Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: That was our first roll call

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: of the year. Good morning.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: This is the House Appropriations Committee on Friday, 01/23/2026, just after 10:00. And we have our first roll call for the session. So we're back with Emily and Andrew to talk about the child care closeout process. And I know you had a presentation to one of you does or both

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: of Yes, I've got a PowerPoint to try to walk through.

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: But Okay. I

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: don't know if you had any more.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: I know

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: you had to pretty quickly, while you were walking upstairs, thought of any questions or anything else for Andrew, on this sort of setting the stage as to why we have to adopt this language because of the mechanics on how the revenue is collected and deposited. Okay, I

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: haven't done many payroll, post nasally, payroll funding agencies. Let me see if I

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: can summarize this. You have four payments. First one did not start with the first month of the So it depends, certain businesses pay on a weekly basis. They're like really big businesses. They're required, it depends on the amount of revenue that they're remitting on behalf of employees. So the issue is not with the payments, but when the returns come in. So when the payments come in, we don't know what part of that is for withholding and what part of that is for childcare contribution. We get the data, and once we get that return, we have that data that gets transferred automatically.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Okay, returns from the employer or from the employee?

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: The employer.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: They're quarterly things they send, quarterly weekly or whatever it is, okay, quarterly payments.

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: Quarterly withholding terms. Right, okay.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: So your first quarter was kind of not quite, it started in August, if I recall, for the first year. October, right?

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: So okay, so the first year it started on July 1, which meant that So it started on July 1, which meant we didn't get a return in July. So there were two Two months. Or yeah. Payments months. Are two months. First quarter because it started on July 1, and you're not getting payments at the beginning of that month based on past year activity, if that makes sense.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, I understand how that works. My understanding is CCC started off in August, so you had a smaller amount the first that quarter anyway.

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: I don't remember off the top of my head. Thought it was July 1 start date.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Well, it might have been but I thought it was they really didn't start withholding until August and September. That was what

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: I remember. That's because you withhold on past activity.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Right. So the first report in would have been in October, the next one in January. You were

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: going to be

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: And then the last one is really in July and that's a new fiscal year, so you're talking from October to July 1. So payments in July are for April through June.

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: So you have

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: to reconcile that whole stuff and put it into the previous year and then we started in the normal full year. Mean, part of the problem is that people weren't sure how much was going to actually the projections on revenue was not really accurate by December. The projections on usage or utilization was not there's the lagging or it wasn't really accurate. And we were told it would take like eighteen months to kind of get a picture of how this would work out in terms

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: of revenue usage and utilization.

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: So you have that now.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Now you're trying to go and so your first year which I believe is 2425. Just the '25. Yeah, now we're in the second year. Is that correct? Is all that

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: That's generally correct. Fundamental issue that JFO, finance and management, and the tax department have been working to resolve is that that last return that comes in July is for payments in April, May and June. And so those payments, that money is sitting in the general fund, but it's owed to the childcare special fund. And there are statutorily required transfers from the general fund. I defer to finance management and JFO on this part, but if that money doesn't get shifted over to the child care special fund, it gets transferred out of the general fund and it's not there anymore. So other funds are getting that child care contribution money that in statute is supposed to go to the child care special fund. So what Emily is going to explain is a process at the end of the year to estimate that amount so that we don't have an issue with childcare special funds getting transferred out of the general fund to other funds that aren't supposed to happen.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Okay, because first of all, have withholding a C101 for your unemployment. You have a nine forty and a nine forty one that you use for your state and federal withholding, you know, for social security.

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: That's for federal?

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Yes, and then you have the WHT form probably for your state.

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: And that's where the child care contributions are.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: So it doesn't have its own form, it's still part of a regular fully withholden, a W-two.

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: Right, we did that because that's a required form that all employers are already using. So to just add a line there made it a lot easier on them, which made complying with the law a lot easier for them rather than creating yet another form.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Right, but it creates

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: It creates this issue.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: This issue

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: and the general fund. Really the issue with why this language is necessary is just timely closure of the general fund. So there's this timing issue where the tax department can't do its reconciliation until it gets the return on the twenty fifth, which they don't get the return and then it's a automatic thing.

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: They're more balanced. Lot of it is. Is automatic. But some of it is not.

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Is not, right? And we want to get the right money in the right bucket. So this is a way to make sure that finance and management can close the general funds timely and to give outline a process to reconcile once the tax department has their information and they fully reconcile for then finance and management to go back and fully reconcile what went into each

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: fund. Because you really, I mean if people are paying for a child care fund, the money goes to

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: go into the child care fund and

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: that's to make sure it goes there

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: and it doesn't go to some other fund or just get lost in either of general fund money. Correct. So it needs to go.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So I have Wayne and then John.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Basically just a comment I was always worried about commingling homes anyway you you're already discussing with the grant locations and the problem so I was also concerned about more about it but I'll talk when we get into the budget and we have people coming in childcare, I'll ask them further questions about the utilization of that money, whether it's tax rate is at the proper level and that sort of thing.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, that's kind of a different issue than what we're talking about right now. This is just a close out process. John?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So this consensus estimate can provide you a little unique here, so we don't have

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: a shortfall later on. And it's

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: this two year basically. Yeah,

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: it's really, we'll have an analyst in our department and an analyst at JFO come do a consensus revenue management, which after a couple of years of this, think is going to be pretty darn, And pretty you'll have the previous three quarters as well. Then that'll finance and management, I believe. Execute.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, they execute.

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Well, and this is what we did this year, and I'll walk through what happened this year because this language didn't exist, but we got to July and went, uh-oh, we got to deal with this. And this just codifies the process, basically, that we went through. And the JFO works with tax and finance to come up with this process. And

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: moving forward, we'll have this process this year and probably next year, our hope with the tax department is moving forward. In January 2027, we're looking to implement, finish implementation of a version upgrade of our system, and one small part of that, it's a really big project, but one small part of that is for withholding payments for, and I want to be clear on this, we're talking about a quarter of the payments, three quarters we already have, it's the final quarter, and of that quarter, 99% of those payments in that final quarter come in electronically, and what we're going to do is make it so that those employers can pay childcare contribution and withholdings separately, and so that money will go into the funds at that time. The one disclaimer that I need to give is it's going to require some serious outreach and education, so it probably would take like six months for us to bring businesses into compliance with this. And the return is ultimately the guiding legal document. So if somebody makes a mistake on these payments when we get the return, it will return them up. But if we're able to get three quarters in accurately and the 99% of them paid in the childcare and general fund pretty darn accurately, it should three years from now alleviate the need to do this estimation process. That's our aim.

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: But in the meantime, we have this fun language that I'll walk through. Hopefully

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: this will all make sense. We're done.

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: Okay.

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Here we go. So, going over the year end closeout language, this is our normal disclaimer. Not making policy recommendations providing information. So we'll go over the proposed BAA language regarding the closeout of the general fund and the child care contribution special fund. We'll go through the current state. Again, we've sort of talked about this already, just it helps to hear it probably more than once. And then what the new language does specifically. So before getting into that, we've talked about this a lot in this committee, but as a reminder, right, in statute, there's a specific set of steps that occur when revenue comes in over and above what's budgeted or what's anticipated. So the first thing is we follow 32 BSA three zero eight, which is the first thing that happens is we fill up the general fund stabilization reserve to 5% prior year appropriations. It's always the first thing that happens when the general fund is closed. And we budget for this. We assume that we're going to need some money in every fiscal year to put into the stabilization reserve. Then the next step is 32 BSA three zero eight, which is that anything after we fill up the stabilization reserve gets split between the rainy day reserves. And this is 15% going to the balance reserve, the rainy day fund, and then 25% Chris is here so we can help you when I get this wrong, 25% to the state employees retirement fund and 25% to the teachers retirement fund. And so that's what would currently happen with anything in the general fund. So in fiscal twenty twenty five, Department of Finance and Management and the JFO and the Department of Taxes works together to estimate the amount of the payroll tax that was collected in the fourth quarter. Because what happened, right, so while those payroll tax receipts are coming in with withholding, they're being deposited into the general fund. When finance manager went to close the general fund, they said, oh, we've got all this payroll tax money that hasn't been transferred out yet. And we don't know how much to transfer out. And finance and management, rightfully, they said, and we shouldn't be the only one making the estimate of how much to transfer out. So let's work with tax and JFO to come up with an amount that should be transferred out of the special fund. Otherwise,

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: it

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: would have been subject to that sort of year end closeout process that's in statute. So what we did in FY '25 is the three entities worked together to establish the amount that was collected in the fourth quarter. They were then reserved in the general funds. We sort of held them and set them aside, sort of fenced them off, and then closed the general fund, kind of keeping those funds where we didn't know which fund they went into from being subject to going to the stabilization reserve and the pensions and the rainy day fund, because it was rightfully should have been part of the childcare fund. So then once the fund was closed, the general fund was closed, all of those statutory allocations happened, finance and management unreserved those childcare contribution special funds that we had estimated was rightfully part of the, should have gone to that special fund, and then transfer them over to the child care contribution special fund. So that sort of was the mechanism to protect those funds that by statute should have been in the child care contribution special fund and not have

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: them go into those trust funds. So

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: the way that that looked was first close the stabilization reserve, that's the first thing you got to do. Then executed the contingent transfer list. So this complicates it a little. So there was also all of these contingent appropriations that were in session law last year, right? So reserving money to be carried forward into the next year.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: We walked through this last week.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And then

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: everything else went to the bottom line. So first we reserved those child care funds, did all of these, and then unreserved them and moved them to the child care fund. So what the BAA language does is codifies this process for finance and management. So, right, like when finance and management got to year end, they were like, we don't have explicit instructions from the general assembly on how to deal with this. We did, you know, in working with JFO and the tax department, were all comfortable moving forward with that, but it makes everybody, there's an actual explicit process on what to do, that makes everybody more comfortable. It's good for an audit process, if anybody questioned why they did that, this language will exist to make it clear. So what this will do is ensure that we can still close the general fund time late, as opposed to waiting later into August to do it. And then it ensures that the childcare contribution special fund gets all of the money that it's supposed to get per statute. So I'm going to walk through each chunk of the language. There's five sections of this language.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We have to say a lot of words to do that. So

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: he works with the finance management and tax department and the principal office worked on this language. Like right after it happened, we all said we need language. So we all worked together to come up with this language. We have back in July, we revisited it in January, there are a few technical tweaks that Grady will bring in, but for the most part, the process is the same. So at the end of the fiscal year, no later than the close of the first week, tax and joint fiscal will tell finance and management what we anticipate the fourth quarter receipts for the child care contribution will be. That's currently sitting in the general fund. So we'll come up with a number that we think is for the child care contribution special fund. And so then finance and management will take that amount and they're going to reserve it sort of in a temporary space in the general fund and then execute the remaining requirements of general fund closeout. So for this purpose in current law, the only other thing that happens, so first you do the stabilization reserve and then the next step, the money to the pension, and the rainy day fund, the teacher's pension. So they're going to reserve it and then finish closing out the general fund. So then once that closeout process is done, now it's possible, I should interject in this part. This is what's in statute, it's impossible, and frequently in the last bunch of budgets, the general assembly has inserted language in the budget that says, in between those steps do some other things, like the contingent appropriations or reserve money for other things. But for the purposes of what needs to go into statute, it'll reflect what's always in statute and then the session law will deal with, if you want to do something different at closeout. So then once the finance and management has closed the general fund, they'll immediately unreserve that amount that was set aside, that fourth quarter childcare contribution payment, and then transfer it to the childcare special fund.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: This is the unreserved step.

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Then there's the transfer step. Yep. And then sections D and E are actually a sort of true up place. So, that's one of the tweaks that we have is it doesn't explicitly say transfer. So, we're going to add some explicit language that says transfer. But so it's possible the JFO, I mean, it's highly likely the JFO and the tax department will not perfectly estimate the amount of the childcare contribution We were very close, I think, this year. As Andrew said, as more data comes in and more years of experience, we'll get better and better at estimating that. But chances are we won't get it to the dollar. So when that happens, once the tax department has fully reconciled the returns, we'll then know what the actual amount should have been. So if the amount unreserved and transferred to the special fund is greater than that should have been, then the excess So we transfer the actual amount. If there's excess, then we're going to reserve it in accordance with the way it should have been reserved because it's really general. The rainy day fund.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Rainy day fund. Stabilization. Yeah, my pensions.

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: We reserve too much, then anything that's left over that's not payroll tax. Take out. We follow the general fund closeout statute because that's what it should have done anyway. If it happens in the other direction, if we don't reserve enough and there's more general fund that's owed back to the childcare special fund, this proposes to unreserve it from the general balance reserve, so the rainy day fund, take it out of the rainy day fund and move it all over.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's not the stabilization reserve, this

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: is the second- Correct, the second reserve. What this doesn't do is take the money, like if we accidentally, I don't want say accidentally, if our estimates are in the direction that means that we put too much into the general fund statutory closeout language, which includes the pensions, this does not reach back into the pension funds and pull out the money that shouldn't have gone to the pensions. It leaves it in the pensions because that's a whole other complicated sets of statutes that we would have to untangle. So it leaves it in the pension, just takes it all out of the rainy day, And then puts it in the child care contribution special fund to make that whole.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So when you had to guess this year, how much were you off? Were you talking about thousands, tens of thousands, millions? I'm being exaggerated, but what sort of was the range of how far you were off? Just so we have a sense of the scope of this. While I

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: was walking over here, I was afraid you were going to ask

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: me that.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Would find out where you're

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: asking a question I can't answer, what actually happened. So we will, I will find out. I don't think it

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: was a lot, and that's what I want people to understand, is that it wasn't, we're not talking about big, big numbers here. That's why I would like to know. Just a range of whatever

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: it was. Yes, it millions. Wasn't And I think, right, like it's in that balancing of like, how do we collect this money that works for, that makes it simple and seamless for employers and make sure that the funds where the money is intended to go to ends up there. Anyway, so that's the five sections that are in the budget. This is what it's doing. So this is just another picture of it. So the steps would be for the proposal and the budget adjustment. First and foremost, before anything else happens, fill up the stabilization reserve. Then reserve the estimated amount owed to the childcare contribution special fund. It will be a consensus estimate between tax and GFO. Once that money is reserved, then follow the process of 308C, rainy day fund, general fund balance, reserve, etcetera. Unreserve the amount that was reserved for the child care contribution special fund. And then do this reconciliation process, so determine whether or not it was too much or not enough, and then move the amount that's owed to the child care contribution speciality. Now that's the proposal of the VA,

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: and that sort of changes current law. And that becomes, yeah, statutory law.

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: That becomes statutory law. Now in the budget adjustment, the governor proposed a process to deal with almost $75,000,000 worth of unallocated funds at the end of FY26 to carry forward to FY27, which is similar in a great contingency language that often happens either in the budget process or in the budget adjustment process, that depending on how revenues are tracking or how you want to deal with unallocated balances in the current year and how they interact with next year, is when we have these sort of session law changes. Last year, it was carryforward money to be utilized in the FY twenty six budget and reserve the 50,000,000 for secretary of admin, some transfer by the e board and the $230,000,000 reserves. Those kind of got stuck in between the two statutory processes. So that has happened again in the budget adjustment. So the last slide was the statutory changes. This is what's being proposed in the budget adjustment. Again, step one doesn't change. The 5% stabilization was sort of

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: first and

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: foremost. Okay, step two is then reserve $74,900,000 year end general fund balance, final property tax increases in FY '27. That will be step The governor's recommendation is that step two. Step three is then reserve the amount owed to the childcare contribution special fund. Then we follow the fourth step, which is anything that's left after that reserve in the rainy day fund and send funds to the pensions. Then we would unreserve the child care contribution special fund amount and then do that reconciliation process and make sure that the correct amount gets to the child care contribution special fund.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So you just, governor's proposed insert step two, the rest would otherwise be the normal order. Yes, correct. Now,

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: while JFO was reviewing this, I think one question for the committee is do you think the $74,000,000 should happen before the reserve for the child care contribution special fund or after?

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: So if this happens before,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: that is committing that amount of general fund to something else, and then what happens if there isn't enough general fund to fill the childcare and the people have paid their taxes to fill the childcare?

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Correct. So if that happens, we wouldn't be able to reserve the full amount that's owed to the childcare contribution special fund. First it would go to FY27 for property tax buy down. And then if there wasn't enough childcare contribution special fund, enough

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: in

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: the general fund to reserve that full amount, then you would either have to un reserve it from the rainy day fund or deal with it in the budget adjustment process. So in the governor's language, it's explicit that notwithstanding both three zero eight C, and its new language is going be three zero eight D, it's explicit that both two sections have to the 75,000,000.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: That's the proposal. That's the proposal.

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: You could strike the notwithstanding of the child of you could put the child care fund before right right

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: we can we could make that step six instead of step two.

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: I would defer purely to finance management.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, I'm not asking you I'm just looking mechanically and then I know you have

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: some questions. It wouldn't be step six it would be flipping step two and step three.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So we would reserve Oh yes, that's right. It. Okay. I

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: was putting it later but next year and

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: then do the Right, okay. Wayne and then when?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: When will we know whether or not the full amount brought in each year will be actually used for child care. So when will we know in a new budget session will enough have numbers that come in to give us a picture of how much it's being reviewed used, as opposed to how much revenue is actually in that fund. Well that would be

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: a better question for DCF oversees that fund. That'd be a better question for them in terms of what the cash flows look like. Money is being transferred into that fund throughout the year, but they're making expenditures throughout the year. And in terms of how they're administering those programs, that's going to impact when the expenditures are going backwards.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Remember, there was a lot of churn before. They were hoping to increase the number of childcare. So if they don't, the missed fund may just keep rising, not be used.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, I just want to go over the mechanics of this. So number one step is the employer pays their employee to pay full taxes both for their state taxes and for the CCC. That's on their W-two, that will end up on their W-two. Then you have, they send money to the state, which then goes into your regular state withholding funds, whatever it always. Then you go, in the last quarter, you fenced off that total withholding fund. You fence off that last quarter in the general fund so you can figure out what's going to go to CCC and what's going to go to the regular withholding fund.

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: Yeah withholding goes to the general fund as part of personal income tax.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Yes, yes, and that you can set these up, we know what that amount is when you get to withholding it.

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: Yeah, we don't, we just don't know what part of that.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: It's the CCC. So you've penciled that out so that you can do the reconciliation for the closing of the fund. So, then you close out the general fund, which is done by F and M, with this fenced off area over here. And then, now the way I have it here is that then after that closeout is done, without that fenced in amount of money for the fourth quarter, then you can go and figure out what then you can take your closeout money without that fenced in. You can give it to stabilization, rainy day fund, all those different categories, and then you can go and look at the fourth quarter and make an estimate based on a lot of things to figure out what is the CCC and what is the regular level told. That goes into the general fund. And then if there's not enough, you could hit the rainy day fund and pull some of it out of that, or if it's too much, you put that gun back into your funds, I would say, was it? Or what do you do if you just transfer from the general fund?

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Too much it would go back to the it would follow through a week so the rainy day fund and

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: the pensions. That would go back to the bank. To be I just want

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: to clarify one thing the amount that gets fenced off is not the full fourth quarter withholding amount It would be the estimated component of that amount that would have been payroll tax for the child care specialist.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: So they're trying to figure out if it's based on which board you received from first quarter plus your history. Correct. So we would be trying

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: to get we're just going to take that component right because the rest of the withhold like 98% or more is You're

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: to take the 1% and the 1.5% whatever you do is and just spend that off the rest of it goes in the regular quarter. I have Yeah. You're going to have employees and employers that reconcile to make sure they're involved, that's

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: how you estimate it.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Super. Well,

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: we'll probably estimate it based on what we've actually received with revenues from the prior three quarters and compare that to the last And when they're reported, the tax department, the way that we get this is just on that WHT app.

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: And you get that every quarter.

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: Every quarter, yes. And the change for the future would be when you go to make a payment, feedback is just making a payment in the payment module. You can think of it as electronic payments voucher, there will be a line for the CCC in addition to the grant, which in the past we weren't able to do.

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Okay, thank

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: you. John and Marty?

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: Sure, so we probably talked about this last year here a little bit, what we anticipate that total amount to be over the full time span here, you remind me with that?

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: JFO nailed it in the first year, actually. About $82,000,000 but that was not the consensus revenue forecast, but really the consensus revenue forecast number was like 90. You'd have to talk with the economists, that's the why that was different.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: But JFOs recommended 82,000,000.

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: The fiscal note I think was 81, somewhere between 81 and 82,000,000, and it came, I had an analyst before just yesterday pull the full year, so it was calendar year 2025 from '1 to February to 02/2005, the total revenue collected was $81,800,000,000 from Josh. Pretty

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: good. Did that fiscal note?

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: It's Ted. It's like they nailed it. Yeah, right. Pretty good,

[Emily (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Finance management said we overestimated by 878,000. Which for only having three quarters worth of data, 5% or one half Yeah, of was a virtually no history.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right, exactly. That's pretty darn good.

[Andrew (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: It's pretty good, thank you. Great. Marty?

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: In principle, I think it would make more sense to reserve the money for the childcare before we set off the $75,000,000 because the money is owed to the childcare by statute. But I think it's going to be a small amount that we really don't need to hassle over too much. I mean, I think it makes more sense because the money is owed to the childcare fund. So, to reserve the consensus that talking about is just that small piece left from the fourth quarter. Then we have money left over, we follow through on the governor's request if that's what we decide to do, and then go through the rest of the reconciliation process, I mean the rest of the reserve process, contingent process. I think it's a small amount of money we're talking about here it's the principle of the thing though right right yeah

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: okay hi Mike has joined us we're talking about child care and close out

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: I don't know how much you've been able to

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: hear but I'll look for

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: your raised hand if you have any questions.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Maybe I'll hold. Okay, so, but I haven't seen them on the Yes, okay. So are there any

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: other questions for Andrew and Emily? Is everyone

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: getting sort of clearer in everybody's minds? A few more times

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: you really know how to put it. I

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: think the five little boxes are really helpful at the end after going through all

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: of it to just kind of get it smaller. So thank you both very much. Andrew, I know we'll

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: see you again. Y twenty seventh is coming along. Coming up soon. So thanks for coming in. I think what we we're running behind because we have a wall call. Are people okay if we continue to trade in the language right now and if you need to take

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: a break you can step out but otherwise we'll did it get darker in here?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: When we talk about money like this, it's always dry.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: You know what I think is the white screen of the presentation was all white and now it's not like Do you want me to Yes, go ahead. Let's go live for a minute and

[Rep. Martha “Marty” Feltus (Vice Chair)]: then