Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Good afternoon. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Wednesday, 02/04/2026. It's just after 02:15PM, continuing to go through the FY twenty seventh budget. And this afternoon, we're pleased to have the Admiral and staff to talk about the budget that you have for the Guard. So welcome. It's great to see you here.

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: Thank you, Madam Chair. Take it away. Appreciate the opportunity, ma'am. I'll go with precedent. If it's acceptable to you and the committee is to create a brief overview of what's going on with our guard, both externally and internally. And then I'll turn it over to Kim to talk through the specifics.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: And for the record, you would all introduce yourselves, that would be terrific.

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: Yes, ma'am. So Major General Greg Knight, Vermont's adjutant general. Provide a quick mission update. As you know, the guard is a has dual missions. We have our state mission, our domestic response mission to the governor and our citizens, as well as our federal mission. But recently, I go back to this past spring, I went out to Okinawa, Japan to visit with our air guard. They had mobilized on a training mission, focusing on interoperability with our regional partners in the Indo Pacific. They conducted exercises in Guam and in South Korea, and that was actually, believe, the second time that our aircraft has flown US aircraft have flown specifically out of a South Korean base in conjunction with our South Korean allies. We also have a number of members. We have what we call a reserve component period, and our air guard members mobilize individuals to support active duty units that are already deployed. And we've had a number of them, about 60 airmen this past year in multiple countries across three combatant commands. And then everybody's aware we had a very short notice, title 10 mobilization for our Air National Guard in support of Southern Command. And what's interesting to note here, being the best in the business sometimes comes at a cost. They were asked for by name, by the secretary of war, to support this mission. And we're quickly becoming known, I think it's well known, at least from my seat, even inclusive of my bias that we are simply the best in the business when it comes to the f 35. Our Army National Guard remains busy. We did have a mobilization ceremony about two weeks ago. We've got a 160 members of our eighty six brigade headquarters and some of our cavalry squadron going to Germany as part of the joint multinational training group Ukraine. So they're gonna be focusing for the next year training new soldiers for the Ukrainian military. So that's a critical mission for them. And then we have, force structure changes. The army is changing, moving away from legacy systems, like the tanks, the strikers, some of those more maintenance intensive and less nimble and adaptable systems becoming more mobile. That means change across the army. It's becoming more adaptable, much lighter, and that's gonna drive change here in Vermont. We will become smaller as a force. Probably good for us. It'll actually rightsize us as a state. Right now, I've got over 700 vacancies in the Army National Guard that we can't fill. So that will get us to where we need to be and put us probably 90 to 95% of staffing to execute our missions. Our state partnerships, before we move on, we also have an upcoming deployment to central command for our infantry battalion, also part of our eighty sixth brigade, and that's in conjunction. We're a multistate brigade, so it'll be Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont soldiers going with our infantry battalion in support of Operation Spartan Shield in Southwest Asia. And that's an enduring mission. It's a stability and security mission that we've been a part of before. And all those missions are gonna be about a year. Our state partnership program remains very strong. I recently visited both North Macedonia and Austria. North Macedonia, we've been partners with for thirty four years. I've been traveling there personally for twenty four years. I have a lot of friends there. We have been alongside them, when they became our one of our newest NATO allies, which is pretty profound. We've worked diligently. Bless you. Increase, their capability, their capacity, modernization, to NATO standards, and they're on track to meet their targets as required by by NATO. One of the significant things for them is validating Krivallac Training Area, which is a 54,000 acre directional firing range. You can do things there, military training there, that you probably can't do any place else in Europe, not at scale. So it's good business for them. It's good business for NATO, and we've been central. Our folks that work at our range actually help them design the master plan and layout for that range, work with seventh Army Training Corps in Europe to make that a reality for them. Austria, of course, is a tremendous partnership. It's different. It's a wealthy, stable, high functioning democracy. We've done things with them in four years that I don't think would have been possible. Very complex joint operations. We've had them at Fort Drum. A year ago, this past June, we were in North Macedonia. It was a joint international operation and exercise. It's called immediate response. And we had 12 nations rep eight nations represented and 12,000 soldiers participating in Greece and in North Macedonia, and that was again to validate Krivallac training area. I cannot buy that kind of marketing for our soldiers. The experiences that they have there are truly irreplaceable. For me, that equals retention. When they can do those things, they will stay in the guard. And, of course, the goodwill, and, again, the development that comes with that is mutually beneficial for us. Austria was a part of that. And in Senegal, of course, where our efforts continue there, we're just on a call yesterday with the AFRICOM commander. Senegal has a renewed focus. It's one of the most stable countries in Northwest Africa. They're in what I call the Ku Belt. So our partnership there is very important. We've been with them for going on eighteen years. Been traveling there for eleven years now, A lot of friends, and that's where the continuity of effort comes in. If you look at the state partnership program across the guard, there are a 116 partnerships across the world right now. Different levels of success, but I would argue that we're probably one of the more successful, especially in Africa. It's a very challenging place to be, but we've worked on countering malign influence, those violent extremist organizations reaching into Senegal to try to turn disaffected use youth to overturn the government, being disruptive, malign influence, disinformation, misinformation, cybersecurity, as well as more humanitarian events. I've I've probably spoken about it before. We've done medical readiness exercises there for eight years consecutive. We've grown that from being a bilateral engagement into actually incorporating our state partners of Austria. We're working on getting to the North Macedonia there as well. Give an example of the impact that that has. It was a year ago, June, our folks traveled to the Far Southeast Of Senegal. They worked at three local communities with civilian Senegalese medical providers and military providers, as well as two Austrian army doctors, three from New Hampshire and then about 30 of our providers from our Air and Army National Guard. And they worked in Tambokunda, Ketegu, and Gudiri, very small outlying villages. And in twelve days, they saw seven ninety one patients. That's how great the need is. Our physical therapists got folks out of wheelchairs walking for the first time in years. Two years consecutive, my combat medics working in labor and delivery revived Senegalese infant at birth. Again, that's a pretty powerful message, and that mother will always know because of the partnership that her child is alive today. We are making progress in recruiting and retention, but we need more help. It's a challenge. And as you all are well aware, affordable housing, advertising for our full time staff. I can give you any number of anecdotes. I'm certainly not alone in the challenges of bringing in talent to Vermont. One challenge to get them is the challenge to keep them. So this is a a larger national conversation, not necessarily for our legislature, but certainly the messaging is there. We are not competitive with outside civilian organizations. So the GS and wage grade employees, we've advertised, for instance, my senior contracting official job eight times. I had three folks that accepted the job and then backed out because they couldn't find a place to live. I recently advertised four positions that were GS nine to GS 11. Not a bad rate of pay, But for those four positions, those vacancies, have one applicant. So don't know the math there, but we've gotta do a better job in getting our talent here and keeping it here. And that really resides with the office of personnel management at the national level. They need to revise that pay scale. I think that's a national problem. I have a question real quick. Can you share what that looks like? Different pay grades of GS-nine to-eleven, what's that look like? What do you think the pay scale is roughly?

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: I'll be GS nine to 10. Say probably

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: Yeah. I can get back to you on that one. But yeah. But even if it were $7,580,000 for a GS 11 Sure. I may have retention bonuses if I have the money from National Guard Bureau. I could offer, for instance, a civil engineer or cyber specialist a $20,000 bonus, retention bonus to keep them for two years. They can make $30,000 more tomorrow working at UVM or any other business that would pay them that. Same thing is true for mechanics, diesel mechanics, hydraulic mechanics, airframe and power plant, all very in demand. Getting them and keeping them remains a challenge. Just one quick thing here as well. So if you have someone who's currently active duty, other branches, they wanna come be here, what happens with their, know it all depends where they're currently are, but is that transferred directly over to what you need for someone for those grade day positions? So somebody coming from outside of Vermont? Sure. So we do have relocation incentives normally. The Air Guard and Army Guard are funded differently. The Air Guard received their their incentive money. The Army Guard did not. We received zero. So I've got no incentive to bring them here. But that remains a challenge. We could drop look for lots of great place to be we could find them a place to live. My son knows that.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: GS-nine is between fifty and sixty ks. So

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: in essence an entry level position Thanks. For So within the legislature, and I would tell anybody that I'm very appreciative of the work that this body does with the guard. I think it's a market change from when I first got the job. I'll talk about this at my State of the Guard address on the February 19 at 09:00 in the morning, should you be there?

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: You'll be there. We have

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: take the calendars for them. Public service announcement. But we did not have a robust relationship with our legislature. We came down when we were called to testify or when we needed something. And I got this job, and that just seems like bad form to me. So we fixed that, and asking for a caucus was probably one of the smartest things I could have done. But from that, came a lot of good work, from our legislature. We've secured our improvements and longevity of our tuition benefit program, which was a pilot program. That is now law. That is a huge, and Kim will talk about it, that is a huge draw for us. That keeps us competitive in the recruiting world. Now we had personalized learning plans for our high school seniors. Did not include a requirement to include military career options. We've changed that. This body made that law. Recently, part of our legislature's sister state working group and, worked with others, to establish recommended actions for the legislature and the governor to formalize sister state requirements and expectations. That one I find very heartling. Our state partnership program, I've worked very diligently to move it beyond just a military to military construct. We've had some success there. I will talk a little bit more about that at another time. But it's been pretty remarkable once we've kinda broken out of our silos and started getting traction and having more sieve to sieve. And, eventually, I hope legislative engagement and sharing of best practices is mutually beneficial for Vermont, and the impact that it can have in a country like Senegal and North Macedonia in particular are pretty profound. Kim will talk in some detail about our military construction projects ongoing and pending. The big one we have are Linden Regional Readiness Center and our new Family Services Center. I was able to work with our congressional delegation with Senator Welch and Senator Sanders to get additional $2,000,000 to address cost overruns for materials. So it went from being a $4,700,000 12,000 square foot family readiness center to now $6,700,000 family readiness center. And I think that's all federal money.

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: For Linden?

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: Yeah, for the Oh, for Family Readiness. Yes. And that's all federal money. So there's no cost sharing with the state of Vermont. So that's a big win for us. Now I come back to making progress in recruiting and retention. Workforce development, we have our prime program, a partner recruiting initiative for military and employers, where a partner agency, an employer works with the guard, we will sign an agreement, and we can refer our personnel, primarily our traditional drilling members of the guard, or those that are underemployed or unemployed, and we will guarantee them an interview with that participating employer. That's been a big win for us. We stole that from the active duty. They would wait four to six years before your soldier or airman came back to become an employee. We need employees now. And that's with the guard office. Our training at the outside is about a year. Normally, it's four to six months to get a ready soldier or airman in Vermont. And they can now apply through us. We will help them, upskill them, get them aligned with employment in the state of Vermont. And the last one I will talk about,

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: and I'll turn it over to

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: Kim, G, which is, of course, an acronym. It's our joint enlistment enhancement program. I also stole that idea. I hate to say it, but I stole it with my colleagues in Alabama. And it's the joint enlistment enhancement program where you incentivize recruiting internally for members of the guard.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Did

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: the acronym come first or did the

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Just about

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: the 700 vacancies in the Army Guard, that's not the Air Guard, can you just how many current members do you have? And do we add plus 700 to something that existed fifteen years ago? Or and who are we missing? So predominantly, it's combat arms. It's our infantry, our mortarman, our cav. What the transition will bring, those units, cavalry in particular, our combat engineers, they will become a division asset, so it goes to a much higher headquarters than us. We will become an infantry pure state with small enabling forces like counter, unmanned aerial systems, cyber specialists. There will be much smaller footprint, but predominantly infantry. Our platforms will change. We will no longer have up armored Humvees. There is a I don't remember the acronym for it. But it's a new platform, much lighter, more nimble. But at the end, that construct becomes much smaller. So we'll reduce our overall force structure by about seven twenty seven positions. They're vacant now. It will require some work on our part to take those soldiers we have who are cavalry or combat engineers and actually transition them to infantry. And that's a retention challenge for us. They may not wanna be infantry. And it sounds like there's a bit of a spiral potential here of losing more people because they don't wanna be retrained. How does that affect the state mission? So bigger picture, if we can't maintain our force structure, it has a direct impact on our ability to build new facilities in Vermont. There's a ratio of you have to have x percentage of fill before you will receive funding to build a new armory, for instance. So my vision was having, in essence, four readiness centers in the four corners of Vermont and then divest our our 20 plus legacy armories that were built in the fifties and sixties. They're no longer sustainable. They're too far flung. Four readiness centers could have multiple units housed in more room for equipment and vehicle storage, and it's a better fit for Vermont certainly with domestic response. Not having assigned strength or personnel strength where it needs to be directly, that's an example, that impacts it. Yes, sir. So we've One more

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: challenge. How

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: many you're still building regs in the Southern Hemisphere. Many you got right now? Two.

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: So we have well, we leased from the US Army Reserve. That's and of course, they're going through changes as well, and they're probably going end up divesting those. It's a big conversation whether or not we take those on and convert them to the National Guard. We did that once at the Smith Goldberg Center outside of Camp Johnson. We got that from the US Army Reserve. Yep. But they're they're going through changes just like we are, and their footprint here was very small to begin with. Yeah. Back to Jeep, it has been a huge success. So it was one of the better ideas that I've ever stolen. So last year, we executed over a $100,000, and that's for every person that puts somebody in our guard, air guard, army guard, we pay them a thousand dollars. It's an incentive to do something that's not necessarily their job. That is that has paid dividends for us. 40% of our accessions into the Army National Guard last year were as a result of that joint investment enhancement program. About 20% of the Air National Guard accessions. So one in five and four in 10. That's pretty significant, and it really amplifies our ability to get the word out about the benefits of having dual career tracking the National Guard. The best way to recruit is have the members on the team already recruiting for it. So that'll be one of our asks this year, madam chair. We only have the state budget. Last year, we had a state budget for 60 k applied to this program, and we were able to move money from other military department programs to cover the difference. So we're going be looking for a small increase there because

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: How much did you end up spending last year? We budgeted $60,000 but how much did you actually get out the door?

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: It's a 108,000 right?

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: Well, it works. We want to make sure it keeps working. As Rep Stevens had asked, if we don't maintain a strong and ready force here, that's going to have some secondary and tertiary impacts to our guard that are not good. Thank you, madam chair.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Thank you.

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: I'd like to turn it over to miss Kim Fidelli. And I would like to say in a public forum, her work is phenomenal. Her and her team have just made my job so much easier. Their work is transparent to most. It's pretty incredible. So I'm I'm very pleased to have her on our team, that we're in good shape. Remarkable fiscal steward for our military department.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Stuff is really important. I'm saying that to the right committee. We appreciate it.

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: Thank Thank you, sir. Good afternoon. My name is Kim Bidelli. I'm the financial director for the military department. Just to time check, do we

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: have till quarter of or till three Are we supposed to have till 02:45? We could go a couple minutes over if we need I'll try to keep it brief. Thank you. We can go a few minutes over. Yeah. Yes.

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: Just a quick organizational overview of our department. I think you've all probably heard this before. But our mission with the military department is to support the Vermont National Guard. We have about 170 personnel in our department. Call ourselves a small department, but it keeps growing and growing our budget. Our general fund budget's about $7,500,000 We bring in anywhere from 40,000,000 to $60,000,000 of federal funding every single year throughout our various different cooperative agreements with the National Guard Bureau. We have five different appropriations within the department. First, we

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: have

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: administration. This mainly houses personnel costs for our executive staff. Our internal service funds make up about 800,000 of this appropriation, so there's not a lot of extra wiggle room in here. And some of our important programs within administration that are aimed for recruiting to assist the guard are, as General Knight mentioned, our Vermont National Guard Tuition Benefit Program and the CHEAP Incentive Program. Also within administration, if there is a state of emergency, state active duty event, we do support that entire mission through our administration. Appropriation. The last two missions we had were both of the last two July flooding events in 2023 and 2024, but the Guard stood right up and helped out during that event. Next, under our air services appropriation, we bring in, I think, our federal budget in this appropriation is about $13,000,000 It's a much smaller amount for state funds. All of these programs that you see listed here are 100 federally funded, with the exception of our facilities operations and maintenance program and our environmental programs. The majority of those budgets are also payroll. So it's our personnel, our staff going out there and working on all of these buildings over at the air base, making sure they're functional and that the roads are cleared. Under our Army Services program, we have several more programs. Again, all of these are 100% federally funded with the exception of facilities, operations and maintenance. So there is a lot of federal dollars that come in through these programs. Every single one of them, they're budgeted. Annually. We get a new cooperative agreement every single year to maintain our facilities, keep an eye on environmental programs, securing these facilities. We have force protection at both the Air and the Army Guard posts. So there's a lot of work that goes into making sure our facilities and operations are up to the standards of the Guard. I will highlight a little bit later on, but within Army and Air, we do have several major military construction projects or minor military construction projects in addition to our annual awards that we receive every single year. Our building maintenance appropriation is really just the state funds that match the Army facilities programs. So that appropriation is entirely geared to support the facilities operations and maintenance for the Army and some other facilities and activities that are not necessarily reimbursable. Lastly, we have the Veterans Affairs Appropriation. So this facility just right across the street here in Montpelier, there are a number of staff that support provide outreach for the 36,000 veterans that we have in state. We have six veteran service officer positions that their job is to help our veterans to obtain benefits from the federal government. They do a lot of really great work in assisting veterans. We also maintain and operate the Vermont Veterans Memorial Cemetery down in Randall. So, a couple of programs we want to highlight. I think General Knight has done a good job of talking towards a couple of these programs, but just some information for you folks on the tuition benefit program, just to see the trajectory over the last several years. It's grown exponentially since it first came on in 2019, is when it really took effect. Our budget in the FY '27 budget request is about $1,200,000 You'll see kind of a dip in the cost of this program in the last couple of years, but you'll also notice that the actual use of this program has not really declined much. We have between one hundred and three and one hundred and eight participants over the last several years. So the types of programs that are available have changed a little bit. We are now able to do certificate programs, master's degrees, and second bachelor's degrees. So there's been a lot of good use of this program. Is that one of

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: the pages in here? I'm trying to find it.

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: Oh, yes. Page 12. Okay. Be under program performance. Okay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: There's the chart. Thank you. I

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: didn't see grants in the lines. Oh,

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: there was

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: no change for this. No change, you don't see it,

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: you have to find it in the back. I found it on a different page, but it's not numbered in the back.

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: And deployments affect tuition? Correct, folks aren't able to really utilize the program when they're deployed and there have been quite a few deployments over the last several years.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: It's like this fiscal year, there's a lot of deployment.

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: Yes. It makes it a little challenging to project what to expect. And next we have the Joint Enlistment Enhancement Program. So this is just a good visual just to see how important this program has been and how useful it's been at recruiting folks into the Guard. As General Mike mentioned, 40% of Army National Guard accessions in federal fiscal year 'twenty five were a result of this program.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Tell us what accessions are. Enlistment.

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: Somebody who enlisted. It's one of our terms.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: You're asked. Lots of terms, I get

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: It's assessed into the national government. Okay. It's an enlistment. Somebody actually joins the government. Thank you.

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: The numbers between the federal fiscal year and our state fiscal years are a little bit skewed, just in case that confuses anyone. But as mentioned, the only way we were able to successfully bring in all of these recruitments through this program is through the use of carry forward funds or utilizing other areas and savings that we can put towards this. But in our base budget at the moment, we only have $70,000 appropriated towards this program. We will hope to be able to do as we have in the past and make this program grow. Right, next we have just some information on our veteran service officers just to show what great work they're doing. We have six positions allotted for DSOs. Only four of them have been filled regularly. They're still working on recruiting those last two. But for the four folks that have been on staff, they brought in $10,000,000 worth of federal benefits last year alone. So they're doing a really great job, and we expect to only see that continue to grow as we're able to fully staff that program. May not go into detail on the next couple in case there's any questions I want to get to our budgets a little bit. I'll try to keep this really simple. In addition to our 3% increase, these are our new funding requests that have been incorporated into the Governor's recommended budget. So our request was for six new maintenance positions within our Army service programs. So we're asking for four new military maintenance specialists, One, and they're the ones that are out there fixing our buildings when a boiler goes down. They're the ones responding, mowing lawns, plowing roads. One military building construction specialist. So this is essentially the liaison between the maintenance program and our contracting office, making sure that when we do bring in contractors or service contracts, that we're coordinating between the business office and scheduling all of the work to be done. We only have one on staff at this point, and they are kind of maintaining all of those contracts for the entire state of Vermont military department. So it's a lot of work, and we'll be thrilled to have another position added. And lastly, a military storekeeper position. And so that's essentially someone to run the warehouse operations at Ethan Allen Firing Range. So just to better our ability to monitor our stock that we have and keep our maintenance folks moving with what they need to be able to maintain the facilities. Our second request is to incorporate a $10,000 annual grant to USS Vermont Support Group. So that is a non profit organization that supports the military members and the families of folks that work on

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: the USSR. You've been doing that every year for

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: a Yes, it's been a one time appropriation for I think the last three years. What you want do is put it the base? Yes.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: So last year it wasn't in there at all and we had to get it put in?

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Last year we always put it in we've always been a one time but so then the request

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: is to move into base it wasn't in the governor's recommend last year we added it in okay

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: All right.

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: And our last ask is additional general fund for the Department of Veterans Affairs. So this money will entirely go towards the cemetery. We have a special cemetery fund that we put towards maintaining and operating the cemetery. We bring in about $120,000 to $140,000 per year, and that money essentially comes from the federal VA for internments at the cemetery. It also comes from family members that buy plots. But we have been far exceeding that revenue on an annual basis just from payroll alone. The cemetery was recently expanded greatly. The plan is to continue to expand. So we have had to grow our personnel and our seasonal staff to be able to maintain that at the quality that it needs to be maintained. Is the fund currently in deficit? No, no ma'am. But with this, we'll be able to actually put that money towards maintaining the facilities and purchasing equipment and vehicles that are needed for us.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Move to the base from the special fund? Yes, ma'am. Yes.

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: Alright, so unless you'd like me to go through any of the appropriations specifically, those are really the

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: standard ups and downs and I think we've been through it so we don't need to go through any of those. I will pass through to

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: one highlight is our budget adjustment for FY26, and that is to return some of the unused funds from the tuition benefit program from FY 'twenty five. Ended the fiscal year with a balance, or VSAC ended the year with a balance, so we reduced that amount towards them for this current fiscal year, and we'd like

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: to return that to the general fund. So that was being reverted in Well, the budget adjustment's already gone out. Was in the budget itself, not

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: budget adjustment. Budget adjustment. It was in the budget. Okay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Yeah, yes, that's right. The tuition benefit. Okay. We already moved that to the Senate. And then

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: just with the last couple of minutes, just to highlight some of the big items that we have going on in the military department. So we talked about some construction contracts. We have 28 active construction contracts going on, and that's either new construction or maintaining, restoring current facilities totaling $43,000,000 Yes, dollars 24,000,000 of that is allocated to the Linden Readiness Center. And this is a mix of federal and state dollars. It's not one or the other. We're maintaining 73 design contracts or design projects. So there are a lot more projects always in the queue. We're prepping, trying to get these facilities up to standard. And then just to highlight some of the staff that supported the various National Guard deployments over the last year or so. And I will say a lot of work did go into both preparing for these deployments and also maintaining all operations during the federal shutdown for the month and a half that was closed. And last, this is just a list of our major and minor military construction projects. So the first, I think, 10 or 11 are all Army projects. As you will see, all but one of these projects is entirely federally funded and would help to bring in a lot of federal revenue into the state.

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: Yeah, was just curious what the Northside Cantiment

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: program is.

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: Mean North Side Cantonment. Can you

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: speak Ethan Allen firing range. Yeah, so I know a little bit about it. I haven't seen the design yet, but I know a part of it is making it energy efficient, so to modern standards, and in essence, creating a microgrid. So if there's a power failure or something like that, the range can continue operations. That's a piece of it. And then the other part

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: of that that's what that is?

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: Yeah. And the other part of that, of course, is another one of those best kept secrets within best kept secrets. We have four of our National Guard members who are Olympic biathletes going to the Olympics this year. It's pretty phenomenal. Flower. He's right. Are you sure? That's it. So they're and that that's what that does is it takes our existing biathlon force and firing range and makes it world class standard. So looking down the road, we will be able to bring world class events here as I visited this past December in Hochfils in Austria. So we're potentially thousands of international visitors and competitors coming here to compete world class events for the biathlon. The Linden Race, the Ratington Center, that's slated to

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: be completed in 'twenty eight. It

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: was awarded in the 2025. I believe they're about 20% complete now.

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: See you once in a while. Just this close. They're going up.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Going up.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Yeah. Exciting. By at John.

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: We we we got really lucky with this one. This project was actually only supposed to be about 19,000,000, but the bids came in very high. We got a plus up from National Guard Bureau of $3,000,000 after those bids came in, and then a congressional ad just came in for another $2,000,000 because we had taken several deducts to try to stay below budget. But we're going to be able to add on to that, so we get a lot more of what we were hoping for.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: So it's a twenty four month construction, so they just look

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: So I wanted to just pause for a second and go back to the business office transitioning to Vermont buys, because I heard that there were some challenges with that system. Are you feeling like it's working for you right now, or are still some glitches that need to be figured out?

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: I will say we essentially did not try to integrate until after October because there were a lot of glitches, then we went into the federal fiscal year end. So between October and now, I believe we're 90% integrated. There are certainly some glitches. We are working hand in hand with the help desk. There's a lot of people collaborating across departments trying to help each other out get through some of the bugs, but we've been able to make it work as best we can. But it definitely came with some challenges.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Okay, well, think we're going to pause you there, if that's all right. And General Knight, I want to thank you for your service. You have changed the legislature's view of the Guard in a really positive way. You've been facing things during your tenure. And I, for one, am very grateful for what you have managed to do. So appreciate all you've done, and I hope you really enjoy your retirement with that.

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: Seven years of backed up projects at home. Thank you so

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: much for your time.

[Major General Greg Knight, Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard]: Thank you, Madam Chairman.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Thank you all. Okay, great. We are running late, but we're going to take five minutes. And then we have Hardy coming back to

[Kim Bidelli, Financial Director, Vermont Military Department]: talk

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: about the executive