Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Hello, this is Joe. Good afternoon, this is the Health Appropriations Committee. It's Monday, 03/09/2026. It's about five minutes of three or a little less than that or more than that or something. We have a joint fiscal office and James with us to talk about the latest iteration of a spreadsheet. This is all still in draft form. It's not being posted on our committee page, but we're going to see what we've got now. So James, welcome.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: For the record, James Duffy, joint fiscal. You all have copies of my comically oversized prop table in your inboxes as well, if you'd prefer a virtual format.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's really nice to have the big print.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes, understood. So before town meeting week, you'll all recall that we reviewed this spreadsheet, which I have refrained from printing out the updated version of the master spreadsheet for you all today only because this information will continue to change. I don't know what the committee's appetite is for how many of these this size tables you all would like. But for now, you have a copy One

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: point we'll have one that has everything everything on it, maybe 10 pages long.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. So for today, you have the update that contains the committee letter recommendations above the governor's recommended But eventually, these will all be consolidated as you all continue to receive bills with appropriations in them as well as we approach crossover. So before town meeting, we discussed three buckets of over gov rep requests that you all will be considering requests from departments and agencies, those from advocates, and those from your fellow legislators. Today, I have in front of you a preliminary table for the fourth bucket, which is recommendations from your standing policy committees. And then the fifth and final will be the bills that will, as I said, be coming your way over the coming weeks.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So just a reminder, what we got before we went on break was worth $194,000,000 in change.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. What you have in front of you today represents a tentative unduplicated total of 10.7. I will put a major caveat on that, though. I am still in the process of reviewing the House Human Services mini letter, which will, I think, you all anticipate add to that total. Transportation is their committee letter primarily deals with state revenues. I don't anticipate that will add any additional appropriations. And House Ways and Means contains two small appropriations and is mostly revenue related otherwise, but still reviewing those. So they are not yet reflected in the spreadsheet.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It will go up by a bit.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: By a bit. I think HHS will certainly up the total and still digging in there. But so for today, we're at preliminary total of above gov rec requests of two thirteen.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So we haven't hit 300,000,000 yet.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: No, we haven't actually. The committee members went relatively easy on you all. There are a lot of and we'll go into this as we talk about the formatting of what you have in front of you. But what you have in front of you represents a lot of individual discrete requests. But many of these are duplicates of requests above the governor's recommended budget, which you have all already heard, either through advocate requests during public hearings, your fellow legislators, or during budget testimony from departments and agencies. There's really I mean, the the rhyme or reason behind what counts is like the original request and what counts as the duplicate is just the order in which the information was received, at least this whole time. But as of today, we're at about $213,500,000 in terms of LOVE, GOV, FREC, general fund requests.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And we still have no idea if we'll even have $10,000,000 in money to offset the $213,000,000. We're still working on that part of it. Some of it, as you've all heard, we find little bits here and there, and we're still working on where we can find other stuff that isn't general fund.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That being said

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: How do we read this?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes, let's talk about the table in front of you all today, which is the committee letter recommendation. So I apologize. First and foremost, a gray. Many of these cells are grayed out, which is not high enough contrast that you can easily distinguish in the printed format. But you can see a bit more easily on the screen in front of you. Grayed out cells represent duplicated requests that are already reflected in what we discussed the week before time, department agency requests, etcetera. And then CELs that aren't grayed out are unduplicated requests that represent new budget requests. And so those are the requests that sum to the $10,700,000 that you see at the bottom of this page.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So for example, I'm looking in the House ad. Did Salvation Farms come up during one of the public hearings? I just don't This is the first place I remember hearing about it. So it's a The others I get, but I wasn't sure about that one.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Salvation may have been written testimony. Yes. Salvation Farms was received as written testimony through the public hearings. And the original request was actually for $100,000 on the written testimony. But as the committee letter recommended, encompassed within the larger Okay,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: thank you.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And you'll see that with a number of the public hearing requests, we received about 40, I think, written pieces of testimony that weren't accompanied by oral testimony. So if you see something that sounds unfamiliar to you in those columns, there's a good chance it was in written testimony. But feel free to follow-up with me or JFO to confirm. So that is the first legibility note. The second is similar to the spreadsheet we reviewed before town meeting week. You'll notice there are cells that are highlighted in yellow. These represent potential global commitment eligible items. And Nolan and I have been talking about the best way to represent, for global commitment, what the general fund global commitment split is. Because some of these, the split may be fifty-fifty. It may be the standard FY27 FMAP. Given the number of global commitment requests that are in the mix and infeasibility from a workload standpoint of JFO and AHS verifying each of those global commitment requests individually, We're considering the potential best way forward being committee members. You will all vote at some point on what your priorities are for requests above gov rec. I believe that's part of Madam Chair's plans for you all. Said you'll go

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: through It'll be an indication of priorities.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: A ranking exercise to vote on what your priorities are. And for those global commitment items that rise to the top of that priority list, from there, that would make the most sense for JFO to then work with AHS on finalizing and confirming the global commitment split. Where available, the global commitment general fund split is identified in the tables that you're receiving for this. But final JFO verification will likely come after you all vote on your priorities or go through your prioritization exercise, rather.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We don't want to make extra work for everybody if we're not interested in pursuing that. And some

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: of these items, given that they touch multiple AHS funding streams, it's a substantial amount of work for AHS

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: as well to verify. Those you guys, right. We don't want to do make work. Tip has a question, then I have a question. Yeah.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: There are some that might be eligible for, might be eligible for rural health transformation, right? And we'll have a conversation tomorrow, I guess. Don't know how specific we can. Well, the thing is that

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: we would see how the Rural Health Transformation would enhance what's happening. We

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: don't

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: replace or any of that stuff. We are just looking to see how it might fit with other programs that we're doing or whatever. So we have to be very careful how we do all that. Yeah.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: And I'm assuming you didn't these aren't just the highest priorities. Are all of the

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: These are all the yes. Status quo.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. And committees, these are listed in the order in which they're presented by the committees. So in general, if you're looking within the subset of recommendations from house agriculture, for example, or from house education, these are in general listed in order of priority. But the final iteration of this will have more specific notation that shows the top tier, middle tier, lowest tier prioritization that was given to you from the committees.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So my question is, and then I'll go to Tom. In line 10, house commerce opposes reversions. Yes. So wouldn't that be money coming back? Isn't that like an ask? And so shouldn't that be a number?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So this one is I'm digging into this one a bit more because they are opposing reversions. So the governor recommended reverting funds, which presumably means that increased the amount of general funds available in the governor's recommended budget. But if that money was then rededicated to other purposes, you all would have to have a corresponding cut to those other reallocations of those funds in order to then use those funds.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So to me, that's an ask? Yes. Does that make sense?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And then this isn't a zero. Really, this is, is I think this would be a negative number. This is proposing free up money in the general fund, but it's a question of

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Well, they wanna give more basis. Right? They So they're asking for the program. So to me, that's an ask. So I don't know if that doesn't make sense to people, or does that make sense?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: I don't know.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Go ahead, Thomas.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Yeah. I just I think

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: think what makes it hard

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: is that we're always told that if I take money away from one thing and throw it into the general fund, it's just caught in the stream and doesn't matter. I can't go back and say, well, we're using that money specifically for something else. That's a theory. I mean, we I can say, I wanna cut a million dollars from a program and then rededicate that money to something, but it's not really once you take the money away from it, it just goes into the stream. And we notice the stream is a little higher and we pull the money out. So there's not a direct that that's my that's what I've learned over the years. Like, we can't say I'm taking the million dollars for this and putting it for that. And that's what this sounds like. They've taken that. They wanna take that money away.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: They wanna put the money back. So the governor has cut those programs.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Right. But the

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: governor took the money away.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right. And spent it wherever he spent it.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Right. So it doesn't matter

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: where I don't Yes. I'm sure you I do believe you're correct. These are opposing the reversions and proposing it may be Right. Continue to be used for Right.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So it means if we want to do that, we have to find the money somewhere. Yes. I would just

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: is true. Yeah.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah. So that's why I put it in here. Yeah. So I would add those in. Yes. Those might be three different things. Sorry, I just made more work for you.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Were those all reversions? There were three reversions. So

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I would put them at three blocks.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Are we really talking about this? When the governor does a budget, the agencies asked to provide their budget, then maybe inversions to state agencies so money goes back in. But here we have a committee that's asking for money to be taken out. Is the proper term a reversion?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It was a reversion, yes.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Or is it a in the government's budget?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: The governor reverted the money. They opposed it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And they opposed the governor reverting the money. So they went on spending

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: I was thinking they were proposing to reverse something. No.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: No. So if we take money out of the carry forward, right, we're gonna revert. I think that's a reversion. If we take money out of the carry forward,

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: not sure.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Reappropriate. And then

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: you're reappropriating. Carry carry forward funds. Yes.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: So on a specific question that I had, line 19, which is the commerce letter to increase tax credits. I mean, that's whether or not that $3,000,000 is part of the conversation, that's up to Ways and Means.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: They can recommend it. Well

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: That's nothing we do.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, it's a decreased general fund if they increase the tax credits.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Ways and Means has to recommend the tax credits or we just say, here, it's $3,000,000, know, increase the tax credits.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I don't know what the Ways and Means letter says, whether

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: they're talking about it at all.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: They find my ways and means letter.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: It does.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And Jay Vocawi, in Revenue Team, is indicating that the House Ways and Means letter does not include this increase, not appropriation, but any increase to the downtown tax credits. Right.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So when we make a decision, we could say, well, I could understand why commerce is, that's commerce and economic development, and that's economic development to be doing that. Ways and means, would say, just as you did, Tom, does ways and means support this? And we're not, they're not supporting it. So that might influence whether we think that's one of our top priorities if we have a few million bucks to spend.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Well, they're not specifically supporting it. Whether it was an option that they looked at, we don't know. Well, I think

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: the chair handed us out to the other chairs, I think tax credits that we can look at. So I haven't I think that was the end of last week. We have been talking about tax credits and whether it makes sense or not to do so. But we could also say, if we think this is a good idea, or even if we don't, we could go talk to ways and meetings.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, think we

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: would say, right, right. And say, they put this in and what you think. So I was kind of looking at, like, since it's tax. Okay. Wayne, do you have

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: a question? Different topic. Yeah. Do we have a gov ops letter?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. We do. The gov ops letter

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: On a huge spreadsheet? Because I'm curious about the veterans home thing that

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: they put in there. Where'd that come from? 49949.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah. The $337,000 for the additional Vermont Veterans Home funding was a base recommendation, increased base recommendation from the House of Ops Committee letter. I don't believe we received testimony from the veterans home requesting additional funds. So some additional homework for me to see where that originated.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: If that's

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Can I also help you with that? Yeah, I

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: can help first mine. So I mean, it's I

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: don't remember that the auditor came in asking for money No,

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: he did not. This looks like the

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: HGO listing here, it seems like these are the non duplicative. Had several pages on their chart of things that were duplicative. Is that right?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And these were interesting to me because two of their three requests do pertain to governmental offices agencies. But these were not requests that we heard from those entities about during their budget testimonies. So the auditor did not request additional funds from you all during his budget testimony. Similarly, the veterans home did not include any of those. Very very

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: specific number two funds dollar. Right. It was the DAA and we had of course DAA and the Medicaid reimbursement stuff that comes in and that's all it's going to come in. Don't know if this is an attempt. I can go back and look but it seems like this is in the ballpark that the amount of budget is

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yep, third committee letter

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: here. So do you have your spreadsheet?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I do. I'm gonna share it

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: with you all now.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, the Vermont Veterans Home, I went I did read all these last piece. And I wrote under that one, gap. So the gap is not in the governor's recommend.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Gap? There's a gap. That's the meaning of something. I'm sure that's probably an acronym.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: No, it's the gap. It's a gap in funding, I think.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Not generally accountant.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, no, it's not GAAP with two Ns.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Generally accounting

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: principles. GAAP is not in government recommend. It included a normal inflationary increase to help offset higher costs for staffing and operations.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: We didn't hear anything about that. No? I'll ask. I'll start with the gloves.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah. Because that seems like a brand new request from a committee. Maybe they heard something, but I don't know why the veterans home wouldn't have told us if they That's sort of unusual.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: And I'll circle back around to it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, you could check on that. But they had a lot of stuff on their spreadsheet. Much of which was the governor's recommend, but it looked like there was some I know you're still working on this, James, right, the GovOps one?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: No, GovOps? No. No.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Secretary of State, you're not putting down the stuff in there. It's already somewhere else.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: There were a number of gated requests in the GovOps letter specifically. Just for the sake of space, I left them off the spreadsheet for today. But for clarity going forward, all the duplicated requests will all be reflected in here. But in front of me today, it's just the unduplicated governor Yeah. Ops committee And

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: the auditor thing was a surprise too when I saw that. I'm trying

[Unidentified Committee Member]: to figure out where that was again.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Trevor? Yeah, James. I'm already seeing one item here for house judiciary.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes, the other items in their committee letter were duplicates of prior requests. I believe so, judiciary.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right. Who is the auditor? That's who. Would you check on that? There's no other information. If I can do that.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: It's a fee of him. Financial management.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Department of Finance and Management? I have no idea. Anyway, Michael just to help us. 01:30. Very strange.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: In my reading in that letter, those are all requests that are reflected in previous requests, either from government agencies like state sheriffs and attorneys, judiciary, or requests that we've received from outside entities such as legal aid. I'll have to double check. Yeah.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Wonder if some of their other stuff is in other bills instead of I want to know the areas. I understand that. Yeah, I'll double check. So yes, that would be what you're doing is good. So all of you should sort of check these against your portfolio and your committee letters to see if there's some things.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: An additional item that I wanted to highlight for the committee only because it's been raised in several of the buckets of additional funding that have been presented to you all so far and various funding sources have been proposed for it has been these VSAC forgivable loan programs. So VSAC administers a number of forgivable loans program with funding through the Department of Health. These are for nurses, for mental health professionals, other medical professionals. I believe the FY27 Governor's Rep Amend proposes removing funding for all varieties of professional forgivable loans. VSAC specifically has requested additional funding for global commitment dollars for the nursing forgivable loan program. You have heard from other folks who are requesting that all those professional forgivable loan programs be

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Come back.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, come back. So that is potential global commitment and one of the larger outstanding items. And then the other DSAC item is these freedom and community scholarships. And this could be a request from folks that suggest using general fund dollars. There's also a request in one or two committee letters suggesting that these be funded through the Higher Ed Trust Fund, perhaps in lieu of the $15,000,000 multipurpose central. This

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: is scholarships, and that's for scholarships. So there's actually a reason to do it from there.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I just wanted to highlight both those.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And do know Do the Freedom and Unity scholarships only go to Vermont State Colleges?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I don't know the answer to that. I don't know if it's BSC or UVM or both.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: To people that would know our job. I think we might. Go ahead.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So were there any of those forgivable loans to the Department of Labor?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I don't believe so. I think they all run through the Department of Health. They're administered by VSAC with funding through DOH.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: There were some other things that were Department of Labor. There were some suggestions to not I think that was in House Commerce to not revert some things from Department of Labor or revert it to use for

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes, you all have received some committee recommendations for specific reversions as sources for some of these investigations.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah. And so those sources have already been taken, correct?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I can't speak to all of them. I think, broadly speaking, unless somebody has been digging through the carry forward reports on your policy committees and looking for other carry forward funds for reversion. But I believe all the highlighted reversions have been incorporated into the fy27gov record.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right, in the governor's budget. So it's the other ones that are left that we're looking at.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Also, can confirm thanks, Chris Roop that the Freeman Unity scholarships are just through

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: the monstagologists, not through EBM. Okay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Are there any go here next. Are there any of these loan programs that would go to UVM? I'm trying to think about balance. If we take some money out of the higher ed trust fund, the scholarships are usually done at a similar rate to each of the entities. And if we decide we want to do some freedom and unity, I'm wondering, is there some other kind of thing we can do for UBM? Are there other forgivable loan programs that are at UBM? I don't think we're the ones that have the answer to that right here, but that's sort of what I'm thinking of, to make that of ethos.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, it sounds like we have clarity that the Freedom and Unity are just Vermont psychologists. As for the medical professional forgivable loans, that would be a question for VSAC or DOH as to what institutions are the participating institutions?

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: One comment, I don't know if this matters, but there's a difference between say, addressing a reversion or restoring a cut. Is there a difference in terms of how we note these things so that

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: maybe there's not. I don't think, I think from a money standpoint, it's we want something back that got taken away.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Right. Are you referring to like in the AHS budget where they outlined all these things where they were just gonna cut? Those were cuts of what they were recommending. Just not spend.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Right. And reversion, you know. Aversion's from a list. Mean, this is from a list of programs, but it's, I I think that, I'm just trying to work it out in my head. Is even important to note? And probably not, it's just that Here's where I'm coming from, that in my own mind, something that's listed out as a request is different to me from, I mean, like a new request, like a new program than restoring cut for a program that has existed for which there may be So we need another color. But the stitchments. No, seriously. Right.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We've got these

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: three One months is more, it ranks more important in my head, but it is just kind of, it feels a little bit different

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: than playing So maybe we just put that in pale pink or, you know, I don't

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: know. Single out requests that are the reversal of a cut or to your point as well, we're seeing a reversion.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: See frequently what happens when you you gotta say you've got money that was appropriated to a state agency and it sat there for three or four or five years.

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

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Then it gets pulled back, it's reverted. Right. It's brought back as a reversion. Or not. Or not. It stayed as carry forward. Right. Right? But when it's taken back, it's called a reversion. So, technically, we want to make sure we don't confuse the things that-

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: But it's reverted to the general fund.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Exactly.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And then there's the second piece, if I'm getting what Emily has taught me correctly. It's a two step process. You revert it to the general fund, and then you appropriate it from the general fund to whatever you want appropriate for. But it goes into the big pot. But if we want to, and I agree there's some things that we've talked about, House Commerce would like to restore. We heard from the twenty eighth legislators in Chittenden County about restoring the 160,000 for the community outreach mental health program, which is not the same as the mobile crisis. So that would be restoring a project that was cut. These are restoring projects that were cut. So I think we should put them in as money that needs to they can possibly be spent, their requests. But maybe if there's a restoration, we can just have it a slightly different color from the other restoration you know, the other things. I don't know if that'll work or not, but so people understand it. So we look at it differently. I mean, we don't have look at it differently, but we know that it's dry, that's where it's coming from. Eileen?

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson (Member)]: There's one thing out there, just for your consideration. Eileen Burn, you know I've missed a lot of this. Sometimes with the reversions of these types of things, it's also important to look at the context for which those monies were appropriated. So if say three years ago, there was a significant amount of extra general fund and some significantly sized one time general fund appropriations were made because there was a lot of extra general fund revenue. And it was either at the time meant to be time limited, right? Or at the time it was meant to be, use it until it runs out or until, you know, like there was a lot

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: of assumptions made at the

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson (Member)]: time about demand for programs, the need for programs, and a lot of money got appropriated a couple

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: of years ago. I think

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson (Member)]: making sure that you look back at the like, what was the intention, you know, isn't a cut to a program that has existed for two years and there just happened to not be demand for that program? Is it still highest and best use versus is it something that's existed in the base budget for a longer period. Think it's important, especially with the reversions, because

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I think some of

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson (Member)]: them are reversions of programs that went into effect with one time money for the purposes, because of the amount of one time money there was. And if you want to continue them until

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: the one time money is gone,

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson (Member)]: Is there a better use of the one time money and just to sort of put us, is it really a, how is this something that exemails, just a little bit more context for what does that mean

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: in terms of home effects

[Rep. Eileen Dickinson (Member)]: So

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: we have to dig into some of those things. Well, that is our job. That's our job. We do a lot of digging.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So that being said, this will be fleshed out with both the duplicated requests so you all can have the bird's eye view of unduplicated and duplicated requests. For example, representative Mrowicki, there will be additional GovOps items to reflect duplicated requests on the final version of this. And then you all will be hearing bills over this week and next as we go through crossover. So my intention is to have these buckets finalized for you all as soon as we can this week. And then the bills will just be added to on a case by case basis as we hear them individually so that this is ready for your prioritization exercise. And

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: my job is going to be working with these guys to try to figure out what is the pool of money that we can spend on these $250,000,000 That's fine. Yes. So James and others have been doing great work trying to get to, you know, we went through all the carry forward sheets and we're trying to get information on that. And of course, nobody wants to give up a carry forward. So that's where knowing the context of whether we can take some of it or not, it becomes helpful. So we're digging into some of that. We have found some, it sounds like, and we have other special funds that some things, I'm talking about small things. We are talking about multimillion dollar pulling out, like the emissions repairs, a few $100,000, but they cover a couple of key priorities. But we mostly aren't going to find some pot of $10,000,000,000 lying under the table that nobody happened to notice. Maybe, but I'm not counting on it. These guys are doing great work trying to dig all that up. And the other thing is that whatever we find, when we scoop it up, it's one time money. And then what the heck are we gonna do next year? So if we scoop $5,000,000 from XYZ thing, it's not going to be there next year. So we know we're going to use one time for one time. And do we scoop and somehow reserve some of it for the next year? Then does the Senate take it all if we scoop it? And that's the other thing. So those are the other parts that I'm wrestling with on the where can we find the money part of things. Dave?

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: There may be some possibilities of building a bridge to something now. The so called healthcare program, the AHEAD program was delayed and pushed off to '28. But to me, it would be a reasonable discussion. Do we believe that, and if so, is it less costly to Vermont to have some abridged tool, or nothing?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That's right.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: And then if you want it, you gotta rebuild it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right, so that's another Cost more. That's gonna be another question. It's one that I'll You'll be thinking about.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: It sounds this process, regardless of where we are in the world, is like this every year, where it's just sort of, you know, for me, I'm focusing for myself, just like,

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: who needs the most help?

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: And can we provide it when the rest of the world is the way that it's been for the last year and change? Like, the way that I mean, we know that there's certain things that we don't have a lot of say over, ADS being the whipping boy, know. But the idea of our decisions being I mean, there's always a worry of what how is it going to be next year? Because we don't know. I mean, if Tom Kabed comes in July and says we're down 15%, then you have all of six months to prepare for what that means, you know? And it's just but it is it's I mean, I'm not dismissing worrying about what's next year, but it's just that feeling of like, do you feed people or do you pave the roads? You know?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right. So there's this need to think about the immediate issues. And I also can't help but think a little bit further and say, what is that gonna mean for next year? I think we have to do both. Sure. Yeah. And I don't know what that looks like. So it's just I'm just sort of sharing my thinking about stuff right now.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Plus, we get to express what we think it is. Yeah. And we're not going to control what the senate thinks. No. But if we don't put it down on if we don't put our side down on paper Right. Then we can't talk about it in May.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That's right.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: And no matter what the governor thinks. We have to decide for ourselves starting with this committee what is important and then Exactly.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I'm trying to find the thing in the review. Risk matrix. I'm just trying to see if war is in there as one of the Because we got this in January. So I just have to tell you, Friday is March 13, and it was 03/13/2020 we closed down our government. And we thought we'd be gone

[Unidentified Committee Member]: for two weeks.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Remember that? And we passed all

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: the bills.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It was Friday the thirteenth. Now we're back to Friday the thirtieth. And we had gotten this matrix, and a global pandemic was not on the list. It's now in there. So I'm just see if a war is in there, whether you put that in there.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Cuba not

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Greenland is not in Venezuela? No. We've got US China tensions increase. We have Russia, Ukraine war escalates. We have nothing about Iran. Oil prices spike, but that's not enough. The whole trade war. Yeah. And there's this CRE doom loop. What did you have? Did we miss anything?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Alien invasion.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Alien invasion. We need to think about that one.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Bold news.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's the CRE doom loop that cracks me up, and that stands as commercial real estate doom It's not high on the list.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: We'll still be able to buy oxygen, right?

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Well, no, because you won't have any. The private equity company will be able to buy all Go of

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: ahead, Tiff. I've been thinking about this a lot over this last week, because I think that there really aren't, kind of like, oh, we'd really love to's in this. This is kind of basic. Most of these requests are pretty basic. And I've been thinking about, I've counseling myself that I can't be married to the things that are in the budgets I have. I really try to think, okay, what's the big view that I need to take? I'm struggling with, I mean, there are some things that are immediate needs, right, that we know about that, we have to weigh the costs of putting money into them now versus picking up the pieces later, right? There are the strategic investments that we've been asked to make in certain places. VHIP is one of them, right? And then there are kind of insurances, like the farm fund, you know, I guess, and I'm, you know, my, what I've wondered is whether, you know, how much of what we recommend should address just basic needs. We just gotta tread water here. And where might we want to invest money? It would be smart to have invested. We will be glad we will have invested years hence. And I don't know if I have any answers to this, but it's just trying to think about, I could fund pretty much everything on this list. I think the people have made very good case for them, and it's gonna be excruciating to have to choose, given the money we're likely to have. And I'm just trying to counsel myself about how to think about these things and keep myself from being an advocate for, because the world I know is the human service world, it's what I've done in my life. And so I'm particularly sensitive to those things, but I also know that primary care is critical. My own doctor emailed me over the break about the knee that you were talking about, Dave, about the head model. Anyway, it's just gonna be an interesting, heartbreaking, exhausting process, I think, as I look ahead to the next two weeks. And the bills, when we think ahead about the bills and the money that's in those,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I don't know how much money is in all the bills. Feel like the committee chairs have heard me talk. That doesn't mean there's no money, but I think we're not going to suddenly get a $10,000,000 request out of the blue from I could be wrong. But that's not where I think most of them are going, because they've been canceled about that.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Wouldn't they have put their main priorities in their letter?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah. But we all have to sort through and think about this. I mean, that's our job is to figure out how we're going to do this because we won't have 10% of what's needed, of what's being requested. We will not have 10% of it. I hope we'll have 5% of it being. That's a lot. That means 95% of the things we're going to be saying no to, unless we can pull more rabbits out of our hat. But I feel like we're running out of rabbits.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And sea fishes. So

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: you're right. It's gonna be hard.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: You knew this is gonna be hard and here I we don't know why I just felt the need to kind of share what's going on in my head because maybe somebody else had another way of viewing this. But I guess I'm really wrestling with what are the longer term investments that we may want to make at sacrificing some of the other things that we really care about. I confess that I'm very suspicious of big round numbers. And I don't trust them. And we have someone asking for, they've been level funded for four years. We rely on their services in this building a lot and they only need $160,000 Are we gonna say no? Well, that might have a real cost. Well, maybe the 4,000,000 isn't really 4,000,000. Yes, maybe 8 And and 60 that's what I've been trying to get at with conversations.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Rounded? Are things if we got rid of some of the rounding, because I imagine everybody likes to think that, just in case, right? So maybe if we shaved a little bit off here and a little bit off there, we'd end up with a little bit more to help some of the things. As long

[Unidentified Committee Member]: as you don't shave it so far that it's Right,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: right. But maybe there's 50,000 from this one.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: What do you think rounds down? What do you think rounds down? I agree with you.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: The nonprofits. I think a lot of

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: the nonprofits round Some might.

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: And I just know from my own experience, I would come here and I knew that I was reviewed as someone with hat in hand, right? Vermont Works for Women was not seen as value added. We were a drain of siphon on the system, at least in some circles. And I think that nonprofits, many of them ask for as little as they can, because they know things are tight, things are tight where they are, so they understand things are tight, and they just need that thing. And so that's where I get really torn because I feel like some of these smaller asks are critical to survival for some of these organizations. And if we didn't have, say, a Vermont Legal Aid, well, there's a huge hole then in legal representation in the state. There's just nobody to replace it. There's no other healthcare advocate to send people to. I can't tell you. Times a year, I'm sending somebody to Mike or somebody on his staff's debt to deal with the health insurance issue. I'm talking too much, it's the big round numbers that stop me. I'm not sure we're gonna know enough to know, you

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: know why you get an idea why I was cranky when I got here this morning because I've been thinking about all this stuff and research and stuff for the last week. Yeah. Well, guess what? And I'm with you. You're exactly right. You don't see me advocating for things very much. And there are places where my heart lies where I would advocate, but I don't advocate that much. I'm looking at operational. I mean, you're running a business, you get fixed costs and you get discretionary costs. The fixed costs keep the lights on and keeps the business working. You have to have the core. We have to have police force. We have to have a lot of basic things that we have to fund. Even this took whatever 250,000, 300,000 for this study for this dam safety where dams would make disappears and ten thousand people get killed.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's kind of worth spending some money.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Kind of something we need to do. And you're right on a lot of little things. I mean, of these big things are such big amounts and they're zero there's no pennies involved but then somebody else comes in there's down to the $0.11 right? Well, the one that goes down to zero one one dollars somebody's actually worked on the budget And the one with 5,000,000, it was just some of them will make minus sky requests. So the only way we know what they really need is looking at the past history maybe asking a little more detailed questions. But in those big amounts is probably a lot of little things a lot that could fund all these little things if you can find the right places. But we got to be careful that we don't shortchange the things we need to keep the wheels on the bus. Right. Yeah, it's a tricky balance that we have. I tend to think that a lot of the smaller

[Unidentified Committee Member]: things can be especially in the social services area. And I think there's a possibility of those being funded locally. At least I think in my area, if there's less funding available for the food show and those kinds of things, people come to help and people donate to that globally. So that if you see a concern in your own particular area, for helping support medical care or food safety or variety of other things in small amounts, I mean, I'm talking about $100,000 or less. You tend to get fundraising at a local level if the local community sees it as an extreme, a need that they need to have funds. So state government does need to do everything, but we do need to do a lot of things, certainly, in the police department and the transportation and basic human services. Yes, we need to take care

[Rep. Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: of those. But I think

[Unidentified Committee Member]: a lot of the smaller things that people come to us for, they're all laudable, they're wonderful if we had

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: to money for all.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: But I think we have to think about what either the local economy or the local philanthropic community will help cover some of those things.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Well, and what are the core functions of government, Right, what whole other is our outlook? And that we may get a variety of answers around the table if we were to list them all out. But we are at that place where we really have to say what are the core functions, what really has to happen, because we are not I mean, most of us have been here, some of us have been here before COVID, when we didn't have all the federal money and there were still But the difference when we had gaps before was that we had the federal government working with us, and we don't have the federal government working with us now as much. And so it's a very different place. It's a place that none of us have been in, even if we were here in 2009 during the recession. It's just a very different place right now. But everybody should appreciate that you

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: can grow and grow and grow and grow, but there always should come a time when you Limits to grow. Yeah and have to go backwards on because there's always things that aren't necessary or that fatted up too much that need to be slimmed down. It's a good exercise, and it's good exercise for us to think about it.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And that individuals can think about it as opposed to depending on the government.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Well, we also, as a committee, don't have the capacity to dig into every single thing. And so the policy committees are doing that to some extent, but even they can't get into every single thing. And that's why some of you, like David, who's had all this experience in human services, you know where to look for things and how to think about things in ways that I will never have because you've been there. And this is also why we've tried to have and there may still be a bill coming out of DevOps about government accountability and actually really focusing on, do we know? Where is the path? And are we getting the outcomes that we think we ought to be getting for spending taxpayer money on these programs? So there's a reason to have those kinds of projects happening.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: That was part of my thinking over the weekend, it was about to be this accountability. Mhmm. I'm talking to Tiff Tiff and I had a discussion today that, you know, what's the data you're collecting? What statistics are you using? Are you if you're doing something, are you doing an a priority where you're you're deciding on the methods you're gonna use before you start collecting the data? Or you're taking data that has been collected haphazardly and trying to apply statistics to it? How do we figure out what's working, what's not working? And when we spend money on it, how much good we got out of the money, how much return on our debt? Right.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's a lot to think about. And we, as a committee, are not going to solve it all in the next few weeks. But we will do our best. We will have thank you all for listening as we have this conversation. At least you have a sense, JFO, what we're thinking all about. Appreciate the latest iteration, James. Thank hugely helpful. And we may pop you back into the schedule tomorrow if we have updates. This week is going to be fluid. Bills are going to come. We'll have time for you guys to start working. You can start thinking about your own priorities with the spreadsheets that you have so far. We aren't at that place yet where we say, what do you want to take from?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: What do you want

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: to give? But we at least can start thinking about within what you know so far, what are the key things for you? And are there places you think you can find the money that aren't general funds? So there's plenty to do and think about. 10:00 tomorrow morning, we have Jill with the Rural Health Transformation Grant Report. We have some more deals tomorrow too. Oh, and President Thomas from UVM is going to join us by Zoom. I wanted to give her a fair shake and talk about the $15,000,000 because we've heard from everybody but her, and I feel that we ought to at

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: least have

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: a chance to explain what her thinking is somehow as well. So that's it. Is that the things you think of for people we need to have