Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Afternoon. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It is still Tuesday, 01/27/2026. It's just after 03:00, and we are going to hear from the, agency of administration and get their budget and red is this, are all they want now going to have this as

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: the color so everybody's going

[Rep. Liz (unidentified)]: to run out of red ink all over the state of

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: supplies for a solution called the problem.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Well, that's leaking. Hope is that red ink doesn't mean red ink in other ways, just that it's a pretty feature

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: that we're use. All on the cover. So

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: introduce yourself and take it away. Thank

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: you, Madam Chair. For the record, Nick Kramer. I'm Chief Operating Officer for the Agency of Administration. Great to be with the committee again. Thank you all, as always, for your time. Folks will remember, this is probably the most exciting budget in state government. Always is. We have lots going on. I say that only half facetiously. I mean, the secretary's office, the business unit I'm going to talk about today is actually does have a lot of kind of idiosyncratic pieces. It's maybe non traditional, just in the sense that it's often the place where things land when they're kind of an orphaned budget item without a home. So we do a lot of kind of miscellaneous and other duties as assigned, often by this body, right? But I'll speak to that a little bit. But before I get started, I always want to start off with a shout out to the team, speaking of this beautiful budget book that actually puts this and every other budget book for the agency administration together, financial services division, whose budget, incidentally, I'll be covering today consists of 10 people. We have 40% of them with us.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Here's a result of you all.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: They just do a fantastic job, and I don't think I need to stress to this room how much work goes into creating a budget and specifically these materials. They work tirelessly this time of year, and they've got 16 different budgets that they present and sort of own as a small team of 10. That number often that is growing, we just they took on the Labor Relations Board this year. And so that, again, to the point that things have a way of landing in the agency of administration, we're customer service oriented agency, and we're always looking to support state government in any way we can. This team really exemplifies it. So this cover too, I didn't mention your senate counterparts earlier. This, I believe, is from a local Vermont photographer, somebody in the team follows, and so very obviously beautiful picture. I do believe it's the bulk of the red ink from a budget perspective.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: I hope so. And then this is also just I'll mention this, the first year we've changed what we're asking agencies to present to us. So you're the first one who gets to do this. So we look forward to seeing how all that works.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Well, I appreciate the committee's forbearance if I stray or if old habits rear themselves. I'm not planning to spend a ton of time in the attachment B today, the ups and downs form, I understand is out in 2026. So I'll give sort of a high level overview. And, again, the team has done a lot of work to pull together, I think, a lot of what was requested in that September memo. I'll set the tone, I guess, since I'm the first one. Unfortunately, as you'll see with a number of departments, that guidance from the legislature, just the timing, it was a little bit after our internal budget instructions went out in So the there's maybe this year a little bit of misalignment in some cases in terms of the format of certain reports. But I think FSD being a great example, everybody across the executive branch has done their very best to try to provide what's being asked for and will treat it as an

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: ongoing.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Right, we are not expecting perfection in year one, but progress, good progress is important, and we're all learning actually as we try to do this and become more accountable. Ben, great, thanks.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: All right, so then diving in, if it please the chair, I am going to I don't know if it's possible to bring up on the Sure, sure. If folks have I'm not going to be looking at it, but just if that's folks' preference. I see everybody has a printed copy. I'm going to be walking through the budget books, starting with the slides, which look like this. So just a quick refresher from the committee. I'm sure this is mostly familiar territory, But the agency of administration generally consists of a bunch of different departments, even the Department of Finance and Management, whose commissioner you just heard from, the Department of Taxes, Libraries, Buildings and General Services, Human Resources, those all sit within AOA, and those commissioners report up to the secretary. I am not going to be speaking at length about their budgets today. I'm focusing primarily on the central business unit, which consists of the secretary's office, financial services division team that I just spoke about, the office of risk management, which is a mighty team of three people, the office of racial equity, which is, of course, a growing and important part of the work that we do. So that structure is laid out on the first slide here. The secretary's office has the sort of the core secretary's office proper, for lack of a better word, is another small but mighty team, myself, the secretary, the deputy, our and executive assistant, Chrissy Gilhooli, who may be a familiar face to She's been fantastic. And so we are that sort of core team. It also includes the chief performance office, that's Justin Kenny, and Haiti, his colleague who run that shop and do a lot of work statewide. The Chief Prevention Officer is Monica Hutt. She works very closely with the governor's office and is primarily embedded in their operations, but she is part of our budget and her position is us. And then the state recovery officer, that's Doug Farnam and his team and the committees, I'm sure familiar with all of their work. And so they are currently three and I'll talk about that's a slight tweak from last year. But that structure is largely unchanged from FY '26. Financial Services Division, I mentioned 10 folks. Their budget is primarily funded by interdepartmental transfers, in fact, entirely funded by interdepartmental transfers. They bill back for their services the departments that they serve. And so the Office of Risk Management, mentioned there are three people there. Their kind of administrative costs are funded out of three insurance internal service funds that we run. There's workers' comp, general liability, and auto liability, and then one called all other insurance, or it shows up sometimes in this document as AOI. That's kind of an aggregation of a lot of smaller policies. Some departments have different programmatic needs, so there's nothing necessarily statewide. They all get lumped into that into all of their insurances. And then the Office of Racial Equity, so created in 2019, starting with Susana Davis, the executive director has grown significantly, I'd

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: say

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: in the last decade, they're now up to six positions total. There are three of them which are funded by general funds. That's the division of racial justice statistics. And there are three which are funded by the HRISF, and that's Susana and then two other folks team. And that really, the rationale there, I think, has to do with who's more internally focused and serving agencies versus general work.

[Rep. Liz (unidentified)]: I'm just going to start off by asking, I know that the Office of Racial Equality, some of the money is going to the Department of Health for health equity. Is there a position going with that, or is that just a

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: There was a transition. I had thought and maybe I'll get over my skis here, but I thought that that was year's budget item for the it was specifically related It was last year. Health equity. And, no, there were no transfers of physicians, just a a shift in where the funding shows.

[Rep. Liz (unidentified)]: I think it was in the period too.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Maybe there was a

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: They may have just showed in

[Rep. Liz (unidentified)]: there because I think it was in

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: the FY twenty six budget. So the old language is probably in there even though

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: we didn't change that.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Thank you. Of course. Yeah. So and then on the left side of this slide, there's just a chart visualization to help show the breakout of our funding. We're about a third general funded, about a third IDT, and about a third ISF. The ISF, as I mentioned, is primarily the DHR ISF and the insurance ISFs workers' comp, general liability and all other. The IDT funds are a mix of the financial services division, which I mentioned are all IDT, then also the recovery office, they're funded by a FEMA IDT, which rolls up into that category. And so the idea there being that much of their work is federally reimbursable related to the nature of the work that they're doing. So they show up there. The tiny sliver of gray of special funds, 125,000 this year are clean water funds, and those flow through the agency of administration. Again, I think because they didn't have anywhere else to land, those are part of the Clean Water Board's annual recommendation. And that's a statutory process. Every year since I've been here, the governor's recommend has reflected their recommendations exactly. So we just plug this number in. And those are for anybody who's interested for stormwater, municipal stormwater utility incentive payments. So those flow through our office as well. So pause there in case committee members have any questions or

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: okay.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Then moving on. I just get tripped up by the QA to flip. I slide, looking like this. It's a 27 summary and highlights. Not not a ton going on. I mean, is kind of a sleepy year. I will highlight in the secretary's office, we have two things I would particularly flag. So there's the removal of one limited service position in the recovery office, a financial manager position, bringing their total down to three. That was, I believe, an ARPA funded limited service position and the funding was going away, and this was an anticipated sort of winding down of that work. So that's very much something we were anticipating. The $125,000 of clean water funding I just described that if when folks are going through the attachment B, if the attachment B will show us pretty significant down from last year, we had seven thirty, I think, and that's partly because of like a one time use the Clean Water Board was recommending for a reserve, for anticipated federal funding in the clean water space. But that request is not repeating this year. So there's drop there. In the Office of Racial Equity, we're also removing a limited service position for whom the funding was going away. PDG stands for thanks to somebody earlier for helping me with this, was Preschool Development Grant. They had a position associated with this is a fairly sizable grant. I'm given to understand that led primarily in the agency of human services, but associated with the scope of work, there was a position, a limited service position in the office of racial equity that the work that that position was doing has, I think, come to a close, and this is just winding down the position in alignment with the anticipated timeframe. In the financial services division, really, it's the sort of usual annualization exercise, lot of salary and benefits increases, there were have been 10 people last year, there are 10 people again this year, the cost of paying those 10 people goes up. And in the office of risk management on the administrative side, it's also a similar story, just mostly salary and benefits pressures. What I think is a little bit probably more, maybe of more interest to the committee since these items will show up in every other budget you review somewhere on the attachment B, there will be a line for insurance costs since these are internal service funds and get allocated across agencies. So we self insure for these items, with the help of an actuary every year, actuary comes up with projections for what we need to charge departments based on actual claims experience. We have a conversation during budget development every year and set those rates. I put premium in quotes because it's not really a premium, but that's kind of how we talk about it. This is what we charge to other departments. So across the enterprise, for workers' compensation, the premium collection is up about 13.4%. That's again, primarily driven by claims experience. That's not out of the realm of experience. All three of these funds experienced quite a bit of volatility just based on the market conditions. I was down the hall earlier telling your Senate counterparts, bamboozling to me, but like after the twenty twenty three floods, our flood insurance actually went down, of all things.

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: Flat insurance. Which But the workers' comp

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: up 13.4 driven by claims. So are there there have been more claims, and that's why it's up. And do you are you noticing any trends or any concerns that you can address within departments? No, we actually I appreciate the question, Madam Chair. We look at this a

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: lot multiple times a year, and we meet with our adjusters to review claims experience. I think primarily what's driven this is actually not an increase in claims in like the incidence of claims, the number of claims, but cost of certainly have a couple high profile or a couple high ticket items. I mean, it's hard to like it's just really hard to anticipate, right, because these are unfortunate events sometimes that we certainly don't plan for, and we have done a lot over the years. I think there's actually the last summer that we met, there was a really interesting chart shared by the actuary showing like claims experience going back over the last decade for the state. And the trend was decidedly better accelerating, particularly during pandemic. And I mean, there's a lot of different categories, right, within workers' comp that can cover a lot of things. But short answer to your question, I don't think there's anything that's causing us undue concern.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: No pattern. So, yeah. And the sprained ankle is not as expensive as a broken back or something like that.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: For instance, yeah, I would assume more long term health conditions or anything else

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: that can come up. It can be a diverse year.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: But the fund balance there is still negative.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Yeah, so good eye, Madam Chair. I included this chart because I didn't last, and I got follow-up questions about it from Representative Harrison. The workers' comp fund balance has been in deficit for a couple of years now. I think the trend that I would highlight is that, and this is a little confusing, you kind of have to read from right to left. The rightmost column is the balance the at end of FY '24. The middle column is the balance at the end of FY '25. We've gone from negative 3,500,000.0 to 2,500,000.0. And that's actually in keeping with what we've been trying to do there. We've been slowly amortizing a deficit based on the premium rates. I mean, we could have amortized, it's an internal service fund, so we could have done it in one year, but then everybody's rates would have gone up 400%. So we've been sort of slowly managing the fund to get back to balance there. So, continued progress there. On general and auto liability, also up about 5% from FY twenty six. Again, that is well within the bounds of what we typically experience ups and downs. I think there were some significant downs in some of these last year if I'm not making that up or the year before, so like a five year average might be an even better way to look at this, and then all other insurance is down about 18%, but about 1,400,000.0 based on the intricacies of those policies. So before I move on to the one times and initiatives, I'll just pause in case folks have any questions on base. Oh, you do?

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: I do see one, Martha.

[Rep. Martha Feltus, Vice Chair]: So back to the workers' comp, will you be adjusting rates to continue to attack this fund balance?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Yes, representative. So what's been budgeted in FY twenty seven is calculated to pay our anticipated obligations and our actuarial projections and partially help amortize this deficit. So, that's the plan. I know, I think we've been making pretty good progress. Of course, you know, with any insurance pool, I'm sure my risk management colleagues would want me to say, I mean, it's, you never know, right? It's the best you can do until some disaster happens, right, or some really terrible event, but we're certainly managing towards positive fund balance. Okay. So then there there's just one initiative to talk about, a onetime appropriation for ideal Vermont inclusion, diversity, equity action of leadership, I think if I'm getting the acronym right, that is a program run by the Office of Racial Equity that works with municipal leaders across the state who have an interest in advancing diversity and equity initiatives at their local level. I think it's been a really great program. We've seen a lot of real success stories coming out of that. Committee members will remember last year, there was a request in the FY twenty six governor's recommended $220,000 in two fiscal years. Ultimately, the bill has passed, just had 110 for one year. So this is that request again for the next fiscal year.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: And I'm trying to remember, do you know how many municipalities are taking advantage of this at this point?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: That's a good question. I don't, off the top of my head, I'd be happy to follow-up, madam chair. I'm sure the or the Office of Racial Equity could Yeah. Was. They may even be in there on their website. But I don't know. I think it's my sense is it's, you know, dozens, not hundreds. I mean, a it's pretty intensive

[Rep. Martha Feltus, Vice Chair]: There's a few you

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: can do each year. You can't do 60 in a year. You have to do a few.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Because I think it's a pretty high touch program that the Office of Racial Equity works intensively with them. Okay. Any questions from folks on that?

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Yeah.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Well, that so that sort of brings me to the end of the high level summary talking points. The budget book continues for 73 pages. There's a lot of detail here to the chair's point. I guess, in the interest of time and wanting to be respectful of the committee, I know you've got lots to do. I won't propose to walk through anything else in great detail, but I'm certainly happy to answer questions or touch on topics that are of interest. Your

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: bottom line is, I think, on page 11 of all the ups and downs, right, that the new budget is? Yes.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Page 11, yep.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: And it looks like you're going down from $8,000,008.16 to 8,000,149?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Yeah, so I would encourage humbly encourage the committee to take the total really in any ups and downs by all funds with a grain of salt, just because there can be so many things happening in different funds. That down you're pointing out, Madam Chair, is primarily driven by the $630,000 drop in clean water fund.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Oh, the clean water fund. Right.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: So that's making up the bulk of that. There's also some significant downs in the IDT column, right has to do with the fact that the PDG grants limited service, that's our budget last year, and that was all IDT funded. And then also the recovery office limited service position that would have also been IDT funded. That explains right.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: So programs ending in clean water going down. Okay. Yep. You operate all these programs that we can't read just to type things.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Is the challenge of fitting on paper, Madam Chair? Yes, so these you can see they're broken down by kind of component unit, the Chief Performance Office, FSD Financial Services Division, Richel Equity Risk Management Recovery Office. There is a lot going on in the agency of administration. And I guess I'll take the opportunity just to highlight because I think this was explicitly in the request committee. So, in terms of legislative initiatives, we had a busy summer, so I'm sure we all did. But among some of the things that landed with the Secretary's office specifically, we, our executive assistant, Chrissy Gilhooli spent most much of her summer supporting the redistricting task force, there was a lot of that went into that in collaboration with the colleagues at tax. We facilitated a, I was speaking with representative earlier, discussion among incumbent adult education and literacy providers around adult education and literacy funding, which of which we're not by any means, subject matter experts, but could certainly be a convener and certainly learned a lot. Was telling Representative Feltus, it was really an education and a pleasure to get to know a lot of really hardworking, dedicated people in that space. Had So, some very engaged, intensive conversations in person here in Montpelier, really appreciate the folks coming up from all the way from Bennington in some cases and down from the NEK. So that was a significant body of work. We convened similarly a series of stakeholder meetings with grants, stakeholders, external grant folks across the state, representatives from the nonprofit sector, the RPCs, the League of Cities and Towns to talk about bulletin five, which is the bulletin managed by the agency of administration governing state grants processes, we actually that wasn't the focal point, but that's kind of the vehicle through which a lot of our grants policies are made. So we had a lot of, there's been conversations over the last couple of years about grants, state grants administration and possible improvements. We wanted to get in line with that conversation ahead of that conversation and seek some feedback from external partners. We held a series of meetings over the summer that brought folks together to take feedback, we had a cross section of like grants, kind of administrators from different departments, from AHS, AOT, ANR to listen, to take some of that feedback and then work collaboratively on some updates, which we're really excited about. And so there will be a revision to Bulletin five coming effective July 1 that I think addresses a lot of concerns we heard and we're hoping can cut. And we've committed to, and I understand our ongoing kind of a regular quarterly convening with that group of external stakeholders, to make sure those channels of communication stay open, that we're getting live feedback in terms of what's working, what's not working. It's, of course, always a balance between trying to make things as streamlined as possible and user friendly on the recipient end and balancing our federal requirements to collect in our own state internal controls to ensure that we're being responsible stewards of public dollars. Without making them report so much,

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: they have no they have no time to actually intimate the grant because they're just reporting everything. Totally. So you found that you found that that was a pretty worthwhile exercise to go through with all these folks. And it sounds

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: like some things will change. We definitely did. I think we had some really productive conversations. I mean, I encourage folks if they're interested to reach out to representatives from Common Good and VLCT and, you know, give their perspective. But we were all feeling, I think, pretty, pretty positive coming out of those discussions. I mean, yeah, there's a there's it's always a dialogue. Right? And there's a longer list of things they would love in an ideal world that we could easily implement or in fact legally implement under federal guidance. But I think where we landed in the middle, there were a lot of in process improvements that are going to benefit actually both sides to be frank. We got a lot of engagement from internal grants administrators saying like, yeah, why do we have like four different versions of this form and could we have a standardized one? And so we're doing a lot of stuff. And big shout out to that team, lives in finance and management.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: That's the sort of thing that we'd like to see. That's excellent.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: We're pretty proud of that work.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: The team's done a great job. Excellent.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: So that's just a cross section of some of the miscellaneous things. I'm sure there are others. I mean, a lot of what we do is just trying to keep the lights on and stay calm. It's been increasingly challenging as this committee knows, right? Y'all do the same thing. And as the world experiences new and interesting levels of uncertainty and all kinds of facets, we are often in a position of reacting as best we can and trying to anticipate what's

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: going It's your agency, your department that is the one that sort of is the place where things land. We're sort of

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: the first line of oversight for better and worse in many cases, but really benefit from those collaborations and support of a lot of different teams across the state. Maybe that's a good place for me to leave it unless That

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: was a good overview.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Anything your team wants to let us know about or highlight that we haven't heard about?

[Rep. Martha Feltus, Vice Chair]: You have a great CEO of.

[Rep. Liz (unidentified)]: Later.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Literally, actually.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Well, that's great. See, it's exciting stuff you guys do. It's important stuff you do. I mean, the grant, I know the grants thing, a former recipient when I ran an RDC and how long it took grants to get out. Anything you can do to make it easier for everybody, including yourselves, why not? So yeah, great. Well, you for coming in. Thank you all for coming in.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Thank you so much. Now you get even better. I think libraries is up next. Know.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Very excited. All right, thanks so much. Take care.

[Rep. Liz (unidentified)]: So we have

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: literary folks.

[Rep. Liz (unidentified)]: They all

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: look the same, I know. So we have two of you, do you want to come or one of you, however you'd like to do it.

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: Probably have it, always love it. Who doesn't love a library? It's not your mother's library.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: The same

[Rep. Liz (unidentified)]: as it used

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: to be. So welcome, and

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: if you want to introduce yourself

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: for the record and talk us about your

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: budget. Absolutely. Good afternoon. My name is Catherine Del Neaux. I'm the state librarian and the commissioner of the Department of Libraries. And I appreciate your welcoming me here today to talk about the department's budget. I'm joined by my colleagues from the Department of Libraries, Tom McMurdo and Jeanette Schaefer. And I'm joined by the same crackerjack team of folks that support Nick Kramer, who you just heard from our Financial Services Division. So everything wonderful and tiny that fits on a page in this budget book and all of the numbers behind it, they support us with and so much more. Our department operates within the agency of administration. If you'd like to visit the state library, please do so. We're located in Barrie at 60 Washington Street. We rent space from the Vermont Historical Society. And in that space, we have 18 permanent staff members and two limited service staff. The two limited service staff are working on two capital grant programs with one time federal funds. I'll just share an overview of the department because we're doing a lot to support libraries in the state and to support state government, and then we can go through the budget book and I'm happy to answer your questions. At the Department of Libraries, we still have physical collections, and we hope to have them forever because we have the Vermontiana Collection. So if you're really interested in strange things about Vermont, please ask us your questions. We also have materials about legislative history, children's literature. We have a partial repository of federal documents. We have a growing public policy collection. So if you are running into any questions in your work as legislators, please let us know. We can help you. You all are eligible for library cards, and we're happy to do reference work for competes. And we also, of course, have a library science collection. Our state library also houses a network library of the Library of Congress's National Library Service. That's known as the Able Library. And the Able Library serves Vermonters who have qualifying visual and other print disabilities. So that is for folks who cannot use a standard print book, And that could be for a variety of reasons. If you break your arm, think Able Library. If you develop arthritis, think Able Library. Mom with macular degeneration like me, think Able Library. So lots of folks qualify for those services. We're actually expanding Able Library services focusing on youth. We have Wonder Book collections and other materials that help youth to use print materials. And some those collections are books that have an audio component to them, for example. So many people who have learning differences are eligible for Able Library services through the department. The department not only has physical materials, we also have electronic collections. And that's something that Assistant State Librarian, Tom McMurdo, is really more expert in than me. But we have the Vermont online library databases, the Udemy learning platform, Peterson's career and test prep learning platform, and we also have a collection of ebooks and e audiobooks that are kind of a base collection of classics and perpetual use materials, and that is called the Palace Project app. All of those materials are available to all Vermonters, yourselves included. Again, get yourself a state library card if you don't have one yet. But also, if you have your public library card and you're using the public library locally, say you're at the Bennington Library or the Ileslie Library, you can just go in and ask them to help you to get connected with those resources. The idea is that if we provide that basic electronic resource, then individual libraries that don't have the resources to pay for those materials, those electronic databases and ebooks and audiobooks and learning platforms you know, if you're up in Canaan, Vermont, and the budget is small, you'll still the people in that community still have access to those materials. And if you're in a community that has more means, then you can focus on supplemental materials and enhanced collections. We provide access to everything that we have, digital collections and electronic resources through our reference services of the department. And we also have a very active interlibrary loan program. There is never a book a Vermonter cannot get at their library. You just need to say, it's not here today. Can I get it through interlibrary loan? And that sets in motion a wonderful we should do a film about it following the courier around the state, but

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: people pull a book off

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: of the shelf in your community, and they'll bring it over to your community. And it's a way that we keep costs down throughout the state, And we use some of our federal grant money from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to fund that service of to fund grants for the courier program. Yes. Can you

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: can you go online and search for holdings in your library?

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: You can. We actually administer this is getting a little bit wonky. So if I go too far into librarian land, pull me back, please. But we have something called the Clover platform, and it it basically does live searches of all of the libraries that participate around the state. So you can see what's checked in not just on your library's shelves, but what's checked in someplace else so that you can borrow those materials and have a good success rate. And I wanna share, Clover doesn't extend to New York or Nebraska or California. But if there's a book you cannot get in Vermont, we we at the Department of Libraries have a staff member who basically just all day long moves books from out of state to our state. And so this is a really great way to keep costs down for local municipal library budgets, for incorporated library budgets as well. And it's a way to really make materials available to Vermonters. And it's something that we spend a lot of time and energy on because we really want to encourage people to use their resources in the best way possible. We're really excited. Last year, we were able to work with University of Vermont and get them in the Courier Network and get them on that Clover database so that you all so everyone has access to their collections as well at their public libraries all around the state.

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: Periodicals also?

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: Some periodicals can move. We do it in different ways. Sometimes you might get a PDF of an article, but we can help you with either books or periodicals. And some libraries will even send media and other materials. I just want to mention, because you or your constituents might have need of this, the state library used to include a very large law library. Some of you who have been in the legislature for a long time will remember that. We no longer have all of those resources. So the department makes an annual grant of $90,000 to the Vermont Law and Graduate School so that everyone in Vermont has access to a robust law library and a librarian who staffs that program. They are they actually exceed the the bounds of what we're asking of them. We're asking for about forty weeks forty hours a week of reference service, but they make the collection open to folks even when their dedicated CLIC librarian is not there. And CLIC stands for Community Legal Information Center.

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: Go ahead. On that, at some point you had conversations with every agency saying you want to close this library and from a distance about what's going on in your conversations, you know, a week ago, that's awful. Can you just share for a couple of minutes what was it like to get the notification or come to the conclusion that this was going to happen and how you found the best solution?

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: I was not the state librarian at the time that this change took place. My understanding is that there was a gradual shift over time and that initially there was a law librarian position that was not filled quickly and then was cut. And at that point, when the law books become out of date, it's very difficult. If you think about the green books in this room and the pocket parts, if you don't keep a law book up to date, it's actually worse to have it on the shelf than not to have it on the shelf. So the books in the state library's law library collection, many of them became less useful. A decision was made, I believe, involving the legislature at the time to use this approach. The thing I watch for as the state librarian is the health of the Vermont Law and Graduate School. And if they're performing a service right now that they're doing very well, If anything were to happen to that law library, if anything were to happen we've seen many libraries of academic institutions that have called us in the past couple of years to say, we're shuttering this library. Do you want any of our materials? And in that case, we do probably the saddest job a librarian can do, which is go and cherry pick Vermontiana and other topics of interest to Vermonters for the state library collection. It would be very difficult to build the collection that the Vermont Law and Graduate School has now. So that's just something that we should all be aware of if there's ever an issue with their continuity. There would be a some there would be a gap here for Vermonters. Does that help to answer your

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: Yes, because it just gives us more than just the bullet point, the insurance. So no, I appreciate it. Thank you.

[Rep. Liz (unidentified)]: You're welcome.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: And a lot of Vermonters actually use make use of the law library?

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: We get a report from the law library related to their grant each year, and they have robust numbers. They serve both Vermonters who are going about their everyday lives. They also do a lot of legal reference correspondence with people who are incarcerated. I can share their annual grant report back to the committee if you'd like, because I didn't come with those numbers today. But it is well used.

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: That's true. Yeah. Just want to

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: make sure we're spending this money. Is it worth it?

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: Well, I would say it's definitely worth it when you look at the scope of what they're performing. They've actually begun working with some local public libraries to try to have more direct access from different nodes around the state. So that's something, again, that exceeds the scope of the grant that we wrote for them. And I've been here since about this time in 2022, and this $90,000 amount has remained stable. So it's I think it's a pretty good deal for the service that they provide. And the law librarian is very engaged with the Vermont library community and does things like continuing education through the department to let people know about her services, what she can do, when it's appropriate to refer people to her, and how she can sort of teach local librarians to access some of the materials remotely as well. So

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: a lot of stuff's online these days. So how much, what proportion, or what characterizes parks that we wouldn't be able to find that come down?

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: As far as the legal references, well, I would say that the law librarian from CLIP, from the Vermont Law and Graduate School, would be better positioned to answer that than me because she knows those materials so intimately. But when I think about it in our own in our own state library collection and I think about the materials we have, a lot of older materials have not been digitized. And in the state of Vermont, there's not been very much money put toward digitization. It's seen as an extra. And so when you're looking for current legal documents, you would likely be able to find many current things online. When you look at the federal repository collection that we have at the state library, most new things that are published by the feds are being born digital. So they're not even sending us the paper copy. But things from the past, we are still maintaining on the shelf. So it's really some of it is the more historical things. You're more likely to find them in print format because no one has the resources to digitize them. But it's also important to remember that print has persisted. And if you were to do research into a news story from fifty years ago, I would recommend that you come to the State Library and use some of our materials in our collection because the digital record hasn't extended back that

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: You ever get a do you have a cost estimate of what it would take to digitize everything?

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: I can I can develop one? I know that our colleagues at the Historical Society have been looking at the idea of having a digital asset management system and have brought some proposals in the past and that people haven't had the resources to really support that. But that's something that I think would be a great benefit to the state to have a digital asset management system. We were participating along with the SARA, the state records administration, and Middlebury College and the historical society. Tom McMurdo, assistant state librarian, was working on a committee to jointly administer Vermont's node of the Digital Public Library of America. There's been a lot of leadership change there, and, the materials were all housed at Middlebury and still are housed at Middlebury. But with the kind of changes in DPLA, the Digital Public Library of America, it's we decided to pull back the resources we were putting there until they sort themselves out, and we determine if we want to continue there. It would be nice to have a Vermont resource for Vermonters that was more stable, I will say that. But it's something that's so, it's a very costly endeavor. And if you outsource it to someone else, you're sending all of the materials to them. And so there are different ways people do this work, but it either involves staff time and equipment on-site, which I've seen, but not done myself. When I was working in San Francisco Public Library, the scanning team was there from the internet archives, scanning many, many materials. It's quite labor intensive. But it's really a matter of where are the resources and do people value the historical record in that way and want to make it accessible? But I do have to say that you can see that if you just rely on material or the digitization of the resource, it may not actually be as reliable in some cases as the print resources in the long term. Because as the platforms change and the record files change, you can run into some real issues with continuity of access. By all means.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Liz? Yeah, thank you.

[Rep. Liz (unidentified)]: Last year, we had the Institute of Museum and Library Services was at one point Can you go over what's happened since then?

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: Oh, sure. It's actually been a bit of a roller coaster. As you'll remember, last year, I gave budget testimony, and then I came back to talk about the IMLS, the Institute of Museum and Library Services funding. Our budget, if you look at page four, I think it's page four. No, page five. No, page four. I was joking. If you look at page four, there's a little pie chart down at the bottom, and you'll see the blue portion that is about 31% of our total funding. That comes from one source, from this grants to states allotment, from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The federal administration last year said that they were cutting it entirely and getting rid of this IMLS entirely. That has not come to pass at this point. We still have funding from IMLS. There was a court case that, I believe has gone to appeal now. There was a ruling in favor of the states that had sued the federal government saying that they needed to maintain the Institute of Museum and Library Services. We're continuing to wait for updates from IMLS and from the federal government about funding for even this year. Since they're on a continuing resolution, they haven't made the full award statements. And I'm looking at Assistant State Librarian, Jeanette Schaefer, who's joining, so I know that I'm on the right track. So typically, would have many, many months ago given us an award letter for the entire year's funding. This year, they've been telling us every few months that we're on a continuing resolution. We can't tell you the full amount yet, but it they they continue to reimburse the state, so that's good. As far as the funding for the future, there's a bill that let's see. The I think this would have been is 181,000,000 plus. So it's actually up a little bit over the 2025 allocation at the federal level. So assuming that that bill goes through and that there's not a shutdown or some other thing that happens between now and then, it seems like what the legislature at the federal level has said is that IMLS is important, and they are funding it

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: from Washington. The House passed out the bills. There were four separate bills, of which yours isn't one of them. But the Senate has decided to combine them all into one with a straight up or down vote. And

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: this portion of funding will be approved and that will continue on. And our budget is really predicated on that. And if there were a change, we'd have to come back and talk about some very challenging circumstances for the department. Before we move to more questions, I do wanna just make sure I say this because I've got staff back at the department who do really important work, and they will be I wanna be sure to to call out what they're doing so that they hear it. One of the really big things that we do is supporting public libraries, and a lot of how we do that is by offering continuing education or workforce development for library staff at libraries around the state. We primarily focus on public library training, and we have something called the certificate of public librarianship to help people who don't have a master's degree in library science to actually provide services to their public in their communities. And we also provide consultation to library staff and trustees. We do that in person, but we do everything primarily. Our main method for delivering services now has moved online. During the pandemic, we found we got a lot higher attendance at our continuing education. I still make a point of getting out there and so do the consultants. But in order to save money, we go together and we go out less. But we do a lot more Teams calls and phone calls with folks. We also administer state and federal surveys. So if you have questions about public libraries and their health, we can give you that data. And we also grant funds to public libraries to offset expenses of participating in that interlibrary loan courier program and also for summer reading for youth. And while we're talking about youth, I wanna just be sure that you know that reading begins in the public library when infants come with their parents. You don't need to be in school to start getting ready to read and ready to learn. And so a lot of what we're doing is focusing on increasing opportunities for public library staff to take training and continuing education at the department, folding in a lot of those same best practices that you'll hear from literacy specialists, but really focusing on training the parents. And a lot of it is done in a gentle way. You're just modeling how to read with kids, how to ask questions about the pictures in the book or about the story or what do you think will happen next, but really developing the idea with the parents and the kids that they're going to have a daily practice of reading and learning together. And that's something that's very important, I think, for moving the needle with childhood literacy, and it's something Vermont hasn't focused as much on. So we are really trying to push some resources and attention in that direction through training for library professionals in the state. And we've also been doing great work with Jeanette's team has been doing great work with STEAM training. We've had some some science and technology programs with partners from the Echo Center. We've recently sent telescopes out and, like, these NASA backpacks that families can check out from their library. So there's a lot going on in the public library. It is not your mom's public library, like you were saying

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: a minute

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: ago, But it still is your mom's public library, because I know my mom goes to her library in Northfield and thinks it's just like the bee's knees. So we're really doing a lot for all different ages and supporting people wherever they are in their lifelong learning journey. And I'm happy to answer any questions you have. I hope I didn't talk too much about libraries, I get pretty enthusiastic.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: David, do have a question?

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: Well, I noticed on your slide presentation, it's page 30, your supply budget for books and periodicals is up 23%, FY27 versus last year, overall supply budget down 24%. Can you make that work?

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: We can. Something that is a pressure for us, and I'm gonna probably wave my hands a lot in the next few minutes, but when you're thinking about every year, the increased costs of staffing and benefits, the salaries and benefit costs, they're going up. The federal funds don't go up. The federal funds have really remained pretty level or even dipped slightly. So as there are increased costs of staffing and benefits for the contracts for things like the Vermont Online Library, there could be increased pressure on us to determine where to make some cuts. We've done some shifting toward We've done some shifts away from as many new physical materials. So that means that we need fewer processing supplies. That helps. I mean, I'd rather have tons of money to buy all books and all the online resources in the world. But reasonably speaking, there are a lot of competing pressures. And so keeping within our, you know, the recommendations of sustaining our growth in a responsible way, we've made some cuts to the supplies that we need fewer of right now.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Curious. Think libraries do so many wonderful things and it's so cool. How does a library define success?

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: That is a really difficult question. Is not

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: really question. Mean, track number of visits and people returning. That's probably success. Kids are coming in and after school programs. But I'm just wondering how you all think of it. How do you know libraries?

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: Well, when we're looking at the metrics year over year, and we're seeing the circulation is going back up So remember, during the pandemic, library visits and library circulation took a nosedive because people were afraid of going in public and sharing physical materials. When we're looking at statistics that we gather every year for the Institute of Museum and Library Services Public Library Survey, we actually see that in Vermont, we've climbed out of that hole. And we are circulating more interlibrary loan materials. We're circulating more physical materials. We have more programs. We have more people attending programs. So by pretty much every more library visits. So by most metrics, I think if we're looking at it in a data driven way, that looks like success to me. For me, there's the data and then there's the qualitative component. And I think if Vermonter can go to their library and find a safe and welcoming spot, and whatever their information need is, or whatever they want a space to do in their community, that they have that space to do it there. To me, I think that that's success. And we visit a lot of libraries. And I look at the programming going on at the Morrisville Centennial Library, and the library director's got this calendar of everything happening every minute and visited for Capitol for a day. There was a group of high schoolers who were doing a writing project. They met every Friday for writing club. And then there were kids doing a craft program, and they were telling us about how upstairs there's a community play that uses the space to to practice and rehearse before they actually put the play on in the library in the reading room. I mean, to me, that looked like success. And I usually find that when I'm visiting public libraries in Vermont, I almost always find that people come up and say, this place is really important to me. And you think about every public library as both municipal and incorporated. They have a board of trustees of five people who are, like, pouring their life's blood into keeping that institution afloat. And it's really a place where civic engagement is happening. And to me, I would say, if it's important to even a few people in the community, it's a success. But I think that what we're seeing is many people care about their public libraries. Agreed.

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: Dave, David? I just have to share a quick story. I live in Morristown, great library. My high school coach said, will you help me? I wanna capture the press releases after our games fifty three years ago. I'm writing a little book. I went to the library and there it is, the newspapers were all digital. And said, this is amazing. And in the afternoon, played 20 games. We captured it all and I didn't even know the resource existed, the librarian, let me help you, that

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: kind of thing, great.

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: And if I'm not mistaken, at that library, there is actually an archival space up on the 2nd Floor, off of the meeting room where you can do modern dance while looking at the community graveyard.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: I think they can be the heartbeat of a community. That's kind of a success. As you as you know, I have the Ilse Library in Middlebury, we're undergoing a massive $17,000,000 renovation. The local bank lent us part of its building to have a mini library for the year and a half while the construction is happening. And somebody else offered me, they needed space, they couldn't give all the books to the new place. The first company that offered has a huge, huge building, but they grow pot in there and they decided they couldn't leave the books because it was all going to smell a different place. That was very nice, the system didn't work. We found a different place. But everybody came together to make it work.

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: And it's great. It's really impressive what your community has done to support the library. And it's a real testament to the importance of the Eels Lee for members.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: And that's why I think the heartbeat of the community is amazing.

[Rep. Liz (unidentified)]: Yeah, I just want to say that I noticed in my own experience when I used to take my kids to the library, it was pretty straightforward. You got a book in the shelves. If there was an activity going on, it was somebody reading the book for the kids. Nowadays, I go with my grandchildren, when I have gone recently with my grandchildren, they've got games, coloring, they have a whole activity room full of all kinds of things that has nothing to do reading, but it's really, you can spend all day there. It's very engaging. It's a much broader effort than what they have the reading thing. Do that.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: You're learning in lots of ways.

[Rep. Liz (unidentified)]: Lots of different learning. Yeah, I think

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: that idea of multiple literacies is something that we're really working with librarians to support. Many librarians are kind of leading us along that way when we look at the story walks that you see outside at libraries. You know, we send out story walk kits. Have you seen these? It's like somebody deconstructs a picture book and we laminate it, and then we put it on a stick and they place it in the community so you might experience a book while you're walking around. This was born right here in Montpelier at the Kellogg Hubbard Library. And when I was working in San Francisco, we implemented a story walk. In Middlebury, my substitutes

[Rep. David Yacovone, Member]: now at the elementary school, they go

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: for these walks in the neighborhood right behind the school and they realize that you read a book along the way. And when they were building our town hall, do you remember some of you, Mike Mulligan and his team? Oh my god, yes. So we were building a town hall and there was, so they put they put laminated things all around the chain link fence about Mike Mulligan at kids' height so they could all read Mike Mulligan as they were building the town hall. We don't have Mary Anne in the basement, but you know.

[Catherine Del Neaux, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries]: That's the kind of thing where you'll have a librarian who's doing something great. And what we like to do at the department is provide opportunities for them to share with their colleagues. So one of the things that Jeanette's team and Tom's team do is that they host these roundtables, And that's really an opportunity for peer to peer troubleshooting and peer to peer problem solving. A lot of people in rural Vermont libraries are feeling pretty isolated. Not everyone's in a big, beautiful new building. The Milton Library is really nice to visit, we've got a pretty big staff. A lot of librarians are just there by themselves. And so we give opportunities for folks to convene on different themes like youth services or cataloging or interlibrary loan. So all different things, technology now. Jeanette just hosted the first facilities roundtable, which is something that I think will take off once people start thinking about it a little bit. So we kind of hear common themes in our consultation, and then we have these roundtables where we can meet with people and connect with them and just give them a place to get together and share so that everybody's not reinventing the wheel locally. And when they are doing something great, it can be magnified. Vermont's different from other states because each of these libraries is operating independently. So I'm not the boss of the librarians in the state. We're we're there to support them, but they all are reporting to their own municipality and the board or the incorporated library board. So this is a way that the department really fosters that connection, and that's some of the great work that our consultants do.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Always fun to have you come in. I'm happy to talk with you.

[Rep. Liz (unidentified)]: I'll go

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: to my library right there. You so much, and thank the whole team for what you're doing. Really appreciate it. Thank you for your support. Subcommittee, that is our last budget for the day. Tomorrow at 9AM, the veterans' Home will be in, they'll be on Zoom, and then the Federer at 09:30. So we'll start right at 09:00 tomorrow. Okay.