House committee reviews Senate amendment to H.935 that trims grants, adds wildfire task force and expands emergency rulemaking

The House Government Operations & Military Affairs committee on Thursday reviewed the Senate's proposed amendment to H.935, an act relating to emergency management, focusing on program administration changes, new emergency rulemaking authority, and several shifts to appropriations and reallocated funds.

Tim Dublin, legislative counsel, gave the committee a section-by-section overview and said the Senate's amendment (highlighted in a side-by-side draft) has not yet been acted on by the full Senate. Dublin identified four principal changes: (1) the technical rescue grant program would be administered by an urban search-and-rescue (USAR) program manager; (2) creation of an "increasing wildland fire response capacity" task force to study how to boost the State's wildfire-response capabilities; (3) a two-year allowance for agencies to adopt emergency rules when a federal rule, amendment, or policy would materially conflict with a state statutory or regulatory program; and (4) removal of a $500,000 appropriation intended for a ready-response grant program that would have funded food-bank storage and distribution of shelf-stable foods and bottled water.

Sen. Brian Collimore (Rutland), who walked members through the sections, said section 1 would create the ready-response grant program and that section 2 would rebrand and place administration of the technical rescue grant with the USAR team program manager. Collimore said section 13 makes implementation of the grant programs contingent on available funding and contains effective dates for the bill.

A committee member asked about the bill's new "whole community" definition, noting prior versions had language explicitly referencing the disability community. Collimore said the new definition is intended to be more inclusive, describing "whole community" as the collective of residents, emergency management practitioners, organizational and community leaders, and local, state, and federal officials; he acknowledged it does not explicitly name the disability community. The member said that change raised concern because earlier, more specific language had been included intentionally.

On funding, Collimore and Joint Fiscal Office staff described several appropriation items that remain and several the Senate amended. Collimore listed amounts in the bill text for a computer-aided dispatch system ($2,250,000 and five years of software licensing fees), $190,000 for cybersecurity, and $4.5 million for a statewide conceptual design to expand the land-mobile radio network. Chris Hooper of the Joint Fiscal Office told the committee the Senate Appropriations Committee removed the provision that would allow the Department of Public Safety to request remaining monies from the original $11,000,000 appropriation after three years and deleted the FY27 $500,000 appropriation for the ready-response grant program. Hooper said the revised Senate language still creates the two grant programs but, as amended, does not currently fund either program; implementation is contingent on funds being available.

Committee members and counsel discussed logistics for a line-by-line review once the Senate completes floor action and the strike-all amendment is available. Collimore said on the record he expected the Senate to pass the amendment and "put it in all remaining stages of passage" and then message it back for House consideration, but no formal committee vote on H.935 was recorded during this session.

The committee paused to await the Senate's floor action; members said they would go offline and reconvene to continue their review once the amended text was available.