Meetings
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[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Good morning. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Tuesday, January 20 It's 07:20 twenty just after 09:30 in the morning, and we're going to take up a bill that came to our committee somewhat inadvertently, but here we are. It's age six forty eight, and we have members of Joint Fiscal Office and Legislative Council to come talk to us. So if you to come take a seat, that would be great. Maria, have you been in our committee before? Well,
[Maria Royal (Legislative Counsel)]: you know it's been a long time because I went after the 3rd Floor in the old committee room.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: But I've been on Zoom, I think,
[Maria Royal (Legislative Counsel)]: since then.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So we'll introduce ourselves. It's interesting because in 2019, there were two members here who were up on the 3rd Floor, and
[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: then they left, and now they're back. So you just never know what's gonna happen. So Dave, why
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: don't we start with you?
[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Good morning, Dave Yacovone, and I represent the Lamoille Washington District.
[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: Morning, John Kascenska. I'm from Eastburg, and I represent 10 towns in the Essex Caledonia District. Hi, Mike Nigro. I represent Bennington and Powell. Stevens from Florida, you represent Washington, Chittenden.
[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Harvey Feltus from London, Caledonia, three, five towns.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Robin Scheu from Middlebury. It's Bluemle, just from South. And Bluemle.
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Trevor Squirrell, Underhill and Jericho. Wayne Laroche, Highgate, Franklin, Birchley, Richgroove.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And then Michael Mrowicki is not here, but is the next desk from Putney Dummersson, I think he has, and then Lynn from St. Albertstown.
[Maria Royal (Legislative Counsel)]: So anyway, so And I am Maria Royal from the Legislative Council, representing only myself. And yes, so I think you wanted a quick maybe update on age six forty eight, which is every year, the Department of Financial Regulation submits a miscellaneous housekeeping bill, and that's this bill. Sometimes the Commerce Committee adds their own insurance or securities or banking proposals from off their wall builds. That did not happen this year.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And in fact, it was kind of inadvertently sent to us. So we do not need a detailed presentation from you.
[Maria Royal (Legislative Counsel)]: Excellent, because it's 84 pages long.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So keep it at 30,000 feet, and then Michael Nigro will be our reporter on the floor once we're done. Okay,
[Maria Royal (Legislative Counsel)]: So I think maybe why it's here is because it does reference two existing funds. It doesn't substantively change those funds. Particularly, and do you want me to share my screen or do you want me to just describe? Okay.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: You're good. Everybody has. Okay. Don't need to. Don't need to. Disorient us wherever you're talking about.
[Maria Royal (Legislative Counsel)]: Yep. So in the towards the end of the bill, there's some miscellaneous provisions, and specifically sections fifty six and fifty seven. And if you are following online, I'll give you the page numbers. So 56 starts on page 79. So what you'll see there under section 56, there's a repeal section. And it seems to actually does repeal the insurance regulatory and supervision fund. But it then recodifies that fund in a different chapter in Title VIII that is more appropriate. Yeah, because the Chapter III that it was in, everything else that had been in that chapter was either recodified somewhere else or repealed. So there was just that one section. So it made sense to repeal the whole chapter, don't use chapter three anymore, and put this insurance fund with the insurance provisions. So it truly is just a recodification of an existing fund. And this is the fund that collects any departmental fees and expenses related to insurance, that pays for the administrative costs of insurance regulation in the state. And any balance at the end of the year goes to the general fund. So that whole structure has not been changed at all. And then the other fund that is referenced, and there were some changes, it's in session 54, which is on page 72. Thank you. So you'll see there are some proposed amendments to the Vermont Financial Services Education and Victim Restitution Special Fund. The name kind of speaks for itself. So these are monies, state monies or portions of settlements. If there's a securities violation and a victim is able to recover some money, a portion of any settlement will go into this fund. But it's basically used to pay for additional awards of restitution. If a victim is not able to fully recover the restitution they're entitled to, it also helps to fund some of the financial services work that the department does. And then there's also a Vermont Whistleblower Protection Act, so some of the funding can go there as well. So the money stays in the special fund. The interest stays in the fund. It doesn't come to the general fund. I don't know how much money is currently in the fund, but it's specifically for those statutory purposes. And the amendments here had nothing to do with changing the allocation, the disbursements between those purposes that I just mentioned. Most of it was clarifying what terms mean, making sure it conforms with, federal definitions where appropriate, updating across reference to vulnerable adult in Vermont law that had been since updated. So things like that.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes, I see. A person shall not engage in dishonesty, forgery, fraud, deceit in connection with an application for assistance. Correct. If they do, if they
[Maria Royal (Legislative Counsel)]: do, then any award is forfeited. Right. Okay.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That's it. Those are probably the meetings we've got in here. And Pat, do you have any information for us? For the bills, their official office
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: would be even less robust than where they are. There's
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay. Is there anything anybody else would like to know about this bill? No.
[Maria Royal (Legislative Counsel)]: Could hear a lot more about it I I on the
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: just thought, do people feel ready
[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: to vote this bill out of our committee?
[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Oh, we had yesterday. Okay.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay. And so Maria, maybe you do we have to this case was a committee bill, so it hasn't been amended by anybody else or It's not a committee bill. Stricel. Okay.
[Maria Royal (Legislative Counsel)]: It went so Thomas voted it out ten-one. It went to Ways and Means.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Oh, it did. Okay. And
[Maria Royal (Legislative Counsel)]: Ways and Means voted it favorably. No amendments, eleven-zero-zero. Thank you. Look at those reports, you'll hear.
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: There were two deeds on me. Okay,
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: so it's as amended? Yes. Okay. All right, I will entertain a motion to favorably approve age six forty eight. So moved. Okay, Lynn and Judge Wayne. All right, any further discussions? Seeing none, when you're ready, go ahead, anytime.
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Representative Bluemle?
[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Yes. Representative Dickinson? Yes. Representative Felton?
[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Yes. Representative Kascenska? Yes. Senator Laroche? Yes.
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Senator Mrowicki? Nigro? Yes. Representative Squirrell, yes. Representative Stevens? Yes. Representative Yacovone? Yes. And representative Chittenden? Yes. That was a terrible one.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay, and you would like, can
[Maria Royal (Legislative Counsel)]: I grow? We'll figure that out and
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: send Perfect. It to
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Thank you. This may be the easiest presentation you've had to do on the panel.
[Maria Royal (Legislative Counsel)]: Gosh, I wish they were all like this.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We appreciate you all coming in at such short notice. We have
[Maria Royal (Legislative Counsel)]: this little window of time. Absolutely.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Thank you very much. You're very welcome. Great, committee. That completes our morning activities. So if you go to the floor, you are welcome to do that, and then at 01:00 be back here. Adam Gresh will be here to talk about language. We're going to move right into 2027, and then we'll have the Agency of Administration and the Department of Libraries come here today. So you can see the updated agenda as if things change, Autumn will update things. For the budget adjustment if you have anything complicated in your area that you want to give me a couple of pages tiff was kind enough to do that with her area you know if you have a couple of sentences about your your area that you want me to be sure to stick in the budget adjustment or at least I have it so then you don't have to talk about it, whatever. You need anything from me, Robin? Probably, I don't know.
[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Of course you would, no. I
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: don't know if your budget sort of will come back. If I may, I didn't mean
[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: to interrupt you, by the
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Go ahead. I
[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: was just thinking in this team of things, everything's important, but I think the big thing we did was this funding for the EFR and a modest reduction to the excuse me, funding for the ERC and a modest reduction to the EFR. I think that's probably
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, I'd like to, if you wanna, if you have something you wanna write for, and then we also funded the triple A's with that modest reduction. So, yes. I think that's where I'll keep it. Does that make sense? I think I have enough on the payment reform because it's a placeholder, and I can always run it by you and see if I'm a pause case. Okay, I'll
[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: send you a little email then.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay, that sounds great. I think the rest of you and everything's pretty straightforward. I don't know if you have anything Marty.
[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: I can send you. The only thing that I think people might ask is why did we spend $890,000 on overtime for state troopers. Oh yeah. I can just say because we don't have enough people. Some of it was also with the accountability Part is for the accountability of Burlington and the other part is for ESAP, which runs twelve hour shifts anyway because they have few people. And we still have
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: that 6,500,000.0 from when you were last in appropriations for the dispatch. It's still in carryforward. Yes, is.
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Only the two little things fine is the military didn't I
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: got yours down and then they yeah, exactly. I don't know if Trevor has anything, I'm all set on that game warden stuff. ANR had very little, but if there's anything else that
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: we'll take There's information. All set on the launches, feeding the launches program? I think so. That it's payments to farmers and people that provide food at harvest time. Right. The transportation thing's pretty straightforward. Yes, we're letting them keep their money. Yes,
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: everybody on that committee will be happy. So I think we're good. So at both of our caucuses this morning, Marty and I will be giving brief updates. There'll be some of the GFO at each of our caucuses. So you all feel free to chime in too, and you know, so we can we'll get that out.
[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: And we both have a document.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes yes James is not here because he's working on the highlights sheet he sent us one and it's being revised right now with a couple more things so we should have something by eleven that's that's the plan
[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: so and is the intent to have the specific quantities to actually
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We can. Can offer those to members. We can. Yeah, there won't be a caucus of the whole. We're just because it's not that complicated. So, we'll just talk about it in our caucuses. And then, you know, we'll compare notes and see if there's things that we need to be sure get mentioned on the floor based on what we hear the caucuses.
[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: I think it would be helpful to have the printed.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes, absolutely standing up and scouting numbers when they don't have anything to look at is you don't retain it. So yeah, that should be the plan. We'll get copies made. So I think that's everything. So let's go off of