Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Good morning, this is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Wednesday, February 25. Two of our members are attending by Sue, Tiff and Robin. We have on our agenda today, we are gonna look at a bill this morning, H567. And then at 11:00, we'll be hearing from various legislators telling us about their specific interest in the budget coming along. And then in the afternoon, we have two more bills to look at, page five forty two and page five seventy eight. So, we are going to look at five sixty seven first, and we have Matt Beron from the Committee of Government Operations, and Cam Wood, Cameron Wood, our attorney as well, and we have Chris Ring available. So, one or all of you can come up front. I guess we'll let Matt describe it first, along with Cam.

[Rep. Matt Birong (Government Operations Committee)]: Yes, yes. Thank you very much

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: for that advice, Chair. Thank you, committee.

[Rep. Matt Birong (Government Operations Committee)]: So yeah, the bill in front of

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: you,

[Rep. Matt Birong (Government Operations Committee)]: H567, is a common, wow, of coffee, Of work. A lot of this happened before we even got into session. There's a great deal of effort between stakeholders, the treasurer's office, legislative council to put this proposal together. It covers a pretty broad range of topics, retirement systems, unclaimed property, adjustments to some probate court, things of that nature. So it really is it touches on a lot of points that are within the treasurer's jurisdiction. As far as our committee work, we took extensive testimony. And for the first time in my legislative career, we voted a bill out as introduced for committee. It was really kind of amazing. So sort of where I'm building up to with that was there was a lot of really diligent work that went into this. And when we brought in all the interested parties, affected organizations and whatnot, there was broad support for the words on the page that are in front of them.

[Speaker 0]: Mr. Wood, would you please lead us through this bill?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes ma'am, I'd be happy to. For the record, Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Counsel. I'll share my screen and kind of walk through For a 36 page bill, I think this can actually be relatively succinct in the description of what's actually changing here. For the first few sections, we have amendments to the statutes related to unclaimed properties. And the language here is more technical amendments as opposed to substantive, I will comment on each of them. The first in section one, when you look at the bottom of this page, the subsection five, what's changing here is it's allowing the treasurer's office to seek more information when they receive unclaimed properties from certain entities. So as you can see here in the sub five, if it's an unclaimed property that's held under a life, we're adding medical or endowment insurance policy. The change here is going to allow the state treasurer's office to ask for an explanation of benefit numbers. Their testimony in the Government Operations Committee was, in a lot of instances, they will just get a large dollar amount coming from these external entities without any further information about whose money it may be or any further description. So this change will allow them to request for additional information for those monies that are coming in.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: I'm looking at it as well as any explanation of benefit numbers. Benefit numbers, what's numbers refer to? Dollars? People? Yes, it would be

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the money that they're receiving that's unflamed property.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Those numbers are a good enough word for that spot? Is that descriptive enough?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I believe so, but the the information initially came from the treasurer's office, so that may be a question you wanna ask them to make sure they feel that they have enough information there to to make the changes that they're they're seeking. But my understanding is yes. I mean, as the testimony was given, again, these entities will just provide a significant chunk of unclaimed property money without any explanation of the numbers that go behind it and whose money it may be. And so this language intended to allow them to request an explanation of the numbers that are coming to them, the monetary numbers that are coming to them. It

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: seems they can not plainly read, but it doesn't inform me as to exactly what they're talking about, dollars or some other numbers? There's a lot of beds and numbers. Right.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It would be the benefit numbers associated under the life medical or endowment insurance policy or annuity contract. Moving to the next page. So this is page three. We're moving on to section two. What this is going to do is, currently, and I'm going to have to come back to this section, but I'm going to pause here and explain what the bill is introduced would do. This section says in the lead in, the lines three and four, before making a deposit of funds received to the general fund. So this is unclaimed property. The treasurer's office is required to set aside and maintain a certain amount of unclaimed property to ensure that they're able to pay the claims that people are filing each year. So they receive the unclaimed property, they hold it, individual comes to them, finds that they have unclaimed property, they request it, the treasurer's office has to pay it out. So there are statutory sections that require the treasurer's office to maintain a certain amount to be able to pay those claims that come in. And then they do also transfer funds to the general fund each year. So they don't just hold all the unclaimed properties that they receive forever into perpetuity because they're old, people aren't going to claim them, etcetera. So they do make transfers to the general fund. What this section is saying is before they make those transfers, they're able to deduct certain things. And part of that is, as you can see in the one through four, expenses, cost of mailing, publication, service charges, etcetera. And then when you get to the sub five, currently, property that's valued at less than a $100, that's more than ten years old, the treasurer's office transfers those funds to, look at line 17, the Higher Education Endowment Trust Fund created in sixteen BSA two thousand eight hundred eighty five. What this bill would do is it would divert those monies to the Vermont Saves Administrative Fund for a certain period of time. And I'm gonna pause because I'm gonna come back to this section because the House Ways and Means Committee is proposing an amendment to this to clarify further the intent behind what the treasurer's office was seeking to do. So if you don't mind, I'm just gonna come back to this this section. Yes, sir. Line

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: line 16, the number there is it's strange. The 300,000?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I'm gonna come back to that because there's a there's potentially an edit I'm gonna ask you all to make on the ways and means amendment that that came through. So okay. Section three is simply repealing that diversion of the funds away from the Higher Education Endowment Fund to the Vermont Saves Fund. So it's a sunset on that shift in money. But, I'm gonna I'm gonna come back to this when I get to the ways and means amendment. So section four and section five, these sections are amending certain thresholds that apply to the unclaimed property division. So when you look at section fifteen fifty three, this requires that individuals that are claiming property have to provide certain information to the treasurer's office to validate its completeness and accuracy that they, you know, have that it's their money. Then when you get to the sub b, looking at the top of page five, this allows the treasurer's office, it was described in government operations, to make a fast claims process. Don't have to require certain documentation of the individual, original documentation, they don't have to require notarization, etc, things like that. If the value itself is under this $250 threshold, then they're able to just move those claims much more quickly through the process so the individual can access those dollars. Their proposal here is to increase that threshold from $250 to $1,000 And then in section five, similarly, what this section does is it's dealing with estates and where the individual who owns the property is deceased. And what we're saying here is, in the case of a closed estate, if it's less than 5,000, then the treasurer's office can distribute the money in accordance with the decree of distribution for that estate. And then if there is no open estate and there is no decree of distribution, then they can distribute it to the surviving spouse or to the next of kin in accordance with Vermont statute that kind of identifies how those funds are distributed out. And they're proposing to increase these thresholds from 5,000 to 10,000. And as you can see under the sub four, if it's above these thresholds, then they are required to reopen the estate in order to distribute the funds. So it's kind of increasing those thresholds from five to 10 to make it easier to distribute those funds in the event there is this decree of distribution that already exists. And then moving to the top of page six, similarly, just a threshold here. If there are more than one individuals who own the property, it's saying that if the value is under $2.50 and the proposal to increase it to 1,000, it gives the treasurer kind of statutory authority to distribute that money to either the first person who claims it or to proportionate share to the individuals who are claiming it. So it's just those two sections four and five, like I said, are just increasing these thresholds by which the treasurer's office can more quickly distribute money out and according to those statutory sections.

[Speaker 0]: Did did you hear that there was kind of a backlog because of this 250 limit as opposed to I mean, you have did treasurer's office have too many sitting there Because it was a two fifty limit and it took them longer to process them.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't wanna speak for them. I don't remember hearing them say that there was a backlog, but I know they have testified that there has been, you know, kind of an ongoing increase in the number of, claims that they have been distributing out. So I know that that was comments that was made. This will also help alleviate the burden from their small administrative team in trying to ensure that these claims are processed as quickly as possible because they have had a continued increase in volume of claims that have been going out. Okay, so that ends the unclaimed property section. So now for the next few, we're gonna move into the Vermont State Retirement System. This first section here on section six is this is addressing and I'm gonna move to page seven because sub b is is really where the the changes here. There are certain municipal employers that participate in the state's retirement system. And what this section would do is it would authorize the treasurer's office, the board, the pension system to apply penalties and interest to those employers if they are not paying their employer share time. So as you can see under the B, payments due that are not received within thirty days after the installment date set by the board result in a penalty assessment against the employer at a rate of 1% of the amount due for each month calculated and provided that the board may waive. So it's really standard language there, but the key thing is it's authorizing the board to assess those penalties against a municipal political subdivision that's participating in the state retirement system. Section seven is creating a pension and benefits funding task force. And the intent of the task force is here, and we're looking at line 15 to report on the funding methodologies of the Vermont State Retirement System and the State Teachers Retirement System. You have membership of the task force. So we have the chair of appropriations, house and senate, secretary of administration, state treasurer. Task force is reviewing existing funding schedules and methodologies. And then you have here a little more detail on what they're required to look at. This is gonna be on page nine. Long term sustainability of the plans, total cost of funding of the system, predictability and stability of the system, etcetera. Key thing is under the three, the task force shall not make recommendations on member benefits, contribution levels, or assumed rates of return. My understanding is here, they're looking to have this task force come in and really do a comprehensive assessment of where you're at with the funding systems excuse me, the pension systems. And I can kind of let Chris better explain this section when he joins you, if you have specific questions. And Stevens?

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Wasn't there a similar task force that was put into place some years ago when the pension funds were in crisis?

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Seems, I can't say duplicative, but why is Thank you for your last sentence, but the idea here is what as compared to what was and what exists because there was a big big big two years you know work out on the functionality

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: of

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: pensions. We've taken testimony where the pensions seem to be healthy. The process, all of these things that it's being asked to look at, we took testimony and said these things at least in the moment are stable, many miles to go to be funded, but that's not what this is for. Is this a group of ombudsmen? Is this a group of people who are a board of directors for BPIC or for the people who are running the funds?

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Chris? Chris Group, my fiscal representative, I think that's very good. I remember you had a few years ago of that pension passports. The private group had a much larger charge than this one. That group really did look at like the entire systems writ large including what the benefit from power plants looked like in terms of the benefits of employee contributions, the whole nine yards. This is intended to be a much more limited scope of work for a group of similar stakeholders where you have legislators and members of the employee unions. This would not look at the benefit structure and things of that nature. My understanding is the focus here is really on our amortization policy and you know right now in statute our unfunded liabilities are to be amortized by fiscal two thousand and thirty eight, but as we get closer to that date, I'll go into this one in the chair, but there is higher risk of contribution volatility if something weird happens in the market because you're running out of years spreading impact across and we need to have a conversation about what does life after 2038 look like at some point because we're going to need to have assisted employees to deal with unfunded liabilities that crop up from time to time. So this is really looking at that piece of the equation. It's a very narrow focus on what should our funding policy have to stay for the unfunded liability?

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: Thanks. Yeah, I was going to ask the same question Tom had, but it looked like duplication to me. But then the next question after listening to Chris is we have a BPEC group that was spun off just a couple of years ago and that does the actual examination of the sustainability, total cost, predictability, effect, and is the advisory group for this. And I believe this calls for the addition of a physician to help them do something to deal with OPEB because OPEB is even a bigger variability as it gets closer, is how does this work if we now have VPIC?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So real quick, and then I'll also defer to Chris. So there isn't a position associated with this study. This is just a limited task No,

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: not study, but there is one mention of the lecture, BIPOC is asking for one.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, ma'am. Because the next few sections of the bill are going to be transferring the OPEB benefits from the treasurer's office to be under the administrative and fiduciary responsibility of BPIC. So I think they are asking for a position to administer that transition, they will be administering those funds. So they're asking for a position for that. But is this duplicative

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: thing that BPIC does?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This would be separate. These are two totally separate.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: The piece you mentioned representing Dickinson with the commission you need has to do with managing OPEB and shifting that over from the treasurer's office to VPIC. This group here, this is a task force that really doesn't have anything to do with the investments or the actuarial assumptions. This task force is really just going to look at the state's funding policies for the pension unfunded liability and what types of statutory changes might need to be made to reduce volatility risk for fall of the pandemic. Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 0]: President Iveshai online has a question.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, remote)]: Hi, thank you. I think some of it's been answered. I remember speaking with the treasurer this fall about the notion that the volatility becomes more of a concern the closer we get to 2038. And I think that's what I heard Chris say is the reason for this. I'm wondering why the chairs of House and Senate appropriations are supposed to be on this committee. Chris, do you have some thoughts about that?

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I would defer to the church or talk us on that. I think if I were to speculate, think some of the logic is that this specific issue is really about funding and about budgetary pressures on the government as opposed to retirement plan design or things of that nature. And I think this is really about coming up with a policy that directly intersects with the marketing appropriations phase.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, remote)]: Okay. All right. Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Since we're right now? Okay. Continue.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. So I will just comment. You know, we have a lot of boilerplate language in here about the task force, but the report is due on December 15. Then the one piece that I wanted to highlight as well is it has an appropriation of $75,000 Here in the sub H on page 11, dollars 75,000 appropriated to the of the state treasurer for costs associated with administering a task force, including per diems and reimbursement of expenses and costs associated with the advisory services. Just wanted to mention that.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: It comes from the general button. Yes, ma'am. Okay,

[Speaker 0]: now One question.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: And so I just wanted to ask the question, if this is a treasurer's gig, then wouldn't this come out of the overhead that might be assigned to them for management of the funds? That's a question I would defer to them.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Chris wants to talk I would just say, primarily, remember there's been studies done for the pension system status come from general fund appropriations, not from the corpus of the pension assets, which for lots of legal reasons that I am not qualified to speak to are held in trust for the exclusive benefit of the client participants. So there's sort of restrictions on what you can use that money for coming out of the assets of the fund. Typically what we've done on the task list a few years ago and anytime the legislature has asked the Treasury's office to look at studying different things, provide a lot of general fund appropriation.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: Yeah, I'm just wondering, there's seven members on this committee, many of them are going to be paid by their employers. We need $75,000 or maybe two or three people at the moment?

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: The per diem is a minimal piece of that cost. That would almost entirely be to one actuary to learn. So when we all did the task force a few years ago, think we received a $150,000 appropriation for that and most of that money went to the front actuarial work.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: So you hire a consultant?

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: We already have a consultant on board. We have to pay them to run at our scenarios.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Chris, if I can answer this question, are there a certain number of meetings that it would take to actuate this force and their charge here? I I may have not seen it.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. Six meetings. Six.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: Yes. Okay.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Top of that page 11. Okay. Great. Okay.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Thank you.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. We are on section eight, page 11. I'm gonna pause here. Sections eight through sections 20. This is page 11 through page 32. Everything in these sections is about moving the administrative and fiduciary obligation administration of the other post employment benefits funds for the state retirement system and the teachers retirement system, moving it out from under the somewhat sole administrative responsibility of the state treasurer and moving it under the Pension Investment Commission. There is no new language in these sections. It is primarily striking language that currently exists under either the state pension retirement chapter or the state teachers retirement chapter and moving the language over to exist under the Vermont Pension Investment Commission chapter. So for example, when you look at section nine, page 15, this has the state treasurer as the custodian of the assets of the fund of the retirement system. So this is kind of speaking about the other post employment benefit funds. And it has certain standards of conduct that apply to members of the commission, but this is technically not in the BPIC section. It's in the state retirement section. All of this language is being mirrored over. I apologize for the scroll. All of this language, for example, is being and just that, I'm just talking about that one piece, is being moved right over here into a standards of conduct section related to BPIC. That's saying that the commissions shall you know, the employees of the commission can't have a direct interest in the gains or profits of any investments made by the commission. That's the exact same language that was in the section I was at previously under section nine, and that's being moved over here of word for word. So again, everything from those sections, section eight through 20, pages 11 through 32, it's just moving the statutory sections over, and there's no changes. The large policy change here is moving that fiduciary responsibility from the treasurer's office solely over to exist under BPIC for those two funds, the other post employment benefit funds for the state employees and for the teachers.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: Questions on that part? Apologies

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: for the the long scrolling. I'm gonna

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: get us to the next section, which is gonna be on page 32.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Okay,

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: now we're dealing with pension credits. The next two sections, section twenty one and twenty two, are about the teachers' retirement system and the municipal retirement system, and it's authorizing a member. So looking at lines 20 and moving forward on the bottom of page 32. So this is in the teachers retirement system. A member who is elected to serve as the president of an employee organization designated as the exclusive bargaining representative for employees in that chapter. So the NEA, for example, here, allowing a member who has been elected to be president to use that time as serving as president as credited service for their retirement. It requires when you're looking at lines five moving forward, the employee organization shall deposit into the fund an amount computed at regular interest to be sufficient to provide the normal retirement. There's a similar piece in the municipal section. So if a municipal employee is serving as president or their bargaining representative, they can receive credit during that period of time. Technically, they're no longer a member when they're serving as president. So it's allowing them to, when they're serving in that capacity, to have service credited to them as long as their employer is paying into the system an amount necessary to cover the cost of those years of service. Then sub two and three is simply saying that

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, remote)]: I have a question about that. Sorry. Go ahead. It's hard to see my hand up there.

[Speaker 0]: I know. Sorry. I didn't see that.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, remote)]: That's okay. So this year of creditable service so you're saying they're not getting paid their usual salary that year, or are they getting paid extra that year? I mean, how does that compare with other years of salary being credited to their service?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I do not know how those individuals are subsequently paid if they become the president of the bargaining organization. I'm assuming the bargaining organization is going to be paying for their salary at that point in time. That may be a question better for the treasurer's office. They're no longer a member of the system at that point. They're no longer defined as a member. And so that's the issue is they're not receiving that years of service credit to their retirement. And my understanding is it's somewhat of a disincentive to get individuals to serve in those roles because they're no longer receiving that credit at that point. But as far as who's paying their salary, I would defer to someone else for the answer.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, remote)]: Okay, and also how much? Is it different than what their normal annual salary would be if they were not the president? So I don't know if somebody can find that out. Lynn, is this yours?

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: No. Well, no, not the salary. This is a different thing.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, remote)]: Oh, is the teachers. John, might be yours.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: Yeah. But I have the same question. Is this who pays the pension? And when it says it pays two thirds equal to one and two thirds or 2%, is that 2%? I'm confused as to whether that's salary or is that what they contribute? And who pays it? Is it the school pay it or does the DEA? My

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: understanding from the terms of this bill is that the labor union would be the one paying the cause of the year of service credit that have been calculated on an actuarially equivalent basis. So all of those percentages that references the multiplier formula that is in place for the pension benefit. At the end of the day the intent here as I understand it is that if you left your employment as a teacher to go serve as the president of the labor union and you're not earning a year of service credit because you're not teaching in that year then the labor union would make a payment to the retirement system at an actuarially equivalent amount to pay for that year of service.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: So they keep their year of service. That's exactly right. Okay.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: You don't lose a year of service by leaving active teaching status to go service at a presidential later. Great, thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Great. Thanks.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Wayne? So is the intent of this that the teacher leaves employment, becomes president, to do this job gets paid by the union instead of the is the intent of that teacher go back being a teacher? If they so choose, I think it would depend on if that individual wants to go back to teaching. It's just adding or authorizing those years that the individual is serving as the president to count towards their retirement. And so then they would still have to meet whatever the normal retirement dates are for whatever that member's group is. And so, you know, whether they decide to maybe retire at the end of serving as president, if they have the normal retirement date, if they have the years of service necessary to do so, then they could. Or they could go back to teaching and then continue to

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: I understand those parts. I'm getting at is if you quit a job here and you take a job here, then you should normally, you took a job with another organization, they wouldn't be paying into your pension from your previous appointment. So I'm just asking, is this a reasonable thing to do? It would be one thing if the intent was for an employee to get done that job and then take this other job, which is going be a benefit to all the folks here as a service with the intent to return to that employment and continuing service. It seems a little disjunct for me to think that it would go from one organization to another.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Understood. And I understand that seems a little odd when you think about it in that sense. I would say they are going to a job as the collective bargaining representing unit of the job in which they're coming from. So I think there is still that somewhat connection. The disconnection isn't as pronounced as if you just took a job with a totally different organization.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: It won't result in any additional cost to the state or to I am probably not qualified to say that, but my understanding is

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: no, because it's built in here to say that the employee organization has to pay that cost. And so that would come from whatever that collective bargaining organization would

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. And Chris said it has

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to be actuarially neutral. So it the intent here based on the language on the page is such that it's not going to it's not going to cost the state any money to pay for that, and it shouldn't impact the retirement system due to the benefits of that individual because it's intended to be neutral.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: That's my point, whether it includes any future obligation on the bucket of state or

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: costs. No, sir.

[Rep. Matt Birong (Government Operations Committee)]: The inflow is from the bucket from the organization for that moment in time. And when that ceases, the individual perhaps goes back to work, perhaps they retire, perhaps they do something else.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Donald, do you still have a question? Not so much a question, but I think to help clarify this a little bit here, taking a leadership position within this entity here, which they weren't represented previously. So we see that a lot in union groups here. We certainly see that in higher education, where people are faculty or staff, and they take a leadership position within the meeting of our business. This is different obviously here, but that's how I look at this. Yes. Correct.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, good. Go. Okay,

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the next section is related to capital debt. So this is going to make some very small amendments to the Capital Debt Advisory Committee's report that they submit. And if you look on page 35, so this is for the annual report that the committee submits to the governor and the general assembly estimating the net state tax supported debt that prudently may be authorized for the next fiscal year. Within that annual report, they have to include, under the four, criteria that recognize bond agency ratings used to judge the quality of issues of state bonds, including and then the amendment is there in the sub D. It was amended, I believe, last year to say other metrics at the committee's discretion, and they're proposing to change this to other metrics adopted by the recognized bond rating agencies. I don't see this as really a significant substantive legal change. My understanding are these changes are more the committee made recommendations to go with this language, and so they're just preferring to go with what the committee recommended as opposed to having it at the committee's discretion. Same thing at the top of page 36, there's a slight change here. The report has to include, currently it says the capital assets depreciation ratio, and this is changing it to be measures reflecting the remaining useful life of the state infrastructure and the potential for future capital maintenance or replacement costs. I don't see this as a legal or a substantive change. My understanding is the committee would prefer and recommended the language that's underlined, and so that's what they're asking you all to do, is go with the language that the Capital Debt Advisory Committee was recommending.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: Thank you. Okay,

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: last two sections, have positions, Office of the State Treasurer, two full time classified program tech, three positions in the Unplanned Property Division, and then one full time policy and research manager in the retirement division. And then you have effective dates 07/01/2026, except that the task force would take effect upon passage to allow them to begin the work immediately. And then section three is about the sunset of the funds for the unclaimed property. And so I'm going to bring us back to that. Or brings back to that section because ways and means does have a recommended amendment. So I'm bringing this all the way back to the beginning on page three. This section is under the unclaimed properties. And if you'll remember, I had mentioned that before money is transferred to the general fund, the treasurer's office is allowed to deduct certain amounts for administrative costs, for mailing, publication, etcetera. And then for property that is $100 or less, more than ten years after the property was received, they transfer the money to the Higher Education Endowment Trust Fund. And the proposal here is to divert that money instead to the Vermont Saves Admin Fund to fund that program. This language that was in the bill as introduced, the treasurer's office came in after it was voted out of past government operations and indicated that it wasn't exactly what they were intending, so they needed a slight tweak to actually accomplish their desired outcome. So that's why we have this amendment from the Ways and Means Committee. So you can see it looks slightly different. I had to break this out for kind of statutory drafting purposes. As opposed to just reading you the words on the page, I'm just gonna tell you what it does. First off, they're increasing that threshold, as you can see on the top of five on line one, from a 100 to a $150. That was as it was introduced. The key here is under the sub A and the B. Instead of taking all of this money and giving it to the Vermont Higher Education Endowment Trust Fund, the proposal here is to deposit the money in the Vermont Retirement Security Fund, that's on line five, up to an annual total of $300,000 Notwithstanding that, a, in the administrator's sole discretion, so in the treasurer's sole discretion, funds may go to the Vermont Higher Education Endowment Trust Fund. So if you all pass this, instead of all of the money going to the Vermont Higher Education Endowment Trust Fund, it shall go to the Vermont Saves Fund, except that the state treasurer may put some of those monies in the Vermont Higher Education Trust Fund. So you are essentially giving the treasurer's office the decision. Does it go into the Vermont Saves Advent Fund? Does it go into the Vermont Higher Education Endowment Trust Fund? The treasurer's office would be able to make that decision. Their testimony has been most of it would go into the Vermont Saves Retirement Fund to stabilize the administrative fund for that program. And then over time, they would slowly reduce the monies going there and start to re funnel the money back to the Vermont Higher Education Endowment Trust Fund. But you may wanna hear from them to answer any specific questions about why and and what their intent is with this language. I'm simply highlighting that it would give the treasurer's office the discretion, and it's capped at $300,000 per year. Understand that written, because you're raising the threshold from $100 to $150, the first year that this goes into effect, you're going to get a significant amount of money that comes in all at once because that threshold is being raised. The language only authorizes them to transfer up to 300,000 per year. So what is going to happen with the rest of that money that comes in that first year? Treasurer's office would hold it, and then each year, they would distribute that up to 300,000 until that money was ultimately transferred over time. So that may be a question you want to ask them at that point. Will It's

[Speaker 0]: also mentioned in the fiscal note that we will eventually get to, and we heard about this when the treasury comes.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so I will highlight that it's not money that's being diverted from the general fund in that sense. This is money that the treasurer's office is able to exclude from the money that they send to the general fund, except that threshold that's being increased. So if you increase the threshold, then in theory, it impacts the money that would go to the general fund. The last comment that I will make is, unfortunately, as was pointed out, I have made a scrivener's error there. And so one thing I would ask if this committee would, if you are intending to make any amendment to the bill or if you would make an amendment to the House Ways and Means proposal if you're finding it favorable, is to fix that Scrutner's error that I have on line six. It should be $300,000 and it's missing Oh, I see. Yes, it's missing.

[Speaker 0]: Missing the zero or a comma or something.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: You can't say close enough for government law.

[Rep. Matt Birong (Government Operations Committee)]: Now it's zeros.

[Speaker 0]: Just points.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the last thing I'll mention is there is a section two and a section three. So the Section three is beginning in January 2040. It removes the diversion of that money to the Vermont Saves Fund, and it would then go back to how it's currently structured, where all of the money would go to the Vermont Higher Education Endowment Trust Fund. So this is a period of time where the money would be diverted for Vermont

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: SAFES. There's also an error on the top of

[Speaker 0]: Right.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I was gonna say

[Speaker 0]: this number

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: is a problem. It is fixing that in two locations. I'm sorry.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Was there any discussion as to why the treasurer would be an appropriate person to make a decision on where the money would be going

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: in your committee. Say that, I'm sorry.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: On your committee, was there any discussion of why the treasurer would be an appropriate authority to decide whether money went into education or to where those?

[Rep. Matt Birong (Government Operations Committee)]: So within this, it is the administrative cost for the Vermont Saves Fund and then any like excess, if I'm understanding the math correctly, would be diverted over there. Yes.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Just a technical thing, he's not actually directing money to any place that he wouldn't have already been directed.

[Rep. Matt Birong (Government Operations Committee)]: That is my understanding.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Yeah, I

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: think the treasurer manages that, along with all the other funds that he manages.

[Rep. Matt Birong (Government Operations Committee)]: It was all already in there, like governing gets to

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: work with those funds. Yes, Robin.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, remote)]: Thank you. I I knew this was coming. I wondered if we if either GovOps or Ways and Means considered a sunset on this, or is this gonna be a permanent thing? Because it's my understanding that once Vermont Saves got to like 20,000 members or something like that, that it would be fully self sustaining and they wouldn't need to do this anymore.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Madam Chair, it has a sunset. January 2040 is built in. So it would give the treasurer's office that discretion through 01/01/2040, at which point it would there's language there to sunset it back. So at that point, thousand forty, it would go back to as it's currently drafted, where all the money would go to the Vermont Higher Education Endowment Trust Fund with a cap of $300,000 per year. But my understanding in a in a standard year, I don't think they've distributed anywhere near 300,000 in in a while.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, remote)]: Yeah. Okay. But 2,040 seems like a very long way away. I'm wondering if we wanna consider having a check back. I'm sort of throwing this out to the committee too sometime before thirteen years from now. So, something to consider.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: Okay. And

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that is the bill and the proposed amendment from the House Ways and Means Committee.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you. Any more I think I'll ask Chris perhaps to go over the fiscal note too, but yes. What

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, remote)]: was the vote in Ways and Means?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I believe it was eleven-zero. Thank you.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: Yes, before we go to the fiscal note, is it possible to ask of the representative here from the treasurer's office? Because they have their own sort of graduated decreasiveness to 2032, like a five year, six year, we would end up really not going to the Vermont states.

[Speaker 0]: Let's hear the fiscal note and then

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: we have Yeah, just a quick question back to representative Chai Robin, suggesting that we should think about perhaps a check back or get information from the committee here that brought this forward here to see if there was conversation about that or was there not? We did. Yeah, no, we did discuss that timeline since it is longer than usual. Yeah. But just the idea of a check back.

[Rep. Matt Birong (Government Operations Committee)]: We did not discuss the idea of the check back. We just discussed whether that was, like, your period duration for sunset to be in place. And just given the amount of time BT saves needs to, like, build up its pot of money that would help fund, fully fund its administrative

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: If we did look at a timeline, I don't have it off the top of my head, how long that was. So, didn't wanna make sure that wasn't lost. No.

[Rep. Matt Birong (Government Operations Committee)]: It was discussed.

[Speaker 0]: Thanks Chris, can you talk us through the

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Good morning, everyone. Again, for the record, Chris Root from the Joint Fiscal Office. I'll pull up the fiscal note right now.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: Do we have the physical note on our Post. What was that? It's posted. It's posted.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Thank you. So I think we already covered a lot of what's in here, but I just wanted to mention a few things while I'm in the chair, and I'm mindful of your schedule and your need for a break before your next segment, so I'll try to be brief. But there's a few things going on in this bill. There's the changes to unclaimed property and the allowance of the small dollar old unclaimed property to go to the Vermont Saves program. There is the pension and benefits funding task force with its related appropriation. The transition of fiduciary oversight for OPEB, the retiree health care systems from the state treasurer over to VPIC, and there are also three positions created in the office of the state treasurer's bill. So I'm gonna go to page two. First of all, I'm just gonna flag that those of you who have hard copies, I discovered an error in the hard copy. In the bottom of the second paragraph, pretend that the words without the $300,000 annual cap, pretend those are not in the fiscal note. I struck it from the version that is on the website and the one I'm showing you right now, but I realized I didn't strike it a week ago when Ways and Memes was doing its amendment. So what you see on the screen is correct. The hard copy is in front of you. If they say without the 300,000 annual cap, just cross out that phrase. There are some graphics here based on some of the projections that the office of the state treasurer put together that try to illustrate how this would work in practice. So figure one shows you, the projected funding sources for Vermont saves. The green bars reflect the estimated program revenue that would be generated from Vermont saves from the admin fees that are on participant accounts. As there are more participants of the system and the account balances grow, you would expect those program revenues to keep increasing. And, it is expected that by 2033, the the program revenues will grow to the point where the Vermont Saves program would be self sufficient fiscally from fees that it generates. But until then, the proposal is to use this small dollar, unclaimed property that's more than ten years old to help bridge the gap. So that is what that orange or salmon colored bar on the top there shows is the contributions that could come in from unclaimed property. Figure two talks about that $300,000 cap. So you remember that the proposal has a few features. It's to raise the dollar threshold on that old unclaimed property from a $100 to a $150, but it would also limit the amount of money from this unclaimed property that can go to Vermont saves or the higher ed trust fund at a combined limit of $300,000, which is why all of those bars in figure two are 300 at $300,000. So it shows you that over time as there is expected to be less of a need to prop up Vermont saves, there would be more of this balance available to go to the higher ed trust fund. Something I wanna note here is that, you know, notwithstanding that redirection of money to Vermont saves, by increasing that dollar threshold from a 100 to a $150, it is expected that the higher ed trust fund is going to receive more money from unclaimed property than they would under status quo law. And it's because when you raise that threshold from a 100 to a $150, you're capturing a whole lot more unclaimed property that would be eligible for transfer. And if you wanna take a look at table one on page three, this shows you some historical data of recent, amounts that were transferred from this unclaimed property to the higher ed trust fund. So last year, a $147,000 was transferred. That was the largest year in recent memory, and that was under the $100 threshold. If that threshold was at a $150 instead of at a $100, you would have seen a substantial increase in the amount of money that would have been eligible to go in there. So that's just another way of taking a look at how much of a difference that is by raising that threshold. And just

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: just to clarify perhaps those people who prefer to, we're not by transferring it this way, it's still available for claims. Oh absolutely. We're not taking the money. We're just moving it to a different investment stream.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Correct. Correct. And and I also wanna mention because, alleged counsel accurately pointed out the interaction with the general fund. I wanna tell you all that I really don't after conversations with the state charge offs, I really don't think this proposal is gonna have a material impact to the general fund because the amount of money we're dealing with is so small in the big picture. You're expecting $7,500,000 to come from unclaimed property to the general fund in f y twenty seven. And in the last few years, the actual amounts transferred in have exceeded the budgeted estimate by several million dollars a year. So when we're talking about a couple $100,000 at play, we really don't think this is a material consideration for the estimate that you're building FY '27 around or how much money is gonna be available in the future because the actuals that are available to that have been available to transfer in once the books have been closed have been healthier than the earlier estimates of the budget has been built around, and this hasn't been by, like, $10. This has been by a fairly healthy cushion, and the unclaimed property system continues to have more and more. So that's just a long way of saying that I didn't even acknowledge that in the fiscal note because I didn't think it was enough of a consideration to type it out, but I wanted to explain it

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: to you.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: And you don't deal with political issues. So as a rule. So this is something that somebody will say, what do you mean you're taking putting it someplace else? So it's just a clarification. Yep.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And I I appreciate the question. So the pension move on to the next section, if that's alright. The pension and benefits funding task force, I think we hit on this earlier. This is a slimmed down version of the task force from 2021, but it still has a good mix of legislators and representatives of the affected employee groups. And I think the, you know, the focus here is less on the whole retirement system writ large and more narrowly focused on, making sure that the funding plan in place for addressing the unfunded liabilities is sustainable. It's predictable. It's something we can manage and that, you know, they're best we're following best practices. So I think there's personally, as somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about the pension system, I think the legislature needs to have this conversation at some point because 2038 is a date that we're gonna hit at some point. And, as was mentioned, the risk of really wacky things happening with the contributions increases as you get closer to 2038. One easy example to get your head around is if the market tanked in 2033, that would impact the ADAC payments beginning in 2035 due to the timing issues involved. By that point, you've got, what, four years to spread that impact across. So as you get closer and closer to that time, the risk of things happening that cause the budget the funding requirements of the budget to get really, really wacky, that risk increases. And it's good to have this conversation when things are relatively normal economically and not when you're trying to close a $200,000,000 budget deficit. And so would we not I mean,

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: is this 2038 date so set in stone that if something happened like Spanish Inquisition, nobody expected that and yet, do we have an opportunity to move it out forward if that if that's the crisis?

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I I think that is exactly the question that this task force is looking to answer in terms of, like, what if if the situation warrants the legislature to bump out that date or to modify or to think about new unfunded liabilities that occur, what should be the plan for addressing it? Like, would it make sense, for example right now, everything's on a single closed layer. Would it make sense to phase in a a layered amortization approach instead, where every year might be amortized on its own fifteen or twenty years. So like some systems do it that way. These are the types of questions that I think this group would really dig into. So the legislature has a plan should they need to pull the trigger. They might come back with suggestions. You know,

[Speaker 0]: every couple of years we take a look or if something happens in '32, we do these or plan b or plan c or whatever.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: So,

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: yeah, we expect, you know, the $75,000 appropriation, you know, the per diems are gonna be pretty small for the two legislative members, about 3,600 out of the total. The vast majority of this money would be to pay the actuaries to run scenarios. Transitioning OPEB fiduciary oversight to VPIC. You all, a few years ago, funded a governance study in the treasurer's office to take a look at this question. And, the report is available on the legislative website. It came out in January 2024 and basically highlighted as the primary recommendation would be to shift from the current sole fiduciary model to having VPIC be the fiduciaries for the OPEB systems. So all of this language effectuates that recommendation. Something I wanted to point out to you is that there are gonna be impacts to the VPIC and the state treasurer's budgets if you decide to move forward with this because some costs are gonna have to shift around from the treasurer's office over to VPIC's budget. The treasurer's office, for example, manages an investment consulting contract that they would no longer need to be the ones holding the dollars to fund that if it moves over to VPIC. VPIC has also identified the need for an additional position to help manage this. That position is not included in the bill, but it was an identified need that they raised in testimony. All of these costs at DPIC would be apportioned proportionately against the retirement assets that the system manages. So these are not general fund asks.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: I

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: think we talked about the elective retirement credit issue. And I just wanted to mention that, you know, there are parallels elsewhere for purchases of service credit that are similar. You can purchase military service, Peace Corps service, things like that. So I think the the key here is that the the payments would be calculated on an actuarially neutral basis, and the payments would be made by the employee organization, the labor union, as opposed to the state. So we do not expect this will have additional costs on state's pension funding requirements. And the reason VMERS is also mentioned in here is because an awful lot of public school employees are in VMERS. The teachers are in the teacher system, the non teaching staff, many of them are in VMers. And then there are three positions at the office of the state treasurer. None of these require a general fund as they would be fund by funded by special funds. So there was a there's an item in here for two full time classified program techs and unclaimed property. Those would be funded from unclaimed property proceeds. And a one full time policy and research manager in the retirement division, and those costs are paid fortunately from the three retirement systems because that's part of, you know, administering those systems. So that is the juicy and thrilling six page fiscal note on this bill. If you all have any other questions that we didn't get to, happy to entertain them. It's a nice fiscal note.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: Thank you. Yes, Clint. Okay, alright, you just made a point of saying that there is an installing contract for the treasurer that will involve whatever they do with OPAP or Yeah. Things of that kind is gonna be transferred to BPEC, which is one position.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: No. They're they're two separate two separate issues.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: So BPEC will need another position to take on the extra responsibility from what I understand. Correct. Okay. Because it's a complicated issue to handle the OPEC.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Correct. And there's four FTEs at at the OPEC right now. Yes. Managing quite a few billion and growing.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: Yes. And they have an issue with compensation, which I think there's been a study for that. Now, if you're going to be consulting the contract for treasuries because they've transferred its responsibility, or partly because they've done it. And that's in the '20 is that in the '27 budget? Yeah. Well, one of the things we would need

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: to do is the GovRX budget does not reflect any of

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: these moves. So if you

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: all would agree with what's proposed in this bill, what I would do afterwards is work with BPIC and with the treasurer's office and figure out what numbers need to move around between the two budgets. And then we would present that to you all when you look at the f y twenty seven budget proposal.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: Okay, then the next question is, have two full time positions in the class on claim property and one full time for retirement division. So those are three full time positions going to the Treasury. Are they in the government's recommended or not? Okay, then I have a question, if I could, for the representative from the Treasury's office.

[Speaker 0]: Yes, if you'd like to come forward.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I would like please.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: I know that one of the issues that the unclaimed property has is fraud. Yes. What kind of data do you have on that? Is it getting better? Is it getting worse? I know this is one of the reasons for the two. I believe you came in and out of Maybe you were here then, but then the treasurer's office came in and asked for those. Last year, my understanding is he did not get those two. So we're asking for it again. You're asking for it again. What's status and what the data can you give us on the fraud issues?

[David Shear (Deputy State Treasurer)]: For the record, David Shear, deputy treasurer. I can say that a tent we have as of even just last week caught a what we believe to be I don't wanna presume, but what we believe to be a fraudulent inquiry for somewhere north of a $20,000 chunk of unclaimed property. So those are issues that continue and do require attention and time. And they do mean addressing that issue. We do have a risk management person in the office who helps with this, but it does slow down the processing of all these claims. More broadly, also, the office had, you know, in f y twenty three, I believe the total amount of of claims was 18,500, totaling about 3,800,000.0. When you look at FY twenty five, that went up to 31,500 claims with claims paid totaling 9,450,000.00. So really quite a dramatic increase in the workload in addition to the fraud issues that we continue to see. And

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: on top of that,

[David Shear (Deputy State Treasurer)]: one thing that the Unclaimed Property Division would be able to do more of and which would help all of us ultimately is to work on compliance issues more wholesomely than they are now. In other words, making sure the unclaimed property that's out there is in fact getting turned into the state as required. Right now, they're able to do a little bit of that. They would be able to do more of that. And ultimately, that would be a benefit to all of us if that were able to happen more. But with this really quite dramatic increase in claims processed and amount of money going out, it has been challenging to do as much

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: of that as the division would like.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: Thank you. Can you tell me more about the contract for the that we're going to be canceling or that the state or the federal reps don't need as much?

[David Shear (Deputy State Treasurer)]: Are you talking about with respect to the The OPEB. OPEB work?

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Picture. Yeah.

[David Shear (Deputy State Treasurer)]: Exactly. So Chris knows this as well as I do. But there's a contract with a vendor that's called RBK that helps with the management of those funds that is specific to the OPEB scope of work. And so since the OPEB scope of work is going over to BPIC, that contract I don't wanna say it'll be a one to one transfer, that there will be some work that will have to be done between the two entities, but a a you know, that scope of work will be transferring it. So some the contract will be reworked in some way to acknowledge that.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: How much is that? Is that even now?

[David Shear (Deputy State Treasurer)]: It's 26,000 a quarter.

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: Wayne, you have a question?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Yeah. You say a person to collect some unclaimed properties, so I'm presuming banks. What other kinds of places do you get that property?

[David Shear (Deputy State Treasurer)]: There's banks. In terms of large institutions, banks, companies that for whatever reason aren't able to find an entity that they're supposed to pay, which does happen sometimes, insurers who aren't able to match the person or the account that it's supposed to go to. And so they're needing to turn stuff over to hospitals ultimately so that could transfer into us. And so, you know, I I when I say compliance, or I I don't mean to insinuate that people are willfully not doing what they're supposed to do, although that I suppose that certainly could be the case, really just emphasizing that people need to understand their obligations.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: So there's statutory obligations for them to turn it in at a certain point in time.

[David Shear (Deputy State Treasurer)]: That's exactly right.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: And if they don't, and no one checks, nobody knows, you could have fraud at that end also.

[David Shear (Deputy State Treasurer)]: That is true. And again, I'm not indicating that that's the case, we certainly know that we need to raise awareness around that.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: If you had some person that was working on that, they might be able to impact or forego that kind of behavior.

[David Shear (Deputy State Treasurer)]: That's exactly right.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, any further questions on this bill, on the fiscal? Yes.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, just a

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: quick answer to the reminder about the increase in property, things you're dealing with here per day here. What's the current staffing of the folks working that harvest? I

[David Shear (Deputy State Treasurer)]: believe we have four people in that division, and I will

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Amassing to that.

[David Shear (Deputy State Treasurer)]: Because we had a temporary person, so I can't remember what that brought it to. I know that the unclean property division director, I think, is watching this right now. So hopefully, he'll get that very shortly. You'll know shortly. Exactly. Yeah.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Thanks a lot. Knew it was

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: just a handful. Yeah, it's

[David Shear (Deputy State Treasurer)]: a small number doing it a lot of Okay,

[Speaker 0]: just a reminder on this bill, our chair had indicated obviously we're not going to vote on it right now, but review all the information. We realize that we may have to make a very slight correction of CAMS numbers, and just keep that in mind. Will review this again as we start thinking about putting the numbers together of the costs involved in various things. And we're happy

[David Shear (Deputy State Treasurer)]: to be available to the committee when you look at this again.

[Speaker 0]: All right, thank you very much.

[David Shear (Deputy State Treasurer)]: Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Let's go off live. We have a bit of a break, but at 11:00 we are going to be hearing from various legislators all in person. Is that true?

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson]: With the intentions about