Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: On Monday, I know it is Monday. What is it? Wednesday, 12/17/2025. Oh boy. You're You're close. It is on until before 11:00 and we are going to talk about some budget adjustment context and information, and also talk about the budget letter that we sent to the agencies for what we're expecting in their presentation this coming year, which is quite different than what we've been getting, and also talk about the budget workshops that we're going to be doing today. So I'm going to turn it over to Emily.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Great. Thank you for having me. For the record, Emily Burns from the Joint Fiscal Office. Do you want me to start with any one of those in particular? I'm happy to Why don't

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: we do budget adjustment stuff first and maybe start with a reminder for everybody in the viewing audience about BAA? So,

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: BAA, Budget Adjustment Act, even though there's no act yet, there will be when all is said and done.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Maybe. In theory. Yeah, we have 200 over last year if you don't like this year's week.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: A year ago, I wouldn't have said in theory, but maybe living in interesting times. So, yeah, for the Budget Adjustment Act, usually presented by the Commissioner of Finance early January, sometimes in December, if we're lucky. And just as an opportunity to. The finance and management starts building the current year budget. Ten months before it's even implemented. So they're making a lot of assumptions, using a lot of estimates when they do it. When they get a couple of months into the budget that actually gets passed by the legislature, things have changed. Maybe there's new information about federal programs that are changing or things are going on in the economy, and they need to adjust the budget. So that's what

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: the budget agenda is. It's just

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: a chance to revisit things like Medicaid caseload or other technical issues that have come up since the budget was passed by the general assembly. So it's generally usually just an opportunity to make technical changes, not to implement new policy or start approving

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: relevant dollars because we know more than we need

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: to. String up the perfect Exactly. I haven't spent a lot of time with what was presented yesterday. It's what we'll do in the next couple of weeks. But

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: one of the things that's important to note about what

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: was presented yesterday is that there is a significant, I would say, amount of available funding to be utilized in the budget adjustment as was presented yesterday by the commissioner. So we did a quick sort of look at that. So one of the I'm going to share this just because I think it's an important thing for you all to look at, which I don't out of my pocket to tell you. I might need to share things.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Is it in the calendar invite, by any chance?

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: No, it's email. Okay,

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: thank you.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: But one thing, so the first sort of thing in the budget adjustment process that we look at is what changed from the forecast that is updated in July versus what was adopted in January. So the budget that you built was based on the January revenue assumptions. Then in July, you get a new number. If that number goes down, there's less revenue available. Depending on the magnitude of the revenue upgrade is when we go into a recession process. So that's what we saw with the transportation fund this summer, where there was a revenue downgrade of $7,500,000 The way that the language is written is that if the revenue downgrade is less than 2%, then the administration can manage it on their own. If it's more than 2%, then the joint fiscal committee gets involved and has to approve the plan. That $7,500,000 downgrade in the transportation fund triggered the joint fiscal committee involvement in the process. And I can't remember what the upper I want to say it's 5%. It's All generally Everybody has to talk about it. So when there's a downgrade, depending on the magnitude, the joint fiscal committee can get involved. When there's an upgrade that money sort of sits until the budget adjustment process or until the next budget year. So, in

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: if I can

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: show you the best place to find this information. Is in the revenue forecast that, Tom Kavet presents to the general assembly or to the emergency board.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Also in, yes, if you go to the joint fiscal committee too for the July 31 meeting, We Forecast. Forecast update is there. Forecast update. This Quebec brought with our associates July 2025, enough review and revenue forecast update.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: If you go to just share our another place you can find it. On the JFO website, under revenue and taxes, there's a link to the consensus revenue forecast. You can go back. There's 58 consensus revenue forecasts up there. And if you go into the the most July, recent one, July 2025, right on page one is this chart, which shows the changes from January. So this shows in the general fund for FY 2026, there was $77,200,000 of additional general fund revenue forecasted as compared to the adopted budget in May. It also shows this is $7,500,000 downgrade in transportation and then a very small downgrade in the education fund. I'll note the education fund doesn't have a rescission process, just the transportation and the general fund. Education fund has the stabilization reserve, which sort of buoys any changes in the revenue forecast. And because the revenue forecast for the education fund is only non property tax education fund sources. So it's twothree? A third of the education fund revenues, and it just gets managed in the next cycle. So it's not Or property taxes get adjusted. And you

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: get had to make up for the

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And you refill the reserve every year if it sort of dips.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Mike, you had a question?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Yeah, and maybe you're going there already, but that was July, right?

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: Yep.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: And did we just get November numbers?

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: We have November actual performance. We will get another forecast at the end in the January before the governor does his budget speech. So it's possible that the 77 number will stay the same.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: It possibly

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: could go up, could go down. When they adopt a new revenue forecast in January, the '26 forecast will likely change.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Then you'll have to react.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Are numbers available on months?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I believe November numbers are available because I saw it in Vermont Biz a couple days ago. I can forward that article to the committee, and it was down in November. The question is whether that was a blip or a trend, and one month doesn't we can't tell. So the e board is going to meet in January for the next revenue forecast update. The governor's budget speech is January 20, so the e board has to meet before then. I don't think we have a date, the governor calls that, my guess is

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: It's being worked on.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I'm sure it's being worked on, and I'm sure it's going be the week before sometime. So it could be the thirteenth, whatever.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: If That's a whole note. There's a downgrade, then the budget adjustment, you'll have to react. The budget adjustment will have to change. If there's an upgrade, it means that there's more money available, which. One of two things can happen. You can either drop it to the bottom line and use it in FY27, or there may be other needs in FY26 that you could deploy those funds for.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: But if there's a change to the governor's budget for next year, maybe it'll be modified from what I was thinking about today, even though we don't know what it is. Right.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And there was a year, I don't know you were on, were you there in 2009? No. Okay, so appropriations came in and the revenue forecast in 2000 and that was the great recession time, and the revenue forecast came in that January at somewhere between $101,150,000,000 dollars downgrade. So they had to cut the budget adjustment. That's the first thing they had to do is cut $100,000,000 out of the budget adjustment. So they had a really fine beginning to their. Yeah, and that was a new biennium. So, welcome to the legislature.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So, that's, I think Commissioner Gretchen spoke to $120,000,000 of available revenue for the budget adjustment of that 01/2020. This is where the first 77.2. Comes from the remaining. Funds and we have to dig into them a little bit more. And we'll get

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: you a sheet. Where did I put it? Share it.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: But there are one of the sources is you'll recall that H91 had a $10,000,000 appropriation in it. That bill was vetoed and then was not taken up for reconsideration. So that $10,000,000 appropriation was unallocated funds for the purposes of budget adjustment. So, it's an additional available funding. 77 now we're 87,000,000 up 120. There was also some money on the bottom line as we talk about it. So, I think we left. I have to go back and look at what we did. We didn't budget every single dollar that was available left some just for cushion, like a couple of 1,000,000 or

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: a couple

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: of Million. It's about 2.7. I think it's a combination of what was on the bottom line. And also just when things are when transfers are finalized, like the cannabis transfer and stuff, those numbers can sort of move a little bit. So that's right. That gets us to so that 12 plus 77, almost 100,000,000. Yeah. For 89,000,000. Right? 12 plus 77. Yeah. And then. There's also in the budget originally you had booked about 8 to $10,000,000 of reversions. Now, we're going to go back and look at these reversions and see what they are. But the administration is proposing increasing that number from $8,000,000 to $31,000,000 So there's an additional about $30,000,000 or $20,000,000 worth of reversions to the general fund from one time appropriations or from base appropriations that weren't utilized in the prior fiscal year. In the last twenty four hours, we haven't had a lot of time to go through each of those appropriations, but we're going to work on. We have the list. Some of them are one time. Some of them are not. We're going go through the list and look at what's there, what bills they were in, try to figure out why they weren't spent. But the commissioner, part of the budget adjustment is typically or the budget is typically language that allows the commissioner of finance and management discretion on what to revert from the general fund. And so that by sort of give everything carries forward, and then the finance and management and the Secretary of Administration determine what gets reverted. So they have gone through that process. That's $20,000,000 And that's another $20,000,000 Yeah.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Say that one again, and then Tom's question.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's another $20,000,000 of the additional for the reversions of prior year evaluations, which we're going to dig into between

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: '8 and '31 from 8 to 31,000,000 and you're looking at that or is that different?

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, we're working on that one. Yeah. It was there's another 2,000,000. It was 10,000,000. Sorry. There's a contingent reversion. We'll have a nice spreadsheet that lays it all out and makes it very clear. Come to you anywhere.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Spreadsheet that. Yeah. And so is any of the contingency that we left?

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: There was a 30,000,000. That is untouched at this point, the contingent appropriations that were made at year end. I can do a quick walk through of what those were. Yeah, that'd

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: be good.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: No, that

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: was my question. Okay,

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: great. So then in addition, he referred to another $9,000,000 of other. Haven't dug into what the other is, but again, we will come back with what that is. So assuming finance and management's assumptions and what they've put together, if we agree with what they put together, that's how you get to the additional $120,000,000 You take the $120,000,000 the budget adjustment itself is about $4,850,000,000. So 120 less that leaves you with the approximately $70,000,000 $75,000,000 that the governor is proposing to hold for property tax relief next year.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I'm not getting the math of that. We had $120,000,000

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I'm doing that on fly. Shouldn't.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We have $120,000,000 and he's using $50,000,000 for this. 70,000,000.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Right, so roughly 45 or something.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: When you're back here, what was the contingent you've referenced?

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So at the close of FY 2025, there was $118,000,000 that was the contingent appropriations based on where we knew the exit, where it was looking like the revenue was trending in terms of over forecast. We can't really appropriate anything over forecast because we only appropriate what's available in the forecast. So we set up the contingent appropriations that if it appears, this is how it gets allocated. The first $8,000,000 went through ADS to deal with their new funding stream. The next $50,000,000 yeah, 180 This map I can go to apply. The next $50,000,000 was appropriated to the Secretary of Administration to be transferred by the emergency board in the event of changes in federal funding circumstances in terms of federal funding coming through the state. So a little bit of that money was spent by the emergency board when the government was shut down and the SNAP benefits were not going to be issued by the federal government.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We'll have another I'm

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: promising a lot of spreadsheets. We'll have a spreadsheet with where that stands. So that $50,000,000 is less than $50,000,000 at this point. But then there was another $30,000,000 that was set aside specifically for other federal funding challenges that may arise, either in the next fiscal year for the general assembly to appropriate. And then a second $30,000,000 tranche that was appropriated for federal funds or other issues that may other needs of the state. So there's sort of 2 $30,000,000 pots. One is very specific for federal, and the other one is federal and whatever else may be needed in the future. So that's the $118,000,000 that was set aside. That, other than the amount that was allocated by the emergency board, hasn't been unreserved in the Budget Adjustment Act. It's still there. It's still there.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It can be used for '27.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Right. So what is the process with that in terms of mean, we I heard the phrase unreserved $13,000,000 in that was part of the math from commissioner or secretary Gresham? Commissioner Gresham or Hardy yesterday was that there's 13,000,000 that it's unreserved that was going to be

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That was the ed fund. That was the Ed fund.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Right, not the GF.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: No. That $13,000,000 you're referring to was a technical issue where we utilized there was a $13,000,000 reserve in the education fund two years ago, I believe. And we utilized it or you all utilized it to. In the education fund construct, but the language was never in it. It's specifically like, take it out of the reserve and utilize it. It just was sort of part so that language just needs to be somewhere.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: So in the process then of contemplating what to do with this $30,000,000 these two funds that we put aside, we created special little pockets of money to be used for emergency purposes to be determined by the Joint Fiscal Committee or whatever, whoever was for the emergency board.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, $230,000,000 is the general assembly.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: So what's the status of that moving into who makes the decision about reusing that money if it was meant to be be used during off session time presumably that was the intent. I understand that it can apply for the whole fiscal year. So what is what was our intent for that money if we're going into this budgeting season with 50 or $60,000,000 that are reserved for emergency purposes, what's the status of that money and how can it be applied? And I don't remember what our intent is or if there's any tradition with funds like that that then get brought back into the budget to be used for other emergencies. Sure. So

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I don't know that I can necessarily speak to your intent. I can infer a couple of things that went on and sort of why it was structured the way it was structured. So the first $50,000,000 that was set aside for the emergency board was really case something happened while the general assembly was out of session. The emergency board can only move up to 2% of appropriations, which is about 49 something of prior year appropriations, which is about 49 something. Million dollars so 50 covered. The emergency board couldn't move any more than 50,000,000. So why give them more money than they can actually move? So that 50,000,000. That's why that number was 50. The $30,000,000 appropriations, I think, were sort of twofold. There was a lot of uncertainty last spring about what was Congress going to pass a budget? How mostly was it going to resemble the president's budget, which had pretty significant reductions to funding available to states, and whether or not how or when or what the federal government was going to do. I think it would nobody knows. We still don't really know what the next what is coming next. There's another continuing resolution that they have to do in January to keep the government funded. So I think that funding was set aside both if there was a I think at the time, there was a possibility the general assembly was going to have to come back in the fall, on what the federal government decided. Setting those two pots of funds aside would have given the general assembly resources if needed to quickly that needed that could be deployed quickly in the event that. Whatever decisions were made at the federal government, the state was going to need to quickly. Since that didn't have to happen. That money is reserved for the purposes that were reserved. General assembly has the authority to unreserve it, to change the language about what it could be used for, and to determine when and if the need arises to unreserve it and deploy it to either in accordance with the language that exists or change the language and then deploy it in accordance with whatever the new language is around, what it's reserved for. Does that help to answer your question?

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Yeah, I'm just trying to get an idea of how you know, I mean, I get an idea of what the playing field is. This sounds like it's the bullpen if we want to keep using baseball as a, you know, it's just out there to be used if necessary. I just want to get a better understanding.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It wasn't given to the administration to use. Was specific. So if you're looking in

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: the budget, I did find it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's pages one hundred eight and one hundred nine of the big bill that was as passed of the two ninety page bill.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: That's really scary, Robin.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's under 300 frames,

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: I thought

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: we did pretty well.

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: No, the fact that you knew where

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: look for it. I had

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: to look for it. No, no, I didn't have it memorized. I was looking while you were talking. I found it. So I know that would be very scary. Get it. Wrap me up. The governor

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: in his budget presentation that he brings to you in January, May have recommendations for what to do with that money, right? The recommendation may That's be my question.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Those two pots of 30 money. Whatever they are. 30,000,000. 30,000,000 are still sitting there. They exist. And either he can suggest that we use them and put them into his budget and do something with it, or we can suggest Well, that it'd be something

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: and we also, the 50,000,000, we use 6,500,000.0 approximately, so we still have 53,500,000.0, sorry 43,500,000.0 for that.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: But we still have to change the language. If we did nothing in terms of determining if we wanted to keep this emergency fund, we still would have to change the language correctly. Mean we've run across that with the BAA conversation of the language didn't fit the desired uses of the money.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's right,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: because it's been appropriated. Right. This money has been appropriated For this purpose. Yes, so if it's going to be re appropriated, it would probably have to be reverted and then reallocated?

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: We could figure out how we want to do it. That's That's crazy job. Yes. Oh, yeah, great. It's here. We can figure out, like, we can write language that we can either revert it and reappropriate it. We can either tweak the language that says shall carry forward and not be reverted pursuant to the language that allows Mr. Franklin.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: The government may attempt in his budget to revert it and reproach it. Possibly. Right? I mean, he has the ability to do that.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Can make a reference. So, it's

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: a big mystery right now what's going to happen with that, those pots and money. Wayne?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Bottom line was the money was set aside because it was a perceived risk coming from the federal government. That didn't come to fruition only with a little

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: bit of the snap money there.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Question then will be, does the risk still exist going into the next year? I

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: don't know, 1,000 people getting their whole housing benefits cut, so I'd say yeah, for sure.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Another 20,000 to 30,000 losing their health insurance premium subsidy. That sounds like a risk. So we need to

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: be frugal. Pardon? So we need

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: to be frugal and There's money there, somebody wanted to direct it towards those problems. So here's the thing on the healthcare. I was actually talking to Nolan about this this morning, and we can't just backfill the health premiums, because everything that the state does is based on the information that the feds have, and all we do is add 1.5 or something to do the premiums. I'm not going to say this very eloquently, but we do what we do with the premium tax credits because the federal government basically does all the work. And if we wanted to backfill or take care of it, we would have to stand up a brand new program with no information on Vermonters and what they're doing and what they're paying because the state doesn't get that information now. So we would have IT, we would have to get whatever the information was and create the guidelines and all of that stuff to just backfill. So it isn't a we can just backfill, which is what I've been operating through that. Yes, Dave. There's the federal tax subsidy program, which as you point out, it's almost impossible, you can't backtrack. There's also Vermont premium tax assistance program. Could somebody, assuming there's a system in place that allocates that now, could somebody just increase that amount and in so doing address the loss in federal funds? Apparently not, according to Nolan. So I'm sorry he's not here to answer this better than I can tell you. That is I think where we were all heading and then Nolan stopped me this morning and said, can't be done. Not really can't be done.

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: Did he

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: have a number of

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: how many locked families will be affected?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I think we did we think it was six there's 65,000,000, and then there's how many thousands of households? 30 something

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: I had a number from them a couple months ago was the threat was to 30,000, but I don't Yeah, know

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I think it was households, so I don't know how many people.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: What do we call households when we're dealing with people who are experiencing homelessness? A household is

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Well, it could be anywhere from one to six or, you know, we don't know. So when we say households, that's a lower number than the number of people that are affected.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: So I just, yeah, just, I mean, struck me as when the commissioner responded to my question yesterday about this was that they're not doing any homework who's effective, you know, that the administration has punted on until we find out exactly what's going on. And the speaker of the house in Washington announced yesterday that they're not taking this up before the end of the year. So we know that and even if they did, people are screwed for 2026 anyway. So I think that's a lot to go on in order to be prepared for what's going to be incredible chaos for 10% of our population. So I just think it's really callous to not plan for it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So, DEMO would be the ones that would have that information. We didn't talk about that yesterday. But we can also, did we get some of this information at a joint fiscal committee? Didn't we talk about that? Emily, do you remember? Does anybody remember if we talked about it at a JMC? Think we're not gonna look. James and Nolan. Yeah, we'll get you guys on the case to get us some more information. And even if you just can email it out to us, that would be great. Anyway, so that's what I learned about that this morning, Dave. Was not helpful. Okay, continue. I've interrupted you.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: No, I think that was, I think on BAA, what I've been able to digest in the last twenty four hours, that's all I got.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Oh, I'm getting upset. Tiff, do you want to join us even without your camera on? Is Tiff there? Is she online?

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, I'm online.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Okay. You don't have to, if you don't want your

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: video, that's fine. But tell us what you were just sending me a text about.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Oh, I just, something flashed on my phone that said that House Republicans, four House Republicans in Congress bucked the party to advance a vote on the subsidies. That that may affect the situation. Breaking news.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Well, that's, yeah, that'll force the vote. That's very interesting. Yeah. So, we'll keep an eye on that. Thank you too.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Sure, and the only reason that my screen is off is I keep on having to blow my nose, you don't need to see that.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Oh, thank

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: you. My pleasure. Okay.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: All

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: right, well ask away if you've got any more questions.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Okay, will do. Definitely will do. I know the DCF is coming in, so.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes, it'll be in this afternoon. Yeah, okay. All right. Great. Where are we now, Emily?

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: You can jump to the budget workshop.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Budget letter? Okay.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Or the letter. Either one. Oh, before I pull up my notes.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: One thing, because I know he was almost introduced to you over email, but

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: you all know James. He's your go to during the session. He'll be here with you through the whole thing

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: while I'm running around with

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: my hair on fire as normal. The one thing I would plug is because this came up yesterday, and we were talking about it afterward. Because it happens with all legislators, not just house approves, but sometimes questions get asked and then departments will reply directly to you all. And we then don't know the answer to the question. And then we either have to ask it again. If.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Go through you.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Well, you don't have to go through us, but if you could copy us or forward us, if you get answers to things, that way we're not asking twice. That way when you get an answer and you're like, oh, we can Everybody knows. Everybody knows. It's more efficient. That's my shameless plug for if you could keep us in the loop, great. And there are questions you need to ask departments that we don't need to know about. So you don't have to copy us on those. But if you think of it, you can forward it to

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Feel free to remind us as necessary. Sure.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: All of you. It will just help us help you. Great. Just put it down. James is your go to. He's wonderful.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We do have a copy of the letter.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: The letter, yes. Can start with the letter.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And it's also on our website, the committee page.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. And I want to be Oh, I'm done in five minutes. So I'm going to go fast.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That's okay.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And we can talk about it more. But you all have the memo that the Rep Shai and Senator Perchlich sent to, we sent to each of the departments on their behalf.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I don't think this is it.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: They gave me the wrong answer.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: This not the right one. January302025.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: What we need is the new one. May have given Autumn the wrong one.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: I have a 10/23.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, no, that's not it. So if you go to our committee page, I'm going put it on the website. I think we put but the one that got printed isn't the right Let's see. Should be dated I don't know why it's dated. No, then that's the wrong one too. Not 01/30/2025. That's the wrong one. That's

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: under FY 2027. Yeah. Permanent legislative budget testimony. Tentwenty threetwenty twenty five. I'm gonna

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: share it. Yeah, that's what sounds like writing. No, that's Once we were

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: in the previous last year.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I guess so. Okay, I guess that's the right Thought we had more signed by Andy, they did it more generically.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, they didn't officially sign this one.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Oh, okay, that's why I'm It

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: is different.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, okay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Oh, so the one on the web committee page is FY '26 budget instructions. Right, so maybe we can change that and put the FY '27 budget instructions there instead of the '26 on the front page of our on the website. Yeah, that'd be great.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: We'll make sure it's in all the right places. But here it is up on the screen. So this is the letter that was shared with agencies and departments In October, we sent it after they were supposed to submit budgets to finance and management. So as not to add to their, the plates, because this is, it's not. Depending on the I think it's important for this just to level set around what to expect on what to get from agencies and departments. I think they're all starting in different places. Some of them already do a lot of the things that are asked in this memo. So it's not going to a lot of that won't be a big one. Other agencies and departments, this may be a multi year evolution of budgetary submissions. They've got 900 other things going on. So they've got to spend some time on it. Hopefully giving them directions back at the October gave them a few extra months to think about it and to yeah, just consider what's being asked of them and what they have available and what they can put forward. But we've had some conversations with some agencies and departments about what the request is, what sort of works. And we'll probably have some more conversations with people as we get closer to their presentations. But generally, the request is to just provide more information when they come in with their budgets and not just walk through the ups and downs. The ups and downs have a purpose. They're helpful for certain things. But there's also a piece that's missing from the ups and downs presentation. Some agencies departments put together a book that when I was a business manager, the sort of goal was that if I got a question from a legislator, I could say, have you read page 37 of the budget book? And then once they've read page 30, right, that all that information was available and public and could be looked at. Some agencies and departments put together really helpful comprehensive PowerPoints that have a lot of information in it. And same deal. Go check out slide five. If you have further questions, let's talk about it. But the goal is to have more of that information available to you all and to the policy committees when budgets are reviewed.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So you gave examples of each of those with the here and here, and the links were because I checked them out. So you can see, for example, the Agency of Education is one of the ones that has a really thorough budget book because Bill Talbot in the 1990s put together something and the agency was smart enough to continue to use that. So when you were there, that's what was being said.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I inherited that book. It made my job a lot easier. So I think we'll have a lot

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: more agencies developing these things, which once they get that done, then they can just replicate it year after year.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: But I think a lot of the sort of goal, and I don't want to speak to the goals that chair Shai or Senator Herzlik had specifically, because it's there now, but jump in rectify those things. Just to give them more guidance on what to prepare and what would be more helpful for you all as you're making decision. One example we talked about is a $1,000,000 change in a $100,000,000 budget really doesn't make a big of a deal. But if you don't know that the underlying program is $100,000,000 you can spend a whole lot of time talking about that $1,000,000 even though it's really just sort of moving around the edges. Whereas if it's a $500,000 program with $1,000,000 change, that's a pretty significant change. And that's a different conversation. So trying to figure out a way to have them we'll see those changes, the incremental changes, but also presenting it in a way that says, Okay, so contextually, this is this. Give an example of something that happened yesterday, and it will probably happen more this afternoon. But AHS has that reallocation of ADS costs to every department. If you walk through the ups and downs, then it's hard not to have that conversation seven separate times when the secretary is here and then every single department. But it's technical. Once you talk about it once, you need to talk about it again. Should really want to spend time on what's going on with Medicaid caseload and what's the $14,000,000 or the $30,000,000 change there, Right?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Because that was just a reallocation so that we didn't need to talk about it, but the Medicaid

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It shows up every time.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right. But we have to remember that it was based on one thing and we don't need to keep bringing it up all the time.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So hopefully, right through their presentations that will sort of, they can give you a, here's all the technical stuff that you should ask us questions about, but you're going to see repeated. The internal service fund changes, right? And you see that every agency and department. Sometimes Sometimes there are nuances with internal service fund changes that you want to talk about. And sometimes it's just sort of normal course of business. But you always see it on the ups and downs.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And that's why the ups and downs are so unhelpful. I mean, this is why we have things under here like prior year accomplishments. If we're paying money for programs, we want to know how they're going, right? That's what we want to talk about, not whether it's $30,000 in interdepartmental transfers or IT allocation. And so there's an accountability piece that we're trying to get to. And especially as our budgets are going to get harder, they and we are going have to make decisions on, do we continue these programs? And is it worth spending our money on? We never take things off the plate. We just seem to add things. And I just change that in a good way.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: In a good form.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So I'm not going to go You can all read it. I'm not going to walk through more of the specifics because we're short on time. But this was what was sent out to folks. But hopefully, you'll see some progress related to these items in budget documents this year.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Right. And it's going to post along the other sidebar.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Oh, good. It's updated for 20 Thank you, Autumn. So everybody can see that. When this was sent out, Emily offered herself and Joy Fischkell office up to help the agencies. So some may be fine, some may be freaking out or whatever. But we didn't just dump it on them and say, good luck in the future. We've got JFO willing to help out, which is I'm appreciative of that. Hopefully they are too. And so We'll see what happens if somebody comes in with just the ups and downs like they have normally done. I'm going to ask them to stop and come back in a week with a revised presentation. So that's the plan. And hopefully, we won't have to do that because we're trying to give people a lot of time, a lot more time than we usually do. We've asked a few of the departments as they've come in yesterday, that's why I was asking the question, I want to be sure that they were A, aware of the letter, and we're remembering that they need to do something about that. So we're going to have to stick together on making sure we get the information that we want to get, and recognize that, yes, for some of these folks, it's going to be a multi year process. But that doesn't mean they do nothing this year.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I think the advice that we've given to some of the entities that have reached out that have bigger budgets is just do the big programs first. Get the detail on the big stuff. Get down to the small grant programs and that stuff in out years.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I think having examples of successful grant books. It's not like we're just saying create the whole cloth. There's ways to do it that are pretty clear.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Wayne? And if a good model is built with all the changing staff through time, it's going to make it really easy for new people to come in and have a good presentation.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: That's

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: right. And that's what works best work with AOE. Cause Emily was in the law after Bill Talbot was there.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, mean, I did a little bit, but I didn't really have to do any.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, and you can make tweaks as it makes sense, but you have the foundation for making, for doing a good project. Yeah, Dave, do you have a No. Okay. I was

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: just gonna say, I really like the point that you've made about the accountability measures, because I think that's really important for us to figure out priorities. If we're gonna have to spend our money differently than we have before, we got to know what's working and what's not. And for a while this committee had a focus of what was called results based accountability, remember? And we had each agency when they came in with their budget, with the top three programs they had, how they were working and how they weren't working and how they either need more money or maybe they need to do something different. So I think that's really helpful. Yeah,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: it really is. And we're post pandemic now. So nobody's swimming in money. It's no

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: emergencies either. Right, well, so

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: part of this is that this should help all of you, all of us ask better questions. I mean, you know, better questions. It's not that we haven't good questions, but with these focuses. And this all went out to the committee chairs. I've talked to the committee chairs. I'll keep talking to the committee chairs. And they are also I've asked them to make sure that their committees are asking these kinds of questions too, so that we're more unified in our approach in helping those things. Do you want

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: to talk about budget workshops or

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Okay. That's

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: all We're going to be a couple of minutes. You're welcome to listen in, folks.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Do this quickly. So historically, JFO has done tax workshops at the beginning of a legislative session where talk about different types of taxes. And at lunchtime, kind of like a brown bag thing, Rep. Scheu and Senator Pertjolk have asked us to think through budget workshops sort of in the same vein. What we're considering, we're going to do two separate budget workshops. I think what we're going to do is have folks sign up for it so we can gauge interest. And then if we have more interests than spots available, we'll run them again. But the two separate workshops, the first one will be generally about budgeting and about the budget. So the budget timeline, how budgets are put together, how their prioritization of, are there a reflection of your priorities? How you have to work with limited resources and kind of do a fun, like, exercise and have people break into small groups and think through like, okay, you only have X number of dollars and you have all of these needs. What are you going to buy? The work that you all have to go through that your colleagues benefit from your hard work on. But just put people through that, I guess, much smaller scale. The second one is going be off the bill itself. So how to read the big bill, what sections of the big bill are, where to find the contingency list, where to find the prior year appropriations, those sorts of things. We'll go through the website, help people navigate to think that the bill relates back to certain spreadsheets and the web report. I know you all get a lot of questions on how to find things. So hopefully, this will give people a little bit

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: of a map. This is where I want to do a scavenger hunt. Here's the contingency list, right? I had to go look it up. Where's the whatever and take last year's budget with prizes involved, of course.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Don't care. So that's, look for more information about that in early January.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Which we really appreciate all of your help, I know Grady's involved, and I'm sure James is involved.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, I haven't done any work at this point. Grady and Amy should get all the credit for her. They're putting it all together.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: You've been off since June?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: You've been off since

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, I've just been hanging. I've just been delegating with my feet on my desk.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: One last thing while we have you, and you and I talked a little bit this morning. At the very end of Adam's presentation yesterday, he talked a little bit about the childcare process and the tax thing. And I don't know about you, but I was kind of fried at that point. So I didn't really understand it. Can you just take thirty seconds and explain?

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Sure. It's really a technical update. We can come in and dig into it in more detail. But currently the way that the payroll tax is collected is it's withheld and remitted to the tax department along with income tax withholding. And there the tax department reconciles the income tax withholding versus the payroll tax quarterly, but they have to wait for that quarterly process. This was the first year because the payroll tax was new, that on June 30, that reconciliation process hadn't occurred, like needs time to happen. But we wanted to close the books on the general fund, but we didn't know of the money in the general fund, how much was payroll tax money that needed to go to the special fund and how much was general fund. So what we did is we internally came up with a consensus process between tax finance and JFO to determine how much should we assume is payroll tax versus not payroll tax. Close to the general fund and then that gets reconciled after the fact. What makes, I'm sure you know what makes accountants nervous is not having specific instructions on how to manage that sort of process. So what that language does is really lay out for finance and management. When they go to close the books, have a step wise process on how to make sure that the right money ends up in the right buckets and have a timely close of the general fund. So we can walk through it more specifically. That's generally what it is. It's just making sure that we have a process.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: this tax money doesn't flow into a specific fund other than its own specific fund. It goes into it. It has to be resolved. So as the money comes in, does it get deposited into a specific fund or just all lumped into the general fund?

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It goes into the general fund right now and then gets reconciled out.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: We have special funds that work in a different way, right? There any thinking? Is this a common practice for a lot of funds to have them flow in that way?

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: No. And this is specifically the way that the tax is administered to make it I think may be a good question for the tax mark, but to make it simpler for employers when they're remitting payroll withholding and the payroll tax, they remit it as one amount.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: My question should be, should we consider making this a special fund making it special funds so that There is a special fund.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: The issue is the bifurcation of

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: the Process?

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: The amount that comes in from employers is both. And it's not specifically the tax department has to reconcile how much of this is withholding and how much of it is payroll tax after the fact. All the money ends up in the right place, but there has to, but it takes time to do it based on how the money's sent to the state.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That's the way to think about it.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: The other special funds, they're like special taxes or special permits. It's easy to just do it go directly. It is and that's why

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: that's why we're trying to

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: diving process. And once we have a

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: history under our belts, it'll be a little bit easier. Yes, when there's, yeah, the figuring out how to bifurcate the two will get easier over time.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Great, thank you very much. Was a matter of you most important things, and we'll be continuing to ask you questions.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: See you in So

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: our criminal justice council, who I think is all online, and we appreciate you all, your patience while we work through a couple of other things. So we have Christopher Briquel, Lindsay, whose last name I'm going to massacre, TJ Ersh. I have one of those names to forget, and Jason's talking. So, you want to introduce yourselves for the record, and we will get started on your presentation. Thank you.

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: Well, good morning, and thank you committee members. For the record, my name is Christopher Berkel. I'm the executive director of the Vermont Criminal Justice Council, and I have with me today our director of administration, Lindsey Tiverge. So you were very close on the last name. And as you all know, Jason Pinard, who is our budget analyst. And moving forward, I think this is a fairly brief and straightforward, but we're happy to answer any questions that that you do have. So we won't keep you from your lunch. And I don't see representative Harrison. Is he not with the committee today?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: No. You know he's retiring. He's leaving the

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: He did.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So he was here yesterday through lunchtime, so we can say our advice and he's home packing and Marty Felthus, Representative Felthus is here as he is going to be our new vice chair and she's going to have his portfolio.

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: Well, thank you. We did get that I did get that information from represents Harrison. I just wanted to wish him well, but I didn't see him and the room was too small for me to be able to tell from my No.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: He's not here, but we'll pass along your good wishes.

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: Okay, thank you. So yes, our action resolves language that we submitted was fairly straightforward moving from our request of 1.2 that was allocated to 1.5 for the three years of financial support for our three phase accreditation process that we had requested. And while the explanation is there, I just feel like we need to give you the the little bit or I need to give you a little bit of history that went behind this was, in our initial f y twenty four budget asked for the redo of our curriculum, redevelopment of the curriculum to make sure that it was legally defensible and that it met best practices for law enforcement training moving forward in the in the process. And that budget ask was supported by the governor and the legislature. Our budget ask was initially 1.4, but when the money came out, we actually received 1.2. So we were short initially there right off the bat. And then through the RFP process, this is a a very specific type of process that requires, very specific type of curriculum development. There are very few companies, if more than one that exist that actually do this. We did contract with iADALIST, is the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training. They do national work on curriculum development and writing as well as internationally as well. When we did the RFP contracting with them initially, the the pricing that we got was 1,800,000.0. That did actually include some staffing, and we cut back every place that we could to keep the bare bones ask of what it was that we were asking to do, which was the actual curriculum rewrite and make our, training defensible, the most key portions of that. And that was settled on the contract of 1,500,000.0. Over the last two budget cycles, I have asked for the the discrepancy of the 300,000 in one time funding each year. Each year, it's been denied, and we understand the rationale and the reasons why. So I'm really at the last, the last thread of ask at this point through the Budget Adjustment Act to try to make this gap of the $300,000 so that we can actually complete the project, which is about, I'd estimate, it's well over halfway. I'm thinking closer to two thirds of the way done, but we're getting fantastic work from this company and it's a project that will ensure us for lot of years to come and making sure that we're starting out with defensible training and making sure that our our curriculum is supported by best practices so far. So the only other slide that we submitted was just the budget adjustment in the line so that you could see where it was placed. But that's fairly it's very straightforward, but I'm happy to answer any questions around that that you have or anything else for that matter.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Great. Thank you.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: My question is you you indicate that you're all you're halfway through the project. You've started it obviously a couple of years ago. So you anticipate being through during the calendar year '26 or running into '27 a little bit?

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: We do not. We anticipate mid year 2027 that we'll actually be piloting. It it comes to us in segments, so each topic, has the curriculum done. It then gets sent to, subject matter experts for their review, and then a curriculum advisory group has to weigh in on it. So it goes back and forth a couple of times. We make sure that it's relatable in Vermont specific to what Vermonters expect for law enforcement training in Vermont. And each topic that gets done, then we get it completed, and then we have it go out to the current instructor cadre that we have. So we're going to, through this process, find that there may be some instructors that aren't comfortable with the brand new curriculum that they're gonna be developing because most curriculum has been developed by instructors themselves over over the course of years. So this is gonna be a a different process for many, but, it's very, very thorough and complete, and I'm I'm happy with the results that we're getting. But because of that piecemeal type of back and forth, we've got over half the curriculum done and on hand that we have here, but the process lays out where they will come from analysts and actually review us piloting that in front of academy classes so that they get a review of our delivery of that content.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Great, thank you. Great, any other questions from anybody? Seems pretty clear, glad it's going well. We'll look forward to hearing more as it progresses.

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: We'll be happy to provide more.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate it. So committee

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Thank you

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: for your time.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay, we'll see you next year.

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: Thank you very much.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So, I think we're done a little early, so you're going to give up a full hour for lunch and then we're going to meet back here with the corrections promptly at 12:45. Anybody who wants to look for you offline?