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[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Good afternoon. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Tuesday, 01/13/2026, just after 02:15, actually about 02:20. And we are continuing our work about the Budget Adjustment Act. And we have with us the Agency of Natural Resources, Secretary Moore, and friends. So if you all want to introduce yourself, and we'll go from here. Sure.
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: So thank you, Julie Moore, Secretary Natural Resources. And I'm joined by Charles Martin, who's our Deputy Secretary and Steve Gomez, who's the agency's Chief Financial Officer. We thought we'd start with the BAA request and then can talk a little bit about ARPA and answer other questions if you have them. Our BAA requests are actually fairly modest. There's just two. The first one is relevant to the Department of Fish and Wildlife. As you may recall, there was a statewide law enforcement RFR that was in process when you were here last year. Ultimately, it was approved in April 2025 and resulted in a two pay grade increase for almost all of our game wardens and a one pay grade increase for one warden. It was made retroactive to July 2024, so almost a full year. And that is why we find ourselves here today, both in that we did have a BAA request or we did excuse me, I should say receive a general fund appropriation in anticipation of this RFR, But it ended up being insufficient for the two pay grade increase. And so we are asking for an FY '26 budget adjustment to meet the full financial impact of that warden RFR. We did account for some increased amount of vacancy savings since we now have benefit of actuals.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So the total two pay pay grade increase is the two ninety plus the two ten? Correct. The
[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: two ninety reflects the FY '25 impact, the two ten is the FY '26. So that accounts for everything, the two ks grades for most of the award and the one k grade increase for the major, so this will make the department hold for both '25 and FY '26.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay and so in FY '27 you have the right amount in the budget I assume because now you know all this.
[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: Yes exactly, so I thought now since it will officially approve the timing date for both in the budget software so it'll come through FY '27.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We'll finally be caught up. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so this makes sense to everybody. Any questions there?
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: The next one, oops, that's just the budget 12. I'll finally skip over that and go to FPR. And this is around wildland firefighting costs that were incurred this past summer. So as you are likely aware, there was severe drought throughout much
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: of
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: Vermont, throughout much of this summer, resulting in very high wildland fire danger. We saw a significant number of fires totaling 84, even though it was a relatively modest number of acres that actually burned just at 66. But this did require our small but mighty Wildland Fire team to be on call for over two months. And a lot of concerns that given the persistent and widespread nature of the drought, any wildfire that initiated could quickly grow and be difficult to contain. You may recall, was a general public appropriation in 2025 of just over $34,000 for wildfire response. The $105,000 BAA request covers overtime. We did end up deploying a US Forest Service helicopter when a fire lit in Williston this, I think September was when that October. October. Just given the proximity of that particular fire to houses and other infrastructure. I believe that helicopter deployment alone costs more than $10,000 This is a really challenging space for us in trying to not incur unnecessary costs, but also be very cognizant of the risk of wildland fire. And so that, as I say, that $105,000 BAA ask reflects our actual costs from this past summer season.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Where were some of the other fires? Because 84 is quite a lot. I hadn't realized there were that many. Just sort of in general, where were they? I think they
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: were pretty widely distributed. Yeah. And none of them were particularly large this year. The previous year there was one larger fire, but that was not in calendar twenty five.
[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: Do you have
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: a question in mind? Yes. Okay.
[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: Are you able to say whether we are still officially in drought?
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: So I believe and I will turn it over to Charles who actually sits on the State Drought Task Force on my behalf, but I believe the drought conditions have abated. So we are no longer in severe drought in most locations, but there are places that certainly groundwater levels are lower than we would like to see them. And we anticipate those conditions will persist into the spring at this point. They're sort of frozen in. Don't know, Charles,
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: if you'd say anything. Okay. Yeah, I thought we were completely out of extreme. Is extreme drought the that's the worst one, right? Yeah, we're in that situation. Nothing is that, but some have, there's still conversations every Thursday, should they update it, whatever, so you know, you probably don't have multi year
[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: whatever, you know
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right, And farmers too. John?
[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: I was just curious about the helicopter deployment. That was just one area, one fire.
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: Correct. Yeah.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: What would they do?
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: They they dropped
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: To drop in?
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: Yeah. Water. Yeah. So this was a piece of equipment that the US Forest Service actually stationed in Manchester, New Hampshire, recognizing that there was a significant regional drought to have available in case of emergency.
[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: I'm actually surprised it was only 10,000.
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: I think it was more than that, Charles.
[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: I don't know if you Oh, there we go. Here we go. 18,000. There's already
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: 8,000. Yeah. Yeah. If
[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: there's further interest in this, will read the government operations this week at 02:00 Thursday. I'll also share synapses
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: from that.
[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: That'll go back to the ones.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Marty has a question and Ray does.
[Rep. Martha 'Marty' Feltus (Vice Chair)]: We note that they were all small fires it looks like. What's the dividing line when the local fire department can't handle it and
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: they call the state in? How do make that decision?
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: They make that decision when they feel like they lack adequate resources, either in terms of volunteer personnel, they're able to rouse or that the fire exceeds the capacity of their department.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It just surprises me because it looks like they're a couple of acres apiece. I'm not sure if that's the average, but yeah. Thanks.
[Rep. Ray (Member, last name unknown)]: Could you characterize the nature of
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: the causes of the fires? They are almost exclusively human caused. I believe there may have been one caused by lightning, Charles, but the rest of them were people, I think, largely making bad decisions about when to light a fire or unintended campgrounds. Some of
[Rep. Ray (Member, last name unknown)]: them enforced or developed, were they mostly around developed area or some of them
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: were remote? Some of them were remote as well.
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: And just a few facts and figures about FPR's Wildland Fire team. We have three staff that are dedicated full time wildland firefighters. There are additional 22 staff within FPR that are what we call red carded, meaning they have completed a set of training in order to be able to fight fires, wildland fires, whereas those three full time folks can actually run the incident command. And then we also rely on Vermont's volunteer and paid firefighters. And there's over 500 folks that have been trained from that corps.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Didn't we meet them last year when we were in public safety when we went to Waterbury? Met the cruise. So
[Rep. Ray (Member, last name unknown)]: obviously we have fires that we cause in backyards, that sort of thing. So how do you define whether or not it's really a wildfire that you should respond to, as opposed to something that's, say, in the village or something that they perhaps the right people to respond
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: to
[Rep. Ray (Member, last name unknown)]: responsible organization is city town.
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: Sure. So if it's on state land, obviously, we are we are in the lead on responding. When it is not on state land, we generally rely on the local fire department to request our assistance. So all these are on state land associated? No, I think this is this is the number of fires we were made aware of. Some of them may have been fully contained by the local fire department, but we sort of maintain the overall database of fire activity in the state
[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: of Vermont. So you
[Rep. Ray (Member, last name unknown)]: didn't respond to all of
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: these fires? We did not respond to all 84 of those fires.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Any questions on those two requests? Seems to be straightforward. Can we switch to ARPA for moment? Sure. Thanks.
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: So as you may recall, we have a giant list ANR led initiatives in this space. I would say the sort of through line in many of them is around water and water infrastructure. There are a couple outliers in that space, state parks connectivity and major maintenance perhaps among them. But in general, the stormwater, just read down the list, right? Stormwater, stormwater combines sewer overflows. Green schools is stormwater. Healthy homes is drinking water and wastewater. Wastewater pretreatment is for businesses. Our roads in state forests, again, is stormwater, rural infrastructure, drinking water, three acre in state parks is stormwater. You get the idea.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: A lot of wastewater. A lot
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: of drinking water, wastewater and stormwater work. Over $190,000,000 in total was appropriated to the agency. And at this point, we have either expended or encumbered 97% of that. And on the next slide, we have some updated statistics. I know Douglas Farnam was in recently, and he provided you with the numbers that are shown in this table through September 30. The December 15 numbers are our most current figures. And you can see we've continued to make progress in getting these dollars into grants and contracts and fully obligating them to the types of projects described. We are now at the point of having just about 5,800,000.0 of that 190,000,000 that is either unencumbered or unexpended as of December 15, and believe we are fully on track to meet both the ARPA and Cure General Fund deadlines that have been provided to us.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So, the two questions here on this, Julie, is the 5.8, didn't they have to be encumbered or obligated by last December? Is this general fund money that there was a swap and that's why it's still in that
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: category? So some of it is general fund money. The 3,200,000.0 is general fund. So then we're talking just about the 2,600,000.0 and I'm going to defer to Steve.
[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: So what's happening there is when we have project that comes into your budget, so let's say it's a healthy health initiative or family project comes in under budget, so that money is on that bottom line. What happens is it'll get redeployed to if there's a cost overrun on another project. So basically just kind of like seeing this churn cycle with projects as they complete, under budget, that hits the bottom line and we know we're going have some that coming over budget so that'll be absorbed there. That's in accordance with treasury guidance and policy. So Okay.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Oh, good. So, yeah, that's also on that, just to the left of that is 36.2, you have encumbered, obligated, but it's not extended. That has to be done because that's our by the end of the of this calendar year. Correct. So, and are you feeling confident that that thirty six point two will be, I mean, if you have money to spend, are you spending ARPA money before general fund money at this point?
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: We are, we have made some of those swaps in three acre stormwater, I think, is probably the best case study of that, where we have ARPA money, we have some Clean Water Fund money, we have money through the Lake Champlain Basin program and are prioritizing deploying those ARPA dollars before we tap into those other sources that don't have the same clock attached to them. So yeah, we're very cognizant of making sure we spend the ARPA dollars first. Obviously, these are big infrastructure projects. And so we need the construction season. We had anticipated throughout that we would need sort of the full '26 construction season and believe we're on track.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah. Okay. And then the general fund, just as a reminder, but we put language in the budget last year that anything that was swapped for general fund, I think, has to be completely used by December 27, right? So we gave you an extra twelve months. Correct. And you're feeling okay about that? Correct.
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: You guys had the most and the most complicated things of any agency. It's been an incredible book of work. I think there are a number of those initiatives that the staff take great pride in. The Healthy Homes program is probably our shining star in that space. I believe the estimate is now we've helped more than 6,000 Vermonters. I think it's about 800 households, but 6,000 Vermonters have better, more reliable access to drinking water, safe drinking water and wastewater disposal, which just feels like such a great story to be able to tell. We knew those conditions existed. I think we were overwhelmed by how many Vermonters are challenged to have a good well and good septic system. But the ability to have resources to help has been just a gift.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Do you still have some money left for that? Or are you tapped out?
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: We're about tapped out. We ran what would be our final round of grant funding this past December and are in the process of making that final set of awards. So I think they anticipate being able to award about 150 additional households. Great. So
[Rep. Ray (Member, last name unknown)]: our big storm water sewage treatment facility problem that we would have, you know, overflows and delayed shape and that sort of stuff. Where do we stand and are we proceeding at a rate that's going to get us in an expedient way towards solution to those problems, if we ever can.
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: Yes. So combined sewer systems, you're right, are really challenging. These are systems that are functioning the way they were designed and built. They were just designed and built long before wastewater treatment plants existed. And so undoing that past practice of sending all of our wastewater and stormwater runoff in a single pipe is complex. Through ARPA spending, as well as some money in the bipartisan infrastructure law, we've been able to make a pretty significant leap forward. We've been kind of picking away at this work over the last ten to fifteen years. We had always envisioned it was a multi decade process to fully address all of our combined sewer overflows. I think the roughly $40,000,000 we have invested of these federal funds was about half of the remaining work to be done. The flip side to that is that last piece is obviously the hardest, most expensive, most technically complex. Each of the communities that has a combined sewer system has what we call a twelve seventy two order, so a compliance order with the state, and they all remain on track with their obligations under that. So we will get there. And the federal funding we saw over the last several years has just been a real boost in terms of any projects in that space that were effectively ready to be built, we were able to help them forward. And the ones you have built, any of them turned out to be deficient?
[Rep. Ray (Member, last name unknown)]: Did they all were they all affected?
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: I I believe so. I think the most significant work was done in the city of Rutland. And I know we've seen some really meaningful improvements in the quantity and frequency of overflows they experience.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Other questions? Seeing anyone, you guys have done yeoman's work over the past few years getting all this money out the door and in such a variety of places. Monitors are a bitter mouth for that.
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: So thank you. Thank you. I can't speak highly enough about all of the staff that have been involved in this work. It really is one of these that takes a village. And I would imagine there's about 600 full time year round staff at ANR. I bet more than a quarter of them have had some involvement in an ARPA or a bipartisan infrastructure law project at this point.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I bet they're pretty tired because I can remember asking when we first got the money, know, when was it five years ago, do you even have the capacity to do all this? Because there's been lot.
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: It has been a lot. I
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: hope everybody will get a little break at the December.
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: Me too. I mean, I think it's one of these, like, for so long, you've said, we don't have the resources to do the things we need to be done. Now we have the resources. It's like, oh, boy. Careful
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: what you wish for. Yeah.
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: It's been such an incredible team effort. And I think, really that that point has resonated with a lot of staff that this is this unprecedented opportunity to fix some things that have just been hanging out there for their entire career. And it feels really good to see those projects move forward. Yeah, that's the whole point of the ARPA money. Correct. Make those transformative changes that
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: you couldn't otherwise do. Correct. Correct. Success. Great. Thank you. Thank you for your team. We appreciate it. And all the staff who did work so hard on this. So we'll see you back here in a couple of weeks or so with the FY27 budget.
[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: Well, we do are preparing a more detailed breakout of the ARPA initiative by each one of those tasks. I'm happy to share that with you. But as I suspect, you know, we always have these kind of white paper fact sheets that we maintain for each of those initiatives. So the team's updating those right now.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Oh, good. Thank you. Thank you all. Okay, we are going to switch gears again. We're actually a little bit earlier, I think. But are you ready, James?
[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: Do
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: you want to go up live for a minute? Why don't we go up live for five minutes and then we'll get ourselves ready for the next one.