Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: Good afternoon. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It's Wednesday, 02/04/2026. It's just nearly 03:15 p. M, and we are going to hear about the Office of the Governor in FY '27 budget. So we have Hardy back with us once again. Always nice to see you.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Thank you, Madam Chair for the record. Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance and Management. The governor regrets that he was not able to appear before the committee today, but as a beautiful foot soldier, I will probably not have as interesting remarks as he could have been able to provide, but I'll at least try to walk you through the numbers and what is a really one of our more basic and simple budgets, I think, to review. So I think I I'd like to start on page four of the document and just look at the look at the overview. We've got a $2,000,000 general fund budget and a $570,000 IDT spending authority component. So, you know, about 2 and a half million dollars combined, the general fund budget does reflect a you know, it's about 4.4% increase versus f y twenty six. And, the governor, was able to, meet his goal of 3% prior to the internal service fund and and health and and and so on, internal service fund increases. After those were applied, it brings it up to this 4.4%. And that's a little when I was speaking to you last week about my department, finance and management's general fund target. I know we were at about 5.4% after those same things applied. I think we're really lower here in the governor's office because we've actually got a net down in the health insurance category, which is unusual to say the least to have that experience in the face of the premium rate increases. But there have been a number of personnel in different positions that been shuffled around. And I think the net the you know, when the net outcome is people selecting plans with, you know, it's maybe a single now instead of family plans and so on. They that's how changes within the individual coverage has resulted in a decrease in health. That's something that will be apparent if we look at the detail on the ups and downs. But there are it's noted here that there are 14 exempt positions, including the governor's position that that are that are present in the budget. I think it's important to note there are only 10 positions filled, and that's the same level as last year. And there is really, if we look into the ups and downs, there's a substantial increase like $200,000 in vacancy savings in the governor's budget. The total vacancy savings in this budget is actually $475,000. And and I guess my the the comment I wanted to make on that, that's a significant amount, but also that it's real. And so the there are four position the four vacant positions right now total up to, over $600,000 on an annual basis. And currently, there are not plans to fill those positions, although there is some leeway there of a $150,000 should a need arise and perhaps some, you know, some unusual event that would prompt the governor to want to to to hire a position to to focus on a particular issue that happened a few years ago with bringing on a director of violence prevention. And so there are there are positions that are that are vacant and available. But the vacancy savings, which is a large number, I guess I just wanted to underline that that that's real, and it's in fact lower than the the total amount of vacancies that are present in the in the budget right now.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: So what are the four vacant positions? What are the Sure.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: We can walk through the why don't we flip to the last page? So page Yeah. Pages twenty two and twenty three, and, that was a perfect segue. I did want to, wanna walk through the org chart. I thought that would be illustrative. So starting with the governor and chief of staff, those positions have remained in place for, I believe, since the governor was elected. The changes are so you'll see there's a deputy chief of staff position that's vacant starting from the left, and that was actually also shown as vacant in this chart, last year. It was last filled by, Britney Wilson as the incumbent, and so secretary of civil and military affairs. And when she moved over to be deputy commissioner of public service department, the position, was not backfilled in terms of the deputy chief of staff. Jay Johnson, the legal counsel, long time legal counsel to the governor, did take on, in addition to her legal counsel role, the statutory position of secretary of civil and military affairs, which is important to have for a number of different statutory functions and required signatures and so forth. So that position was vacant and remains vacant. Moving to the right, I'll just walk through, some changes. The director of policy development and legislative affairs is Jason Malushi, and so he used to be involved in communications. And Kendall Smith had this role, as the lead, legislative affairs person. She is currently the commissioner at the Department of Labor, and so Jason has moved into his position. He used to be in the position over to the right. Position number 107008 used to be where, the the position number that Jason Malucci occupied. He's now moved over to the left to take Kendall's former position, and the and the position that he left behind is remaining vacant in the governor's budget recommendation for '27. Moving to another another box to the right to position 107006, That vacant position of appointments director was filled last year by Tracy Ennis who has moved actually, she is employed elsewhere within state government, and I'm drawing a blank. I think it may be AOT now, but I would have to double check to confirm exactly where where she's working. But that that position is not being is not being backfilled in this budget. The executive director position that's listed as vacant far to the right, that was previously vacant until it was filled with Doug Farnham in the chief recovery officer role in response to the twenty twenty three floods. And then that position sat in the governor's office, created It was initially filled in the governor's office and was there, I think it might have been two years. But in f y twenty six, the position is is at AOA. Right. And that was a change the legislature made in terms of of having that position established.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: Executive director. What does the governor need an executive director for?

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Executive executive director is one of several I don't have the statutory citations in front of me, but what you'll find is that in statute, if you go into the administration section and go pouring through, you'll find that each department has authority to create to to have a certain number of exempt positions, and executive director is named as one of them. So you'll find executive director as something of a it's a it's essentially a a generic exempt title that you'll find across state government if you dig in and look at the position summary reports. Oftentimes, someone will have a title that is something different. Like, for instance, that I know in in AOA also on the 5th Floor, we had for many years chief performance officer position. But their actual position title on position summary, you know, it was really an executive director. Right? And it was an executive position, you know, executive director position, but they were the the title they were given to use on their business card was chief performance officer. So I'm not sure if I helped explain or confuse things with that, but I could follow-up.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: Catch all, and that's the only name they could come up with. It doesn't seem like a very good description.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: And and what I think you could expect is that just because that was previously used to hire in Doug Farnham and call him the chief recovery officer, if the and now it's vacant. If that position is filled again, I'm sure when you watch the news, the job will be announced as a different title other than the executive director, but the way it sits in the personnel system and as it's authorized by statute with that title is executive director.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: We have some classifications. Clear as mud? Yeah. Wayne.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: So all all these positions are are designated by statute. Rule the case by

[Wayne Laroche, Member]: law, you can't rule

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: the title.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Well, that's a good question. I don't believe they're all designated by statute. The statute I was referring to establishes a certain number of titles, including executive director, that can be established in any department. But for instance, in statute, I I'm not I'm not sure that stat statute, only refers to, I think, secretary of civil and military affairs. I think some of these other titles aren't necessarily in statute pertaining specifically to the executive office. What are the slots of the The slots are the the positions are all here. And I I guess what I would say is even though these a number of these positions have been vacant for a number of years, there has not been an appetite on the part of the administration to move them to other departments Yep. Or, for instance, to abolish or eliminate the positions because it's it's certainly possible that another governor might, at some point, occupy this office and wish to have positions available, and it will be up to that governor to decide whether and how to fill the positions. In incidentally, on that on that subject, I look back just for to gain some historical frame of reference. I looked back to the version of this budget presentation from f y seventeen ten years ago. And at that time, there were actually 17 exempt positions in the executive office with 16 of them filled. In in in f y eighteen, so that went down somewhat during the first year of the Scott administration. It went down to 15 positions with 11 filled, we're now down to 14 with 10 filled. And and that's the that's the level we're at. So

[Wayne Laroche, Member]: Okay.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: I guess the only other thing I would add, back to the org chart, this does represent the full executive office staff reporting to the governor. There is, however, one other position that does, in effect, report through to the governor and is part of his senior staff meetings and is one of his liaisons with with departments. And so that's Monica Hutt, but she doesn't appear on this chart because her position is created in statute at the agency of administration. So because she's her position was created and lives in the agency of administration by statute, she appears in the agency of administration budget and does not appear on the ZORIC chart. However, de facto operations, she does report to the governor and is part and is considered, you know, in the administration as part of the governor's What's your title? Chief prevention officer. Prevention. And that's a title created in statute.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: What is she preventing?

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: It is a health if it's a it's a it's a health related position. We could refer back to the statutory language when that was created by the legislature. But her focus is on she's the governor's liaison with the agency with AHS, and she she is also very much focused on prevention efforts such as, you know, at she was very involved with, for instance, the whole standing up of the cannabis program, advocating for the thirty percent to substance misuse. And so really, out of the governor's team, she's really taking the lead on on health related initiatives and and prevention of health of of health problems. So I just want I just I just wanted to acknowledge that there is another de facto report to the governor, but there aren't any hidden hidden staff, so to speak, in other departments other than that one. And that's because it's an AOA as created by statute.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: The ups and downs are pretty standard. You talked about the vacancy savings.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Yeah. So the the vacancy savings

[Wayne Laroche, Member]: stands out and Reduce other personal services?

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Yeah. That is a technical adjustment. If we need more detail, perhaps, Paul, you could jump in, but I think that's primarily related with moving moving dollars that may I think they that may have been associated with the chief recovery officer position that was moved out of here. It may have been budgeted in other personal services, and now it's being budgeted up in salary and wages, but it's also at the same time being offset by an increase in vacancy savings. I don't know if that was an adequate explanation, Holly. Do you think it

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: Okay. Moving stuff around.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: So I mentioned that increase in vacant significant increase in vacancy savings brings it up to 475,000 total for the vacancy savings, but the the currently vacant positions would be $640,000 on an annualized basis.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: I'm seeing maybe I'm looking at the wrong page.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Sure.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: I'm looking on page eight. Yeah. And I see vacancy turnover savings of a maximum of 317,914.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: That actually is that's what that is is the increase from FY '26 because this is the ups and downs. So you would do the delta between 475, which is in the budget detail report Okay. A few pages. And so it's it's a you know, it's around a 160,000 currently. And what's what's being done is it's being increased quite a bit to a more realistic level, and there's room to do that because because those positions are are remaining vacant.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: So Okay.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: The ups and downs can be con it can be confusing.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: That's why we need some more information.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: And you forget it's just the change.

[Wayne Laroche, Member]: My spreadsheet.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: And and you can if you go into the budget detail, which is on, I think,

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: This one is page 14. I'm looking at vacancy savings. That gets you

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: to the That's right.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: 75.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: That's right. That's the four seventy five that I was referring to. It doesn't jump out at you in the ups and downs. So the only other thing really that I find notable on the ups and downs is I was surprised myself to look at to look at the ADS allocated charge and the decrease in ADS service level agreement. And if you read what's on the ups and downs, it it appears that the executive office will actually be spending $10,000 less if you combine those two lines. And that was surprising to me because in general, we are seeing ADS costs increasing across the board for departments even when the the decrease of SLAs combined with the increase in allocation. So that was surprising to me when I looked into it, I found that what was going on is that, well, there's a decrease in budgeted spending authority for these two ADS lines in the executive office, they're actually gonna be spending $10,000 more next year. And the reason for that is in FY '26, it looks like they were just budgeted far more in the service level agreement account than they needed. They had 65,000 budgeted for SLA in FY '26, but their actual SLA bills were $40,000 So between this year's actual and next year, it's only a $20,000 decrease in anticipated SLA bill, but because the budget was essentially $25,000 higher than it needed to be, the decrease in budget is $45,000 as opposed to 20. That's a kind of in the weeds detail that I may not have had to confuse you all with, but because it looked counterintuitive to me, and I was surprised to see what appeared to be ADS expenses going down. I did a little digging today just to confirm, and what it turns out, they were actually budgeted too high from a starting point. So that's why it appears that's why it appears that it's going down. But while their while their budget's going down, their actual spend is gonna go up by 10,000 when we add those numbers together. So I'll pause there if there are

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: Yep. And then we're gonna wrap up.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Any questions then?

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: Or do have a question?

[Wayne Laroche, Member]: I have not a question on this, sorry. But just because we are talking about ABS, I wanted to let everybody in the committee know that when you look at the detail of your various budgets, you will see a whole bunch of ABS lines from '25 and '26 and then '27. And then there's ups and downs, ups and downs of all those. When you look at '27, that's what we're gonna be paying now. And they're very different from the previous ones. But when you add them all up, you either come up with somewhat more or sometimes somewhat less depending upon which budget you're looking at but it's a much similar allocation for ABS than it was before But you have to find that in the detail of the budget. Something will get used to it in a couple of years. Right, right, but if we go to another year,

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: you won't see it. David? Just quickly, page 21, there's MOUs with several That's right. Can you explain those? Are those for staff people?

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: I can. So first of all, I'll go back to the first page I started talking to with the pie chart that shows there's the $2,000,000 of general fund, and then there's interdepartmental transfer of $570,000. One of the things we're that we're required to provide as part of the governor's budget recommendation is the detailed backup for any interdepartmental transfers. And yes, the way these are implemented is by allocating percentages of the staff salaries we saw on the org chart to depending on the staff position, different staff position positions are allocated to to IDT, and then the IDTs are billed out to these departments as such. And you'll see it's actually something I did intend to bring up is, you know, out of that $570,000 fully half of it is with AHS. And then almost a $100,000 is with AOT, between AOT and DMV. Then there's a $47,000 piece with public safety, and then a $29,000 piece with ADS and then a number of much smaller.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: So they're just helping to cover the cost.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: And this is not something new when I mentioned, I looked back at the FY '17, so the last year of the Shumlin administration budget, there was in fact, in that year, a similar pie chart here. They had $1,700,000 of GF and $400,000 in IDT at that time. So you can see how those numbers have changed over the years, but they're still the the the pie chart itself looks pretty similar. So yep.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: Other questions? Artie, thank you very much.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'm All

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: the history of the lecture. And I know we'll be seeing you again.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: I certainly look forward to it. Thank you.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: Thanks Arty. We're going to continue right now because we have our last person and she's online. If you want to let Carrie in, this is the Vermont Commission on Women. Okay. We're still live. Yep. Once you get her on. Hi, Carrie. Hello. Welcome. I see that you have a bunch of budget detail stuff, but are we going to have information about accomplishments and the conversation that isn't just about what the numbers are and the role of Yes,

[Carrie Brown, Executive Director, Vermont Commission on Women]: I was going to share that with you and then send you written version of it afterwards.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: K. That sounds great. Thank you.

[Carrie Brown, Executive Director, Vermont Commission on Women]: That sound

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: good? Okay. Yep. Okay.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Great.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: Are you set up to share the screen without Autumn being here? Or

[Carrie Brown, Executive Director, Vermont Commission on Women]: No. I don't think I need to share the screen. I'm just gonna talk to you.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: Oh, okay. Well, you can talk to us. Great.

[Carrie Brown, Executive Director, Vermont Commission on Women]: Are we set? Yes, we are. All right. Thank you. I'm Carrie Brown. I'm the executive director of the Vermont Commission on Women, and I'm pleased to come and talk about our budget with you today. I thought what I would do is give you kind of a really broad overview, talk about some of the key activities that we've been working on, and then talk a little bit about the budget numbers. There's not a whole lot to say about that. So does that sound like a like a good structure to follow here?

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: Yeah, that sounds great. Thanks. All right.

[Carrie Brown, Executive Director, Vermont Commission on Women]: Wonderful. Okay, so we are an independent, nonpartisan state agency, the Vermont Commission on Women. We've been around since 1964, and we are dedicated to advancing rights and opportunities for women in Vermont and gender equity for all. And in our work, we some of the things that we do, we advise and consult with the legislative and executive branches of state government on policies affecting the status of women in Vermont. We conduct research and study of issues affecting the status of women in Vermont. We educate and inform business education state and local governments and the general public about the nature and scope of sex discrimination and other matters affecting the status of women in Vermont. And we serve as a liaison and clearinghouse between government, private interest groups, and the general public concerned with services for women. A lot of that comes right out of our statute. The Commission consists of 16 commissioners. At the moment, we actually have 15. Someone just resigned a couple days ago, so if anybody knows anyone who wants to be on the commission on women, we have an opening. They're appointed by half are appointed by the governor, a quarter by the speaker of the house, and a quarter by the Senate Committee on Committees. And they are from around the state and from quite a wide variety of backgrounds. And then we also have an advisory council, which is about 29 organizations right now that align with our mission, and they provide information to us and kind of give us some feedback about more sort of that boots on the ground kind of work, and we partner with them in out in the community. Our staff is three people, and it's an executive director, myself, and then we have a communications outreach and and program coordinator. And then our last position is kind of a hybrid of policy and research analyst and business manager That's the person who pays our bills and takes care of all that administrative stuff. She actually just had a baby a couple of days ago, and so she's out on parental leave. And in the meantime, we are working with finance and management to take care of our bills and everything like that. And we've done this a little bit in the past where I think we might be a little bit unusual in that we handle all of our financial stuff internally. And so in the past, when she's gone out, this is her second child, the past when she's been out on leave, they've kind of covered for her just sort of on an ad hoc basis. Now they're tightening up a little bit and they say they actually want to contract with us and have an MOU and they're going to charge us for that. So it's fine. It's not a lot of money, but it's something that we're hopefully, you won't be hearing from us again. It won't be a problem on our budget, but that's what we're doing there. And so our work falls roughly into three general categories: public education, policy, and an information and referral service. So I'll just talk a little bit just give you some highlights from each of those areas. This is not everything, but just some kind of some key things so you have a sense of what we do. So under the public education umbrella, we have a program called the Equal Pay Compact, which is a voluntary pledge that employers can sign on to to indicate their commitment to taking steps to close the gender wage gap. We've had close to 200 employers sign on to this, and these employers are encouraged to take steps that expand beyond simply paying their employees fairly, such as changing their recruiting practices to encourage more women to apply for STEM jobs or actions like that. For the past couple of years, during the month of March, we've implemented a equal pay public education campaigns. So we've done educational videos, op eds, social media spotlights on our equal pay compact employers, as well as our advisory partners who are working on pay equity. In one pager informational publications, we had a series of podcasts addressing pay disparities between white men and various demographics of women, such as women with disabilities and multiple other forms of outreach. And as part of that, you will see us in the State House. It's not during March. This is April this year. Is it March? Oh my gosh, I can't remember the date. I think it might be March 19, actually. We'll be in the cafeteria for an event we call the Pay Equity Cafe. And this is an event that we do in collaboration with multiple other organizations that are also interested in pay equity, not just gender pay equity, but addressing all kinds of pay disparities. So for instance, we partner with the Vermont Works for Women, the Vermont Women's Fund, the Vermont Paid Leave Coalition, the Alzheimer's Association, the Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, and we will all be in the cafeteria that morning with materials and information to talk with you all about pay equity. We have a website called Workplaces for All, which some of you may have seen, which is a very comprehensive website that's a one stop resource for information about sexual harassment and workplace discrimination. It includes comprehensive information about legal protections and responsibilities for both employers and employees, as well as resources for helping to cultivate a workplace climate that is welcoming and inclusive. So it's not just focusing on addressing problems that have already arisen, but trying to address culture so that problems don't arise. There's been multiple changes to remote laws in this area in the past several years, and so we recently undertook a pretty thorough project to update that website. We were able to take advantage of some carryforward funding that we had so that we could contract with someone who has national expertise on discrimination law and women's issues. And she did a great job of bringing it all up to date, but then also in really beefing up the resources that we have for employers, because that was one of the things we realized was a little bit lacking, is we had a lot of kind of legal information about here's what the law says, and here's what you're gonna get in trouble for, and not as much more proactive. Here's how you can make a good work environment. Here's how you can foster a culture of civility and respect and equity. So we tried to expand that a little bit more, and we collaborated with the Human Rights Commission and the civil rights unit of the Attorney General's office on that project. For the past few years, a couple years, starting in 2024, we started hosting regular public forums in different venues around the state and as well as online. So we have visited Waterbury, Rutland, Newport, Bennington, Brattleboro, and St. Albans. And then we have been working on going back to some of those communities to kind of do some follow-up as well as to find other places to go. So we went back to Bennington and we partnered with a really strong community organization down there. And then tomorrow, in fact, we're gonna be in Johnson. We're doing a community conversation tomorrow evening with an organization called Jenna's Promise that works to support people with substance abuse disorder and housing and workforce development and treatment. We some other public education efforts include addressing issues or publicizing current data through presentations and workshops to groups around Vermont, creation and distribution of educational publications, media and interviews, articles, commentary, our social media channels, our website. Recently, have done some concerted education to let people know about the changes that have been made to anti discrimination laws, and we've also collaborated with, again, the civil rights unit of the attorney general's office and the Vermont Chamber of Commerce to produce a webinar for employers letting them know about the new wage transparency and job postings law that recently went into effect. And we have been very fortunate to be able to continue long term partnerships with Vermont Works for Women and the Vermont Women's Fund. Years ago, we were part of an initiative called Change the Story, which some of you have seen some of the work of. We did a lot of things to try to address women's economic equity in Vermont, including a lot of research on data collection reporting on women's economic situation. And we have been very fortunate to be able to continue working with those same partners recently to research and publish some additional data on that we call women, work, and wages. So it's a spotlight report. It's a two page report. It's very short. Just came out. Some of you may have seen it already. Some of you may have an opportunity to attend the Women's Caucus is going to be doing a presentation of this on February 18. We're going to be working with them to host a panel discussion and to present some of this data and then have discussion afterwards. And we'll be doing additional presentations of that data in various venues over the next several months. This is a kind of precursor to a longer, more in-depth report that will be coming out later on in the year that will be looking at a lot more key data points about what's been going on financially for women in Vermont. And our hope is that this is with the funding from the Vermont Women's Fund and really a lot of the coordination and legwork from Vermont Works for Women, that we'll be able to publish a report like this every two years. And we'll have some basic information that we're kind of tracking along the way, but then we'll have a different focus for different reports that come out. The one that's coming out this year, the focus will be on occupational segregation and looking at the impact that has on pay disparities. That's public education. Under the policy realm, part of our job is to provide is to advise and consult with the executive and legislative branches. And so we come to you, the legislative branch, often to give testimony on issues that are before you in order to try to share some information about what the gender equity considerations may be. So in the past couple of years, we've given testimony on things such as PR4, the Equal Rights Amendment, the Vermont constitution that hopefully will be coming through you all for the last time this year and then going to the voters in November. A tax credit for unpaid caregivers, removing the severe pervasive standard from our discrimination laws, flexible working arrangements, requiring wage transparency and job postings, and expanding access to the Vermont Parental and Family Leave Act. Recently, submitted a memo to the agency of administration sharing gender equity considerations for the governor's return to office mandate for state employees. And as a member of the governor's Workforce Equity and Diversity Council, we provide equity guidance to the Department of Human Resources. And then in our membership on the Department of Corrections Women's Facility Stakeholders Group, we contribute policy and process recommendations to that group as they're considering replacing the women's correctional facility. And then we sit on numerous other committees and do other collaborations, including the Department of Health Maternal Health Task Force, the Early Childhood Education Policy Working Group, Vermont Council on Domestic Violence, and the New England Women's Policy Initiative, which is a regional collaboration of all of the New England states. And then in the '5, just a couple months ago, we presented at the Vermont Human Rights Commission's Civil Rights Summit, and we contributed to policy recommendations emerging from that summit. And then we have something that we've been talking about that we haven't really officially started yet, and I hope that maybe we will. It's a program called Cities for CEDAW. CEDAW is the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. It's a United Nations convention that most countries in the world have signed on to, signed on to many, many years ago, The United States never signed on to it. And so there's an effort to try to get municipalities or counties in The US to sign on individually, and it's called Cities for CEDAW. We have a new commissioner, Madeline Mata, who used to be on the Ethics Commission, and she has done a lot of work with the League of Women Voters and knows a lot about this program. We're hoping that we might be able to find a municipality to work with to help them to help support them in kind of taking this on and doing the work that's associated with it and then maybe be able to provide that kind of support to other municipalities. We'll keep you posted on that one, how that one goes. And then finally, our information referral service. This is, as you may have heard me say before, something that in the old days, ten, twenty years ago, we spent a lot of time on the phone with people. Lots of people would call us all the time looking for information. And now that, you know, first of all, the internet came along, and so people didn't call as much because they could go get stuff on our website. Then two eleven came along, and two eleven does a million times better at providing resources to people and referrals to where they should go to find help than we ever could have done. And so we've really backed way off on that part of the work. And so now we still do this, we still respond to people, we tend to hear people call us generally when they feel like they've exhausted every other possibility and they really don't know quite where to turn. We don't provide legal advice or counsel or anything like that, but we do try to steer them in the direction of where they can go and do some brainstorming to help them find resources they might not have otherwise. We also have something called the Legal Rights of Women in Vermont Handbook, and this is a document that we've had for many, many years, and it tries to be sort of a plain language explanation of some general legal rights of women in Vermont, and we are currently undergoing a really comprehensive overhaul of that. So we're reworking every single chapter of it. We've got volunteers from, you know, other attorneys are volunteering with us, people from the community, members of our advisory organizations, commissioners are working on this. And we're really hoping that it'll set by the summer. We'll see. It's a slow process, but it's happening, and I think it's going to be a lot better than it is now. We'll see. We also have an electronic newsletter that goes out about monthly, and that is kind of constantly evolving. We hired a new communications and outreach coordinator about a year ago, and she made some really pretty good changes to that. And she changed the whole structure and format of it and added in lots of additional resources and lots of additional information about the work that the commission is doing. So that's been great. And then we just have also lots ofif you go to our website, you'll see we have lots of different publications and resources about people's rights and about, you know, information that's available to them, including things like videos and, as I said, podcasts and that kind of thing. So that was a super rapid overview of a bunch of the stuff that we are doing. I'm I'm happy to pause there and take any questions before I talk about our budget.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: I'm not seeing any questions, and I'm guessing your budget is pretty standard.

[Carrie Brown, Executive Director, Vermont Commission on Women]: It really is. Yeah. Really, really is. Yeah. So when it's pretty much the same as it was last year, except for so we had to make some reductions to meet the 3% increase that we were asked for from the governor's office. And so most of that came from some we had some money in there for some web content and development that we figured out we could cover in a different way. We got rid of that. And then we also have money earmarked for ASL interpreters. So when we have public events, if we ever need an interpreter, it has not come up, but it's something that we know we need to be able to do. So we have a budget for that. We reduce that dramatically to meet that 3% cap. So hopefully, that won't be a concern, but we'll figure it out as we go if it is. Great. Our just our general overview, this is also very similar to last year. It's changed a little bit. About 83% of our budget is personal services, and 15% is allocated expenses, like your fee for space and that kind of thing. And then there's 2% that covers everything else. So that's our phone, that's travel, that's per diems for commissioners, that's travel reimbursement for commissioners, our photocopier, any professional development, which we don't really have a professional development budget, but it would be there if we had one. All of it goes in there. And that's that's the 2% is what we really have any where we have any opportunity to expand or cut or make any changes, and the rest is just what we have.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: Great. Thank you. I am not seeing any questions. Really appreciate your time, Carrie, and the work that you're doing. It's important. Appreciate that. And if we have questions, Mike Mrowicki is your contact, I'll ask questions through him. I think you've given us a good explanation. Thank you very much.

[Carrie Brown, Executive Director, Vermont Commission on Women]: All right, great. Thank you so much for your time.

[Hardy Mrowicki, Deputy Commissioner of Finance & Management]: You. I appreciate it.

[Robin Scheu, Chair]: Take care. Bye. That's it for today. And tomorrow morning we don't have BGS coming at nine, which means we're actually not starting till 10:30, which gives you time to work on your budgets. People have asked, can I have some time to meet with people or work on my budgets or get my questions answered or go to another committee where my budget is in the policy committee so you've got some time to deal with that? There are some other meetings. I know people are checking into certain things that have come up over the course of conversations with people who've come with their budget. So it's a chance to use the opportunity to that's all I'll say. So we'll be in at 10:30, Human Rights Commission, Green Mountain Pier Board, in the afternoon, the Defender General's Office, BPIC, quite a collection, Secretary of State, Liquor and Lottery, and Public Service Department. So that'll get us through Ben. And Friday, at the moment, we don't have anything after the Joint Fiscal Committee. I think that's going to probably go till 02:00. And maybe if I can get somebody in here for like thirty minutes, we'll do that but otherwise we might end, we'll probably end over, we won't go till 04:00 at least on Friday to get everybody ready for a break and it's gonna be cold this weekend so yeah Back to that, enjoy the tropical weather while we have it. The committee letters went out to all chairs and vice chairs this morning. I forwarded it to all of you, so you have a copy of it. So you might be hearing from your committee liaisons maybe, I can get a sense of what that is, I think that's all I've got. Anybody else have anything else for right now? I may in the morning go upstairs to the healthcare committee, they're taking some testimony. Great. And I may on the other hand, may find it on YouTube. That's how works. That They have something in the app to do. Yeah, this is the time, your budget isn't in here we need to have a quorum to meet so I can't have all of you like running off right now but as long as we have six of us in this room we can meet but if yeah so just beat me Call me Beep you with a BEP, right? Yeah, okay. So that's where we are, and let me know if anything else has come up, and otherwise we'll go offline and see