Meetings
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[Chair Robin Scheu]: Good afternoon. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Friday, 01/30/2026. It's 03:00 in the afternoon, and we have our last presenter of the day and of the week. So we're delighted to have the lieutenant governor and friend.
[Holly Pratt, Agency of Administration – Financial Services Division]: So if you'll introduce yourself for
[Chair Robin Scheu]: the record and take it away for us.
[Lieutenant Governor John Rogers]: Thanks, Madam Chair. Lieutenant Governor John Rogers.
[Holly Pratt, Agency of Administration – Financial Services Division]: Holly Pratt, Agents and Administration Financial Services Division. Welcome.
[Lieutenant Governor John Rogers]: Holly and James have been the ones. James shows me what's going on. He sends things back and forth to Holly. We eventually arrived at a place where we could submit it. So basically, of our BGS cost went up quite a bit. We saved a bunch of money because my wife carries our healthcare, so I'm not using the state dollars for healthcare. That's where the savings came from, and otherwise everything is as the governor recommended. I believe unless Holly corrects me.
[Holly Pratt, Agency of Administration – Financial Services Division]: Yep, it's a very small budget, down 7.5%.
[Lieutenant Governor John Rogers]: Wish you could do that with the rest of the budgets.
[Chair Robin Scheu]: One of your jobs, you can create your own job here, governor, so you can work on that.
[Holly Pratt, Agency of Administration – Financial Services Division]: And the lieutenant governor is correct. The majority of the savings is because of the change, or the health care is not needed. So the budget comes in at $321,911 in the governor's rec. And most of the costs, if you
[Chair Robin Scheu]: look
[Holly Pratt, Agency of Administration – Financial Services Division]: at the ups and downs, there was a slight increase in equipment. The operating expenses, the $4,102 it's for different things such as postage, printing. There's a slight increase in travel there for in state mileage. So it's really a very, very small budget. Is this a staff of
[Chair Robin Scheu]: two or 1.5?
[Lieutenant Governor John Rogers]: It's myself and one staff person, and so I'd just also like to point out to the committee, Holly mentioned travel, I have never seen this as a ceremonial office, and I use the office to help Vermonters and advocate for Vermonters, and we have done a lot of traveling, and we have some initiatives that we're rolling out, mainly focused on trades and hands on learning or putting on like a bring back the trades event in October, with the National Guard using one of their hangers trying to expose students to the trades and the National Guard at the same time. So we have toured tech centers and maker spaces, and businesses. And one of my initiatives in position is to expand the opportunity for students to go into the trades and manufacturing and advanced manufacturing, more hands on learning, where people can come out of tech centers and maybe go straight into work, maybe go to tech college, but provide the pipeline for the jobs that we need here in the state. And so as opposed to some others in the past, we do a lot of traveling and a lot of work in the office advocating for promoters.
[Chair Robin Scheu]: But we need to have a program like that. There's got to be costs to it besides you driving there and getting your mileage. And is that in the budget somewhere?
[Lieutenant Governor John Rogers]: It's not. We're working with partners to try not to spend state dollars on these things. So we are constantly reaching out to businesses, manufacturers, and getting partners to help sponsor those things.
[Chair Robin Scheu]: OPM, other people's money.
[Lieutenant Governor John Rogers]: You got it, as much as possible. Quite frankly, most of them are super into doing it because it's future workforce.
[Holly Pratt, Agency of Administration – Financial Services Division]: Any questions?
[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: Mark? Just one little piggy one. You mentioned that there was a change from BGS for the fee for space. Was this just a reevaluation of space that you didn't
[Holly Pratt, Agency of Administration – Financial Services Division]: talk about?
[Lieutenant Governor John Rogers]: They just went up on their rentals on all of us.
[Holly Pratt, Agency of Administration – Financial Services Division]: I know. Is there furniture?
[Lieutenant Governor John Rogers]: No, no, actually we have to complain because they stole two of our chairs. It's like, wait a minute. There's one chair at the table? That's not very inviting for people.
[Holly Pratt, Agency of Administration – Financial Services Division]: It's got a double. You didn't have to bring a chair
[Chair Robin Scheu]: from home.
[Holly Pratt, Agency of Administration – Financial Services Division]: They probably have one in there.
[Chair Robin Scheu]: You know, they always have that warehouse. Warehouse. I I bet bet you you can can find find one one in in there. There.
[Lieutenant Governor John Rogers]: Yeah. We had to bring our own moose. Negotiate on the charge, but take a couple of chairs and pay less.
[Chair Robin Scheu]: Yeah. I totally agree. It would have been a lot more with $1,500 if you needed take the chairs.
[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: I agree with Molly. You said it's just
[Holly Pratt, Agency of Administration – Financial Services Division]: a routine Yeah, that's the operation. You don't necessarily grow, right? So as I understand, for paper space, common space gets allocated out among departments. The cost of all those services from BGS, because those costs go up, it's really just multiplying that by this square footage.
[Chair Robin Scheu]: Anybody have any more questions? Is there anything else you want to tell us
[Lieutenant Governor John Rogers]: besides the Madam Chair, I thank you for your time.
[Chair Robin Scheu]: All budgets should be so easy, but that's not the way it works.
[Lieutenant Governor John Rogers]: And all budgets should have cut by that larger percentage.
[Chair Robin Scheu]: Well, can can help them.
[Lieutenant Governor John Rogers]: I'll work
[Chair Robin Scheu]: on that
[Holly Pratt, Agency of Administration – Financial Services Division]: for Thank you so much. Have a
[Chair Robin Scheu]: good weekend. Have great night.
[Lieutenant Governor John Rogers]: You as well.
[Holly Pratt, Agency of Administration – Financial Services Division]: Appreciate it.
[Lieutenant Governor John Rogers]: Thank you, everybody.
[Chair Robin Scheu]: Titi, we are on for 01:00 on Monday. Thank you. We're back to Mondays again, and we'll try to end by four every day on Mondays if we can. We may have to go later if it makes it easier on Friday or something, but at
[Holly Pratt, Agency of Administration – Financial Services Division]: the moment we have two. I'm going
[Chair Robin Scheu]: to work with Autumn right now on finalizing the agenda as much as we can, so it'll be posted this afternoon, so feel free to take a look, but definitely plan on 01:00 on Monday. So travel safe.