Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Hey, good morning. This is House Committee on Appropriations. It is Wednesday, 03/11/2026. It's a little bit after 11AM. And we are going to get the latest update on spreadsheets for the budget. Before we do that, we are now a bit more organized on bills. Don't see this updated. Maybe I have to update mine. We're going to vote out a bunch of bills this afternoon. Okay, here we go. We're going to vote out H762. We've heard that this morning. The County and Mutual Governance Study Committee, no money. H542, terminating testing of schools for PCBs. We heard that before vacation, no money. You'll

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: hear

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: a theme here. H588, the OPR bill, again, no money. What was the first one we heard this morning? That was the county office. Okay, never mind. That's right. Okay. And then we are going to, at 01:30 here, age six seventeen, we have an amendment. It's the sister state program. Based on our meeting, our conversation with the bill before break, we made some changes. I just sent that out to all of you, so you have a copy of that. And then we should be able to vote that out. Again, there's not a money issue there. What's that number? Six seventy four. I'm just reading off our agenda, so it's all there. So we're going to vote out four bills today, and then we're going to hear a possible vote actually on eightfourteen, which is a bill we're Do we actually

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: have that in our possession now? Yeah.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Okay. So we can vote it out. It's related to the use of AI and technology. Again, there's de minimis per diem, so we'll get that out of here. No one will be in, as well as Jen Carvey. And we have another bill at 02:15 that we're

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: not voting on. We're going

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: to hear about that. And then tomorrow morning, we're going to vote out the parole board bill. Again, no money, $5.59. And we're going to walk through the landlord tenant bill seven seventy two,

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: but we're not going

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: to vote on that one.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: We vote on the parole board.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: And then we have another one we may not vote on, on the greenhouse gas industry. I don't know what other bills we may be getting today. But as we can get off our money, we can deal with it. So some of these points that have money that we're not voting on right away, we can also decide that we want to just strip the money out, do our usual contingency language, and then get it over to the Senate, because we will need to move them along. At least we can hear them. Autumn? That was incorrect. I think that eight fourteen is, can you get referred to us as

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: floor to the table?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Oh, we can't vote on it until Can we get it? Well, so we're going to hear it at 01:45, and then we'll vote on it maybe later in the fall after Oh, we may not, because the floor may go late today. We'll vote on it either later today or tomorrow morning. So anyway, a bunch of bills that we're

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: gonna go through, which would

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: be nice to get them on their way. Okay, I'm gonna now switch gears and talk about our bill. Excellent.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: For the record, James Duffy, joint fiscal. So we are going to spend some time talking about the prioritization exercise that the committee is going to go through for appropriations above GovRack. So I have a number of documents for you all that you're going to use for this. I'm going to pass about one at a time in the order that you're going to use them. So first, I'm going to distribute paper copy of your scoring and your voting spreadsheet. And I also am about to send you an email version of this. So it's a little bit more user friendly to do in Excel you prefer. But paper copies for you all.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Everything's like date stamps so we can use the latest information. Transfer your scribble chunks from one to the next. This is the amended one that has Yep.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: So this that actually isn't timestamped at OSPI. The Excel file that I'm sending you all will be. But you will notice we have a grand total, preliminary grand total for our requests above gov rec. It excludes bills for the time being because bills are moving quickly. But our grand total for the moment is oh, I just handed out all my sheets.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Almost $2.13.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yeah, we're just under $230,000,000 for requests above coverage. That does not yet include bills. That is all the other categories that will be part of the prioritization. So that includes the So that being said, unless there's any questions on this sheet, I will pass out

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Yeah, it's in a section on alternative funding sources.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: All right, so next coming your way will be small spreadsheet for change of the governor's recommended one time appropriations for fiscal year twenty seven. So this will be part of the amortization that you all are doing. I apologize. There might be extra copies that end up at your end of the table that I'll grab when I finish up over here.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: And we can maybe keep extras over there on the table. If someone

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Do my best.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: People's need

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Pardon? Oh, I'm sorry. Thought you were talking to me.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: And I'm passing these out in a particular order. As you go through the tables that I'm going to be passing out to you, you'll see more and more gray. So we're starting off with the governor's recommended per onetime appropriations. These don't have any overlap in the software sheets that I'm going to hand out to you. So there are no grayed out items indicating that these are duplicate funding requests in the governor's recommended one time appropriations. You might see in the sheets I'm about to hand out to you that there are legislators or advocates who are affirming support for these items. Those will be marked as duplicate. These are these are unique unduplicated. These are the governors one time fiscal year twenty seven appropriations. So next coming your way will be a spreadsheet that contains our government what I'm calling our instrumentalities of government, which is the right term of art. But these are our department and agency requests above gov rec.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: From outside the administration directive

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: So not all agencies and departments obviously have the latitude to request extra money above the governor's recommend. But some, such as our statewide offices, obviously treasurer, secretary of state do, that's what you're going to see in the pink table on the left hand side of the page sheet I'm handing out to you all. And on the right side will be our advocate general fund request. So these are the requests that you all received either via the public hearings, via written testimony that were submitted at the public hearings, or subsequently. And these are

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: And legislators

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: too. And legislators are on this one as well. So the one I'm handing out to you contains three of our six buckets above government appropriation targets. This is one of our big ones. And the same notation as yesterday applies. So you're going to see some grayed out cells in these. Those indicate duplicated requests. So you can still choose to circle them or evaluate them on their merits, but they're grayed out for the purpose of demonstrating that they're not reflected in the subtotal for that sheet.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: If we duplicate it, it looks like

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: So not a useful It's coming your way. And again, as I hand these out to you, because we're proceeding through the chronology of how and when these requests were received, you'll see more and more gray indicating that those are duplicates. Received those. And then coming to you next will be our committee letter, a summary table of our committee letters. So there's a lot of gray in this because you received a lot of feedback from the standing policy committees saying, we support this appropriation, we support this request. But there are some unique funding requests above gov rec that did come to you all through the policy committees as well. You'll see a small number of white cells in this table, which indicate unique, unduplicated funding requests that came to you through the committee letters.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Dave, you look like you're thinking about something.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: I'm waiting the appropriate time to raise my hand. So you spotted it

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: before you It's not when you're ready to talk. Go ahead, Dave.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: I do glance quickly, and I may not have seen it, but in the governor's one time Yep. I didn't see the 15,000,000 for the BM Complex.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: That's because it's not general fund. Absolutely. It's still a decision they have to make.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Thank you, representative, for that. That's actually an important clarification. So the conversation we're having now and the exercise we're going to go through as a committee is general fund.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: General fund.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: General fund. The bucket and the box.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: You got some I know what, maybe we have a table down there. So if we need Yeah, to have all of them. That's right. Yeah.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: I'll just let you all know the tables that you've received are posted on the committee page. The ranking sheet that you also received in physical copy is in your email Excel file. And that is what I have for you currently. Bills are continuing to fly as we get towards the end of policy crossover week. So that's in the works. This afternoon after lunch, I'm going to have what will be a very preliminary bill table for you all updated with today's It will be in the works. The minute bills, because that's obviously the final and important bucket. You can think of this as six buckets of funding that are going into this exercise. We've got the governor's recommended one times. We've got the requests from departments and agencies. We've got the advocate requests. We've got requests from fellow legislators. We've got your committee letter requests. And then the final and sixth bucket that's still very much in flux is the bills. So up the minute version of that coming to you after lunch. What's going on today? So I will pause for questions and

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Go ahead, Duane. Great. So each one of

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: those are duplicated. There were multiple requests, ones, and you've rolled them all into just one.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: So, yeah, the idea is that each request will show up as unduplicated only once for the purposes of summing up the the the numerical total.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So it was 10 of those 10 that were identical, then the phone was one on the.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Oh, well, then what the gray indicates

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: more than once.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: You may have received so, for example, you received feedback from several policy committees that they support the establishment of a farm and forestry operations security special fund. That was also a request that was received several weeks ago at the public hearings. And so that request pertaining to the farm and forestry operations security special fund, it's unduplicated in the advocate requests spreadsheet that you got. It's not the original. But it shows up as gray in subsequent spreadsheets. So it can be duplicated across the The categories. That's what the gray

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: The words will be duplicated, but the dollars will not be duplicated.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Exactly.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: But what is important is to see that not only advocates supported something, but our committees supported certain things. So that's why you want to have that right. That's why you want to look at those as well.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yeah. And so for the purpose of committee looking at these items, evaluating each of them on their merits, would say, the gray, it pertains to the numbers. It shows your updated numbers. It's just a matter of you can still consider each request, whether it's grayed out or white. It just indicates whether it was factored into that subtotal.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: So it all counts. But if

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: you

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: get a sense of, should I think about the Ag Security Special Fund? Well, gee, it showed up in four different committees over here. A whole bunch of people said $15,600,000 but the Ag Committee said $50,000 because that seemed more reasonable in this environment. So important, yes. And I like that one. I'm making this up, but you know what mean? So that's why

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: And that's kind of the It's thing. Behind the order in which these were passed out to you all. So we start with the gut fragment, then we're kind of proceeding down the chronology of when he's requested or received. That's why you see more and more gray and more and more duplication as we go forward.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: So James, one of the things that the governor's recommend, and we'll have to figure this out with Chair Wood in Human Services, is the Line five for $15,000,000 and Line seven for $6,000,000 I believe are part of the homelessness housing initiative that they are working on there. So they're not losing any more than the governor recommended for that whole program. But I think we're going to have to extract some of those out. So don't assume that money's available. That's what I would say at one time, because that's already being used for that other program. I don't believe that's true of the secure residential one for Fordham. I think that's what Tiff and Don and Cathy have been working on. But that's separate from the housing initiative, just so we understand that. And the other thing that's not on here, which is perfectly fine, but we can look back at our spreadsheet, there were some things that have been one time in the past, the governor is proposing to move to base. So it's new base stuff. VHIP is one of them for $4,000,000 And there may be some other things, too. So those are also fair game, even though they're not on the spreadsheet. The entire budget is fair game, frankly. But you can take a look at that as well. Those spreadsheets haven't changed since Emily presented those to us before meeting break.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: And you'll see as well, this is particularly relevant in the committee recommendations tables, where committees voice support for a GovRec item, for example, the 4,000,000 base for VHIP. Did my best to catalog each of those. So you will see some other GovRec items showing up in the committee recommendations spreadsheet, either as support or opposition from the policy committees.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: You should all have the committee letters anyway. So if you want more detail, they're all on our web page. Print them all out, keep them in the folders.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: A couple of other kind of guidepost tips. Global commitment implicated items are marked by asterisks. So you'll see on the first page of the Advocate General Fund requests, that green table, there are a number of stress to marking items that are potentially implicated or confirmed to be implicated or eligible for for global commitment. Where possible, where splits were provided either by the advocates, by policy committees, or the preliminary JFO analysis. The gross versus general fund split has been provided. As we discussed, it's not available for all of these items yet, and not all of these have been subject to final JFO verification for those splits. So once we go through this prioritization exercise, see which one of those rise to the top, JFO will provide the final splits for those global commitment items. And I'll also just point out that the advocate general fund requests are listed in rough order of the budget. Same goes for the department and agency requests. Those are listed in the order in which they appear in the budget. And your committee recommendations are just

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Alphabetical by committee. Right. Other questions for James? This is really great for you.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: It is, yeah. Feel like it's

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: really helpful.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: It's

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: good to see them broken out. We get better at this every year, so it's great, it's terrific. Yes, Lynn? Yeah, some of these categories have no dollar signs, no dollar amounts in them.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Just saw a couple

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: of these are the recommendations.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Maybe more than anything else.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: So some you might see zero. I'm looking at one that's a legislator general fund request on line 45. Sorry. So looking at your The first one. Page one, pink and green. Page two, under legislator general fund request, that blue table. So we're looking at line 45 of page two of that table. I don't know if this is an example of what you noticed with the senate

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: ticket sales. I guess it's Box 43, and that looks like the housing general is concurrent with the $4,000,000 of proposed VHIP. That's got zero in there. There's nothing in there. Just a debt. It's the committee.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yeah. So that was intentional. Yes.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Now there's one below that. Okay. Then I guess they also concur with the 800 in time MHAR.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Yes.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: And so they're controlling with the governor. Is that why we see a dash instead of an actual?

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yes, the dash indicates zero and the zero might mean two things. One, actually, so the most common meaning behind is that it's not above gov rec because these tables are only showing the requests above what the governor has recommended. But there are requests, recommendations from committees that felt relevant for you all to know about and consider as you're looking at these. So yes, for example, the recommended $800,000 for VHIP or $4,000,000

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: for VHIP.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Yes, I just found one that doesn't. The judiciary, I guess it's box 74 judiciary And that's on our pink and above gov rec for one limited service assistant director, permanent, no GF impact.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yes.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: I'm not sure. Yeah, but that's not that.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: And that's an example of either the agency is absorbing that in their existing base or they're using a non general fund source.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: GREGORY So

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: the 12

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Yeah, Trevor, do you have anything that That was a put in there.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: They recommend further discussions with us.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: And that's why, yeah, because it's a gov rec, it's not above gov rec, but the recommendation was further discussion with House appropriations. I don't have any more color to add to that

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: one, unfortunately. Want me to speak

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: to what you mean?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Yeah, why don't you just get to that?

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: This goes to the pretrial certification.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Oh, okay. And

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: they added another 200,000 above the base this year. We've made a decision with the administration and various committees that we're going to drop that rope, and that has implications on how we can reallocate

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: that figure of the pandemic.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: That's where we are.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Yeah, so more to come on that one.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Don't put that on your top priority list.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Because the plant gets solved. Yes, exactly.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So if we shoot, go out the film.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Yep, and you've got basically tier one, tier two, tier three, 5,000,000 in each one. So what's your first 5,000,000, your second 5,000,000, and your third 5,000,000. And as I find out more about money and one time versus base, I will keep you posted and I'm hearing new information every day, and that's why we're starting where we're starting right now. Dave, you had a question.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: James, you may not know this, but for clarification, in the document from the committees with their recommendations, in the House Human Services, the third one down, one of their, pulled out one, two, three, Just a clarification, it says, Do not concur with proposal to elimination of Vermont's support services provider program. I believe, but if you can correct me, I believe that's the interpreter services for the deaf blind population. Do you know that, James?

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: I don't.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Because it is now, it's pretty vanilla, nobody might say, oh, okay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: I think that's a really good point. Let me just check and see their committee letter, Dave, and see what's Yes, that

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: That's what it is. Yeah.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Let me just confirm if that's what it is.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: If it is, I just wanted our members around the table to know that it might score differently if it's worded differently.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Yes, this is the Exactly right. So they were eliminating the entire program for service provider support for people who are deaf and blind, and that they do the interpreter or something and they use their hands to talk, and if they don't have another person, they're deaf and they're blind. And so this was eliminating the whole program to support these people. And to be clear,

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: deference to the department who I spoke with about this, they said it was a pilot that's scheduled to end June 30. They don't feel they eliminated it, they just didn't support renewing it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Thank you for sharing it.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: I just wanted to share that. Well,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: they have information that it wasn't being used or that they didn't know

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: I about suspect Caledonia's Human Services knows that.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: It's mine, Dave. Third one down? Which street? It's letter. On

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: The letters you want.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: So it's actually on page Page

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: three of committee letters, line 71.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: David? He's in white. Thank you. It's in the upper right corner.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Line 71. Yeah.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Over here. Yes, it means this one. It says, Do not concur with proposed elimination of Vermont Support Service Provider Program. That is for supporting people who are deaf and blind. So if you want to make a note that says that it's deaf and blind, then maybe that will trigger what you'll remember. Thank you, Dave, for pointing that out. No, that's the grand sheet is

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: right. Turn over to the upper

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: right. Upper right, far right. Third one down. Other left. I just wrote deaf and blind so I remember what that is. Dave, thank you.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: The

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: other right.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Each of the committees use different ranking mechanisms, slightly different ranking mechanisms. But for each committee, they're ranked in that committee's order of importance, whatever system Right.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: They had tier one or highest Yeah. Exactly.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So when you when you transcribe them onto this sheet, they're in the same order.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yes, within tier one or tier two, they're not in any particular order, but the categories of priority are

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: at the top of their list will

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: be the top priority. Exactly.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: Well, the top group. In human services, there's a whole bunch of highest, but they didn't rank within highest, they didn't rank one through 10. Same thing on the general and house. Just did highest. Right, and a lot of them did that. A lot of them said tier one, tier two, tier three, was judiciary. We have to allow them a little artistic place, as long as we understand what they think the highest player on these are. One of these is, if it's not yours, feel free to go to that committee and say, if you had to pick one, what would it be?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: We were just wondering about that gap. Yeah, it's not a

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: reason you're talking about. Fourth force choice kind of thing. You've got six things in tier one.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: What I did last year is when we got to Wednesday or Thursday of next week, I went to every committee chair and I said, I basically said, Pick one, or Pick two,

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: or whatever, where we are.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair), House Committee on Appropriations]: And they really appreciated getting one last chance at saying, here's what we're down to. So I'm happy to do that again this year. But if you have stuff in the meantime now that you want to ask them about. Okay. James will always be available for questions, and he's got backup, but you also have the committee letters and ask any of us if he's got other questions. They'll And be like, actually, I'm saying, Go. So we'll be back at one with the first bill. Actually, could we take that 115? I have to stay over at JFO at the meeting for a few minutes, and then that way we'll be waiting. So we'll go off live and come back out at 01:15.