Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Good afternoon, this is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Tuesday, 01/06/2026. It's the first day of the second year of our biennium. So welcome back, everybody. We are going to start with some information about the Budget Adjustment Act from the Vermont Veterans Home. And so we have folks joining us Zooming in from Bennington. And welcome. Nice to see you. Happy New Year. If you would like to introduce yourselves, we have your documents in front of us.

[Melissa Jackson]: Thank you. Good afternoon. I am Melissa Jackson, the CEO of the Vermont Veterans Home, and ahead, Steven, I'll let you introduce yourself.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: I'm Steven McLafferty. I'm the Finance Director for the Vermont Veterans Home. Thank you.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Welcome.

[Melissa Jackson]: Our presentation is rather brief. We are not asking for a budget adjustment. We are just notifying you of a change in a line item in terms of funding. In that we will be moving $1,034,567 from general funds to special funds. And that is because our Medicaid settlements was larger than anticipated by $963,267 And we've had an increase in our rehabilitation revenue, which is our physical therapy, our occupational therapy, and our speech therapy of $71,000 So special funds are our Medicare and our Medicaid dollars. So we had a decreased need for general funds because we've made that up with special funds.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So just to be clear, the Medicaid settlement, you've got more money from Medicaid than you thought you were going to get.

[Melissa Jackson]: Yes, this is where we receive the interim rate and then they do the cross reporting and they do what I refer to as a true up. So, that came in higher than we anticipated.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay, and you're getting more revenue from Medicare than rehabilitation revenue. So that's also, okay. Yes. So are you moving the money from the special fund to the general fund?

[Melissa Jackson]: No, it's going to where we're decreasing the general fund amount. Right. Just decreasing the general fund.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Go ahead. Your total budget isn't changing here, right? So you're not spending any more. Essentially this is a spending authority?

[Melissa Jackson]: Yes.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's just kind of a trend.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: It's like the they didn't they didn't have general fund money for it. This this money has come in and they need to have to be able to spend with. So, it's with the spending authority. That's the proper way of thinking? I

[Melissa Jackson]: believe it's just to make sure that we're accurately documenting where the dollars are coming from. At the end of the day, the total budget dollar amount is not changing. It's just what revenue stream is coming from is changing. We want to make sure that that is accurate.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right. So, we appreciate that it decreased the general We always appreciated that. So that's great. Remind me, Melissa, is this like the second year that we're now working on not using the budget adjustment to be the budgeting tool that you're budgeting it in advance, sort of aligning with the normal fiscal year? Is that right? This is the second This

[Melissa Jackson]: is the first year. The

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: first year.

[Melissa Jackson]: Yes. Then next, when we come back in a few weeks, that'll be our second year. Yes, ma'am.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay. So how's that working for you, making that shift? Has that been okay?

[Melissa Jackson]: This year's been interesting, but we do appreciate doing it this way. So been an adjustment, but it definitely makes projections substantially easier for us. So thank you. We appreciate doing it this way.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay, great. Well, probably for all of us too. We don't have any huge multimillion dollar budget adjustment surprises. So we appreciate that. Do we have another person who's joined us?

[Melissa Jackson]: Gary DeGaspa has joined us. He's the president of our board of trustees.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay. Good afternoon. Welcome, Gary. Nice to see you having

[Gary DeGaspa]: my usual computer problems. I apologize. That's all right.

[Melissa Jackson]: Been there.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Wayne, this is yours, right? Yes. Okay. Does anybody have any questions about what Dave? Go ahead.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Is this a reversion?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: No. The GF? It's within there.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: So my question is, will this result in general fund being on the bottom line?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes, so if look at the spreadsheet, that's I find the most helpful for going back to, you'll see that it's a decrease in the general fund and an increase in the special funds because they're getting more in special funds than Medicare and Medicaid. They don't need general funds for it which makes us all happy. Very nice, thank you. Other questions or comments? Good read except for your chair? Okay, is there anything else while we're having a little chaos here in the committee room? Anything else you want to tell us about what's happening? I know we'll get you back with the FY27 budget, but if there's anything else you want to share with us at this point?

[Melissa Jackson]: I want to share some good news since we're on a good news kick with decreasing our request for general funds. The Vermont Veterans Home received the National Silver Quality Award from the American Healthcare Association. We were the only nursing home in the state of Vermont to receive that. Very, very proud of that.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We're also

[Melissa Jackson]: the only nursing home in the state of Vermont to receive US News and World Report's Best of Nursing Homes for Long and Short Term Care. And we are recognized by Google as one of the top 10 nursing homes in the state of Vermont as well. I am very proud of my team and the state of Vermont should be very proud of all of the work the staff does down here. We are literally the best of the best. And we will continue to provide great quality care for our veterans.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Great. Well, That's a lot to be proud of.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Congratulations.

[Gary DeGaspa]: I do have lot of observation though from my part. It seems that you all seem to be much more content when we give rather than when we ask. Gonna pick up on that. It

[Melissa Jackson]: shows you're doing a good job managing.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That's right. Appreciate all your hard work. That's great. That's great.

[Gary DeGaspa]: Yeah, the home and its staff does a tremendous job. I can certify that in my days of working with the VA and providing oversight to the home. The home has done a superb job under Melissa's leadership, national recognition, wonderful quality of care. I think you all as the board is very proud of what the home does for our veterans.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, that's great. Excellent. Thank you so much. We're glad you're there, and we're glad you're here visiting us today. And I'm not seeing a lot more questions. So we will see you back after the FY twenty seven budget is released. You'll be hearing from Autumn, our committee assistant, to get that set up once we know these. So great. We'll see you in a few weeks. Thanks again. Take care. Bye bye.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: You.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Thank you. So, committee, we're having a light week or certainly light day. We're going to, in a minute, go off live, and we'll have ADS come in and talk about the billing. You may recall that they wanted a lot of money to fix their billing, and they can explain it all again. And we gave them $8,000,000 that was part of our contingency list was if we had excess revenues, which we were pretty sure we were going to have at the end of last year, that the first $8,000,000 was going go to ADS to start offsetting their billing issue. And so they got that. And so we've asked them to come back and just update us on how that's all going. And I think where we possibly can, we're authorizing all this money to be spent. We want to have people come back and talk about how it's going, sort of the accounting. So that's what we've got. And then that will be it for the afternoon. So