Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Welcome. Today is Friday, 01/09/2026, and we, the House of Appropriations Committee, like to welcome you to our very first budget workshop. Ways and Means has done this for a number of years, appropriations has not in the past. So we're glad to be able to offer this now. We're delighted to be coming. We're looking forward to having more legislators understand the budget and the budget process. So that is one of our goals. So today is the first of a two part series. This session is essentially Budget 101, covering the budget process and timeline, what goes into the budget, and other basics. And the final section of today's workshop is a budgeting exercise where you get to practice making some challenging budget decisions. The workshop is being recorded, so it will be posted on our website along with the presentation. However, we're going to stop the recording for the exercise at the end because that's just for us to do things. And if other people who are watching want a copy of the exercise, we can be happy to give it to you. The next workshop, which offers a deeper dive into the budget, the documents, the terminology, and another fun hands on exercise, which may involve prizes if I can get my act together, will be held two weeks from today on Friday, January 23, also at noon here in Room 10. We'll send a link for you to sign up for that as well. So now I'm going to turn this over to our fabulous Joint Fiscal Office staff, most of whom seems to be in the room. So we're glad you're here. The team that works most directly with me includes Emily Byrne here, Grady Nixon, James Duffy, Autumn Crabtree. We also have Amy Pope, Ted Barnett, Julie Richter, and Catherine Bennington. So if you have any questions, we are well staffed to cover any question you could possibly ask. So thanks to all of the JFO staff. We couldn't do this without you. James actually mindshare created the presentation, and he's going to lead it today. So I'm going to turn it over to you. Thanks, James.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Hello. Welcome to everybody in the room, and welcome to those joining online. So as Chair Pichai just described today, we will be discussing the state budget process. And we'll be back on Friday, May 23. So mark your calendars with a second workshop where we'll be going into more detail navigating the state budget itself, diving into the document, and some other tips and tricks to help you navigate the budget. There will be a link sent out again to sign up for my January 23 workshop. There is one live chat chat and send out already. So be sure to sign up and mark your calendars. So for those of you who might not know us as well, the Joint Fiscal Office is a nonpartisan legislative office dedicated to producing unbiased fiscal analysis. Like all of our materials, this presentation is meant to provide information for legislative consideration, not to provide policy obligations. And today, the presentation will go through four basic topics. We're going to start by going over some useful background context for the big bill and some foundational principles, you orient yourself in the conversation. From there, we'll talk a bit about how budgeting is really an exercise in allocating finite resources and how that informs the role of appropriators and the process of the overall budget itself. There, we'll talk more specifically about the process of putting together the budget, piling the budget that was involved in the timeline. And finally, we will turn the reins over to you all for the last fifteen minutes or so to put on your appropriator analysis and play appropriator for the day with our interactive budgeting exercise. So key takeaways from today, just to list them up front and keep in your mind as we move through the presentation, that the funding process is admittedly complex. It touches every part of state government. But knowing a few key basics will take you a really long way in understanding the process of just being in it. Budgeting is an exercise in trade offs, an exercise in allocating limited money among many leading priorities. And sometimes difficult choices must be made. The state budget is a plan. It's based on economic and programmatic forecasts. For example, rely on the state revenue forecasts to inform decisions about how much money we have to spend in a given fiscal year. That being said, forecasts are never entirely correct. They're our best guess, and plans have to change in response to changing realities. And finally, power over the budget is shared across branches of government And that is the process of completing a budget and inherently negotiated process. Let's start with some basics. And as a quick note of housekeeping, I think at the end of each of these three sections to start us off, we should have time for one or two questions. And from there, we can say your questions to look out for the end. So feel free to raise your hand, but I can't even reach each section. We'll get to it soon as we can be. So big bill. When we talk about the state budget, you'll hear the big bill phrase used a lot. What is the big bill? It's, first and foremost, a financial plan for the coming fiscal year. Fundamentally, it's authorization for the government to expend funds for specific purposes and operations. It's a guidance document that puts guardrails in place around how the city and its constituent parts can spend taxpayer dollars. And finally, it's a policy document. The budget reflects the priorities of Vermonters through their elected representatives that are in this room. Another way of thinking about what the big bill is or what the budget is, is that it is the total of its constituent funds. But a budget is comprised of multiple funds. Examples are in front of you, the general fund, the T fund, the education fund. The key concept to understand for each of these is that each has different revenue streams and dedicated purposes and permissible uses. Oftentimes the general fund is the focus of appropriation conversations. And we'll go into more detail on this later, but it's the fund that is used for expenses that have no other dedicated special revenue source And as such, a lot of discretionary state spending is a conversation around uses of the general fund. Another way to think about what the big bill is, is the only must pass bill of the session without if the government cannot operate. Now there are some nuances involved here. There are other bills that are really foundational to core government functions from one year to the next that also could be argued to be must pass. But fundamentally, big bill is the authorization for every constituent part of the state government to extend funds and complete its legislative purposes and functions. We see what it looks like at the federal level when spending authorization lapses for government. It's not pretty. Fortunately, in Vermont, we have no precedent that I'm aware of in which we've on time. Not all Vermont has yet had to deal with. This is just a note about synonyms from the big bill. When we talk about the big bill, you'll also hear it referred to synonymously as the state budget. You'll also sometimes see it in its long form, in the budget document itself, an act relating to making appropriations for support of the government. But if you're new to the conversation, it's just helpful to state this out loud that the big bill is synonymous with the state budget. Now, the big bill is a money bill. It authorizes the expenditure of funds for the state government to operate. That being said, it is not the only money bill, I can hear that phrase, thrown around from time to time, money bills. There are other bills that authorize the expenditure of state funds for specific purposes. You have the transfer rate of the transportation bill, the T bill, that's pertaining to building, maintaining transportation infrastructure. There's the capital bill pertaining to major construction of state buildings, the miscellaneous tax bill, the fee bill. There are other money bills, that deal with the extension of state funds. But we're talking about the big bill today because it is by far the broadest and most likely principal of these money bills. A couple other points of useful context to orient ourselves in budget conversations. The state has its own fiscal year. The Vermont fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30. A fairly typical fiscal year for most states, 46 states out of 50 use that same fiscal calendar. Can any of the audience think of a entity that uses a different fiscal year? Federal government. October 1 to September 30 is the federal fiscal year. And fiscal year and private sectors too, you'll see different fiscal years employed in order to capture the key components of each sector entities, most important dates of the business cycle. But the key thing to understand is that when we're talking about the Vermont fiscal year, we're talking about July 30, June 31. Another point of useful context, when we're talking about appropriations, what we really mean by the word appropriation is authorization. Appropriation to a unit of government is an authorization to that unit of government to spend funds. Probation is spending authority at its core. Probations can also be base or one time. You'll hear the phrases based on one time around a lot in budget conversations. Base funds refer to funds that are included in the official revenue forecasts every year that are expected to recur in future years. And these support ongoing programs and operations of state government. On the other hand, one time funds are non recurring that are made on an annual basis. They'll often include for economic special fund balances, court settlements. These are generally used to address one time spending issues or perhaps be reserved for future use. The state budget also plays out across three branches.

[Unidentified Legislator]: This is

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: really key now to extending the process. The legislature has the power of the person, the power to enact laws. The executive branch administers and implements the directives of the legislature as laid out in those laws and in the budget. I think it's important when you're talking about the negotiation that occurs between the branches. No matter how many shared priorities there might be, there are never identical priorities between the legislative and executive branches, and it makes the budget process inherently negotiated. Finally, as one more point of useful background context, Vermont is one of the only states, in fact, the only state that does not have a constitutional or statutory balanced budget requirement. That being said, Vermont has a strong tradition of passing balanced budgets. So for all intents and purposes, when we're talking about the budget, revenue must equal expenses. State of Vermont does not deficit spend in the same way that the federal government has the power to do. Also, when we're talking about conversations about budget appropriations, it's useful to keep in mind that expenses in this context are appropriations. An appropriation from the general fund or from a human fund represents an expense to the state. One takeaway from this slide, revenue will equal expenses at the end of the budget cycle. We've got past balanced budgets. Any questions on some of that background noise? Wait,

[Speaker 0]: Phil, go ahead.

[Unidentified Legislator (Phil)]: Yeah, what process is in place if halfway through the year revenues not keeping up or expenses, know, learning to expenses happening and you're not going to be balanced with the budget that was passed?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It's a really good question. So as we said earlier, the forecasts are not always perfectly predictive of reality. We have a Budget Adjustment Act, which is getting started in the legislature as we speak.

[Speaker 0]: Well, and twice a year, we have a consensus revenue forecast with our the state economists and our economists get together and agree on what the revenue is going to be. And that's typically January and July. So actually, next Friday is our big day. We're going to find out what their revenue forecast is. That'll be actually used for the FY '27 budget. If things happen that are crazy, we can ask for additional revenue forecasts. So we have done that. Catherine, you'll know better than I do. In the recession of 2009, did we have an extra one then?

[Unidentified Legislator]: We had a revenue forecast in mid April I believe when an efficient revenue forecast would downgrade so that people wanted to do it but that we had a lower number of work and everybody was in agreement with that lower number. That was one issue.

[Speaker 0]: I think during COVID, there were like three or four budgets one year, but there might have not been revenue forecast. It was just more budgets because we suddenly got a billion dollars that we had to spend in nine months. But in 2009, it was something like a $100,000,000 downgrade. So the budget adjustment, so that was a year that there were rescissions and there's rules around when you have to start cutting money and you had to cut staff and people were furloughed and a whole lot of things happened because they didn't have that much time. Yeah, that happened outside. Well, maybe it wasn't. It was still part of the budget, right? I was gonna talk about transportation this year. Did you talk about that? Oh, yeah. So in transportation, some you are on the transportation committee, there was a revenue downgrade in the July revenue forecast update. And as a result, the agency of transportation had to reduce their budget by $7,500,000 their current budget. So they actually went through that process. And you probably heard about it in your committee. Are you real?

[Unidentified Legislator (Phil)]: There's threshold of 1% or something that requires that. That's right. My question is, are there requirements outside of that would trigger?

[Speaker 0]: No. I mean, because we really operate with the consensus revenue forecast. And everybody agrees that that's the number. And the only way the number could change is if we get our economists to do another official revenue forecast with a change number. Thank

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: you. Budgeting with finite resources. So just a reminder, I'll call back to the previous slide here. Big Bill is comprised of multiple funds, each of which had different grant agreements, different permissible uses purposes. The general fund is of these funds that was used to fund all expenses that don't have dedicated revenue source. So a certain activity in the state may have a dedicated revenue source for any number of funds, transportation fund, the education fund laid out in statute. But for those expenses or those functions of government that do not have a dedicated revenue source, That expenditure, that appropriation is a conversation for the general fund. For that reason, most of our conversation today is oriented around the general fund. It's kind of our primer on the appropriations and budget process.

[Speaker 0]: And

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And pie. Five.

[Speaker 0]: It's fine. So

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: the general fund can be used for many things, that being said. But do not let that make you think there's no claims on the general fund that carry over in a routine batch for one year to the next. So in fiscal year twenty twenty six, for example, we appropriated, we have the state of Vermont appropriated about $3,500,000,000 from the general fund. But of this, about $225,000,000 went to teacher retirement and got a post employment benefits. Another $713,000,000 went to Medicaid and Global Commitment. 5,000,000 smaller. We spent another on about $221,000,000 for corrections and just under $500,000,000 on other human services. Now there's nothing in law statute necessarily that says this is division from one year to the next or these are the funding levels that we spend on these items. This has been exhaustive. Let's support government functions by any means. But those expenditures, those appropriations, tend to be some of the biggest slices of the pie for London. And it compares to the most core basic functions, state government that are honored from one year to the next. And so what you're left with once you subtract those slices of the pie last year or this year in fiscal year 'twenty six is about $850,000,000. That's about a third of the total general fund appropriations available for everything else. And what's everything else? Well, for the one thing, it's operating based budgets for the states departments, agencies, different units. And in those base budgets are nested their required obligations. What are they mandated by law or by their establishing statute to do? Incorporation of health pressures, salary and benefits. We all know that healthcare premiums are arriving costs for many sectors. Government is no exception. That's a budget challenge. Program pressures, what's the federal match for a given program from one year to the next? Does the program need more resources to carry out its basic obligations, more status? Are there new needs, new things being asked of existing departments and agencies that require funding? Are there unanticipated issues that require initial appropriations from the state to keep those programs operating as they typically do. So of our discretionary slice, we've got to keep the wheels on the machine that's already running. Then we also have conversations that happen on one time investments. These might be investments or initiatives that are funded by one time appropriations on discretionary basis as funds are available. And this is by no means an exhaustive list of worthwhile priorities in which the state invests appropriations, but these are some of the

[Speaker 0]: topics that frequently come up in conversations around discretionary general fund appropriations. So I'll just insert in here. Last year, we ended up after paying for everybody's salaries and all the things that we agreed that we need to pay for. We had about $45,000,000 for discretionary gains. Remember, was running around with a big spreadsheet saying there were $300,000,000 in asks. We had about 45,000,000 that we could play with to deal with that money, which was a better year than we've had in other years. But those of you who came in during COVID and beyond are used to seeing lots of money, and it's kind of like, how do we spend it as opposed to, you don't have much to spend.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And this is the challenge of the appropriation process and the challenge of the appropriator. With many worthwhile priorities among which you can dedicate this slice of the pie. How do you divide that slice?

[Speaker 0]: Questions on that second, Doug?

[Unidentified Legislator (Doug)]: Every time I think I have it, I don't have it. Respect to global commitment and the interplay of what it means when we're spending money that's in leveraging federal dollars, can you speak a little bit to global commitment? Yeah, actually, how does work? What is it? Yeah. I will defer to my appearance by the Gene Leader.

[Emily Byrne (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So yeah, now Emily Byrne from the Joint Office. Nolan from the Joint Fiscal Office can do hours of presentations about the Global Compendence Fund. But sort of at a high level is that the Medicaid program requires that the state match all the federal dollars for all the associated expenses. The global commitment fund is mostly a financial mechanism that simplifies that and makes it easier so that the agency and services can manage like the federal funds and the state funds making sure that the match is correct. So a unique thing specific just for the Medicaid program, really. So it's actually appropriated twice, interestingly. This is what makes it complicated. So what AHS is doing is they're paying a hospital, let's say for somebody who's Medicaid or whatever. They pay it out of the government fund. And then they go back to the federal government and they say, spent a dollar, you owe us 56¢. And then we kick in our 44¢ to sort of match that. So there's like this, so they can make the payments through the gold commitment fund and then we go in and fill it out accordingly. They stop for television. That's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So when we're talking about it within the general fund, are we talking about our 44¢? Yes. Just our 44¢, right.

[Emily Byrne (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And we have to, like, if we make a payment under Medicaid, we have to kick in

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: our share.

[Speaker 0]: And

[Emily Byrne (Joint Fiscal Office)]: it's not to make it worse. It's not always 44¢. It depends on.

[Speaker 0]: That's why we have JFO. Yep, go ahead.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: All right, so let's dive into the process of timeline a bit. So as we said earlier, Vermont uses fiscal year to begin on July 1 and ends on June 30. We have a single year of budget. We do the budget every year. Some states have a bimodal budget, a budget session every other year, the budget is good for two. In Vermont, we have a fiscal year budget every fiscal year. The budget process actually begins about nine months before the fiscal year that it actually covers. It's a little bit small on the screens in front of you, but beginning as early as September, agencies, executive departments and agencies start having conversations about what their budget needs are going to be for the upcoming fiscal year. And by the time it gets to the legislature in January, where the legislature starts to exercise its power of the first, this process has been ongoing for several months. It's been a conversation with the agencies that is then brought the legislature several months later. I think that's a useful thing to keep in mind for representative senators, for lawmakers that you're seeing these agencies several months into the process of building their budgets. There's a lot of work and a lot of really hard thinking that goes into the forecasts that the agencies use to try and form their recommended budget proposals. So we start in September. The budget is presented to legislature in January. It begins in the House, proceeds to the Senate. Most years, the House and Senate don't have the exact same idea about what the budget ought to look like. In that instance, it goes to committee of conference and typically we see the budget enacted in mid May or sometimes mid June. So let's zoom in on the first step of that process, the executive branch step of the process. So departments and agencies beginning in the fall begin building their budget requests based on number of inputs. Those could be priorities given to them by the governor. Crucially, the July revenue forecast plays a really significant role in agencies tracking their initial budget proposals. That is the construct around which the rest of the budget is built, how much money we were going to have available to spend in prevailing economic conditions. Agencies have to think about a lot of different baskets when they're building their budgets. What are the impacts of, for example, inflation on their base operations? If I'm running a fleet of vehicles, need to be thinking really hard about the price of gas and the price of oil. On the state police, what's it gonna take for me to put all those miles on our fleet this year? If I'm fishing wildlife, I'm looking at how many hunting and fishing license are we selling? Are we on track with our forecast? Are we going to need to request general fund money? These are the level of granularity of the conversations that banks are often having to craft these proposals. That's happening in September. In October and December, there's a public input survey that circulated to Vermonters about the budget. Agencies are submitting their initial budgets to the governor via the agency of administration by mid October. Division of Finance and Management within the executive branch analyzes the budget submissions to ensure that terms for compliance, to ensure the numbers are balancing, to ensure that all requirements with federal and statutory obligations are being met. Governors reviewing those proposals as they evolve, and then that all culminates in the governor's budget address from January when the budget's finalized and presented to the legislature.

[Speaker 0]: We're going to hear that on January 20. So four days after the revenue forecast on the sixteenth is the budget.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And happening at that same time in January is not just the beginning of the conversation for the coming fiscal year, but also conversations around the Budget Adjustment Act for that given year. So we're looking forward to hearing the governor's budget proposal later this month. And House Appropriations and Senate Appropriations Committees have also begun their conversation around this fiscal year 2026 Budget Adjustment Act, but the BAA for this current fiscal year.

[Unidentified Legislator]: How does that happen?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Don't know much about the process. It's an executive branch survey, but I don't know if anyone in my audience has ever has direct experience with it. But I can get more information for you if you'd like.

[Speaker 0]: Actually have quite a good Catherine, do you know anything about Heather?

[Unidentified Legislator]: Sorry, I'm a bunch of lesbian.

[Speaker 0]: The public input on the budget process, don't they send an email? I don't know what they do.

[Unidentified Legislator]: There was email, There was a public announcement that went out. It was probably one of the governor's press releases, or it could have been someone else, indicating that there was a survey available online, and here's the link, and all of our monitors are invited go in and put your little input in. I saw it two or three times, probably in my local newspaper. I think it showed up in certain advocates' organizations published it because they wanted you to go in and indicate your interest in their particular area. So it's In recent years, it's just been this online survey. It used to be, many years ago, they used to have in place hearings, like 10 places around the state where it had closed circuit TV and people could literally come and comment on it. But the current version is just an online survey.

[Unidentified Legislator]: Thank you, just I'll look for it.

[Speaker 0]: We'll have to go figure that out.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So from there, the budget goes to the House. Starting the House Appropriations Committee, it's a committee bill. House Appropriations Committee will take testimony from all state department and agencies, hold joint public hearings with the Senate to get additional testimony. The committee receives feedback from the various Senate policy committees of the House and typically finishes their version of the bill by mid to late March, at which point the big bill is sent to the Senate. Begins in the Senate Appropriations Committee, will also take slots for testimony from executive branch departments and agencies, receive additional testimony and the bill as they see fit and typically finish the bill and pass it out of the Senate by late April. Like I said earlier, those versions from the two chambers are barely the same. So from there, we go to committee of conference whose job is to negotiate only the differences between the House and Senate budgets. So the entire budget is not up for rediscussion during the committee of conference. It's just those components of the bill that differ between the two bodies. Communities of conference, the committee of conference is composed of three house members, three senators. And finally, that culminates in a vote by both chambers on the conference report, which cannot be amended. Goes to the governor who has to act on the entire budget. That is some state line item veto in which the government can amend veto individual components. There's a really fun example from Wisconsin last year, the governor changing a period from a comma or period to a comma and increasing some budget line item by some order of magnitude forever. We do not have a line item veto in the state of Vermont. The governor can only act on the entire budget. You can either sign the bill into law or allow the bills to become law without his signature, or you can veto the bill. Either way, there are five business days available to the governor to act on the bill when it reaches his desk.

[Speaker 0]: Or it automatically becomes law.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Or it automatically becomes law. Should there be a veto, the general assembly can try to override it. To do so, both chambers need two thirds majority to override. That's 20 members in the senate assuming all at present, 100 members in the house. And VIGO bills cannot be further amended.

[Speaker 0]: That's any bill. That's not just the budget.

[Unidentified Legislator]: Veto. The second process question, I don't know if you guys can answer, but like appropriations and then various committees, like our committee oversees three different areas in state government, three different departments. And every time they come in every year, the bunch of documents are all very different in presentations, right? DCF has their format. They all have their format. VGH has their format. Has there been any thought given to, like, these things standardized across the board? I mean, I can imagine for you guys how appropriate it is. There's basic information that they should all have, similarly with requests from community organizations. We have a form. It

[Speaker 0]: would be lovely to have it be done. Yeah, so the budget letter that we sent out this year is vastly different. Yes, thanks to JFO. And we are expecting quite a bit more of the agencies and departments this year. The thing that has always been the same when they've sent us their budget, and you've all seen, is that silly ups and downs spreadsheet, which doesn't tell you right. So that seems to be the only thing that's all the same. But we've recommended what needs to be included in the budget. We do not have a template developed, although when the memo went out, we had examples of a couple of different agencies or departments that had good budget books so that they could use that as kind of their own template to put together their own budget book. We certainly don't have anything from outside folks that are asking us, like NOFA or whatever the outside agencies who are asking us for stuff. That'd be kind of an interesting idea. They go through a different process with public hearings and committees and things like that. We hope this year there'll be a little more uniformity in terms of the information, but creating a completely standard template might be a bit of a challenge because there are some differences between the ages and how they do their work and how they think about things. So we want them to have similar information, but it may get them to run it a little bit differently. Thank you.

[Emily Byrne (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I'll just throw out there. There are standard reports that come from a budget system that they have that's like, here's a list of all the positions, and here's a list of five account code where we cannot spend any money. They're pretty dry, frankly. But it has all the data underneath. The challenge is, it's the budget. Talk about this a little bit, really. It's a policy document, it's a story. How do you tell the story, department is trying to do for the providers? You don't want to necessarily say, you have to tell the story of this framework, right? Because you get a different story that way.

[Unidentified Legislator (Phil)]: So there's just that tension. You.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Sorry for one more question before we move on to point now.

[Unidentified Legislator]: So I'm just wondering about the timing. The budget is the last thing we pass.

[Speaker 0]: It does not have to be the last thing. In fact, last year it was not the last thing we passed.

[Unidentified Legislator]: So, we heard during the state of the state, maybe there would be some pushback and I was just trying to

[Speaker 0]: understand how that might unfold. Well, typically it has been, if not the last, one of the very last, because the budget is also the place where we decide on the money for a lot of the bills that you all send us. Every bill that has money in it comes to house appropriations, even if it's $1,000 And some of those small amounts, we can say, oh yeah, per diems for this thing, that's fine. We don't have to worry about it. But last year, for example, we had H91, and that had $10,000,000 And then we had other things. And so some things come in right at the very end. So that has to be all of those dollars from all of those bills are part of the total sandbox we get to play in from the revenue forecast. So they come out of that money. So the more we spend on the other bills and actually, that's not we should probably put that on there. It's like other bills is part of what that general fund money goes to. So the more that goes to other bills, the less there is for the budget. That's Okay. That's a decision that we make because we have to spend money in other places as well. So that's why we often wait till the end. And in the past, we have actually put entire bills into the budget. Last year, we made the decision not to do that. We would account for the money, but the bills needed to go through on their own. And I prefer doing it that way. I think it's a lot cleaner. If you have a bill you're interested in, you can look at it, but we can account for

[Unidentified Legislator]: the money in the budget.

[Speaker 0]: And that's how we did it last year.

[Unidentified Legislator]: But in the case of the housing bill, that bill got vetoed, but the money stayed in the budget.

[Speaker 0]: But the money would have, either way, the money would have dropped to the bottom. If the bill gets vetoed, even if the money was in it, that money would drop to the bottom line because the money's now not being used the way it was intended in the appropriation.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So at this point, we can go up live. We're going to move on to our budgeting exercise. You're all going to put on your appropriator hats.