Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Good afternoon. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Friday, 02/13/2026. It's 01:00. And we have with us the third of the ANR budgets to talk about, Department of Forest, Parks and Recreation. So welcome, if you would like to introduce yourselves, and take it away, of course.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: You. Good afternoon. For the record, I'm Danielle Fitzgow. I'm the Commissioner of Forest, Parks and Recreation.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: And I'm Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer for the Agency of Natural Resources. Great.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Okay. We will get into our presentation. Similar to the other departments in the secretary's office, we have a lot more slides than we'll present, but you have the full slide deck. So I know we may pause at some places, so happy to answer any questions along the way. Just a quick overview of FPR. When I think of FPR, I think about Vermont's identity, and I think we are a steward of a lot of what Vermont's known for. We are a forest, so we work on keeping our forests healthy, intact, and sustainably managed. Thinking about biodiversity, climate resilience, and the forest economy, which contributes 14,000 jobs a year and 2,100,000,000 to our economy. We are state parks. We're 55 state parks across the state. We like to stay where every Vermonter is twenty minutes away from a state park, usually about a million visitors a year, really making memories, affordable memories for Vermonters and visitors. And we are outdoor recreation, so advancing the outdoor recreation sector, which is about 4.6% of Vermont's GDP. So think about almost 5¢ of every dollar can be attributed to outdoor recreation. So beyond the economic impact, it's about our health and well-being and supporting communities and our connection to nature. When I think about FPR's work, we support the rural economy, both in forest and recreation sector, public health and well-being, workforce development, conservation, biodiversity and climate resilience. Really, again, thinking about, like, the Vermont identities, so what our service is about. This is my people slide to give you an idea of how we're organized. I'm the commissioner, but right next to me is Kate Everly. She's our principal assistant. She's not here today, but you will see her in the building, she's our legislative affairs liaison and communications lead. You may have gotten our summer newsletter that she helps lead. And then we have four divisions. We have our forestry division, which is our largest, about 64 full time staff with eight programmatic areas, everything from forest health, wildland fire, state lands, private lands, downtowns, urban and community forests, watershed forestry, forest economy, climate. They do a lot of great work. State parks, we have about 50 full time employees. And then you can imagine what it's like in the summertime. We're offering state parks. We blow up to about bring on about four fifty seasonal. Right now, it's hiring. So if you know anybody, we'd love to have you at state parks. We always think, Come try Vermont, like, work at our state parks. Really fortunate this year, but over 50% are coming back, so they return, which is fantastic. We have Lands Administration and Recreation. This really has three buckets. They lead outdoor recreation for us. They also are a conservation arm. So anytime we're conserving land, whether it's going to be part of our portfolio with FPR or conservation easements. And they also provide an agency function for the lands administration for our state lands. So they manage sort of like the deeds of state lands, but also what is the policies and procedures for our planning and caring for the lands. And then the administrative arm, it's they're not the ones you see, but they are the ones keeping us the programmatic areas moving forward. They do everything from our budgeting, grants, contracts, HR compliance. Total, we have about 144 year round. Then again, the summertime, the employee, support a

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: lot of workforce in Vermont. How long has your administrative leader been missing?

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Since October. We've we're in the second round of active recruitment right now, and we're very close. So if I come back in two weeks, I would hopefully be staying clear.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Be safe to say. Okay.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I know Steve would really be happy, because he's been playing double duty. I'm sure. But he is fantastic, so thank you, Steve. Wanted to give you an update on some of last year's investments. We did have a one time appropriation for the workforce development program, Serve, Learn, Earn. I'm sure you're familiar with this program. It's a fantastic program. Just from July 2025 to the end of the calendar year, That actually wrote down. Two eighty participants went through the program, with 160 projects and 50 communities. In addition to the $250,000 we got in one time funds, you also provided, thank you, dollars 500,000 in base funds last year that are maintained this year going forward.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Great, okay. Yeah, it'd be nice to see you put a lot out about the fire engine, but a little less about the server engineering. It would be nice to hear a little bit more about this I and more writing on

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: am happy to provide that they just provide us the annual report. The reason we added the fire engine, because the last time we presented in the policy committee, they asked so much about the fire engine. They wanted to see a picture. They were so curious about it. People left their trucks. Yeah. So we did get $275,000 for a wildlife fire truck. That is for the state to be able to support local fire departments in responding to wildlife fires. I'm sure you know the risk has increased. This past summer was we were on high alert all summer long. This is not like we're going down to the local fire engine dealer and buying an engine. The RFP we've been working on with BGS since July 1, it's to drop any day now. And then once we get under contract, it probably will take about a year to get the engine in. -Really? -Yeah. They build it. But we're really excited to have it. I think it's probably the last day to have one of these. And when it's not in use, and we have a low fire season here, we can actually send it to other states to use, and they will give us money back. So it's we feel like it will eventually, like, bring more money into some And wildland

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: right now, since you don't have one, if you have a wildland fire, can you borrow from other states? Oh, yeah,

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: we have agreements, within the region, with the Forest Service. So like this past summer, we had states ready to come in. You know, you probably heard about the helicopter that came in and dropped the slaughter in Williston. That was the Forest Service helping us out. So there's definitely an increase in activity for us. We supported 12 fire events this past year. And we actually saw the BAA request. It would cost us about $100,000 this year in overtime, the helicopter. And also, Forest Service provides us twenty four hours of free sort of response, and after that, we have to So pay they one event, they were over twenty four hours.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Well, seems to me that helicopter ride was

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: around $18,000 -It was.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: -Very expensive. I remember numbers.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: We dropped 11,000 gallons in about thirty minutes. And normally, like, that was the first time we've done anything like this. But it was in Williston, and we had infrastructure around. So it's like, the cost, if we didn't do, we felt would be greater, so we did deploy it. Yeah. It's hard making those choices on the phone. But we have a great team that's monitoring, and we are looking at hopefully having a task force to even think about what are our needs in the future. We don't want to do it after an event. We want to be thinking progressively forward. There is, in the governor's recommended budget, funding for VOREC, which is the Mon Outdoor Recreation Economic Collaborative. This is I'm sure you've heard of VOREC grants. These are recreation grants. There's $500,000 currently in the recommend. These are really, when I think about board grants, these are really revenue generating grants because they're You know, when we invest in the outdoor economy, it does pay us back. These are locally led projects that really look at how we steward our outdoor recreation, but also linking to outdoor businesses. And it's also really direct connection, in many cases, to downtowns, trying to, like, increase visitation downtown. The last time we offered a grant round was in 2025, and we actually had $11,000,000 because we combined two years. In that grant round, we still left $13,000,000 and 70 projects unfunded. So that just tells me there's still so much opportunity out there, that communities are ready. We have completed grant well, we have grants with 85 different groups. 29 are still open. You can see there, the map shows you where they've been all across the state. You can see many rural parts of our state.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So examples of some projects? Oh, sure.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Well, guess what I have next? Thank you. These are just two of the 85, and the first one is in Wakefield. I realized with $500,000 we could not have the scale of grants going out. But in Wakefield, what they did was they had a plan in place and looked at community of what it would look like to improve safe access to businesses and crossings. So they improved access where there's the roads and trails. They built this bridge here, which connects to 60 miles of network. And the result is really this recreation system that connects right to the downtown. They've, I was actually I've seen it. It's pretty amazing. Yeah, it's fantastic. It's totally community led, and they have plans in place, and everyone's really on board. And it's about the stewardship and then also the community sort of investment and vitalization. In Danville, for just under $100,000 they took their train station and created it into a recreation hub that connects to the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail. Are you familiar with it?

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: It's there.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah, it's fantastic. And what we're hearing from local businesses is that people are coming in more now, and it's such a fantastic resource. So the train station is still it's now a recreation hub. They've even had some branding to promote the area, and then they've made an ADA accessible facilities within the train station. So, really good investments with proven results on the ground.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So, you're asking for $500,000 this year? Yes. And you have a backlog?

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: I mean, you have

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: projects ready We to

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: $13,000,000 unfunded projects last grant rounds when we had 11,000,000 to give out. So, there's definitely demand. Sure. Great. This next one is a modernization of what we call the Lands and Facilities Trust Fund. The fund's revenue comes from uses of state land. So think about like telecommunication powers on state lands or timber sale revenues, leases and permits. Sometimes when we have conservation projects, we get stewardship funds that all goes into the Land Facilities Trust Fund, which is in a high interest earning account that the treasurer's office oversees. What we're looking to do is three things. One is basically a technical correction. Where the language sits is actually under the Agency of Natural Resources, but the language refers to FPR, so we want to just change that to ANR to align in statute. Another piece in the language is we'd like to expand the use of the funds. And I should clarify this for you as well. We use 5% of the twelve month rolling average to put back on the ground for state land. So it's stewardship dollars on the ground. We'd like to expand. As opposed to just being money on the ground, most of the money gets put out in contracts. So we'd like to expand it to be able to use for the administrative purposes of it, Because what's happening is we're writing a lot of contracts, we want to be able to fund our ability to actually manage those contracts going out. And the last piece, because of the health of the account, which is currently at $6,200,000 we'd like to increase it from 5% to 8% of the funds that were available to use on the ground. If This you is a special fund. Yeah. That's you call it

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes. And that's what it's called. So, we can find it in our special funds report. Yes. And when you talk about administrative costs, is there a percentage of anything that you've put out? Or how are you putting guidelines and guardrails around how much is spent for administrative costs? We don't want

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: to spend a lot of money on administrative costs, but we want the money on the ground. I think we were looking at less than 10%, honestly. Is the

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: language in the governor's recommend? Yes. I'll point us to this section because this doesn't We can find it. We can follow-up. How much does administrative cost? You see that over here?

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: I looked at it, but I didn't see that.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: There's no mention of like an administrative cost, Pat, no.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: There isn't, okay. No. All right, well we'll take a look at the language, see if we need to maybe tighten it

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: up a little bit. Our goal is to put the money on the ground, because

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes, we're thinking about understand that. And sometimes we like to just have that built in oversight so we don't ask you all the time. Absolutely.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: And just for clarification, in the FY twenty seven budget, did include some dollars for administrative costs. It's like 9.5% is what I think it is approximately under 10%. So that is built into the FY '27 budget. It is. The administrative piece, yes.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So that's assuming the language passes.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: That's assuming the language passes, correct.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Steve did all the analysis here, and if at using 8% in 2034, we anticipate the fund would grow to $7,000,000 So even taking going from 5 to 8%, the fund would continue to grow based on very conservative estimates that Steve ran. But he could tell you more because he's drained behind the dollars.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: So what we did with the assessment of the fund is there's three main categories on the revenue side. So there's the earned revenue, which includes timber sales and special use permits. There's the interest revenue generated, and then there's a very small amount of donations. So what we did is we took a ten year sample size and basically looked at those and took snapshots of three, five, and ten year averages for each of those revenue sources. Whichever amount was the lowest, we used that as basically the base for the fund going forward. So when we did that calculation, just as an example, it comes up with $570,000 of new revenue in FY27. And looking back, four out of the last six years, it's been over three quarters of a million dollars. So we feel taking this approach, it allows us to increase the amount of money that'll be on the ground for project work, but also the fund will continue to grow. Our estimate's at 1%. I'm guessing it'll be more than that based the reality we've seen in the fund for the last six years. The other piece that the department did was starting in FY twenty five, they built a management plan for this fund. So now we are trying to keep at least 90% invested in trust investment account, which is the higher yield. We have two options. You have your daily savings, which doesn't generate interest, and you have trust investment account. So we're trying to keep at least 90% invested. So that's about 10 more than it historically has been. So just from that factor alone, we should see additional revenue being generated on the investment side. So we did some free work up to that. Spreadsheets.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: You want a spreadsheet? That would be great.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: That's not a problem.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: He likes spreadsheets too. Yeah. Go ahead, Laurie.

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Is this the same fund from which you pay the pilot payments? Or is that coming out of another?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: No, the pilot payment is paid out of the B-seven zero one appropriation, which is in the secretary's office. It's primarily funded with general fund dollars. And then the Department of Fish and Wildlife, they fund about $421,000 and it's about $2,300,000 in general fund.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: My next slide shows you where we actually how we use the funds to steward state lands. I've kind of broken it out into three categories. There's really the on the ground projects. Think of trails and trailheads. This coming year, we anticipate doing work at Stowe Pinnacle, doing an adaptive mountain biking trail at Little River State Park, Shrewsbury Peak, several others. Visitor infrastructure, we've been really putting effort into revitalizing the eight fire towers that are on state land. They've become recreational destinations. But they're not in the best of shape right now. So we have plans to do work there. Dam and water infrastructure, we're going to be doing a design to remove a dam in Underhill State Park. We also use these funds for just core land stewardship, thinking about hazard tree removals, protecting public safety. I'm sure you've heard of emerald ash borer and introduced invasive insects that is killing ash trees, and we need to be aggressive in removing ash trees in high use areas, particularly state parks and trailheads. And any vegetation management, just thinking about mowing and introducing invasive species control. Also, it does help support some workforce and capacity. We bring on seasonals, like state trail crew that helps us with roving and clearing up and maintaining trails. And then also areas where we do not bring in revenue, but we have high use. Think of like Willoughby, South End Of Willoughby. I'm sure most of you have been there. It's fantastic. People love it. And we've had to put a lot of infrastructure there to manage sort of the people so we can protect the resource. But with so many people visiting, we actually had to have staff there to manage, keep parking and keep everybody engaged.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Getting back to your vegetation management, does that include controlled burns or anything?

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: You don't do those. We do prescribed burns. It doesn't really cost us anything because our staff are trained in how to do that. We work It's got to be in a long range management plan for us to do that, and it's mostly done on fish and wildlife land when we're looking at habitat management. It must be The U. S. Forest Service that's trying to do some controlled burns in my neck of the woods around Lake Dunmore and Silver Lake, and that's The US, right? That is the US Forest Service, yes, that's doing that. That's in the headlock They're right

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: in the middle of a comment. Right. Okay.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: It is an effective management tool that we use it sparingly, but you don't and depends on when you can actually do it, because you've to be safe when you can actually go. So our Wildlife Fire team manages all that. We do maybe one every other year. Okay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, it's not something I've heard a lot about from you guys, or in the paper. So it must be

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: not out of control. Nothing we're doing is out of control, but everything goes through I think it's because of going through the planning process. We go through a long range management planning process before we implement anything on the ground.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: Okay.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: So that is LFTF. I realize that's a lot. Any questions? Okay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: No, John?

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: I live not too far from Lake Willamie, so I mean, how crowded it can be, like, in the summertime, especially on both ends of

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: the lake here, really. And we've done a lot of investments there recently that have been hopefully well received.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: Yeah, has that been helpful?

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Parking has been tremendous. We added over 100 extra parking. Still gets old. It still -Still fills, right? -Yup. And we do have some more plans. We're doing ADA accessible kayak launch this year. Eventually, we hope to actually have more permanent bathroom facilities there. Just, it's such a high use area.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: Do you think you'd have to add even more parking at that? I mean, there wasn't as much at the beginning with here. People were parking on the road. You built a nice tier block there, and that's been super helpful, but it still fills.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: It still fills. We're still We don't have funding for that right now, but, you know, we were really fortunate on that when we did get Northern Borders Regional Commission funding to put those on the ground. So we're always looking at what's next. And it tends to be, a lot of times, we have these high use water areas that we have to begin investing in, and we really don't bring any revenue in for Leica State Park, where we do actually have price B emission.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: So you have a

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: couple of staff there now.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: We have a roving we call

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: a roving ranger, yes. Helping to, like, get the people parked, or you have to turn people away. Just bits of

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I don't think We try not to turn people away, but we do make sure, like, the gates are closed at night. We have a partnership with the campground across the street. I think it's been better managed. And we have a great relationship with the Game Wardens to help us if needed.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: What are you partnering with? A console. Okay.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Okay, what do I have next? I understand you want some ARPA updates. FPR did receive 3.3 I'm billion

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: that you've had federal funds update. Anything that's been cut

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: or pulled back? We have not had We're all nervous, clearly, for a year, but we have not had any cuts. All the competitive grants have come through. FY 'twenty six federal budget is on par, and in some cases, a little higher than it was the previous year. So nothing that's alarming for us at this Okay. Thank you. Yeah. So we did $3,300,000 in ARPA in three targeted areas. State parks have to meet the three acre storm order rule. We have 19 state parks that have over three acres from pervious areas. And these funds, dollars 2,000,000 actually, supported meeting that three acre rule in four parks and partially in two other parks. We had an urban tree planting block grant and community canopy grant that was really looking at targeting tree planting in areas where we can improve stormwater. And then parks, major maintenance, we had $300,000 to support wastewater system in, I think, Underhill State Park. Right now, we have just under $90,000 that remains unspent, but it's gonna be out the door very soon. We're absolutely on track to have the funds spent by the end of the calendar year.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Is that $89,000 for one project or just across a bunch of things?

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: It's in the three acre stormwater. Three acre, okay. -And if you're interested, that picture there, because, you know, I'm an urban forester, that is silver cells, where it's think about scaffolding under sidewalks that allows a continuous soil underneath it so you can grow really big trees with a canopy, yeah.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: She always wondered what's going on underneath the sidewalk and

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: how did that big tree get Yeah, there, that's because of the, really, innovation in how we can now grow trees with silver cells. So, that's in Burlington with Barbara funding. Great. This is a general overview of our budget.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: Yeah.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: So, we wanted to just provide the opportunity since FBR's budget is split into five different appropriations to provide the big picture of the department as a whole. And the one thing I'll flag here in particular, and we'll cover most of this in an additional slide, you see there's a large decrease in the FY26 to FY27 budget, almost $1,200,000 What's really driving that there is land acquisition costs. So in the FY26 budget, there's about $8,000,000 for land acquisition. In FY27, there's only about $4,000,000 So if you remove just that one accounting line, you end up with a $3,000,000 increase, which is about a 6% year over year increase. So just wanted to flag that because it does look odd and wanted to point that out for

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: that be a decrease? Sorry, what was that? It would be a decrease. It shows right now as

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: a decrease because of the way an acquisition Correct. So it's a little confusing. That's what you'd expect to see probably in a budget. Sort of wanted to point that out, that once you move that one accounting line, then there's the $3,000,000 increase, that 6%.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Do you have plans for the $4,000,000 I imagine you budget some every year, but do you have actual projects in mind with the $4,000,000

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: those are federal dollars that come in pretty much through the Forest Legacy program. We have a lot of Forest Legacy funds for projects that we've been awarded from the Forest Service. We try to guess when we're going to close on them and put them in that fiscal year We have some big ones coming up, but we don't anticipate them for the following fiscal year. And we get those funds on a competitive basis. We have to apply for them. So it's just when do we think they're going to close? So it fluctuates every year. Sure.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: No, I totally understand that. And does some of this money, can it be used to pay into the pilot? So, that has that's general fund? Yes.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: These are the act like, all the due diligence that goes up to it. We're actually allowed to do staff time, because there's a lot of surveying work, and our conservation team, and then the actual acquisition. Okay. Which is also the match program. Okay, thank you. This is just an overview of our five funds that we have in FPR and the sort of the size of them. State parks is our largest at 37% of our budget. Most of that is parks special funds. It's I actually wrote about how much is general fund for parks. It's not very much. 8% Parks General Fund. It's mostly Parks Special Fund. Lands Administration and Recreation, very heavy on federal dollars because of planned conservation and a lot of money coming in for recreation grants. Forestry is has a larger portion of general funds, but about 30% federal funds. Administration is our business office and the commissioner's office. And that little sliver down there that has nothing on it, that is state parks and forest roads. It's about $230,000 that's dedicated to the management of state roads in state parks and state forests. We have about 600 miles of roads. So, you can imagine it's a little bit to help us manage those roads. Is Steve's going go over this one. This is some key budget changes that may pop out at you when you look at our budget in more detail. What

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: page is that one? Slide 19. With key budget changes, looking at the Internal Service Fund, as you're all familiar with, so we have $131,000 increase there. I wanted to flag that FPR's general fund increase year over year is just under 2%, which to occur to other departments probably seems low. The main driver for that is property and commercial insurance decreased. And along with that decrease, basically all of that was general fund. So we saw a 5 and $41,000 decrease and then a corresponding $549,000 general fund decrease as a result

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: of that.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So you why you're much down so much?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: Yeah, the property and commercial insurance has been on this kind of roller coaster because of the floods that have happened. So we get a flood and then it jumps up and then no flood or less flooding. Then we see it down, there's a couple of state parks that are particularly hard in 2030.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: So

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: that's what we're seeing there. And then as with the other departments at ANR, a $424,000 net increase in ADS billable services. This is core enterprise services increasing, and then a decrease in the service level agreement. So that nets out to just over $400,000 And then on the federal and program side, a new grant for the department was awarded. It's a $5,000,000 grant in total. We have $1,100,000 budgeted in FY '27. So that's new for the upcoming fiscal year. And then there's $160,000 increase budgeted for tree removal, high hazard trees and areas as of a safety concern. And then as part of the clean water budget recommendation, there was an additional $300,000 increase for FPR for road and water quality funding.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: What does this IRA stand for?

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Inflation Reduction Act. There's too many IRAs. Especially if you've money. Yeah, exactly. I should know better than not to spell it out.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's not your retirement account.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: Exactly. And then the last set of bullet points there, there was a $1,000,000 decrease for Economic Development Authority funding. That flowed through ACCD to FPR. So you'll notice there's a large decrease in the interdepartmental fund for FPR. That's just projects being completed, one time funding coming off the books. Then, as I mentioned previously, land acquisitions down by just over $4,000,000 year to year. The vast majority of that $3,800,000 is forest legacy dollars, so they're federal funds. There's also a small amount, 300,000 that is tied to the land acquisition special fund that FPR complete that $4,100,000 decrease you see. And then the last one is a very interesting one. So the Land and Water Conservation Fund, that is federal funding that flows to the department. So the department's on a cycle where each year there's a different award type. So what we saw in FY26 is a large amount budgeted in grants, those went out to communities, and a smaller amount budgeted in contracts, which that stays in house for state lands work. And what you'll see in '27 is an increase in contract work for state lands work and then the decrease in the community grant round. So we're on this every other year cycle where one year even year it goes out to communities odd years it stays in house. And so going forward, you'll see this every year where it kind of shifts between these major object lines. But overall, the funding for the federal fiscal year 'twenty six budget is expected to increase by 5% as passed. Thank

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: you. I'm just wondering, what's the rationale for cycle? That Yeah. Well, it's

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: a heavy lift to move $3,000,000 out to communities. So we do that every other year. So it allows us to do the upstream work of working with communities to get them ready to apply. Then we go to the awards, and then that could take us a year, then they give it a pause, and then we go out every other year with the grants. We get about $3,300,000 every year. And the way the funding comes, fifty percent's meant for state projects and fifty percent's meant for community projects, so we just flip flop it every year. It seems to work well for communities who can plan. They know when it's coming every other year. And then it allows for administratively to sort of move the grants through the system. I think that there's certainly a lot more slides there. This is our last slide that really just links you to a whole bunch of documents. But if you want to peek through anything and if any follow-up questions, we're happy to I'm

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: just sort of scrolling through here, I just came upon the division of forests,

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: and you have 154,000

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: proposed vacancy target. So, are those positions that are empty right now?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: No, it's the projected. So, I believe that if you look at the three year average for that division in particular, the vacancy rate's been about 7%. The $154,000 budgeted represents, I think, a 3.2% vacancy rate. So this is just part of the normal churn that we've been seeing with people either retiring or leaving state employment or leaving department employment. So that's what that number reflects there.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So nobody's losing their job over vacancy.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: We like to bill right away.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: Yeah, there are no proposed rifts in the budget.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I will say, though, this is the first year for administration, DLR, and state parks, we added vacancy savings in our budgets.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Yeah, well, was looking ahead at Section B706, Division of Rentals, Administration and Recreation on-site and there's 122% increase in personnel line, but a 47% decrease in operating and a 59% decrease in grants. So can you just explain?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: Yep, that'll go back to the slide that had the key budget changes. So the 122% increase in personal services, that includes contracts. So that includes the increase for the Wind and Water Conservation Fund contracting piece. So we had, I think it was 4,100,000.0 or $2,000,000 identified on that bullet point for Wind and Water Conservation Fund. So that's what's represented there. The 47% decrease in operating, that's where the land acquisition line lives. So what you're seeing there is the $8,000,000 to essentially $4,000,000 budgeted for land acquisitions. And then the grants decrease, again, that's connected to the Land and Water Conservation Fund going from community year round to state lands work. So this division houses those biggest swings you saw in the previous budget slide.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So every other year, are going to flip flop, basically is what you're saying. Contracted services don't go into grants. They go into personal services.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: He has to explain Yeah, them yeah.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: So the personal services line, yes, it includes the staffing costs, but it also includes contracts, workers' comp, unemployment insurance, catamount health. So it's a lot of things rolled up into that single major object.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And the reason that federal funds there are down $2,500,000 planned composition? Land acquisition. The land acquisition. And that can also go up and down, and you're not worried about that being pulled or stopped at this point?

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: No, actually, the American Great Outdoors Act, which passed Congress maybe three or four years ago. There's $900,000,000 in that, and there's about $100,000,000 each year that goes to First Legacy. So that's pretty stable. And Vermont has been very successful. Senator Leahy is the one who championed that. -Yeah. -First project in the nation. Oh, cool.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Nice. All right. Any other areas that you have for reports here? Anything else we should

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: know? Mike, just speak to the special fund slide, slide 39, because that looks very interesting based on the current status, wanted to just provide fill in the gap there. So FBR has two special funds that have over half $1,000,000 in expenditures. One of those is the State Forest Parks Fund, which is the State Parks Special Fund. When we ran this report a couple of weeks ago, there was a $2,500,000 deficit in that fund. And that's just because we're waiting on the lease payments to come in for that fund. So projecting there's $5,200,000 of lease payments that we're going to be depositing here in the next two months, definitely. Our projection for that fund is by the end of the year, we'll probably have about a million dollar fund balance. So it's in the red right now. We'll deposit those speed lease payments and we'll end up probably around a million dollars in special fund balance.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: You're skiing. It's

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: mining. It's like once a year they pay? Yeah,

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: the payments all roll in usually between January and April for the

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: seven

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: seas.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Seven seas.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: Seven seas. And

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: so when we had this conversation in here, who was telling me this? Why aren't you guys over here? Do you own the tramway at Killington or something? Who's telling you

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: that? We don't. I don't think the inspection department of labor.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Oh, that was it.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I was like, oh, I can't answer this one.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Seemed a little odd. That was it. It was just they were expecting it.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: For whatever reason, the visual aid sits on probably on the same category as the Department of Agriculture, plates and measures, the gasoline. Gas stations. There's something quirky about it from years ago that the Department of Labor oversees the safety They of

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: don't know anything about that. I thought there was something that we owned, like a list somewhere, but I guess we don't own any lists, right? Just own the land and they

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: own the and there's some buildings, but yeah. Okay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And do you update, you renegotiate leases every three years, five years?

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: They're like forty to fifty year leases.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: First one that Is a residential index built into that?

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: No, the first one that's up for renewal is Bromley in 2032. So I started thinking about that. I will share with you that we are under contract now with financial firm that is helping us look at our ski leases and better understand sort of payments now that tickets sort of tickets have changed from just a single day use or a Caesars pass to, like, multi resort passes. So we're just trying to get a better handle on that and having some more consistency in the reporting that comes back to us. That just kicked off a couple weeks ago. So by this, by next year, I'll be able to report back on sort of what that consultant has advised us on how to move forward managing our ski leases. We are When we have an opportunity, we do modernize the leases to include, like, uphill ski policies and be thinking about how use has changed, but we really can't change the money pieces of it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And is that common for states to have forty or fifty year leases?

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah. I mean, you're managing a really big resort and long Yeah. Term

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah. I mean, you kind of want to know that if you're going to put all that money in, it's going to be a rally, so you'll be lease it for a while.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: And every time we do any sort of transact, the update of a lease like that, we get we come to the legislature for approval.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That's why I seem to remember that you did that sometime in the last ten years with some ski area.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: I feel like I've talked Maybe

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Maybe some some months. Months. Sometimes do adjust when it's a sale.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Smugglers just goes to be bought by people who are not Right? So, that would be a time that you might have a conversation. I think there were some minor adjustments. Yeah.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: And Burke were both sold by heroes. Right.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Got sold a couple of times.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: We do, with the upcoming sale, we work with Department of Finance and Regulation to be thinking about, are they good, fistfully Do they have the resource to actually manage it for the long term? So they do an analysis for us on that.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: The things we do in state government is always so interesting. Things, the chachereats and scariest. Anything else you would like to let us know about at this point? Okay,

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: appreciate your time. See any questions from the committee. You know Trevor is your liaison. He's been doing this for a while. We'll pass more questions. It's been kind of fun hearing more about what all of you are doing. So I appreciated that today. Thanks for

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: all you're doing. Thank you.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Have a great weekend. Yes, thank you. And Happy Valentine's Day. Yeah. So committee, I have advanced access to next week's agenda. Hi, Dave. We're going to start at 09:30. Autumn will post this before she leaves today, maybe when you get home today, but you will see us. But we're starting at 09:30 on Tuesday. We have Monday off because it's a holiday. Another three day weekend. I'll be the last one for a while, so enjoy it. But we will have town meeting break in between. So it isn't like, we're okay. So we have labor relations and 09:11. Logan from Joint Fiscal is going to come in later in the morning to talk about an overview of the purchase and use tax so that we understand that, because that's one of the things the governor's proposing. And I know Wade and Means is working on it, but we ought to know all about that, too. I don't know if that's also been involved in any more transportation information. I'll check and see if we maybe get Chris involved at the same time. Lots of various things. We're going to have judge counsel and the deputy treasurer come in on Wednesday morning to talk about the Higher Ed Endowment Trust Fund. The governor's proposing changing the uses of that fund and wants to propose that $15,000,000 So, we're going to understand how that money is being used now and what those changes are being proposed. It's So, one of those sleepy funds that we've never, you never pay any attention to it because people who have, somebody died last year who chose to do in their estate planning, that they would pay taxes to the state of Vermont. It wasn't a mistake. It was somebody who felt that they should, at least one of them, is what I've been told. Anyway, so various things going on. And we're also, just so you know, the budget adjustment has passed second reading on the floor of the Senate this morning on a voice vote. I was told Chris Rupert had been up there, he didn't hear any nays, so it sounded unanimous. So it'll be final reading on Tuesday. The plan is to forthwith it expeditiously back over to us, suspend rules. So we will get it. Because of the timing, I guess we may not get it till Wednesday, and then Wednesday after So we'll take a look at it really quickly. We'll have Ledge counts, we'll have Emily in and whoever, talk about what the changes are and then recommend the committee of conference, which I will do it on the floor on Wednesday. And then we're hoping that maybe we can do the whole thing Thursday and Friday. There aren't that many changes, but we want to just do with a committee conference. So, that's kind of the plan. That all make sense?

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Could I suggest, do we need to have ADS in one more time? Because when they came the first time, they didn't show us any

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So we want to see their actual budget, and we also may want to talk about whether they should be in two parts, and one part is understanding this whole new billing thing, and maybe Adam's here with them.

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: I think that would be helpful. Because I don't they have been in energy and digital infrastructure two or three times.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Well, two times

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: They've had their full budget talked about with that committee and Adam's been in and James was in yesterday to entertain, whatever. So, I think they understand now what it is, but we haven't had that

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: full overview. And so, I think it would be helpful. Yes. We'll work with Autumn and figure out a time next week for them to come in. And we're getting close to the end of everybody that we need to hear from. Committee letters are due next Friday. We won't get 100% next Friday, but we'll get a bunch. What would happen? After

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: BHCD comes in on Wednesday, we'll have heard from everyone.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We'll have what? Heard from everyone. Oh, we will. All right. Go team. So, now we're on to some round two. So, we're pulling people back in because we want to know more about certain things. And if there are other things that you think of, just let me know and we can put them back in. Once the committee letters in, we'll have Teresa in, for example. We'll probably have Alyssa in from healthcare. I don't know whether we'll have others. It sort of depends on what they've got, but those are always the two biggest ones. So probably the following week at some point, we'll have them in as well. And then we're going to start getting a few more bills. We have two bills that we're just sort of sitting on for the moment, but I'm understanding that there are going to be a few more bills coming. I don't think it's going to be 39 bills in a week this year. Mike and then Lynn.

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: So, in the past, after we went through this group, we heard other stakeholders and also I think we set a day or a certain amount of time for legislators to come in. Yes, thank you. Yes,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: thank you for the reminder. Why don't we do that the week before town meeting? Because we'll have another public hearing next week on Thursday from five to 06:30. So people don't forget that. That's completely filled up. So the following week, let's have legislators come in. And I think we set aside an hour to do that. So we'll pick a time.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Is it possible that a journalist would come in and explain the kinds of details that are in that information thing that it can't really change. I mean, I have idea of what we can do, what we're expected to do, what cannot do.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, I think that would be good. Maybe we have Nolan. Nolan was going to do some sort of a crosswalk maybe between There are things that are being left out. We may want to have some people from AHS come in again, too, because I think there's things that are not being picked up by the world felt transformation and that are just going away. And we didn't get as good a handle on that as I There's think of

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: a couple bills, of course, all the time, but there's a health care bill in health that is changing some of the things that we've done in the past two years, twenty years or so, that apparently are supposed to be having an impact on the cost of healthcare. It might be nice to see.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Well, if and when that bill gets out of committee, we'll take it out. I think there's some good ideas and there's some half baked ideas and some not under So, the for example, the community rating is one of the things that they've talked about, just making it getting rid of it instead of all people pay the same. But the actual numbers when people went and did the work on it, only talking of their request was for a 5% difference. And the savings is negligible to change, to take away the community rating in terms of what the younger people would save. And the costs on the other end would be a lot higher. So, sounds like, in theory, it may be a good idea, but in practice, it doesn't sound like it's that kind good work. But that's the sort of stuff they're looking at. And so, we'll see what kind of bill comes out of there. And then, obviously, that will come to our committee.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: So Dave?

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Yes. Can you hear me?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes, we can.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Great. Thank you. I'm not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze, and don't want to make JFO do something that we can't do anything about. But I've been thinking more and more about the vacancy savings, and it seems like it's the go to tool to balance the books and state government. And I I'm curious what the overall impact is. And in ANR, it seemed very significant. They had 600 positions, I believe, and 8% of them that they won't be able to fill. And and some of the smaller units, you know, if you've got 25 employees and you gotta have two empty positions, they it can really be wasteful and crippling. I mean, you can have high level high level paid people doing administrative work just because you don't have a program clerk. I mean, doesn't maybe I'm the only one that has a concern and I certainly appreciate that.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: I was gonna ask a similar thing. What is the What is the process of taking a look at an annual budget and saying, we demand that you have this much savings, which means you are purposefully not hiring people that we may have already budgeted for, or whatever it is. Like, I've heard of this use for years past, but it seems now that I'm sitting here, I can I question the lines of data, which is just like, Yeah? Like this is purposely keeping people under capacity to reach a budget number as opposed to a service number. I mean this isn't even like this worst thing than austerity budgeting.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's how you balance the budget. Yeah.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Yeah. And it's not strategic. You you know, there's no strategy. You might as well say we don't have the money for all 70 employees. We gotta let two go. And here's the two that should be gone as opposed to by chance somebody decides to leave you. It's unfair.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I think there's a combination of things. That makes sense. So I'm moving through Trevor and then John.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: No, I was just gonna suggest as part of this conversation that we bring in finance and management, so to explain the process. Yeah.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Did you get that on? Finance and management to explain the process of vacancy savings? Great minds need a light.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Process and philosophy. Yeah,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: there you go.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Yes, Tim. Well, I've been talking with James about there were big fluctuations in terms of the personnel increases, the percentage increases across departments. Was really struck by the attorney generals. That was, I think, over, it was maybe 13% or something, and some other departments are being held to like 1%. And so, it may be useful to kind of cross reference that piece as well. I mean, again,

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I don't know if that Well,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I think vacancy savings has been a topic for discussion for a long time. We've seen that. And personally, I'm not a fan of like, across the board 10% cut, or it needs to be strategic. And I don't know if it's strategic or not. I mean, I just, that would be one of the questions that we'd probably want to ask. So Lynn, then Mike?

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: One of the things when you talk about something like the attorney general or the treasurer or any of those independently elected officers, they they may have, get a 3% request from the governor, but I'm not sure the governor really controls, or anybody really controls that situation except them. Because the treasurer, they separated some of the stuff. They took BPIC and took some of the investment stuff out, and they hired person to help over there. And then he came out and wanted two positions, and he wanted four positions. Then we gave him six or so. I mean, it was like, why would he need more of when he had just separated up the southern group to handle the investments? I mean, it's a good question because how do they determine what they need and how do we determine how it fits into the good?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Well, they still get the same instructions. And then the governor so if they had total control over their budgets, they wouldn't be coming to us with extra asks. So the secretary of state who, you know, Help America Vote Act, and the federal funds are going to, they asked for more money and the governor did not put the money in their budget. So they so, you know, they have some Some independence and some not so independence. Yeah, I think. But that would be helpful to clarify. Yeah, we Yes, okay. Mike?

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: The reason I asked the secretary more about Davis, I wonder if the work's getting

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: done. In

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: our town we've been pushing for three years to address a growing auto graveyard where the cars are literally piling up. Three years now. Nothing. We have been pushing and pushing and I keep, well you know, then somebody left and then now it's moving over.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Been a

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Trevor has something to say to that.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: Yeah, I mean, you look

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: at the Flood Safety Act in the past years ago, the agency came to us and said, us being the legislature, said we need 17 bodies to do this work. The final analysis by the time we got done with it, the Senate got done with it, they got 11 positions, they got 15 positions and let them fund it. That's the work that we did. We didn't give them a reason

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: to sell, then let's look at that.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Yeah, so on private property? Yeah. And is it just one person doing it?

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: It's a family affair. No, we haven't done a big

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: part of the fence backing

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: up alongside the road. There's probably at least 100 vehicles there now. And are they near the waterways? No, well, everything's near groundwater and they're at the top of the hill of this road.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right, mean we have some under resourced areas without question and ANR is one I've heard from other legislators that they're you know, they have so much work to do. And

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: get it. Let's give them

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: the resources. Is Well, when you find the money, you let me know. It's like

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: the agency of administration says we have five people or six positions that are vacancy savings, my natural impulse is to say treat it like it's a pool and say well I want to use those positions over here, especially if they're at this rate and I can put them over here and I know that's not the way it really works. Right. But the essence of saying they don't want us to take away the positions because then they can't claim vacancy savings. Yeah. It's just it's it's It's particularly deceptive bean counting for someone who's not an accountant. Yeah. You know, to think that to say that you've zeroed you've done the budget and and and yet we're still under capacity and we can't do our work and we can't do all these we can't respond to this stuff and yet there's positions that are hanging out there.

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: Know, all of what it is.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Well, some vacancy savings can be expected because when you have turnover, there's a time gap and so your payroll will go down for that period of time And they may come in at a lower salary, which is different from we're not going to fill this position and they were saving $125,000

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: And it's also a function of whether we can find people to go into those jobs. That kind of expertise that you may need to have.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right, and it may take longer.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Because nobody can find people to get to be employed enough in the state of Vermont at the moment.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: There's no the state government. Yeah.

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: There's other issues like with the fingerprinting and background checks. It's now a six month wait, Bennington.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: It's ridiculous.

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: I was talking to Sarah, the Secretary of State, she said New Hampshire just went through this process and they cut a six month wait now down to three days.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Really?

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Wow. Which is what it felt like it was here you know ten or twelve years ago. I was like being a substitute teacher and every year I had to submit finger, you know, had come down here to Montpelier and get fingerprints done and it wasn't a problem. Right. You know, there was an understanding, there was an understanding perhaps that even if it took two weeks that I could start working because there was a promise that was coming.

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: But getting conditional. Yeah, and that was while that was dealing with children, it wasn't bugs, super young children, nurses are going through the same thing.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, well a lot of people, but we now have people going through other organizations, which is why that fund is unfunded, is underfunded, because the million dollars seems

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: to be a priority. It's really affecting workflow.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah. Dave, did you have more you wanted to add?

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Nope. Nope. Just listening intently. Okay.

[Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Thank you.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Changed the subject from

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: stuff that

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: we've heard so I was thinking these versions listen that's another thing I'll talk to you offline about it

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: about how to really look at it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yep.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Because I understood the instructions on it or the way to read it, it's then it seemed a little bit out of date because it included the Land Access Opportunity Board, a million dollar reversion that we then repurposed correctly so that so it wasn't but it wasn't but it was still on this list.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That's because this list is as of 07/01/2025. Okay. So that was why I suggested you ask the questions, is the money still here? You know, how do you plan to use it? When do you plan to use it?

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Right and I'll do that with ACC with more currents or whatever is listed. Right. The thing that stood out to me on this list that the other thing that stood out to me on this list is to go back to the conversation we had with the Department of Labor where they were talking about burning a couple of million dollars in labor force training. And so when I mentioned this to Mike Moncotte, he didn't really have a verbal response. Was just like he just put his head down and just shook his head about you know this notion of saying we work really hard between I mean most of heavy lifting was commerce but you know being on the labor committee it was really important for us to support these efforts to bring this money and in this reversion report there's $189,000 for new American labor force reversion and you know without understanding like yes there's going to be a drop in the usage of the new American labor force training because the federal government is making it really hard for new Americans to come to Vermont or to The United States. I mean we've a lot of this was tied into the expected surge in Afghanis moving to Vermont which is every ten years we get a population in, Years ago it was the Shkadian Turks, Bosnians. So if things change, when things change and people are allowed back into the country and they want to come here, do we have to now, does that whoever's going to be taking over the commerce community have to fight for this money again? Because at least this money, if not the line item, is gone. As opposed to saying, no, we need to hold on to this because someday there will be new Americans that we want at a time when I mean it's this battle of course, right? We all know that influx of immigrants will be beneficial to our economy. And yet here we are and this isn't the only one.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: No, it's a great job.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: They've talked about 900,000 in another there was a whole list that they were cutting back from labor force training

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: and I'm like so what are we being shortsighted?

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Was it again my experience with this administration at times is that program and it's not just this administration I'm sure it's any executive branch be fair but this administration for the last ten years has chosen not to execute things that we have put into statute And then years later comes back out. Again, I'm not blaming them only and I know it happens elsewhere, but the last ten years have been this administration. Happened with the Department of Education after Act 46, we put a lot of money into hiring enough staff so that Act 46 could be implemented in a way especially that small towns could handle, which is the same argument we're having with Act 73. So we didn't create a plan, if they didn't see the data later, we need some savings. And the execution of what our intent was wasn't being followed. And so I'm curious to know if we have labor back in is they're not going to admit to saying no we chose to do this, but their execution of what we've asked them to do especially with money that predates very difficult to hire people for nine months or whatever it is or there weren't enough application for job it's job training. That has to do with people being able to reach out and then you know giving these communities more than you know we pass laws that no one's has to hear about even though they have lobbyists in this building and their job is to get anyway it's frustrating to read yet another thing that I know that we work hard policies, committees, know this committee worked hard to make sure the money was available and

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Natural Resources]: we all walked out of

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: here going, we're doing our best.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Then here was three or four years later. So Mike, you have a

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: I do want to mention that the commerce took testimony specifically on this yesterday from BOL. So they have

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: a little bit more insight at this point than

[Unidentified Committee Member]: they shared a little bit more with us. Again, not to say, think these are

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: pretty simple questions for each reversion. So, well, and some of is reverted, some of it is carried forward that's years and years old. So we can ask Adam to talk about the bigger picture, and then you all also have your own portfolios, you can go talk and have some of those deeper conversations. We're not going have everybody in to talk about these things, but we have be sure, did I explain to you about how you read how old the carryforward is? Those two digits. So, there's four digits at the end, and it's the first two. So, you'll see there's a '23 or a '24 or a twenty one or '25. Maybe there's an '18, I don't know. But some of these, if it's last year, then they should probably say, well, it's a timing thing and we have to send it. But if we're going back two or three or four years, we should be finding out a bit more. And I know that some of the FEMA stuff was '23 and there was some COVID stuff and there's stuff they're doing with the flooding and

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: they're still negotiating. All of that is still in process.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right. But we can confirm that, just so we know. But some of these, I think we're starting to hear, well, it's been there for five years and actually we're not going to use it. So let's take that back and that's money available that we can reuse. And just one more frustration with all of this conversation with particular programs that I can only identify a small percentage of, and

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: knowing that we're going go into the next chunk of our work with legislators, advocates, we have a pile of requests that we're going to be saying to people no or here's just a 22% of what you asked for all of those stuff. And then we have the administration requests for ADS which they testified in the committee upstairs that they went from being $1,000,000 in the black to $20,000,000 in the red and they don't know why. And now we're expected to just give a blank check to them because we have to have Microsoft licenses, because we have to have these programs any more than we have to feed people. So I know but those are the kinds of, that's the kind of difference in how I'm hearing numbers. I'm just expressing my own personal agenda over the fact that the fact that there's numbers that we have to do not account, not taking the accountability of why didn't you put this money out? Why wasn't there capacity to get this money out? Or you can't explain it to a level that says anything more to me than I, why should I trust that they, that the money that they're going to be, that we're going to be throwing at ADS is going to be used properly because the money we've thrown at ADS with this vague promise that we're in the black hasn't happened. And that's not just because Microsoft is hard to deal with, That's not just because computers are hard, that's competency and how do we judge that and then give them the money and then turn around to people who are sleeping on the streets and say sorry, can't help you. I have a hard time with that and that's going to be my struggle moving forward, I'm just laying it out here. So when you see my resting bitch face out in public, that would be because I'm very unhappy at how we may be making decisions or how we have to make decisions.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That's right. And I think, you know, we all knew we were coming into a hard year, and I think we're starting to see the challenges we're going to face as we make the decisions, and we're going to make some real hard decisions, and we are not gonna make everybody happy. There's no question. But we are gonna continue to try to understand it the best we can and try to make the best decisions we can. And my goal at the end of the day is still to minimize harm as much as possible different mantras, because that's what we're here for in many different ways. That comes in many different So forms, yeah, it's gonna be hard folks. I think we're really seeing it now. So, we're anticipating. Okay, well. So, we're going to keep digging and where we can find money to do things and where we can understand things better, we'll continue to try to understand things. So if you have other ideas of who you want to have come in, if we need to, we can do that. The committees are going be doing stuff too. And then you all have your sometimes those side conversations can be the most effective as well.