Welcome to Capital Beat. It's week two and the legislature this week focused mostly on Act 46, the Education Reform Bill passed last year. And joining us to talk about the spending thresholds and how to deal with them this year is Representative Dave Sharp. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, you're the chairman of the House Education Committee and you are now looking at ways to deal with the spending thresholds put in place last year that many school districts have bumped up against. Give us just a brief overview of the direction that you've set the House on. So we started hearing over the summer some of the difficulties school districts were having staying under the 2% variable threshold. So there were school districts that had as little as 0% possible growth in their per pupil costs. And then we started hearing about the unexpectedly high increases in healthcare premiums at 7.9%. So there was sympathy in the committee for softening or tweaking the thresholds. So we felt that it was very important to continue to keep the pressure on cost containment as we move from our insulated tiny school districts to act 46 larger integrated school districts and so that it was important to keep those thresholds in place. On the other hand, listening to the concerns that school districts had in trying to stay under the thresholds. And how many school districts are gonna be affected by this proposed spending threshold increase that your committee approved? Well they all are. Sure. And the agency has estimated that under the current thresholds just under half of the school districts would not be able to stay under and would exceed them. Sure. And with the change, how is that, is there, how many fewer do we have any idea? Somewhat fewer would not stay under. It would be less of a penalty for everybody that is over the threshold. So it helps, they estimated around 127. It would help every one of those school districts penalties either go away or be less. Senate education is looking to repeal them all together. So how do you see these two disparate propositions where we're reconciling themselves here? Well it's not going to be easy, that's for sure. We do feel strongly in the house, it's why the thresholds were in the bill in the first place and why we've recommended a 0.9% increase in the threshold, yet keeping them in place is that we feel that it's important to keep the pressure on with regard to cost containment. Do you see any wiggle room in the house in terms of your position and then the Senate position because it seems that the House Ways and Means Committee felt a little differently, at least didn't feel as strongly about boosting the threshold by 0.9%. Yeah, there's a wide spectrum of opinions and we see it across the spectrum in the state, in the public and we see it across the spectrum here in the house. And you were with the speaker before you joined us here on this program. Any idea where the speaker stands at this point? He supports our work in the committee and supports the 0.9. But the real question is how do we move forward from here knowing that the house is on a different track than the Senate? So there'll be a lot of back and forth with your Senate colleagues to figure this one out? Absolutely, I mean, the longer it hangs on and the less clear we can be with school districts, the more problematic it is and we understand that. It's why we've worked diligently since day one. Actually, we've been working since November. We had a committee meeting in November in an effort to bring clarity to this in a timely manner. If the Senate refuses to compromise, would you be willing to just leave the thresholds intact as they are? Is that gonna be your alternative? Well, I think doing nothing is clearly a possibility. If we can't reach some agreement between the house and the Senate, the result is that the thresholds and act 46 stay in place. Representative Sharp, thanks so much for joining us today. We appreciate it. Glad to be here. And we're back with Bennington County Senator Brian Campion, a member of the Senate Education Committee. Thank you. Thanks for having me. We just spoke with Dave Sharp from the House Education Committee and we talked a little bit about the house position on act 46 and the spending thresholds. Their idea is to boost the cap 0.9% to help districts who are struggling under those thresholds. The Senate has moved forward with a different plan to strip out the thresholds altogether. Why? Why are you looking to eliminate them? So the testimony that we heard over the past couple of weeks really to me and I think to the other three members of the Senate committee that joined me on this decision really felt as though this was impacting kids. We tell school districts, we tell teachers, we tell principals, you have to do pre-K. You have to do do enrollment. These are things that cost money. Healthcare costs we all know are up. So these are putting pressures on budgets. And what we heard from folks in order to meet the requirements act 46 put in place last year, they were gonna start cutting things such as remedial math, counselors, school safety initiatives. And we felt as though that was just really bad policy. Act 46 talks about primarily expanding opportunities and this would be, in my opinion, taking away opportunities. And it's interesting, next week we will have CCB and the state colleges come into our committee as we do every year and an annual question is how many of our Vermont students do you need to remediate? And in the past that percentage has been somewhat high. I don't recall off the top of my head but it's always a surprisingly high number. So to me, how can we be asking people to cut courses? And then at the same time become angry that certain things aren't being fulfilled in our public schools. So that's where a lot of us fell on that issue. The spending thresholds, we refer to them as caps and people get angry about that, but the spending thresholds were to some extent intended to help keep property taxes down and force districts to think long and hard about what they are putting in their budgets. By removing them all together, aren't you eliminating that property tax relief that you were hoping to achieve? Well, hoping for some. I think there are two pieces of 46 and I think, again, just speaking for myself, the overarching priority for me was to expand opportunities and hopefully some tax relief will come from that. I still believe at 46 because of a new governance structure will lead eventually to some savings. It's possible that savings may be reinvested into schools. So we'll see what happens but without a doubt there are people who are feeling tax pressures. We have to address those but we also have to, I believe, trust the taxpayers, trust the citizens, trust the educators to do what they need to do to really educate young people to be active participants in this democracy as well as prepare them for the workforce. And if you look at this state historically, again, in general 95% of the school budgets are passed every year. That's trust people to continue to do the right thing. I really don't think if we were looking at hospitals, if we were looking at something where we were telling hospital personnel, physicians, nurses, that you cannot run a certain test, you cannot provide a certain service to a young person or anyone to make that individual healthier, this wouldn't be happening. I mean, this is really, I think, something where we need to give, like we give hospitals and medical professionals flexibility to do right by young people in Vermont. I think teachers, educators, taxpayers deserve that. And as you guys will, as you'll recall, the Senate version of Act 46 never included the CAHPS. The CAHPS were put in at the very last minute and I think it was a mistake. So we're rapidly moving toward what appears to be another showdown, I suppose, between House and Senate and that House is looking to increase the threshold to a 0.9%. If you can't reach compromise, is leaving the thresholds in place the alternative? I think we're gonna try to reach some kind of compromise just prior to walking in here. The chair of Senate had indicated that she's having conversations with folks. So again, I think we don't want this to be political. We want this to be what's best for kids. So I personally wanna get somewhere so that we can do that.  Both House and Senate dig in their heels. And do nothing. And do nothing in the CAHPS. Status quo stays.  I mean, I think historically, again, the Vermont legislature really thinks about it as citizens and puts it as citizens first. What's the track for your bill that you're working on now? When will it hit the Senate floor? I believe it'll be put on notice on Tuesday so I suspect it'll hit the Senate floor by Wednesday. And I think, I may be wrong, but I think we have the votes to lift the CAHPS. And I know that it's interesting reading the press and hearing from other folks. There seems to be a little bit of a maybe disconnect in the House around how people feel about what House Ed did versus what some people I think perhaps might be in more agreement to what Senate Ed did. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. That is a very internal situation. All right, Senator Campion, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it. I enjoyed it. Thanks, yeah, thanks. We're joined now by Dorsett, Republican Representative Patty Comline. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. Now, as this Act 46 discussion over the threshold spending continues, you have an amendment that you are looking to add on to some education bill that would limit the hit on the education fund. Right, it would be an education mandate amendment that people are familiar with now in the House. So I've attached it to many bills over the past year and a half. What it would call for is any bills that we pass here that cost money to schools, that we pay for out of the state's general fund. If it's a good idea, we should be paying for it. Pre-K is a good idea, but that's put a lot of pressure on the local schools. There's a number of dual enrollment, there's a number of things that we've done over the years that have driven up school costs. So I thought it was appropriate to put this bill on this, put this amendment on this bill when we're talking about thresholds and we're slamming schools, punishing them for going over a certain threshold while we're passing bills here that drive up costs. So would this be retroactive or would this be for new new days? I would like to do retroactive, I couldn't get that agreement. So it would be going forward. It's passed the House three times and it never gets by the Senate. So I'm counting on this year really getting it done early, getting it over there and having people contact their senators and ask them to support this, as it just makes sense. Has the Senate taken it up for a vote? They have not. They have it in the past, they've taken it out of bills. So I really want the public being aware of this and hopefully pressuring senators into supporting it. And again, it's going forward. I planned on putting it on this threshold bill that you hear a lot of talk about now, and I'm just told it would be considered non-Germain. The bill is very tightly worded, so it can't have many amendments and that the speaker wouldn't give me any assurance that it would be taken up. So it will be going on the next education bill we have that's relevant. Do you know yet what that next education bill will contain? It should be what we call the yield bill. It used to be the property tax rate bill that we set. Now the new language is yield. So that will be the next bill out and we'll be coming out of my committee. They asked me to do this on the floor of the House rather than in committee. So again, it was passed almost unanimously, I think three times now. But I'm excited that we can get it moving early and then I'll be working on a lot of constituent outreach for people to contact our senators and get it passed. You mentioned the pre-K program that was passed by the legislature, the dual enrollment program. Are there any other mandates that have been passed in recent years and fed into the education fund? Yes, there's a recent one called Act 66 I think that I was just told about by the state board of superintendents. And what that had to do with was individual education plans for each student. There was one we did, which was none of these are bad bills. A lot of them are laudable. There was a concussion bill we passed and that evidently cost the school $750,000. So these have effects. There's one that I bring up, it's minute, but it was called green cleaning products that we mandated that all schools have to use green cleaning products. And I went to buy laundry detergent and I went to get my $699 laundry detergent and next to it was the green clean, the green. And it was $25. So there's an impact to all of these things that we passed and they're laudable and they're well-meaning, but we should be paying for them now pushing on the school. Do we know what the impact has been on the statewide property tax rate over the last few years because of these? No, I'm wondering if I could get that. That's a good question. I'm not sure I could get, I have a packet of bills that were passed over the last 10 years. And it's substantial how many bills we've passed that have financially impacted the schools. I don't know if I can get a total note on that, but I'll try. It seems the public might think differently about these sorts of mandates if they knew what the individual impact from each piece of legislation was on their property tax rate. The pre-K was at least $20 million. I mean, they're significant. These are significant bills. How's the outreach going with the Senate on this amendment so far? I haven't tried yet. I want to get it passed to your first once it gets over there, then we're going to work. I'll be having people contact my senators for sure right away, especially focused at the school board level. And then we can branch out from there because the school boards will have vested interest in this as well. Right. All right, Patty. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you very much. Education obviously wasn't the only thing happening here in the state house this past week. Josh, we had a privacy bill in the Senate and more action on marijuana legislation. The privacy bill is fairly interesting. And it was the first piece of legislation that the Senate took up as a body. Absolutely, yeah. And it gave it a ringing, unanimous endorsement. So, which is interesting, because that almost never happened. That almost, yeah, you're right. Except for those concurrent resolutions, you know, thinking Bob the Builder for doing something great. Yeah, it's pretty rare that I've seen the Senate in complete agreement on anything, but this was the case. So this privacy bill, the intent of it is according to the lawmakers, which Senator Joe Benning out of Caledonia and Senator Tim Ash and Senator Dick Sears are the co-sponsors on this bill. And what they're saying is that this is an attempt to make legislation catch up with advances in technology. And specifically, most of it regards the way that law enforcement is able to use technology to gather information on people. So it touches on unmanned aerial devices or drones. It touches on the way police can access your cell phone records or email records. It touches on the data that's collected by license plate readers. And so it places limits on what police are able to do, for example, if they want to use a drone to conduct surveillance of your residence, then they have to get a warrant for that as opposed to just flying around. It also, there are exceptions to that. If they have what they perceive to be an emergency situation, I suppose if you had maybe a search and rescue, then I suppose that would probably be perfectly fine. But if they're looking specifically to gather information on a person, then they need to have a warrant. They also need a warrant if they're going to access a lot of your electronic communications, say text messages, say emails, the contents of both the subject lines, those need warrants. They have a lower standard of threshold to what they call subscriber information. So that is your IP address. That's more of that metadata that we've heard so much about through the NSA stuff. And the argument that law enforcement made before the Senate Judiciary is, well, you don't need a warrant to know somebody's physical address. So they shouldn't need a warrant to know somebody's virtual address. And apparently that argument held water with the Senate Judiciary because they ended up going in that direction. Interesting. So yeah, this bill came through really smooth and we expect it'll probably be over in the house. I imagine fairly soon. And we should note that the Senate Judiciary Committee began reviewing this over the fall. Absolutely. They wanted to get a jumpstart on it. And isn't there a new crime for arming a drone? Yes, yes. I thought that was one of the more fascinating things for me. Yes, this is true. One of the few aspects of this bill that doesn't actually relate explicitly to law enforcement has to do with, it makes it a misdemeanor crime punishable up to one year in prison for mounting a weapon or firing a projectile from a drone. Does a potato gun count? I think anything that can be fired, I think would probably fall under this. Is that a misdemeanor crime? I don't know. I wouldn't do it. All right, so that bill, I believe was getting third reading on Friday. And we'll head over to the House for its consideration. Now we mentioned that the Senate Judiciary Committee took this up early in the fall during the off session because they wanted to get this out in the first week, first couple of weeks. And that's because they were trying to focus now on the marijuana bills. There are two under consideration. We've heard some testimony already for and against legalizing marijuana. You sat through a hearing earlier this week with Bennington Police Chief, Paul Doucette, who is the chairman of the police chiefs. I would have to look, I believe he has a title like that. I believe he's something like president or executive manager or something of like the police chiefs of Vermont. So he had some interesting testimony and was very much against legalization. Absolutely, he was part of a contingent of law enforcement folks that headed out to Colorado right about one year ago. When we were first talking about POT, that was when the Rand Commission study came out. So he and some state police and some sheriffs and some state-based attorneys took the trip out to Colorado and the information that they came back with is pretty damning, at least from their perspective. And so they are strongly urging against any sort of legalization. Stephen Bernard, who's the sheriff for Rutland County, said that all of the sheriffs in the state are united against legalization. Right. Chief to set said that marijuana is the first step toward heroin addiction. Although it didn't call it a gateway drug, but it alluded to that. He said, I'm not gonna call it a gateway drug, but it is the first step. Senator Tim Ash pointed out that we currently have a heroin epidemic in Vermont and we don't have legal marijuana. So maybe that's not a straight line. However, the police chief is standing by that statement. Okay. On Thursday, Department of Financial Regulation commissioner Susan Donaghan offered some, what I thought was interesting testimony regarding the banking system and the insurance industry. Sure, what's the problem with that? So there's a couple of issues. Number one, the federal government still considers marijuana to be illegal and accessing banking services through the federal banking system would be near impossible for retailers or lounges, which are part of the legislation. They would be allowed if it's passed. In Colorado, where it is legal, businesses have had difficulty finding access to banking services because any bank with a federal charter does not want to accept their business. They're afraid that they will lose their relationships with the federal reserve. So credit unions have begun to spring up. Many of them have state charters. In Vermont, we have at least one medical marijuana dispensary that does business banking services with the Vermont State Employees Credit Union. However, it's simply cash or check. They have no access to debit cards or credit cards because that uses the federal banking system. Many insurers don't want to ensure a marijuana related business because they're not quite certain what their liability is because, again, the federal government doesn't consider marijuana to be legal. So if a legal market is set up, perhaps there is opportunity for other credit unions to offer basic banking services, at least a place to deposit cash and write checks from the account. But it could be very difficult for, I think there's 84 retail outlets that would be allowed in Vermont under one of the bills and 42 lounges. That's a lot of businesses that would need access to banking service and they may not find willing participants. So the one thing that Commissioner Donagin did say is you don't want unmarked vans, driving around the highways with piles of cash in them because they have nowhere to put it. So that's something that the state will have to figure out moving forward how to accept money made from a legal marijuana market in Vermont when it can't be deposited into a traditional bank. And so we had current law enforcement testify against legalization. A former top chief here at law enforcement here in Vermont came out in favor of it. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, Kimberly Cheney, a former AG, he served from I think 73 to 75. He came out in favor of it and said he'll be urging lawmakers to act this year. And really the big reason that he is pushing legalization and that many others are doing so is because they believe prohibition has failed and plenty of people still have access to marijuana, still use marijuana and we might as well try something different and capture and regulate the market rather than seed it to illicit drug dealers. So that's at least one former law enforcement official that is now in favor of legalization and perhaps we'll see more moving forward. All right, joining us now is Chittenden County Senator Dave Zuckerman, a candidate for lieutenant governor. But we're not here to talk about that. We are here to talk to you a little bit about a legalization bill, marijuana legalization bill that you introduced last year. There's a new bill this year. That's right. First of all, Ronas, just give us a brief recap of your bill and how it differs from what's on the table this year. Well, I think sort of everything's on the table and that's the process we go through is discussing the different elements of both bills that are introduced as well as issues that other folks are bringing up and I think there are yet more to talk about. But both bills have discussions around basically regulating what is now an illicit underground market. It's as I think maybe you've been talking about in the past, clearly prohibition has not worked to eradicate cannabis. No one is saying that cannabis is a wonderful thing to use, just as no one says that alcohol is a perfect thing or tobacco is a perfect thing. The question is, what's the best way to manage it in our society? And I think many folks have come to a rational conclusion that managing it in a regulated environment means knowing the concentration of product that people are getting, knowing that folks aren't getting it from a, quote, drug dealer who may have other interests in getting you hooked on something else. So the two bills and the discussion from the Rand report discuss everything from how to tax it to how to manage it, how many stores can sell it, whether there's a licensing program for production and for production from a cultivation perspective as well as different folks who might process it into different ways of consuming it.  Access for youth, edibles, and then sort of driving and or workplace concerns for people who are consuming the product. And those were all conditions that Governor Peter Shumlin laid out when he came out and said, I will sign a bill if it takes those things under. That's right. And actually during that speech, I was pretty pleased because four out of the five of those were in the bill that I introduced in some form or another. And as people who follow the legislative process, everything is always addressed and then how do you address it often? So the one that I had a difference in my bill with what he said was with respect to edibles. And frankly, I'm open to that discussion. The bill I introduced said no edibles that look like children's candy, no edibles or all edibles after you're wrapped in single serving units. And then also any edible that's produced would have to be approved by a board. And there are problems with that from a sort of procedural scenario. But at the same time, fully banning them also just means, okay, the edible market will be the next underground market that we're not regulating. But that's something I'm more than happy to talk about. And if passage of the bill, everything else is working or generally approved and that's the one sticking point, edibles can be put off a few years. That's not the crux and necessary element in my opinion. Yeah, it's generally believed that there's a few weeks for the Senate to deal with this and pass it and move it on over to the House. If it is to move forward this year and become law, do you, how are you feeling at this point in terms of its prospects? Well, there's an interesting dynamic of what the timeline is. I think the President pro tem had said three weeks, but I think that was really about, don't have any one committee take more than, three weeks worth of time because there's other issues to take up. So whether the bill moves out of the Senate within three weeks, I don't think that's either a realistic timeline nor a realistic drop dead plan. For it to pass through the House, I do think there's legitimacy to making sure we get a very thoroughly vetted bill that really covers many of these issues that have been brought up, which are legitimate issues with, I think, reasonable ways to address them, but it's gotta be a very comprehensive and well done bill for it to get through the House where they have not spent as much time as my Senate colleagues have. On the other hand, we have talked about cannabis reform in various formats for over 10 years now. And so I think a lot of constituents are ready and typically legislators aren't ready to pass something until they feel like their constituents are. And that work has evolved for a long time. And I think there's certainly still a good possibility for it to get through. Okay. If you were a betting man, would you bet on legal marijuana this year? I probably would, but I think it's just over 50-50. It's not certainly a slam dunk by any means. Better than the Powerball, which apparently nobody ever bought one, so. Which is too bad. I never buy them. I went by my corner store and they were actually closed for the evening. I wasn't in the running, but I probably saved you two bucks. That's right. All right, Senator Zuckerman, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thanks again for joining Capitol Beat. We will be back next week with a wrap-up of week three here in the legislature.


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