Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Good afternoon. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It's Thursday, 01/22/2026. It's just a few minutes after 2PM. And we are here with Katie McLean from Legislative Council to share some language with us to look at for the Budget Adjustment Act. So welcome, Katie.

[Katie McLean (Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you. Katie, thank you for participating. Here is the language.

[Speaker 0]: I'm not even sure which thing we're talking about. I know you've been working on a few

[Katie McLean (Legislative Counsel)]: different things. Yes. So there are two pieces of language here. I drafted them in a way, can drop

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: them wherever you want to drop them.

[Katie McLean (Legislative Counsel)]: So the first has to do with homelessness prevention organizations and the concept of restoring these community partners to the appropriation level they received in fiscal year twenty five.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, this is the hop thing. Okay. Sorry, I'm not, we're just, we're calling it something else. Oh, okay. Totally confused, but that's all right. Well, so this is the, there was the 2,000,000 that was going to the shelters at OEO, and Theresa suggested that we leave them the $660 whatever, and do the $13.22 dollars to restore the money to those organizations. That's where we are. Okay, sorry, we just had to be oriented.

[Katie McLean (Legislative Counsel)]: So this language is that in fiscal year twenty six, the general assembly shall appropriate roughly 1,300,000.0 from

[Unidentified Committee Member]: the general

[Katie McLean (Legislative Counsel)]: fund to DCF's Office of Economic Opportunity for distribution to community partners providing services to prevent and address homelessness for the purpose of restoring these community partners to their fiscal year twenty five appropriation level as follows. And then you have the specific appropriation for each entity outlined. So you have 5,000 to the Charterhouse Coalition, 46,000 roughly to Home, 5,000 to Groundworks Collaborative, 90,000 to Homeless Prevention Center, 1,000 to the New Story Center, 60,000 to the Springfield Supported Housing Program, 50,000 to Upper Valley Haven, 20,000 to Good Samaritan Haven, 10,000 to the Vermont network, 381,000 roughly to Brock, 184,000 roughly to Southeastern Vermont Community Action, 308,000 roughly to the Champaign Valley Office of Economic Opportunity and 160,000 to the Northeast Kingdom Community Action.

[Speaker 0]: Does everybody understand what is happening there? Okay. Okay, all right.

[Katie McLean (Legislative Counsel)]: Next. Move on to part two. The Syndrome Recovery Center. Oh, that's an unfortunate line break there. So this is the distribution was equal to each of the recovery centers and the result of that was that some of the recovery centers are now facing a hardship for having received an equal distribution. So this is language to give additional funds to recovery centers that were negatively impacted. So in fiscal year 2026, 210,000 is appropriated from the Substance Misuse Prevention Specialist Fund to the Department of Health for distribution to recovery centers that were negatively impacted by receiving equal distributions from the department earlier in the year as follows. 22.5 to the Turning Point Recovery Center of Springfield, 5,000 to Journey to Recovery Community Center, 37.5 to Turning Point Center of Chittenden County, 37.5 to Turning Point Center of Addison County, 52.5 to the Turning Point Recovery Center of Bennington, 37.5 to the Turning Point Center of Windham County.

[Speaker 0]: So that's $210,000 from the Substance Abuse Prevention Fund. And Nolan, would you like to check-in here, please?

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office Analyst)]: On record, the alumni wealth management loans, I just checked, there's $228,000 left on the bottom line of the fund, so there's just enough money to spend money. Some

[Speaker 0]: days you get lucky. What are the other uses for that fund historically? Again, Dolan, Marty has a question. What have been the uses of that fund in the past?

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office Analyst)]: Good question, I don't have.

[Speaker 0]: They usually come in and present to us what they're using it for. So it's often for recovery centers. Do you remember, Tim, some of

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: the other things? Some of it is prevention activities. I don't know if it's for school prevention activities. It's kind of an amalgam of things that have been kind of traditionally funded through that special fund because it existed. Does it get replenished?

[Katie McLean (Legislative Counsel)]: I have a statue pulled out of my TV.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, Katie, go for it. There's also the opioid misprevention, which is completely different. So we have some different ones.

[Katie McLean (Legislative Counsel)]: So this is the creation of the special fund, 30% of the revenues raised by the cannabis excise tax, not to exceed 10,000,000 per fiscal year deposited into this fund for substance misuse prevention. That's subsection B.

[Speaker 0]: And it does get replenished every year. There's a advisory council or something makes the recommendations.

[Katie McLean (Legislative Counsel)]: That's the opioid. Is that

[Speaker 0]: an opioid? Never mind. I'm not sure if there's there's a group for the opioid. Yeah, I'm mixing them up. I'm mixing them up. Wayne?

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: There's a settlement fund also, wasn't there some

[Speaker 0]: sort That's the opioid. That's from the Saffold family. Yeah, exactly. They're similar in what they could do, but not exactly, because opioid is specific to certain things.

[Katie McLean (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, there's a list and statute

[Speaker 0]: of how opioid was used. Great, that's happy news. So, and it's pretty specific, it's pretty clear the department should not have any trouble understanding what to do. Are people good with this? Great. All right. So we will include that. Well, sure. Well, no, what's the other one? Sorry. It's the it's moving the right. So restoring the hop that was taken to build shelters. So they took $2,000,000 We're restoring 1,300,000.0 something, and the other $677,000,000 is going to stay for the shelter. Can I finish this one for sure? So are we all right with doing that and restoring this pop? We'll just put that language in? Okay. We're just about

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Oh, sorry. One more thing.

[Speaker 0]: I'm sorry, Lynn. We're done with Katie. I want to let her go. Have a couple more things you're working on? For

[Katie McLean (Legislative Counsel)]: this committee, nothing I know of. So, Do you need anything else? Be notified. He's going

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: to check-in with you about one. Great.

[Katie McLean (Legislative Counsel)]: I will look pretty soon.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you so much for coming We appreciate it. Okay, sorry Lynn, let's talk about Bridges to Health. Bridges to

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Health, I got an email from Amy that I explained the other guys. This is a food that's been using UVM's facilities, their computers, the whole, they have to, they they to go and they, set up their basic computer staff and make them licensed. They may have as much as seven weeks, maybe six to seven weeks of transition to operating expenses because if they don't get the money right during that July 1 then they will be depending on their appropriation 2027. That they may have to cover a little bit of an operating expense to begin with. But it's support service that's you know getting there because the free clinic will not, they'll take them in and they'll be there with the physical agent, they will not let the news go up there.

[Speaker 0]: Right, they still need equipment and things And like

[Unidentified Committee Member]: it's basically for immigrant health and immigrant migrant

[Speaker 0]: workers on dairy farms.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And other places as well but the point is that everyone agriculture is involved and they have a strong recommendation to do it from there and then health of course the big deal is that there's volunteers, there's all kinds of people to help with us, it's not all just me.

[Speaker 0]: That's right, it's a lot of volunteers who do this.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So where is this going? How is

[Unidentified Committee Member]: this going? It's going from UDM over to the three pretty much all clinics and UVM has all kinds of resources they took it in, I can't remember exactly why they took it in, there was something they had to do with with something they took it in yeah and but they get a full use of all of their equipment

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: everything else.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Going to the free clinics the $167,000 will be setting them up with the things they need to go and transition their software and their licenses and get into a, they piggyback on certain services.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Set up costs basically.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Exactly. A little bit for operating if they need it because they're going to have a request for the 27 Yeah,

[David Yacovone (Member)]: and they're free and

[Speaker 0]: referral clinics due anyway. So ours in Addison County is called the open door clinic. And there are doctors and PT and other people who volunteer their time to help people and there are

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office Analyst)]: people who

[Speaker 0]: are Spanish speakers who translate for them and all that sort of stuff. It's a pretty important service that we have, especially for For our me, that 167 makes sense. Yes. Okay. So let's hold that. Let's see if we can find some money for that.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Source identified yet for the case there.

[Speaker 0]: No, but I've got I can see little pots where we could do this. Yes, and so we'll, after we hear from Adam, we'll also see about, because he suddenly added some stuff that was in the void, for example.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: So are we only looking at

[Speaker 0]: the orangey? No, I've been looking at the whole whole thing. I was just at the moment focused on this because we have people asking for information. I know Dave is getting some language on the non emergency Medicaid transport. Wayne is talking to John Sales tomorrow morning, so we'll hear more about that. And the only other one that's on here, TIFF, is the aids. We can also see the aids and the care,

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: the 45,000 for that. The language really is just a I talked to Grady about this. It's just a change in the number. So what happens in

[Speaker 0]: 'twenty seven? Do we know what they're doing, what they have for 2027 for money? Don't think you and James can go figure out where that is in the FY 'twenty six budget. It must be in the Department of Health.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Want to make sure I understand your thoughts.

[Speaker 0]: I want to know well, wonder if we're going

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: to have

[Speaker 0]: the same problem next year, for one thing. This is the budget adjustment. We've level funded this Vermont Cares program for years and years, and they're asking for an increase because of

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: a lot of people and also because Vermont Care is closed and another losing

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office Analyst)]: shoe quotes.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Where so they have been their utilization rate is higher. Okay. And I don't really necessarily see those organizations coming back to pick up that slack.

[Speaker 0]: Right. So what I'm wondering is what is the government's budget for FY27 for this same thing so if you guys

[Unidentified Committee Member]: can find that out there, just find that right out. Okay, all right so I

[Speaker 0]: think that's everything on this list did you also want to look at the spreadsheet from this morning? Unless anybody has anything else they want to comment on the public hearing. I think we're as far as we can go on that for the moment. Dave is thinking. I

[David Yacovone (Member)]: think it's all covered. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: We have time. I have Oh, yeah, so we can close some of these ones at the bottom. So we're on this big spreadsheet that James handed us this morning about seriously going to about crayons. That's the other thing.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you for bringing it up.

[Speaker 0]: Right here. There you go. Every day I organized my desk. So reach out.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: I've talked with the chair human services and going, think that we should accept the government's recommended. They're going be taking this up in the budget. They issue a free check.

[Speaker 0]: That's the one we've got to get faced with. Yeah, so that was one of the ones that was on the yellow sheet that we said could be in the budget. It's the first one on yellow sheet about reach up.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: The recommendation is to accept that The reduction. Reduction. 176. And, the recommendation, also is, to accept 57 and 58.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, those are just

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: a swap. It's a swap, yep. And though we had questions, as did the committee, about basically building two new permanent positions that will then be in the FY 'twenty seven budget.

[Speaker 0]: What is that phrase? The hill to die on? Hill to die on. Soda.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Oh, maybe that's it. There's two of those. And

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: then we should actually 55, 155, it's caseload adjustment with 300 ks and that's, I should have caught that. That mean, is fine. Okay. The issue that we, that they raised about the GA program is the surplus, the unspent. So we could accept spend. So

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: on 57, the two position swap, is it permanent positions to permanent positions or

[Speaker 0]: limited term? There's limited service.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: They're all as a

[Speaker 0]: service service. Yeah. And but I

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: think the assumption is that they will be made that in the FY 'twenty seven budgets, will be proposed

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So to be we'd be able to let them.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, exactly. But right now, they're swapping it to be in the place where they need the position with an OEO. So that should be pretty so we have now closed everything on that page except global commitment. And I think we still have to create a global commitment.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: And then OEO,

[Speaker 0]: the

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: shelter investments, I mean, this would be a reduction. I would just recommend that we not reduce it to $6.77 ks. I think we should just reduce it to 700 ks. And then we just accepted the $1,300,000 to support the top money to restore that to the organizations that provide that service and use it for Right, so just round it. So round it up.

[Speaker 0]: So we're going to change the two. This is the other half of the money that Katie just had. So we would make that 1.3. No, we make it. It's not even a 1.7. No, no, no. But all we're going to do is make that point seven. I use the wrong number. Yeah. 0.7 change the two Change the two. So in the middle column, we would say 0.7. And on the left, it would say

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: 1.3. Okay. So in doing that, shelter investments, I'm assuming that investing is investing in just existing shelters, or is the expectation that they're going build new shelters?

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: This is, as best I can understand it from my conversations with folks from BHCB and from the homeless alliance and from the testimony that we heard yesterday is that this is to cover increased costs associated with shelters that are in development or currently running. And fact is that some of those shelters are not, it's what I heard from BHCB that is actually working on developing the shelters. Any new shelter development is not going to happen in this fiscal year. And

[Unidentified Committee Member]: so,

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: I'm going to talk with Lily Sojourner tomorrow at lunchtime. And she

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Again, this is BAA, so I'm curious as to why because I can understand if we had places in the state where we had no shelters that were needed if we had to invest money in developing some new ones. But you'd expect to do that in regular budget.

[Speaker 0]: Well we also gave them a lot of money to do that.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: It was $2,000,000 And there is actually an elsewhere. Well and there's money that PHCB has from another source to develop shelters that AHS could tap into.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So investment continues, are they having costs? Do they need more money for operations? Because investments, can you suggest to me that capital investments is And some

[Speaker 0]: sort,

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: this, that, Well, that, or

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: that is why I'm talking really tomorrow to

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Which you should ask. I mean I

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: asked about Yeah, because we got almost no information.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office Analyst)]: So the

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: disposable Are they disposables that they're purchasing or is there investing in some capital that's going be

[Speaker 0]: long term use? Well then there's staff.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: But there is also other money right now sitting in VHCb that can be used to that.

[Speaker 0]: So we don't need to use this money for that. We can restore the money.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: What's the 1.3?

[Speaker 0]: So the 1.3 is

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: the HOP, the money that

[Speaker 0]: we just went to, to talk about the housing agencies that Katie presented. So we're splitting to 700 Let's just say, 0.7. So the 2,000,000 is being reduced by 1,300,000.0, and they're gonna get you to 700,000. And the 1,300,000.0 is the hot money that we just restored when Katie went through that with all the different agencies. So So we're just reallocating the $2,000,000 keeping some of it here and reallocating it back

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: to some of the different. That $1,300,000 is one of the most effective uses of money around it. It keeps people from our housing. If they have an immediate emergency need, it also helps people put in their first month's rent or security deposits. And I got some information from HHSB that they presented to Human Services that went through. It just highlighted what Springfield Housing had done, Rutland, how different agencies had used this money and how many people had either been moved out of homelessness through it or hadn't actually been able to hold onto their housing through it. None of those. Yeah, it's pretty striking. It sounds fine

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: to me. No question. So they

[Speaker 0]: want to be free that you move There'll be a new line. New line. It'll be a new line. James will figure out where it goes. This

[Unidentified Committee Member]: hot money is for people at 30%, right? Okay. I so. Yeah. So this is like Yeah. This is the extremely low, whereas a lot of the VHCb money goes to buildings for people at 60% roughly. But this is really when people ask can you combine everything together, it's like if I'm not mistaken, this is for the lowest

[Speaker 0]: Extremely low income. Dave?

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Yes. Ask for your patience a little bit, I want to make sure I'm tracking the different pieces here.

[Speaker 0]: I thought when DCF was here yesterday,

[David Yacovone (Member)]: they said there was upwards of $6,500,000 give or take, unspent in general assistance, that they indicated they wanted to enroll into next year for some type of initiative which they really weren't at liberty to share with us, though I think it felt shelters.

[Speaker 0]: It only so far? So it's 5,500,000.0 that they're going to carry forward into FY twenty seven, for an $11,000,000 program that is addressing housing in a broader way. But I don't believe it's all shelters. I think shelters will be a part of it. But I think it somehow is also going to dovetail with the housing bill that Teresa and Eric McGuire. I've bill that they're doing to work on this. So I think they're all of a piece somehow, or they're connected. Thank you.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: So the 1,300,000.0 right now that we're talking about putting into the housing opportunities program, how do we know that's the right amount? Was that testimony from human services?

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Human services, that was their recommendation.

[Speaker 0]: The recommendation of where it should go. Restoring, we're learning now, we're being very specific about who gets how much money, so it doesn't get, because of what was past. And

[David Yacovone (Member)]: then the 700,000 is going where?

[Speaker 0]: That's staying with so the governor recommended they wanted to have $2,000,000 more to go to shelters. But that was a budget adjustment request. So we're saying you can keep $700,000 of that. It's still an increase in money that they're using for shelters. But we're going to restore the $1,300,000 back to the HOP. So there's no new money, we're just reallocating the $2,000,000 that the governor had in his budget.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: We're following the committee's recommendations. Yes, yes. I'm trying to get as comfortable as I can with leaving money on the table with all these needs that are going on, and trusting, not that I don't trust you, but hoping that the proposals that are coming will be meaningful and on par.

[Speaker 0]: Yes, I think we all are feeling that way. I mean, hope that we are, yes, because we need to fix this.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: That won't start until at least July. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, so I'm tracking okay. Are. Yes, we're tracking. Yeah, and keep asking questions because there's, you know, that's okay. Does anybody else have anything they need to say at this point? That means that

[Unidentified Committee Member]: we approve line 59 for the 300,000. Yes, so that's going to

[Speaker 0]: be changed to 700,000.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Know what it's about now that I'm fisting about it.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, so Senator Welch is coming to talk to us in about ten minutes. If he's on schedule, I don't know where he is before he's with us, but he will be coming in here. The floor starts at three I'll need to go ask somebody to make an announcement. We have the budget workshop tomorrow

[Unidentified Committee Member]: at noon from twelve to one,

[Speaker 0]: I want to add, I'll have somebody make an announcement about that.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Can't we

[Unidentified Committee Member]: invoke the rule where Autumn can go and sit in your seat just being

[Speaker 0]: approved? Yeah, Maybe James. Yeah, I'm to go and see if Laurie will make the announcement for me. It's readable, very mixed screens. So we'll go back live. I assume we go live when the senator's here. Yeah. I assume we do. Yeah. So, and that's around 02:45. And then after that, we have What do we have?

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Who's coming this afternoon? Do we

[Unidentified Committee Member]: have anybody coming this afternoon? Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: We'll check back in after the senator. Oh, we will have to go to the floor because there'll be a roll call on once they'll So that will happen also. And then we'll see where we are from there. But I think we're circling