Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Good afternoon, this is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Wednesday, 12/17/2025, and we've just come back from lunch and we are continuing through the FY twenty six budget adjustment bill and we're going

[Kristen Caledonia, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: to hear next from the Department of Corrections.

[Speaker 0]: I've got two days, I got

[Kristen Caledonia, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: three people here, you're all welcome, it's great.

[Speaker 0]: So if you would, could keep silence for the record and let us know what you've got.

[Kristen Caledonia, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Absolutely, hi everyone, nice to be here and to see you. I'm Kristen Caledonia, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections.

[Speaker 0]: And finally, key Executive Director of Finance for Corrections.

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: Hi, I'm John Murad, I'm the Interim Commissioner for the Department of Corrections. Thank you very much for having us. Great.

[Speaker 0]: Well, welcome and welcome to your new job. Good to have you here. Did you all give us some documentation? Do we have it? We're just going to use the ups and downs. Okay. From the AHS. Okay. We let's just give it a second Right, so it's the last two pages, pages twenty one and twenty eight. It's done before that. 28 through 22 at the back. All right now you're good. You. We're going to go right to section B338 which is correctional services. Okay. Yes. Okay. Three thirty eight. Okay. And the first item on there is the sheriff's transport expeditions, increased cost and volume. 83,000 is for approved agreement. We were never provided the funds, but we do have a service of voice and an agreement. This is primarily for the Windsor sharing, and that is an increase of 83,000 for the general fund. That's for one person? Multiple. Okay.

[Kristen Caledonia, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: So, if someone is arrested out of state, then we x-ray them back to Vermont using the sheriff's agreement that we have, but we've seen an increase in that over the last several years, and are trying to get funded now.

[Speaker 0]: The next item is a transfer. It's a net neutral. It's not new money. It is from, AHS. And I don't know what you're talking about the well path for that yes okay okay Okay, so the next item is well, path staffing contract amendment, increased average daily population. Above, fifteen twenty five, so it has been changed to fifteen fifty due to the increase. In the incarcerated population and it also includes the Burlington Recovery Response Project and section 115 waiver and that is an increase of 4,550,643 for the general fund. So, that you increased 25 people that are in corrections. Change the the the of it. Yeah. John, you had a question?

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: I think you answered a couple of

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: my questions with your response earlier, but just to be verify the $1,200,000 is that for seven new staff or is it limited service staff?

[Kristen Caledonia, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: It's seven additional permanent staff. Additional permanent, what are those physicians just so you have an idea? Sure, I can't recall all of them, but clinical staff that will provide the actual therapy to treat them, and a director to oversee the program.

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: It would be good

[Speaker 0]: to get something in writing from you that play into this a bit more than what we've gotten either from you or the commissioner yesterday. Thank

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: you.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: Yesterday we birthed from a health commissioner that it's more among substance fuses, methamphetamine is becoming normal child and that the treatments are not nearly as easily arrived at. There isn't an antidote such as we have now for COVID-nineteen. The behaviors can be more extreme. Are you feeling ready for this change in what the scene directions?

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: That's a terrific question.

[Kristen Caledonia, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Yeah, it's a really great question. Probably harder to predict. I mean, we do see a level of that from time to time, especially with new admissions or folks that come in under kind of a protective custody type of format. I'd have to get back to you to address maybe exactly what we are doing from a clinical perspective. But we try to be as nimble as possible. One of the ways we do that is with the well path contract and making sure we have a good range of staff able to deal with those issues. But yeah, it's a great question and something we have to really think about.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: The first step is going to

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: be the same, which is detoxification for anybody coming in if they are suffering from substance abuse. What comes next, you're right, opioids, there are agonists available both for overdose and as treatment, and that doesn't exist yet for meth. I know that as a police chief, had seen some of this transition in the drug market. I don't know that it has been as pronounced inside the facilities yet, but flagging it for us is we're grateful for that. Mean we certainly it's something that we do

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: need to be cognizant of. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: You have a question Mike?

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: A couple but let me wait. Okay. All

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: right. Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Right so yeah understanding that a little

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: bit in more detail would be helpful.

[Speaker 0]: And then there's more well path money here. Okay, so the next item is the transfer, this is not new money, is existing, it's a net neutral, it's a transfer from AHS GC, general fund carry forward from Wellpath for one SF 25 invoice that was paid in sf in this fiscal year and that is 3,168,537. So this was not paid in the year that it was, Did you get the invoice late or what caused the problem?

[Kristen Caledonia, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: There was a number of different issues. One, the payment structure with the current contract is not the typical net 30, and so we received an invoice but weren't able to pay it due to a couple of system conversion issues with BT buys, and so it had to be held for FY26, which would cause us to have 13 payments in the fiscal year. And so AHS has this funding available and we're asking for it to be

[Speaker 0]: transferred to us. Okay, so is this like carry forward or something that you're using to pay that was in your department anyway?

[Kristen Caledonia, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: I believe it was in maybe carry forward from AHS and then we're asking it to be transferred from us, but I'd have to ask the AHS. Okay, great. Thanks, Sean.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: This is just asking for the spending authority to use existing projects and be an interdepartmental.

[Kristen Caledonia, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: The

[Speaker 0]: The next item is revenue offset, which is a GC increased offset the GF payroll, with eligible activity five and random moment time study statistic. It's a decrease of the general fund by 2,500,000 and an increase of the investment GCF of 2,500,000. So you can use global commitment money instead of general fund for this? Correct, yep.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: The

[Speaker 0]: next example, so the SSCF water sewer bill, there has been an agreement that has now expired which would require us to pay the cost of that water sewer bill, and that's an increase of $100,000 in general fund. Is that Springfield? Where is SS? That's Springfield. And the next item is a fee for space charge pilot fund increase of $55,000 Where?

[Kristen Caledonia, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: This will be increased to the pilot fund. Get a certain amount. There's two agreements in place for the Northern State Correctional Facility and Southern State. We add the CPI inflator to that each year, and so the cost grows. We've been absorbing it as a general fund item for a number of years. And so now we're just

[Speaker 0]: asking for the pilot fund to fully fund that obligation. So will your budget for FY27 reflect the actual corrected numbers and not the $40,000 or 12,000 or whatever, the small amount of Correct,

[Kristen Caledonia, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: yeah, as of right now, we do plan for it to be in the '27 budget.

[Speaker 0]: It's not yet finalized, but That's the plan, okay. Next item is staff hotel costs. Hotel costs for short turnaround staff transporting. Previously it's been unbudgeted and this is an increase of $225,000 general fund. The next item is the heat mitigation, DLC policy number 322. It's for include, but not limited to, equipment, vans, clothing such as warm weather short sleeve shirts, water and other cold refreshments related to the policy, and OSHA recommendations, that is an increase of $60,000 General Fund. So is this where, so OSHA came in?

[Kristen Caledonia, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Yeah, VOCA came in, did an assessment and made some recommendations, and so we instituted this policy. I'll say in addition to this, we do have capital bill funding now, and we'll probably request more to continue improving HVAC in all of our facilities so that they do have air conditioning. But in the meantime, we had to take some measures so there was some relief for staff and individuals in

[Speaker 0]: our custody living in some very hot places during the summer.

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: They don't currently have air conditioning. Of course, when we had that tremendous heat snap over the summer, there were a lot of days where it became pretty darn unbearable in some facilities, both for our staff, but also for the people in our custody. So these were recommendations, really sort of piecemeal small level mitigations that were recommended and that we've put in place. For example, Northwest, our facility in Swanton has an IC machine in it now so that people can go out to the front office and use just one of those little ones that sits on the table and get it gets back as a means of cooling down.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, the next item is ADS service level agreement transfer from AHS central office. This is AHS net neutral, it's an increase of $215,143 for the general fund. And the last item is for correctional out of state beds, and this is an increase of $389,955 for general fund, and this is additional out of state beds utilized due to increased population which has already been decreased. How many people are going to be

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: in Mississippi now? There are currently 150. We recently sent down a number approximately 30, a little bit less than 30, at the November, and we don't anticipate doing this is a request to bring us to that level. We don't anticipate sending more than that. We have as many as approximately 300 beds by contract with them but we've only funded up to the 125 that we were previously carrying and this is a request to get us to the 150 that we are now at. And frankly, don't anticipate that going down and I can't promise that we may not be here again to ask for more. We are over capacity at all of our facilities and none of our facilities has the ability to expand in the near term, whereas this contract does give us that capacity. We don't control the number of people who are in such facilities, that is a function of what the court deems proper and appropriate, and we are holding more detainees than we have in living memory. So the proportion of our total population, which is about sixteen fifty, is more detainee oriented than it has been in the past. Detainees, of course, are not yet convicted in Vermont court. They are not eligible to be sent out of state and that is the population that's growing the most which puts pressure on our post conviction sentenced incarcerated population.

[Speaker 0]: So how many detainees are there of that sixteen fifty? How many are detainees?

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: The total number of detainees for us right now is six thirty one. So out of sixteen fifty and so you know for that for 600 out of 1,600 that's a that's a very different proportion than we are accustomed to.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: So total capacity, at which point you essentially have to us on some of zones, how far are you from that? And I realize you probably have to have some help with in there because you can never tell what's going belong. We're over that at

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: the moment, with regard to our general population. So our numbers are, we have to measure them in a number of different ways. General population is really the number that we should be looking at and we're well over our general population total. The other beds that are available in a facility may you may have a facility that says it has 180 beds, but really only 130 of those are general population because the others are beds that are used for infirmary or beds that are used for certain kinds of segregated or special housing and it's not unlike knowing that each of you needs a seat in the chamber and yet each of you needs a seat around these conference rooms as well. We have to leave additional space available for our general population for when they need that infirmary bed. We can't count the infirmary bed as a regular usage, and yet we are getting to places where we're actually over the capacity even of the total number, for example in our women's facility, and we don't want to send women out of state. We have not and we are going to do our best not to do so. I don't know that there would be any appetite for that in our state, and yet that facility is over capacity in its general population and has been a few times this year over capacity for its total number as well, which is really striking. So we're over already as far as what happens if we continue to see from our communities and our police and our prosecutors and our courts the same number of folks being sent to us, that's

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: an open question for us. So there's a risk associated with being overcapacity. That's why you have BUPS, what's the nature of the risk and at what point is the risk

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: that I'm unaccepted with? That too is great question, one that we wrestle with. Those risks are myriad, there are risks around the safety and welfare of the people in our custody. We have women right now in our Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility who are being housed in a gymnasium, and that's overage that's caused both by construction work that we're doing owing to making certain that we're in compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act, but also because we're out of space. So that's one factor. Another factor is the risk that it puts on staff and the degree. And then the next is the fact that when we

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: are that full we cannot

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: conduct the kinds of programming that we want to be able to do in order to make certain that we are truly a correctional facility that corrects the folks who are inside and urges them on towards success. So all of those are challenges for us.

[Unknown DOC staff member]: Just a

[Speaker 0]: real quick question just for

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: your knowledge, so anyone who was on my side or out of state because of your back capacity here, do they stay there through their sentence? I mean they get transferred back to Vermont

[Speaker 0]: at some point in time or just sort

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: of will be brought Family around. So we do everything that we can to facilitate connection to family for people who go out of state. Technology has been tremendously helpful in that. There's many more ways now to connect. We have a team in our central office in Waterbury that's dedicated to ensuring that the people who are out of state are never forgotten as Vermonters and Vermont prisoners. They are only housed in Mississippi with other Vermont prisoners. And there is regular contact with central office on their behalf to ensure their connections. They do come back and people are moved back and forth even at times owing to trial, owing to other kinds of needs, there's going to be, for example, a hearing in the appeal that requires that person to be brought back, that may happen. Certainly if they are nearing the end of a sentence, we would bring them back, but that said we do tend to try to put people there who are under longer sentence, it doesn't make sense to put someone there who is only going to be in for another six months, that would be relatively silly from a logistics perspective.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: So I want to get back to the women's prison. You have people sleeping on the gym floor like a big dorm, and it's my understanding that they cannot the child visitation is not happening because of this is that correct do I have that right?

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: Spaces that we use for programs like the kids apart program that we do with the one have been compromised by these neighbors And so we've had to truncate those. We've also had to truncate physical activity. The gymnasium is now being used as a dormitory or it looks like an emergency shelter after a natural disaster. Aspect and that means that we can't have, for example, a pickleball week that had been begun by a person in the community who's volunteering time and really doing a lot of work with the women who are in custody. These are all things that we don't like or that are not optimal by any means.

[Speaker 0]: I'm more concerned about parents not being able to see their children than anything else. How many people do you have in the gym and how long has this been going on that you've had the gym useless face? 25 people in

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: the gym I believe right now although forgive me if that's not the exact head count I can get that for you and for about a little less than a month at this point or maybe about a month at this point and they will be returned to their parts of the facility once the construction is completed which should be in relatively short order but then construction will begin on other parts of the facility and we will move new people into the gym. So the gym is not going to be returned to us for some months. As far as how many people, for example, have been unable to meet the children, I

[Unknown DOC staff member]: don't know that number, but I

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: could try to find it out for you.

[Speaker 0]: Well, I would love it if

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: you could figure out a way to make that happen regardless of people sleeping on the gym floor. That just seems like something that ought to be happening. Yes, mean, will certainly, there are other spaces, but all of those spaces are utilized in other ways as well. It is a facility that is simply bursting at its seams, even when we don't have a construction sort of minor catastrophe as we have at the moment.

[Unknown DOC staff member]: I would defer to our community partners at One Kids Apart that runs that program. They have tried to move some of it to the visiting space but they're still doing some family unification visits, but the issue is the bathroom space. And these facilities are highly inflexible, they need to be that proximity to a bathroom for the child. So we are expanding kids apart to our remote state correctional facility site, but certainly we're in a very difficult position given the limited infrastructure available in our women's facility. We have between one hundred and

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: seventy and one hundred and

[Unknown DOC staff member]: eighty women in that building on any given day.

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: I realize I'm not a policy committee on this particular area but can you give me a general idea or a more specific idea of the priorities you use to determine who goes to out of state?

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: The the first and foremost is the person sentenced and not merely detained pending trial. Next would have to do with health. If people have pressing health needs, we keep them in state. And then there are also sort of programmatic needs that we would look at as a component. None of these things are in and of some, there's no single factor other than detained or incarcerated that would say you can or cannot go. But all these other factors add up to a total picture that says is this person going to be a good candidate? And in addition to, as I said, both whether they're sentenced or not, whether they have health conditions or not, and then the programming, are they participating in certain kinds of programming that we do here and don't have

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: the ability to do remotely? Is there a

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: component of considering their own state? I hear a lot in my particular area about, you know, we get a lot of folks in our area that are sentenced to Vermont prisons who initially came from Massachusetts and other places. And I'm told we should send those folks in of state rather than keeping them in our own local institutions. Is there a factor that you consider there? I can say that

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: there are people who are currently being housed out of state in Vermont's correctional system who are not from Vermont. That is true, but it is not a major component of what determines whether or not we send somebody out of state.

[Speaker 0]: Other questions?

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: Should it be?

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: Well, it brings to us the tough question of who and who is not a Vermonter, and certainly it's one thing to say that you literally drove up two days before you were apprehended on a drug run and you were caught and arrested and tried, that's relatively clear for us, there's a pretty clear line there. But what if you've been here for two years, and you don't have the same depth of connection as somebody who perhaps goes back 10 generations, but nevertheless, you've been here two years living and working, you have some sort of criminal incidents for which you're convicted? Is that an out of state person at that stage? I was the police chief in Burlington prior to taking this role, and we oftentimes wrestled with the question of who it was we were arresting. And at times we would use driver's licenses as proxies. What kind of driver's license do you possess or not? But even that, there are people who have been here for two or three years and still have their Massachusetts driver's license. And so that was a question I was always, or rather a categorization, I was always a little weary of using police from here or not. So no, it's not necessarily something we consider at this point.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: But if they were maybe here for two years, they have no family. Part of the problem is do you want visitation? If they've been here two or three years and they're involved in this and came from someplace else, that's part of the criminal activity that they were engaged in. Think that would be criteria judge not necessarily having to deal with that. There's two different things there. One is that they're all by themselves. They don't have ties in the state of the mind, children that they would need to see or something hypothetical. Will be a factor.

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: I don't know for sure that we have used those kinds of factors in our determinations, for example, how often is this individual visited, does this person receive visits every week for example, it's certainly something that we could explore as a potential component of our process for selecting individuals to

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: go out of state or not. Not only mentioning it, obviously we have a capacity problem that's going to cause a crisis and such. And so if there can be some triage in terms of how to deal with that an improved situation, it might be worth looking at. Thank you.

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: This will be taken up

[Speaker 0]: by the policy committee, I'm sure. So are those all the pieces? That's it. Or this is yours? You guys get what you need and Okay, think that's all I'm seeing for questions. Okay, deep breath, onto the next subject. We've got Lisa here. And so, if you would like to introduce yourselves for the breath work. Great. Sure, I'm Sandy Houghlin, Interim Commissioner at ECA. Megan Spadey, Financial Director at ECA. Nice to see you and welcome to your new interim position. Shall we begin? Yes, please. Okay, so DCF's mission is to foster the healthy development, safety, well-being, and self sufficiency of Vermonters. We serve approximately 200,000 Vermonters every year, including children, youth, families, older Vermonters, and people with disabilities. Our budget is organized into 13 appropriations and they correspond with our DEP IDs or programs. They include economic services, family services, child development, child support, economic opportunity, and disability determination services. In addition to ESD staffing and operations, the admin appropriations contains the commissioner's office staffing and operating business office staffing and operating and the ADS budget. And I think Megan will go in, the overview is that it represents an eight, about 0.8% increase over the SFY twenty six budget as passed with adjustments based on caseload trends and system of care needs, and it also addresses technical corrections, revenue adjustments, and efforts to maximize federal funding where possible. So are you on the what are you looking at? The power between the power points. Okay. And I think it's on page six now. Good? Okay. And Megan's gonna go line by line, so

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: I I won't go through a

[Speaker 0]: week with you. So you'll have them if you want to quit, but you said, Megan, go line by line. Yeah, so I can start going through the ups downs, starting with an individual services appropriation, which is the first one on my sheet, it's like in pink, BIV three sixteen.

[Kristen Caledonia, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Okay, great. So the first one on

[Speaker 0]: there is a net neutral adjustment. We are just realigning our federal revenue and our general fund based on where we can earn the federal dollars and where we can earn match, state match. And there are some expenses that are only eligible if federal tenant dollars are spent on if they don't count towards the state match. And there are other expenses that can be both. So we obviously want our state dollars where we have the opportunity to get a maintenance effort of state match. And then that allows us to buy down our work participation rate for TANF and reach out to participants. So you're trying to maximize using federal funds? Yes. It's just, it's in that usually you'll see the same one further down in the other direction. We have an income verification system that we need to purchase. ESD has been using the federally provided system called EBS to verify income for program eligibility, but the feds are no longer providing that system, so ESD has a Q and A method for verifying incomes, and they estimate they need to be about $50,000 They're working on that now. Why aren't they the feds? It's just They just stopped? They just stopped. I think it starts at the beginning of next year, but we have to build a system out to show. So this is where ADS

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: has worked on. So is this going to be one time or is this a total amount of money?

[Speaker 0]: So there's some work to build the system out with ADS and to integrate it with our system, I'm not sure how ADS might be procuring it. I'd have to figure out more about that. But there's like upfront costs, then there'll be cost operated moving forward at some point. Okay, John and then Marty. Sure.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: So thank you. Thanks for being here today, congratulations. Nice. So the the system you've you've been using, that's just stopping. This is a new version of the federal system. So they'll be able to talk

[Speaker 0]: to each other. To defer ABSD. I'll be talking about that's working for. You can get back to us. Yes. Okay. We can definitely get any more information on that. Thank you.

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: Good morning. I would answer your questions. Mean, I'm sure AHS has tons of programs which you have to verify ends up.

[Speaker 0]: I don't

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: understand why this either needs to be a standalone program or why we need to build it ourselves. Think that's part of the income, that's part of the eligibility program that we've been working on for years and years, isn't it?

[Speaker 0]: Yeah we are working with the adult we are discussing it and trying to see how we can incorporate. But maybe you don't need your own system. We don't have an integrated eligibility system yet. So we need some sort of system in the interim.

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: What I'm saying, and $50,000 won't bug you much.

[Speaker 0]: I would, again, I would have to defer to ESD, I don't know if anyone is right now, but we can get you more information on why they can't, why specifically they need this. I know that our integrated eligibility and enrollment system is not yet active and it's still in process. Right. Aside from we know the integrated eligibility which has been going on since the dawn of time and I hope will happen the next one is just the transfer. I know that AHS was here yesterday, and so they talked about how they had the money for the ADS service level agreement or SLA bill in their budget and how they're transferring it to the other departments based on the needs. And you're waiting for the biggest amount. Complex systems. So that's admin. We can move to FSD if anyone has any other questions. Again, you'll see the other side of the TANF revenue realignment. So the next one is a net neutral transfer. We had money that came from DMH for our DS system last year that got put in CBD by mistake, so we're just moving it to FSD to correct that. And then we have the contract transportation pressures. So you may remember from last year that this was also on our bus service last year. FSD has contracts with a few different transportation providers. Their costs just keep going up. We don't really have a lot of other options. We have to provide transportation to youth and families for a variety of reasons. And so when bid costs go up, we have budget pressures. So this is to right size with our current contracts, and hopefully correct that problem. So, do you think you're going to be able to fully fund it for FY27? I can't speak to FY27 yet. But the intent, I would imagine, be. We don't want to use budget adjustment as your budgeting tool. That's a lot of money.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: Wayne? So this is share of transport,

[Speaker 0]: and so on? It includes the share of transports, which have gone up in price. It also includes the Youth Transit Authority and YTA, a a few other smaller contracts that we have. Does

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: that include transportation with kids in custody or visitations in

[Speaker 0]: that booking too? Yes, the transportation line includes any sort of time that we need to transport youth using one of our service contractors.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: So those are like sheriffs, those are either contracted or FSD, KCs?

[Speaker 0]: We have contracts with the we have sheriff's departments that provide transport for us, yeah.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: Just for family visits?

[Speaker 0]: I don't know if they provide family visit transport. Would again, I would refer to FSD on the types of transport that they use the different contracts for, but the shares have definitely seen an increase in rates that we have to pay them. This might be transporting youth out of state to programs. It could be that. It could be taking youth to medical appointments. It could be taking youth to family visitation, to school if they need to get to school in various capacities.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: So we've more security involved with some of those folks that their sheriffs are transporting. Perhaps we could get just a general's idea what proportion of this is for the sheriff transports whether they're out of state or whether you have something on this security issue relative to those kids in school or doctors or something like that. I think that would be useful since we're dealing with shared transports and a number of different

[Speaker 0]: other budgets. So just the share or just share it's that you

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: would like broken out? Break out right? It would

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: be nice to know the breakout of

[Speaker 0]: is the million being spent?

[Kristen Caledonia, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: How did

[Speaker 0]: you get to the million? What's for each of the

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: It's important for us because we're dealing with sheriff transport, collection facilities to the courts, and new folks from places. It's nice to know we do not have an overlap or have explanations of why there might be bottlenecks in certain places.

[Speaker 0]: So the next two lines are for our caseload pressures. We have subsidized adoption and substitute care. Substitute care line is a decrease. This represents changes in the youth in our custody from a variety of different case loads, including aging out, independent living, standard foster care, in state residential, out of state residentials, psychiatric residential treatment facilities, specialized foster care, and emergency short term care. We've been seeing a decreasing caseload in those various types of care. And then the last item is the subsidized adoption, and we've seeing an increase in that case load, so that one isn't up, and that includes subsidized adoptions, permanent guardianships, and non recurring costs or adoptions. So are there subsidized adoptions going up because there are more kids being adopted? Don't know, this is not in middle the house, but Again, I would defer to FSD on the why behind that, but there is the number of subsidized adoptions in our case has always gone up. It's 56 cases per month higher than what we budgeted at last year.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: That's a lot.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: I'm curious, what's the subsidized, or is somebody painting? What's that about?

[Speaker 0]: We have Want to phone a friend? You want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more. Thank you.

[Heather McLean, Revenue Enhancement Director (DCF Family Services)]: Sure. I'm Heather McLean. I'm the revenue enhancement director for DCF Family Services. And so the question is why has subsidized adoption increased? Right? And then what is subsidized adoption? So as Megan noted, we just have more caseload. More kids have been adopted than we initially budgeted for, which is a good thing. And the way that somebody qualifies for subsidized adoption is that it's a program, a federal program that is supported with Title IV E dollars to support families who are adopting a special needs child. So they have there is a qualification process that a child goes through in order to be found eligible for subsidized adoption. And so then the state, with the assistance of the federal dollars, supports that child until they turn 18. And it's not the full cost of their care. It's based on the needs of the family and whatever special needs the child might have that the state can assist a family in meeting those needs.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: All federal money, is that correct? State paying any portion of it?

[Heather McLean, Revenue Enhancement Director (DCF Family Services)]: It's, sorry go ahead Megan.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: I mean, yeah, there's W-five, fifty-fifty?

[Speaker 0]: It's roughly fifty-fifty. David and Mike.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Just a little context, if it's helpful, I can recall, at times the subsidized adoption budget would spike and the clinical people would explain it. When a child is adopted, maybe a lovable little three year old, who sadly has been traumatized and mistreated, when they reach puberty, as they get older, sometimes the behaviors that manifest are so profound that the family hasn't seen that behavior, is sometimes saying, time out, I'm not sure I can keep little Dave here, unless I get a lot of therapeutic help, some kind of treatment that wasn't in the initial package of services when the subsidized adoption was developed. It kind of, as children age, different waves of that. Does that ring any bells? See I had an audience. Heather is

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: agreeing with you. Okay.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: The benefits of having a former DCI commissioner. I just wanted to chime in that these adoptions are a good thing. These are putting kids in a situation where they can drive. Think we want that. We know when they go up or down, but it's a good thing.

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: Yeah. I think it's a great thing.

[Speaker 0]: I'm just worried if there's an increase and if it's related to TPR, or

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: other things that we should be looking at, or the policy committee should be thinking about treating those underlying issues as opposed to symptoms.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: I think overall the numbers are down. Yes,

[Speaker 0]: you'll see the substitute care line that's a decrease in infants and their kids are actually reducing kids in our custody. Thank you. And I don't know if Heather could also answer any transportation questions, if you have. The transportation questions? Yeah. I don't know if you heard us talking about transportation and sort of break out the million a little bit more than what we've seen.

[Heather McLean, Revenue Enhancement Director (DCF Family Services)]: Yeah, I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but I will state that the transportation budget line for family services does cover, as you talked about, sheriff's transportation. We can get the breakout of what the proportions are across the different types. It includes secure transportation provided on contract, something we call staff secure transport, which is a lower level than secure, but it requires two adults to be on the vehicle and especially outfitted vehicle. It also includes, like, we talked about what we call standard transportation, which is to get kids to, you know, school. School is a huge pressure, actually. Think that's one of the reasons we've really seen our transportation budget kind of explode or expenditures explode is because there's a federal law that requires the family services transport a child to their school of origin. If through their placement in foster care, they've been moved out of district, we still have to get them back to their original district to finish the school year. And that's to protect against educational loss due to transitions. And it also includes when we pay foster parents to transport foster children to family visits, appointments, things like that. So it's kind of every time we are transporting a child in our custody, or sometimes we are transporting their parents very infrequently, but that does sometimes happen, that all hits that same budget line. And again, we can get you the details of what the breakout is between all those different types of transportation.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Lots of guns.

[Speaker 0]: You can tell that we're not the Human Services Committee. Thank

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

[Speaker 0]: Okay, so that's FSD, unless anyone has any other FSD questions. Moving on to the Child Development Division or CDD.

[Unknown DOC staff member]: So you'll

[Speaker 0]: see the other side of that transfer to FSD for the DS. With the DS Disability Services. So that money came from DMH last year into two lines. One was for integrated services and one was for DS. Both put into CDD's budget, and the amounts were swapped by the state. So this is just a bunch of net neutral moves to clean things up and get things where they need to be. So that is all CD. For the personal So then moving on, we've got nothing in OCS, so we can go straight to aid for the aged, abiding, and disabled, or AABD. We pay the federal government to administer the state funded benefits on our behalf. And so every year, we adjust our admin based on an assumed rate that we would be budgeting for next year and caseload. We pay them a certain dollar amount per caseload. We've seen a reduced caseload in AABD, so our admin amount has gone down because we don't have to pay the best to administer as many payments on our behalf. So that's the first two lines, and then the third line is the essential persons also decreasing. And so those are all the caseload adjustments. Moving on to general assistance. In GA, we have a support services caseload, we're using an up in this caseload. This includes burials, physicians, dental, and abortions. And then we have a down based on caseloads to our personal needs and incidentals, which are things like groceries, moving board, and rent supports. My head's gone down, any intel on that? Don't have any background unless I know we have staged a lot of Moving on, not placing in three squares. So reach up. Have caseload pressures down, that is because we are utilizing our higher consultant who does caseload projections for us, using their projection and our average cost per case, which is based on a three year trend, we're seeing a reduced need in our reach out budget for the caseloads. And then there's a net neutral adjustment to the tantalum of revenue.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: I'm just trying to find it. Much is the reach out reduction due to caseload?

[Speaker 0]: It's $2,200,000 So,

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: I'm saying we're reducing the budget. Do you know where that money goes?

[Speaker 0]: Mean it just goes to

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: the bottom line, it goes to the top line. Forgive me, because I suspect this is not a technical BAA issue, but were there any discussions about, boy, it's hard to be a Lamoille, it's hard to be an American with all of the affordability challenges we have coming at us, know, electricity, food, etc, etc. Is this the time to take some of those savings that the consultant tells us is coming and consider increasing the monthly grant or some other benefit to better strengthen these families. Most of the cases are children. Has that occurred or is this just a mathematical exercise of a number from X to Y and here are the savings?

[Speaker 0]: There are constant conversations about how we can help Vermonters with any surplus we might have and there's not a lot of surplus across the board. So we look at it as an agency and say, how can we address the pressures that our families, that the Vermonters are feeling? So for this particular one, I don't know about the discussion as far as that goes, but as we're building budgets and talking about the shortfalls or the extra Well, in some way, we'll be about it. Thank you. So the next one is the Office of Economic Opportunity, that has any changes to it. And so the first line is net neutral move from branch out into personal services to cover two positions that ASD has that are limited service. They have been funded using one time funds in the past. With the continued expansion of the emergency housing or the shelter and housing opportunity program, we really need to retain these limited service positions in the budget to continue to administer that ever growing grant load. So it's just putting the funding into the right place. So it's reducing HOP funding? Yes, to allow for administration of the massively increased budget. If you look back five years, it's gone up by millions and millions of dollars. HOP funding. So you're just it's still HOF related. It's still HOF related. It's to administer the HOF program. Then the next line is $147,000 to support the permanent supportive housing community transition services. We've been funding this using ARPA dollars, but that is coming to an end, and so we are needing to backfill it with some global commitment dollars to continue to support that program moving forward. And then the final line on there is the shelter investments. Fees are It's $2,000,000 OBO has been utilizing one time funds to stand up new shelters throughout the state. It's been creating some operating pressures. Additional op investments are needed to continue to maintain those investments and expand and provide direct services, supports to individuals who are experiencing homelessness. So these are

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: conference shelters, like gym spaces, things like that, or private rooms,

[Speaker 0]: or what are they? She can probably better squeeze Shelters. Yes.

[Lily Sojourn, Director, Office of Economic Opportunity (DCF)]: Hi, Dan. Hi.

[Speaker 0]: Magically appealing.

[Lily Sojourn, Director, Office of Economic Opportunity (DCF)]: Okay. Hi, everyone. I'm Lily Sojourn, the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity. I would say the majority of shelters in Vermont could be described as probably semi congregate, where people often have maybe their own bedroom but are sharing common spaces, such as bathrooms or kind of kitchen areas. We do have some shelters that are fully noncongregate, so a family has almost like a full efficiency kind of apartment if you think about what they would have access to, but again, a majority we would consider semicongregate, some also where maybe you have two to four individuals sharing a shared sleeping space, and then again, utilizing common grounds. We have very few shelters that are just, I think what you were starting to describe, like a large open space and just a series of beds that's not, typically what we see except outside of maybe some of the seasonal capacity does maybe more align with that visually. But, generally, I would say no.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. And are you standing at where are the new ones that you're doing with this 2,000,000?

[Lily Sojourn, Director, Office of Economic Opportunity (DCF)]: So we have increased shelter capacity this year in Burlington, Waterbury, Montpelier, Rutland. I'm trying to think if I'm missing any. And so, again, these investments allow us to maintain projects that have been started with one time funds, as well as help give an infusion to shelters as they're stood up, knowing that there are sometimes extra one time costs.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. And do you know how many beds that is that you were expanding? I would say we've been

[Lily Sojourn, Director, Office of Economic Opportunity (DCF)]: adding between fifty and one hundred beds per year for the past few years, and I can follow-up with the exact numbers.

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: Great. Thank you. I saw we didn't like

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: So is the population stable, growing, or decreasing?

[Lily Sojourn, Director, Office of Economic Opportunity (DCF)]: Of the number the shelter capacity that we have is we're increasing our shelter capacity.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: People. Not the capacity, but the demand.

[Lily Sojourn, Director, Office of Economic Opportunity (DCF)]: The need. Unfortunately, Vermont along with the rest of the nation continues to see an increase in homelessness. This is, again, unfortunately, a nationwide trend where we tend to see more homelessness and more people experiencing homelessness for the first time, unfortunately.

[Speaker 0]: Mike and then tip on line.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: Is a question for Lily. Lily, does that include Prattleboro where the Methodist Church is trying to open up a temporary shelter?

[Lily Sojourn, Director, Office of Economic Opportunity (DCF)]: This particular funding does not they're receiving funding through our new extreme cold weather shelter program, which operates on a night by night basis during some of the more extreme weather as again, just another strategy to involve more community based programs. They are trying to operate seasonally, and when we met with them, they did not want to explore state funding for that at the time, feeling like they wanted to explore what their capacity was organically. I think they've been able to really tap into a lot of community support and get private fundraising and not feel like they were ready for maybe full participation in a seasonal state funded program. But I did share with them information around our annual funding process, and I think they are reflecting on whether or not they would pursue that for next winter.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: Thanks. So I think what's happening right now is there's limited to eight people across the fire and safety rules until the temperature goes below zero. And I think some of us are suggesting that before you get to below zero, it's still pretty darn cold out there. So we're going to be looking into whether we can have a waiver to allow it. A very big space. They're talking about people there while there are people outside is is it's a safety issue II know they they fire safety and said they want to keep safety paramount and we we believe that freezing to death is a safety issue too. So we're trying to see if we can get a waiver there.

[Speaker 0]: Thanks, Mike. Tip, do you wanna Yeah.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: There she is.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Hi. I'm sorry that I'm not there. I'm just curious. We got a memo from the Housing and Homelessness Alliance.

[Lily Sojourn, Director, Office of Economic Opportunity (DCF)]: HHAV.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, thank you very much. Yesterday, and it was actually projecting that funding for HOP funded activities that relate to many of the service providers that support folks in keeping their housing was going to run out before the 2026. I'm assuming that this does not have to do with that. This request is real is

[Lily Sojourn, Director, Office of Economic Opportunity (DCF)]: just for actual shelter. Is this just to make sure I'm tracking, related to the direct assistance the financial assistance?

[Speaker 0]: Yes. It is. Yeah.

[Lily Sojourn, Director, Office of Economic Opportunity (DCF)]: I can follow-up with them and see more about that. We were able to identify an additional round of funding to go out for that, which we've been sending out amendments this past month. So I'm not sure if this is with that additional infusion or without that they have concerns. I think that our primary focus is shelter expansion, but I think as Megan said, otherwise, again, direct assistance to people who are experiencing homelessness. And I think this is right up there sort of a second tier. And so I think shelter projects can be dynamic. And if we had the option, that I think would be what we would go to and what we have done already this past month to increase funding.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Okay. I think I'm gonna need to follow-up with you about that, because I believe that the CAPS met with you, and I need to better understand kind of what sorry for my dog, what this,

[Speaker 0]: what your, I don't know

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: if it's an RFP, but whatever funding that you are trying to make available for those services is gonna be enough to actually cover what they are projecting losing. At any rate, I'll follow-up on that. Thank you.

[John Murad, Interim Commissioner of Corrections]: Thanks, Sue. Okay, let's

[Speaker 0]: take the next slide. So the last item on the upstands is the crisis stabilization program in Windham for $1,900,000 DCF has a one time allocation that's been supporting our secure residential treatment facility needs. But by the '26, we anticipate having fully utilized that one time appropriation, and we would still have a need of $1,900,000 on top of that to be able to operate both the new Rivers West River facility in Windham and the Red Clover facility, along with

[Kristen Caledonia, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: all the contracts that we

[Speaker 0]: have for other sorts of crisis stabilization and secure treatment. And so we have this pressure. We don't have a permanent facility, and so we need to operate both the temporary Red Clover and then West River being this new crisis stabilization program that we're getting launched in fiscal year 'twenty six. Rep. Lumi has another question about this, I think. Yeah, I do.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Thank you. Can you remind me, because I can't seem to toggle to the right page, what is our contract with Red Clover? What is the value of that contract and how many beds? And then how many beds are associated with West River?

[Speaker 0]: Tyler is on and Tyler should

[Unknown DOC staff member]: be able to answer them.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, there's Tyler. Good

[Tyler Allen, High-End System of Care Director (DCF Family Services)]: afternoon to the committee for the record. My name is Tyler Allen. I'm the high end System of Care Director for Family Services Division. The question I'm hearing it is how many beds do we have at the West River Haven? How many beds do we have at Red Clover? And I'm sorry, was a first part to that that

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: I'm Yeah, it's what I I just have been trying to go through my budget, and I'm just I can't remember the actual line item for the Red Clover contract, so I just needed to know the value of that contract.

[Tyler Allen, High-End System of Care Director (DCF Family Services)]: Oh, yeah, apologies, I'm not remembering the concrete number off the top of my head, I'll search for it, but it is approximately $4,000,000 annually for the program at Red Clover.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Does that also include carryforward money that is being used to support that program? There has been, for several years, the program has been supported in part through carryforward money.

[Tyler Allen, High-End System of Care Director (DCF Family Services)]: I think, and Megan might be able to answer this better than I, but they are coming from the same line, which is our secure residential treatment facility, and it funds a number of things, which has included the renovations originally to the Red Clover program. Those renovations occurred the year before last. And then the contract for the provider of the Red Clover, as well as the renovations to the West River Haven program in Wyndham. So that's all in the same line item, is the secure residential treatment facility line, which has included the carryover funds.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. I can elaborate on that. So we've got a base budget of $3,700,000 in our secure residential treatment facility. We were able to carry forward $1,300,000 to support those costs. And then we still have a one time appropriation of 4,600,000.0. So all of those are going together to support the many needs around our secure high end system of care needs.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: All right, and can you tell me how many beds are at Red Clover and at West River?

[Tyler Allen, High-End System of Care Director (DCF Family Services)]: Yep, West River will be a three bed crisis stabilization program. Again, that's non secure, which means the doors are not locked in that program. Red Clover is a secure program, which means the doors are locked. It is typically a four bed secure stabilization program. Right now, there are only three operating rooms due to some damage to the facility that occurred. That should be very temporary.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Okay. So if the operating expenses for Red Clover are 4,000,000, then that's about $1,000,000 a bed. Is that right?

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: Roughly.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: How do we rate against other states? I mean

[Speaker 0]: I think

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: seems awfully expensive. I understand that there are a lot of different costs associated with that, but I'm just I'm curious about how, are we in the top three?

[Tyler Allen, High-End System of Care Director (DCF Family Services)]: I don't have all the details on cost per state, but I would venture that Vermont is much more expensive than other states, and largely that is because of the very small number of secure beds that we have in the state at all. So we only have four secure beds in the state at large. All these programs we're talking about are high acuity needs youth programs. Other states commonly have youth detention centers, in some cases might have two to 300 beds in a youth detention center or many, many more. And generally speaking with large detention institutional settings, there is an economy of scale that's enjoyed. So I don't have the numbers on specifically how much it is, but I do think the way that our approach to care combined with our smaller population definitely upsets that difference.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Are the numbers going down in terms of youth who are in secure facilities?

[Tyler Allen, High-End System of Care Director (DCF Family Services)]: No, I would say no, they're not going down. I we've identified that we need more secure bed space than we have with the beds at Red Clover. It's why our proposal for the Green Mountain Youth Campus includes 15 beds in entirety or 14 beds in entirety between stabilization beds and longer term treatment beds. So I think we see a greater need for bed space than we have. Red Clover was always intended to be a temporary solution.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Madam Chair, do we have time for one more quick question?

[Speaker 0]: Go ahead and then let me skip.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Okay, thanks. This is just concerning for Jens. Did we have to pay out money in canceling that contract? Were there expenses related to that contract?

[Speaker 0]: Yes, there were

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: expenses related

[Tyler Allen, High-End System of Care Director (DCF Family Services)]: to that contract. We spent nearly a year doing project development. We have worked up new plans associated with the development of that project, so we did have an investment with it. The total amount was approximately $280,000 that was spent over about a year and a half that we had that contract in operation.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: All right, thank you very much. Sorry.

[Speaker 0]: Thanks, Mike.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: Thank you. I just wanted to comment on this a bit. Last week legislators met with the gradual retreat leadership and my usual question to them and my time working for family services was are there kids waiting in emergency departments for bed and retreat? Is there a waiting list for kids? And for the first time this year their answer was no, there's not kids waiting. There are not kids in the emergency department sitting there for days waiting for bed. I believe these programs are part of why that's true, that we have other options for these children now instead of sitting in the emergency department doing it for days. So I'm not sure if this is a lot of money compared to other states, but I think it's money well spent if they're not having kids sitting in emergency departments literally waiting for days. We can keep looking into this, but my sense is it's a better way for kids to be served than sitting in hospital or emergency departments.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Okay. Is there time for one more?

[Speaker 0]: Yes, go ahead.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Are these short term placements, usually the length of stay on average?

[Tyler Allen, High-End System of Care Director (DCF Family Services)]: Are all intended to be short term placements. Our original intent for crisis stabilization program is thirty days or less. That was always our hope around Red Clover. I'm sorry I don't have an average length of stay right now, but what we are seeing is there are cases that stay for much longer, and there are some cases that we can turn around much more quickly. So it was always a goal to have these be thirty days or less, but in certain, particularly with Red Clover, there are youth whose posture within the court system is such that they need to be maintained there for a longer duration of time.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Is it appropriate to consider quality out of state placements for some of the population?

[Tyler Allen, High-End System of Care Director (DCF Family Services)]: I'm sorry, I don't think I understood that question. Consider quality of placement?

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Are there quality out of state placements where children living here could be placed in, that have the economies of scale?

[Tyler Allen, High-End System of Care Director (DCF Family Services)]: So many of the youth who are in Red Clover, we are able to transition out of Red Clover into an out of state placement. That depends on the cooperation of the courts. Obviously, we need to have courts that are in favor of an out of state placement before we can do that. And in many cases we do. These are all what is typically classified as a PRTF, which is a psychiatric residential treatment facility, and until we have one of those in Vermont, we often look to out of state PRTF programs. So it is common that youth go from Red Clover into those programs.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Thank you, one final question. Have we considered staff secure facilities that would allow us to access Medicaid funding instead of locked doors, or is that just unrealistic given the population?

[Tyler Allen, High-End System of Care Director (DCF Family Services)]: We do have some staff secured crisis stabilization programs. I'm thinking of programs we have down in Bennington. They are on a PNMI model, and so we are able to draw down some Medicaid funding for those programs.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you. Okay, there's one one time cost that I wanted to highlight. It's the ADS child abuse hotline expenses. We have to do some necessary IT work to make the hotline compatible with the HR requirements, and so that is a one time ask. Any other questions for the folks if you see it? Thank you. Thank you a lot, you're wrestling with, so we appreciate your time and thank you for coming in.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: I want to thank you and everyone and wish everyone a good holiday.

[Speaker 0]: Okay great thanks. I'm wondering before we go offline if we can get but like add 60 people in earlier. Yeah, so if we could start at 02:30 instead of 02:45. Let's