Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: They'll hear us talking about this. All right, yeah, we could Pretty much. Okay.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: So

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I've been working on our letter to appropriations, and we're going to try and wrap that up today if we can. I think we're actually 80% of the way there. We are going to hear just in a few minutes from the Agency of Agriculture with those extra questions that we'd asked. So it will be helpful to hear that, I think, before we make any final decisions on this. So just to review, we're supporting these amounts that were in the governor's budget in the base book purchasing incentive, 500,000. That's the money that is available to schools that purchase local food. AOE came in and talked to us about that. That was oversubscribed this year for the first time. Then the fund is- That's level funded. That's level funded at 500,000, yeah. Are just, by the way, the lead committee asking for that funding. So in the past, because it's AOE, the education committee has worked on that and they asked us to do that. If there's more discussion or conversation and anything we should have about that, but just as an FYI. And then the 500, it has been 500 and it was increased to 500,008 and 75 for the Farm to School grants. That's a grant program that's been around for a while that we've also heard testimony in. And then fairs and field days, I want to just confirm what that number is. Heard testimony the other day from the fair group, and we need to just go back and see what's in the budget.

[Jed Lipsky (Committee Clerk)]: My notes did not include that.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: It's two sets of numbers too.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: I thought it

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: was. It's two probes, right? It's, yeah, institution and stipend.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, it's a stipend. It's an amount that's split over all the 10 fairs or whatever. And I think maybe it's 300, but whatever it is, you're in support of it. I

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: don't. I thought it was 100,000 or spread out between all of

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: them and maybe $30,000 per capital, but I'm gonna check and see whether they sent us anything that spells it out. I looked at it now.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, I think it's Isn't it

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: like 300 or something for

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: the infrastructure and $2.12 or something like that for stipends? The check. Yeah.

[Jed Lipsky (Committee Clerk)]: I can't remember at all. Yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And then I'm going to suggest that we support, I know we had a discussion about this a little bit yesterday, we support the full funding, statutory funding for the High Rating and Population Board, a big number, and we have historically looked at it and said, oh, well, wouldn't hurt if we took a little bit from that. Although this committee never did. This committee never did. The committees did. And we've gotten back to a point now where the focus is on housing, and I think we want to make sure there's also focus on conservation that we continue that.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Do we know at all? We really didn't talk about budget with them when they were here. How much of that would be used for housing, how much would be used for conservation?

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Who decides that? And overhead.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Somewhere along the way, and I can't remember who told me this or where it was, I don't think it was the committee, but historically it's more, I'm gonna say sixtyforty and I may have that wrong, just as a caveat, but we could ask for that member. Have we

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: tried to do that before? Yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: They get back to us quickly. Yeah. And kind

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: of maybe that same thing that we asked the food bank of, you know, is their operating budget 15% of the total, like the food bank, or how does that work?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, good, good question. Picture Shock, can we just make a note to reach out to the, I can help you with the who, because there's a lot of context there. Vermont, housing and conservation.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Poly, maybe.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. Poly nature probably.

[Jed Lipsky (Committee Clerk)]: Reach out to Jackie Folsom. Thing that was unique about Bears and Field Days is the entire board's territory. There's no administrative thou or not one.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Right?

[Jed Lipsky (Committee Clerk)]: To your point, that's unique as long as the department's.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Alright. Those are the items that I think are in the governor's recommended budget debates. And then

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Besides the agency and FBI?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yes, yeah. Within the agency budget and within the FBR budget, there are a couple of things that I'll also mention here. So then I think yesterday we collectively felt that NOFA, Working Lands and Vermont Food Bank were three that we would put towards the top. The no further request is for 500,000. The Vermont Food Bank is for 2,000,000 for Vermont. Feeding Vermont through those are the requests. And we need to confirm that those are the number we want to recommend or some other numbers. And then the working lands, there is a million dollars in the base, and then there was a request to bump that up to 5,000,000.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: From a request from them?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: From the coalition. Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: But that was broken into 500,000 base and three

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So point five at one time, any thoughts on, let's start with the background. If

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: the 500,000 was added to the one. So

[Unidentified Committee Member]: what part is the government's recommend?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: 1,000,000. And that's what it was last year.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I feel like we should stick with that because I think the likelihood that we're gonna get any extra is so slim that if we ask for extra in every category, we're gonna end up just not getting the things we want. So I lean towards going with a million for that one and then asking for these other ones like Vermonters feeding Vermonters isn't in the governor's recommend and neither is NOFA. And those are the programs that are the double duty farmer supporting and also food supporting in terms of including security people. So that would be my 2¢.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Would it make sense to ask for more, but have it not at the top of the list?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That's also possible.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Yeah, I'm thinking 5,000,000, no, it's true that there's no point in asking for 5, it'd be

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: a waste of interest.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: We could potentially ask for that 500,000, but just as a one time.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, and we can certainly make it clear that these are our, we would prioritize this. Were we also gonna make a note in there that the matching? Yeah. Yep. I've got a note about that.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: The one thing I like about working, man, it's like the, I can't remember her name, that's the company that makes hot sauces. That was worth my answer. Yeah, she received

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: a grant.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: To me that's pretty powerful seed money, you know, that creates jobs and boosts our economy, know, and you're giving it to people who are pretty gung ho to do something, you know, and I've received it before and passed, and it was 50% match back when we did it. And I still use the equipment that people bought with that.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I probably wouldn't have bought it other much.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: And extended, I bought it for long term storage bins, so I could sell my apples longer and keep them in good condition to be able to wholesale them.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, and there is a lot to

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: be said about that program.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We've heard consistently that the demand, for what it's worth, the demand outpaces what we've made available, yeah, no question that it's made a huge difference for people, and it's helped with food resiliency. Yeah, it definitely is an important program. We could. So we could say we also support, certainly, what's in the recommendation, we would be also open to having another additional amount, maybe it's 500,000 in one time or increasing the base. Typically, what happens is if there is any extra money, it's one time. It's a harder sell to put in the base. We can ask for it in the base and then what is the psychology of asking for more versus asking for less and asking for the base of the proposed one time. I don't know what the answer is to that.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So somebody on another committee told me that their committee was told or their interpretation was if they were recommending anything that wasn't in the governor's budget, they needed to find where it was gonna come from within their same category. No. No? No. Okay, all right. So we don't need to make recommendations about where cuts need

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: to come? No.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: We just put the things on our list and hope that they figure it out.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So yesterday I mentioned that I heard that the school budgets had come down a little bit. And this came up again in discussion across the hall after committee time was done. There was an education update. The numbers are percentages, percentage increases, and the working number had been 5.8% growth in school budgets, and now it's looking more like 4.3%. So it's down 1.5%, and 2,000,000,000 or whatever our total education fund is, somebody else will have to do the calculation. So not an insignificant amount anyway. So And that's money that if we were to use the general fund to try and buy down property tax increases, that means we will have to use less of the general fund. So arguably, there's more available. Anyway, I don't think no, I don't think we need to say, take the money from here. It's understood that it'll be general fund money.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Consistent with that policy we were talking about yesterday of we all agree on feeding Vermonters, that's food security is definitely a priority. But also to Greg's point, I think that growing our farm and forest economy sectors is important, and whether that means Greg selling apples to school or in working lands case, job creation, that has a certain amount of money coming back to the state too, the impact. And keeping money in the

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: economy, that's pretty powerful. Arguably makes it possible for recipient to participate in Vermonters in Vermonters down the road. We conceptually, we all agree that those things are true, then the question is still what we asked for. I did hear somebody suggest 500,000.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: With the match, if John said, and Greg said that

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and matching would be part of that. Do we have our Zoom guests here yet?

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: I think it's a million.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: A million? Okay. In one time?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yes. How much do they ask for?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: 3 and a half in one time. Oh wow.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, that's been long standing, hasn't it? And rarely, if ever, realized. I think when

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: it was created, right, wasn't it supposed to be something like 5,000,000? Well, was the dream,

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: yeah. Exactly. And with ARPA, I realized it maybe twice, yeah.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: I would just add that if we ought to ask for more than we think we're gonna get,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: We haven't really talked about that second category, like the conservation districts, which have a positive multiplayer. So good.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Not the next on the list, but we'll come to that shortly. So remote receiving remote monitors is the other one, and that's the two so it's $2,000,000 request. Do we wanna support that number? Do you wanna support a different?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: For me, that's my top choice. And I would definitely say to fund it. I think last time we asked for that and they gave us a fraction of it and they'll make use of whatever they get out of it. But the more they get, the more farmers can do. And it's kind of like you were talking about with working lands. If they get money, if they know they can count on, they can run their business more efficiently. It's gonna promote farming in the future. Yeah, I vote for two.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: That's the food bank too, right?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yep. Okay. The conservation districts are recommended in the governor's budget level based funding of 612,000. And the request was for to increase that to 948,200. And I don't have in front of me whether that's base or I think that was base, but I'm not certain. Anyway, that's so those are two numbers we can come up with our own network.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: What's the difference, 300 something?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: It's not a ton of $3.30 something, What was the amount in Taiwan? 948,200. All right, let's think about that one. And I want to also say, while we're talking about big numbers, the security fund, the Farm and Forestry Operations Security Special Fund. So that's the one that is funded by us. And it's S-sixty program, we don't have any money for it so far. And the request was for $15,600,000 That was calculated on half of the losses, average losses over the past three years. We saw those slides the other day. So that's a big number. I wish for 500,000 as an initial contribution to that fund. Okay. Other thoughts? It's a

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: bit lower than 15,000,000.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: It's a

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: It's a start. Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: I mean, my feeling is if we need to open a bank account, whatever the lowest amount is, just because whatever we put in there, 500,050 thousand, even 3,000,000, it's not going to be enough to really address the next emergency in any meaningful way. But it's an important thing, and I think if Senate approves or somebody wants to throw money at it, we certainly agree with that. But when you think of that multiplier effect or security, it's just money in an account that's there, and it's not going to affect any Vermonters, really, until it's used, whereas these other programs we're talking about have immediate

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: impact. Any thoughts on that before you leave?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I think that it's a good thing to support and

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I don't

[Unidentified Committee Member]: know what number makes sense, but I think we should give them something. And I mean, at least their ask and maybe more than their ask because it seems like, I mean, we hear Richard talk about them, they do really important work that nobody else does. Also So

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: the conservation district? Yeah. Oh, what about this? The security.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Oh, the security fund, oh, sorry.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: You need to go to testify. So yeah, thank you. I'll look at

[Unidentified Committee Member]: number and I'll look at it

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: when I come back. We don't make any final decisions. Okay.

[Jed Lipsky (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you. We were walking about the food line of these

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: conservation core. That's a different line there. And how we're actually resourced. And I'm gonna suggest because I see the agency has joined us on Zoom and want to temporarily put this discussion on hold, but this is part of the larger discussion. Good morning,

[Amy Mercer (Financial Director, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Good morning. How are you?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I'm well. How are you?

[Amy Mercer (Financial Director, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Good. Thanks.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And are we are we just having a good morning or is

[Amy Mercer (Financial Director, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: No. It looks like Nicole's in the waiting room.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. She's joining. Okay. Hi, Nicole.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Hello.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Good morning.

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: How are you? Good morning.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Good. I guess I'll start by asking whether either of you wants to share anything share your screen.

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I can share a spreadsheet I have that just breaks down our budget from 2019 forward if that would be helpful to lead the discussion.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Sure. Yeah. Okay. While you're pulling that up, thank you both for joining us on short notice.

[Amy Mercer (Financial Director, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Sure.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Can Can I ask a question? Sure. Yes. If either of you

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: recall a time when, say, the executive branch told the agencies that you have to cut 5% or 3%, not level or sort of COLA increase. Representative Lipsky and I were just talking about how school boards at times have to look at a school budget and say, okay, we're getting very strong guidance that the school budget needs to be 5% or less. I couldn't remember if the agencies, specifically Agency of Agriculture, had to do that at some point in the last fifteen years.

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: So for the record, Nicole Dubuque, Agency of Agriculture chief operating officer. So neither Amy nor I have been with this agency for fifteen years. In the last three years that I've been with the agency, we have not been asked to specifically cut the budget. Rather, we do kind of like budgeting exercises to make sure that our increase stays within like what would be considered level funding. Like, I think it's normally like 3% or something like that. In my previous role in the agency of human services, when I worked for DCF, there were a few years where we had to put forth cuts to the budget. So it does happen. But in the past three years, I have not been asked to do that. I don't know, Amy, if you had a different experience.

[Amy Mercer (Financial Director, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Not that I can recall. But like Nicole said, for the record, Mercer, financial director, It's pretty much been level funding.

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah. I think another important thing to note, too, is that we are running on roughly 22% general fund, whereas there are other agencies that run much higher than that. So it's difficult for us to like, we can't just cut out of our federal funding, for example, because that's what USDA is giving us. We've been charged with running a specific program for them. So we can't really put that forward as as a cut to our budget.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Thank you. That's really helpful.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Alright. We see the spreadsheet, Nicole. Perfect.

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Alright. So I am oh, my screen sharing is paused. You can still see it,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: though? Mhmm.

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Okay, perfect. So I just wanted to run through this and take any questions, but I thought a visual would be helpful, and I can certainly send this to you after our discussion today. So we've laid out fiscal year 'nineteen through fiscal year 'twenty seven for the agency. We've divided it by category of funding, and we've also done a position breakdown for you here. So you'll see that if we just jump from fiscal year nineteen to '27, we've had moderate increases every year, but we've really gone from a budget of 24,830,000.00 to 61,190,000.00 over the last few years. You'll see general fund wallet has increased and we have some some reasons for why it increased. So did I can you still see the spreadsheet? I wanna make sure that I'm not

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: changing it. If you don't.

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Perfect. Perfect. Okay. So we've had general fund increases over time, but the actual percentage of how much our budget is made up of general fund has gone down. So we're at about 22% reliance right now. In 2019, we were about 34% and most of our general fund increases can be attributed to working lands, NRCC, farm to school, internal service fees were a big thing. So just to explain that to you, that's where our general fund increases have come from. We've gone from about 8,390,000.00 to 13,700,000.0 over the last several years. Then we have our federal funds. So this is really where we've had big increases. So we went from about 3,610,000.00 in federal funds in fiscal year nineteen up to 20,000,000 now. So we can attribute a fair amount of that to DBIC and some other USDA programs that have come to us that we've been required to administer. And then we have special funds, which has increased from about 12,390,000.00 to 24,350,000.00. And a lot of that increase can be attributed to clean water funds. So those are the big ones I wanted to point out. You'll also notice that our position count total has gone from 126 to 151, and that includes both exempt permanent and limited service positions. I'm happy to go into detail about kind of what and where those positions increased, but I can stop for a second and take questions.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, we've got a couple of questions. One question that I'm wondering right off, and you might not have this at your fingertips, in the general so are all those 151 positions today funded out of the general fund?

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: No. Most of them are not.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. We may want to drill into that a little bit, but I think we've

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: got a couple other questions here. John? Sorry, DBIC. I don't know what that is.

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Oh, I'm sorry. It's the Dairy Business Innovation Center, and it is run out of our agricultural development division within our agency. However, the Dairy Business Innovation Center actually serves all 11 Northeastern states. And so we do have six positions supported and they're all limited service positions supported by the funding we get for the Dairy Business Innovation Center. But those six positions don't only serve Vermont, if that makes sense.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yes. So that's money coming in. Comes in, some of it goes out to Vermonters in grant form, but it's all funded federally.

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: It's all funded federally, and I think an important thing to note there just while we're talking about positions is those six positions, because they are funded with that very specific federal funding, we can't find bandwidth in them, for example. So if there was something that came up that is funded by general fund, we can't look to those six physicians and say, can you do this for us? Because of how their funding is. They have to work solely on DBIC.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: That makes sense. Yeah. And also, you mentioned that these numbers include working lands. Would that just be for the recurring working lands? Like during when we got all the COVID money, there was a big bump in that. Is that reflected in these numbers, or are the onetime funding wouldn't show up in

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: This is just base budget. The onetime that we got, was it last year or the year before, would not be reflected here. This is just the base budget, but I think our working lands budget, Amy helped me with the numbers went from something like 450,000 up to a million. That would be reflected here.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yes. Representative Burtt.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Thanks, Chair. The goal with the special fund money you said goes to water quality. A lot of that is related to water quality. How many positions there or how many are in that special fund that are specific for water quality and what exactly is that program doing? Is that like the cover crop type programs and things with, you know, manure injection? Is that what that money goes toward?

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: So our special funds, we've compiled all of our special funds. So it's all the fees that we collect, and it's also the clean water funding that we get from the Clean Water Board all compiled into one lump sum number. So some of that money is brought in from our plant industry division and pays for those positions. A large chunk of it is brought in from clean water and it pays for those positions. So to answer your question specifically, we have in our water quality division, we have 20 permanent positions and 11 limited service positions, and there is a variety of things that they do. So we have actual do you have something to add, Amy? Sorry.

[Amy Mercer (Financial Director, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah, I just wanted to say that there are 13 positions that are funded with clean water funding, But that's a mix of funding that comes in the approved clean water budget through the Clean Water Board, plus fees that the agency collects, such as the large farm operations fees and the medium farm operation fees?

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: So it looks like 13 then of the 31 positions we have are fully covered by Clean Water Board funding. But they do a variety of different things. So we have the inspectors that actually go out and do the inspections and make sure that we don't have non point source discharges happening, report those to ANR if we do find that there are discharges happening. Then we also have our engineers who help with some of our matching programs for federal programs through NRCS. So they're going to go out and do work on that and make sure that the engineering plans are cleared for some of those infrastructure projects that we support. And then we also have staff in that division that do granting programs. They kind of put the money out the door that comes our way from both capital budget for grants and then also clean water board.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Thank you.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Go ahead, Richard. Brian. Nicole,

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: just by definition, our limited service positions almost always funded by non general fund monies, mostly federal?

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yes, so limited service positions are primarily funded through federal funds, or they could be funded maybe through one time appropriations sometimes, but like normally it's related to a time limited source of funding.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Within the permanent category for each of the additions that you've got up, those would be some are exempt and then the rest are not exempt, I guess is what you would call them? We

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: have a total of six exempt staff in the entire agency, and they all exist within the administration division. And then we have a total of 116 permanent staff which are sprinkled throughout all six divisions and then we have 29 limited service staff. And I'm not sure. Can you see the colorful spreadsheet or are you still seeing the overall summary?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We're seeing the just slip back there. Yeah. Yeah. We you're toggling and we can see that. Representative O'Brien.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Just just a follow-up. So exact are all appointments, right?

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: They're not all appointments. So there's secretary Tebbetts and deputy secretary Eastman. There's also secretary Tebbetts executive assistant. Those are exempt. But then attorneys are also exempt. So our general counsel is exempt, our staff attorney is exempt. And I'm missing this. Oh, and then our our assistant attorney general that's assigned to us is also exempt. So those are the six I just named there. And our AAG actually works for the attorney general's office, but we pay the salary. So it's in our budget.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And not to go too far off here, but exempt normally means exempt, I think, from overtime. So is that what it means here? Does everyone else qualify to be paid if they work more than forty hours for overtime?

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: So there's different categories, which I think are classified in the collective bargaining agreement. And so management level, I believe qualifies for comp time or straight time overtime. And these questions are probably better answered by DHR, but I'm just trying to do my best. And then there's, like, pay grade delineations for what you can get for overtime. I think it's pay grade 25 and below can qualify for time and a half cash. So there's different stipulations depending on your pay plan, but exempt does not get overtime.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Other questions? Representative Burtt, it's

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: I guess, just looking at it from a 30,000 foot view, it's seeing the budget go from Could you go back to the other spreadsheet, Nicole? You know, going from 24.8 to 61 in seven years, I guess. Initially that looks like a big jump, but you're obviously the money coming from the federal government toward the dairy innovation or is a big part of that. Looks like water quality initiatives are a big part of that too. Is there anything else that the agency is doing that has increased the activity of the agency significantly that is accounting for that large increase outside of inflation, which obviously that's a big factor too.

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I mean, so those are the big ones, but I think like the important note here and part of what I want to bring up because we did request a position for the business office this year is just the fact that while you can see that the administration division has increased the number of positions over the years, The majority of that actually all but one position was just those positions moving out of other divisions for restructuring. So we haven't actually gained a lot there. And the most important point is that the business office has not increased the number of positions they have at all since 2019. So we've maintained four people in our business office, including Amy, since 2019. We actually have one of our staff out on leave right now, and that has happened in previous years, leaving us with three people total. What has increased is that the business office has to manage Vale, which would have come into the fold in 2019. We didn't have the management of the the shared lab with ANR before then to this extent. We also get a lot of one times that the business office has to handle. We brought in the Dairy Business Innovation Center, and while they have six employees to process grants, our business office actually has to handle the money. We've also received coronavirus relief funds, which the business office had to handle. We had American Rescue Plan Act funds that the business office had to handle. B gap, even though ACCD held the budget for that, we had to do a lot of processing as far as the applications and whatnot with internal staff only to do that. And then there's other special projects that come up for the business office like VT buys, where we just have to use one of our four people to try to do that. We don't have a centralized grants and contracts unit that exists in our administration division. We don't have an audit unit in our division. In the position we're requesting, I just want to put it out there so that the information there, it would be coming from the position pool, and we would be asking for a 70% general fund contribution for it.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Can you say a little bit more about that, Nicole? What does it mean to a budgetary standpoint come from the pool? And then part two of the question to have a 70% contribution.

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Right. So the position pool, you have to go through the position pool committee, you submit paperwork to request the position. But essentially what it means is there's a position number that already exists within state government that was given up or is vacant, for example, in another agency that's been given back to the pool. That could be for a variety of reasons and funding shifts. So we ask a position from that pool. We kind of speak our piece about why we need it. And it's not a new position created for state government, if that makes sense. So we're not adding to the overall number of positions that exist in state government by getting one from the pool. We're just moving it into our agency. And then we have kind of other funding streams that we're able to use to cover the 30%. And then the 70% is what we would be asking for general fund to cover. And I don't have the exact numbers in front of me. So if you'd like to know more of a breakdown, think Amy could probably grab that for you.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: No, thank you. I think that's is good background. So the 30 would be coming if it's coming from other sources, it might be because you can say, well, this this position is supporting somehow, you know, water quality, and so we can use some of the special fund. Exactly. Is that right?

[Amy Mercer (Financial Director, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Correct. Exactly.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: O'Brien. Nicole, as we heard with FPR, some of the limited service positions funding is going to sunset here in a year or two, and so you know we may have to decide whether positions like say the climate forester we want to pay for at the state level if the federal government isn't supportive going forward. And so I wondered if that was the case with some of these limited service positions. And as an example also, or maybe it's parallel with the coming sort of CAFO restructuring of water quality, will positions perhaps migrate to ANR, for example?

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: So as far as the limited service positions, if we're talking about the ones in our agricultural development division, I am not aware off the top of my head of like a specific program that is sunsetting at this point, but that can very well happen where a USDA program can end or change or shift. And at that point we would have to, and I should preface this with every year we do a review with finance and management to look at all of our limited service positions and say the funding is still doing exactly what it's intended to do. It still exists. We're still paying for this position with federal funding exactly the way we asked the Joint Fiscal Office for the position. We do that review every year. So in a scenario where a program did sunset, we would have to discuss that in our review and likely opt to not extend it unless, of course, right, the legislature or the administration felt like they wanted to fill that with state funds. Think that's probably very similar to FPR. As far as water quality goes, I I think I would have to defer to our our general counsel about that. I am not aware at this point of any plan to to move positions, at least not in fiscal year twenty seven. So I I mean, I need to get back to you on that, but I I'm not aware of that plan.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Okay. Thank you. That's helpful.

[Jed Lipsky (Committee Clerk)]: Mhmm.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Any other questions? All right. Well, this has been helpful, yeah. I think, and really enlightening to see how much larger the department is overall and understanding that there are explanations for that. And really staffing staffing's increased over that time, but by 25 positions in total, it looks like from one twenty six to one fifty one. So and we again heard why that might be so. So it's good. I think we can wrap it up then.

[Nicole Dubuque (Chief Operating Officer, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Okay. Yeah. I will send over this spreadsheet to you so that you all can have it, and I'm happy to answer any further questions that that you might have come up.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Alright. Thanks, Paul. Take care.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Bye.