Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Good afternoon. This is still the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, 01/13/2026. It's about 02:45, and we are switching gears to talk about the Section VIII voucher program. This is not something that we normally talk about in state government because the money for Section eight housing vouchers goes directly from the federal government to landlords and other people in the state really hasn't been called. This year, as you know, things have been changing, and there have been reductions in housing. And I can't explain all this. That's why we have James here. James has become our subject matter expert in the last few weeks, because we haven't had to deal with it a year before. But we are looking at seeing if there's some things that we could do. And I should let you know that the emergency board we started hearing about Section eight problems last July as the federal government was cutting money. And throughout the fall, monitored it, and we checked in with the public housing authorities. We thought that the emergency board might have to meet in December to do something about the issue. And at the end of the day, from a timing standpoint, we decided that they and we could wait until the general assembly is back in session. So now we're looking at possibly doing something in the budget with adjustment. So since it's new to all of us, James is going to educate us. So welcome, James.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Great friend. So for the record, James Duffy, fiscal analyst, joint fiscal office. And the impetus for this conversation today really began, I think, in earnest in November with the joint fiscal committee meeting as chair Shai pointed out. That's when this question of Section eight voucher program funding and potential state involvement in Section eight funding first came about. And so the goal of this slide deck today is to brief the committee on some useful Section eight background, as well as the appropriation request that was put forward by the Vermont State Housing Authority in collaboration with other public housing authorities back in November to the joint fiscal committee, which later became an e board conversation and which is now in the mix with conversations on the BIA. Joint Fiscal Office, as you all know, is a nonpartisan legislative office dedicated to producing unbiased fiscal analysis. We'll start by going over some background of the Section eight program, recent federal funding context that is really key to understanding the request that the SHA put forward in collaboration with the other PHAs and helps explain why there's now a conversation around state funding with what has historically been an entirely federally funded program. And then we'll talk about the funding request itself. So Section eight housing vouchers are also known as housing choice vouchers or the Housing Choice Voucher Program. Throughout today's presentation, you'll hear me referring to the program as Section eight because I think that's the term that most people are familiar with when they think about this program. But for the record, if you're looking at any federal documents about this program, you'll often see it referred to synonymously as the Housing Choice HCV program. So this is the premier federal rental assistance program for low income, elderly, and disabled individuals in The United States. It's funded through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, but administered locally by public housing authorities throughout

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the country.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: And so this is a really important thing to understand about this program. The funding originates at the federal level, the vast majority of implementation work happens locally through public housing authorities. And we'll get into this a bit more later. But in Vermont, we have nine public housing authorities, or PHAs. In addition to low income households, elderly people, and disabled individuals who meet income eligibility thresholds. Public housing authorities may also run special purpose Section eight voucher programs that target additional assistance to specific populations. For example, here in Vermont, several of our public housing authorities run voucher programs that are specifically for homeless veterans, for families with non elderly disabled heads of households, foster youth who have recently turned 18 who are looking for housing in the private rental market, etcetera. And just for a bit of overall context, your 7,200 households is about the number that receives Section eight vouchers here in Vermont. So about 7,200 Section eight leases are currently active in Vermont. And it's a household number. The number of individuals receiving rental assistance is some multiple, 7,200.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: And so maybe I'll get into this later. I can't remember, James. There are vouchers that are related, tied to an individual, and there are vouchers that are tied to apartments or housing units. Do you get into that later?

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Not so much, but I'm happy to talk about it.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Okay. Yeah.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: So there are two additional ways to break down Section eight vouchers. Some are I'm struggling to remember the word. But they are tied to a particular unit, building, or project. So you can think of that voucher as living with a specific rental unit, whereas other vouchers and the vast majority of Section 8 vouchers in Vermont is my understanding live with the individual or the renter. So if I'm somebody who qualifies for Section eight housing assistance, I'm free to take that voucher anywhere with me to any number of eligible rental units. And the project based vouchers is the phrase for those that live with a particular unit or development.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So I think I've got Wayne and then Tom.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So each of the nine PHAs, do they all provide same services, are they all the same, or is this somehow

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: They vary in size and scope, I would say. I'm not quite sure on, for example, the veteran specific special purpose voucher. That's an example of a program that may be run at one housing authority but not run at others. Housing authorities have a wide degree of discretion as to how they prioritize their funds, how they set aside.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So they all could do the same things, but some maybe because of the demands in the region that you're in, do may not do some of the things.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's correct. We have nine public housing authorities in Vermont. They are all independent of one another, free to make their own operational and programmatic decisions. Vermont's housing authority is the only housing authority in Vermont statewide jurisdiction or close to statewide. The other eight are all municipally based and have jurisdictions that are tied to their municipal charters. And we'll get to that part.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: This is still the big ole big ole.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: But I think that I would just add that this becomes relevant later on. The SHA, Vermont State Housing Authority, is the housing authority that has really coordinated a lot of the communication and action on behalf of other public housing authorities in the state for this appropriation request. But it's worth to understand that they are an independent entity who has stepped into this voluntary role. We have nine completely independent public housing authorities in the state of Vermont. They're not nested within Vermont state housing authority.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: There's no umbrella organization. But Tom and then Lynn?

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Two things, know, it's all federal money, this we have a state rental subsidy program as well, which is limited. It's not, it's dumb, it was instituted when we had a shortage and a lack of funding some years ago. Then the other piece about the project, one of the differences that I always carry with me with the difference between the project based and the individual based is that, yes, you can take it to, if you have a personal Section A voucher, you can take

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: it to another unit anywhere in

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: the country. It will be honored, I think that's, I mean, there's not a lot of loss that way, but that does happen. And then just very quickly, you touched on the housing choice, the veterans, the family unification program, the non elderly disabled, the housing opportunity for persons with AIDS, and the home family. And they're all slightly different and they all come from DCF. All are coordinated with some of our agencies as well. Just want I don't want to reduce our conversation about or our learning about Section eight vouchers as only Section eight vouchers, they really are. There are some very specific voucher situations that we don't know how this is the loss that affect any particular one of these. Yeah.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's right. Yeah. While the funding stream has been federal historically, you're absolutely right to point out that sectioning housing vouchers play a role in the overall ecosystem of the affordable housing initiatives that take place in Vermont. For example, project based Section eight vouchers, I understand are often an important component of the funding stack for particular affordable housing development, for example.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Yeah. And many going back to the 80s and 90s when a lot of people signed their original contracts with HUD, they got project based vouchers. And it's not just the stack that is in and on, but it is for some people how they built their business thirty or forty years ago, and the key thing is project based, you get paid. If it's in your building, you get paid whether it's vacant or not. It's very important that the property owners to

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: maintain. They're pretty valuable, the project based vouchers.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: They're both,

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: yeah. And so when a project like Taylor Street apartments over the where the parking garage is over there, getting four or five project based vouchers was a very important part of the stack because they can count on that as part of their bottom line.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So what you're saying is the vouchers is not one size fits all. Those vouchers, each one of them is unique?

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Not each one. There are programs where certain so for housing opportunity for persons with AIDS, clearly twenty five years ago there were more people who were being diagnosed with AIDS than perhaps now. But they put some aside for each of these categories so that I mean, there's one, the Home Family Housing Voucher, it's the rapid rehousing program for families experiencing homelessness. There's x number. There's not like for the state ones, there's x number. There's not always a lot, many of them fall under the Housing Choice Voucher Program.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Not unique, but multiple categories.

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: You said that there were, at the end you were saying that there's a certain number of rental properties or people who are using these. What was the number again?

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Oh, statewide in Vermont?

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Yes.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: As of September 2025, 7,200 Households. Yeah, households. Yeah, 7,200 households in Vermont. How many? 7,200. And that comes from HUD. HUD maintains a public dashboard where you can look at individual housing authority data as well as statewide housing authority data. So that's where that number comes from. Some of the housing authorities might be able provide more up to date information that's what's current in September 2025. But for Hood, September 2025, the number is 72,000

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So that's basically adding up the nine housing authorities Correct.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: For each of them.

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: Out what Tom asked or talked about, are the HCV, the Choice Vector, are those the ones that can be used anywhere in the country?

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. Provided I'm not I'm not up to speed on all the rules of portability and transporting vouchers across the lines. Yes, when we say HCV, Housing Choice Vouchers, we're talking about Section eight. And by and large, I think Section eight vouchers are portable across state lines, across jurisdictions. It depends on each state, I guess, by and large.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: And John?

[John Kascenska (Member)]: Just real quick, so PHAs, they vary in size and scope here. Are each of them assigned a certain volume of leases to be managing here or is this sort of lease of houses?

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Leasing levels are tied to the funds and authorization given to the PHAs by HUD. I'll say that historically, there is a gap between the number of vouchers that PHAs are authorized to issue and the amount of funding that they're given by HUD to make good on that authorization. So I'm not sure if there's ever been a time in in the history of these PHAs where they receive all of the money needed to issue as many vouchers as they're authorized to give, but those are two different numbers. The authorization are given by HUD and then the actual funds that are granted by HUD to issue those vouchers.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: And last year, we learned that there were a lot of people who had been issued vouchers, didn't have a place to be able to use them, and then we had to retract the voucher because the federal government was cutting. So people who were housed were not getting kicked out of their housing, But people who were basically on the waiting list with a voucher in hand had those vouchers taken away.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: How many were affected by that number? 25.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: 2025, the most recent number I had from the SHA was around 130 vouchers, had been retired, as they say, through attrition, which is what just described. That was as of November 2025. But the overall trend for the last several years has been one of voucher attrition. Yeah, we'll get into that more in a bit. Basic eligibility boils down to low income individuals and families, the elderly defined as 62 or over, people with disabilities. And as I said earlier, there are additional groups eligible for special purpose vouchers. And when we talk about income eligibility, this varies often from PHA to PHA, from area to area, and maybe special purpose voucher program to program. But generally, when we talk about income eligibility, we're talking about 50% of an area's median income based on family size is the general rule for income eligibility and Section eight vouchers. The SHA and the other pages, if get more into the details there, I think some special programs might have that defined up to 80% of AMIs. They're a median income, but we're usually talking about 50% here. So as a general rule, Section eight vouchers pay the difference between 30% of a recipient's adjusted gross monthly income and the cost of renting an eligible unit and utilities.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: An eligible unit, I think, is also important because it's not like they're getting an $8,000 a month apartment paying 30% of their income and the feds pay the rest of it.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, I included eligible here for a couple of reasons. One is that units have to meet certain baseline health and safety standards in order to be eligible. As a landlord, the landlord has to maintain basic level of rental conditions to participate. And also, yes, there are some restrictions put in place on how much a rental voucher can cover. One of those is the determination of fair market rent. So each budget cycle, HUD looks at what they would consider to be fair market rent for a given geographic area. I believe it's often done by zip code. And what that really means is it's about the fortieth percentile of rents in an area. So what amount of subsidy would be sufficient to pay for rent in about 40% of units in a given area? So you're not looking at the fanciest, most expensive developments or neighborhoods in a given area. Often, that fair market rent limits the pool of units that can participate from the landlord point of view in Section eight housing. Additionally, the PHAs will calculate a maximum subsidy amount. So in addition to determining what's a fair market rent that the program is willing to pay, PHAs do a separate but related calculation of what is the maximum amount that a recipient can receive. And that's usually in the range of 90% to 110% of fair market rent. But that's the absolute ceiling of what an eligible participant might receive. It's often lower than the full ceiling.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So a landlord would get two checks, basically, or two deposits to their account for one unit. So they get the 30% payment from the client, and then they would get the 70% from the federal government.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Directly from the PHA, actually. Ultimately, it is from the federal government. PHA pays

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: the rest of those. You get two checks for every unit that they have for two deposits.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Okay. James, will you talk at some point about the or the most recent stressors on that system about how rent is, fair market rent is usually calculated from a year or two previous, which doesn't necessarily match perhaps what's going on in the market. While the market seems to have stabilized somewhat over the last two or three or four years, rents have exploded so And the caps on what the vouchers will pay for plus the 30 percent sometimes don't match what the current fair market value is.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, we'll get into some of the cost stressors that have diminished the purchasing power of, so to speak, of the vouchers, and that's definitely one of them. Yeah, thank you. Okay. That's a bit of background about what Section eight pays for, who's eligible. Before we get into the next section, I'm going to talk a little bit operationally about how the program is run through the public housing authorities. So as I said earlier, we have nine public housing authorities operating in the state of Vermont. Vermont State Housing Authority has almost statewide jurisdiction. The other eight housing authorities have more or less municipal jurisdiction. And then the VSHA, Vermont State Housing Authority operates. My understanding is they operate anywhere that those other eight do not. So we have statewide coverage.

[Michael Nigro (Member)]: So North

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Of Winooski or into the East, that's where the Vermont State Housing Authority is. Them ones that are called out Are you down there? So that that one unit deals with all the rest of the state up to the North and the East.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's right. I'm not familiar with each of the charters of some of these municipal housing authorities. They might have maybe they extended to a neighboring town through agreement with other municipalities, something like that. But basically, in your mind's eye, you can draw a bubble around each of those municipalities. Anything not included in those bubbles is the SHA jurisdiction.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Gladstone County is included in there either. So be agents that would be likely to be doing that.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: So as PHAs are doing the day to day work of distributing vouchers, managing intake, managing landlord payments, the way that the PHAs fund their operations, by and large, is through the collection of administrative fees, which are calculated as a percentage of each voucher that they process, each active voucher that they process and maintain. So you can think of that as kind of an indirect cost recovery in the parlance of maybe grant agreements. For every voucher that's active and in use, PHAs are recovering a percentage of that cost to cover their administrative burden, administrating the program. PHAs, if they manage their finances prudently and have leftover administrative fee revenue at the end of a budget cycle, are empowered by HUD to place those leftover administrative fees in reserve. That reserve account in housing land is called unrestricted net position, UNP. You'll hear the SHA, the other PHEs talk about UNP, unrestricted net position, as they walk through the mechanics of the funding request that we'll discuss in a little bit. But I made a point of including the name of the PHA reserve accounts.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Yes. Thanks. Am I correct in understanding that HUD requires administrative

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: reserves at a certain threshold? I'm

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: not I don't know the answer as to the floor. I don't know if HUD has requirements for a floor of reserves. I do know that there is a ceiling that PHAs aren't allowed to maintain reserve above a certain level.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Okay. Do you know offhand what that level is? Is it a percentage of the

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: It's a percentage of, I want to say, maybe previous year's spending authority. But I don't know what the percentage threshold is, but it's percent of some previous year budget amount. Back in on that.

[Michael Nigro (Member)]: I don't

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: know. So if you go over that, they're going to take back that money. They're going to sweep that money back. More will come, I'm sure. Keep going. I have two questions. The first one, forgot.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Go ahead, James.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: And another note here is that prior year voucher numbers, the amount of active end use vouchers that a housing authority maintains, inform future year HUD funding. So PHAs operate on a calendar year basis, which we'll talk more about in a bit. HUD recalculates PHA funding each year, and that funding is largely informed by how many vouchers were out on the street the previous year.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So can the vouchers increase? I mean, this feels like they can only go down.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: I've had a similar question in the past. I think if HUD were to increase funding levels and PHAs were able to issue additional vouchers, that's one mechanism through which you could see that go up. I think that's a really good question when we're talking about the potential use of state funds to increase voucher levels. The SHA, as part of their proposal, which we'll talk more about later, has a proposal for how state supplemental funding can drive the number up and increase further future federal populations.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: I see Wayne's got his question. And Dave Luke looks like he has one after that.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: I'm ready, wasn't I?

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Okay, you were. Okay, Wayne first and then Dave.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So so the the money in the the reserve fund, they have what can they use it for? Administrative? Or can it can it go into a voucher?

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Don't have an exhaustive list of things they can use for. But I can tell you, one permissible use of their reserves of their UNP is, yes, they can transfer funds from their UNP into the account that they use to make voucher payments.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: The rest would be they can use it for administrative.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. And I think one other really significant use of those funds is and we'll talk more about the PHA budget cycles in a bit. But PHAs often don't find out what their federal funding award is going to be until maybe May in a good year. And sometimes it's later. This year, it was later. And so they operate on a calendar year basis. That means they're trying to make programmatic decisions first, third of the year or maybe more based on what they expect to get from the federal government. And so sometimes they're off. And the UNP reserves are one of the buffers that they'll use to prevent going into shortfall should their projections be off.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: This is the last one. Dave?

[David Yacovone (Member)]: I'll hold my question until we get to the VSHA proposal.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Okay. Thank you. Yeah, remind me if I forget.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: But I'm going to put a pin in my answer to your question, representative. But yes, they are permitted by HUD to use their reserves to pay for vouchers. It's basically just going be I'll tell them later on in the conversation.

[Michael Nigro (Member)]: If they have

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: a big reserve or something, rather than have it sweep back, they might want to put it into vouchers. Yeah, well,

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: we can talk to you about what happened last year. Last calendar year.

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, so we're going talk

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: a bit about federal funding. As I said before, secondary managers are funded by HUD on a calendar year basis. Don't know if anyone's aware, but federal funding has been a bit off cycle, a bit wonky in the last couple of years. Currently operating under a continuing resolution that expires on January 30 of the current month, so about two weeks. PHAs have been operating at level funded calendar year '24 levels since expiration of calendar year '24 funding. What this means is rents have increased. Inflationary pressures have been high in many parts of the country. Vermont has not been excluded from that. And so from inflationary pressure alone, PHAs have seen the purchasing power of Section eight vouchers diminishing without corresponding increases

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: in the government.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: And I'll note that this has been an ongoing dynamic for a long time. I think if you talk to PHAs, they'll tell you that federal funding and inflation adjustments have often not kept pace with inflation year over year. But it's been particularly acute in the last couple of budget cycles, seeing inflation that we have. So this poses a problem for PHAs because they can't overspend what they're authorized to spend. They can't deficit spend. And so if they're seeing their purchasing power for their portfolio vouchers go down, that effectively means they're able to support fewer vouchers over time. One strategy PHAs use to cope with this is to retire vouchers as they're returned to the housing authority through attrition. So what does that mean? Maybe a family has their income increased and no longer needs rental assistance. Maybe they move to a different jurisdiction and the voucher follows them, but it's coming from a different PHA's budget. For one reason or another, a voucher might come back to the PHA. And PHAs will retire that or keep it on the shelf. They're not funding it to be used, although they're authorized to do so. So that reduces voucher costs. And there are other operational decisions that PHAs can make to reduce costs over time. PHAs spent much of calendar year 'twenty five employing those cost saving measures. They also employ reserve spending to avoid having to retire active in use vouchers. So kind of a red line.

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Go ahead. I

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: was just going to say the red line that PHAs have yet to cross, and anybody's member that I've spoken to here in Vermont, is that even under past budget pressures, housing authorities have never needed to terminate actively in use vouchers from families who currently receive them. And that's an outcome that is both tightly regulated by HUD. There are only specific circumstances where they're allowed to do that. It's also an outcome that PHAs would really prefer to avoid. And so what you see them doing instead as they're purchasing power dimension over time is retiring vouchers as they're returned, reserve spending, and employing other operational cost savings within their organizations to avoid that outcome.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So they're depleting their reserves, and they're reducing the number of vouchers available for people in the future. That's their two responses, but they that's what they have. That's yeah, go ahead.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Well, just wanted to make the distinction between retiring, I mean, retiring in use vouchers, and then they're all the vouchers that were never given out, that would in a normal year have been available had the federal government not made its decisions. And have some housing authorities anticipating lower cuts, then, and I think I'm right about this, in advance reading the tea leaves, they retired a number of vouchers. So that the total number of unfunded or, we've lost vouchers or we haven't given them out. And that's the total. And I think that's somewhere over a thousand.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: That's what I remember hearing, too. Correct.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: The number that I am most familiar from the SHA was their twenty twenty five year that they had retired, about 130 active vouchers rep blooming. Do know that also had they not received their shortfall funding from HUD, they were in the position of perhaps retiring around 1,100 active vouchers. I don't know if that 1,100

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: figure Well, is says a different thing. Think it's a different thing. There's unfunded vouchers. I'm looking at the link that you included. And it's ten sixty four unfunded vouchers as of the December. Vouchers lost was 131 and more.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: What I suspect I would is it the VSHA testimony document?

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: This is, yes. Well, it's just to

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: the joint facility.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: What I would suspect is that the 1,000 number is referring to the gap between vouchers that the authorities authorized to issue. Yes, but not given. And that has been a long standing dynamic. That number may have been more or less 1,000 for a number of years.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Not just new this year. Right. When

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: you talk to VSHA about new retirements, new vouchers that they've taken out of circulation as a result of more recent budget pressures, I think it's closer to the range of 200 over the last two years.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Here's what is

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: confusing to me. And I am so your testimony offered that there were 7,200 leased vouchers in the state. Vouchers leased a year ago, January, was 8,272. So there's a gap there. And I'm trying to help us understand, so that drop is 1,000 plus.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: And I think so you're describing two data sources that are linked in the presentation. The first is the SHA testimony given to JFC back in November. And the second is the HUD data dashboard that contains Section E voucher enrollment numbers for PHAs and statewide numbers. I suspect the number given by the SHA in that testimony document that you're referencing includes special purpose doctors, which may be excluded from the data dashboard on the federal website, as well as other programs they may operate that are separate from Section eight. But I'd have to talk with the SHA to follow-up and

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Find out what this Find

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: out what that delta is. I have talked to them about the data dashboard that HUD maintains. It's good. It's relatively current data. I think it might just capture a different subset of Section eight programs or vouchers that are

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: run by the SHA. So Lynn and then Yeah,

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: I have a question about leases and the requirements. And you talk about retiring people no longer being eligible, for instance. My understanding is that the leases are fairly long and complex and there's lot of requirements, it has to be inspected, there's all sorts of stuff that goes into being able to use a Section eight, either as a landlord or for the tenant that's trying to use it. We've had a question in our area about someone who wanted to get a Well, she referred to it as a friend who lost his house and grandmother died or something, and he had to move. And then referred to him as family. And it sounded like it was a voucher that allowed her and her partner to be there, and now she wanted to add a third person and tried to do it, and it ended up with a bureaucratic nightmare. So the question is, you look into any of that as to how I mean, a lot of landlords do not go and just allow a person to move in without their name being on the lease and live there. And if you're going to add people, you have to do that with your landlord. And it sounds like that's what she kind of wanted to do, but I think the person moved in before she got approval. So I'm wondering, did you investigate

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: any

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: of those kinds of situations? And how many of those are there?

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: I can't speak to that specific kind of situation. I'm sure the PHAs absolutely can. What I can tell you is that there are essentially two contracts. One is the lease between the landlord and the renter. And there's also a separate rental agreement contract between the public housing authority and the landlord, which dictates the terms of the relationship between the PHA and the landlord, their respective obligations to each other. I don't know which of those contracts that sort of situation would be handled in between the three entities.

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: Well, I'll tell you that if you have a John Smith who's a landlord, and you start bringing new people into an apartment when he thought he was renting to two people, and now you've got three people or four people, it would take a very long time for them to be evicted based on the violation of the lease. But if you have a Section eight and you start adding people to it that they have not approved, if it's part of their agreement and it is probably indicated somewhere in that lease, they can just stop paying for it. And then that person is no longer eligible. It's criteria a and a different consequence.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Right. That probably gets into the number of people defined as being in the household, right? Because the subsidy amount is in part determined by the size of the household. And so I would imagine having folks into the living situation might run afoul of the PH case calculations in that situation.

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: But you don't have any

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: No, I'm afraid I haven't looked into that and specifics around how that would play out in the contracts between landlords and the PHAs and the renters. But I'm happy to follow-up with

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: Yeah, that's actually a very common thing in the rental unit world is that you have people coming and going sometimes, children, friends, relatives, whatever, who come in and couch surf or whatever you want to call it. And when it becomes obvious that this is a violation of a lease or agreement, then it becomes a problem. But it's not uncommon.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Sure. Okay, Wayne, you want to start a question?

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: It Seems like how much funding there is, how many vouchers? Who sets is it the housing authorities, is it the federal government that sets the number of vouchers at any point in time?

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: It's a mix of both. So HUD decides how much funding a PHA is going to receive. From there, PHAs have discretion to make certain policy decisions on their own. They have a role in determining what their maximum amount of subsidy is, for example. My understanding is PHAs have latitude to adjust subsidy amount depending on what their funding levels are in a given year. So the overall budget is set by HUD. And then from there, it's a conversation between HUD and the PHA as to what the amount of subsidy is and how far they're able to stretch that to optimize their ideal number of vouchers. Thanks.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: And they have to do it within all regulations and constraints that they're doing.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: I was just wondering whether they would authorize somebody straight from the feds or whether they have the authority to designate how many

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: A of little bit, yeah. But again, there's constraints in them when they do. Okay, let's continue.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: So background here is that amid decreasing purchasing power for vouchers over the last several years, particularly during the last two calendar years, the public housing authorities in Vermont and nationwide have been retiring vouchers, taking vouchers out of circulation as they return through attrition. This is resulting in fewer vouchers available statewide to offer rental assistance. This also impacts the calculation of federal funding for PHAs in future budget cycles.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So if the number goes down, then the amount they get from HUD is going to go down too. So there's this downward spiral of the less they pay, the less they get.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: So despite the cost saving measures that PHAs began taking throughout 2025, calendar year 2025, four Vermont public housing authorities were in shortfall. I'll spend a minute talking about shortfall. So this is a word with a specific meaning in Section eight parlance. It's the word that they use to describe a public housing authority that is projected to not have enough revenue or reserves enough liquidity to cover its voucher obligations for the remainder of the calendar year. This is fairly common, both among public housing authorities nationwide and in Vermont. It's not an uncommon occurrence. And there are HUD procedures in place to determine both when a public housing authority is in shortfall and to calculate potential shortfall assistance to PHAs to help them close that gap at the end of the calendar year. So you'll remember that PHA or you may remember from conversations happening in November that as of November 2025, several PHAs were preparing to retire currently in use vouchers in order to bring their calendar year 'twenty five funding in balance. This would be a much more dramatic step than they've taken in the past. It's not retiring vouchers through attrition. It's taking away vouchers from those who are actively using them and terminating rental assistance perhaps in the middle of a lease. Ultimately, public housing authorities did receive shortfall funding from HUD in December 2025. This negated the potential the possibility of PHAs retiring vouchers at that time from people who are actively using them. At the time, the SHA had been estimating that across all nine public housing authorities, to 1,100 households could have been exited from voucher programs statewide had they not received shortfall funding from That

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: was active households. People would be basically kicked out of their housing units.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. And public housing authorities were beginning to have conversations with their boards to dust off their manuals for how they go about doing processes in place that are approved by HUD about how they go about removing people who are actively using vouchers. Again, it's never something they've had to do in Vermont to anybody's memory, but their procedures in place, they were revisiting those in preparation for perhaps having to exit people from the program as early as December 25 or January 26. Fortunately, that was not the case, as HUD did release shortfall funding to the PHAs that were determined to be in shortfall at the end of the year. So

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: just to be clear, when you are exited from the program on your voucher, that's removing your voucher. That that they're taking away the voucher that's been assigned to you.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Is that right? Yes.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: So with that removal, I'd be going from paying 30% to 100%, which I can't do. So I'm in line to get evicted.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Right. Yeah. I think the concern was that there'll be a large the concern the SHA was raising as early as November was that you would see a large number of families suddenly unable to afford rent because they would not be receiving rental assistance through Section eight any longer. We could see a spike in potentially unhoused families heading into

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: And so that's 1,100 households that was estimated last year? Yes. And the flip side of that is that property owners, landlords who no longer receive the 70% will be motivated to evict the people who have been living there, or they'll be put in a form of limbo. I mean, they'll no longer be on the list. So if the vouchers were ever refunded several years down the line is what it looks like, you have landlords who are now out of the program, who have signed contracts with HUD, because I imagine their contracts would end as well, or any agreements they made with HUD would end as well. I would imagine so. I didn't speak to VSHA about

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: specifically how that would be implemented on the landlord side of things. But yes, I would imagine that as the landlord, the SHA or landlord PHA contract is connected to the recipient of the voucher once that voucher is taken away, that contract.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: So the punch line here is chaos.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: The landlord doesn't have a steady income, and the people don't have a place to live.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Right, but the landlords have an opportunity to recover by moving their apartments over to Marcus Rent, but they lose the chaos of no matter how complicated and how many hoops they have to jump through, they've chosen to say, want to have this income guaranteed at the least every month. And by taking it away, HUD is creating chaos in all places and then it makes the state have to deal with 1,100 households that could conceivably be evicted over the course of time, which is already difficult because one of the things with the Section eight vouchers with the housing choice vouchers over the last couple of years is less vacancies in general, where vouchers had to be returned back to the SHA because families qualified for them couldn't find an apartment to live in. So it's just more chaos is what we're saying here is that the loss of these vouchers, the loss of this system is going to create more chaos in a world where we walk around saying we want more affordability for housing.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Right, there's not an unlimited supply of section eight units in the state. For

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: more precisely property owners who would work with that in order to provide them. Yes, yeah,

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: yeah. Just

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: trying to make sure we know what we're talking about here when we're talking about the crisis at hand.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Yeah, thank you. Okay, let's continue.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Despite the receipt of that shortfall funding, calendar year '25, which came in the final days of of 2025, PHAs are still entering the current calendar year in pretty precarious fiscal condition. Several of them are testifying to House General on Thursday of this those who would like to hear more from the PHAs. But some of the challenges that they're dealing with besides those we've already discussed are depleted reserves. So they spend much of calendar year 2025 spending down reserves. A fun detail of shortfall funding from HUD is that at least in this calendar year, national shortfall funding was procured by HUD through taking funds out of PHA reserves across the country. HUD utilized its authority to withdraw funds from PHA reserves above a certain threshold in order to procure at least some of the funding that had been redistributed as shortfall funding to PHAs nationwide. And so PHAs nationwide in the state are going into 2026 with reserves that are even further depleted by that HUD

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: They had no say in that because HUD just said

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: They utilized

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: we scrapped it. Okay.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: HUD utilized its authority to do so. There's also uncertain federal funding. So we're currently operating under a continuing resolution that funds PHAs at calendar year 'twenty four levels. That expires at the end of this month. No one's quite sure what will take its place.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Oh, because of the continuing resolution.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: So there's a world in which PHAs continue to receive level funding at CY24 levels, or who knows? But also, there is a world in which a full appropriations bill for HUD is passed. And in communications I've had with the SHA, they aren't hearing encouraging news about a would be full federal appropriations package. I think some of the funding packages that are being socialized in DC at the moment would still see PHAs forced to retire vouchers either through attrition or perhaps through terminating active vouchers. I'm not sure how they would deal with that situation. But federal funding, even in the best case scenario of not operating under CRs forever, is not looking great for PHAs in Vermont. Also, HUD and PHAs are all expecting to see shortfalls again in calendar year '26. As early as recently as this week, PHAs received communication from HUD saying, hey, we expect pretty much all of you who are in shortfall in '25 to be in shortfall again in '26. So here's a reminder to be implementing as many cost saving measures as you possibly can. And hey, by the way, I wouldn't count on shortfall funding again in 2026 or at least not the levels you received in 2025. So PHAs are continuing to retire vouchers turned in through attrition amid a really uncertain federal funding landscape, depleted reserves, and uncertain assistance from HUD going forward. And again, just to put a fine point on it, the retirement of vouchers, the removal of vouchers from circulation reduces federal funding calculations in future years going forward, even if appropriations were relatively generous compared to past years. If you're looking at a smaller pool of vouchers year over year, that calculation results in less funding for Section eight vouchers for PHAs. So this brings us to the funding request from the SHA on behalf of the other PHAs in the state. So this dates back to November. The SHA did propose is proposing again a one time general fund appropriation, which would restore for calendar year 'twenty six voucher enrollment to levels that were current as of 01/01/2025. So let me rephrase that. The concept behind the appropriation is a one time appropriation that would give the PHAs sufficient funds to issue vouchers back up to the levels they were leased as of 01/01/2025.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So is it my understanding that they can't use they have to use federal funds to do the vouchers directly?

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's correct.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So this is

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: And so the ESHA and the other housing authorities, I assume, will go into more detail about the mechanics of this request, perhaps later this week in House of Health General. What I can say about the mechanics that are being proposed is that state funds in this scenario would be used to replenish reserve accounts or to supplement reserve accounts within the PHAs, which have relatively fewer restrictions about what they can and cannot be used for. That would free up capacity for the housing authorities to transfer some funds from their reserves into the accounts used to make voucher payments. So state funds can't be used directly to fund vouchers. Those can only be federal dollars. But by depositing state funds into a reserve account within the PHAs, the idea is this would free up other dollars within their accounts to then make additional voucher payments.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: And so this would be a separate account because I think you can't co mingle state and federal funds?

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: I would encourage you all to hear from the PHAs about the specifics here. I do share that understanding as well, that there are certain Because it's federal

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: fund and that HUD can come and pull it out.

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: That's not.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: And UNP, their unrestricted net position reserve accounts, while they are more flexible, they do have rules in place around how they can and can't be used. I think one mechanism that has been contemplated is to have separate reserve accounts established within the PHAs into which state funds would be deposited. And then anything beyond that gets into the specifics of the PHA accounting that I can't speak to. Okay.

[Michael Nigro (Member)]: Mike? Plus, I'm a little ahead on this. But it sounds like part of this is speaking to the fact that the previous year's funding and number of vouchers, like that, the next year's funding and trying to stop that, doing something like this to be know how that would be viewed by HUD? Would we be running into a risk of HUD viewing us as moving these funds around and potentially say, well, we're not gonna honor something that you've artificially put up as?

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: I think that's a really good question. I think there are rules, many rules in place around how PHAs are authorized to use funds. There are rules in place for when they're allowed to accept external funds, I. E. State funds. And I think that's a really good question for the housing authorities and the VSHA about what the status of their conversations with have been around this and what their understanding of the rules and regs are about how this money could be used. I think that's an important question.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So there's a bunch of questions going on. I see John, and then I'll go back to Dave. And I also just wonder, just to let you know, House General is taking testimony from two or three of the housing authorities, I believe, on Thursday. So that probably we may want to share some of these questions, and maybe we want to share some of these questions that we're getting. I'm going to go back to John and Dave. We also have some organizations that are listening right now that are here with us that maybe have some more expertise and can answer some of these questions as well. So I'll turn to Chris Donnelly after you guys ask questions.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: So just real quick, just a follow-up question that was just asked right here. So historically, have we, we've just not really provided stake money in this way here to fill the gaps.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's my understanding. I'm in talking to the PSHA, the PHAs, not aware of any history of of Vermont doing funding protection in this way. There have been other engagements yes. There have been other engagements between the SHA and the state for other separate programs. Right.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: So that might be perhaps. I was thinking of the same question actually, that risk of putting money into the PHAs here and risking perhaps even a lower allocation here of funds, I don't know. Certainly

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: this mechanism is the first, but this would be a novel mechanism in the state of Vermont. This has not been done before.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: Thank you.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Dave? Yes, you addressed one of my concerns, but I want to accentuate it if I can. I wanna make sure that general housing knows the questions that needed to be asked from an appropriation standpoint along this line. And that's not a criticism of them, they just

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Oh no, no, no.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: They're looking at it perhaps.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: We still have to get our questions answered because There's

[David Yacovone (Member)]: a lot of outstanding questions. I was a landlord, I no longer am. All of my tenants were section eight situations and I found it, and at the time, landlords sought the section eight program because it did give them some predictability on 30% of the rent. When I had tenants who got in trouble with paying their rent, I still could help. I had some, the 30% cost or excuse me, the federal cost helping carry my carrying cost, and then I could work with the tenant to work things out. Now the state of Vermont in 2013 at the time, had a 100 fully funded state section eight look alike slots. Forgive me for using the word slot, but slots. I do not know what the number is now. There were conversations then whether to take the program out of DCF and transfer it to the state housing authority to run because that's what they did. There were always complications because one tenant in particular, her son aged out, wanted to leave her, he graduated from high school, wanted to go out on her own, making family of two, drop to a family of one, different income eligibility, lost their voucher, very problematic happens up. In another case, recently, was working with a constituent who went to work as a caregiver, private caregiver, Choices for Care program. And the income made her ineligible. She was shocked by what the market rate was that she would have to pay and was going through this dilemma, do I cut back my hours to a certain point so I can keep my slot? There's constant churning going on for these reasons. And there's always a policy debate on should these be free slots for somebody to have and go about and find a landlord or put it into a project. And I'm not sure, would like to ask Gus Sealy whether the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, when they do a project, I know they're using lots of tax credits, but would they want dedicated a number of slots so that if they do a 20 apartment unit, if it came with slots too, that's really helpful. These are like gold. And I see this as an opportunity to find out, I would be inclined to somehow not put the money, if we were so inclined to help on this.

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: Because

[David Yacovone (Member)]: it seems to me one of the few significant tools we have to address poverty and housing and our housing situation. I mean, by not putting it into a reserve, because it would seem to be at risk from the federal government, but to have it available in some fashion. So I'm excited by the opportunity, but appreciate And the we're

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: also looking at one time, not ongoing. That's the

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: other thing.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Is great, actually yes, because if it works right, with that infusion of one time, it primes the pump for an ongoing basis. Could

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: be. I'm gonna just see Tom and then I'm gonna go to Chris.

[Michael Nigro (Member)]: You're all set?

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So I'm gonna invite Chris to say anything he'd like to say if you have more information, because you can tell that we've not had this experience. So if you want to introduce yourself. I can tell you that

[Chris Donnelly (Housing organization representative)]: in our own file, know, five other departments, about half of the people received some kind of relative assistance, some kind of, I'm not sure how many zero, housing choice vouchers and so forth, And we're very, you know, it's about this trend of shelving just to say against me, Not only because it will result in fewer apartments available, people exiting homelessness, destabilizing people that are living in the housing, but also it has an impact on our capacity and our budgets. I think the housing authorities around the state, to Dickinson's point, were looking at ways to restrict flexibility and when somebody brings in another tenant who they found that as an opportunity to say, alright, well that's not true, we can pull back, not to be in spirited about it at all. But they were looking for ways to more easily reduce the amount of exposure that they had going forward. It's an ability to, a high priority for us to hopefully slow down, put the brakes the decline of the people go through this state.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Because where are people going to go? And the hotel motel program is not a solution for anything except emergencies, and there's only a finite number of those rooms and a thousand more people or whatever. Yeah, I

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: am sitting here listening to this and then I've come to the same conclusion. And a lot of these federal programs are much more restrictive than a private landlord who might say, Sure. They interview the person, they say, We'll add their name to the lease. There's room there, whatever. But the federal government, if they're looking for excuses to deal with shortfalls, this is a classic example, I think, of something that they would say, well, too bad, I'm sorry. That could work. And they do have pretty strict rules. I mean, it's very I think that's what you're looking at with a shortfall. I think that's maybe one of the reasons why they're just like, oh.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Okay, so let's thank you for letting us put you on the spot, Chris.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Appreciate it. Go ahead,

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: James. So, President Igor, you teed up an important conversation, I think, or an important question, which is I think committees of jurisdiction in this committee, if they hear more about this request from public housing authorities, will want to ask the questions about the interplay between state programs and HUD and HUD's stance on proposal of its nature. I think other considerations that are worth keeping in mind are the timing of the appropriation versus the federal funding calculations. It's something you all probably want to hear more about and understand better. One, I think the nature of this conversation changes depending whether you view it as a one time investment, period, or a one time investment that then allows more federal funding to flow to these housing authorities in the future because they've been able to replenish their voucher enrollment to 01/01/2025 levels.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So That's so one time?

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes, yeah, one time, just think whether the implications are one time or whether the benefits are one time or whether the benefits are ongoing. So one of the benefits of this proposal as described by the SHA is that it will help to increase the amount of federal funding that flows to the PHAs as a result of future calculations.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Is always also our version of goal, right, to have one time money percent.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Things are weird right

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: We'd like it to be, I think, probably useful down the road. I mean, if it can have a longer term impact by doing a one time investment, I would guess that we'd all prefer to do that.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Thank you. Yes, that's a much better way of putting it. And I think things are weird right now with federal funding cycles. I myself don't personally know when HUD typically does the recalculations of PHA funding for a given calendar year and how the timing of the receipt of funds and the issuance of new vouchers at the PHA level would tie into that timeline. And so other folks in the building, folks with PHAs under housing conditions might be able to speak to that in more detail. But I think that that's an important thing to dial in on.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Yeah. And so as I said, House General is going to be having two or three housing authorities. PHAs coming in for testimony on Thursday. Tiff's going to be there. Tip's taking notes on the questions.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: And if there are any other questions, let me know.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: And we can let them know ahead of time. I imagine that some of the housing folks will be at that testimony on Thursday as well. This is just an interesting challenge because this is not something we've ever visited before. And suddenly we all have to learn. James has done great work in trying to get up to speed on something that we've just never had to deal with. It's a great time to have your institutional knowledge on this stuff, but it's just new for all of us. To wrap our head around this and just have to be able to do this fairly quickly is I appreciate you all asking good questions and listening.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: And do you know what their schedule is on Thursday for? I haven't looked myself. Could look it up obviously here, but

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: I think it was in the morning. It was like 10:30. I haven't

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Yeah. I'll just check it briefly.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: I was just thinking if there was an opportunity for more of us to either watch it from here or attend. Public meetings are starting to think about that.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: I'd update your YouTube subscription. 10:30,

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: you've got Rotlund, Montpelier, and BSHA, 10:30 to twelve, and we have

[John Kascenska (Member)]: We have something

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: in the

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: morning. Should be a discussion, so Good. That's good. So people can go to that. We'll talk about it. I don't wonder if we want to do a joint hearing with them. I'm just thinking out loud. I don't know if that would maybe not make any sense. That might get too confusing, but maybe we listen and we get into a list of questions.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Sure, mean, think they're also going to be learning this the same in similar ins and outs that we're just getting tuned up on.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Although they did have

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: this was a topic, last week and I think some of the some of the, basics that that we went through, were discussed.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Yeah, it just it's it as you said, I'm sure it's it is new to all of us in terms of finding out what the solution is to the point of your question, Mike. It's like I mean, no one knows what's going to happen in Washington with any of this stuff about anything that the states try to do. But if we don't do something, then the federal government will continue to take if we have less vouchers this year, then we won't get funding next year, and then they'll lose another set of vouchers and this spiral downwards.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: That's what worries me, and we don't have places for people to go. And what I've just understood is that the federal

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: calculation starts from January forward, which is why some housing authorities last January decided not to issue certain vouchers because they didn't know what the economic realities were going to be until about May, I think, April or May. So, but anyway. Which is why this is a discussion in the BAA, right?

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Because of timing issues. It's thorny. I'm wondering, thinking back to Mike's question about, are we going to raise the ire of HUD or do something that's in contradiction and have unintended consequences? How would we get that information? Mean, we

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: To the SHA, I think there have been conversations with HUD representatives. I don't know at what level they've been, but there's been communication between the SHA So this isn't news or some secret. But I would encourage you all to and I can coordinate this information as well. Hear from the SHA about what the nature of those conversations

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: It's normally we'd say, Legis Council, tell us all about this. But we don't really have anybody in legislative council who spent their last ten years doing HUD.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: And don't worry, HUD staff's been coming by at least 30%.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: We won't find out for a while.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Actually, we're not the only state dealing with this, and I wonder if the National Council of State Legislatures or our other partner might be a good place to check and see how people if there's a track record.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: We are not in the only state dealing with this. It's true that we're far from the only state dealing with this. When I last looked into this, which was several weeks ago, I was not aware of any other state that is piloting this solution to section to the second problem. But I'm sure there have been more conversations among the PO organizations, among the states and territories since then.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Maybe another check with NCSL or anybody could be good. Yeah. Thanks, Tracy. Yeah, you guys can coordinate that.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: It's a challenge.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Here we are. So right now

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: there's nothing in our budget adjustment.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: No, would be putting something in. Yes, once we get figured out how to do that. And that's why we're trying to get up to speed as fast as we can. Personally, I view this as a much more efficient or effective way to use some one time money that doesn't create a long term problem of homelessness down the road that's going

[Michael Nigro (Member)]: cost us a whole lot

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: more money if we simply don't have units for people to go to. And if we have a housing crisis, we got to hang on to what we've got and knock through some more of that. James, thank you very much. Appreciate you doing this

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: on short notice and learning it all.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: If you have more questions, Tiffany know. And I'm going to keep us here for one more thing before we have maybe a quick break and do something else. We're going to change topics back to S60. Mike has been patiently waiting for us to get through. Is it on our website now? Okay. It's posted on our site, our committee page. I've got to refresh. Oh, that's the wrong committee. I thought, what is she? That's not our person. Okay, get on

[David Yacovone (Member)]: the committee page. Thank you.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Okay. So this is draft 3.1.

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. This is Michael Grady

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: with by the

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: state of council. Should I have, draft 3.1 of the amendment the committee's amendment s 60 with a January 13 date and a 02:14PM time stamp. Do you want me to just walk through the changes that you requested?

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Yeah. I think we we know what the other ones are. So On

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: page one, lines eleven and twelve, you had previously struck the term climate resilience. You asked that the term resilience be retained and the term climate be struck, and that's what page one, lines eleven and twelve does. Right below that, there had been that duplicative language about climate based emergencies and extreme weather, and you went to weather based emergencies. And then on the next page, on page two, at the bottom of the page, this is new language that you haven't seen before. This is the request that representative Stevens sent me regarding the use of the fund by the secretary of agriculture to pay reasonable immediate administrative expenses. This replaces the authority for the secretary to use $67,000 annually from the fund and allows the secretary to pay reasonable administrative expenses from the fund for purposes of administrating the requirements of the subchapital.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: And, Tom, do you want to speak to why we made that change?

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: By keeping it at 67,000, number one, we're everything's contingent. Funding is contingent. And so if $67,000 is coming out of a fund that doesn't have any money in it, then there's no and it's also it centers it on to be in a half position, which I think we've talked about, and I've talked with the agency as being maybe not quite the right size of need to administer. So if we're sending this back to the Senate for their work on this, then I think taking the 67,000 protects us from the it gets us into the we're not funding this yet conversation more cleanly than saying $67,000 or whatever of nothing is not it just doesn't work. So by this way, we're moving that conversation to the Senate and then to final conversations at the end of the year when we figure out if we're going to fund it or if we're going to be able to fund it. So if there's nothing to administer, there's no need to have the funding in it. And again, paying attention to some of the questions that the agency had is that they're not sure that a HAPL position is the right position at this until they know what the whole piece is.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Does that make sense to everybody? Yeah, it

[John Kascenska (Member)]: makes perfect sense.

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, moving on page three, lines 11 through 15. This is the contingency of funding you wanted on line 14 for it to say in fiscal year twenty twenty seven or subsequent fiscal years.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Right.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: But we aren't limiting it to just yeah. All that work and then nothing. And

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: then last, the point pointed out by representative Feltus in the, changing of the title, It should say an accolating to establishing the farm, forestry operations, security special fund, who revised payments from the farm and forestry operation losses due to weather conditions. Check. Check with the clerk that your title will take precedence over the recommended title by the committee on agriculture as your last in action.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: We get the name.

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: You get the name. Okay.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So if you don't mind not going for a second, our normal clerk is out today. Trevor's not here. Tip is standing in. And so we have to you kidding me? You're clerk for a day. Okay. This is the piece for the day. We have clerk for the day. So we have to vote twice. We vote the amendment.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: And vote the

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: And then as amended, as amended, as amended, or what do we do on the

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You you are amending the report of the committee on agriculture. So you vote to amend the report, and then you vote to move the bill favorably or unfavorably as amended.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: But we don't have to say any further amended or any of those things?

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Well This was only internal.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Well, ag ag amended it from

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. But that that was their report. Right? So you're you're amending their report, and then you're you're approving their report as amended.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Okay.

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Their recommendation of amendments to be specific because it's an SBL.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Recommendation. Okay. So, first thing we are doing is voting on the amendment. Do I have a motion to so favorably pass. Okay. And I need to report that somewhere, right? I just make notes at the bottom. Oh, okay. That was years ago. And wait a second. Who is this? Tom made the motion to favorably support the amendment.

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Well,

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: just Okay. Trevor can do it how he wants. I like the paper trail. We've

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: had the motion, and it's been seconded.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Is there any further discussion on the amendment itself? Hearing none. Clerk to the day may call the roll.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Rep. Lamoille? Yes. Rep. Dickinson? Yes. Harrison? Oh, sorry. Yes.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Rep. Kascenska?

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Yes. Trevor Laroche? Yes. Trevor Murphy?

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Yes. Trevor Nigro? Yes.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Trevor Squirrell? Absent. Trevor Stevens?

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Yes.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Trevor Yacovone? Yes. And Reb Shah? Yes. And the pope is ten-zero.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: One. Yeah, ten-one. Always essential. Yes. And so the next motion would be to approve the bill as amended.

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Recommendation of the Committee on Agriculture as amended.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: That's why the Committee on Appropriations.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Right. Is that John Kascenska? Is there a second

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Feltus? Yes. Rep Kascenska? Yes. Rep Laroche? Yes. Rep Mori?

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Yes. Rep

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Nigro? Yes. Rep Spoille? Yes.

[Michael Nigro (Member)]: Yes.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: And good job for the day. This will be on the floor. It'll be on notice tomorrow, floor Thursday, Friday. And you do it. This is Tom's bill. Our first bill out.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: All right.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Good job, team. So I needed to contest the clerk.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Yeah, there's stuff that has to happen. Nigel knows that this bill is coming from us. He knows that our clerk isn't here and that we're figuring it all out. Yes,

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: there's So I can actually walk up to the clerk's office now and talk through the messages. I mean, usually it's I send an email.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: You probably still have to send an email. Let me forward you, we'll forward you something.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Yeah, need to get

[John Kascenska (Member)]: a copy

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: of it. Okay, we're going to do one last thing before we go. Is that the last thing we have is the reports? Okay, so Marty wanted to update us and have a quick chat about reports, and then we'll be done for the day.

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Our big spreadsheet about reports. Has anybody had any better success than I have in tracking down those reports? I went through the ledge. Okay, but I just wanted to just get, if anybody has a golden key about it, I'd love to know that. Anyway, I went through the JFO thing on reports and looked at keywords and looked looked at dates, and they didn't pop up where I wanted And I went to our webpage and looked through there, and I didn't What puzzled me on this document is that, and according to Tucker, the legislation says that in some particular year, we passed legislation that said five years after a report is initiated, it shall expire unless we do this and we say we wanna have it. So I thought this expiration date on this column meant that because indeed it was five years past the date over here that enacted it. So, my understanding was that this report, for example, was authorized in 2012. It should have expired in 2017. But I thought the implication was is that they were still being produced because they had not been repealed. So, I tried to find some in here. And I found two or three out of 2017 and 2018 on the appropriations commission, I found a couple of them. But most of them I couldn't find.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So I

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: thought, this is weird, and I talked to Lisa Hango and she indeed talked to Tucker and they still are pretty confused about what all this means. I

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: think what's

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: happening that these things were enacted on the date on the left. They were supposed to expire five years later, the date here in the middle. And I think what we need to do is look at the ones that relate to an agency that you know, and look at the topic of the report and see if indeed it's something that you think would be useful. And I would suggest looking at the appropriations website for say 2020 and see if that report showed up then, and if it had enough information that you want it to continue or not. That's the best way I can suggest it right now unless somebody's found it there.

[Michael Nigro (Member)]: So if some of these reports haven't been happening since 2017, if we say we like it, we're actually starting from scratch to read

[James Duffy (Fiscal Analyst, Joint Fiscal Office)]: something that

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: is not happening.

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Or the question would be, if it really looks interesting and you say, oh we haven't been receiving this all along, then you can go back to the agency and say, does anybody in your agency do this? And if they don't and if you think it's important, well how difficult would it be to resurrect that if you really think it's important.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Marty did you ever find out who created this?

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Well Tucker did.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Tucker just didn't did.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Did Tucker take this as a subset of a larger list or is this

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: I a listened to his discussion in the GovOps Committee and he talked about how it was a giant project because they had a big database and then something went wrong with the database and got all separated and he tried to put it all back together again. And then of course it was complicated because committees have changed energy and environment and stuff like that.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Know, you

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: had to reshuffle things which belonged where.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: Few people have changed as well.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Right, right. But the committee, at least for appropriations, anytime it Right, should be

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: So he did admit that it was a big mess and it had not been done in two or three years. Yes, that's correct. So that's why we have this. And I just expressed it was very difficult to find the actual report, even though the title here may vary a bit. If the report didn't say done in pursuant to such and such a law, then I figured it wasn't the right one. But I struggled trying to fund of these reports.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: I have the

[John Kascenska (Member)]: same experience as you, just finding a few things, looking for a long time. If you can go to JFone, you scroll down by ear, can scroll, scroll, scroll.

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, well even using the search function you could it wouldn't spit out what

[John Kascenska (Member)]: I was expecting

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: to spit out. So I went to the mini web page just for the appropriations ones and said, okay, in 2018, did we get a report about, you know, choices here? And we maybe did, we maybe didn't. Know? Did find weatherization, couple of specifically they gave the right citation and everything. It was the report from DCF about weatherization.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: But I couldn't track them very well. So definitely focus on your own portfolio first and then look at others because at least that way everybody gets a little look at it. I just got something in the pink nail today, and I have no idea what it is and whether it's part of that or not. I'm hesitant, I will show it to you. I have another spreadsheet of something with no explanation. I don't even know who's from.

[Michael Nigro (Member)]: Of course, of things

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: come in. We could ask them.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Yeah, well, we have to be in by the twenty third. So they will all be in by next Friday. Right, right.

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: But you could, if you have anybody you're talking to anybody about the BIA.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Maybe focus on the, maybe not the 2017 ones, the more recent ones. That would be the priority update.

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: I would agree with your answer. If they were supposedly expired in 2022 or 2024, meaning they were five years old then, the question is, is it still valid now? It was supposed to be valid,

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: it's just going to do.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Getting There's not a mechanism for us to get that at the beginning of any year. So really they're worthless if they don't get to us, right? But there doesn't appear to be any mechanism they're going to get to.

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Well, I think they get filed with JFO and they put them on that big database and then somehow it gets any assistance to distribute them.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Because we've been getting reports this year. Autumn has been putting stuff on the website. On our page. Under reports. So if you scroll down, you'll have the documents for the day, if you don't process it, you'll say bills and witnesses and blah blah blah.

[Michael Nigro (Member)]: The way

[John Kascenska (Member)]: to do that. I'll go back in the years

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: and see.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So you can go back to a different legislative session. With appropriation. Appropriation. You can do it. There

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: was one year, and we're done. I think it was 2020, I found them.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Really from 2020?

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, I just said no reports. That

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: was the COVID deal.

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Well, know, but we still got. There's still some reports coming.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: A lot of things

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: passed the House just before we closed, if you recall. It was a marathon that we had what we were doing in commerce. We were doing the unemployment law to change it so people could actually leave it without penalizing employers and so people could have money. I just don't like on a Thursday. And I think what happened is all the bills we passed, it was the crossover date, and we passed everything that everybody had.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Right, on the thirteenth

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: of And it all went and it all went to the House, the Senate Rules Committee. I don't think it ever got voted out of there. So whatever reports with those,

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: those would have been different.

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Anyway, I just had great sex in finding it. If anybody else has found better success, that was good.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: But I think prioritize your portfolio and more recent ones. And then if we get to the old ones, then we get to the old ones. And that's all we can do, right? Or

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: if the topic doesn't sound like we're going to need it, just

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: share And I think if you leave it blank, they're just not going to do it.

[Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: At least blanks are going repeal it.

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: They're going to repeal it anyway. So don't worry about that. So thank you for hanging in there, committee. A lot of work done today. Great to have a first bill out. Tomorrow, we start at 09:30 with DFR and health insurance sustainability. Health insurance stuff is another big have lots of thorny issues this year, so we're going to jump right in. And then we're going to have Diva and the director of Medicaid policy come in and talk about some of the implications of HR1, which is the bill that was passed last July, House Resolution one. And so what are the impacts? We know Medicaid, there's a whole lot of stuff that's going be going on. Some of it is happening. Some of

[Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: it doesn't happen until September. Some of

[Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: it doesn't happen until January. So that'll start to inform us of the budget. And then before lunch, Bryn Herr is coming in from lunch counsel and Karen Joellen from the Joint Legislative Management Committee approved something in their purview about restructuring a bit of legislative staff. So that's going to be 10 pages in the budget adjustment. They came and talked to the party and me this morning, and we felt that you all should hear what it is that's going in and you don't just say, Here, just does this 10 pages of stuff. Yeah, it's a lot of statutory changes of words. It's like technical corrections to nouns. But we should all know what that is. So that's all we got. Unless anybody has anything else?

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: No, thank you very much because none of my areas surround us.

[Michael Nigro (Member)]: Oh, you can help John.