Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Good morning. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Tuesday, 12/16/2025, and we are here for a couple of days to get started on the Budget Adjustment Act and a couple of other things of import. And before we get started, just want to let everybody know we have some new staff and welcome them. Autumn Factory is our new committee assistant and senior analyst, senior associate at JFO. James is our new Maria in case you knew. Welcome, James. Nolan's here. Amy's here. Is Emily out today? She's here. She's here. Okay, great. And on the House member side, good news, bad news. Sad news is that Jim has decided to move to another state in the middle of the session. He can explain himself later. Jim is going to stay through lunch today, and then he needs to go home and pack,

[Rep. David Yacovone]: but he will also be

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: here the first day of the session. He's officially residing at noon on January 6. So we're not going to let him slap off. If you've got questions, you've got questions. But in the meantime, I really want to welcome Marty Felthus, who has agreed at the last minute to come and be our vice chair. And so glad to have you here, Marty. Thank you very much, Robin. Marty was on probes for eight years.

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: Did I

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: have that right? And then she didn't run for office the last biennium, and then ran again, and thought she'd escaped appropriations by going back to basic needs. But here she is back again, and we're delighted to have you back.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Didn't you say something like, vote for your

[Rep. Marty Feltus, Vice Chair]: Something like that.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: It only worked the first time.

[Rep. Marty Feltus, Vice Chair]: I thought I wanted to see the state finances from the other side. Spending all this time in appropriations, you spend the money and I thought it would be interesting to see how we get the money by some means. So I got a year of that and I understand that I think.

[Jean Hamilton, Co‑Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: The two have to work together.

[Rep. Marty Feltus, Vice Chair]: So I'm delighted to come back.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: Hope you brought some with you.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: So welcome and it's great to have you here. Party is going to have Jim's portfolio. So we've had enough change in this committee with people and everything else, so I think we'll keep the same portfolio. We'll do that. And Jim has officially handed over his book. Hopefully, be available for questions. We have a really full two days, lots to get done. The good news is, while we originally thought that we were not going to get the actual budget adjustment information from the Office of Finance and Management. They called me last night and said, we have the spreadsheet, we have the language, and we are good to go. So this is real stuff. And that's going to help us a lot because the governor's budget speech is actually a week earlier than we would think of it being. It's going to be January 20. It has to be like the third Tuesday or whatever. Because of the calendar, this is about the earliest it can ever be. So instead of being around the twenty sixth or twenty seventh, it's the twentieth, which means we'll be getting started on the budget earlier. That's not a bad thing. But it means we have to get budget adjustments out as fast as we can. So the fact that we have real language is great. So he will be in after Douglas is here, and we've now taken up a bunch of your time. Douglas, I appreciate you hanging in with us while we get ourselves settled and going. If there's nothing else, I will send it off to you.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: Well, thank you. For the record, Douglas Farnam, Chief Recovery Officer for the State of Vermont. Thank you for having me, Madam Chair. It's great to see everybody. And I apologize for not being there in person. Life kind of intervened with me today as it does with many Vermonters when the weather gets cold.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Oh, dear. I hope you're warm.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: We're we're warm, but I my furnace can get finicky, and that needs personal supervision sometimes. Yes. I need So my house from I would like to start off, Madam Chair, by just going through a quick overview recap of American Rescue Plan Act state fiscal recovery, if that's helpful.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Great. Yes, please.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: Appropriated by the federal government in March 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act state fiscal recovery was the second coronavirus the pandemic recovery vehicle. The coronavirus relief fund, which was 1,250,000,000.00, is largely closed out and was expended in 2020 and 2021. The 1,050,000,000.00 that came with the American Rescue Plan Act state fiscal state and local fiscal recovery funds, that was allowed to be obligated through 12/31/2024. So we had a big December year where we were getting in our final obligations. No new obligations, which means a grant agreement or a contract countersigned by two parties was allowed is allowed to be created after 12/31/2024. So very important for these funds. All of the movement, all of the new uses, all of the allocation essentially had to happen by 12/31/2024 or earlier. So we met that date. We got a 100% of the ARPA state and local fiscal recovery funds obligated. One note there is that 1,050,000,000.00 was for the state, 200,000,000 was for municipalities. My under the state doesn't directly supervise the local fiscal recovery funds, but my understanding from working with Katie Buckley is that that was a very successful process, that that money was spent, that there were no returns to date that we're aware of, and that most of Vermont's municipalities were able to use the revenue loss reporting category and so had minimal reporting duties to treasury. I don't know the exact expenditure status of those funds, but I believe it's in really good shape. So we're now in the 2025, and we are about halfway through a unique expenditure period. So, normally, funds have a ninety day closeout period. ARPA has a two year closeout period. So in 2025 and 2026, we're in this closeout period where we're only allowed to expend the funds. And if final costs shake out during the closeout process, awards are canceled, etcetera, we are allowed to reallocate funds between projects that have already been established. So we're extremely limited. We can move some money, but we're extremely limited in how that money is moved around. And at this point in time, the agency of administration is reviewing any project reallocations. If a program has money, has projects existing, and can propose a reallocation within their own program, we are reviewing that and approving it because it's not changing the legislative intent in any way. Right? And if they aren't able to use the money within their own program, as in it was a single use appropriation and there's money left over when everything is said and done, then the agency administration will have to bundle those up and present them to the joint fiscal committee for review and approval in order to shift to a different previously established ARPA appropriation. And I'll say one more thing before pausing, madam chair, to make sure people can ask questions. Those reallocations are extremely important to be done within a quarterly date. If we de obligate funds during the quarter and we don't re obligate them before the end of the quarter, we don't want to see what happens there. But we're pretty sure Treasury will demand the funds back if we have unobligated funds when we file a Treasury report.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: So Joint Fiscal Committee is the only place where this can be reallocated. Is that correct?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: If we are changing the programs, yes, Madam

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: The

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: administration cannot move that money without the Joint Fiscal Committee's approval.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: We may need to have some joint fiscal committee meetings during the session where we might not otherwise.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Is that correct?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: That is possible, Madam Chair. I think most of the reallocation activity should happen between April and September. Okay. And we know that it's an important session, so if it can wait, we're going to try to do it during the summer, but some situations may not allow us to wait.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Well, on the other hand, it might be easier to meet while we're in session because we're all here. Anyway, all right. Thank you for that outline and reminder of where we all are.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: So, my current plan is to notify the Joint Fiscal Office when we have pending potential reallocations and coordinate with them on what might make the most sense.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Great. Thank you. So I think we have a spreadsheet.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: Yes.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Which is always fine. It's gotten a lot smaller than the original ones we saw back in 'twenty one and 'twenty two.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: We haven't started to remove lines of closed out programs. That may make sense at some point to make the spreadsheet easier to digest. Would you like me to share the spreadsheet on my screen, Madam Chair? Would that make sense?

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Sure. Why don't we do that for the viewing audience at least?

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: All right. Let me make sure I'm Alright.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: Is everyone seeing that properly? Is that coming through? Apologies, I don't share in Zoom very often.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: You can probably make it bigger if that's if you can. If not, we have cousins too.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: There we go.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: That's great. Thank you.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: Alright. So this first the first two pages of this spreadsheet deal with programs that were created with ARPA. And then in December 2024, there was swapping that was performed with authority the legislature granted AOA to take funds that were ARPA, apply them to payroll in a different area of the state, and then reallocate those funds back to the original program in order to allow ARPA programs more time to operate. Primarily, that was applied to programs that either had eligibility concerns, where the intended use of the the Vermont legislature didn't quite line up with the final rule that Treasury published in a, you know, in a bulletproof way. So in anywhere we could reduce risk of federal government disagreeing with the use of those funds, we did so. And then other programs, it was applied because those programs were not expending funds at a rate that would resolve by twelvethirty onetwenty twenty six. So this is most these slides are mostly just for awareness at this point in time. They involve, you know, within those programs $452,000,000 of ARPA was appropriated by the general assembly. 400,000,000 of that has been expended. So that's an important note because just over 51,000,000 is still being expended, which means many of those programs are not spending the general fund appropriation yet because they're working through the ARPA first. And that swapping, that movement of funds was 242,700,000.0 general fund, and 51.8 of that has been spent at this point. Last year, the general assembly put in kind of a check back date of 12/31/2027 for those programs that were created by ARPA, are funded by general fund, and were allowed essentially to extend, But unobligated funds will revert on 12/31/2027 so that those general funds can be put to productive use.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Right. So that was our way of allowing projects that take a long time to have a little extra time and do it legally. Wayne,

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: do you

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: have a question? Yeah. I think we also have this sheet here that appears to be about the same. What's the difference between two?

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: So, should use the color one. Yes. So, your colors are great and this is the first time I've seen these colors of all the shades. So, just maybe explain a little bit of this. If we haven't expended general fund, it's green, but if we have, it's red.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: Right. So, looking at the center of the sheet, there's a column there for ARPA state local fiscal recovery to be expended. For this next year, that is the most important indicator, right? So our first one, rural infrastructure wastewater, that's 53% unexpended. So it has 1,400,000.0, 1,500,000.0 to go. So a small dollar amount. So, okay, that might be able to resolve. And then on the second page, we've got village wastewater, wet weather, sewer overflow, wastewater treatment, and clean water board funds. We so that middle column, I think, is the most important one to watch for this next year, madam chair, because that's ARPA funds. Those are funds that we can lose. The far right, it uses the same color scale, and you can see we've got some where those programs haven't touched their general fund yet. Yeah. But especially where wet weather sewer overflow at the very bottom, they have a lot of ARPA left to go, so they shouldn't be touching their general fund yet. Right? We want them to spend the ARPA first.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Right. Exact.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: So that far right column is for information, but it's not really important yet. That would become more important if programs are starting to get through 2027 and they still have a large amount of funds unexpended, then that means the general assembly has a decision to make about whether or not they retain those funds or they get pulled back.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Right. So that that middle line with the first set of colors, you want all of those to get to zero.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: Absolutely. That middle column needs to be zero by next December. And because we're under certain restrictions, my goal, obviously, madam chair, is to get those ARPA funds to zero. But because we're we have our hands tied in certain ways, I'm not absolutely confident that every single dollar will be expended. I'll do everything I can to get as close to that full expenditure And as

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: is that the group that we can get together and join fiscal, we can reallocate somewhere?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: Yes. Those funds, if there was a productive use identified for a preexisting ARPA project, yes, that column could be reappropriated by well, reallocated by joint fiscal committee using the authority from last year.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Okay. Thank you. And we have a couple of questions, John, and then Wayne.

[Rep. John Kascenska]: Good morning, Doug. Thanks for bringing this along here for us. So the example that you used, the wet weather sewer overflow with Worth Worth is a skipping amount that's not been expended yet. Is it just projects in the queue here to be worked on that are identified or just do you understand my question?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: Yes. Absolutely, representative. So we've been working with the agency of natural resources on a large concentration of unexpended funds. The programs that we knew from the start would take longer to expend are those are those wastewater and water and those infrastructure related programs. They're extremely valuable uses of funds. And I think a lot of those programs, they have a plan for how the funds will be expended. But I would say it's partly the nature of the projects where a lot of that work happens and then you see a balloon payment at the end. But it's partly that it just these projects take a long time. And I think the legislature was aware upfront that these would be the programs that would likely take the full term to expend. So it was it was an element that was known, but it still, of course, makes me a little bit nervous, right Right. To not be able to trend it out and say, yes. This will finish early. But ANR is working really hard on making sure that they're prioritizing these funds, And they'll be able to speak directly to actions they're taking with with different programs and different grantees. But I know they are really focused on moving this money.

[Rep. John Kascenska]: Yeah. And I suspect those kinds of projects just take a lot of, like, engineering to get them best identified to move things along.

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: Thank you.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Thanks, John. Wayne and then Tom?

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: Mine was all on the same lines. Any red flags at all in terms of those projects, in terms of engineering or permitting that right now? I know ANR will be in, but anything you're aware of?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: So for for the most part, we've reviewed we reviewed those projects over the summer, and everything appears to be moving well. There appears to be a path to full expenditure. Again, the path's not super wide, so things could still go off. And that's why we're we're really staying in in pretty frequent communication with ANR and and pushing for because reallocations between even the ones that we can do through joint fiscal committee, any significant reallocations we do in this time period would very likely draw Charity's attention and could cause them to initiate an audit if they feel like we are not adhering to the spirit of the closeout transfer. And so I think we have to be very careful, how much funding we try to reallocate during this period.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: So it would be safer. I mean, we have a lot of ANR projects here, water water related projects. So it would be safer if it wasn't a reallocation to be even those categories, not going outside of category to something else.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: Yes. I think but the I think the category is, forgive the pun, but it's saturated right now.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: We

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: in have to order to achieve a reasonable expectation that we'd increase the burn rate, we'd probably have to go outside of that expenditure category, which would could potentially draw Treasury's attention. It wouldn't make it disallowed, but I think there are some considerations with the current federal administration and whether or not we want to trigger their attention.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Yeah. Totally understood. Thank you. Tom?

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Yes. Doug, thanks for coming in. I wasn't here for any of these allocations really in '22 or '24, whatever in terms of building this kind of spreadsheet here. Can you just just take a moment to step back a little bit and explain to me pick a line here. Let me let me pick a line here and explain to me like the relationship between the middle two columns on the ARPA and state and local matches to the general fund appropriations. So if so I don't know what's a good match here for for my question, but I'm I'm I just wanna understand the relationship between on the top of page two, say, so it's clean water board grants. Yes. So we we took $17,500,000 and and granted that to or gave that to a and r, Department of Environmental, and and they've expended 8,300,000.0. So that is what you're saying is that that's one of those projects that there may be a lot that come in towards the end of the expenditures. Is that right?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: Yes. Yes. And that one in particular had to it went through the appropriation process in the general assembly, and then it went through the clean water board recommending the specific programs that that money went into. So that made it roll out over multiple years. But yes, that's exactly the type of

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: And so that's 50, that represents 52% to be expended. You're keeping an eye on that particular expenditure to get the other 48%. Then what is the relationship of the $1,900,000 in the general fund appropriation? How much of that's been expended? Is that a match? Is that like a certain percentage match? And is this what you're talking about when you say, if we can't expend ARPA money, and we have to reallocate it, then we have to also decide here about what to do with the general fund portion of that. Is that is that what the general fund appropriations or is that held harmless from treasuries auditing?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: So that general fund column, the three columns to the right of the spreadsheet, they are a unique element to ARPA. They're they're not matched. They're not required. They're because when when ARPA is a unique federal vehicle. I doubt we'll see anything like it again, but maybe in twenty or thirty years when people have forgotten. What they did was we got the 1,050,000,000.00, and then the different states handled it differently. Some, the governor, you know, appropriated out the grant. Some, like Vermont, the general assembly appropriated the funds out. This was a lot of money for us, so the general assembly appropriated all of these amounts. Then what happened is the treasury published a final rule. They published an interim, then a final rule that said, these are the different ways the states can use this money. Extremely broad compared to most federal funding sources are single single use funds. And what we did is in order to reduce some of our portfolio risk, agency of administration applied 242,000,000 of these funds to payroll and higher education payments because those were eligible uses at the federal level, but those were not the policy uses the Vermont General Assembly wanted to use the funds for. So we took the general funds that were freed up by that use and moved it back into the original programs. And this was all through statutory authority that was created several years ago. So I referred to it often as curing the funds. We basically applied them to an eligible use at the federal level and then moved them back to allow the original program to continue. And I'm sorry, Madam Chair, that I'm hopefully this is all helpful. I'm bogging down so I'm not covering the full scope today.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: I think these are the questions we have.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Yeah. Other questions? Why don't you continue then?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: So for familiarity, the main thing I would point out is, so this next section where it's not colored and I apologize for the multiple versions. Some columns got cut unintentionally from an earlier version that I sent Autumn, and she was gracious enough to try to get the new version up immediately. This next section where there's no color coding, the most important So this is the full program list of ARPA programs. And the most important thing here is the far right column, total unexpended. So this far right column is gonna be the outstanding liability, what's at risk with federal government. And you can see on the bottom of page five, far right, there's a big cluster of those unexpended ARPA amounts. Now, some of those will be duplicated in the tables above. So the tables in the first two slides talked about blended programs, ARPA and GF, and had a snapshot. This is a different snapshot of this is all of the ARPA program. Programs. So there's some overlap in what's being reported there. So if you go all the way down, you can see we've got some very small amounts that are remaining to be funded, we've got some pretty significant amounts, highest concentration again in those ANR programs. But I would say the 16,300,000.0 at VHCb, I'm not concerned about that being expended on time. It's a large dollar amount, but they spent 13.5 last quarter. They'll get that spend.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Yeah.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: And then here's the how it all rolls up, right? We've got 1,049,000,000.000. We obligated that all by the 2024. We've expended $952,000,000 in the last quarter, 52,000,000 was expended. It's actually a good quarter for expenditures. And then we have 96,300,000.0 of ARPA left to

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: go. Okay.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: So we're under the triple digits in millions. So that's a nice landmark to pass. We still have five quarters to expend 96,000,000. So we're not out of the woods, but we are getting close enough that if we have to return any funds, hopefully they're much smaller, right?

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Yes, and I guess we'll ask ANR about capacity and what's happening and all of that, because that's the one I've been concerned about for the last four years is ANR.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: And then this last spreadsheet is just the general fund activity pulled out. So basically, this is three different ways of looking at it. They're back to back. So the first is the ARPA and the GF programs where they overlap. Then we have all of the ARPA programs without any color. And then this last one where it only has color on the far right, that's just looking at the general fund, the 242,700,000.0. So it really depends on what you wanna focus on of which which series of these spreadsheets you So

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: $2.42 is general fund. And this is the money that if it is not spent by December 2027, before giving you an extra year, it comes back.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: Yes, That's So if you add them together, they're in the ARPA realm, there is $286,000,000 still to be expended.

[Jean Hamilton, Co‑Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: Of general fund?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: 190,000,000 of the general fund is still unexpended and 96,000,000 of the ARPA.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Okay. And are you putting these reports together on a quarterly basis, John?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: Yes. We report to Treasury a month after the quarterly end date. So we report on January 31 for the next one. And then it takes my staff and I about two weeks to, well, just package up some of the reports. Yeah. So we should have through the end of the calendar year available by February.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Okay. So we'll get you back in mid to late February, probably mid February before town meeting break or something to hear. No, that's it'll be happening before town meeting to hear what's up and just see the progress. It sounds like you had a really good quarter last quarter, which is great. A couple more of

[Rep. David Yacovone]: those and we'll be all done.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Right.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Great. Any other questions for Bennington at this point? Anything else from you, Douglas? You're all set. No,

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: I think we covered the landscape at least, and I'm happy to answer any follow-up questions or help connect the committee or members with the right people to dig in.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Okay. Thank you so much. I appreciate the different ways of looking at all of this. Think it's really helpful. One more question from Laroche.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: I just want to go back

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: and clarify something. You said $286,000,000

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: of ARPA still is unexpended. That includes the 190,000,000 general fund. So on the last page of the uncolored one, it's the 96,000,000 that's our combined is still to be expended.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Is that correct?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: That is correct, right? There's $286,000,000 still roughly still at play. Of course, this data is from September 30, so that number is smaller than $2.86 because they've been spending for the last two and a half months. And I don't know exactly how much has been spent yet.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Right and then And

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: this is the quarter where a lot of the construction season invoices start to come in. So I am hopeful that we'll see progress on those ANR programs that represent the construction season.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: We'll look

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: forward to your next report.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: All right.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: So it's going in the right direction. Thank you so much for all

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: of us.

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: Thank you

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: very much for having me.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Okay, take care. Happy holidays. All right, we don't have any breaks this morning, but we're having an early lunch, but if you need to get up, you know, I think we have Finance and Management up next. Long time no see. Welcome, Marty and Adam. Come take a seat. Find another chair. Do we have something from these guys? Okay. Thanks, Emily. Okay. So we'll get paper copies of the minute and it's on our button.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Steve, someone brought us cookies. That is just too kind.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Who are those for you? Don't need them up here. It's good. Well

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: I'll take them this way, though, you wanna

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Jones is going. It's not open on Tuesday,

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: so I apologize.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: So you found a good reasonable alternative? Alternative.

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: Okay. Gas station.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: All right. Welcome, gentlemen. If you would like to introduce yourselves for the record and tell us why you're here. Thank

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: you for inviting us. Adam Gresham, commissioner finance and management.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: And Hardy Merrill, deputy commissioner finance and management. Great to see you both again.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: First of all, you'll note that on your screen, and for those of you with laptops, there is a link to the presentation materials we are going to get. So we will follow along. And we will work from the worksheet, the spreadsheet that you see behind you. That's typically what we do. But there's also a language document that accompanies this that lays it all out. So

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: And we they've just arrived. So I'll just pass it. Yeah.

[Rep. Marty Feltus, Vice Chair]: The pain on your face.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: All right now we have our spreadsheets. We have extra do you want a copy of the spreadsheets? Think Dave just put one down over

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: there. Does anyone need one?

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Just give me an extra. Okay, I think we're ready.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Okay. So I thought I would begin with some context and then we can dive right into what we laid out for you in the budget adjustment proposal. And for context, we begin with approximately a $120,000,000 or so of available revenue. And that comes from predominantly three sources. The first one, which you're all familiar with, was the July, emergency board meeting when our economists upgraded the forecast for fiscal twenty six, our current fiscal year, by a little over $77,000,000. So that immediately is available since the budget was created with $77,000,000 less in revenue, we now have that much available. There's also, about 12.7, little under $13,000,000 of unallocated, revenue that was left on the bottom line of the general fund when the budget was passed. The largest share of that came from h '91, which never crossed the finish line where there was a $10,000,000 appropriation. And then in this, bill, there's $21,000,000. We show $21,000,000 of aversions. So when we add those up plus, a little bit here and a little bit there, we get to about a $120,000,000, $121,000,000 of available revenue. The bill, as you'll see, makes a net $48,000,000 of additional appropriations. That's reduced slightly, or offset slightly by $2,000,000 of net transfers. Some ups and downs taking money in, say, from liquor and lottery, from unclaimed property and the like. So when we get through with transfers, the net use of general fund is $46,000,000 of additional uses, which leaves about $75,000,000 on the general fund bottom line after all adjustments are done. You will note in section 50 of the language document, what the governor proposes to do with this sum. He reserves it for property tax relief in fiscal twenty seven. And for that reason and others, this BAA is clean. It's a clean budget adjustment. There are no new initiatives. We're just meeting our obligations to Vermonters as set out in prior years session law and statute. And knowing we have a large education funding challenge, which is the governor's top priority this year, and an unsettled revenue outlook, certainly unclear in revenue, you can anticipate that when we come back here in a month after the governor delivers his budget, that it will be a similar approach. So, madam chair, with that cheery preamble, I am inclined to dive right into what we have proposed for you. And typically, for those of you who've been here before, you know that deputy commissioner Mrowicki I, we tag team going through the spreadsheet. And I thought I would hand it off to my colleague to start with the v one hundreds.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Okay. Thank you, Adam. Perhaps I'll take a moment before jumping right in to provide a brief reorientation of how the information is displayed on sheet. So we start at the very top line, which is shaded in blue, and the numbers, I apologize, seem to get a little smaller each year, at least for me. Lifting up my glasses, the the large numbers in the very first row represent the amounts of spending authority as passed based on 2025 act 27, the big bill that was passed last session. So those are the starting amounts of spending authority, and it's broken up into fund or, in some cases, fund categories. So the general fund, transportation fund, and education fund have their own columns. All other special funds are lumped into the fourth column from the left, and then federal funds, dedicated funds. There's a key in the footnotes. We I don't think we have any changes in that category, global commitment, and other. We then are breaking up into the functional areas of the budget. So that's general government protection, human services, natural resources, and so on. And on the far left hand, we're describing any appropriation changes in reference to the section number in act 27 as passed. And in terms of how to read the numbers, a number in red in parenthesis represents a decrease in spending authority from that starting point of the as passed bill. A number in black, that's a positive number, represents an increase in spending authority. And in the first two rows that are described on on the worksheet b one thirty seven and b one thirty eight, the way you can interpret this is this is actually a net neutral shift in spending authority of from the general fund from one section of the budget to another within tax. So what's happening here is a $1,500,000 decrease in the amount of spending authority appropriated for homeowner rebates, and there's a corresponding $1,500,000 increase in the amount of spending authority appropriated for the renter rebate. And there's explanations in each row in the far right hand side of the worksheet, and we're explaining here that the amount that needs to be expended for the homeowner rebate program is decreasing because fewer households are eligible each year. The income cut off for the program has remained fixed at 47,000,000, and that means fewer 47,000. 37,000. I'm sorry. Thanks. I'm used to

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: that's usually the deal in millions

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: of finance and management. I'm not used to coming down for

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: the liberal would be that'd

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: be like heard about that.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Macroeconomic level of household finances. And correspondingly, you know, there's more demand for the renter credit because credit amount and the income thresholds are both indexed for inflation. So so this is the tax department just saying, you know, we're not going to need to, have this much appropriated for the homeowner rebate program, and we're gonna shift that to the renter rebate. Any, any further questions or discussion needed on that item?

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Yeah. Sure. Will, is that $47,000 number, determined?

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: I'm thinking, I'm looking at the chair who also is a fellow OASI. I'm thinking maybe

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: lot is there.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Years ago.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Been a very Been a while.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: So it's never been adjusted for inflation. Got it for actually a question right, that's never been adjusted for inflation. So this that is that number up for negotiation to change to make sure that it matches inflation to at least the salary increases that have happened since then?

[Rep. Marty Feltus, Vice Chair]: Pardon? It's part of H4504 that introduced a new system of homestead exemption as opposed to this homestead rebate program and that did take into account changes in income.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: So will this number change? Because it seems out of date.

[Rep. Marty Feltus, Vice Chair]: I agree, it seems out of date. That's why the Waste and Means Committee last year as part of that bill, suggested change, well it passed, changing the homestead instead of the rebate homeowners rebate it changed it to a homestead exemption in which the homeowner would pay for instance at the level is 300,000 based upon certain income. You don't pay tax on

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: the first 300, you pay

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: it on the next whatever.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: So this is just, this is changes representing for this change and we'll see something And different I next

[Rep. Marty Feltus, Vice Chair]: can't remember when that homestead exemption is to take effect. Thank you. This year or next year.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Is this something left over from when we actually had rebates related to Act 60 and then we had other income that would have been back in 1997. We had a rebate program for very low income people. Grandma who lived down the street, who lived in her home and was on social security. They still exist. My understanding, they pay very little, if that is capital.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Right. And I would yield to the vice chair here, but this is a similar quote.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: It's a similar quote. So the appropriate just to level set, the appropriation in b one thirty seven for homeowner rebate was $19,000,000 as passed. Taxes is saying we only anticipate expending 17,500,000.0, but there's still 17,500,000.0 going in. There there still is a program. It's simply not as much required for this program as as estimated when at this time last year when the budget was put together. The amount that they're forecasting actually needing now halfway through this fiscal year is a mill they're saying, we anticipate needing a million and a half less than that, and we recommend shifting that to the renter rebate program as a net control budget adjustment. So again, this isn't policy to recap on Adam's, you know, opening comments. These are technical primarily technical adjustments to true up the budget fiscal twenty six.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: And so this is like the ups and downs, which is maybe fine in the budget adjustment because we passed this budget. Right?

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: And again, to the vice chair, the fix that's going in April, is

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: that gonna result in an

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: increase in the amount of dollars necessary in order to flow out?

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: See what I mean?

[Rep. Marty Feltus, Vice Chair]: I understand what you mean. I think our calculations were that we would spend about the same amount of money. It was just a different format, a different way of doing it. This rebate program has a year's delay and it's difficult to calculate. And so the new program was going to be easier to calculate and people would know right away. And the income levels changed, but overall the total amount to be expended, think separate calls would be approximately the same. I'm pretty sure when we get back in session that we're going to have some more information on education because I'm sure most of us don't remember everything that

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: was in that bill from last June. So we'll get updates. Okay, continue.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Okay, so we'll move on to the protection functional area and starting with B204, judiciary, there is an increase in spending authority recommended of 5 and $58,000 approximately, and that's related to sheriff's security services contracts at courthouses. Shall I keep moving? Just keep

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: going because I yep. Oh, wait. No. Jim has a question.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Two zero seven.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Sorry if Jim has a question. We

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: the committee can get the details later, but what I'm surprised is there's nothing there for the special court that was set up for impeachment comment. That's coming, but it's it's not in Not in that one. In this in this row. For B207, which is sheriffs, the total increase in general fund spending of authority of $183,000 is broken down in the far right hand column. It's primarily, you know, the factors are in state mileage costs for transport deputies, per diems, overtime costs for transport deputies, and there's also a half year's worth of funding for one new transport deputy position that was created in Act 27, but was not funded. So the funding is being added in budget adjustment. Our understanding is the position hasn't been hired yet, but this will fund that position in this fiscal year. Shall I keep moving?

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Yes.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Okay. So in public safety administration, section B208, we're showing a shift in spending authority. In this case, it's from the other funds column. We're decreasing the budgeted spending authority by $760,000 and we're replacing it essentially with general fund spending authority in the same amount of $760,000 and in this case, the other fund referred to is actually the interdepartmental transfer fund, and what's happening in this largely technical maneuver is that interdepartmental transfer fund spending authorities being replaced by GF spending authority. In this case, the payers to the DPS administration are other units within DPS. So it may be state police. It may be fire safety. What they what they do in this case is take a number of charges in including internal service fund charges, and they pay them all out of the admin section represented here using IDT spending authority, and they bill back the respective units. And in this case, the the units were running short on funds. So what's being done here is to backfill with ID backfill the IDT with GF, and this is sort of a common accounting maneuver that business units will take if they're running short on expenses versus spending authority is what they'll do is withhold spending the internal billings. You still have to pay your external vendors on time. Right? But things like these internal service fund bills or an ADS bill or something like that, there is no penalty for delaying the payment of the bill. And so in this case, they're saying we're gonna delay the payment of that bill and ask for the spending of the GF spending authority and budget adjustment and then pay the bill later this year.

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: Oh, okay.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: I just wanted to explain perhaps more information than you wanted, but I I just wanted to explain what was going on there. The next the next items are more straightforward, just simple simply cost increases versus what was budget budgeted. This total of $865,000 in increased GF for the state police is related to overtime. And out of that amount, about a $100,000 is related to the net overtime cost with the Burlington deployment. But the majority of that amount is is not related to the Burlington deployment. It's other overtime related to state police. In public safety criminal justice services, $570,000 general fund increase is related to an IT contract increase for an ongoing upgrade to cloud based software, and further details if needed can be provided by DPS, we did the term. Is a project in progress with additional costs required to finish it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Yeah, that's a big number to suddenly pop up, probably for the year. So we'll ask that question.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: I had that last year. That caught it.

[Rep. Marty Feltus, Vice Chair]: I know.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: That was me.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: I made you come in tomorrow. Okay, thanks.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: And in section B215, which is the military and their administration appropriation, this decrease of spending authority of $287,000 is related to the Vermont National Guard tuition benefit program. So it had a balance remaining at the end of the fiscal year, and so the appropriation is just being reduced accordingly.

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: I actually talked to some military. Remember, it was cut by a 100,000 last year.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Right. We did. Yeah. And now there's another 200.

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: Yeah. And I talked to some of the colonels this morning, and, apparently, there's a lot of people being deployed.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: That's Yes.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: That that has been a fact that has been a Every year.

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: Yes. Before.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Right. Because they're all

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: so they can't use That's the reason deployments, the less tuition.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Right. That's all.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: This is gonna take forever.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Well, I know is

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: there some way that we can we're going to do this line by line eventually.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont]: This is yeah, well This isn't going

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: to take longer than an

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: hour and we're not going

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: to really have any questions about the overall thinking behind this until later, so I just want to know.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Okay, yeah, so we can focus on the biggest key items that are on here.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: So skipping the next couple, there is a somewhat atypical adjustment for the cannabis control board adding $630,000 of spending authority from the cannabis regulation fund, and that corresponds to a transfer to the cannabis regulation fund that will be described at the end of this presentation. It's related to a number of years ago in fiscal twenty three, Act 83 provided for an $850,000 transfer to the cannabis regulation fund. The purpose was for fit up of a laboratory, And then what happened is at the end of fiscal twenty four, based on current law, okay, everything left in that fund that was unobligated was swept out to the general fund. Now it's time to fit up the lap. So it's it's asking for the funds back that were swept out by current law. And so the so there's two things happening. Funds being put back in and a transfer, and then this is the spending authority that represents the amount of that 850,000 that had not been obligated. So with that, that covers protection and the human services.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Okay. Starting in with the p 3 hundreds and just kind of looking at it from the top level down, there's a total of just under $33,000,000 of additional general fund spending authority on a net basis in the b three hundreds. In addition, there's $11,000,000 at one time that Hardy will, speak about later on, for human services related, activities. So, you know, the total of 33,000,011 million, know, $4,445,000,000 dollars is fairly substantial sum, but I would remind you that their total appropriation, their base appropriation is 1,400,000,000.0. So in that context, you know, the numbers of human services are always bigger. So in that context, it's a little over 2% cost pressures that you'll see. And I thought, in fact, with representative Stevens in mind, rather than going through line by line, I might do it topically. That way, you know, you can see general themes. I'm also aware that I think you guys are going to help digest your lunch today with the folks in human services. So, I know you'll be

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: You'll be hearing from the human You'll be hearing from them. So yeah. So the high level is great.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: But in in general, there are a number of pressures here. The the first and foremost, which is typical, that you see in the VAA is caseload pressure. I mean, if you look at b three zero one, which is the giant mixing bowl, some would call it the magical money machine where you put in a dollar and you get back more. You know, you see there about $60,000,000 of upward pressures. That's predominantly from two sources. First, you'll see featured in b three zero seven Medicaid, our main state Medicaid program, which is, 33,000,000 up, in this fiscal year from what was originally budgeted. That's a result of the of the consensus forecast that was lifted up, which in turn was based on trends that they saw with, utilization predominantly. So $33,000,000 with all funds, the general fund, component, that's about $14,000,000. Similarly, for in terms of caseload, if you go all the way down to b three thirty four point one, that's choices for care, nursing home, emergency financial relief for the nursing homes, and the like, this is a 26 all funds pressure. General fund component of that is roughly $12,000,000. So when you look at just kind of the choices for care and Medicaid program alone, you're dealing with about 26 and a half million dollars of general fund pressures from that. Continuing on in caseload, you'll notice in in a smaller sense, but nonetheless, same trend in b three fourteen, the PNMI, the private nonmedical institutions. There's pressures there with utilization, frankly, capacity. And then, of course, if you go all the way down to b three thirty eight, b three thirty nine in corrections, there are additional caseload pressures, probably best represented by an amendment to the WellPath contract, which is the health care contract for correctional residents. And there there is a a trip, call it, a required amendment when the headcount, the average daily headcount, equals or exceeds 1,525 residents, and that was tripped. So there's an additional $4,600,000. So general that with

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: 126 people. Yeah. It goes up 4 and a half million $4,600,000.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: That's the way it works.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: But It's not gradually increased. It's just a total.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: You should check on that. I I can't That was what my understanding is. In addition in corrections while we're there, I mean, it's also from last year, there's some cost pressures. They they pushed some payments from '25 to '26, so there's an additional $3,200,000 of payments that were really due in '25 that were doing in '26, which, you know, essentially gets to the very tight closed what they had last year. But these are all, you know, again, kinda caseload involved more people or more utilization than was anticipated that led to cost pressures delivering the same services, just to either more people or for each person more service.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Other question.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Commissioner, can you just quickly explain your path to maintenance?

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: That is the health care provider for the Department of Corrections. Third party, independent, private? That's correct. That's correct. They're a health care provider that was hired by corrections to take care of the inmates that are there. The third party.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Tiffany, this question is. Know, I'm

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle, Ranking Member]: at the three fifteen mental health facilities, and am I right in understanding that the vacancy savings is a center of paying for the visiting nurses? And are those vacancies related to visiting nurses?

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Yes, I was going to get to that later on,

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: but yes.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: There's an offset. I mean, it kinda makes intuitive sense that if you have travelers, that's because you haven't been able to fill your staff up. So there is a a vacancy savings offset to the traveling nurses. Yeah. It's not one to one, but it's close. So

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: if

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: you look at caseloads, you'll see that kind of throughout. You'll also see some familiar software pressures that just maintaining our systems in b three zero six, for example, with Diva. You'll see there's, you know, in and around $2,000,000 of additional costs, a payment to Deloitte for the Medicaid data warehouse, the m d w s program. The largest one actually is to gain well for the Medicaid managed information system, MMIS system, which is about $1,400,000 higher. And on a smaller level, but same issue, there's additional payments to Oracle for licenses. But just maintaining our system and making sure that our our employees are hooked up requires from time to time additional payments. And then, you know, I would say there's what for lack of a better term, I would say is the cost of doing business. So your comment earlier, representative Bluemle, if you look at b three fifteen, there's just under 5,000,004,900,000.0 general fund pressure for travelers, traveling nurses, to staff, predominantly psychiatric costs mental health facilities. That is, as you mentioned earlier, offset by vacancies higher than they anticipated, which is kind of what triggers the need for travelers. So there's an offset there, but nonetheless, I mean, it's it's a fairly decent, increase. There's pressures with transportation that you notice with DCF, in B 317, D M H 2, and B 314. These are transporting customers, you know, clients and facility to various appointments, and it's increasingly difficult to find companies, contractors who are willing to do that, and the cost is higher. In B 327, you see the secure residential treatment facility, a little under 2,000,000, 1,900,000.0. That's the Windham facility that, requires fit up and staffing. And department. I'm sorry. Yes. Sheriff's department. That's correct. Yes. And then as I already mentioned before, in terms of cost of doing business there, you know, the DOC facilities, but, you know, even crudely like utilities, water, sewer for their facilities, increased fee for space, and actually, new this year hotel rooms Because of the intensity of the work and the fact that there are many people working overtime, it makes little sense for them to clock out at midnight and come back at six, you know, even if they've just got a short drive. So for those instances where there are very short, breathing time between shifts, DOC is putting them putting them up in nearby hotel rooms. There are other, I would say, potentially anyway, off costs. You're aware of Planned Parenthood of New England, kind of a loss of federal funding there. That was originally just a moratorium for f y twenty six, and our hope and expectation is that that will be just f y twenty six, but we don't know that. But there's when you look and that shows up in a number of different business units in B 307 and 309 for claims, and in B 306 and 312 for investments, you'll see it show up. But the net cost of that general fund wise is about 1,100,000.0. And then in B-three twenty five, the DCF, the HOTH program, You'll remember there was a onetime investment in fiscal twenty five current year budget for standing up and staffing new shelters, but that's being factored into the base for this year. And that's about a $2,000,000 investment needed to maintain those shelf space. The good news, if there is any, is there are some revenue offsets here that I wanted to mention. We've already dealt with the vacancy savings, in department of mental health. In corrections, you'll know, our thought is there's about 2 and a half million dollars of predominantly healthcare related costs that may be global commitment eligible, which would be an offset to what has been purely a general fund. In DC DCM, there's been some relief from caseloads with reach up, for example, and sub care, almost $1,000,000 in sub care, about 2,300,000.0 in reach up. Yes, ma'am.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle, Ranking Member]: Yeah. I guess I don't really understand how caseloads are adjusted in that, I mean, is it that fewer people are actually applying? Are people dropping off because they're not meeting certain requirements? I just don't know how those numbers fluctuate. The benefit is not terribly significant to meet the needs of these families. I just

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: How does this happen?

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: So we make estimates, as you're aware, every year when we do in the budget. And the estimates, I think what is there? Three levels. There's the high level, the mid level, and the low level estimates. And I think we use the mid level estimate for projections for the year and caseloads happen. And this is, of course, a projection about what they'll need for the remainder of the year because we're only six months into it. But I think their most recent projection is they're running cold, so there'll be money left over. They would be from a technical standpoint, I don't wanna speak with the CF. They would be much

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle, Ranking Member]: We'll more have an opportunity to talk about that. Yeah.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: But this is simply trend relative to estimates, and the estimates were made in in you know, best we could. I was going to stop there and pause with the b three hundreds. That was a bit of a whirlwind, but I think it captures the main kind of ups and downs. To circle back to the beginning, there's a total of about $33,000,000 of additional general fund in base spending. They have additional one time asks that we'll get to later on. But that's we'll cover for the b 3 hundreds, and I am sure they will provide many more details when they come in.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Great. I have a couple of people with questions, Adam. Dave and

[Rep. David Yacovone]: then Wayne? And and this may be if best for the Diva Commissioner, but the two areas though, I saw an up for leases. Is that related to the return to office policy change in the 300 series?

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: That I believe is going to be the Pilgrim Place

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Building, which is essentially being swapped for

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: the Cherry Street Building in Burlington. For the health. It's So they're moving from Burlington. That building was sold. I believe that's that's closed by now. That sale has gone through. K. And they are moving to Waterbury. So they are leasing additional space, and this is predominantly fit up for them. And Probably lease cost.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Actually, in in this section, it's the lease cost in the base, and then there's a one time appropriation in the one time section for fit up costs.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: Well, this may not be the appropriate place if the return to office policy hadn't been implemented, would we need as much a lease space? I understand the Cherry Street issue, people were moving. So is is there someone I should speak to about that, Adam, a commissioner?

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Well, EVA folks would be able to speak to that, but I can tell you that there's a requirement to have people have a place to hang their hat. Right. So if not Cherry Street Somewhere else. Somewhere else. And it was actually Department of Health that was predominantly in Cherry Street, but they're moving into the Waterbury State Office Complex and Diva is shifting over to Pilgrim Place. Why that is happening, I think they would be better to answer, but that's why it's within the Diva.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: Yep. And if I may just one other one, the choices for care. My understanding is there was, granted a cost of living increase last year in this budget for inflation for the choices for care folks, and there was an omission. Apparently some of the case managers with the area agency on aging normally would have been in a group to get an inflationary increase. I was told that it's 179,000 upward pressure. I don't know if that's GF or total, however. And I didn't know, do you know if that's in this choices for care increase? Can we check? Can somebody I

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: will certainly check. We may

[Rep. David Yacovone]: or may not be able to do anything about it, but maybe they addressed it.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: It may be in three thirty four point one, but I can check. Yes. Thank you. I can check for that.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: I'm trying to be aware of the time too, and we've been getting all of the agency human services folks in. Okay.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: Thank you. So stop it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Thank you. I Wayne, do you did you have?

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: B B 342, the Veterans Zone. I see it's it's neutral in the end, but I have I have that area. I just wonder if there's something there I need to know beyond. The

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: short answer is there is not. And that is a they reconcile federal payments, a year in arrears essentially. So that's actually a payment for fiscal year twenty twenty four, I wanna say.

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: This is what we do

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: And it's just a truing up of what they Good. Thanks. Madam chair, I was going to move on to the b 5 hundreds. There's only one entry. There is a reduction of a million dollars, and I believe it's b five O508.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Universal School Meals?

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: For Universal Meals, and that's a utilization, on being you there was an estimate of a little over $18,000,000. Evidently, that's coming in, they think around $17,000,000 that we're reducing the spending authority by a million. And I was gonna hand it over to Michael.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Okay. In the natural resources section, pretty quick and straightforward. In fish and wildlife, there's $210,000 associated with a game warden RFR, a request for review process, and it was originally anticipated and budgeted to be a one pay grade increase. It ended up coming out of the process as being a two pay grade increase. So this is the additional amount required to pay the game wardens. In forest parks and recreation, this approximately $100,000 of additional spending authority is related to wild primarily related to wildfire fighting efforts. Some of that paying back Green Mountain National Forest crews, some related to a helicopter deployment, and the balance to overtime. There's also a small adjustment for operating expenses for the land use review board of $41,000.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Are we ready to keep moving?

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Yes. We'll secure some one times.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: There are some one times. The largest paid at the Brattleboro retreat alternative payment model year five reconciliation payment of about 8,000,000.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Last year, was 11. General fund.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: So, yes, it has. That's the silver lining is it was much more last year, but obviously a significant payment. At Diva, the next largest item is related to Vermont Health Connect, migrating to a cloud based platform and that's for a federal data services hub compliance requirement. So that's the 2,700,000.0 general fund there. And there is a million dollar one time appropriation to the Land Access and Opportunity Board. This is actually of a net neutral change in there was an appropriation to the land use and opportunity board that was specifically appropriated in law for the administration and support of the board for a million dollars for FY25 operating costs. It wasn't spent at all. We did not prove the carry forward of that appropriation because it was clearly identified as only being for administration and support of the board and the proposed use was to grant for various granting programs, which is a different use. So this is a case of the original appropriation not carrying forward and being part of the reversions column and proposing a new one time appropriation for the specific purpose of the granting programs proposed by the Land Access and Opportunity Board. So I just thought that required a moment's worth of explanation. There's one other similar situation, which is the $163,000 appropriation to the health department. And that's related to the fact that there was going back to, I think it's FY '22, there was an appropriation made to the Office of Racial Equity for health equity purposes. And what has happened since then is the Office of Health Equity has been established and founded permanent home within the Vermont Department of Health. And so the remaining balance of this appropriation that was to AOE, Office of Racial Equity, was also not carried forward, was reverted, and now this is reestablishing the spending authority where it needs to be, which is Vermont Department of Health.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Some of that last year too. Wayne, do have a question?

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: That's correct. And that was the operating costs of the office that we're moving. Now this is a remaining balance in a one time that's being trued up as well.

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: Not on this topic, I note last year we had all these IT changes in budget investments. That's all the noise. I don't see an issue.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Oh, we're talking about every budget area had IT. That was the build back in the 'eighteen-'eighteen delay.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: So that's why I'm thinking about the area is we're not seeing that in this year's budget adjustments. I recall in testimony last year with the agency of digital services, we were told not to expect the same situation and we are not seeing that situation. Whether their coordination of estimating the amounts to budget or whatever, but fortunately, we're not seeing that. I think the only because there was a question about the Chittenden pilot court earlier, those costs appear here. They're relatively small, but $139,000 to judiciary related to the establishment of the Chittenden pilot court, and then $37,000 to state's attorneys, which is also related to administrative support for the special prosecutor. So that's where those specific costs are appearing. Again, they're

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: But those are new things, so those weren't like business that you

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: They're not, and that's why they appear here, and they were put forth as unique one time appropriations rather than as base section increases to really highlight here's this unique special purpose. Right, should be

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: one time.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Okay, reversions.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: I don't, unless there are any other questions, I did not mention every line. The tax is largely academic and, and then here's the fit up costs related to the Pilgrim Place Waterbury office complex of $385,000. Those complement the one time cost is for fit up. The the base adjustment was for the lease costs. That covers the one times.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: So, madam chair, moving down to the end, there are some, transfers. And here again, I think we might not need to go into deep detail, but I think the first one is worthy of mention. There's a $1,000,000, general fund, transfer to the criminal history records check fund, and that is, entirely due to the fact that this fund supports the Vermont crime information center salaries and benefits. I mean, that's basically what it does. And those have been growing faster than revenue into this criminal records check fund has been growing. And so there's been a disparity. I believe that folks in public safety will speak to you, in more detail about that. But we're just trying to prevent the fund from going into deficit, and these kinda meet the cost pressures of this year. There are two pilot special fund line items that you see, below. And this gets to you may remember in, this current year budget section e nine seventeen, there was a 1,150,000 appropriation from the pilot special fund to deal with, nonfederal disasters. In other words, programs that were not considered part of the federal disaster declaration, but still nonetheless took some heavy hits. It turns out that the 1,150,000.00 was smaller than the ultimate. There's actually, in fact, two additional projects that are currently being completed. So AOT came to us with a request for additional spending authority in this in this area so they can complete those projects. We signed them an excess receipt for 300 and forget the exact amount. Call it $350,000, but with the stipulation that those funds be replaced. So here in the budget adjustment, we are replacing them, from both, the t fund and the general fund to make the pilot fund whole. But, you know, the reality is it was a very successful, appropriation. It was good. I think it's the town of Pompret and the town of Norwich that have projects that are outstanding that that excess receipt went to cover. So those two you see, there. I think, Hardy had mentioned earlier, the cannabis regulation fund and how there's been some fund moves, movement around. There's a replacement of an inadvertent sweep, for their lab facility, that they've now stood up, and also there was additional revenue that came into the fund in in excess of what was originally budgeted to be the sweep. So here we're recognizing that revenues. And then, the final thing is, in some of our, direct applications, sometimes we adjust those up, sometimes we adjust those down based on what we are seeing and what we anticipate. So there's been more money in unclaimed property and liquor, and there's been a little less money in sports wagering. So we have adjusted those accordingly for estimates to the end of the year. Typically, you guys will adjust them again when we do the big bill, the c section with the most up to date trends. And there, the final line you see is a $21,000,000, a little bit more than that in reversions, which we will provide for you in bit of color. That is a kind of a whirlwind. I would note, madam chair, there's also a language document. The vast majority of this document is we've just gone over. It's just in words saying but there are a few sections that if you'd like us to go over now or have us back, we can review. I mean

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: You have a couple of minutes.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: So why don't we

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: if there's a couple of highlights that, you wanna give us from in here?

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Okay. I I would say, again, the overwhelming majority of the pages are just following, you know, providing, the actual movement of funds. But if you wanna flip to page, 35 starting with section 15. Yeah. And that is as I you know, in my preamble, I mentioned that the governor is very clear that he is asking to reserve whatever is not required for the budget adjustment, general fund, for use in next year's budget and next year's ed fund. So you see the language that would make that happen in section 50, which is the bottom of page 35.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Right. So 75,000,000, basically, of carryforward.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: That's correct.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: And then another 13,000,000 from the Ed fund, the reserve fund.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: So that, you know, I think I spoke about this earlier. That's a delightful example of that we're all human beings, and, occasionally, we make mistakes. There was $13,000,000 that was reserved the prior year in f y twenty four for use in tax offset in fiscal twenty six. And the problem is it it was never on reserve. So, I mean, we're rule followers in FinOps, and if money is reserved and not unreserved, we can't use it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: So this is retroactive?

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: This is unreserving it, and it well, what happened was that $13,000,000 was taken out of the Ed Fund reserve, Ed Fund stabilization reserve. So the Ed Fund was made whole, but it finished the year with a reserve under, 5%. You know, we took from it. It's got a 55,000,000 or so reserve. We took $13,000,000 out of that, and the Ed Fund closed a year in balance, but it with a reserve that was slightly under 5%. This basically unreserves that money restores the reserve to 5%. If someone weren't paying attention, they wouldn't notice any difference, but it's it's just unreserving the money, and then it will go

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: Yeah.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Towards the reserve. So that's what that's what that is. Okay. There's I I think no. No. I think already had mentioned in section 51, the land use review board, executive director was a limited service position. The thought is that this should be permanent position. It's not gold. So here we are.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: The same. Yeah. The nine other positions were converted, and I think this one was just up. Probably the only other material thing would be the child care construct at it. That's correct. Yeah.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: On the last page.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Yeah, this is section 53. Page

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: 37.

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Yeah, page 37 and maybe just looking at the the language is somewhat dense. Looking at the explanation on on the last page is probably the easiest way to to tackle this. What this is doing is establishing an annual procedure to be implemented as part of the fiscal year end closeout process. And we ran into a situation at close last year, which was the first year of the actual child care payroll tax being collected. And the issue is that the collections are made as part of the withholding process. Collection, the revenue goes into the general, ends up in the general fund. And it's not until really November that that last orders receipts that there is like a the reconciliation based on the actual filings from the filers. What we what we realized was that I don't I neither the executive nor the legislature, I don't I think anticipated this until we got to this point in the year, which is those amounts that were collected from the payroll tax sitting in the general fund, but they couldn't be transferred to the child care special fund until the reconciliation was complete, which is coming up in the next November. So if it was just sitting in the general fund, it would have gotten swept into the balance reserves, which is great for funding 50% to this retirement system and 50% to that, but then there would be no fund to transfer into the childcare. So this is trying to set up a situation to essentially,

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: this is

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: a proposal to solve that problem. This was developed in working with JFO, and that's what

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: this language is about. What we did was we estimated what amounts. And we felt a little bit vulnerable. What if we screw it up? What if we're too high? What if we're too low? So this creates a consensus process, essentially. When we have years of data, this won't be that hard. Right. We're still figuring it out. Okay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: So this is helpful for you to raise that flag, and we'll probably have Emily explain it to us again.

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: That's okay.

[Jean Hamilton, Co‑Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: Because we've just had

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: a whole lot of numbers, and this is a big thing we want to be sure that we understand child care well so we appreciate you that's

[Hardy Merrill, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: not a number it's just a process

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: it's a process and we should understand did you get enough cookies Jim

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Lynn doesn't look at her phone.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Any other questions for Adam and Marty before we can talk?

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Yeah, just on the nothing to comment about the proposed transfer of funds to the education fund. We had that conversation last year. We'll have it again this coming year. People knew that I was coming to this meeting and they needed me to ask. So as you know, the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable with the demise of the subsidies from the federal government. Any what what is the administration's take on that? Is there it's going to it would be far more substantial than $75,000,000. But I don't hear a word here about the 30,000 Vermonters and the small businesses that are going to be affected by this. I've had constituents already call me and say they are taking they are giving up their health insurance because the way they've signed up for it, it's an automatic draft out of the checking account. The reason they qualify for the Affordable Care Act is because it's affordable. And when rates are going from 400 or $500 to $2,000 they can't afford it. So where is the administration on dealing with this particular fiasco that's coming from the federal government?

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: So the administration is as you are equally concerned. I would note and this was a frequent topic of discussion during our meetings. I would note that the situation today is rather fluid. And for budget adjustment, we just didn't have enough this actually may turn out to be cured and back to what we have before. They may go halfway. They may go no way. So we don't know where it stands, but we're aware of the need, and we've discussed it. It's just that for budget adjustment, it was just too fluid a situation for us to feature it here. Fair enough.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: But I hope you appreciate the chaos that's going on and that people are dropping their insurance and getting back on it is going to require pretty substantial investment of time and commitment from the state government to to deal with it. And I I don't hear that in public and nor did my constituents. And I think it's I think it would be as long as it's fluid, people are going to live in chaos. So I just want to lay that out there. It's not a simple game of numbers or waiting for something to happen, we need to

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: let people know there'd be

[Rep. David Yacovone]: Dave? At one of the joint fiscal committee meetings this fall, there was a discussion about section eight funding not being available. And have you have you heard is there anything addressing that? Is there anybody coming in to testify later that I should speak with instead?

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Are you referring to the Vermont State Housing Authority? Yes. We have heard.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: Federal shortage. Right.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: We're aware of their request.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: We haven't addressed it here, though.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: It's not in the budget adjustment.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Dave, we have had some conversations, the joint fiscal committee members and emergency board members with the administration and trying to understand what's going on. So it's definitely on the radar. It's been a little challenging because Section eight doesn't come through the state budget on a normal basis. So trying to develop the expertise to understand a complex thing has been a challenge in and of itself. And we have the Vermont State Housing Authority, and we have nine other public housing authorities across the state. And there's no universal umbrella organization. I only know a teeny drop, and this is some of the stuff I've learned. So we're aware it's being discussed, and there isn't If we need to do something, we'll probably be addressing it earlier in the year. Thank you. But there's some question on what we can actually do and what they actually need. That's kind of

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: where we are. And that's one reason why it's not featured yet.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: So more to come. Okay. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you very much for getting us the spreadsheet and the language. We really appreciate it. I know we'll be talking to you more about this. I know the governor's is January 20 earlier than it typically is, because we want to get this thing moving as fast as we can. So I really appreciate that this is done now, which helps us in January. So moving right along to the Land, Access and Opportunity Board, Jean Hamilton and Marnella Panapiguero. Wayne, so I think you're the last one. Just don't hand it to him. Okay. We're ready to go.

[Ronella Mata Figueroa, Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: Good morning. Good

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Trisha. Thank Good you.

[Ronella Mata Figueroa, Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: The record, my name is Ronella Mata Figueroa, director of the Land, Access, and Opportunity Board.

[Jean Hamilton, Co‑Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: And I'm Jean Hamilton, the other co director for the LAOB. And I'm just logging into the Zoom so I can put slides up when she's here.

[Ronella Mata Figueroa, Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: Awesome. We begin everywhere we land with our touchstones. And I would love to invite you all to keep them in mind during our time together today. And they are that we listen generously and that we speak our truth from our heart and mind, that we make the way that we work together an example of what is possible, and that we trust that we each hold a piece of the puzzle and that we need each other's pieces to understand the whole picture. Do you all consent to working with those touchstones in mind today? Thank you.

[Jean Hamilton, Co‑Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: Okay. So we are here specifically to talk about our Budget Adjustment Act proposal, which we understand you just heard a little bit about from the commissioner. This is a BAI request for $1,000,000 $750,000 of which we will be granting in predevelopment seed grants for beginning and emerging developers that are coming through a Homes For All training and technical assistance program that we're partnered with DHCV on. And then 250,000 of that go into a grant program we are launching right now for Community Resilience Hub grants, are essentially grants to launch and develop community led disaster readiness and resilience projects. I think you heard from the commissioner that this is a million dollars that was previously in our budget. This was our FY '25 appropriation. We had it in our FY twenty six budget. We were fully intending to use it this year, but due to some language discrepancy, it did get reverted by DFM in August is when we learned of that. And we have been in conversation back and forth with them for the last few months about this. So I'm sorry that we weren't here to hear exactly what the commissioner said, but glad to fill in any gaps. We will start our presentation with a little bit of background on the Land Access and Opportunity Board as we're a relatively new body. We don't want to assume that any of you are deeply familiar with our work. And we've been doing a lot of exciting work over the last year. So we want to catch you up with that. And then we will go into a little bit more detail about these two grant programs. And just before we start, does anyone have any questions to start off with or any guidance for today? What's our time block?

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: You have till 11:30, but we can give you an extra five minutes because I think we started five minutes. Thank you.

[Ronella Mata Figueroa, Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: So the Land, Access and Opportunity Board was created in 2022 as an independent state board. It was created to address disparities in land and homeownership in Vermont for people and groups who have been historically or systematically marginalized from land and homeownership. Who are these marginalized communities? We say that the LAOB belongs to everyone because we represent all poor and low income Vermonters, Vermonters with disabilities, LGBTQIA Vermonters, immigrant people who are new to Vermont, Vermonters who are people of color, and any Vermonter who is a psychiatric survivor. While centering communities who have been most marginalized and disadvantaged in housing and land systems, we recognize, like I said, that the LAOB belongs to all Vermonters, that it is very important that we improve access and land housing and homeownership for these populations and stable housing for these populations. And because our communities have survived disadvantaged conditions for generations, they have developed expertise and experience and have strategies that are especially useful in addressing the problems in our state right now. As a nonpartisan body, the Land Access and Opportunity Board is dedicated to fostering civic engagement and community led systemic solutions that are led by marginalized communities, and we believe that when those who are most marginalized in our communities are doing better, then the whole state is going to do better. Our statute is unique and potent. It broadly is categorized into two categories: our advisory powers and our grant making powers. Advisory powers flow in two directions. We advise the state of Vermont and affiliated institutions to identify and understand and redress structural barriers for housing and land access, of course, for people who are most marginalized, and also to disadvantaged and marginalized communities. We perform these advisory powers by retaining experts from marginalized communities who know best where the gaps in services are occurring. And these experts are essential to highlighting what is our resources and what are the impacts of the existing systems. We also center the data. Often, our public policies and publicly funded programs focus attention on justice success stories, and just let's celebrate what we're doing well. And while we really believe in celebrating what we're doing well, we also need to be observing and tracking these gaps and these places where our Vermonters are falling through the cracks, and we need to be focusing there. We advise and work with the state of Vermont and affiliated institutions to review and monitor and develop policies and programs to promote racial, social, economic and climate justice for all Vermonters. We perform our grant making powers, which we are just starting. Yesterday, we had our first kind of approval for our first grant program that the board is going to be launching, and that's very exciting. And we perform these grant making powers by listening to the real conditions of our LAOB communities on the ground and working collaboratively with many different institutions, organizations and first responders, on the ground community members, to look at these opportunities to leverage high impact investments. Because we don't have millions and millions of dollars, so we have to be very thoughtful and strategic when we're investing our resources. Our board is essential to this. And if you see there, they are intersectional. They represent the communities that we are advocating for. And they have so much expertise about our systems and what our communities need. We are here for action and impact.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Thank you, Jean.

[Jean Hamilton, Co‑Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: Okay, so this is a timeline that can give you a sense of what's happened for the LEOB since our creation in 2022. This body did create the LEOB through an accurate statute and appropriated $200,000 at that time to basically support the board in researching and understanding how can a board function in this way, are there any legal concerns about this work, And to make a proposal for how the board would get started. The board was very successful at that, submitted a sunrise report to the legislature in 2023, and a budget that was appropriated at 1,200,000 During that year of 2023, the LEOB did a lot of the foundational administrative work to get ready for staff and for action. And so critically, the board executed a memorandum of understanding with VHCb, which is our administrative host. We live at VHCb, but through our own independent directorship through our board of directors. And that board was able to effectively accomplish all these things without staff and then hired Arnela and me at the beginning of twenty twenty four as the first two staff as co directors. Since then, we have been sprinting all around Vermont's land and housing systems, ecosystems, building trust, participating in working groups, hosting many, many community engagement sessions, researching the data. What are these gaps? Where is their momentum? How do we strategically invest these precious millions of dollars we have? Which to date, as you can see, has been about $4,000,000 We did unfortunately have that $1,000,000 reverted in August, which then created a new series of work we needed to do to reinstate that into our budget, hopefully. I think what I want to point to here is the successful trajectory of this board, that this was a board created with really interesting, complex, and extensive purposes, as you can see in our statute. This is not easy work. It is involving people who do not trust government to reinspire trust back into government. It is to work with the government systems and institutions, some of which may have become somewhat cynical about what we can really accomplish in terms of serving all Vermonters to reinspire trust, to reinspire vision, and to reinspire a collective coalition that can work together towards these problems that our communities feel first and feel hardest. But as you all know from your constituents, many people now are feeling the housing shortage, a lack of access to land, concerns about will they even be able to keep their land? Will their children be able to build homes on their land? Can they trust the government? Does the government serve them? These are questions, again, that our communities know, have known for a long time, but all communities in Vermont are now asking. What I want to show with this timeline is that in these four years, this is a program that is working. This is an act that this body has taken that has established the administrative foundation, that has established trusting relationships in government and in community, that now has a staff team of five people. And we have programs that are absolutely launching and ready to go. So that's what I want

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: you to take away from here.

[Jean Hamilton, Co‑Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: But if there's any specific questions, you do have these slides and we invite them on the details. I mentioned, and I think Larnella also mentioned, the importance of community engagement to our work. One of the things that we've really noticed, which again, I think you all probably noticed too, is a lack of sufficient civic engagement to really carry our communities forward. There are many factors that are leading to this, but one is that many of our communities do not know how to engage with government systems and public policy. They do not feel welcome. They do not feel like their ideas are expert enough. We have a lot of what you may know of as imposter syndrome in the policy making spaces. So one of the big functions that we have taken on as a board is to go to our communities, to go to the most disadvantaged members of our communities and say, what does secure and stable housing look like for you? What are your ideas from your expertise of surviving and thriving with limited resources? I

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: don't know if you can

[Jean Hamilton, Co‑Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: see my cursor, but this easel pad here is about what we have when we don't have money, which is something that our communities are very familiar with. And these are the kinds of resources that I think that all Vermont communities can consider right now when we are facing budgetary crises. We've been using this tool, the spectrum of community engagement to ownership, which we brought a few of to pass around. This is a policymaking innovation. It is a tool for how do you actually engage, empower, and put community members at the leadership of policymaking. The real point of doing this is to expand our policymaking capacity as a whole state and to make sure that the policies we create are actually meeting the mark, that they're effective and addressing the gaps and the problems, the real problems, and also that they are efficient because we already have community buy in. We already have momentum. We don't need to waste time doing research projects or launching policies that are going to land flat because we never ask the community, is this going to work for you? So that's the point of community engagement and is really the centerpiece of the LAOB. These are the problems that we have seen from all that community engagement. And I'm not going to read them, although I would love to. And maybe when we come back later in the session, we can go more into these problems. But just a few that I want to highlight because they are really relevant to these grant programs that we're talking about with the Budget Adjustment Act is Vermont needs more people power. We really need more engaged minds, hearts, and bodies to lead these solutions to the problems that the many cliffs that our communities are facing now. Those who are most vulnerable are hit the hardest by every single crisis. We have that firsthand view in our communities, whether we are homeless, whether we are immigrants, whether we are disabled, that the housing crisis, lack of access to land, and all of the associated crises that come with those, emergency, flooding, hit our communities hardest and first. The lack of effective solutions is inefficient, expensive, and demoralizing. How much money could we save if our policies more well informed before they were put into effect, or our programs were better informed by the rulemaking and governing that goes into the development of the programs? And then finally, this lack of effective solutions is not just expensive and inefficient. It also leads to a lack of trust between people and the government. And this, I think, we can all see happening a lot around us right now, which, of course, creates more inefficiency. So we'll just dive in quickly here to our two grant programs. This first one is the Homes for All redevelopment grants for developers. This is a project that we have been developing in close partnership with VHFA and DHCD over the last two years. Again, I hope we'll have a chance to come in here and tell you more or in your other committees tell you more about what this work really looks like. But what we know is that no amount of technical assistance can solve for a lack of access to capital. We are really excited to be bringing on many new people, many new Vermonters who want to build houses in their communities who may not have already access to cash and capital to get these projects set. So these grants are intended to help new developers address those predevelopment costs, like the design work, the road designs, the septic designs, so that they can then go to the bank and get financing so that they are ready for financing. This is a timeline I will not speak to because we don't have time, but it is in your slide. These are the partners that are engaged on this phase two of Homes for All, which is about training new developers. And here you see are the grant programming that we intend to launch as soon as possible that we get this Budget Adjustment Act money in hand. And then we do have a follow-up ask in our FY '27. The point of this money is if we get it soon enough, we can then get builders ready for financing for this year's build season. And I will hand it

[Ronella Mata Figueroa, Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: to you, Ornella, for community resilience. So we're asking for in this million dollars, we have $250,000 that we're supposed to go for our community resilience hub work. Me go to the next slide. Right now, we're investing $350,000 that are already secure, and we have an LOI that's getting directed right now for these community resilience hubs. This is a process that has been in the works for probably a year and a half as well. We remember going to the very first meeting about what do we need after this flood in 2023, which was the first flood. And this group and coalition came together after the twenty twenty four floods and started to work on this resilience hub. It is a collaboration with Grassroots Partners. The list is there. It involves one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten of our local frontline organizations working together. And the resilience hubs are intended to support resilience in that broad definition that is there and supports communities before disaster by mapping assets, by building the networks, by preparing the supplies and training volunteers before disasters strike. And then during a disaster, by helping to coordinate a response, tracking the needs in the communities, making sure nobody's getting forgotten because there's no road to get there, managing the volunteers, and putting communications out into the communities. Quick question, if I may.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Are the regional planning commissions also involved?

[Ronella Mata Figueroa, Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: I think they have been to some of the meeting, but they're not involved in this. They weren't involved in building the toolkit.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Okay, because they are certainly involved in emergency recovery and those kinds of things across the state.

[Ronella Mata Figueroa, Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: Yeah, no, we'll definitely encourage communities to be

[Jean Hamilton, Co‑Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: working with their local regional planning commissions. Absolutely. And just some context, this toolkit has been a creation, as we said, for the past eighteen months. It just launched. So in its complete form, it just launched last week. And now this next phase is to build the hubs. So that's really the time to engage partners like the RPC. Exactly. And we did pass around. I'm sorry, we didn't bring enough copies of anything, but there are, if you all will share with each other and love, this is a print version of sort of the short toolkit. There is also a 100 page version, and then it is all online as printable templates and fillable templates. So this is an open source tool that any community can use now. And the other document we shared was spectrum to community engagement to ownership. Thank you. Yes.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: That sounds very good. And it looks like we're looking for homeownership, ultimately, for all of these groups of people. You are not the only people that think that the lack of effective solutions is inefficient, expensive, and demoralizing. What are you going to get involved with Act two fifty and the permitting process and the need to go and change what we do for all housing. I'm not talking about apartments that are built at 600,000 per week, two bedroom apartment on Main Street. I'm talking about the kind of thing that I hear you asking to go and have built for your constituency and that really all Vermonters need. It's a huge roadblock. Have you gone and looked into any of that to get involved in that piece of the community activity?

[Ronella Mata Figueroa, Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: We are participating in all of the rulemaking processes right now, and helping, giving feedback, and informing those rulemaking processes. We are participating in all of them. Do you want

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: to pull up the slide?

[Jean Hamilton, Co‑Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: I don't know

[Ronella Mata Figueroa, Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: if we have the full list here, but we are participating in Act two fifty and all of the we participated in support of the community engagement process for the planning commissions related to what was environmental justice pieces. We've been working in the Act two fifty space and the rulemaking now for permits for what the LERB is doing related to their own kind of structure and setup and road rule and Tier three.

[Jean Hamilton, Co‑Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: And what else? We were named into all these working groups, so we have had a front row seat. And in short, this is a major issue that we anticipate talking with you all about in this coming session. We do have concerns that it appears there has not been a real assessment of the economic impact and the environmental justice impacts of Act two fifty even before 01/1981. And then now we have additional provisions with road rule and tier three. And at some point, as soon as possible, we really see a need to understand how is Act two fifty impacting economic justice in growth zones, in rural zones. Many of our community members want to live in rural communities. They work the land, they are farm workers, and they need access to affordable affordable housing in rural communities. So the general sort of vibe of, oh, we're gonna build all the houses in tier one, and then the tier three and tier two is gonna be for open landscape. Our communities are also very interested in living in a functioning ecosystem. We don't think that there's a throw the baby out with a backlog of situation, but there is a necessity to understand what are the economic impacts, especially for low income landowners and people aspiring to be landowners for building homes

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: under these new paradigms. The second question I have is, you want to train and get people involved in learning how to do the building, how to put the trays, do all of

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: the different things that need

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: to be done. There are educational institutions already in existence. Have you looked into trying to partner with them?

[Ronella Mata Figueroa, Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: CTEs? Yeah, we're not necessarily going to be ourselves training anyone as an LAOB. Our job here with our community of practice is to coordinate the network of people and then connect them with. And yes, we will be right now, we're working with Helm locally, who's going to be doing our one on one TA for the developers. This is geared specifically to developers, not What's tradespeople. Trades or the construction aspect of development at this point. But in that, we are kind of looking at it softly as a thing that we're going to be maybe moving into next. As folks show up with the desire to learn these skills, and then we have a person that's talking with them, we will not only be referring folks to Helm for 101 TA, most likely, as the pool of interested trades folks gathers, we are going to be working with them to direct them to working with the organizations that are already doing this education and skill development. Okay, thank you.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Great. Did you have a question?

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: So if I was to decide or write a criteria for success and failure for your organization, what would that be? More housing units built?

[Ronella Mata Figueroa, Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: Conversation we had with the administration. Well, here you mean the success built for the program or for the LAOB?

[Rep. Michael Nigro]: The whole concept of this whole thing. Your purpose, I mean, legislature creates policy. And it sounds like you're doing a lot of thinking about policy that's actually under authority of legislature. So my question is, you're built as an organization with the intent that you were to facilitate the building of more housing units. And so successors earlier to time would be, did you accomplish that? Did you achieve more housing units built than would have happened if you didn't exist?

[Ronella Mata Figueroa, Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: I would measure our success and failure as to how well all of the housing institutions are serving underserved people. Because our role is to help housing institutions serve our communities. Our role we only have $3,000,000 How are we going to build housing with that little money? Our role is not to put people in housing, because we wouldn't be able to do it with the budget that we have received. Didn't you name an affordable housing unit at 600,000? Our role is not to put people into housing, it's to help the housing systems do their work better. How do we do that? A piece that we didn't mention is that we help all of these systems in how they do their community engagement. So what does it mean to move from engagement to ownership, as it shows in the packet that we sent around. And then we support the community engagement processes of all the rulemaking systems. We were doing that with Act 59. We did it with Act 181. We support the leaders in these organizations behind the closed doors and have the conversations about what is going to be most effective. Because you all write the laws, then the programs have to be built and developed. And there's a big disconnect between what the law says and then how how the program is developed. And what we do then is help do that translating. Helps see, Okay, so this is the law, this is what the program's going to be most effective. And we help build that effective program with that community engagement piece, with a robust community engagement process.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: And the end result, one of the end results, is that there will be more people in housing. Sure. I mean, that's where they're going.

[Ronella Mata Figueroa, Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: Yeah, more people in secure

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: They're going about it a way that is more inclusive and considers people who aren't often included in the how do we get them into housing.

[Jean Hamilton, Co‑Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: I think what you would see as some data points are, for example, the homeownership disparity between Black Vermonters and White Vermonters decreases. Right now, Black Vermonters own homes at less than a third the rate of White Vermonters. You would see the demographics of who's unhoused look more reflective of our actual demographics and not so vastly skewed towards people with disabilities or people who are black or Latinx. You will see more robust civic engagement in all of our processes. You will see innovations that allow for more people to own equity in their homes and land, like agrihoods and clustered housing where people can together a shared parcel of open land with smaller lots for homes. So these kinds of innovations that allow for more people to actually step into more secure housing, those are the kinds of metrics that we will measure our success in. If we get $20,000,000 yeah, we'll start building houses.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Okay, we have to wrap up. I'm going to let Tom have the last question.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: It's fair to say, though, with respect to, you're not being you're not. We're giving you the tools to then build out your own toolbox to help people build out their own toolboxes in order to know how to do this, why to do it in ways that hasn't existed before. It's not so much the final end product. It doesn't it's education, not just for the people involved who are going to be taking place in the workshops, whether it's buyers or builders or funders. It's just, it's opening up what we're providing, the resources and the access to the rules, regulations, and laws that haven't existed easily.

[Jean Hamilton, Co‑Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board]: It is definitely about improving access to the programs. And some of that is about educating communities. But as Arnela said about our advisory powers flowing to institutions and also to community members, education about the programs flows to community members. But a big part of the education is actually addressing the barriers and the inconsistencies and failures of the system now. And so one example that we can share is from the Developmental Disability Housing Initiative, which permissioned a report, which you all will be seeing, the Act 69 report, that basically identifies a plan of how to bring on the 600 units that folks in the intellectual and developmental disability communities need to secure their housing. This is a project that the Developmental Disabilities Housing Initiatives, which is a grassroots organization and the DD Council, have been working towards for years. Last year, Kersten Murphy and Sue Aronoff, who are the two staff people at DD Council said, Hey, LAOB, that by the way, they're on our board, can you help us connect with the housing department at VHCb? Because we're really struggling to make these connections. So we started convening a biweekly meeting every other week with the families, with Kirsten and Sue, and with VHCb's housing department to say, hey, can we look at these gaps together? And from that, I mean, you would not believe that the education that happened for all of us, but notably for VHCb, whose job presumably is to supply housing for these folks. They are a priority population for VHCb's investments. And there was a lot of really complicated knowledge that was missing. And some of it was as simple as the director of VHCb's housing saying, Oh, I can call the AHS and the people over there, and I'll get more traction than others have been able. So some of it is really just fixer stuff. Like who needs to call who to connect these dots? And having someone like us be loud enough and trustworthy enough relationships that we can actually efficiently say, this is the dot that needs to be connected. And then, oh, there's this problem with regulation over group homes. This is a lot that needs to be changed. How do we build a strategy to do that? So it is educational, but it is also very strategic and tactical about identifying those places where the system falls apart and people fall through that gap and saying, come on y'all, let's build some momentum, focus on this together and fix this problem. Let's make government more effective.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: I'm gonna stop this here because we're running late. We could talk to you for a

[Rep. David Yacovone]: lot longer.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: So we really appreciate you coming in and hearing more about what you're doing. The more I hear you, the more I'm understanding about the things you do. So we appreciate your time this morning. Thank you you so so