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Legislative Update – Week 23

June 19, 2020

Major pieces of legislation moved closer to the finish line this week bringing the legislature nearer to adjournment.  It’s looking more and more likely that the legislature will make their forecasted adjournment date of June 26th, offering a much-needed break from the legislative process for everyone involved.  This week brought good progress for businesses as capacity limits were lifted and the House passed a bill containing more economic relief. 

In this week’s update:

Executive Order Extended, Restaurants and Venues Gain Capacity 

Today Governor Scott announced starting June 26, organizations may allow 50 percent of fire occupancy or 1 person per 100 square feet, with a maximum of 75 people indoors and 150 people outdoors.  Also, effective June 26th, restaurants, catering, food service, and bars may allow 50 percent of fire safety occupancy or 1 person per 100 square feet, with a maximum of 75 people indoors and operators must limit the total number of customers served/seated in outside seating at one time to 150 or their maximum licensed seating capacity, whichever is less. 

The Governor earlier today signed a proclamation proclaiming today Juneteenth Day in Vermont.  Juneteenth, marking the day in 1865 (two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation) that the news reached Galveston, Texas, is known as the end of slavery.  The House also passed H.R 21, a house resolution commemorating the 155th anniversary of Juneteenth and recognizing our State’s and nation’s continuing struggle for racial equality

Earlier this week, Governor Scott announced that the state of emergency scheduled to end June 15th is being extended to July 15th.  With most sectors and businesses allowed to open to at least 25% capacity and health and safety measures continuing to be followed, this extension of the state of emergency will allow Vermont to continue on the path of safely reopening the economy.

All additions and addendums to the Be Smart, Be Safe order can be found here. 

ACCD has also updated its Drive-in Operation guidance (Section 5.2) to make clear firework displays can move forward with drive-in viewing options.  The Administration has credited towns for their creativity in adapting some Fourth of July festivities to move forward in modified ways that follow guidance for gatherings and dining.

CARES Act Dollar Distribution and State Budgeting 

The mosaic that is the deployment of CARES Act Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF) dollars is taking clear shape with the passage of multiple packages tagged on to the typical House Appropriations bill as amendments due to lack of time. 

As we said over the past few weeks, in addition to advocating for relief to businesses, you can make sure you are ready to capitalize on business grants by making sure you have a myVTax account and are up to date on filings (this should be done now because for security reasons you will need to receive a letter in the mail to set up the account).  Also, failure to pay taxes won’t disqualify you, however, all indicators point to an applicant needing to have filings up to date and be on some manner of payment plan.  The names of every business and the amount they receive as a grant will be publicly available in required weekly updates from ACCD.  More guidance has been outlined around sole-proprietors and those with at least one W2 employee are able to apply. Learn more at tax.vermont.gov/coronavirus.

This afternoon the House passed H.966 an appropriations bill totaling $232.63 million, which contains economic relief as follows:

  • $70.2 million for the second round of business grants.  The bill includes a lower threshold for businesses’ demonstrated revenue loss  (50% now) and extends relief beyond businesses that remit trust taxes. 
  • $5 million to the Vermont Community Loan Fund, of which $2.5 million is allocated for grants of not more than $10,000 to women-owned businesses and $2.5 million for grants of not more than $10,000 to minority-owned businesses.  To qualify for this aid a business must have a loss of 50% or more.  These funds seek to rectify the disparity in the allocation of federal SBA funds that have been documented. 
  • $3 million to the Agency for Commerce and Community Development for grants to businesses that provide highway and bridge maintenance services for the Agency of Transportation, municipal highway departments, or both.
  • $3 million to the Department of Tourism and Marketing to provide marketing support to businesses recovering from the COVID-19 crisis.
  • $1.4 million to the Office of Economic Opportunity for funding to the Community Action Agencies to provide grants of not more than $5,000, technical assistance, and for the costs of administration, which may include the creation of a statewide centralized online HUB and funding for new micro-business counselors and a statewide coordinator.
  • $3 million to the ACCD to establish a Restart Vermont Technical Support Network to make available an appropriate level of professional assistance to businesses to enable them to re-emerge from the COVID-19 emergency in a viable way. 
  • $1 million to the Department of Housing and Community Development for grants to communities through the Better Places Program to purchase or lease equipment, including masks, sanitizing stations, hands-free door pulls, outdoor tables and chairs, and other items used towards public safety measures and the mitigation of the spread of COVID-19, while enabling local businesses and organizations to reopen.  This fund is designed to exist in perpetuity and will be filled with philanthropic and crowdfunding efforts. 
  • $5 million to the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund to implement a Restaurants Feeding the Hungry Initiative. 
  • $5 million to the Vermont Arts Council to deploy grants to nonprofits arts and culture organizations that have experienced a 50% loss of revenue. 
  • $1.5 million to the Agency of Natural Resources for grants through the Outdoor Recreation Business Assistance Program for compliance with COVID-19 precautionary measures. 
  • $5 million to the Working Lands program.
  • $20 million for hazard pay was added to the bill at the absolute last minute.  The program has gone through multiple iterations and was at one point abandoned, due to changing and opaque guidance from the U.S. Treasury.  The most recent guidelines allow for grant payments to a limited scope of Vermont employees to make up some of the disparity between what they made at their job and what they would have made on unemployment during the first two months of the crisis. 

All of the funding detailed above will not be available to apply for until the bill is passed by the Senate, signed by the Governor, and programs are stood up by the entities that receive these funds.  Businesses are limited to only one avenue of funding, with the exception of dairy operations who can do so if they are pivoting business models. 

During this process, the Lake Champlain Chamber continually repeated that grants are what is needed most at this time to keep our businesses alive.  Towards that end, we advocated to the committees of jurisdiction that ACCD be given great flexibility around deploying the funding to help businesses and that funds being applied to the administrative cost of new or existing programs is not preferable. 

H.966 is also the vehicle for provisions from the House Committee on Energy and Technology amounting to about $43 million.  Of that $11 million is dedicated to the buildout of new broadband and $2 million would go to residents who are in proximity to broadband but need connection.  H.966 also contains $68,061,600.00 for housing initiatives including rent arrearage.  The full extent of the provisions of these sections can be found here.

Wednesday, the House passed H.956, a $300 million human services bill, bringing the Health and Human Services Coronavirus Recovery package to nearly $355 million to date.  As of this morning, before the passage of these pieces of legislation, $763,449,757 of the $1.25 billion provided to the state under the CARES Act was allocated or spent.  The Chair of the House Appropriations Committee expects that by the time the legislature adjourns next week $1 billion will be allocated.

Travel Restrictions Guidance 

The Department of Financial Regulation has updated the map of non-quarantine counties for cross-state travel this week.  Any county with less than 400 active cases of COVID-19 per one million residents is now eligible for quarantine-free leisure travel.  The map as well as the latest quarantine restrictions are available on the Cross-State Travel Information page.  More counties will be added over time as their active case counts improve.  A recording of the webinar ACCD hosted this week to help explain the coming quarantine changes as they relate to the lodging industry is now available online.

Act 250 Bill Gets Delayed

The Vermont Senate was scheduled to pass today S.237, an affordable housing bill originating with the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs that contained some Act 250 changes.  The bill was further amended by the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy to include elements of H.926, the Act 250 bill passed by the House before they adjourned for town meeting recess in March.  Any change of this magnitude would be difficult and contentious in normal times.  With the legislative process entirely online and stakeholders dispersed and distracted, this process was near impossible. You can watch the floor debate here.

Senate Economic Chair, Michael Sirotkin summarized the underlying bill by explaining to his colleagues that they wanted to tackle housing issues with a housing bond last year, however, due to credit rating issues, his committee changed tactics and after a statewide tour built this bill understanding that, “housing is not only about putting your hand out for more money, and resources, … we can affect housing by policy changes that don’t cost money but in the long run, will making housing cheaper to build and buy.” 

The underlying bill aligns state and local regulation through the removal of designated downtowns and neighborhood development areas from Act 250 jurisdiction as well as other efforts to make permitting in downtowns easier.  The bill also contains, for the first time, a route to extinguish an Act 250 permit, which in the past lived with a site in perpetuity.  The bill contains tax credits to improve housing stock in Vermont downtowns.  Additionally, the bill makes changes to Accessory Dwelling Units regulations to allow greater density and aging in place for older Vermonters.  The bill allows municipalities to regulate short-term rentals as they see fit, so long as that regulation does not adversely affect affordable housing stock in that municipality. 

The amendment to S.237 by the Senate Natural Committee was added on to the bill during final reading today and contains a number of troubling provisions that were previously contained in  H.926In a memo the Lake Champlain Chamber sent last week, we requested that S.237 be passed as a stand-alone bill, not containing these controversial provisions that could weigh the bill down. 

Chief among those provisions is a road rule which was extinguished many years ago.  It is now back, triggering Act 250 if a road of 2,000 feet, including driveways, is created.  One legislator realized their home’s driveway would now be in Act 250.  This bill potentially increases the cost of a project as it creates a bill-back authority to the Department of Forest, Parks, and Recreation. 

The bill also contains the makings of a new trails program that exists outside of Act 250 while providing a bridge policy to govern trails over the next 18-months as that is stood up, a change deeply appreciated by those who work in this sector.  Another fantastic addition brought from H.926 calls for a study delivered before October 15, 2021, by the Executive Director of Racial Equity on findings and any recommendations for legislative action based on their assessment of Act 250’s contributions to inequities in homeownership, land ownership, and land distribution within the State. 

We will break down S.237, and possibly the amendment from the Senate Committee on Natural Resources, in more depth in next week’s update.  The bill will likely need to go to a Committee of Conference.

Mandatory Food Recycling and Single-Use Plastic Ban Effective July 1st 

As a reminder, despite the world turning upside down, legislation passed before our crisis to ban plastic bags and mandate the separation of food waste from other solid waste will go into effect next month.  After July 1, 2020:

  • Vermont state law bans disposal of food scraps in the trash or landfills under ACT 148.  Trash haulers must offer food scrap collection services to non-residential customers and apartments with 4 units or more unless another hauler is willing to provide that service.
  • Stores and food service establishments will no longer provide plastic carryout bags at check-out.  Plastic bags will be allowed in stores and food service establishments for loose items such as prescriptions and vegetables.  Stores will be allowed to expend existing inventory.  Stores and food service establishments may provide paper carryout bags at check-out, for a minimum of $0.10 each.  The $0.10 fee does not need to be charged for small, lightweight bags (generally shorter than 10 in. or with a basis weight of 30 lbs. or less).
  • Stores and food service establishments are no longer allowed to provide or sell food or beverage containers made of expanded polystyrene including plates, cups, trays, egg cartons, and take-out containers.  Expanded Polystyrene is still allowed for trays used to package uncooked meat, fish, poultry, or seafood.  Additionally, this law can not be applied to products packaged out-of-state or products packaged for sale out-of-state. 
  • Food service establishments will no longer automatically provide plastic straws to customers, however, any customer can request a straw.  Hospitals, nursing homes, and other care facilities may continue providing plastic straws.  Similarly, food service establishments will no longer provide plastic stirrer sticks to customers.  Food service establishments may provide straws or stirring sticks made from alternative material.

More details and FAQs around plastic and EPS bans can be found here

More information about Vermont’s Universal Recycling Law can be found here.

Small Business Administration Updates and Resources 

The US Small Businesses Administration has reopened the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) and EIDL Advance program portal to all eligible applicants experiencing economic impacts due to COVID-19.  The EIDL program offers long-term, low-interest loans for small businesses and nonprofits that can be used to cover payroll and inventory, pay debt, or fund other expenses.  The EIDL Advance program will provide up to $10,000 of emergency economic relief grants to businesses that are currently experiencing temporary difficulties.

The Paycheck Protection Program provides small businesses with funds for payroll costs and is taking applications until June 30, 2020.  More than $100 billion in PPP funds are still available.  Small businesses can use funds for up to 24 weeks and have the option of extending the life of the loan from two years to five. SBA will forgive loans if funds are used as intended.

The SBA Vermont District Office is hosting a free daily webinar at 9:00 am Monday to Friday to discuss Paycheck Protection Program forgiveness and other changes. 

Laundry List 

  • Vermont shone favorably in the limelight this week as the Washington Post highlighted the state’s success confronting COVID-19. 
  • Vermont’s unemployment rate decreased by 3.8% in May to a rate of 12.7%.  The U.S. unemployment rate was 13.3% during the same period.  For the week ending June 13, 2020, the Labor Department processed 1,859 Initial Claims, up 209 from the previous week, however, the total new and continuing claims keep falling, with claims at 45,197, a decrease of 1,660 from the previous week.  Vermont has $384.3 million in its trust fund and spent $12.4 million on claims last week. 
  • The Senate unanimously approved setting up a study committee to investigate how the state could tax and regulate sports betting in Vermont.  Sen. Michael Sirotkin, D-Chittenden, told fellow senators that sports betting is already happening in the state, unregulated and with no financial gain for Vermont.  The next day an amendment was added to ensure the study committee looked at how to handle sports within the state. 
  • S.220, a bill requiring professionals regulated and required to do continuing education for licensure under the division of fire safety or OPR be educated on state energy goals by July 1 of 2021, was passed by the Senate and is headed to the House for consideration. 
  • Read last week’s update.
  • Lake Champlain Chamber’s COVID-19 Resource Guide.

Concerned or need to learn more about anything in this newsletter? Email our team at [email protected]. 

We look forward to working with you.
Sincerely, 
The Lake Champlain Chamber Advocacy Team

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Tom Torti, President
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Cathy Davis, Executive Vice President
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Austin Davis, Government Affairs Manager