled and Kavanaugh and Gorsuch's nominations before that. That nomination, again, was particularly controversial because, you know, it occurred right at the end of what turned out to be the end of Trump's term and during a general election, despite Republicans saying in 2016 that Obama couldn't put forward garland because, you know, the primary was underway in 2020 Republican lawmakers said, you know, this year's different from 2016, because in 2020, the White House and the Senate were in the control of the same political party. This term, it allowed them to get Barrett confirmed, but it has only deepened this increasingly partisan divide that we're seeing around judicial nominations. But as I mentioned before, despite this, you know, political fury, or maybe because of it, Roberts appears to be working really hard to keep finding the middle. And this term has shown that other justices like Kavanaugh and Barrett are willing to work for the middle to. So it's unclear, you know, what turn they'll take if these really big meaty environmental questions, you know, such as federal regulation of climate change make their way to the court in the coming years. There are also calls to add more Supreme Court justices to dilute Trump's impact on the court. The court has had more justices and fewer justices before in the past. The current number seems unlikely. Biden has convened a bipartisan commission to examine the federal court system overall. And we're waiting to see what comes of that. Breyer, who's now the court's oldest justice and one of the three remaining liberals is facing calls from progressive groups to step down while a Democrat is in office. Justice Ginsburg faced similar calls when Obama was in office. An opportunity to replace Breyer wouldn't give Biden the chance to shift the court's ideology, but it could help avoid an even deeper entrenchment of the current conservative majority. But justices are independent and they want to be seen as above the political fray, even if they're often right in the midst of it. This is what Breyer had to say about the matter during a lecture earlier this year. The public sees judges as politicians and robes, its confidence in the courts and in the rule of law itself can only diminish, diminishing the court's power, including its power to act as a check on the other branches. Before I close, I want to give a special thanks to Francis Chung, our photographer at E&E News, who took many of the photos I've used throughout this presentation, including this one here at the Supreme Court. Thank you all so much for listening this afternoon and thank you again Vermont Law School for having me here this summer. We do have a few minutes and we are going to take some questions from the audience as a reminder for those of you who are watching on our website live stream. You can click on the icon at the bottom of the video to bring up the big screen and chat box where you can log in to add your question there. Or if you are watching on our Facebook live stream, you can add your question to the comment box below and we will try to get through as many as we can in the time that we have left. Okay, so our first question that we have is, Pamela, what are you hearing about the likelihood of President Biden expanding the number of justices that sit on the Supreme Court? Yeah, that's definitely something that's being raised as one possible solution to kind of counteract this impact that Trump has had on the court. It seems unlikely that Biden would do it, but as I mentioned in the presentation, he has convened this bipartisan commission. And people have talked about that as an expansion of court as one possibility to result from that commission's analysis. Again, it doesn't seem super likely to me. Yes, thank you. Our next question is, Justice Roberts becoming the centrist of the court has been somewhat unexpected compared to what we heard when he was nominated. Are you seeing any trends that are surprising for the new justices that have been nominated by Trump? Well, like I said, according to those statistics from SCOTUS blog of how the justices, you know, were how many times they had voted with the majority during the current term. Kavanaugh is at the top. And he's followed right behind by Roberts and Barrett. There does seem to be this sort of like three justice voting block forming with Roberts and Kavanaugh and Barrett trying to find, you know, really the center of the court. They're all very pragmatic.  So, you know, it's hard sometimes to get a real sense of someone right off the bat, and we'll learn more about her as she settles into the court. Thank you. Do you think the revised format for arguments and questioning during COVID? Do you think that that could result in different decisions than would normally happen in person? That's interesting. This isn't something I thought about a lot. My guess is that the court is, you know, determined to operate as much as, you know, business as usual as possible. In fact, you know, I'm sure there's a huge push among the justices to get back to in person arguments as soon as possible. Again, I really don't know. A lot of the court's operations really happen behind the curtain. But I do wonder if there's some of that, you know, negotiation and discussion between the justices that, you know, about cases that might, you know, be easier for them to do once they're in person again. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see. And maybe it's something that reveals itself over time, depending on whether or not, you know, these COVID policies remain in place versus going back to normal sooner than not. So I guess we'll have to wait and see with that one. All right, our next question is, do you have any takeaways about the temperament of this set of justices based on the cases that they have chosen not to take? Oh, that's interesting. Let me see if I can think of any in the environmental realm. No, but like I mentioned, it'll be really interesting to watch those petitions that I mentioned in the presentation about the DC circuits rejection of the Trump administration's affordable clean energy rule. If they don't take up that case, that could say something interesting. If they do take it up that could say something interesting as well. Yeah. All right, I think we have time for one more question. The question is, are there particular areas of environmental law that you think are more likely to be areas of agreement among the liberal and conservative justices? Yeah, I mentioned the pennies case during the presentation and how that was, you know, an interesting conflict between energy development and states rights. We see that a lot in some of the environmental cases, and that's often a way to sort of position an environmental issue, you know, such as the environmental cleanups case that I mentioned from the 2019 term. That was really about whether landowners could, you know, sue in the state courts for additional cleanup. And, you know, I think the Montana Supreme Court in that case, it said that the landowners could sue, if I remember bring all the details correctly. And so that's kind of like, that's a pro environment decision, but that's also, you know, a state powers decision, which the conservative justices are seemingly more likely to go for. Thank you. All right, it looks like we are out of time and need to wrap up today's talk so I want to thank you again Pamela for your presentation today and also for joining us on campus for the past two weeks. And thank you to our viewers who joined us today as well. As a reminder, the law school is closed next week for summer break and so we are going to take a pause from our hot topics lecture series next week. And we will be back on Tuesday, July 13 here at noon for our next talk and we hope that you can join us then. Thanks everyone.