Good morning everyone. This is the house committee on government operations military affairs and we are picking up our work on the miscellaneous ethics bill. This is the draft request two four zero two two nine and we're here to take a look at draft three point two to think. Tim has been working diligently on to capture some of our thoughts from last week. So thanks for walking us through the new year. You're very welcome to McCarthy. Thank you very much for having me for the record. My name is Tim Dublin legislative council. The committee will have access to draft three point two as well as an updated bill summary of draft three point two. And like last time the bill sorry indicates the changed material in green font and sure McCarthy. Would you like me to just kind of jump straight into where things have changed since the last version or you know what I think we should probably do because we haven't kind of. We've been working on a ton of different stuff in here and I think it might be helpful to talk first about what are the changes that you've done for this draft. So go through the summary and then take the time to actually walk through the language out of John where we can skip stuff that we've really talked about before but kind of see it in context. So if that that'll give us I think your summary first. Yeah. So start with the summary. Tim if you can highlight the changes and then we'll go back and look at it. Just to kind of see what I'd like to do today for the committee is identify areas where we've kind of think that we may have gotten to a good place and then identify areas where you know folks that have high level concern or questions that we want to address and go from there. Okay, that sounds good. And I should also know for the committee's attention that in draft 3.2 all the updated text appears highlighted. So quickly asking to find exactly what's been changed. So in section one version draft 3.2. That's the updates some language having to do with the candidate disclosure, candidate financial disclosure requirements, specifically the loans that are to be required to be disclosed by a candidate. If loans are made to a company if the candidate owns more than 10% of that company and if the loan was not commercially reasonable and made in the ordinary course of business. And so a definition has been inserted here to define what that what would be loan that's not commercially reasonable or made in the ordinary course of business. Or should I say that is those things and that is a loan that is made a in the usual manner on any recognized market be at any price current in any recognized market at the time of making the loan or see otherwise in conformity with reasonable commercial practices among lenders typically dealing in the type of loan made. Okay. The next update in final sign. Let's see page for the summary. This is in the part of the bill pertaining to the expansion of state ethics commissions powers, specifically in section nine, which has to do with the procedure for accepting and referring complaints. Prior to this, the section nine had just been renamed the title of it that is to be more factually descriptive. This now includes see further amendment, requiring that any entity receiving a referred complaint from the commission shall consult with the commission regarding the application of the state code of ethics to facts presented in the complaint. And for context, this is in situations where the current current law, the state ethics commission serves as a clearing house and redirects complaints to certain entities that actually will handle the complaints. And so this would require kind of. Once the other entity receives the complaint, have a check back, really an upfront consultation to make sure that the state code of ethics is being followed properly. The next section to build that's been updated section 10. You can do with the new investigatory power. And this amounts a few things. This section overall enables the commission to investigate alleged an ethical conduct occurring within the prior two years with or without receiving a complaint. Investigations must conclude within now six months. It was three months before and may result in an investigative investigation report and subsequent commission hearing if there is a reasonable basis. To change some of the terminology from probable cause to recent basis, same thing, just for your little bit, or common parlance there, maybe more easily digestible by folks reading this. And let's see, and then also added is that investigations and subsequent hearings maybe need to be only by a majority of the members present voting permanently for that to happen. The next section of the bill that's been updated section 12. And this is to add, in addition to the warnings, recommends, or recommendation recommended actions that the commission can issue. This enabled the commission to enter into agreements with the public servant. So I've just termed here as resolution agreements, kind of made up that term into committee would like something else, happy to change that. And these resolution agreements be entered into by the commission with the public sermon at any point in time before or during the proceedings, which will pause any pending deadlines, but require a three month check back from the commission to ensure compliance with that agreement. And this has to do with the procedure and rulemaking. See the year this will require two thirds of the commission's members present in voting in order to waive the application of any rule. And then it also grants the commission. Now the executive director and missions legal counsel and investigators power to issue subpoena administer votes in connection with any investigation hearing. And so that's just a clarification language that as to who can actually issue those subpoenas, not just the commission, but since involved staff working for the commission. We have section 14 has to do with records and confidentiality. And under the previous draft, we saw that public records relating to the commission's handling of complaints, including alleged ethical conduct investigations and proceedings are exempt from the public records act and shall be kept confidential. And then there's exceptions to that being one investigation reports. Where a hearing is found to be warranted to miss his new investigation reports relating to alleged ethical conduct determined to not warrant a hearing. However, if requested by the public servant that can be made public. And then see also the resolution agreements would be exempt. Sorry, it'd be exempt to the exemption meaning they would be public and not necessarily confidential. I think this is a picky thing or maybe I just don't understand, but since like the 2nd warranted in that number 2. Maybe not. Well, maybe it's on the grammatical. Summary just on the summary or did you. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. Let's go through the draft. Let's just double check it. Tim, Tim's usually like an eagle eye on it on the on the draft itself. Thank you very much. I'll make sure to update that and double check the draft to make sure that's copacetic. And let's see the last part of the bill that's been altered here in draft 3.2 of the effective dates. And now there's essentially 3 rollout periods. The first being sections all take effect on passage is the majority of them. Section 2 through 5 regarding in office financial disclosure requirements section 6 regarding delinquent disclosures for candidates and state office and office stated Senate about Senate. Section 13 regarding the state ethics commissions rulemaking authority section 15 regarding state ethics commissions membership section 1617 regarding state ethics commission staffing section 18 regarding the citation correction. Section 19 regarding ethics data collection. Those are all take effect upon passage. The next rollout period is January 1 2025 and this is for section 7 through 12 and 14, regarding the state expansion of powers excluding rulemaking authority. To go into effect earlier. And then the last rollout period is January 1st, 2026. This is section 1 regarding the candidate financial disclosure requirements. And those are all the updates right now.  Including the change. This will be 6 voting members. Yes, even a couple of times in here. It's referenced a majority of its present. Can do something. So, if there are 2 pairs of people present, there's a form. Notice there's a default form requirements of the majority of many members who need to be present. So, then to take now, you still have to have a majority at the 6. To take to, let's see, action being approved of initiating investigation or one of the spots I saw hearing would require a majority of those present and voting. That majority assumes there's a quorum existing already. So at least 4 people sitting the additional members added. So, coming up to that. So, representing a little get a security. There's a question. There's a place in here where there's language that suggests. It talks about the burden of proof, the contents of evidence. What are you remind me that, what are the 3 levels of burden. I'm not sure there are actually. Many a week to please see this. Criminal standards and there's also stands for civil proceedings. Let's see. Remember all that is beyond reasonable doubt. There's a certain evidence criminal and then a clear convincing evidence. So, what mother is. I believe that would be kind of a threshold. Let me double check that though, real quickly because I isn't one of those things I can't recall it's on my head. The clear convincing is higher than that and. Yes, I believe so. And again, I apologize. I've heard this many times and it hasn't stuck so. Yes, so preponderance of evidence would be a burden that convinced the fact finder that there's greater than 50% chance the claim is true. And that's just one of a variety of evidential evidentiary standards. And I believe that is the default. Yes, that is the standard in most civil cases. Okay. Going back to the commission structure. Did you say that it was excuse me, six members. It will. It's currently five. This proposes out of six representative to be appointed by the. Is there a tie break mechanism in here? No. So they got to get to a 64 to move it. That was bad math apologies for that little hiccup, but you understand what I'm saying. So there needs to be a plurality with a number of members. Yeah. True that. Any other questions from the summary before we. See it all out in the wild. All right, so I think what we should do is turn our attention to the draft itself and see what all of this looks like in context and I imagine that may. It's a few questions when I ask someone to do. So the first change. And the bill is some of the statement of purpose has been updated. You're the interior. First change can be found on page six. And this has been highlighted. This is the. Addition of the definition of what is a commercially reasonable loan made in the ordinary course of business. And sorry, just for clarification. Is this how you'd like me to proceed just kind of bounce with the highlights or. Actually really form a section by section one. Yeah, I think if we, if we can just go section by section, I just, I know the committee has been. Really bounce around with a whole bunch of different topics. I just want to make sure we're all kind of oriented into what is in the draft. We've been through a few drafts. We've been doing this kind of doing a heavy session on this about once a week now. The session and now that we're kind of, I think that the way I would describe this draft is we're like in the 90% done range, I think. I think there's been an attempt to address a lot of the concerns that kind of were flagged by various members of the committee. And also, I know that. You know, I've been working with you, Tim on trying to flush out what was somewhat vague procedural language around the the investigatory powers. So what I'd like to do is kind of take a look at just the highlights of what is in the disclosure form. Make sure we're looking at the disclosure amounts, the hitting those areas where we talked about like for the self employed folks and their representative Higley had brought up a couple questions about that and we've made some changes. I just want to make sure folks are aware that we're not asking for the amounts on the stock hold and so I don't want to do freeze through the disclosure to make sure. I was trying to see where we've done some modifications there over the last couple of drafts. And then we can spend more time really going through line by line on the investigatory pieces because those have changed a lot without us as a committee really focusing as much. That seems like something you can help us with Tim I think that would be the most useful for the committee. Absolutely. So a recap of the first part of the bill being section one having to do the candidate financial disclosure requirements. This is section subsection a, it will require the following disclosures to include one source of personal income of more than $5,000 from an employer. This is current law. And then we have whom if self employed sources of personal income from and then we have two items a the name of any client whom the candidate knows has had business before any municipal or state office department or agency during the previous 12 months provided that the disclosed information is not confidential information. Be if self employed sources of personal income from then include the names of clients from whom the candidate has received $10,000 or more in the previous 12 months provide that the disclosed information is not confidential information. So, I'm going to stop there and think about for a second some of the conversation we've been having around this disclosing clients so I think we've been trying to balance. We want to know we want to have disclosure be consistent across the board with where people's income is coming from. So the folks are making a good faith disclosure and I'm wondering if, if this captures the discussion so the first part at the bottom of. So my team were saying, if the candidate is self employed. They have to describe the nature of the self employment so they might say, you know, I'm an attorney and I have to disclose them in in Romanette. I the names of clients that are known to me or the order of my domestic partners spouses clients to have had business before a municipality in the state. And then separately, they have to disclose any client from whom the client or their spouse or domestic partner has received $10,000 more so that's the way it's constructed right now is anybody who's had business for the state that you know. And then any clients of $10,000 more, and I'm wondering if that's where we want to hit and I'll probably come back to that one representative who's here, but I just wanted to flag that is that's one area where I'd say he's concerned about that. The disclosure of the names of all of the clients as opposed to saying, you know, I'm a contractor and in my business, you know, so my business is being a contractor and not naming all of the individual clients. And sort of how what level of specificity we need, because I know representative Hango and represent piglet both talked about that quite a bit so I just want to flag that Romanette to we might need to make an adjustment there and the next drafts to just those concerns. Okay, just has just a situational clarification on this right so that could be a real estate director who sells a home to somebody involved in the state government or candidate.  I think, I think what what I'm trying to really think about here is we're trying to say in statute, what are the other things we want to ask for on a form. Right. And so if we're saying to a candidate report any clients that you that are known to you to have had business before the state and report any clients that have had that have paid you $10,000 or more. That seems pretty clear. I think it's going to be up to the to some interpretation depending on the particulars of your industry. If you're making a good faith disclosure to say like, Okay, well I work for this particular real estate firm I happen to have a commission that was $16,000. Or just that I have a commission from a sale that's from my real estate firm that I work for as an independent contractor or something like that, or is that for doing you to report the name of the particular client. Right. And so that that's the question that I think we might want to come back to you and Chris of like, what are we really asking for people to report and what's important, because it's like do you report the some of you report the client or do you report the fact that it's in excess of it's not the Yeah, it's the names of those who paid you in excess of so that there's a, the idea here is to get it. What are people sources of income. Not, what are all the details of every single transaction that they've ever done. That's my interpretation and I'm seeing a nod from director. Does that make sense. I don't know what it does it does. I mean, yeah, just when everybody else is here I just want to workshop. Yeah, so I don't want to get told I don't want to go totally down the rabbit hole on this right now. That's why I'm backing off the throttle. Okay, great. Yeah, so as we were talking about the, like, they don't have to disclose it if it's confidential. I was just wondering where that decision gets made and like, is there a definition of what confidential, what would qualify is that Oh, no, please go ahead, please. We've added a definition as to what constitutes confidential information in here it's on page six. It's not highlighted because that was the last round of edits and defined confidential information means information as exempt from public expense inspection and copying under a public records act or otherwise designated by law is confidential. So the person disclosing this side is it's all self supported anyway. Yeah, yeah, I mean in the end this is much like when you file your tax return. So the government's asking you to self disclose what your sources of income were right and here with a candidate financial disclosure where we as the state are saying these are the things that we expect a candidate to self disclose the degree to which they make a good faith effort to provide the details that they're being asked for is probably going to in large part be proportional to how specific the form is. Like I'm really trying to say every time I read this disclosure section I'm like, what is this going to look like on a phone. And what am I going to be expected to do and I actually think one of the things that might be useful for us to do when when we as a whole committee come back to the disclosures and I had thought about doing it today but I wanted to get through this draft with Tim is to actually look at the disclosure forms that we have now as some examples, because there's not much on. And I actually think, even with all this level of specificity and the conversations we've had here, there's not going to be a whole lot more on the forms. Like we're asking candidates to say, who pays you, you know, and where does your where's your income coming from and, and I think we've got hung up on the thresholds because they they make a reasonable person when they look at the plain text reading of this go oh there's a gold for a dollar amount there. That must mean I need to report a dollar amount. And really it's just about saying, I have these sources of income. Like, we all report our employers now like I report that I work for a solar company, I don't say what my salary is or anything that and nothing about that is changing in this log, but but now for self employed people were getting much more specific about, you know, which clients they need to report or what circumstances so I think there's room for us to debate exactly how much information we're going to ask for. We'll come back to that. Good question. Okay, let's give the next thing required to be disclosed by candidates on that form is membership and position on any board for commission in the prior 12 months. And loans made to a company if the candidate owned more than 10% of the company and if the loan was not commercially reasonable and made in the ordinary course of business. And we just went on to define that later on this section. Fifth, a companies in which can they had an ownership or controlling interest in the previous 12 months that had business with the state or municipality. A description, but not amount of publicly traded assets and interest and trust. Interest trust valued at $25,000 or more and municipal bonds issued in the state of Vermont at any value. These are to be reported to the best of the candidates knowledge, which permits candidate to describe blind trust similar assets, like an investor. And we have full name of the candidates spouse or domestic partner. Then see subsection C would enable candidates to redact their US individual income tax return form 1040. So from that, they could redact the candidate street address and identifying information and signature of a paid preparer. And just another note, that's not a legislators that would be providing their 1040, it's only state officers. And that concludes section one. In office disclosure requirements is sections two through five, I should say, which begins. On page seven. And this has to do with migrating certain definitions. From other parts of the chapter into the definition section, including conflict of interest, which is stated the same county officer. Which has been added and in this context is individuals holding the office of high bailiff, state's attorney. And just like to make a note that that is different than the candidate disclosure, which requires county officers, including a probate and assistant judges. But once they're in office, no longer being required to dispose of things. And then. Let's see. And Tim, that's the logic behind that being that they're they're covered by the judicial branches of code and we've got separation of powers issues with requiring that judiciary branch both once they're elected to office. They have their own code of ethics. Right under the Vermont Constitution, there's no one separate powers issues indeed. Thank you. Okay. See. In this definitions section, they also under the definition of governmental conduct regulated by law. We include this includes creating or permitting to persist any unlawful employment practice presented 21 to be a section of 495 and that's essentially discrimination. Laws. There with the effect that that can now be grouped into what is considered an ethical conduct that can be examined by the commission or referred to by the commission to controlling interviews. Let's see. Section three. We also migrates the definition of definition of public servants into the definition section without changing it. And section for migrates conflict of interest definition without changing into the definition section as well. Let's see section five. We also require the same additional information to be disclosed for in office, executive officers and county officers as candidates for those offices in section one, except for the nuance having to do a different county. So again, everything that we're just discussing as far as section one is replicated here. So those same conditions and thresholds are repeated here. And that's the second five that is. So, the next part of the bill has to do with delinquent disclosure for candidates for state office, county office, state center and state representative. This is section six. And this is found at the bottom of page 15 for reference. And section six will add a new section 17 PSA section 2415 this election title regarding penalties. For those individuals who was now not properly filed their financial disclosures subsections a create the penalty structure. And is the secretary of state will notify the state ethics commission, which will issue a notice of delinquency to the candidates in a shell five working days from the state of the issues notice to cure the delinquency after which the state will not be able to do that. Okay, $10 day, even when I get Maxim up to $1000. Section he makes the waters and I know this is a question. I'm very open to but is there, does the secretary of state's office already gone through all of those findings after the date and let people know if they have missed the filing date. know that they collect. I'm not sure if folks are. So you're asking under current law? Yeah, what's currently happening? Are they already analyzing, not even analyzing, but are they already collecting? Or just it's just you put it in their walk away. Yeah, so I think we've heard in testimony actually, but I know the fact that the Secretary of State does not enforce the requirements. Right, but they don't even look. I was wondering if they just kind of paged through and said, hey, rep water sevens, you're a daily.  It's finally deadline during the session when I'm not ready. And there's nothing right. And there is absolutely nothing right now where you don't get a notification. You don't get, I mean, it is, it is literally just only the only real accountability right now. A constituent or a reporter or someone looks and says, I see that the end of the day, so or so, or official so and so has not filed their disclosure. So there really isn't any mechanism right now. It's just there for though. The only the only incentive we had to do it really right now is that you would sort of could get shamed for not doing it. It's just really like just the public transparency and the potential that someone would call you out for not filing is really the only thing now to encourage you. There isn't even kind of a consultative mechanism that reminds you that you're supposed to do right now. We're trying to at least take a big step in the direction of creating a culture where it's expected that everybody does it and that there will be some level of accountability represented by you. So it's still in subsection three. So the $10 penalty and the $1,000 threshold, like I said, two questions. Is this made in public while the penalty is approving? Presumably it is public record. So the public record set. Okay, but it's not like it's not like advertised. I guess like if somebody falls into this where no, this will not require the Secretary of State or the State Commission to post public wall. Yes. My next question is that says that the any penalty imposed under this division exceed $1,000. So if you hit the $1,000 market just plateaus there and it doesn't. Yeah, so it just I'm just thinking if like that's actually the double, but the turn to somebody's doing a various is $1,000 just a possibility is not disclosed. That's what would theoretical ethical conversation. That's extra shameless. Yeah, I think the story about somebody just being like, I'm paying $1,000 to that would be like, I'm like printing over here being sketchy. That would raise the that would raise the bar pretty high. I don't know that that's been contemplated. It's like a sketchy hedge fund matrix, right? Like you make a $85,000 trade. It's $2,000 penalty. Cut that check all day. No, I was just trying to find out that we didn't even use the sort of auction act, which means we couldn't collect the fine.  Unethical nefarious. It is way less than the profit you're making off of that financial transaction. There's not really much of a disincentive there. I think the bigger thing here is we're talking about people who are expected to maintain the public's trust. And right now, it's just so easy to just kind of go ahead and you know, I forget it's no big deal. This makes it a notch heavier, but I don't think it completely solves the problem. And I think we all know that people who don't have the highest level of integrity have been elected public office. That's an issue sort of across the board. Would that find per person or per election cycle or per filing deadline? Or what's the thousand dollar cap constraining? It's as currently drafted. It's, let's see, no event shall any amount of any penalty imposed under the subdivision exceed $1,000. So it's framed as under the subdivision, which would be perspective. I would think that it might be limited overall across numerous elections. That could be clarified. I don't know if it's necessarily limited to per cycle. I think I'm hearing per person, like if you hit that thousand dollar cap in your first election cycle, then it's got free for the next seven years. Yeah, greater clarity. I mean, perhaps I have it state per cycle. I mean, do we want to have a conversation about tying that up to like a per election cycle or filing period? Like, I don't know, like how do we want to untwangle this time? No, I think people need to file every time and that should be tied to the filing. And if they're just letting it go, it can go on multiple fines because they have the opportunity in this draft to go to the ethics commission and say I, you know, to plead ignorance or technical difficulty. And I don't think it's the ethics commission's desire to be trying to get a fine. The idea is to get the disclosure to be a real thing and have people take it seriously, right? No, but I mean, I'm just a little brain stuck in the fact that if this is, if the thousand just goes into infinity, like where's the breakpoint where you could theoretically be fined and penalized again if the action continues? I think the fine is less important. I think the fact of the fine is less important than the amount. So it's, to me, it doesn't, that's a good point, but we can talk about it if you want to fly back and come back to it. Here's what I'm going to say. If anybody has a suggestion about language, I'd rather not have a hypothetical abstract debate about any of this so we can get through it and make a suggestion. Representative Rupert. Just a language question. You just said, and it's written that it can be weighed or reduced, but there's a shallow of the, yes, well, action three. Add negate one. Um, we can clarify that with a notwithstanding. 16, page 16. So, Tim, you're saying add the notwithstanding to line 19 so that it's here that notwithstanding the previous, as if that's mission as about, I understand it's implied here. Just put super, super excellent. See, so, and subsection E makes any intentionally fraudulent statements on disclosure forms a false claim and quote pursuant to 13 BSA section 3016, which shall be referred to the attorney general and state's attorney for force. Next part of the bill, part four, this section seven through 14 has to do with the expansion of the state ethics commission's powers. And the following sections will expand upon which is powers or expand the commission's powers, enabling it to investigate, hold hearings and make non binding recommendations as well as enter into resolution agreements. So, section seven, and then we turn to page 18. That highly on there is enables the, this is kind of a correction of something that's already implied just making explicit that the state ethics commission can accept review, investigate matters involving the actual state code of ethics itself, which doesn't hurt to spell it out there, but I didn't know it's implied, as well as refer matters to entities that can actually discipline individuals. So, we have, okay, so the section seven men's section three, or three VSA section 1221 state ethics commission subsection a to empower the state ethics mission to independently investigate and hold hearings regarding ethics complaints. This is some of the general enabling language at the beginning of the chapter. And also like to say that section 1221 is also amended by section 11 later on, which will add another member to the question and by section 12, which removes the requirement that the commission executive director be part time. And again, this is amended in three different sections just to kind of keep all the amendments thematically organized versus if the commission or the committee would like it otherwise, we can use the change. Just if anybody notices, we keep returning to some of the same sections. That's why section eight just simply renames three VSA 1222 be more factually accurate descriptive section nine already discussed this earlier. But again, it will rename a three VSA section 1223 to be called procedures for accepting and referring complaints. And this will require a consultation with any entity receiving referred complaint to check in with the commission ads make sure that they understand the state code of ethics and how the facts presented in the complaint may relate to it. Section 10 will add the new section three VSA section 1227 and do with investigations. And some familiar state of the solar was reiterated reiterated here enables the commission to investigate alleged unethical conduct occurring within the prior two years with or without receiving a complaint. And here we have we updated in this version so that investigations must conclude within six months versus three months. And so this over to that. And you can see that the bottom of page 20 here in a subsection G timeline of investigation, as well as next line for proof, we have changed our problem costs are reasonable basis to believe that the public service conduct constitutes an unethical violation. So stand to believe the same, just to be a little bit more reader friendly. The, let's see. And then we but the bills altered so that only by a majority of members present made investigation or subsequent hearing be initiated section 11. Can I just make sure that that understands the changes we made here so ethics commission gets complete. If the executive director executive director shall only initiate an investigation for majority of the members of the commission present affirmative present affirmatively vote to proceed. So there has to be a an affirmative vote in order for an investigation to proceed. Yeah, I think it's already discussed last night. So I'm a TJ way in with some reasons why it might be better to stop the executive director makes the decision. I did a discussion with the commission. Especially early on with the investigative power being new, I like that there's more consultation with the commission before launching an investigation. And then the timeline is six months. The burden proof. So to go from an investigation to a hearing is not a reasonable basis to believe that there's been a unethical conduct of violation of code. And so when what's the definition of reasonable basis 10 and what level of what is that really meaning and legal problems, not arbitrary and precious. So would a reasonable person look at this and come to a similar conclusion that there may at the public servants conduct constitutes non ethical violation of reasonable versus look at the code and look at the conduct and be like, there may be something there. Not necessarily definitive or proved by the means, but just that it's reasonable to conclude that that may have occurred. Right. So it's just it's a standard that we're using as a gate for the proceeding from an investigation to a hearing. And then the new section that I think is where you just stop is next. So this is the termination after investigation. So this if a majority of the members of the commission formally voted concurrence with the executive director's termination, then an evidentiary hearing was warranted. The executive director shall prepare an investigation report specifying public servants alleged unethical conduct. And so this is really getting at the hearing and what will happen there. Okay. Right. So to progress from the investigation to an evidentiary hearing, there's a vote that needs to occur at which point an investigation report will become public. And a copy of that will be served upon the public servants and any individual assuming there's any that submitted a complaint. And then also that would be bundled with the notice of hearing personnel to condition set out another section. Okay. Then questions there. Section 11 will add a new section three vsa 12.8 hearings before the commission. And this is a bottom of page 21 to build on the page 22. This enables the commission to hold public hearings for the purpose of gathering evidence and testimony and making determinations if wanted. Both the public servant and any complainant will be afforded an opportunity to be heard at the hearing, present evidence, respond to evidence, and argue on all issues related to the alleged unethical misconduct. And here are the highlights. I just got corrected, just clarified there were references to the parties, but in order considering this bill, pertains to both some elections title stuff and ethics commission figured it'd be best to avoid any ambiguity and just rename the parties as public servants and complainants because that's who we're really referring to. Here. Section 12 has a new section three vsa 12.9 12.29. Now to be titled warnings, reprimands, recommended actions and agreements. This enables the commission to issue warnings, reprimands and recommended actions within 30 days of the last hearing. The recommendations may include facilitated mediation, additional training and education, referrals to counseling and wellness support and other remedial actions. And again, like any other time we use including doesn't necessarily limit it to what we did as provided examples. The new language here in draft 3.2 has to do with the commission being able to enter into resolution agreements with the public servant and they can do this at any point and try before during the proceedings. If it's during the proceedings, it would put a pause on any pending deadlines. And then the director would be required to check in at three months to see that the agreement is actually being complied with. Otherwise proceedings would resume. And this is on page 26 where we see the entire page highlighted there. And there's some additional information what those agreements shall include. Actually, would you like me to take some time to walk through that? Chair McRoth here? Yeah. So I think actually what would be helpful is on the resolution agreements, we probably may have executive director Civret come up, we'll talk about what they are and sort of how they would function. I don't know if just Elvin or some language will illuminate how it'll work enough for us to really get our heads around it. That makes sense. You can probably breeze over that for now and we'll ask the director Civret and TJ to give us a little bit more context and examples of how it might work. Okay. Section 13 will add a new Section 3 VSA 2030 procedure and rulemaking. And this directs the commission to adopt rules regarding procedural and evidentiary aspects of the commission's investigations and hearings. The language has been so modified since the last draft so that two thirds of the commission's members presently voting may waive an application of the rule. It also grants the commission, as well as the executive director and the commission's legal counsel and investigators, power to issue subpoenas and administer oaths in connection with any investigation or hearing. And again, the updates here have just made clear that the commission, as well as its staffers, certain staffers may issue subpoenas. Section 14 adds a new Section 3 VSA, Section 1231, records and confidentiality, and public records related to commission's handling and complaints alleged and ethical conduct investigations and proceedings are presumably exempt from public records. The public records act and shall be kept confidential, except, and then we enumerate a list here of things that would be presumably public and not confidential. And those would include investigation reports if a hearing is found to be warranted, to investigation reports to link to alleged and ethical conduct, determined conduct determined to not warrant a hearing if requested by the public servant, three, evidence produced in the open and public portions of the commission hearings, or any warnings, recommends, recommendations issued by the commission, five, any resolution agreements, six, any records as determined by the commission that support a warning, recommend, recommendation, or executed resolution agreement. And at the, that concludes the expansion of the powers. I just have a note in the summary to remind the committee that as I said before, there's no appeals process, mainly because there's no binding final decision. There's no expulsion from office, no fine, no loss of property, right, et cetera. That is, there's nothing to appeal. The next part of the bill has to do with the State Ethics Commission membership, this is section 15. This amends three VSA section 12, 21. A second time that is to expand its membership from five to six members to include an additional one member appointed by the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. Part six has to do with State Ethics Commission staffing. This is sections 16 and 17, so we're now on page 30 of the bill. And together, section 16 and 17 convert the commission's positions of executive director and administrative assistant from part-time to full-time and adds a full-time attorney. Section 12 removes the requirement that the commission's executive director be part-time. Sorry, that should be 16, 17. I'll update the summary to reflect that. So section 16 removes the requirement that the commission's executive director be part-time and second 17 reclassifies those positions and appropriates funds for each. And currently, right now, these are the estimates of placeholders, $150,000 for legal counsel, $150,000 for the executive director, and $57,000 for administrative assistant. Part seven of the bill has to do with a small citation correction, that's section 18. And that just amends a cross-reference that, right now, it's currently Crawford's reference into nothing. And so, I'll just update that. Or a statute that doesn't really, isn't there. Part eight of the bill has to do with Ethics Data Collections, section 19. This renames three VSA 1226 to be called Ethics Data Collection, setting a colon commissions report, and it requires those entities to which the commission refers complaints to report back annually, quote, with aggregate data on ethics complaints not submitted to the commission, with the complaints separated by topic and the disposition of those complaints, including any prosecution enforcement action of award dismissal. Those reporting entities that I was referring to are the Office of the Attorney General, the State's Attorney's Office, the Department of Human Resources, the House and Senate ethics panels, the Judicial Conduct Board, the Professional Responsibility Board, and the Office of State Court Administrator. That brings us to the last part of the bill, this kind of confusing run-on sentence that's highlighted in section 12 of the last page of 34. And those are the three roll-out periods, the various sections here, which I need to reiterate those, nor are you already covered up, but we have to read through it again. No, that's fine. All right, great. So thank you very much, Tim, for getting us all the way through this draft. So what I'd like to do is invite Director Cipri up. I had a few questions and just kind of wanted to see what our way to zero in on resolving a few of these outstanding issues. And I was hoping we might just touch on a couple of the disclosure pieces since representative Lee is here now. I don't want to spend the bulk of our time on that, but I'd like to too is kind of get to talking both about how the investigatory timelines would go and see if the committee has any questions or concerns about that, and also get a little bit of a primer on resolution and some how those might work in practice. Does that sound like a reasonable agenda for you? All right, great. So just to bring Representative Higley up to speed. So we in this draft didn't make any big changes because I wanted to kind of have this be more of a discussion at the committee level. So the one piece that I think we had left unresolved in this draft is at the top of page, bottom page to top of page three around the disclosure of clients for self-employed candidates for office. And Director Cipri, after hearing some of our discussion about this, where do you recommend we strike the balance between wanting to know where a candidate's income comes from, but not necessarily needing to know the name of every single client that, you know, for instance, a contractor works for, if they can say, you know, I have my self-employed construction or renovation business or something like that is what we really want them to list. That might suggest something to be so, and this is in the spirit of like getting at what we really want to get at, is you could narrow it down a bit further. And I think this would probably provide clarity as you're looking at the names of clients known to have business before, you know, a government office, but you can narrow it down to the client being regulated by the state in their business or having a contract with the state. So that would narrow it down further and I think still get at what we're really trying to get at here. Yeah, I think the, so the, so we would essentially strike remnant to the names of clients that are paying above a certain threshold. So it's really they're just listing their source of income and then listing any clients that are known to them to have business before the state, but we would strike the need for them to list any clients that just happened to have contracted with them for more than a certain amount at this point. Would that satisfy your concern if we strike the piece that is the remnant to their representative? Yeah, I think it would. Okay. So Tim, I think that that's where we're gonna head in the next drafts. Okay. Unless anybody has any objection from the committee. Representative. You said regulated by the state too. So if they're in a business that's regulated by the state, so really getting at situations where some maybe some of these regularly applying. So they're doing this client or they're doing the client. Okay. Yeah. So say somebody's in a business where they're regularly applying for permits. So they're in a business that is regulated by the state. So we know that they definitely have business before the state. So we're not looking at situations where they are surely coming before the state for administrative reasons say they are, you know, I think they're good. They work for a newspaper and then, you know, they're going to get their driver's license, right? So we're not looking at those types of situations or looking at somebody where their, their own business is regulated by the state or they have a contract with the state. So in this particular specific case, in regulated by the state, it can necessarily mean social consent. No, I mean, we're not looking for like a really expansive definition of regulated by the state because in that sense, you could say, you know, anyone who applies for any sort of license is regulated by the states. Sorry. No, no, no, I'm just like, my interest speaks with us just because I'm, I just thought like, you know, like the entire OPR bill could follow. So anyway, no, I understand the intent. I'm just trying to make the words on the page match the intent. So we don't want to do this downstream of the bill. I'd rather do this now. What I would strongly suggest is if you have recommendations for language, get them to Tim and CC represent Waters Evans and myself before the end of this week. That is what I would strongly recommend. And so that we're not wordsmithing here in real time. And maybe TJ, do you have any thoughts on what might be clarifying language so that we're not getting too broad of a definition of regulated by the state? My thoughts are that you could say make clear that it's in a professional realm, not regulated by the state for something that is other than what they're making money for. I mean, it's possible that, you know, you raise the issue of driver's licenses, even if you need a driver's license to conduct your business that wouldn't be regulated by the state, it would have to do with the profession itself. You know, responsible dumping of toxic liquids comes to mind as something that you would want. The profession itself is regulated by the state and people would have to be certified to do that. That would be emblematic of the type of profession that you would want to disclose or the client would want to disclose. I think the archetypical example here of the information we're trying to capture is, you know, the independent attorney who represents clients who have business before the state. Public utility commission permits for major projects, you know, a real estate developer who's, you know, working on things that are regulated by A&R.  I don't think there's going to be any argument that they have a particular financial interest that needs to be disclosed to the public about their client. So trying to make sure that we're making that distinction, I think, is worthy to represent buyers. There's no ambient utility downstream and this gets gummed up later. I'd rather hash this out now because we've had our heads in it for the most significant. We're going to try and get there by next, the next draft is going to be like just ready for the final, the final polish, I think. And that's why we're doing this. Yeah, that's great. So Tim, do you think that you might be able to help us capture the distinction there in the next draft? Okay. I think our legislative council's got it. All right. I think we can move from there. And I think that, and this is mostly for representative Higley's benefit, I think that with the thresholds and the making it clear that the description of but not the amount of individual holdings is what we're looking for in the forum. I think that will resolve 99% of the concerns that I've heard from folks who don't necessarily, especially for the spouse of a member of the General Assembly, that's the most common thing that's been brought up to me is that folks are really concerned that they might have to disclose the amount of a particular holding that they have. And I think what we're looking for here is just the knowledge that the client or their partner spouse has an interest in a particular company, for instance, as opposed to the amount of that. And we've made that really clear in the last couple of drafts, but I just wanted to flag that because I know it's been a point of some anxiety, especially for members who are worried about their spouse or their domestic partner saying, you can't run for office anymore if I have to say how much Apple stock I have or whatever. Representative Waters, did you have something there? I just had a comment, which is that is it correct to say that at no point in that one place in the spell are we asking for actual amounts of money that are to be disclosed by anyone regarding any, correct? That's really helpful in excess of money. Like if not anyone is right, but it's not an amount of money. Correct. Yeah, you're just saying that. And then not their spouse, not their client, not their salary, it's just over a certain amount at some point. Okay. Just wanted to clarify. Do you have any remaining questions about disclosure before we move on? I don't think so. Okay, great. I mean, we'll be back at it with a revised draft eventually here, but okay, thanks. Okay. I think we can move on to talking about some of the media stuff here. I'm wondering maybe turning it down to starting maybe with section nine, director, I just wanted to sort of really root the committee in from the time that you, as the executive director or the attorney, you know, starts working on a complaint, receives a complaint. What are the kind of powers and how are they changing here? As we've seen here is that the requirement for an agency that I think commission refers a complaint to sort of the first thing that's changed. Right. That is the first thing that's changing. So currently we have no power to decide whether we would investigate it or not. So we would only review the complaint for sufficiency to make sure it led to specs that, you know, suggested a violation of the code of ethics may or may not have happened, may have happened, holding on, you know, for their investigation. Sometimes, of course, you can tell from the face of the complaint that it's likely that it has. And so what's changing here for us is that we have the power to investigate what is rather than refer it on. And those complaints that we do refer on, which is honestly going to be the majority of them, as I, you know, at least to begin with, we'll have very limited resources and very limited ability to file the investigations. It would require consultation on the part of the referring agency, the agency would refer the complaint to related specifically to the code of ethics and the facts alleged in them. And I do have a couple of suggestions here. I think we were still a bit, you know, thinking through the process, what it would look like here. I do think it's important that we add some clarification on that there should be done within a certain one second. Yeah. So I think what we're going to do is just stop the live streaming and then start so that we make sure that we're following all the rules. All right. So we just had a little technical glitch there. So we're picking back our testimony on our miscellaneous ethics bill. Thank you, Executive Director Sivirip for your recommendations there. No problem. I just wanted to bring up the consultation process, which would be, you know, one of the newer things that we're doing. I do think it's important. I think it's important I mentioned last time because it's another level of transparency. It ensures that the code of ethics is having a life assistance throughout government and also it, you know, encourages collaboration. We're still thinking exactly how the process would work, but we do think there are three elements that would be important to include. One is to set a certain timeframe during which the consultation has to occur, that the consultation should be in writing, and that consultation occurs prior to a major decision being made about the complaint, which would be either, you know, a decision to complain that, to close the complaint without further investigation or before findings are issued, are issued. So. Can you repeat that several times? Before a decision is made to close a complaint without moving forward with investigation or before findings are issued. So after the investigation. So moving forward, the power to investigate. So the commission through the executive director may investigate public servants for alleged unethical conduct. The commission may investigate either without receiving a complaint or after being referred to the commission. So that would be the newest power and that would give us the ability to investigate complaints that I think the criteria that would be using it at first because it is such a kind of limited ability to move forward with investigations. We have a number of complaints in the past where there was no place to report those complaints to and so in those situations, they just kind of, we have to close them out because there is no, there's no place to report them. And so that would be one of the criteria I think we'll be looking at would also be looking at does the complaint allege firmly alleged complaints that fall under the code of violations that fall under the code of ethics versus other rules laws or policies. Sometimes we get complaints that nominally fall under the state code of ethics, but aren't really an ethics complaint.  And then, of course, looking at, you know, complaints that may require like a specific level of impartiality where we just feel like the ethics commission is best, best position to investigate the nature of this complaint given the parties given the substance of the complaint. So the initiation and investigation by the commission. So this would be new in the sense that we would have the ability to investigate a complaint or take on a complaint without it being submitted to us by a third party. And so I think those would also be reserved for pretty rare situations. Because I mean, I don't have any questions about that. I'm not sure where, I'm not sure where I should get more information or just keep moving through. I think I think it's up to the committee to ask. This is our kind of, you know, slowly absorbing all of the information about how this would kind of work because it's new power. So we're going to represent the water dams. Thanks. So would an example of that last situation you mentioned be if somebody saw a newspaper article that was about something that was happening, you know, the town or department or agency or whatever, then decided that it was worth looking into independently without receiving a complaint with a date. I think that would be an example. Okay. So statute implementations. To your statute of limitations, as I legal counsel and investigators, executive director may point legal counsel to assist with investigations hearings or the issuance of warnings. Notice the executive director shall notify the plaintiff and public servant in writing of any complaint being investigated, complaint participation, the complainant shall have the right to be heard in investigation resulting from the complaints. Timeline investigation, investigation shall conclude within six months. Either the date the complaint was received or in the event no complaint received the date of the investigation's initiation by the executive director. But in a proof, I think we went over the reasonable basis standard. So the reasonable basis standard would be applied before subsequent to investigation and before hearing process. Determination after the investigation upon investigating the alleged unethical conduct of the executive director determines that an evidentiary hearing is warranted, the executive director shall notify the commission in the majority of the members of the commission present, affirmatively vote in concurrence with the executive director's determination for an evidentiary hearing is warranted, the executive director shall prepare an investigation report specifying the public servant's alleged unethical conduct, a copy of which shall be served upon a public servant and any complaint, together with a notice appearing. On investigating the alleged unethical conduct, if the executive director determines that an evidentiary hearing is not warranted, the executive director shall notify the commission, the public servant, and any complainant in writing other results of investigation and determination of proceedings. So I'll say that based on my experience as far as receiving complaints, I think this does solve some issues or concerns that people have when complaints are referred by our office. Often the complainant doesn't hear what the result is and so that's very frustrating to people. And so I do think that that's quite the advancement and it's contributing to public trust in the system that they will not have the opportunity to know what exactly happened and have more information about what happened to their complaint because we do have situations where a forward or a complaint and a month later will go back from the complainant and they've never heard back from the referral agency to even reach out to them at all. Present Chase. Maybe this is for Tim very quick. The notifying writing, does that include electronic means these days or does it have to be like? No, it doesn't have to be post-part. Okay. Email. Thank you. There's old hearings. The commission may meet and hold hearings for purpose of gathering evidence and testimony. It found warranted pursuant to section 1227. That was title and to make determinations. All commission hearings shall be considered meetings. The commission as described in 1221e and shall be conducted in accordance with one BSA section 310. Time of hearing. Chair of the commission so set a time for the hearing as soon as convenient following the director's determination that an inventory hearing is warranted subject to a scary very needs. The public servant and a complainant is established in any hearing or discovery conference or in any orders regulating discovery and depositions are both but not lower than 30 days after service. The charge upon the public servant. The public servant or complainant may file motions to extend the time of the hearing for good cause which may be granted by the chair. Notice of hearing. The chair shall give the public servant and any complainant reasonable notice of the hearing which will include a statement of the time place and nature of the hearing. A statement of the legal authority and jurisdiction under which the hearing is being held. A reference to the particular sections of the statute and rules involved. A short and plain statement of the matters that issue if the commission isn't able to state the matters in detail at the time initial notice be limited to a statement of the issues involved. Thereafter upon application by either the public servant or any complainant and well-definite and detailed statement may be furnished shall be furnished. A reference and a copy of any rules adopted by the commission regarding the hearing's procedure rules of evidence and other aspects of the hearing. So that's one of the things that we're working on between now and the effective date of the bill should it go through. Rights of public servants and complainants opportunity shall be given to the public servant and the complainant to be heard at the hearing present evidence respond evidence and argue on all issues related to the election and if the bill is conduct. Executive's session in addition to the provisions of one BSA section 13 at 313 a commission may enter executive session if the commission needs to appropriate in order to the confidentiality any individual or any other protected information. Pertaining to any identifiable person that is otherwise confidential under state or federal law. I think that really will tracks how we handle advisory opinions at this time. We need to talk to your parties who are requesting advisory opinions. Section 1229 warnings, recommends, recommended actions, agreements. Powered issue warnings, recommends and recommended actions. The commission may issue warnings, recommends and recommended actions not inconsistent with a lot of constitution and laws of the state including facilitated mediation, additional training and education referrals concept to counseling and wellness support or other remedial actions. Factors and determination, circumstances of unethical conduct in this determined in this determining the commission shall consider the degree of unethical conduct the timeline over which the unethical conduct occurred whether the conduct was repeated and the privacy rights and responsibilities of the parties. Determination based on evidence, the commission shall render its determination on the allegation on the basis of the evidence in the record before regardless of whether the commission makes its determination on the investigative report of the executive director pursuant to section 1227 of this title alone on evidence a testimony presented in the hearing pursuant to section 1228 or on its own parties. We're going to approve, the commission shall only issue a warning, recommend and recommend the action if found with that by the evidence of the evidence, public servant committed an unethical act. Determination after hearing if a majority of the members of the commission present present and voting find that the public servant committed unethical conduct is specified in the best decision board the executive director pursuant to section 1227 its title alone the commission shall not inviting or stated in the record issue a warning recommend or recommended action. If the commission does not find that the public servant committed unethical conduct the commission shall issue a statement that the allegations were not proved. When a determination or order is approved for issue by a board of commission the decision or order may be signed by the chair on behalf of the issuing board of commission timeline for determination the commission shall make its determination within 30 days of polluting the questions last hearing under the section already showing notified. Work with either personally or by mail of the commission's determination and of any warning, recommend and recommended action. Referral of unethical conduct not withstanding subsection till 23 of this title the commission shall notify the attorney general of the state's attorney of jurisdiction of any alleged violations of governmental conduct regulated by law or the relevant federal agency of any alleged violations of federal law they discovered in the course of the commission's investigations. I think was this was the section people are most interested in power to enter into resolution agreements not withstanding any provision of this chapter the contrary the commission may by a majority of its vote this members present and join a resolution agreement with the public servant. A resolution agreement shall include an agreed course of the media action to be taken by the public servant in writing executed by the public servant and the executive director be a public record subject to public inspection, subject to public inspection and copying under the public record contract. A resolution agreement may be entered into at any point in time before the commission proceedings and a procedural deadline described in this chapter will be adopted for as soon as chapter shall be paused at the time of execution on the resolution agreement. The executive director shall verify compliance with the resolution agreement within three months but execution of the agreement and if the executive director is not satisfied that compliance has been achieved the commission may resume its initial proceedings. Is that something where you should pause for questions or so I think so I think just I want to step out for the committee and just for a second and try to frame this a little up a little bit because I think what I'm reading in terms of the procedure and what's outlined here seems to make sense on its face but I want to kind of as for considering this and looking it over stay rooted in what is the virtue of the investigatory and hearing power so right now the ethics commission's powers to provide any level of accountability for violations of the code are somewhat limited right they can all can refer to the department of human resources or the senator of house ethics panels but this would actually allow you to investigate hold hearings and issue essentially a public finding and I think Tim did a good job of saying you know this this is a document that isn't appealable because it doesn't actually have a force and effect but it would have a pretty big public force and effects in a lot of situations that I think we can imagine here so could you and TJ maybe just kind of bring us back up to a high level about kind of the virtue of having ethics commissions have this sort of power just so that we're all kind of operating from a sort of level set of values and expectations for the commission yeah well I think just from you know starting basis you know the best practice the goal that we should all be trying to achieve is an independent investigatory body so the states that have the best practices and ethics every single one of them is going to have an independent authority that's there to investigate ethics complaints and also some measure of public some measure of accountability that involves you know bringing public into bringing public awareness to the issues that are happening and so right now Vermont is just really missing that you know almost completely and so even when I just look around from a low from you know somewhat of a distance but also like having more of a close-up view than the average member of the public it is even hard for me to kind of understand the process when ethics complaints are received by us and referred on to know exactly what happens with those complaints afterwards much less know the timeline during you know during which things are supposed to happen what are the procedures how involved is the complainant is there findings or they're not findings what happens when those findings are made what level of information is disclosed to the public so I think that right now are a situation where there's varying levels of transparency across government and we need to start setting a standard when you start setting a standard where there is you know independent independent investigation independent you know eyes on ethics generally speaking but also setting standards that hopefully you know every era of government that investigates ethics complaints on its own is also starting to follow. I can't find it again but I remember you reading a section in here in regards to being able to outside counsel and I'm wondering why that is when you know it looks like we're hiring at $150,000 legal counsel for the ethics commission so what was that in regards to I think there's two things going on there so one is that they think the hiring outside counsel isn't solely tied to the investigatory powers because that was envisioned initially when we're when we are considering the municipal ethics spell so that will greatly increase the level the amount of work that that estimation is coming on so we had initially envisioned that position as being someone who would kind of specialize in municipal ethics and also training so in terms of the ethics commission white staff right now we have two part-time employees and so we're already understaffed so we do have slow periods during the year we do have visitor times during the year from December to May it's the busy time I work way more than part-time we could basically you know if we hired if we had three full-time staff members right now we could create the amount of work that without even moving forward just create enough work to make us all busy 40 hours a week without even getting into these new responsibilities so I and also we're looking at situations where potentially that person has you know a high workload but also we're looking at situations where there might be you know a conflict of interest or a reason why they would be the the most appropriate person to investigate the point so that gives us the flexibility to hire somebody from the outside when it seems like it's most appropriate especially if you need somebody maybe with more specialized knowledge I think we're also looking at situations where we would be potentially hiring mediators for definitely investigators so it'd be a wide variety of tasks that that person could take part in and because it's allocated to us now we don't know the level of work that we're going to be getting in so if we look at two years ago we had three complaints coming to our office last year we had 15 complaints coming to our office this month this last month we've already I think had four and so we're really kind of moving forward at a faster pace so we just don't know how to anticipate the workload but I think we can expect expect it to increase both with the municipal ethics work but also with these increased you know powers for that execution in terms investigations and in terms of the ability to refer complaints and then requiring consultation so that would be something where we would take very seriously it would be an advisory opinion but it'd be something that we would expect to provide an opinion in writing which can be time consuming depending on the nature of the complaint so again is this going to be included in like a budgetary item is to the expectations of how much you might have to hire outside counsel well my understanding so I think it was $57,000 he's allocated in the draft bill and so what I would anticipate is we didn't we didn't request a specific amount but we know we need something and so we would use that um during this first year we could come up to it and go past it or we could use it less I think it's just really going to be we're not going to be you know set and you must spend this amount over this year so we're just going to see what is the nature of the work that's coming to us um how much do we need to use external hires uh and external contractors so I mean I would say that right now we have two part-time people TJ essentially as a third member of our office and so like even with you know these three we'll call three part-time people we are already you know it's like overworked um so we so we know that we need additional additional staffing no matter what and so the staffing that's provided that we for in this bill was anticipating municipal ethics but not necessarily the investigations piece so I do think that we will get needing that money at some point to hire somebody from the outside can you say that amount is $200,000 I think it's $57,000 for the for the outside council the outside okay thank you so you were deciding a notable upticking case load workload coming into your office um what do you attribute that to right now just the the fact that this exists now are you seeing the just curiosity is higher within the public sentiment or advocacy or whoever about understanding what's going on with officials I think it's increased awareness of the eviction um because the nature of the complaints haven't changed okay the nature of the inquiries and the nature of the request for guidance have changed just the fact that there's like an entity now for this purpose you're seeing exists curiosity inflow okay does anyone else have anything on this portion procedure and rulemaking procedure unless otherwise controlled by statute or rules adopted by the commission the Vermont rules silk procedure and the Vermont rules of evidence shall apply in the commission's investigations and hearings rulemaking the commission shall adopt rules pursuant to 3vsa chapter 25 regarding procedural and evidentiary aspects of the commission's investigations and hearings waiver of rules to prevent unnecessary hardship delay or injustice of whether their cause the two thirds of the commission's members present voting may waive the application of the rule on such conditions of the chair may require and less precluded by rule or by statute subpoenas and also the commission the executive director and the commission's legal counsel and investigators shall the power to issue subpoenas and minister oaths in connection with any investigation or hearing including compelling compelling the provision of materials or the attendance of witnesses at any hearing investigation or hearing the commission the executive director and the commission's legal counsel and investigators may take or cause depositions to be taken as needed in any investigation or hearing 6-1-1 representative of our heavens. Thanks can you give us some examples of maybe other commissions for bodies that also have this kind of power to invest in power to issue subpoenas and do similar kinds of sure I think most of most of most of us to be honest yeah I want to have um yeah so anyone that has unfortunately powers anywhere we're not at that level yet but I think most of them I think do you need examples of organizations like medicaid massachusetts or dylan for new england new england examples I think we'll be looking more at cases where they don't have this power that would be a shorter future if you want to apply them at all on this or I'm just double checking to make sure this is nothing unusual revolutionary I don't know yeah it's pretty standard okay but yes apologies I think I lost sorry talk but oh no um so I think we were on waiver rules to prevent unnecessary hardship delay or injustice or brother of cause a voted two-thirds of the commission's members present voted they waive the application of a rule upon such conditions as the chairman require unless precluded by rule or by statute subpoenas and oats the commission they executive director and the commission's legal counsel and investigators shall have our issues subpoenas and minister o's in connection with any investigation or hearing including compelling the provision of materials or the attendance of witnesses at any investigation or hearing the commission the executive director and commission's legal counsel and investigators can take with positive positions be taken as needed in any investigation or hearing intent is the intent of this section both to protect the reputation of public servants from public disclosure repose complaints against them and to people the public's right to know any unethical conduct committed by public servant the results and issued warnings recommends or recommended actions public record public records relating to the commission's handling the complaints alleged unethical conduct investigations proceedings are designed from public instruction and copying into the public records act shall be kept confidential except those public records required if needed to be released in this chapter records subject to public inspection copying to the public records act shall be investigation reports related to alleged unethical conduct determined to warrant hearings pursuant to section 1227 of this title but not any undisclosed records gathered or created in the course of the investigation other questions of the public servant or the public servants designated representative investigation reports relating to alleged unethical conduct determined not to warrant hearing pursuant to section 1227 of this title but not any undisclosed records gathered or created in that course of investigation so this is to give to respond at the opportunity to help them I guess clear their name or show that that there was if they show that there's a complaint that was filed against them however the facts did not lead to the necessity here necessity okay evidence produced in the open and public portions of commission hearings any warnings from her mans and recommendations issued by commission any executed resolution agreements and any records of digital medical commission that support a warning recommend recommendation or executed resolution agreement for orders nothing the section shall prohibit the disclosure of any information regarding alleged unethical conduct pursuant to an order from court of competent jurisdiction or just state or federal law enforcement agency in the course of its investigation provided the agency agrees to maintain a confidentiality of the information that's provided in subsection b of this section so I think since we've done a walk through the language what might be the most useful since we're going to have to switch gears pretty soon to take some testimony on a new draft of a different bill actually director server if you could just talk to us generally about resolution agreements and sort of what those look like and at what point they they kind of come in because I think this is a new concept for me I'm sure most other folks on the committee so resolution agreements are pretty common and I'll say that we wanted to have the ability to resolve resolve complaints at the earliest opportunity and so kind of took my inspiration or the inspiration for this or a model is human rights commission that also has the ability to enter into settlement agreements or mediation or resolution agreements at any stage in the process including immediately after receipt of a complaint or I think potentially a complaint inquiry before it rises to the level of like a formal file complaints I'm getting that from what I've read not from conversations with the rights commission so I hope they forget me if I got something wrong but the idea here is just to take those complaints where there's an easy path to resolution and before going through the entire process using the resources dragging it out entering to an agreement and so the agreements are between ethics commission and the respondent right so the ethics commission is working on behalf of the state and the entire goal is to rectify the behavior that is likely or in this case we've pretty much determined that does actually by the state put of ethics and to make improvements in the system to rectify the situation so resolution agreement will give us the ability to just resolve those complaints that are pretty clear on their face early on before we go through the entire process that would drag it out for for the respondent and also you know unnecessarily so what would have could you give an example of what a resolution agreement would look like yeah so resolution agreement I mean they're pretty standard there's a lot of examples out there but if we're looking at it would just be you know again a summary of the facts summary of the facts that are agreed upon as applied to the to the law kind of a history of the complaint process what has happened up to up to this stage and what the action steps are going to what action steps are agreed upon in order to rectify the situation and so what is the course of action that the respondent agrees to what is the course of action that the respondent agrees to in order to resolve resolve the issue and so generally speaking it has some kind of timeline it has some specific steps laid out and it really depends on the nature and how complicated the complaint was so you could have a very simple complaint say where we commonly get complaints about preferential treatment so you could say you know in this office they are hiring people only from this one specific university and so you can say okay we receive this complaint on its face if this is true then that is definitely a violation of the preferential treatment provision of the code of ethics so I'm reaching out to the the respondent to let them know this complaint has been filed you're in a complaint with them if they know that this is true then the idea would be for them to say okay we understand the facts are accurate we now understand that this is preferential treatment that we're engaged in that we shouldn't be engaged in so we would discuss what are your steps to rectify the situation moving forward are there any remedial actions you need to take or could be taken to rectify situations that already happened but focus is on the future and so moving forward what will you do will you change internal written policies will you change you know who you work with for recruitment so on and so forth and so how will that be implemented over you know the next several months and so once you come to an agreement how that worked it would be you know it would be an agreement that signed by the respondent and also the members of the fx commission for longer seconds thanks and those would be publicly available those resolution agreements yeah the the incentive for the respondent though the person who the complaint was made against the public official would be to say okay yeah acknowledge that you know these are the steps I'm willing to take to make sure we can resolve this complaint and so that might be you know an officer a department saying we're going to change our hiring practice and we've implemented this and then under this draft they'd be required to check back in under the resolution agreement the and it could have whatever kind of mechanism for making sure that that was closed and what would happen if in that instance if you know the public official violated the terms of the resolution agreement for the process would pick back up where it started and so you knew the idea is to enter into a resolution agreement you know early on and so for example if this was even before we got to the investigation stage if the if the agreement is violated then you just just pick back up start the investigation and then move forward from there any other questions about resolution agreements that seems like a good tool to have in the toolbox might also avoid some of the more actually full pieces of hearings and things and give an opportunity for the public official to well and give an opportunity maybe if someone wasn't quite aware that there was a conflict with interest or professional or preferential treatment or something like that to make the situation right you know it's there yeah I certainly think there are situations where people are engaged in behavior that may be common or maybe they've never thought of it in the context of ethics and specifically the code of ethics so this fixed the opportunity the opportunity to resolve the issue yeah early on and show good faith so we're going to pick this back up I'm hoping that we might actually schedule some time on Friday afternoon because we will fill out and there are a couple of things I'm wondering Tim I don't know what your schedule is like at this point but assuming that you are available I'm sort of thinking we might pick up our work on this at that point and incorporate some of the ideas here but yeah other questions represent Cooper this one throws something out on the table when I discuss next time Tim and I have been having a discussion in the background here I'm on several boards where to actually pass a motion it's a quorum is established but that doesn't necessarily mean that's enough votes when the majority votes to pass a motion it's not those present and voting it's those who are members of so in this case the the thing I posed was six member commission four member quorum four people show up in the meeting quorum is meant you take a vote three people say yes one person says no does the motion pass or fail under this language it pass it's written in the language where it says four members would be required to vote yes because that's a majority of the entire body it's a it's a quorum but it's also a difference in the standard of let's say conviction if one person comes before the entire board they have to be found guilty for lack of a better word by x number of people where if somebody comes in with the diminished number of members present it's a different standard for them to be actually found guilty or innocent I'm bothered by that what on it what would be the resolution other boards and online you have to have a majority of those appointed to the board if it's seven member board for six member board in this case before so the motion that was made where three people said yes and one person said no it would fail rather than pass because you did not reach for which is the quorum for the whole the whole body and again the issue is a different standard of conviction so I don't know yeah I mean I I think that there's some merit in given that the seriousness of the findings could dramatically impact you have the public's perception of our other long-term official and having a higher threshold for get the resolution of the case might make sense and have there be a you know a minimum of four loads required but director servers is there you having any thoughts on that I don't have a strong feeling either way right I would just be careful so we have had situations in the past where commissioners had to refuse themselves and so we don't want to box ourselves into a place where we are setting up a situation where we couldn't actually move forward so we do have for example several attorneys on the board and we had to have people recuse themselves because of you know cases they've worked in the past we do have any member who I believe does work for the district I'm not for so just you know scenarios where we could have somebody or the one person who needs to recuse themselves also for saying we need four people majority of four people so right now we have five commissioners we are moving into a situation where we have six they'll just point out you know currently we weren't changing the makeup of the commission because we're adding the rent like a cities and towns and that's because of the missile ethics piece we would be at a place where we would always be looking for three so just to keep that in mind that like right now with this with a setup of the commission if it weren't changing and it's only changing because of the missile ethics piece three would be sufficient and I don't think that that's will be an unusual standard today do you want to weigh in sure I mean the the ethics commissions are typically different than a lot of other agencies first is the appointment structure that they're appointed by a whole bunch of different bodies and sometimes those appointments don't come through in a timely way the second is the the importance of recusal becomes more acute on an ethics board and you want to encourage people even if they have the slightest appearance of a conflict to be able to opt out knowing that the vote can go forward in their absence if you change the structure of voting you provide a an incentive for those people who are on the fence as to whether they should recuse themselves to participate in the vote simply so that the vote can take place if their recusal would be in the absence of a quorum and so it puts officials appointed to the board in a quandary in situations where from a legal perspective they don't have a conflict of interest but from a public appearance perspective they want to recuse themselves to take away any perceived taint from the decision G.J. that's if I may oh yes please that's I think not my issue my issue is somebody goes in on a Tuesday and there are four members present and somebody goes in on a Thursday and there are six members present one person gets found guilty by three one person gets found guilty by four that's inconsistent and I don't think it should be inconsistent I understand it's a it's a situation that is faced by many commissions that are subject to a standard most most of these commissions up for a president voting standard to take into account a variety of situations so it would end up being inconsistent in the sense that a majority of five is less than a majority of seven but it would end up being consistent in that the percentages will always rain true yeah I think this rise because of the subject matter you're dealing with and the people that you're dealing with I think this might be considered rising to a higher level than do we spend 50 bucks on donuts this month the the the determination of this group is potentially you know depending upon how serious the allegation is significant that's all I have to say so represent me Jen and then go ahead but it makes me think that this probably happens in other cases that there are people have to refuse themselves from votes where the quorum is required of the entire body I don't know if that's sure not or if we could like make an exception but I see your point and I feel like there are resonates of me so I wonder yeah what happened maybe wonder for a while I won't figure it out I guess what I would say is that maybe we can work offline legislative council to look at how other quasi-judicial boards handle the quorum versus both requirements and see if there's an example there I could I'm starting to think of if the real issue is that we don't want to set you know four out of six as the threshold in the event that say two members have to recuse themselves so it's not just a casual reason that there aren't happened to not be a couple of members there there's a cause for the inconsistency that for you know that for the final findings that we you know might make it a majority of the board instead of majority of the members present you know who have not had to recuse themselves or something like that where it's not just an absence of the member it's an actual recusal and that way what that would force the board to do if we if we meet a contingent that way was to schedule the vote for a time when all the members who hadn't recused themselves could actually be present also just mentioned that the way the commission is set up it's pretty unique in a sense that a lot of community organizations members to the commission and one requirement for some of them is that the appointed member has to be a member of that organization so for example we did have a situation last year we had a commissioner resign it took several months to fill the position because you're dealing with an organization that has a small number of members and they're trying to find the person who's willing to devote the time to be a volunteer member of the board and it's not that always that easy to do I think we can word smith this to address the concern represent pooper but I think it is a valid one great so I think we've gotten a few more things on the table today introduced and delving a couple of new concepts I would I think the use of that Friday afternoon block that's opened up would be good for us to to take a look further if Tim is available and and obviously director siver and tj if you're available on Friday we can pick this back up at one what it likes to do is give the committee a little bit of a break before we pick up 641 with Tucker hi good morning again welcome back House committee on government operations military affairs we are switching our attention now to the latest draft of each 641 our bill about statements as class and Tucker has a new draft course which is posted on our committee page let's try the way this is 1.2 yes draft 1.2 all right there are three changes from draft 1.1 as you reviewed it yesterday and for the record Tucker Anderson legislative council um the first two instances of amendment are the updated day counts so if you look in subdivision e2 on page 2 you will notice that the board shall provide notice each of the taxpayers at a minimum 21 days before the schedule hearing for the class the deadline for the response has been updated to seven days taxpayers seven days before the so seven and 21 okay the other change is also within subdivision e2 so you'll note right after that sentence we just covered it says that the notice shall include a description of the class and the board's reasons for grouping the requests this is what you had asked for yesterday some sort of description for the taxpayer to understand why the board is going to group the requests and what the class is those are the changes from yesterday's version happy to answer any questions walk through this again whatever the committee needs are there questions i think just reading this which will provide notice to each taxpayer 21 days before the scheduled hearing so the timeline is 21 days before the hearing they have 14 days to opt out and that gives at least a couple of days for the board of the pavement and the clerk to get the stable word together and it was shown with description of the class and the board's reasons for grouping the requests I think that does the job thank you Tucker for getting our abstract thoughts into some actual language I have a question it is almost decidedly irrelevant I'm just curious why in number two it says at minimum 21 days before the scheduled hearing and in section three it says a minimum of seven days before the board's hearing is that two ways of saying the same thing or do they mean something different it is two ways of saying the same thing and something that we should have caught in editing but not enough of a significant departure from the drafting manual that require immediate correction two ways of saying the same thing great thanks I'm just curious if there's an opportunity to look at this again in the near future we'll make it consistent not in consistent consistent yeah consistent it's not I love a good callback appreciate that are there any seeing questions concerns I think that on balance what we've done here is to create a set of guardrails a timeline we're giving a reasonable ability for boards of abatement to group like cases but we're giving an opportunity for those tax payers to opt out if they want to be heard individually and it'll be up to them to weigh the pros and cons of that but I think we are adding enough information into the notice that's required to be given to those requesting abatement that they'll be able to make that decision effectively is anyone to have any objection to us going ahead and and move this forward today any last questions for Tucker I will just note that I did confirm yesterday that there's another bill dealing with abatement age 629 that House Ways and Means is working on into the maximum extent possible I made sure that this version would at least conform there are some overlapping provisions such as age 629 there is a proposal to include age 19 in that as well but Curt E. Keaton and I will make sure that however these proposals move forward that there's a harmonization a harmonization between the two bills I really deeply appreciate that I know this bill's I would say slightly less substantive than what they're considering doing up there representing people such as I had a conversation with Carol Doss myself yesterday and there was an interesting conversation and I'm certainly willing to to support what we're trying to do here but I mentioned to her as well that I think it's going to be a tough task for maybe not tough but the clerks are going to have to really probably take a lot of calls as far as just what's going on here I mean I think the information that's going out there isn't you know prescriptive enough to have the tax payers understand exactly what they might be getting into so I just I just want to again unsupported but I've got a feeling that you know there's going to be a lot of confusion out there and I I'm absolutely willing to give it a shot but I hope for the best in percent more just to follow up on that I don't got that that can happen BCA's have enough to do with on a regular basis you know as volunteers but I also hope maybe VLCT can help with training and keeping people up to date on that and they do a great job I should say you know whether it's for select forward people or other municipal committee members they VLCT does a great job and I know that they've been helping with our JPs and BCA so hopefully that will continue and just to follow up again you know one of the things is you know the board of abatement doesn't doesn't necessarily have to go out and and view this and and that's that's to me going to be a tough one for you don't have to go out and see whether or not the house is totally destroyed or partially destroyed is basically basically on the investigative and hearing process to understand that which is a lot different than you know what we've been through is sometimes a family might have a family catastrophe and and we understand that we get paid a certain amount whatever it is sometimes it's a fire that's pretty obvious you know that they need just the guard burned a whole house burnt out of that you know so but a little different than so many issues around whether it's a mud slide or flooding I think even Christelia mentioned it yesterday with Cambridge where you know you've got one house that's got basement flooded the next house has got to flip me upstairs first floor and the next house is even different than that so it's yeah but again I'm hoping for the best right one of the things that tipped me early on in this discussion into wanting to have the committee actually really dive into this and work on the bill some more was the testimony that we had heard that said there's some some towns that are probably already de facto doing this and to actually lay out some notice requirements and put some meat on the bones of there's not a whole lot that is in statute around the boards of abatement have to do other than the specific criteria for abatement so on balance I think we've we're going to see an improvement here but it's going to be interesting to see and I'll be interested to hear back from some of the the towns that do decide to take advantage of this in cases where there's been an event like what we're seeing very representable are we ready for a vote I would entertain a motion and we find the strat fable I will offer that motion to approve 8 641 as prevented as presented so able are there any further comments or shall commence the call the room representative Byron yes representative Boydon yes representative Pendo yes representative Morgan yes representative Cooper Brownton yes representative Markey yes representative Chase yes representative Waters Evans yes representative Randall representative Nugent yes representative Pigley yes representative McCarthy yes 1101 would you have any interest in reporting this I don't want to force it on you but I hadn't I hadn't thought that through you're insightful yeah yeah so if since representative Pigley has kindly offered to do that I think your experience with boards of abatement and some of the local municipal issues that are relevant here would be really valuable case people have questions let me know there's anything you need on the floor this will probably be noticed tomorrow you know probably take a swing through a way as it meets oh yeah yeah yeah yeah okay yeah so yeah so it won't be coming too fast and furious and they've got a couple other things to work on I can imagine they want to take a peek at this one yeah all right committee well that was pretty efficient use of our time so I'm going to use this little time for our lunch to try to make a plan for some of the things that we're going to be doing with the ethics bill we will be back here at one o'clock and it's are going to be 6.06 so and we'll be doing a little bit of hearing about each 6.06 and it will be returning for some testimony from OPR and the Vermont Medical Society about the OPR afternoon we'll see you all back at one we'll be sure and go out back