Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Good afternoon. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Monday, 02/02/2026. Happy February. It's just after 1PM, and we are continuing to go through the FY27 budget. And today, we have the Department of Children and Families, AKA DCF, us to present their budget, so welcome. Before we start, I just want to let everybody know that we have officially announced our two public hearings for the FY27 budget for those that are interested in coming in, don't know, they get sent out into the universe, but they're out there. But it's going to be next week, Thursday, February 12, from 12:45 to 03:15PM, and then the following Thursday, February 19 from five to 06:30PM. And these will be joint hearings with Senate Appropriations, and I believe we've reserved a little less

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: for both of us, right?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: One forty five to 03:15. Yeah. Okay. So, do they sign up

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: with you or with Elle? There's a link.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: There's a

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: link to the sign up. Okay. And that's on the Federal Assembly website too. So just wanted to let everybody know about that. Okay. So, we'll turn it over to DCF. You can introduce yourselves and take it away. We have lots of papers.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: For the record, Megan Smieton, I am the CFO for DCF.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: And I'm standing out as the interim commissioner for DCF. And I think you got our very exciting publication of the DCF. Yes, budget book and annual report. We're very excited about producing that for you. So you can use that. As we go through the slides, I'm going to give an overview. Megan will get she'll go line by line, and then there's a deeper dive in that budget book. Sure. Yeah, that'd be great. So the secretary was here last week, and she explained to you how we went about establishing our budgets within the departments. The agency as a whole looked at what we were forced to consider for cuts. So it was a definite it was a tough, tough process, but I think we came we are bringing forth some decisions that we think are the right ones to propose. So, as you know, the DCF's mission is to foster the healthy development, safety, well-being, and self sufficiency of Vermonters. And we provide benefits, services, and supports to some 200,000 Vermonters every year, including children, youth, families, older Vermonters, and people with disabilities. Are

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: you trying to share, but it says the host isn't allowing me to share? Oh, no, no. Got

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: to be in a great mood.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: You have to ask twice. We like to share here. There we go. Okay. All right. That's finished that. Size of the three dots, the handout. There we go. Yeah. Okay.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: Okay. And so some of the changes that you'll see is a 4.7% increase to the state fiscal year

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: 'twenty six budget, a 6.6% decrease to special fund, 14.3% increase to general fund, and a comprehensive $31,400,000 housing initiative.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: When you say special fund, are talking global commitments? What are we talking?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Are there various special funds? There are various special funds, yes. So those can be They come from specific sources and they're for specific purposes. So for example, one of the larger decreases is the child care contribution funds. And that's one of our larger special

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: And then here, you'll see the differences in the past proposed and the state fiscal year 'twenty seven recommended budgets. Then we were asked to show the major federal funding sources, so it's broken down by division here.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: I just want to pause for a second going back on the special fund, because you mentioned it, to just let people know that the upgraded consensus revenue forecast included a downgrade in that, which I assume is why we have this downgrade here. That is the reason that it came about, for people that may not understand why that happened. So, yeah, John?

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: How many special funds do you have?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: I know that number off the top of my head.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: If you

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: don't know.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Statewide, there are over 400, I think. We have the special fund report from Adam somewhere. Actually,

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: in our budget book, at the end, the last section of the budget book lists all of our special funds.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: Look at that. Look at that tool you have.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: That's a great way to get us to look at that. I heard it's excellent reading. Okay. Thank you. So funding sources.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: And these are the largest federal funding sources broken down with the amounts.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: So it's what department within your division or division within your department?

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: This

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: is how much we earned in state fiscal year '25.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: When you say earned, you mean from the federal funding?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Yeah, how much we drew to the mutual fund. What's 4E, Title 4E? FSDs make larger funding sources. It funds a lot of our child welfare supports, and it's an entitlement. So the more that we spend, the more we can draw down. It's not capped at a certain amount.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: So

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: DCF initiatives and adjustments for state fiscal year 'twenty six caseloads, the FSD subsidized adoptions and substitute care, ESD reach up support services, GA personal needs and incidentals, aid for the aged blind and disabled, and Three Squares Vermont.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: When you say, is that an initiative or an adjustment? Why are they showing up there for caseloads?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: I mean, we'll get into it more as we go through, but we adjust our caseloads up or down depending on what we're seeing.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: But these are adjustments. Okay.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: Are we talking about FY '26 or '27?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Asked to do highlights of what happened over the last

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: year and then we'll

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: get to what's happening this year. All right.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: So, I won't go through these, but you'll just look at them or you want me to go through

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Any highlights you want to mention of the ones that are here, if there's anything in particular that you particularly want to highlight? I'd probably highlight them all.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: We're going to go through them one by one. Including the initiatives there. Yeah. So, the one time appropriations, temporary secure treatment facility funding, and then the housing initiative.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: There is a temporary secure. Is that versus something else? Yes, that is for

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Red Red Clover Clover. I thought you were asking where

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: it was on this slide. I'm thinking it's right there.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Just so that

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: we're all clear, how many youth are served at Red Clover by Red Clover? Four bed capacity. Four beds, okay. And is there So, this is a one time appropriation in addition to a base appropriation for this. What's the base again for that line item? So the base is about $4,000,000 and I have a worksheet that I can share with you that walks through the various components of it. We have

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: carryforward that we have to support that, one time carryforward. We also have a one time appropriation that we have to And support then

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: over and above all that, we also are asking for a base increase to this And the total then of all those different funding streams? I would be able

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: to get it except I'm sharing my screen right now. So it's hard for me to

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: to that. This is just the overview.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Okay.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Thanks.

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

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: So administration and economic services, it's composed of four sub budgets, the commissioner's office, business office, economic services division, admin, and IT costs. ESD admin includes salaries for all ESD staff and operating funds, as well as an assortment of grants, mostly SNAP related.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: It looks like we saved some money, or if it's in red there. Yeah, so the grants are reduction.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So we had some administrative efficiencies, and then we'll talk through some of our reductions.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Okay, because that's right. This is for '27, and some of federal government eliminated, and some of are choosing to. Wayne?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: Just backing up for a second. What's the housing initiative 21,200,000,000.0?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So we will go through that in the records, but we have that's the one time appropriations that we're requesting. What? It's all in your So

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: why don't we wait until they get to the detail, but this is in FY this is in fiscal year '26. It says

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: This is incorrect. Needs to say

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: one-seven. Okay.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: That's why we're confused. I can see why that would be confusing.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Okay, so these are '27 proposed. Okay. All right.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So,

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: Services Division, FSD works in partnership with families, communities, and others to make sure children and youth are safe from abuse, their basic needs are met, and youth are free from delinquent behavior. They also ensure families are supported to achieve these goals. And you see the summary and highlights, but we're getting into that after. Okay. So the next graph you see is a decrease in substitute care. That's the sub care caseloads, such as we've seen over the past two years. It means that fewer youth are coming into DCF custody. And then there's an increase in the subsidized adoptions. So that means youth are finding permanent homes.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: You had an increase in foster parents?

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: I think Erica is on. We can ask her.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: How about we come back to that? Yeah. Okay.

[Erica Radke (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: Oh, hi. I'm here, Erica Radke, FSD deputy commissioner. What was the question?

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: Has there been an increase in foster parents or foster families?

[Erica Radke (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: No, there has not been an increase. We actually have had a decrease recently, and we're planning on trying to do an initiative, which is why we had the, caregiver summit in October to try to really get to the root cause of what's happening with, the decrease in foster foster families.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: Thank you. In the Child Development Division, CDD improves the well-being of Vermont children by developing and administering a continuum of high quality comprehensive child development and family support services that promote health and well-being, school readiness, and foundations for lifelong success. So the summary you'll get into. Yeah, we do know that there are more families getting financial assistance, 5,000 more families, and we started to turn the curve on stopping the decline of programs and slowly building. And the mix of the programs has changed. That's both fixed rates. And then Office of Child Support. OCS improves children's economic security by establishing, enforcing, and modifying child support orders for children who do not live with both parents and collecting, recording, and distributing child support payments through the OCS registry. Aid to the Aged Blind and Disabled, AAVD. This program provides a financial supplement to recipients of federal SSI who are 65, disabled or blind, and do not have sufficient income to provide a reasonable substance needed for their well-being as defined by 33 VSA Chapter 13. It also funds the Essential Person Program by providing cash assistance to household members whose care is essential to an agent or disabled person in the home. Caseloads for AABD supplementary SSI payments have continued to steadily trend downward over the past two state fiscal years.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Is that because there were fewer people that qualify or people are would be say on or Any sense of why that is, Randall?

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: The decline in aabd average caseload is fewer people are fewer people qualified

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Right. If people get older,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: they are not with us any longer. So that could be part of it too. I just wondered if you did that. Okay.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: And then general assistance. GA provides emergency financial assistance to eligible individuals and families. This may include help paying for personal needs and incidentals, housing, fuel and utilities, medical and burial costs.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: We will go into this because I'm sure people Yes. About the decrease there. Mhmm.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: And then the governor's housing initiative, shelter expansion funding, OEO, family specific sheltering option, DV and SV sheltering option, shelter planning and startup investments, Dale, the medically vulnerable sheltering option, PDH and OEO, the SUD sheltering option.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: What page are you on? Sorry.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: 20. Thank you.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Excuse me. Okay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: So, will you go over this in more detail? Because this is certainly the first in this committee that we're hearing about.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Yes. Okay.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: There's a little bit more detail on the housing initiative for the positions needed and the transition plan for that. But again, we'll get into other housing investments. And then Three Squares Vermont is the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides low income households better access to a healthy diet while supporting American agriculture. Reach Up helps eligible parents gain job skills and find work so they can support their minor dependent children. Services include education employment supports, case management services, and monthly cash payments to pay for basic necessities. And reach up caseloads have been decreasing over the past year, which contrasts with our projected increase in caseloads we used for last year's budget, resulting in projected savings. And looking at historical data, can see that there have been fluctuations. They've gone up and down over the years, and we've always adjusted our budget to reflect it. Low Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP, DCF's fuel assistance program has two components, seasonal fuel assistance operated by the Economic Services Division and crisis fuel assistance operated by the state's five community action agencies. And then the Office of Economic Opportunity, OEO. OEO administers funds to help organizations address poverty through community initiatives and direct services in the areas of financial capability, homelessness assistance, and community services. This includes core federal funding for community action agencies and homeless shelter and service providers.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Some of those summary things we've seen in other of your summaries, so it's duplicative. It's not in addition to the ones we've already seen on previous pages. Correct?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Yes. And the housing initiative was sort of called out separately in those earlier slides.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Right. And the hop on wrap is also from another.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: We owe weatherization. The Low Income Home Weatherization Assistance Program reduces energy costs for low income families by improving the energy efficiency and comfort of their homes while ensuring their health and safety. The Home Weatherization Assistance Program funds provide state funding for weatherization through a fuel tax on all non transportation fuels sold in the state. And then the secure residential treatment facility, we talked about that a little bit, base funding for short term crisis stabilization program, and we'll get into that. Disability Determination Services. DDS provides applicants with accurate medical eligibility decisions as quickly as possible, as governed by social security, federal statutes, regulations, and policy. With full and fair consideration of each applicant's situation and respecting concern for the individual's well-being and legal rights. And we just wanted to highlight the DDS outcomes. The average initial case processing time is seventy point five days. The national average is one hundred and ninety days. And the initial decisional accuracy is 99%, which is among the top 10 states. And then you have the number of claims they processed.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: And while we're pausing to get to the next whatever, I just want to recognize that Chair Wood from Health's Human Services is here also. Please, if

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: you have questions, just sort of lost an hour.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Go That's right. Or you can sit in one of the other two chairs if you'd

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: like to. You're good? Okay.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: Megan's going to go through the spreadsheet, right?

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Yes. So

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: you should have received the upstands for DCF. Yes, that sheet. Within the budget book, there's a section called the narrative, and it has all of our a description of every line item in there. We broke out the housing initiative separate in the budget book. So as you go through the narrative section of the budget book, whenever you hit one of the initiative lines, it'll say see initiative, and that's at the bottom. Just because we have 13 appropriations, it means that some parts are scattered about for just tracking sake. It's hard to see the whole picture unless you're looking at it as a cohesive picture. So that's why we kind of broke them out separately in the budget narrative.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: And I see that rep already has a question. Go ahead, Mike.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member, House Appropriations)]: Thank you. Can you hear me?

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: Yes.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member, House Appropriations)]: Good. Just to go backwards a little bit, I saw the 24,000,000 for LIHEAP. There was some concerns last year about the federal government either cutting that down or closing offices around that. Is that federal money or is that state money?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: It's federal money. We are adjusting our budget to account for the federal award. We did not see a significant decrease or change in our federal livelihood award this year despite having heard those similar things. But every year for the last couple of years, we've had to put in what's called an ERR, an excess revenue receipt request. Yes. And they, to get the extra money. And so we were just building it in now that we see that the federal lawy board seems to be continuing at the current amount.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: We'll get

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: to more of that when we go through the upstands. So I am going to start going through the upstands. I can skip over the salaries and fringe and and, like

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Any of the standard stuff, don't want to we just don't skip over all of that at all. It's it's really any of the big stuff that we see or things that are changing. So I'm looking at some $10,000,000 and up in federal funds. Yeah. So all kinds of things would be good to know.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So if we start at the top, the first things that you'll see in admin that aren't just the standard boilerplate adjustments is the TANF revenue realignment. We are adjusting where our TANF revenue is able to be spent based on where we can maximize our state dollars in terms of meeting our maintenance of effort requirements and exceeding them. And so for that reason, we are moving our federal funds to Reach Up and putting general fund in admin. It's just a net neutral transfer.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Maybe net neutral to you, but

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: it sounds like you're using $1,000,000 of general fund, and that's not neutral to us. No, the general fund was already appropriated in Reach Up. And so we're swapping. So we're spending $1,000,000 It's actually $3 It's got to

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: be 3 if that's what's happening.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Yes. It's admin, FSD, and Reach Up. And so we have certain expenses that we can count towards our maintenance of effort and others that we can't. And we want to exceed our maintenance of effort because that allows us to buy down our work participation rate. And so we need the general fund in the places where we can meet our maintenance of effort requirements. And then the federal funds can go to the places where we have expenses that are eligible for federal, but not maintenance of So you're

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: still using all the federal funds, just in the end of the year? Okay, great.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Thank you. So that's the first line. We have a temp staff cut. And so that is eliminating two temp positions, one within the business office and one within the commissioner's office, as part of our administrative efficiencies this year to meet our budget requirements. We are eliminating one position from ESD, a Reach First admin position. When we get to the Reach Up appropriation, we are also cutting the Reach First program. And so as a result, the position is no longer needed as well.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: So we can skip these littler ones. Okay. And then whoever has those can ask you if we've got questions. When you get to two point eight million

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Two point eight. Got it. I'm interested. Okay. So HR1 had some different provisions around SNAP this year that impacted us. And so one of them was that the federal share for the admin cost of SNAP would go from a 50% federal match to a 25% federal match. And that impacts our admin appropriation pretty significantly. There's actually three lines on here. It's kind of hard. We have to break it out by personal services operating and grants out. And so you have to add them just three lines up, but it's about $4,500,000 of lost federal revenue. 4,500,000.0

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: And is that for a full year?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: It's about three quarters of the year because it starts on tenone.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: Yeah. Can I ask a question? Because was trying to add things up and I, you know, going back to earlier fall projections on the federal cuts and the impact on the state budget. The figure that I've seen most frequently is $8,400,000 for a year.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Yeah. And so I think that there's a lot of things that go into that. That $8,400,000 I believe came from the FFIS calculations, which is a system that provides information to states on different federal programs. And so that would be the amount of federal admin that we were matching as a state. But the state wasn't putting forward the full match. We have partners that put forward some match for us. And also, we have this summer EBT program, which has been diverting some of our staff time to that, which didn't lose the 50%. It's staying at the 50% admin. And so when we reran our cost allocation plan with new criteria in place and used that to project out for the year, the amount that we were actually losing was slightly lower than what LIS had put out there for Vermont. So for example But by

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: $2,000,000 Yeah. We

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: allocate our costs across a bunch of different federal funding sources. So sometimes when one funding source goes away, it can cascade down to another funding source. At the end of the day, it was about $6,500,000 that we were projecting. Or annual. Or annualized cost. You mentioned community partners or other partners that help pay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Is that something I didn't get?

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: Yeah, so sometimes we have certain programs where we don't put

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: the match up. We just draw in the federal revenue and a partner will say like, oh, we have these expenses that we can put forward as match. So who would a partner be? I don't

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: try to figure out who that would be. Oh, go ahead.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Good afternoon, the Reverend Martin and Grant, Deputy Chief of the Economic Services Division, a full of examples of the undercovering law and councils on aging. Okay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Good, thanks. I just want to understand what that means. Okay. Do you have a question when you have that book? So we're still on the first page where SNAP, admin, and federal change, we're talking about the 2,500,000.0 change. That we've had to pick up in general fund because the match has gone down, what the federal government's going to be willing to match.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: And that's issued to EBT cards?

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

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: EBT cards. Part of that.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So the EBT cards themselves, the funding that goes out on the EBT cards, is really dependent on the error rate that ESD has. And so we don't know. We're hopeful that it will continue to be zero, that the state share. And that money doesn't flow through us. The only money that flows through us on the EBT cards is the cash out portion. The rest of it goes directly from the feds to people. So it all flows through the feds?

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Yeah. Yeah.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Yeah, this is just the administrative piece from DCF. Dave?

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: When does the requirement that beneficiaries have to reapply? Just once every six months?

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Sophia, we have annually, and there is an interim report,

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: so it's six months,

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: but then we also have the majority of our population on a three year cycle now.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: But are we going, is it Medicaid in general is six months? Eligibility is not every six months?

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: So you are certified per year, but then we have a check-in at the six month. So it's a smaller-

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: that check-in, is that something that's been around for a while or is that new?

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Nope, that's been around.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: So are there any new federal requirements that put demands on our staff to administer the SNAP program?

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Not at this time, no.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Are there some being contemplated that you're aware of?

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: You'll have to forgive me because I'm grading the state.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: There are some states,

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: and there's one in particular that I think they were asked because there was some allegations of fraud to do renewals of their population, but at this time that isn't something that could go about this. How

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Approximately, if you know, how many beneficiaries on SNAP do we have?

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: I

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: would just say 67,000 or something, is that?

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Can you share with us how our error rates are at this time?

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: So we don't have an official rate,

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Is there much headroom? Are we close to the 6%?

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Like five point.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Somewhat close.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Yes. So the only change at the moment to SNAP is the match rate has been reduced from fifty percent to twenty five percent, and the state has to pick up that extra 25%. That's it for SNAP. It's a whole other story, but There that's

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: are some other changes that happened. For example, as we get down to the next section of the admin budget, you'll see that we are eliminating our SNAP education program because that was eliminated.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: It's already got rid

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: of that last year, though. Can you just say

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: a little something for everybody, what what is what that is what it does and what is lost?

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: I'd be happy to. So that was administered for Donald through the health department and it was the focus on how to prepare healthy meals on a budget, food, education, etc. And some of those grantees that weren't also the health department were that Abenac be helping Abenac come alive outside People's Farm Standard Village, Hydroponics, UVM Extension, Vermont Food Bank. Those were some of the partners that had this funding.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: John had a question then Theresa.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Can you just remind us what the error rate, what does that stand for? I know we heard it here.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: It's been a few months for us. Yes, and

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, Child Development Division, DCF)]: I'm happy to, I will

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: also follow-up something in writing. My three Squirrels director is far more articulate, but it's a combination of both errors that he makes, so believe it incorrectly determine the case, but it can also be a combination of knowing that if a client fails to report information to us, as well as our timeliness on acting on cases. So it's really quite a bundle of items. And we are doing everything that we can within our system to try to

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: make sure

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: that we're keeping the error rate down, we're noticing trends and errors within our staff, targeted training, just trying to make sure that we're addressing those quickly, trying to make sure that we're educating those that are on the program, importance of providing us timely information and anything that changes.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Sure, so if it exceeds that 6% threshold. Yes,

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: then we'll pay and it's incremental. As a state, then it pays more depending on how high your error rate is.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: Thank

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: you. Theresa, do want finish?

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: Yeah, that's whoever's still on SNAP.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: I recall back

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: when we learned of the changes in HR1 that the original estimates were around I think 7 and a half million dollars for the SNAP admin increased cost to the state. And I realized it's only nine months worth contained in here because the federal fiscal year but that those numbers don't. They are comparable. So I'm trying to figure out our original estimates too high. Because three quarters of that original 7 and a half million isn't what is in here.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Yes. We actually, I think before you got

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: the talk, you asked that.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Somebody asked that question. But

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: it's a combination of having partners that should be a part of our match. And Miranda gave some examples of those partners, like Hunger Free Vermont. And then also having other federal funding sources like Summer EBT that are drawing away some of our admin costs and open that remaining at 50% share of time. And then just an estimate from one year to the next is never perfect. And so we reran the cap and did it for our cost allocation plan and projected that forward. And it came in a little bit lower than the 67.5. Oh, thank you. So

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: is this the only money that flows through EBT cards?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: No. So our Three Squares appropriation, which is coming at several appropriations further down, has all of the cash out money, and that's about $53,000,000 And that's for individuals who receive a cash benefit. They're elderly or disabled. And then anyone who does not get a cash benefit, they get a food benefit on the EBT cards. That doesn't go through our budget at all. The feds put that directly on the cards to the individuals. And then there's other ways that we use our EBT cards for benefits that are not SNAP related as well.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: The reason why it has, I'm just trying to get my mind wrapped around what's going through those SNAP cards. You did see that case up in Lawrence County where they had a dozen EBT cards that were involved in a drug case and they were trading benefits, EBT cards for drugs. Just wondering about the controls.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: We do have a robust fraud unit and so when there are instances where we feel that maybe fraud has been reported, that means in particular, know, we outreach to just understand and have a report that it was actually very few EBT cards. I think there was personal credit cards and debit cards that were off of that bank, so it wasn't just EBT cards. But we do have mechanisms in place to be able to look into if someone is improperly using EBT. So how frequently do you check

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: on those or require them to provide information that justifies being in the program.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So that's the, if you will, like,

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: we do a full review of people's cases, but then every six months we do, so kind of like a mid year. We check-in to make sure nothing has changed. Do they have different sources of income based on living where, they've been reported, etcetera.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Dave? The eligibility at the federal level changed whereby in determining eligibility, whether I was financially eligible, I think a person could deduct some of their utility bills to make them eligible. Does that change?

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Want to check-in.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Just curious. Okay. You could, just wondered if that would have a downward pressure. And then with the able-bodied and working conditions, those are still in place?

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Those are and that did change under HR1.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: There are more, some of the

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: exceptions are removed, in particular, like the whole plus exemption. People do have to now engage in either work or volunteer work.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Even if they're homeless?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Correct. Yes, and so there's a report that maybe we should put on our website that was submitted to Human Services, not to Appropriations, September 15. This is what I'm talking about, when Chris Winters was the commissioner. And so, we can put that on our website, but one of the things they said is the three, they removed work requirement exemptions from three populations. So, I'm reading from the report right now. Individuals experiencing homelessness, at the time, it was about sixteen oh three Vermonters. Again, I don't know what the number is now, but that was that. And then there were 12 or fewer veterans who were also now had to do work requirements, and then young adults who have aged out of foster care. And again, there were fewer than 12 at the time. But that was from the report.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: And if I may, I was just trying to find out if the work requirement conditions are putting additional pressures on our staff. Comment on that

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: for me?

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Yeah, so I think in moments in time, so this fall we had outreach to all those households to ensure that they knew that this was gonna be something that was happening. Then Vermont, we just happened to be fortunate in our three year clock reset. So everyone gets three months where they don't have to meet their work requirement because of the federal government shutdown of the House. We actually got an additional month. And so actually at the end of this month will be when we would see those individual that would need to be used for their work requirement. And so we are going to leave out a little bit of an increase because we're going to outreach to all those households. Again, are also using our alleviate using the same technology we did during the shutdown where we might send some lower text to each of these households that have to be able to contact us so we can make sure that they go different options.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: One final question, Madam Chair, then I'm trying to find out if those kinds of pressures could inflate our error rate, which you indicated in part is determined by timeliness. So staff are, because they're required to be engaged in the work requirement, might have less time to do the eligibility processing. Are we concerned about that or is that manageable?

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: I would say at this time, it feels manageable. We're in a pretty good spot just with, made some changes and I've been able to keep up with processing these cases very timely. So I think we're okay with that, but I appreciate your asking.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Thank you.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Okay, I've

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: just sent Autumn that report to Theresa. I'm not sure where you're

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: going next Madam Chair, when there's an opportunity I'd like

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: to ask about carry forward funds.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: Yes, so am I. There's a

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: great document that we got last week, I think when the whole central office and all of you were here that I actually looked at this morning. Yes. Was it SAP related or just in It's GA, really. Okay. Well, yeah. Remind me when we get to GA. So I think we've now talked about SNAP. Yes.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Jumping down to the only other items that would flag, I think you're jumping past some small stuff in there. We get to the two eleven hour reduction. We're proposing to reduce the hours of operation for the two eleven emergency housing call center from twenty fourseven to 8AM to 11PM. Between the hours of 11PM and 8AM, we're not able to actually place people at hotels or other shelter options. And so it is not feeling like the best prioritization of general fund dollars or global commitment dollars. So that is our proposal for two-one-one. Questions on that? And then the last item on here, and I guess I would defer to you on how you want to do this. Do we want to talk through the housing initiative items as they come up through the steps, or do we want to go and talk through the whole housing?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: I want to hear about the whole program, and then we can see how the fits and pieces will

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So we'll skip that and we'll get to that. Okay, great. So then we move on to Family Services Division, which is B317. So we have another part of the TANF revenue realignment that we talked about earlier here.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Have

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: revenue true up, which is just moving, aligning our earnings to how we actually earned funding last year. So we were earning more global commitment and personal services and less in operating. So we're just doing some cleanup moves there. We have our social worker class action annualization. So we had a class action for all of our social workers last year that went up a pay grade, and so that caused some budget pressures. So is that salary increase, or is that legal stuff? That's salary.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: That salaries. Okay. So based on RFRs?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: It was a class action, so all of them went up. It was an individual RFRs. And then skipping past the ISFs. So we have the private non medical institution PNMI inflation factor. That is the inflation adjustments that are provided to our PNMI providers to align with the impacts of inflation. Annually, it's calculated by Veeva. So that is our adjustment for those. We have some net neutral move, a net neutral move just to correct, I know it was put in the wrong probe last year. And then we have our transportation contact pressures. We've talked about this in BAA. I don't know if you want to go into it again, but it's the same.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Is this the non emergency medical transport? This is

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: for our children in our custody. Oh, transportation. Different. Okay. And those costs just keep going up. And we don't really have that many providers that we contract with. We have some caseload adjustments. We have our substitute care caseload and utilization. And as we touched on in the PowerPoint, that's been trending downwards over time. And there are fewer children in our custody. And then we have our subsidized adoption caseload who's been fending upward, which represents more children in permanent placements. Just have

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: a quick clarifying question. If in fact the numbers of youth in custody is going down, why are transportation costs going up? The cost per transportation is increasing significantly. How many of are in touch city right now?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: I'm forgetting your notes. A

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: little over 800.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: I see them. Ahead.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member, House Appropriations)]: Thank you. About the transportation costs, is part of that services that Easterseals provides?

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: Think Erica is on. Hi.

[Erica Radke (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: Yes. That is part of the service that Easterseals provides, but not all of it. As a matter of fact, sometimes our workers are doing transportation as well as the transportation providers that we've contracted with. And this is primarily to get children to school or to their appointments.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: And it's gone up by

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: a million dollars because there are fewer organizations doing the transportation, so they're just charging us a lot or are they going further to take kids to school or what's happening?

[Erica Radke (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: It's the formal. It's generally there are fewer providers and we are in a position where they're able to charge more than they've charged in the past. But we are also doing a lot of transportation of youth because we do want youth that they are being placed outside of their home area. They can still go to school. We want them to have that normalcy. So we are transporting kids to school back in their home area and other things like that.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Thank you. Dave, did you have more other questions?

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Yes. I wanted to get a sense if you could tell us later, if you don't know, how many calls are coming in annually to the abuse and neglect hotline?

[Erica Radke (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: I can find that out and I'll get back to you Thank right

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: you. I'm interested to know if it's increasing or staying flat. And if it's increasing, but yet the number of children coming into custody is decreasing. What's your reflection and comment on that would be? I'm wondering what percent of abuse calls turn into actual action of removing children. Thank you.

[Erica Radke (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: Thank you. Will do.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Okay, so after we get through the caseload adjustments, we get to some of the reductions in our budgets. So the first line item is the post permanence program. We're proposing a 25% reduction, and this is a reduction in funding to support services provided to families after an adoption has been finalized. This would reduce the eligible population to only those families whose adoption was facilitated by DCF. And so this would represent a loss of services to families who adopted a child through an organization outside of DCF. Excuse

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: me, outside of DCF.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Decrease the funding for the

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: ones that were outside of

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: D. C.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: And the thinking, is that just a reduction because times are hard or is there

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: a policy behind that? We had to come up with Just

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: a quick question about how does that affect something, an organization like Lund? So Lund is one of the entities that provides these services. So it would

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: be a reduction in funding for NFI, Lund, and Easter sales.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: 200,000, right? Am I reading that right? 8,000 across all. Yeah, thank you. Okay.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So the next item is the nurturing parent program. We're proposing a 50% reduction to this program. And this reduces the program that provides parenting classes to eligible households. And it's administered by Prevent Child Abuse Vermont.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: And what was your thinking behind reducing

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: that one?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: I think that, again, it's one of those things where we were prioritizing health and life sustaining safety first, and then looking at places where we had scalable programs where we could provide services but didn't necessarily have to cut the whole thing. And just finding places where we thought that we had no legal mandate to provide it from the federal government. And yeah, those are some of the criteria that we used.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Okay. Two questions. Mike first and then Dave.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member, House Appropriations)]: Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm hoping this is something the committee could look at. We we've seen numbers going down, and I believe the work of this group is partly responsible for those numbers going down. And I I would hope that we're not assuming numbers are gonna continue to go down if we if we stop the services that help it to go down there. So I'm just hoping we can put that in the parking lot and and revisit this when we go through the the budget here.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Dave and then Wayne?

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: That was my question. Thank you, Mike. Okay. Thanks.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: So on the flip side of that, see estimates of our children in school going from 79,000 now to someplace in the mid sixties. So in the future. So, if that's the case, then, is there in the pipeline fewer kids coming up through? Could that also be impacting any of this?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: It's what it is for right now, but it's going to

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: be down the road with fewer students. In ten years, they're projecting 65,000 to 79,000. That's a number I heard, so that's a big number.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Yeah, In ten years.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: If that's working its way through the pipeline now.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Lots of changes. Okay. Continue. Yeah. I think

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: the next one is the elimination of the post adoption consortium program. And this is a program that's really underutilized in our budget. We only spent $2,000 of the $200,000 last year. So just in trying to make these hard decisions about what we had to felt like an opportunity that wouldn't result in large impacts on Vermonters receiving services. You have a big cut. And then we have the Families First Prevention Services Act, or FFPSA. We have two lines there. And this is the elimination of funding for aftercare services for youth exiting state custody, which was identified as necessary to implement the FFPSA. This is necessary for us to be able to draw in 4E revenue beyond the first fourteen days of a child's stay in a group home, the residential placement. However, it's not the only thing that's preventing us from drawing in that money. The main thing preventing us from being able to draw in that 40 revenue is the lack of a CCWIS system, which we're working on procuring and building. So Over the last how many years? We've only really been working on it for the last two years. But yes, it is a system. We have an existing system called SSMIS that is really antiquated. And so we are working on procuring the new CCWIS system. But we never actually implemented these last two items, the aftercare or the prevention services. We got the funding for them, but it was never a program that actually we started implementing. And so given that we can't draw in the revenue anyways, even with these programs and nobody's receiving services from them yet, it just felt like it was an opportunity to, again, realize some savings in a really hard budget discussion without having people lose services.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Does this free up some global commitment for other things?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Yeah, in so much as it falls to the bottom line for other places, yeah. Related

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: to CCWIS, So, heard testimony a week ago that it was gonna be roughly a $30,000,000 project and that the state didn't want to do it sort of module by module. So, what I'm understanding is there's 7,500,000.0 in state funds and that matched is about 15,000,000. So, I'm just trying to figure out why there isn't additional funding in here for Seamus

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: implementation or not implementation development still? So I guess when we were building the budget, we didn't yet have best in person offers from the CCWIS procurement process. And the range that we got in the offers was quite large. In the bids that we got from providers, was quite a significant range. And we've been able to narrow that down through the procurement process. I think we're in a better place now as we sit here to understand what the total cost is going to be in the long term. But at the time when we were building it, we weren't sure if $14,000,000 might be enough or not. And so I think it's enough to get us through the first year. And then when we have a final number, we'll be able to present a more accurate ask in the future. So

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: ADS presented but they pretty much know that it's gonna be more than what we have now and closer to the range of 30,000,000. So roughly double what we have now. So I'm just pointing that out for the committee in terms of what we've gotten in terms of testimony for APS.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So we thought we were going

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: to see a budget adjustment for that? Mean, you try to get something through before we get out of here in May.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: I don't think I know the answer to how we don't have a selected bidder yet either. Think that that is another I think we're still in the procurement process. So we'd have to really wait and see how that plays out. So that brings us to the child development division. Let's skip through all the the boring stuff again. Again, we have a revenue realignment between personal services and operating just to reflect where funding is or where revenue is actually being earned. We have a $2,500,000 downward adjustment to the childcare revenue special fund in our budget. This is resulting because the whole amount of the projected revenue was put into our budget last year with a mistake being that we needed to put 2,500,000.0 in the tax department. So we needed to account for 2,500,000.0 of the child care special fund is going to the tax department to administer that special fund. We needed to take it out of our budget. Then the other big down in the special fund is for the child care special fund shortfall. And so that $6,200,000 is a result of, as we said earlier, the reduced projections by the economists, the consensus projections.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: So above the first grant, you have revenue realignment grants, and it's $6.98 from general fund and not special fund.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So the revenue realignment is as a result of where we're earning our revenue. So the $6.98 down is from federal. So we're earning less revenue in grants in CDD and more in personal services. So there's a line above it in personal services where you'll see us up. And so we're just Okay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: So they're related to each other. Yeah. Okay. And

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: then after this childcare special fund shortfall, we have some more cuts that we're proposing. The first one is the strengthening families program cut. And this is the elimination of a grant program for supports and childcare programs. It's targeted to sunset as the funds weren't equitably distributed and additional funds are available via Act 76 for investments. And then we have $100,000 reduction for child care capacity grants. And this reduction is to support startup and expansion costs. $900,000 remains available. And with the PDG, the Preschool Development Block Grant or Preschool Development Grant, Birthby Five funding that we received this year, we also think we can subsidize some of this with that as well. So,

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: is for childcare facilities. Okay. So, in the past, there's been a significant annual turnover in the number of those is that continuing. I know at one point when I was five years ago when I was on development, it was 50%.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Completely changed with the child care bill.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: What's

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: that? It's completely changed with the child care. We had more openings and closings last year for the first time

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: in years. So my question is, these grants are getting grants for the facilities when they go in. So I'm questioning how much are we bleeding from those grants when people go out of business You don't get grants to fix up their places. Can we ever assess that?

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: If they got a grant to fix up their place and then went out of business, Janet just came on.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Hey, Tyler.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: It's a beer.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Oh, I love I love to. I love to change that.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: If it's 50% a year, 35%, or 25% a year, over a period of four upon years that could amount to a lot of money.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, Child Development Division, DCF)]: Go ahead, Janet. Okay, so hi there, Janet McLaughlin, I'm DCF Deputy Commissioner in charge of the Child Development Division. And there is turnover in childcare businesses for family childcare homes. It sort of averages between 510% a year over the last, I think we looked at this data recently, it was like over the last seven years or so. So it's really a five to 10% on this real personal business for family childcare homes. In terms of centers, the closure rate is much, much lower than that. So yes, staff turnover, but the rates are, like I said, closer to sort of this five or 10%, and that's just in the family childcare side of it. And when we do make the grants for startup, we are working with a nonprofit partner that supports us in that for children's finance. And they're providing a lot of business technical assistance to go along with grant funds. So they're working with them on their business plan, helping them think through, you know, how are they setting up their tax structure, and doing, helping them develop their tuition structure, their enrollment plans. So we're trying to wrap around to make sure those investments that we're making capacity can't stand the test of time.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: So that's Building Bright Futures.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, Child Development Division, DCF)]: No, it's an organization called First Children's Finance. They're a national nonprofit and they started but they have a Vermont specific office with people that have run childcare programs in Vermont, and they started about two years ago.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: So how does Building Bright Futures fit into this?

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, Child Development Division, DCF)]: Building Bright Futures is another nonprofit in Vermont, and they are our state early childhood advisory council. They're named in statute to sort of advise and monitor, and, facilitate the systems over the early childhood systems overall. So that includes like early childhood education, but it also includes early childhood mental health, looking at physical health, looking at housing, sort of all issues related to early childhood in the state. So it's just a different, they're totally different functions.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Right, the big picture. The family's foundation, whatever you call the other one, reminds me of the Small Business Development Center providing technical assistance, technical assistance specifically for this industry.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: That's, yes.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: So we aren't just saying here's some money, good luck in the future. We're actually helping them out.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: Building great features doesn't provide any grants to providers, but they are named in Act 76 to evaluate the implementation of Act 76.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: So, do you actually count the number of days that for children, the number of children per day in each one of these facilities? You keeping track of that? Is there any requirement for tracking that? So that we get an assessment of what the cost is per day of a child being housed? Cared for.

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: So

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, Child Development Division, DCF)]: we do have, we can answer that question a couple of ways, but one is, I mean, there's a thousand separate childcare programs in the state. And so no, we don't know exactly, we don't keep enrollment required that they report attendance for every single child that attends those programs. But for those children who do benefit from childcare financial assistance, yes, we do get attendance on those children. So we know that they have been attending when they've been absent. And we do do regular audits, both in person and using the attendance records and looking for patterns and things like that. And we do that every single pay period for childcare financial assistance, and we're getting out in person to childcare programs on a regular basis. So in terms of, and then we also have done some analysis on sort of a cost of care model for a variety of different, childcare programs to try to assess viability and sustainability of the program based on the ages of the children you've enrolled, what percentage of them are on childcare financial assistance, looking at, well, how does that work with wages that where they currently are? How does it work with wages when they might be closer to what some more aligned perhaps with what's offered in public schools? So there's a lot of numbers and analysis out there. But I do think we can feel really confident that there's more kids attending care and more kids are certainly getting a benefiting from the Child Care Financial Assistance Program.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Thanks. This one is very well over. There's a lot

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: of oversight. I just like clarification is this $100,000 reduction in the capacity grants, the whole program, or is there money left in the grant program.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: There's $900,000 remaining after the $100,000 reduction.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Did you use the whole million or whatever it was last year? Was it completely used or is there any carry forward on that one?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: We didn't have carry forward in CDD last year, but that's not to say that we spent every dollar of that line item as we close out this apartment. I can get back to you and let me know how much was actually spent. We

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: did spend it.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Yeah.

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

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So the next line item is the emergency financial relief utilization cut. So this is the reduction of funding to support emergency needs for childcare providers at risk of closure. And the remaining budget is aligned with what was actually dispersed in state fiscal year '25. So this is a reduction in the amount that we're budgeting to align with how much was actually requested last year. So how much is left? 156,000. And so then the next slide is another $100,000 reduction, and this is a reduction for child care eligibility agreement efficiencies. We have 12 Community Child Care Support Agencies,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: or

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: CCCSAs, that have been funded based on that do our eligibility determinations for us. And we are reducing this because we have funding that hasn't been drawn down in the past couple of years. Dollars 2,500,000.0 remains. And then the final line item is the Children's Trust Fund program cut. And this is the elimination of a contribution to CTF's annual grant making program for a variety of child serving programs. Federal funds have not been available to support this for several years now, and then this removes the spending authority for the federal line as well as the general fund. And so that's CDD.

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

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: I apologize, you covered this, but I'm just digesting here. The strengthening families, did I hear you say, is that the whole program? Pardon?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Yes, the strengthening families program is one cause for elimination.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: It eliminates the whole thing. That was the policy foundation of our child development program, was it not? In the four tenets, you know, the Janet's

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: gonna answer. Go ahead, Janet.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, Child Development Division, DCF)]: Strengthening family, yes, is a really important framework related to child well-being and child protection from abuse. We still have the tenants of the strengthening families framework embedded into the work we do at the child development division. It's a key, it's even more strongly component of the STARS quality recognition and improvement system. So we have other ways that we are supporting programs, childcare programs, to be able to embed these practices within their programs. This is what this is doing is eliminating a program that gave grants to about 30 organizations. So not it didn't give grants to the full continuum.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: And so we that's

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: Yes. Where we

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Just to understand, are you suggesting that the STARS program will fulfill most of this work throughout the continuum?

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, Child Development Division, DCF)]: I am suggesting, yes, that the STARS program will be a way to support widespread adoption of the strengthening families practices across many more childcare programs. And that it's embedded into the trainings that are offered, via our different partners at Northern Lights through the coaching that we have offered through the SPARKS program. And then it's also embedded into the STARS program. So it's just it's a different approach, trying to get the, rather than going deep with a really deep with smaller number of programs, the approach is to go broad with more programs, knowing that those programs have more resources now that now that x 76 is in place. And

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: just one more if I may. It used to be there were five stars, but now I'm told everybody gets the equivalent of five stars?

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, Child Development Division, DCF)]: No, so there still are five stars. Everybody comes in at one star with licensing. When you become licensed, you're at one star. Then there's four additional levels beyond that. I think the confusion is that when with Act 76, we eliminated tiered reimbursement based on your stars level.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: So

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, Child Development Division, DCF)]: that's what happened. So we made the base level, the five star rate from that time became the new base rate. It's changed since then, but that was the line of thinking that got people into thinking that everybody's five stars, and it's not that. We just changed the rates.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Mhmm. Reimbursement from the five stars was built in. So do we still designate? I might be a three star and John got a four star, but we could you not today, but could you please send us the distribution of where childcare programs fall on the stars, 30% are a two star, 40% are four, etcetera. And be great to see that over time. Thank you.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Yep,

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, Child Development Division, DCF)]: happy to share that. And we do provide incentive dollars for programs that are achieving higher STARS level. It's just not directly through the childcare financial assistance reimbursement rate anymore. Do get incentive.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: I think that conversation was a good example of what we did across the agency. We looked into the departments, were there redundancies, could we increase efficiencies? And then each director was working with their team to look at the programs that they had. Is there evidence to show that it's working? Are there other programs that fill the need? So that just is a great example of it. Good.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: I can hear it. So let's go quickly to the Office of Child Support because I think we really want to hear about your housing thing. I don't

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: think there's much to talk about in OCS.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: No, it looked like there was just a judiciary cooperative agreement reduction. Yeah, so that's just

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: a reduction in the GF that we provide to the judiciary to offset their non-4D eligible costs. Part of that is for work that they do on the administrative side of that, and we've been doing more of that work. So it's just a reduction from offset on our needs there. AABD, we have an increase to the amount that we are needing to cover the administrative costs of this program. We pay the feds a flat rate per payment to administer these payments on our behalf, and they raise the rates every year. So this is just an increase in the amount that we have to pay for all of our ABD payments to go out. And then the line below that is a benefit adjustment, a benefit caseload adjustment. So as the chart showed, we have been seeing a decline in the number of households receiving ABD benefits. And so this is aligned with that reducing caseload. Great. Thank you. Which brings us to GA. And so in GA, you'll see the first one is a down in our Social Security Specialist Agreement cut. So we're eliminating the agreement that provides support to GA eligible households and applying for Social Security benefits. We've done analysis of data, and it did not demonstrate that there was a substantial increase in the applications for an approval by SSA as a result of this agreement. That's why we

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: So that's an agreement with Social Security directly?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: No, it's an agreement with a provider.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: My association of business industry is between BABOR.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Yes, BABOR. Okay.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Support people as they apply for us. Okay. So we didn't see the connection, the result. Okay. The next line item is an increase to our support services budget in GA to align with the different components of support services. So we're actually seeing a reduction in the dental costs, which is why you see it down in the GC. But then we have some increases in other components, which are burial abortions and positions. And then we have our personal needs and incidentals, which is another down. And this is a reduction based on prior year trends for groceries, room and board, home rent, that type of thing. We know that more analysis needs to be done on this program to understand the crossover between populations in various housing programs and how they impact the P and I utilization. And we look forward to doing that as we move forward with the new version of the housing initiative. And then the last item in GA is part of the housing initiative. It's a big down, but that's because we have ups in other places in the budget. But initiative that DCF has put forth as part of the governor's recommended budget prioritizes shelter funding and expansion. And so DCF is proposing converting the base funding for the hotel motel program in state fiscal year '27 into one time funding, which allows additional base funding to be invested in other components of the housing system. And this retains limited funding for contracted hotelmotel rooms in ESD space budget.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: So where do we find like this whole housing initiative thing? Because it's probably not in the ups and downs, mean it's in pieces, but we want

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: to like talk about it as a Page one twenty six.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Maybe we should go to that. I'm trying to be aware of the time, and I know we have until three, but this is kind of a big one.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: That's in a different handout.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: It's in

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: the 175 page budget book and annual report. And Teresa said it's on page 126. I just sent it. There it is.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: Can I just ask a quick question before we jump into that? So what does this remaining $3,000,000 pay for? It's support services,

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: the agreements, several different various agreements that we administer through the GA budget, and it's our P and I program. Are there other things in GA that I'm right now that remain there after you take out the housing program? Besides the admin.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Okay.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: And

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: I can just let my committee know that last week when the office and everybody else came in we got a great series of spreadsheets that included carried forward, I don't know how I ended up with this, but I have it. Carry forward reversion, single audit findings,

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: and the cost to increase

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: community providers rate by 1%. So, it's a delightful combination of everything. Carry forward isn't that.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: I don't have that Madam Chair, but in San Diego, they have some specific things. My question specifically is, it looks like there's 11,100,000 carried forward FY '25

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: and then it's kind of

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: emergency housing. And then it looks like there's going to be at least around $6,000,000 in FY '26. And I'm just wondering if that roughly 17 to $18,000,000 is included as part of this Governor's House.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So those are both one time appropriations. Well, so the Right.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: There's a lot of stuff in this governor housing issue as well.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Yeah. And so I think I don't know if Lily can speak more to exactly what we're utilizing that for. I can definitely get back to you. But there are plans to utilize the remaining balances to support our initiative, as well as ongoing projects that are just taking a little while to materialize and be billed for.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: I was just gonna say, yeah, mean, did ask for breakout at FY 2526, and then proposed 27 of appropriated, extended, and then proposed so that we could see it more clearly to make sure that from hearing apples to apples when we're looking at what the initiative actually contains.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Then we almost have that done for you.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: We're working on that today.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: That probably is good for us to have to.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Yeah.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: I don't know if any of you have it online, but if you click this little icon up here, then it pulls up all the headings. So you can skip around if you have to scroll through everything. And then you can click on the governor's recommended budget. And then within that, there's subcategories. So then you can go to the governor's housing initiative. Just, I don't know, you probably all already know this, but I just didn't.

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: Yeah. I'm also chairing our director of

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: the office on economic opportunity. And so

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: on the bottom of page 135, under shelter things, startup investments, we referenced a $6,000,000 that we're putting forward, but then talk about utilizing of these platforms to allow for this is primarily, again, a more intensive startup process, building acquisitions, significant renovations. And so that's where that is incorporated into those plans. So I

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: feel like we're starting in the middle. And I would like to go back and tell us what the housing initiative is. Give us the big picture of what you're talking about Velocity of the whole thing. It's okay, I understand. I'm just gonna now pull us back and let's go to the 30,000 feet and tell us what we're talking about. Who's in charge of this?

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: We're arguing over it. We

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: both want to do it.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: Recognizing that Vermont is a shelter first state, we want to invest in shelters moving forward. So do you

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Can I have the over for a second? Yeah. I keep hearing you all say we're a shelter first state as opposed to what? And Housing when did that happen? We were not ever housing? I thought we were housing No. We've never been housing first? Not in statute.

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: Okay. And because it relates to general assistance, covering the staffing and use of motels. Not, Housing First is a specific.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: It's about something else.

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: Philosophy and intervention

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Okay, so a shelter first aid means that we try to find shelter for people of different kinds of shelters.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: Yeah, rather than a hotel room, really. Like we're looking for a shelter where they're gonna get programming. There are services available. They're not just staying in a room, they have access to services.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: And they're moving toward housing. Okay. So it includes wraparound services with the goal of moving to housing. Right.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So So, this year, as part of the governor's recommended budget, DCF is proposing a new housing initiative designed to address the housing crisis in Vermont in a more nuanced way, utilizing data on what works best for households throughout the continuum of housing needs and target populations most adversely impacted by the housing crisis individually rather than in a one size fits all approach. As part of this initiative, AHS proposes investing more heavily in shelter and service options for targeted populations in the long term, with state fiscal year '27 and state fiscal year '28 as transition year. Hotels and motels will play a key role during the transition and may be utilized in the future, but in a safer and more targeted way. Understanding that expansion of shelter capacity takes time, DCF does not propose eliminating the hotel motel program in state fiscal year '27, but rather, supposed to be utilizing one time appropriations as the state transitions to a shelter focused approach to housing supports. The sections below outline the components of the initiatives. All the funding has been allocated to DCF or is supposed to be allocated to DCF. But DCF has worked closely with AHS, Dale, DMH, and BDH on developing this proposal and plans to continue working closely on administering the FOG to our partners across the agency.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: Okay. Yes. So, that's kind of a statement of intention. And then can you get it? I have really hard time getting my arms around, like many shelters, how many beds,

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: eligibility,

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: any changes in eligibility, and how does that then compare to what we're doing right now in terms of people?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: And different kinds of sheltering options is what Yeah. I would

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: So, think some of those things we're still talking about. We are prioritizing Vermonters. So we want Vermonters to receive the services, to receive the to have access. So we are suggesting that there are residency requirements for for folks to access the programming. Far as the the number of shelters, I would ask Lily to

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: oh. I'm sorry.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: How does one prove residency if you're homeless?

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: Attestations from providers in the community.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Go ahead.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: I know that's a big topic constantly on how you define residency and how you can legally and constitutionally define residency. So, it's a very thorny issue.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: And we also want to support people if they're going to make Vermont their homes. So, how do you do that? So, we're still figuring out some of those things.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Right, and every state in the country thinks that all the homeless people come from another state. It's just not true. It doesn't work that way, so we need to dispel that myth. Can I

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: just be, I just want to make sure that I'm understanding, when you say you're still talking about the specifics, are you still talking about the number of people that the system can accommodate and the different, you know, like numbers of different types of shelters, or is it that you're still debating eligibility requirements, or is it both? Well, we've

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: been exploring these, we've been working on this since I started and before I started. So, I only know from when I started what we've been working on, but we've been talking eligibility criteria. What should it look like? How could we move people in different directions within the system? What services are available across the departments, across the agency? What do our community partners offer? Where are there gaps in care? Where should we invest to make sure that medically vulnerable folks have shelter? So we work with Dale and Dale says, oh, this work, and this is what we think it would cost, and maybe two programs, one in the North, one in the South. So exploring all of the things we identify as being gaps. One thing that we have to make sure that we remember is there's not just this number. There's not a number of people that we need to serve and make sure there's a bed for because it fluctuates. And what we hope is when they receive the services that are available through other departments within the agency, there'll be a reduction in the homeless population. I

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: want to be really clear. I don't minimize the difficulty of your job and this particular challenge. And yet, I've been hearing for five years that the departments are going to be working together and that services will be provided. And every year, it is a new commitment. And I should let you talk, but I think that my expectation would be that at this point, given this problem, you come to us with a really concrete proposal because the Human Services Committee did last year and it was rejected. So, at any rate, I know that, I mean, is in my budget category, and I know that there are many members of this committee who have grappled with this for quite a while now. And so we'll be working with human services to better understand the plan and

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: I'm

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: hopeful that it is

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: that that

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: people's lives are on the line. And what I am hearing as I participate in listening in on other testimony is that the eligibility requirements will change pretty significantly and that will affect thousands of people who are currently unhoused. So, I think as specific as you can get, it will be very helpful to me and probably many people in the body.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: So you did Speech.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: Yeah. You did hear some of the presentation, and I hope that you saw that there was cross department work, that the agency We have been working with our partners in Dale, DMH, DOC, DDH. We have been working with them assessing what is available right now, seeing where there's overlap, seeing if there needs to be increases. So what we identified was in the shelters, there needs to be increases in mental health services. DMH proposes ten hours a week through designated agencies. I spoke briefly to the potential shelter for medically vulnerable folks in the North and South of the state, there's been an increase in beds for people with substance use disorder in virgins. There's also an assessment through VDH where they looked at the services that the preferred providers are obligated to provide and making sure that they're doing that in the shelter. So again, meeting people where they are.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: A resource might be the presentation that we put into housekeeping services last Wednesday.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Yes. I mean, I was thinking of this, and there's a lot of information here, but it's not necessarily giving me the information I want other than some of the numbers. If we take the medically vulnerable, you've got 2,600,000 What is that going for? How many people are going to be served? What are the eligibility requirements? I mean, could see a spreadsheet or a chart or a spreadsheet that says for each of these, here's the cost, here's the number of people that will be served, here are the eligibility requirements. There may be health of other columns that I can't think of. But that would be really helpful to just see what Then we can see how many people we're talking about, all that, John.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Think it would be helpful for me to understand what that looks like state regionally. Right. Because it's different.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Right. And then we see the total dollars for being

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: thousand people I represent, but how many people might need to serve there or other places. Right. It's a little more breakdown. And that may be and we just need to be exact to the person here, but the best forecasting you can do for that based on our past services.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: And how much we're really talking about? Because I see shelter planning and start up investments for 6,000,000, but we have carry forward of 11,000,000. It feels like it needs to be all brought together in a chart somehow. What's paid for what? Wayne?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: I agree wholeheartedly.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: No, it's a little bit harder to focus on the dimensions of focusing on shelters as opposed to hotel rooms. Because hotel rooms, it's like $80 a night times six, number of nights, equals this many.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: You got to the 6,000,000 somehow.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Yeah. And so I think, a lot of it is, to some extent, this is our goal, but just because we have a goal of 90 beds or whatever I'm making that number up, doesn't mean necessarily that when we go out for procurement and secure shelter capacity, it will be 90 beds. So I think that that's slightly different when you're

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Although, why would we give you 6,000,000 if you can't even tell us what it's going to be used for? Procurement could be Because if it's $6,000,000 and you get 30 beds, that's probably not okay. So, I think we need a little bit

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: more information. With John on this, if not by county, it could be like Northwest.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: You could raise the most sense, yeah.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: And I see you have, for medically vulnerable, you have North and South, so that's at least something. And I like the notion of families have certain needs that are different from those who are medically vulnerable, that are different from those who are in recovery. And that makes sense to me. So I appreciate all that thinking. And I just feel like we need a little bit more to hang all this money

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: And if we haven't done this, then this should be a major part of your planning process.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: So we have met with providers. They suggest are percentages of folks that come in and meet these categories. And so we try to figure, Okay, what does that mean across the state? And there has been some data analysis. I can say is, It was two hours that we met and we gave an overview to HHS. I don't know that that's what you need. Think we can hone it in. I'm hearing the questions that you're asking, and I could get a smaller group to come and not an overview of everything that's already on, but the breakdown of the costs. I mean, I can tell you that it's for additional shelter capacity, but I'm hearing you want to know, okay, what does that mean? How many? Said 300

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: or 300, or something that we like the data. Teresa, and I think Dave has a question too. I was just gonna say,

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: Madam Chair, hospital services is going to get more detailed later this week. We have the department scheduled for testimony specifically to review. We've only had sort of the broad overview and then we had what each department in HS as the commissioner said is doing currently. And so we're gonna be digging deeper into this later and welcome any number of appropriations. And

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: I was there last week.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Yeah, and I think that's right. But I just think having it laid out in a chart somehow that we think differently. That's helpful for us to have all that detail.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: Yeah, I think that the chart that they're preparing with the expenditures and the appropriations that definitely helps

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: make sure that

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: you that. That would be really helpful to have. Dave, go ahead.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Just a couple of things. Is there a proposal on the table to change the eligibility for emergency housing for the disabled?

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: I'm trying to scroll down, but I can't.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Okay. Can

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: you repeat the question, Dave?

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Is there a proposal to change the definition of who is disabled for emergency housing?

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: Not changing, refining it, making sure that it's very clear.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Can you give me an example? I would

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: ask folks at Dale to do that. Oh, okay. Because I

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: know now, and looking at the data that DCF provides on their webpage, periodically, monthly, whatever. You can see this is how many are on SSI. This is how many are on SSDI. This is how many, I think it's a voc rehab eligibility. And pretty much figured, well, must be disabled folks. And I didn't know if we were tightening that in some way. I should speak to dental

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: staff about whether they are.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: And then I wanna just shift a little bit. We say shelter first, and I'm an advocate of shelters. However, I'm interested in the cost benefit analysis of which makes more sense. I think we have 600 plus beds in shelters now. I could be off a little bit, but the cost to build a shelter, 20 bed, a 30 bed, a 10 bed, and to sprinkle that construction around the state and then to staff it with services sufficient to address the wraparound needs that people have, is it is it less costly and equally effective to do something like using vacant hotel space or buying marginally profitable motels throughout the state and bringing the services to the motel that's already built. And imagine the AHS field director, I do not know how many exist anymore, but every Monday morning, looking at the list of the people that are there and say, community action, mental health, parent child center, who's the case manager for David Yacovone? And visits being arranged and saying, okay, Dave, have you made it in to apply for your etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Is that model just ineffective, obsolete? Is it cost effective? Are looking at different models or is it just, boy, we're going to somehow construct shelters and hopefully place them in the right place?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Something you would like to answer.

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: I think that in addition to shelter investments that we're making, there are also other investments. Because ideally,

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: and I think to the point made

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: earlier, we don't want to walk away saying, oh, Vermont just has a plethora of shelter beds, and that's sort of your final destination. We want people's final destination to be their apartment, to be a skilled nursing facility that meets their needs. We want to be something that is not a shelter. And so I think that's where some of the service discussions that we've had to help get people to those destinations that best meet their needs, that's

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: an important investment that we've highlighted.

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: And then also there's an investment for rental assistance, knowing that again, for many people, it's this three legs of the stool analogy, where you have rental assistance, the unit, and the services. So again, knowing that for folks and for us, need to prioritize some families and children, people with complex health needs, how can we get them the rental assistance that when they are in services like family supported housing, they can go out and get into these units that we're working with our colleagues at Department of Health and Community Development and others to bring online? Because while those units need definition of affordability for folks who may be on reach out or who may be on SSI, they need some sort of rental assistance to get into those. So I think that's where it's not just a sheltered plan, and we have

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: multiple

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: different investments that are going to get to that capacity. It's not just shelters, right? It's trying to move people beyond shelter and have shelters serve as that safety net so that homelessness can be age free, if they're not recovering for a short duration of time, but that we're investing in other services and supports that are going

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: to help people maintain permanent housing.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: And who do you imagine running all this? Is it a community nonprofit? Doing an RFP? Is it the state? Making all those decisions and operating the different facets of what you described. Is there someone who's on first?

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: So, think we can leverage a lot of the information that's happening now in communities, including things like the coordinated entry assessment process, families and individuals, if they need a higher level of care information, could be referred to T based care with HR skilled services. But that's a way to kind of do the process and the orientation. In terms of some of the details, most recently, for instance, we've had a statewide voucher program for families with minor children that CBOEO was the recipient of those funds. Think there's different ways in terms of the funding mechanics. And then, again, making sure that families are being connected through things like coordinated entry. Right now, we leverage coordinated entry for any referrals to family supportive housing. We leverage it for permanent housing assistance to get and make sure we go. And that allows us to make those choices around urgency, for instance. So with family supportive housing, we look at factors such as children under the age of six. We were talking about some of the strengthening families down the road with Janet. So kids under the age of six, families about their child welfare, duration of homelessness, and that helps us feature we're getting to those families with the most need first for those families for housing services.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Thank you.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Those are things we can do.

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: We also envision funding

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: options or opportunities

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: for specific regions to apply for funding for what they need in that region. And it would encourage them to work together to be collaborative in their application. And then give them the autonomy to do what they need in their region.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: I see big people looking at me. Do you want to say something, Dave? No. Okay.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: I can get you now. Are

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: there more questions? Yeah, keep going.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Did you want us to keep going through the initiative, or did we want to go back to the episodes?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: That people are feeling, do we want to keep going through this, or wait till we get more of a We may end up having you come back and talk about the initiative when we have more info. I kind of feel like we're going to be flailing about a bit with the initiative until we get a little more information. Is that okay? So let's It would also be good

[Interim Commissioner, Department for Children and Families (first name reported as 'Randall')]: to have the other departments here with us.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Great. Yes. Have a party.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Okay, so there's probably a couple more ups and downs you want us to look at?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Yeah, so I think we left off at Three Squares. So Three Squares Vermont is again where the cash out benefits and the summer EBT benefits flow through us to beneficiaries. It's 100% federally funded, and we're just adjusting it to account for utilization and caseloads. Just an increase in federal funding.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Sorry, I lost my spreadsheet.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: I'm

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: not seeing questions on three squares. That brings us up.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Oh, wait. Just one. Go ahead.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: We have an awful lot of food programs in The States. Do you folks feel that there's no overlap, no misalignment of anything there?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Don't know. Miranda, why don't weigh in on that? Whether there's overlap or misalignment amongst the many food programs.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: I guess I would want to know the part where you were thinking there was going to be some overlap and misalignment.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: We've got school programs, we've got summer programs, we've got food bank, we've got, we're giving money up to three squares, we've about 15 or more food programs total in the state, something non elder maybe $200,000,000 I'm just wondering, do you feel there's no overlap or anything in that?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: I'm not sure it's that much, I don't think it's $200,000,000 It is, we'll see.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: I did a little assessment.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Maybe we should get that confirmed. You share it, just so

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: we Okay. Can see where to

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: We'll take a look. I mean, I think the programs that I'm aware of do different things. Yeah.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: So, we have meals for children when they're in school. The summer program is providing access. It's a pretty small benefit to be able to help families be able to purchase some food while their children aren't able to access those summer meals. Food shelves, I mean, I even think of our SNAP only through storage benefit, it's like a length study. And when you look at what the bed sized mouth is, and I know that there are, should note this probably off the top of my head, but there's a challenge for us, for you and I, go and see, can we support our family not to dispense at what were the meals? They are really, truly trans supplemented, that's where food shelves are. So depending on what community they have on it, some people can only go once a week, once a month. So I think we need a lot of these resources to be in place.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: When we were looking at SNAP when the government shutdown happened, seem to record the number I seem to recall is that for one person, their SNAP benefit was $30 a week. So, living on $30 a week, know, week after week is not understand. Easy to

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: If I don't ask the question, I don't have anybody thinking about it.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So that brings us to B323, which is reach out. So the first line item on there is the $3,300,000 reduction to our caseload costs based on the caseloads that were projected last year when we were building the base budget versus where we're seeing caseloads land now and those projected forward. And we use the projections from our consultant, and then we use three year trends in cost per case to project it out. And as a result, we have some significant savings that we can realize in Reach Up. So is that because

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: people are not eligible because they're making more money

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: and they don't qualify for that?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Case for change.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: We're seeing a national trend that caseloads are decreasing. If you think in part it probably has something to do with the benefit amount and then also just like what employers are paying. You know, think we saw that during the height of the pandemic, right? Like, so people, it wasn't just minimum wage, they're paying people $20 an hour. So people are paying $20 an hour, and also you have a larger family and probably not eligible for regional benefits. Great, thank you. The

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: next slide item is the Reach First program cut. It's the elimination of the Reach First program, which provides short term targeted support for households as part of a diverging strategy. This is a program that was meant to divert people from Reach Up and only a small number of households are served by the program. We think we can absorb these costs within the Reach Up budget. It's an average of 15 households per month with an average of $928 per household for up to four months. And then we have the pregnant and parenting bed reduction. So this reduces the maximum number of DCF contracted beds at Lund by three beds for a total of 23 beds available. One has not had more than 22 beds utilized at one time for over a year. And so we feel confident that even with this reduction, we still are providing ourselves with the buffer. The next line item is similar to the GA one that we saw, which was, again, an agreement with Weber that provides support. We're eliminating this agreement that provides support to households that are reach out eligible in applying and receiving Social Security benefits. And again, we haven't seen the substantial increase in application for an approval by SSA as a result of this agreement. Then we have our Reach Up housing agreement cuts, and this is the elimination of grants to provide housing case management supports to Reach Up households. We're providing housing case management services already through various other venues within DCF. And so we think this is a duplicative service that will be addressed via the housing initiative. So people will still get the services that

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: they need just somewhere else. Yes.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: And then finally, last one is the other half of the third part of the TANF revenue realignment.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Right, it had to go down somewhere. Yeah. So,

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: with that, Sarita.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Okay. Seeing questions. So then

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: we move on to LiveEAP. We're just seeing an increase here in our path for LiveEAP's budget. It's all federal funding. And we've just seen our we've been asking for it via ERR in the past, and now we're just building it into the budget to align with our award. And then OEO, we're going to skip through some items. Then we have the positions that we talked about in DAA on here. We are asking to utilize some of the increases that we're seeing in our HOT budget to support these positions in providing those grant management supports needed to operationalize that. They're really significant investments in the HOP program that we're seeing.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Where do we see the money for HOP? So, HOP, if

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: you scroll down further, so it's in the grants out section

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: OEL, which is Oh, I see. There's like a whole bunch of different Well,

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: yeah. It That's

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: the housing initiative down there.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Well, so the housing initiative does have some investments in the HOT program. So I'm looking at BAA, that's why it's not on there.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Wasn't it like 32,000,000 or

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: something for HOP last year? Well, I should know that, but I don't know it off the top of it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Lily, is that about right? And I

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: think Megan's trying to fill it up because we are asking for additional funds for outside of the housing initiative. I think what we're trying to do, and appreciate your feedback, we can work to refine this for Thursday's presentation. The difference between housing initiative, which is more, I think, kind of like new things versus addressing these pressures with foreign pop budget. So you'll see an increase in pop budget for shelter operating costs based on investments that we've already made this year to increase shelter capacity, as well as we're looking to bring the extreme cold weather shelter program into base funding. It was funded this year with one time funding. So those two things are housing related, of course, but not necessarily part of that housing issue because, again, we see that in the space pressures that we're committed to. I know she'll be getting there. I'm just trying to let Megan find it so she can. Right.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Yes. So I can share my screen again to show you where it is on I can find the Zoom link again now. Where it is on the budget. It looks like there's some positions involved, too. So you'll see here that this is the GF. All the HOP investments are in GF. And we have the 6,200,000 that's, as Lily spoke to, the base impacts of investments that we're making this year.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Is that new, HOP investments, or is that

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: No, maybe increase the operating for shelters that were, you know, started in this year or next year.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Okay, and how much are we spending in HOP now? For the $6,200,000 addition?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So our budget last year was $29,700,000 for HOP, and this year, the budget for 'twenty six was 29,700,000.0 and the budget that we're proposing for 'twenty seven is 37,500,000.0.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: 37.5. Yeah. Okay.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: And that doesn't account for several of the components that are in OEO's budget. We're sort of budgeting those separately, not within the HOT budget. So that's not including the family specific shelters or the medically vulnerable shelters. Those are separate. I see

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: the housing initiative sections all down there.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Yeah, I just wanted to know, so

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: will those who provide, like the cap agencies that provide support and financial assistance, will they still be doing that under this budget? Is there a line item for

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: the cap services that support folks who are homeless?

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: So to clarify, I think what you're talking about is the hot funded client financial assistance, which is funded by administrators, not just the community action agencies. Some of them play that role, but not all of them. And in other communities, there are other providers. So

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member, House Appropriations)]: that goes to

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: what people experiencing homelessness are at risk of homelessness. This budget does not So the housing opportunity grant program budget covers our activities, which is helpful to leverage, as the discussion was earlier, to support local planning and respond to local needs. This budget does not particularly increase that line item. So we would not expect to see an increase.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Is it level funded? I'm sorry.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: I just want to ask you more specific. Did you continue the FY $261,370,000.00 dollars decrease? So

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: that was an end primarily based on the end of one time funding, and so yes, we would not expect that to be addressed. Yes, continue that.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair, House Human Services)]: That's the question you're asking. It is. Yes. Thanks.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Yeah, Wayne.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: So, all this is going out as contracts. And so, these positioned, are those some managing contracts?

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Grants. Grants, right. Most of OER is grant. There is, I think, Lily, you do have contracts for family supportive housing, permanent supportive housing.

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: The housing and permanent supportive housing are contracts in primarily related Medicaid rates. These are grants and the positions are not so much doing grant contract administration, but really doing more training and technical assistance activities. So for instance, this includes monitoring shelters, doing half of the building inspections, monitoring program and policy to make sure that they're adhering to our standards. Data analysis, we receive quarterly and annual reports that helps make sure that quarantine shelter beds are being utilized or that spending is on track or that they're not running into issues with operations. It's more of that training and technical assistance positions.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: So the work has to be done for grants and contracts and stuff. That's all in house and other part, your in your general budget for staff members on on board.

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: We we're absorbing that currently.

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: And again, as we've grown, we're seeing more of

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: the need to bring on the staff is around the, again, that training, technical assistance and monitoring. It is a heavy workload for our staff, but we didn't manage to get these out of work over the summer. And our staff put in tremendous, tremendous work to make that happen.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: Makes sense.

[Lily (Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, DCF)]: So

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: We of skipped ahead a

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: little bit, but we also are proposing baseline funding to continue the coal bedded shelter investments that we made with one time funding this year in the future. And then there's all of the various components of the housing initiative. I'm looking up ahead of under personal services, and

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: it looks like you've got new positions.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So those are three limited service positions that were funded in various capacities in the past, and we're asking to build them into the budget moving forward as limited service positions but funded with state dollars rather than various other mechanisms. One was funded with ERAP and the others were funded via one time funds.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: So you want to put them in the base, which means they won't be limited service for very long.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: You can still have a limited service position.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Well, if you have it and you're putting it the base, I'm imagining a long term plan is to get them to be classified or something, not limited service.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: We build limited service positions into the base on occasion for grants that are for things that are really tied to a specific funding source because we know that those things are connected.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: And

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So, know we're over time, so I don't know how much you Oh, are.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Weatherization,

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: there's nothing really interesting happening there. Just the $1,000,000 federal fund adjustment again, just the revenue adjustment.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: And then you've got secure residential and there's a million dollars.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: So the secure residential is associated with our

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member, House Appropriations)]: So

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: after state fiscal year '26, DCF will have fully utilized all our one time funding and carry forward for secure treatment facilities. And as we do not have a permanent secure residential treatment facility in place, we will continue to utilize Red Clover, which is our temporary secure facility, in state fiscal year '27. We will also be operating a short term stabilization treatment facility in Windham that has three beds capacity. And that will be an ongoing, it's not a temporary, it's a permanent And so combined, the operating need for those two facilities is about 8,000,000, along with other grants and contracts that we have. And so we're asking for base funding to fully fund our West River Haven, which is the new short term stabilization facility in Windham. And then we're asking for one time funds for our temporary rent for our facility as we continue to work towards a plan of future permanent facility somewhere in the state.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: Good deal. It's a million dollars a bet, right?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Sorry? Expensive, a million dollars bet. That sounds

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations)]: like a good deal.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: And DDS looks pretty standard.

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: Yes, DDS, the only items that are we have a cost of living adjustment for temp position that we require to be able to do the work that DDS does. And then everything else is just salaries. So what I

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: was looking for, which typically actually on the very first page, and again, we can talk about it when you come back and talk more about the housing initiative, but there's 21 positions related to the housing initiative. Did separate from whatever we have to do for more administration for Medicaid? That must be housed somewhere else, all the eligibility. Is that housed in central office for Diva? Diva. Diva?

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Yeah. Lost. Okay, this is

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: the housing. So these are the positions that support the GA program and generally do eligibility determinations. And we have bill payers. We have the work that happens around administering the emergency housing program.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Are these new positions or

[Megan Smieton (Chief Financial Officer, DCF)]: are they being transferred? They're existing positions. They've been funded out of one time appropriations for several years now. And so we are just putting the money for them into the base budget because we know that the housing programs aren't going away, and we will have need for positions to support whatever.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Well, it's very interesting couple of hours. I'm sure everybody else's heads are swirling like mine is, or maybe they're not, but I think we've gotten a bunch of our questions answered. We really appreciate

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: your time, but we will

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: get you back after we figure out. I know you're presenting in human services on Thursday on the housing initiative, and then we'll confer and figure out the best way to get you back to talk more about that so we can understand. It's a lot of money and it's a big change and we're all tired now, so we'll have you come back and talk about it. And whoever else you think should be here will organize the best way we can. Thank you very much. You online, everybody that stood there. Thank you everybody who's called. I really appreciate it. So committee, we will take, Why don't we grade to three twenty five? Because we have legal aid coming and that's our

[Miranda Grant (Deputy Chief, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: last thing for the day. No, is it legal aid? Yeah, he's gonna stay out.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: It is legal aid.