Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Good morning, this class appropriations committee.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Maybe. It

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: is Friday morning. We're live. It's January What is it? 02/20/2026. It is 11AM or so, and we are here to do a bit of a debrief on the two public hearings that we have. James has a lovely drafty draft of what the asks are so far. Also, when we're done with this, I want to talk with you all about some, just let you know about some bills coming and ask you who else we need to hear from in the next week or so. So James, take your way.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: For director James Duffy, joint fiscal office, In front of you all, there is a draft table of the public hearing budget requests above the governor's recommended budget for f y twenty seven that we've received. I will note first and foremost, that this is preliminary. We received some of these requests just last night, and there's some more digging to do into potential overlap with the gov rec, with some of the other requests. And you'll also note that there are some yellow highlighted cells here. Those are generally referring to requests that implicate global commitment and for which JFO needs to do some more verification to see that the amount is accurate for the work that's being requested as well as the the federal fund general fund split. So that being said, this afternoon, I will be back at my desk verifying these, stripping out some of the duplicates, sticking into some of the individual items that might have overlaps, and providing you all with an updated copy. But I know the committee wanted to have an overview of the requests this morning to inform your debrief conversation, highlight any items of particular interest, follow-up from JFO, as well as anything that any questions you have for JFO on particular items from this table.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Marty? Are you also gonna be looking at all the letters that we have received this year?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. So this this will be a component of the master spreadsheet that gets put together, which will contain policy committee requests as well as requests that you all heard during budget testimony that are above.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We the government's recommended used the link together. We had five pages. But I wanted us to get a preliminary idea of what people are thinking about out there. So I thought it would be a little less sincere, because I thought people were getting the message, but it is for BAA.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And although this, so the version that you have in front of you has a significantly higher total than the version that I walked out of our February 12 public hearing with. We got last night in particular, I think there's about $80,000,000 in housing requests. There's $41,000,000 for the housing opportunities program, 35,000,000 for general assistance, $11 million for shelter expansion that I have to do some more digging into. But those are the most serious drivers of the increased cost.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And the

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: I get know? PHCB.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. That as well. So Another 40,000,000. Some more homework to do for JFO there just to see what potential overlap there is between gov rec and some of those individual requests. But that's driving a lot of the jump in the total from the February 12 and the February 19 periods.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Some of these must have come from the Did the First United Methodist Church actually

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: A number of these provided a written testimony, but did not provide oral testimony. And that's one of them.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Okay. Thank you. Do you want

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: us to pop up with comments? Sure. Working on enterprise additional funding, it's that is $4,000,000 which was the total, but that's that's a split ask. It's 500 feet higher base, 3.5 per one ton. The base is at 1,000,000 per day.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right, well that's on the first page. Sorry, that's a page on. Yeah, that's okay.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: How much were they? 500 to base. 8.5.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Rep Stevens, I believe that, and you you may know, I believe that was a request from the Vermont Rural Development Council. They did have two components of the request. I my interpretation had been that they had a $4,000,000 requested increase for working lands enterprise and a separate request for 500,000 for the rural and community technical assistance program.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: That's not my understanding.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I will double back to the written testimony.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: The request that seemed to be coming from lot of the different advocates is almost $500,000 per page and it's 2.51.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And I think the Rural Community Technical Assistance is a different program.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It is, yes. A different program. They had been submitted as part of the same testimony, are different programs and different apps.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Well, they had like, there's four things I'm going to

[John Kascenska (Member)]: ask for. Right? So just stepping back a second, was there a limit to how many people could sign up?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: The limit was 40 each time, and sometimes there are multiple, and then anybody who wants to can submit, but you

[John Kascenska (Member)]: can testify. So it's first come, first served. On the signage. And who is doing that?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Well, they all sent it to Autumn. We sent it out to There's a process, I just give it to our staff and a miracle occurs and everybody knows that.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: My concern is that we've got so many leads that are probably redundant, same requests over and over again, redundant. My concern was whether or

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: not there were other people out there that

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Didn't get to

[John Kascenska (Member)]: Didn't get there because first come, first served, we had all the people coming in.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And we've been to this, it's a public hearing. We're not going to turn people away. We have tried to make exceptions where we needed to On a list when there's been people, and we have adjusted when we've had to. And if we had some people who were brand new and we have eight of something else, I would not hesitate to go and talk to the lead advocate and say, Really, we don't need to hear it eight times. We need two slots for some people who haven't had

[John Kascenska (Member)]: a chance. So we didn't have a lot of extra people that didn't get from them?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: There was three reached out to me that were on the mailing list and I also received like a 100 things of public comments. So if you go on your committee page, there's like a lot of public There's a lot of written testimony. Written,

[John Kascenska (Member)]: yes. Like letters.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right, so you need to look at that as well. It sounds like James

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Simple, it does include written testimony that we did not hear in purposes. That's included in this table. So at last night's hearing, there were about 30 pieces of written testimony that were posted, submitted online, but that didn't have people speak to it in person.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: And that

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: is reflected in this table.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We should all be looking at that written testimony. Just go to don't print it out. Just breeze through it and see what

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: you see. So I don't know if it's based on

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: The one that starts

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: All different. It's not page one.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: A million five for reach of this page one.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: That's correct. Okay. So on page two, for instance I mean, James, this is a question for you. You have a total of $2.00 2 almost $200,000,000, but will the next version of this draft have marks on it that are in the governor's recommended already? I see things like the housing opportunities program $41,000,000 additional. I don't know if that's additional or if that's in the recommends, you know, general assistance. I I don't know what's in the recommends. Yeah. So. Oh, man. So, just didn't,

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: you know, as

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: long as.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That's part of what James will be doing this. Yeah.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah. About the first page and a half of items here are from the first public hearing we had a week ago and those we had more time to look at, dig into, and are fairly confident that those are all above the governor's recommended budget are not duplicated in the FY '27 gov rec. I would say the bottom, you know, three quarters of the second page are requests that we only just heard about last night. And several of those require some more digging to make sure. The $40,000,000 BHCB requests above gov rec, for example, the one that you highlighted, rep Stevens, those definitely require some more looking into to see what might be in the gov rec and what's going

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: because the comment that was correctly made in one of the hearings, I think it was early last night, was, you know make sure we support a statutory give that's the governor's recommend of whatever the $37,000,000 Yeah.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: And I

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: know that the HCB might have been asking for a total of, but they were asking they were asking for money when they came in it was not it was not an additional $40,000,000 there was 5 or 6,000,000 I mean they were just different numbers being talked right.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And this one in particular too where the written testimony hadn't been provided yet. So it just it needs some more homework. I will highlight, though, there are a number of testimonies that were received that are requesting funding for something that is in the gov rec, but they're requesting extra money above level funding. So for example, the Vermont two eleven sustained level funding item about a third of the way through the first page. Yeah. Sorry. It's page one with with the green row on top. Apologies. This isn't numbered. But the Vermont 211 sustained level funding item, that's 332000Dollars that's proposed for removal from their budget in FY '27 gov rec. They have other funds in the budget, but they're requesting that they have that funding 27.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That's what it would take.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Yeah. That's that's fine. I just but it's also, like, what and, again, just these these are just things bouncing off my eyes. You know? So for instance, the Human Rights Commission has a government governor's rec of x, and then they propose to us that in order to either work, they need x Right. That will come. Y. And so that's

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: All this is is from the two public hearings. I wanted to get something in front of us in very draft form. This is so far from final, but at least we have a sense of where people are coming from, and it's going to get refined. We will eventually have the spreadsheet like we had last year that'll have all the other requests from the agencies that are not, I don't know how you call it, Human Rights Commission, etcetera. Everybody, the treasurer, all those, they'll come in. We'll also have the committee recommendations from the committee letters starting from me. This is just the beginning.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: And just want to make sure we spend that time. I mean I know we will I just want to say it out loud that we spent the time sifting through to make sure that I mean first impressions are really important so we all reacted to two zero two as opposed to you know I mean it's

[John Kascenska (Member)]: like a

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: lot of it's already covered.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: It's like a newspaper that put a headline and then five days later it's a correction

[John Kascenska (Member)]: We all need to make a note.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right, well we'll probably be at 200 even if it isn't this 200 because we haven't gotten the committee letters yet. We haven't added in the attorney general, the attorneys, the legislative, on and on and

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: on. Just want to have

[John Kascenska (Member)]: a spreadsheet. We're going

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: to do this. James has what we did last year. And then we will also have, I don't know how I showed you this, we had a separate smaller spreadsheet, which was the governor's sort of wish list. So you all, as you're going through, you can also, the budget itself, because there isn't a lot in there, But you can think about, in your worlds, what does the governor have in there? Are there programs that they're keeping that maybe we don't think they should keep? Just because they're in there doesn't mean they need to stay there. So you should be looking at that in your portfolios. We have the list of the one times, which are basically his wish list. There's not a lot there. And we also have the carry forwards and reversions. Most of the carry forwards are the things that we can revert, that we want to be looking at as well. So those are kind of the pockets that we're looking at to find money.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And also, as we get closer to crossover and know what bills are making their way to you all with appropriation requests, that will be a component of that information.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right, right. And we're going to start ticking up some bills next week. Some of them we can vote on because it's a cancellation of something and there was money, but there isn't, and we can make a decision. Others, I just want us all to start hearing them, but we won't vote because I don't want us to be going through the budget and then suddenly having to switch our brain and say, oh my gosh, what's this 36 page bill? So as much as we can get done before crossover to at least here, then we can remind ourselves info when we have to vote closer to when our bill budget has to be Yeah, some investigation in the meantime. Right, we can investigate and you can just have it in your brain that we talked about whatever it was. Once we get

[John Kascenska (Member)]: it all arrayed into a spreadsheet so we can see it all, all the requests, then it'd be a lot easier to

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right, right. And so what I want to do is what we did last year is send you all home with this stuff and say, what do you want to do? What are you going to take from to do that? And then what are your priorities? So we'll do that same exercise across the whole budget. Yeah, John.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: I was kind of thinking about this last night here, we have all these categories of classes here. Yes. It's probably like some sane areas that comes in, in terms of my brain trying to sort through it that way here. So I might have one request in a particular category here, whatever it might be.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So we can talk about arranging it the way government functions. So we can have human services related things together and other things related together.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: I mean, if we want

[John Kascenska (Member)]: to provide something here, but we can't provide total. Right.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So we can sort things. Like I said, this is just to get it on paper so we can have a place to start.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Thank you, representative. I think organizing it by budget section or for something more exactly like, have all the things that are clearly human services, which are lumped together on the spreadsheets. Right. I was thinking of you can synthesize it. Absolutely.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: I mean, but I think

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: that you're probably going to be indicating this, like, some people have said restore a cut that was made, right? And that'll be important for us to know if it's a restoration of a cut that appears in the budget.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Versus playing a lot of those.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, we're hearing from people that they don't want certain things cut. They weren't necessarily at the public hearing, but they may be in the testimony and our committees may say, because they're the ones also looking into what the cuts were. So we'll hear from our committees about that.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I agree. I think it's important context too, because if you all see there's a request for a restored $20,000 in proposed cuts, you probably wanna know, well, what's the total proposed appropriation so we know what percentage we're talking about. So that context will also be included in the final version. What's proposed for retention? What's proposed for cutting? And then what's the actual proposed full appropriation in the GOVR Act for context?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right. So we have a long way to go. It's going to happen pretty fast, but this is a great first start.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah. I know Crossover is or not Crossover, Town Meeting Week is coming up. So, Madam Chair, what I was thinking was, we'll compare notes early next week and make sure that over the weekend we haven't missed anything. We've got all covered. Then you all will have a draft ready for you well before you go home. Not a draft, but final version ready for you well before you go home for town meeting week.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay, yeah. So you can start thinking about it and probing into stuff that you Dave, you look like

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: you have a question.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Well, you can read me so well. I'm just trying to anticipate ahead and how to manage workloads and things like that. Thinking I was gonna ask Nolan for my area, so my portfolio, which I'll tell him, if he could just put the downs, all the governor's downs on one and the governor's ups on another, and then align it to, this is in B306, you know, that kind I'm trying to build a floor report, realizing things will likely change, could change. And then I'm also thinking, when will we know what revenues we have to work with? And would that be after crossover? No, I'm hoping that Crossover is okay.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So the speaker and the chair of Ways and Means and I are going to be talking about this next week. To have a sense of what

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Yeah, so that we can Because afford

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: law that's depending upon There's a huge amount that the governor's proposing to carry forward for education spending. And that's one of the wild cards, right?

[David Yacovone (Member)]: That's all one time, correct?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That's all one time. Which is Right. And so, there are lots of questions around how does that best get deployed to accomplish what we want to accomplish. So, that's to come.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: So that will likely be sometime during the week before town meeting week.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Which is next week. Next week.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Yep, then there's town meeting week, and then when we get back, are we in

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We'll markup two to finish up the budget. So we'll get into serious markdown. We'll have more of the spreadsheets. Mark up. Which Apple lady writes. $12.99 No, there's no pennies anymore. Anyway, whatever. Markdown, jeez. It's Friday. We did, by the way, pass the budget adjustment in the committee of conference, so that's been accomplished. What did you decide, just out

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: of curiosity? Pardon me? What did you compromise on, or what was the final?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We updated language on Section eight housing. We updated some dates on the Disabilities Payment Reform. We split the difference on what goes to the Vermont Center for Independent Living for Meals on Wheels versus the Vermonters feeding Vermonters. So I think we ended up taking 15 from Vermonters feeding Vermonters and putting it to the Meals on Wheels section. It was pretty minor. And in fact, some of you heard me say this, we didn't do a strike all, so there's not a whole brand new whole budget adjustment report. We are acceding, is the word that we have to use, to the Senate with five instances or six instances of amendment. So the actual part that what we'll be going over makes my full report a lot easier and everybody to find what we're doing. It's very short.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: On the conversation about the Meals on Wheels, when you were in conference, somebody came up to me to try to explain the difference between just there's Meals on Wheels statewide. VCIL, where we put the 30,000, has a separate Meals on Wheels program, which just made it all confusing.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right, which is also statewide, and it's for individuals with disabilities who are under the age of 60, and so wouldn't otherwise qualify for the standard meals on meals program. And they are the statewide organization. So the money isn't going to wherever they're located, it's to be spread out along the stage. So it's a very specific targeted group of people.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: And that's where the money, the extra $15,000 is going?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Just clarification. Did Senate say that VCIL came in to ask for more from them?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: They went and checked, and there's a waiting list so that they actually could have used more. They came in asking for, as Tiff eloquently said, that sometimes these smallest organizations don't ask for what they, they're so worried that they don't ask for enough of what they need.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Well they don't take into account compromise and my industry is like, well somebody we got some money last year, I want somebody else to

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: get it which is lovely. I know, right, Which is very sweet.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Well, is, but it's also I think it was representative Johnson or Toll, and they were chair of this committee who fold one organization that I did a lot of work with, like, if you don't ask, it's a no. Know, just to start it's like it was pre COVID so it had to be Representative Johnson but it was they were like you know they had to get in not aggressive, but it is the thing where they were constantly saying, We got ours last year, so we want Right. It's like, that's just not the

[John Kascenska (Member)]: way things Right. Are Some of what bothers me is because obviously we have some very well organized advocates, for some portions of this, and my feeling is our elderly some of those people that are home don't have that same organization, and I we should be doing more for Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's one

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: of the requests in the big bill. So this smaller group is getting more. They're getting 55,000 because the Senate pulled down 10,000 that we had left on the bottom line. Then the other 30, instead of taking 40,000 from Modern Speaking for Moderns, they're taking 15,000. So 55,000 is going to the Vermont Center for Independent Living for those folks from meals on meals. Then 385,000 is being added to the Vermont O'Shea Fund. And I think that was a reasonable place to end up. So that was basically it. There was some other language. That was three instances of amendment to fix those things, But that was what we accomplished.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Yeah, Lynn? Yeah, who Lynn just tested out? I got a request from a member. He has a senior citizen group in the islands who have essentially, they bring things from home, but they don't need the large, it's like a plumage sale type environment. And they all have this little place in town that they stock it. And it's called Granny's Closet or something like that. Anyway, and then when it's sold, people go and buy stuff. And then when they get it, they donate money to

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: children to older people. Do this

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: together. It's that big. But the point is they got kicked out of their place where they had this little plaza. Now they're looking to try to get another place to go and they need like $20,000 whatever. And he said, do you do that? And I said, well, go ahead.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: You can always ask. You can always ask.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: That's the kind of They don't make any money. It's all volunteers. They're all 75 or 80 years old. They just have to turn out the houses and sell And it sounds like it's a really good idea.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's so hard because are so many good things. And yes, there are major holes in what we are doing and we need to pay attention to that. And we aren't going to have the money that we had last year. So it's going be made that much harder. I will be coming through, you all need to be, too, those carry forward. And then wherever else, I know Dave knows secret pockets and human services. Last year, wanted to take a couple million from excess receipts, and suddenly we had Adam saying we could find you the couple million. So we'll keep looking and keep thinking about, we'll go through that exercise again. For me, there are going to be a few things that are a lot easier to say no to, and then there are going to be those ones that are going be really hard to say no to and what we want to do. So we'll have a chance to do that. But this is just getting us started. But do read the testimony. You can start to read the committee letters. I think we've gotten Are they on here? They're on our website. If you go under other bills, Yes? FY '20

[John Kascenska (Member)]: It sounds like they're only per day, this is like today. You.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: But they should be posted, I'm just going to check our committee page here. So, we go to other documents. There's nothing. FY '27 budget.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: I have to go back, okay.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: There are committee letters on there as a Oh, information from standing committees. There we go.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: You just read that?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: What we have is energy and digital infrastructure and health care. And we are having health care, human services, housing, somebody else coming in next week, are those the three committees?

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, those are the three.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And so if we see other letters and we want people to come in, we can do that. But some of them just don't have that much. So you can just be the liaison with the committee if it's yours. But we want to have those three come in because those are the big ones. Which then leads me to, we've heard a lot of stuff from a lot of people so far. Are there people or organizations you feel like we still need to hear from that we should be setting up

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: for next week at this point? Well,

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Dave, I'm up to speed on it. I don't know if there's whole conversation around primary care. I haven't read the house help letter, I'll do that. But if some of the elements are not in that, half hour presentation from the medical people might set a good backdrop. What I'm trying to show is here's what we did for primary care last year and have been doing for some time. Here's what's been taken out and here's some ideas on how to respond. I don't know if I just save that until after town meeting week.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Well, an The eye on other thing though is that it's looking at the Rural Health Transformation Grant, because there's a lot of primary care related stuff in there. So we're going to finally fund, I believe that's in there, the residency program at Maple Run that we tried to do last year in the budget, remember? And we couldn't get the waiver. So when you say primary care, it kind of depends on what you mean. Yeah, so I would check that also.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Yeah, I'll work on that.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We don't get to vote on that. I think no one was working on a rural health transformation kind of side by side, looking at what may be in the budget versus what's in rural health transformation. And that I think would be important, Dave, support our combined budgets.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Yes, thank you.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: I thought early in the week or last week, I thought you were saying, maybe we should have him back. I don't remember what it was about. Just run your memory back. Was there anything that you thought to someone who was going come in for that hasn't? Or maybe they already came in? But I remember you saying, Maybe we should have you come back. Remember

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: who that was. You are reminding me, we do have federal delegation folks coming in on Tuesday. So they will talk about all of their congressionally directed spending, which will help inform, so maybe some of the things people want are going to be covered in that. Not quite what you were talking about, Lynn, but you could check with Dan. Senator Sanders has a half $1,000,000 grant to the senior centers to do special things. So I don't know if there's any, if that's a place you could get something. So we'll have it, we'll keep an eye on that.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: I'm just wondering what we're talking about here is like a little petty cash fund. For whom? For us?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: For to have, you know what I mean? Yeah.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: For these. First we have

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: to figure out what we think we have available to contribute because this we could be back to and Marty can speak to this more eloquently than I that we're fighting over $10,000 The

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: little tiny things you said just individual folks got in mind, my community needs 15,000 or something and you're- Yes, yes.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: I remember doing it for big, but you're fighting over $10,000 Well, but I think we

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: need to, in my view, those little things need to fit within a much bigger pot. There's a way

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: of getting that money out. Senior centers is a really good idea for them. So let's hear what- That particular grant would be. Right, that might be a

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: match to your point. Steer them.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: To get some sort of they can go. That's why I

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: want the delegation because it looked like they had a lot of stuff that was related to a lot of the things that we're dealing with in the budget. So if it's covered there, let's not do it here, to do

[John Kascenska (Member)]: it here too. Double some details to find out what strings or what.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Right, right. Well, is

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: 12,000,000 for housing to be HCV, I think. And then somebody, or somebody went and talked and said that they would have to be, they'd have to apply and be like 1,000,000 each year or 2,000,000 or I can't remember. Anyway, so there's money for things that we like to do and if that's going to be helpful. Yeah, lot of community development stuff, they said. And there may be more primary, I don't remember what else. I don't have an IT student. So, we

[John Kascenska (Member)]: can just categorize this stuff, we'll see some of those little things that fit a job. Right, to go someplace, we or we

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: can afford So, that's kind of where we are. If you think of other people that we ought to get back in.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: I'm going bring in Jill Olson. So if we get to a point where we're looking at, she might be in much more detail when you have that meeting across the hall with her. Right. A fiscal committee, yep. That might be Right. She has more information that may be helpful for us to understand as a committee.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Phil. And Nolan does that, which I think it's his weekend homework assignment day, to do that spreadsheet for the Rural Health Transformation Grant, see how it aligns with stuff being cut. Because VSAC's involved, there's a whole lot of different programs that are involved. And one of the things that happened, for example, and we did see a request for SASH, which is Supportive Services at Home, We had budgeted one time money last year because it was covered by the old Accountable Care Organization, the ACO, which went away in that December. And so the governor put in money for this year to cover us before we got to this AHEAD program, which was going to take care of it. Except now that doesn't seem to be happening, which is what we were worried about. And we may be losing significant services that we have to pay attention to. So I'm hoping that I don't know whether that's Melissa or Teresa, but healthcare, human services will be talking about that, I think. That'd be healthcare. Behind the program. Behind the program. Yeah, Sash though. Is Sash coming this up year? Here?

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Well, yes. It didn't do a letter. So it may be

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: in the letter. Yeah. So those are the kinds of things that we kind of have to do these crosswalks to figure out what's based on. So lots to think about, lots to dig into. And next week, we will not be fully having testimony because next week is also a really good week for you all to do your digging and meet with people that you need to meet with. And John, we'll talk about your portfolio. As we officially, as a committee, say congratulations. Congratulations to our You know you'll do a great job.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: My best. We would have liked together. Yeah.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: But we will take your portfolio away from you since you have higher ed. And I have joked with some people, if you want to become a Vermont State College's trustee, you need to come to this committee and have the higher ed portfolio.

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Need

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: advice. Advice and two biennials. I've had to

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: change somebody's portfolio. I understand. Mark kept everything but the state colleges. It's his portfolio. He and I swapped,

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I was vice chair and I swapped some stuff with him, but I'm not doing that this year. But I have an idea and we'll just chat before we go head out today so we can take it up. All right, so I think that's everything, unless anybody has anything else to Safe come to travels and all. Enjoy the

[Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: snow once you're safely home.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Work to do, assignments, and more to come next week. So we'll meet Tuesday. When are we starting on Tuesday? We know yet? Nine or 09:30?

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: One of the two.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: The House is meeting at ten on Tuesday.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, but we made a meeting before then. Assume nine unless you hear otherwise. But not Monday. Enjoy your Monday. The next two Mondays will be here soon. Mean, that can't be yet. All right. James, thank you. We can't be sleeping over to you. Know, I'm off a different side.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Stay with her.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Sit over here.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Bye. Thank you for starting the day.