Meetings
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[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: For the record.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Good afternoon. It's the House Appropriations Committee. It's Tuesday. No, it's not Tuesday. Thank goodness. It's Thursday, Sorry Marius about that, folks. 2026. It's just about 3PM. And we are back to get one more fabulous spreadsheet from James.
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: And then we will continue to go out and do our work.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So James, turning it over to you.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Good afternoon. Enjoy fiscal. James Duffy. We're here briefly to talk about the builds that are out there circulating. We have one final addition to your prioritization exercise, stack of spreadsheets. So this is the final piece of that exercise. But I'll note that since we're not yet to the end of crossover, you should consider this preliminary information draft. There are still bills out there with other committees that are still making changes to things. We have draft requests that have not yet been introduced and given bill numbers, etcetera. But I just thought we could go through more or less one by one. Most of these will be very quick. The bills that we know are out there in the spreadsheet that I've just handed out to you and I can flag what's preliminary, what's known.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: When you say no vote, it doesn't mean a no vote. It means hasn't been a vote yet. I had to look twice when I first saw that.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Many of these will be familiar. I'll go through the ones that have a known or preliminary number. So H67, in app relating to legislative operations and government accountability. This as it's in front of you all would appropriate $150,000 for a two year limited service position at JFL to work on associated accountability projects. And I'll note that bills highlighted in yellow are in other committees. So those are highlighted because those numbers could change. They're still in flux. But H211 is currently in Commerce Economic Development. As of my last check, it contains a $50,000 appropriation from the general fund. This would be used to hire a one time consultant to help with this new data broker registry. You all have not heard yet about this bill, don't believe, so I won't go into too much detail. I'll just note that the secretary you see has flagged this could raise as much as $144,000 in FY27 in additional fee revenue. So this might actually, if it remains unchanged when it comes to you, it could be revenue positive. But as of now, there's a $50,000 appropriation. H519, this is a town relating to pension treatment for the Randolph Police Department. There's a de minimis impact to VCRS from this bill. I believe that comes to you because it deals with outflows from VCRS, but it's been deemed de minimis.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And we are going to take that up tomorrow morning, and we may just vote on it. That may be one of those that we can just vote. So we have a
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: possible vote on it. Thanks. Page five forty two, PCB testing in schools. This has already left back the house appropriations. There's no general fund impact. H548 is the bill that would establish two positions within the Vermont Labor Relations Board as currently drafted. You've all heard of this bill already. One would be an attorney position, one would be a mediator. Currently, that bill appropriates $250,000 for those two positions.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We've been focusing on the mediator in the committee, I think.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Page five fifty eight, Medicaid school based services. I haven't seen a fiscal note for this bill yet, so I don't have much information for you all. It's in ways and means currently. It establishes a new special fund that would receive federal reimbursement for Medicaid school based services.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We need to bring that into the budget. It's language. Bring that into the budget. I think so. It's just some language as it says transferring the Medicaid services from AOE to AHS who has the skills and capacity to do that. It's a better place for it and then AOE still has some certain things they have to do but it just transfers them. That should be a transfer out of general's or out of whatever federal funds It's going to be mostly language. I'm not sure whether there's any money
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: involved, but that's the part that reports information about that. We did. Yeah, we did a little bit twice. A
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: little bit, but we may not actually get a bill. We may get some proposed language to come
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: to us to look at to put in the budget.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Okay. Page five fifty nine, you've all voted this out of the committee. This is an act award. That would appropriate $50,000 in fiscal year twenty seven for parole board training. It's a $50,000 appropriation from the general fund in addition to authorization authorization for for a $25,000 base carry forward for a total authorization of $75,000 in fiscal year 'twenty seven. I'll just note for you all that while it is a $50,000 appropriation that you all have approved, I believe the discussion in the committee was that there will be a corresponding decrease to DOC base in FY 'twenty seven. It's sort of a pay for, given that DOC has ample money for this.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And we did vote that out.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. Voted Voted out. Oh, I apologize if the paper version still says no vote. Yeah, that was voted out, obviously. H55 five sixty seven, you have all heard about this bill, have not yet voted. This is the Treasurer's Omnibus bill as it's often referred to. There are a number of appropriations and fiscal components of the spill. The only general fund component is $75,000 for an actuarial task force. There are other non general fund impacts. My preliminary number for that is what you see in front of you, 626,000. But I need to take a closer look at that. I assume that will be a separate conversation from the committee when you all move on to your non general fund appropriations conversations. H5. Oh, and these are grayed out because the general fund costs associated with these has already been notated in previous spreadsheets that you've received. That cost, for example, 75,000 has previously appeared under the department and agency asks that you all received. And the same goes for the next bill, H577, a $50,000 proposed appropriation for marketing and outreach related to the treasurer's proposed prescription drug discount card program. You have all heard about that bill that have not yet voted. H578 was voted out of committee that has no general fund impact. I believe it dealt with criminal fines and fees, things of that nature. H588, an acclimating confessions occupations regulated by OPR that was voted out of house appropriations. No general fund impact. It dissolves a previously authorized advisory committee that was pretty ineligible. Six eleven, for those who can remember early February. Yeah, you all voted that out February 3. That was no general fund impact. Page six thirty two, enact relating to miscellaneous environmental amendments. You have all heard about this, have not yet voted. Joint fiscal has specified that this has minimal general fund impact. There's a minor change to eligibility for emissions repair voucher amounts, please, in tax returns. H648, an act relating to banking, insurance and securities that was voted out of appropriations back on January 27. No fiscal impact or no general fund impact rather. H657 in front of you all, it says it's still in house human services, but that was actually voted out of house human services this afternoon. It will need to go to ways and means.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Then it'll come to us.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And then it will come to us. I don't have an appropriations number for you all on that. So we'll see what happens there in ways and means.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: What number was that?
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: There's an appropriate, as of draft 4.1, there was an appropriation to DCF. We'll have to see what happens in ways and means.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, I'm seeing something about a $50,000 just get the creation for the DM's. So that, I don't know if it's a lot or not.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Age six sixty is rescheduled for discussion to tomorrow, I believe.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We're now to Monday at 12:30. Monday at 12:30.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So you'll hear more about that soon. Age six seventy four, the sister state program bill, you all voted that out of committee. I believe I had mistakenly put this under the special fund or non general fund column in the spreadsheet in front of you. That's a $9,500 general fund appropriation per diem per diems. By budget.
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: So it's
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: going to be absorbed by the ACCD and the general assembly fund.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Thank you. Okay. So actually, no, it's just in their existing base then. So no general fund impact. H727, as of now, this will not need to come to the Appropriations Committee if it stays as long as the appropriations stay as introduced, I'm keeping my eye on that one. It will be going away from means. H740, you all just heard about, contains a $500,000 preparation to ANR. That is great out. That has been reflected in, I believe, legislator requests under the spreadsheets you've previously received. H762, County and Regional Governance Study Committee was voted out of appropriations. That's a $15,000 general fund appropriation FY27 and there's additional carry forward from FY25. H772, you have all heard about. The number that I handed out to you all actually needs to be corrected. I believe I have 1,300 in front of you all at that.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: 1,300,000.0.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: 1,300,000.0. It's 0.3 actually 1,900,000.0 as you all saw it today. I'll just note that while it's a 1,900,000.0 total appropriation, 1,800,000.0 of that has been accounted for in other requests that are in previous, the other spreadsheets you've all received from me. I think there's a $1,000,000 BSHA appropriation, for example, that was received by you all in public hearing requests. But there is a new $100,000 general fund ask included in this. 1,900,000.0 total of $100,000 that's new to all your calculations.
[Unidentified Member]: Yeah, that's the one that we were looking at. Recognize that the two of them were already in, but there were some things that weren't.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: There was one thing that
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It's a positive credit reporting task force reporting study, but the $100,000 treasurer's office, that's the new piece. The other $1,800,000 I believe is excluded in previous tables.
[Unidentified Member]: There was one other
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's 70,000 for CBOEO to help with education. And then the 1,200,000.0 is divided up into $1,000,000 and $200,000
[Unidentified Member]: Right.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So I believe the $1,000,000,000 BSHA Rental Awareness Assistance Fund was an ask received by you all during public hearings. So I think that's under your advocate requests towards the bottom of the other housing items.
[Unidentified Member]: I was just trying to figure out whether or not to require continuity between those or whether those were individual items under that that were not dependent on one another.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. So that $1,900,000 under this bill is broken out into four individual items in all of your spreadsheets. And then H775, an act relating to creating tools for housing production, is currently in Ways and Means.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: They have just voted it out. I'm looking at So we'll get it from the floor tomorrow. We have
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: to know this calendar and we'll pull
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: it off and get it. So we'll look at it next week.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So there's a couple of pieces that will be of interest to you all. There's a new special fund that's created. There are several positions. I think the big component that I had tracked, I don't know what's going to happen to this or what did happen to this always means. There had been a $1,200,000 reduction in general fund from a redirection of interest, but we'll have to take a closer look at that.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Past spending, yes. I'm getting texts about that as we speak.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: H778 is the damn safety bill. You have all heard about this, but not yet voted. There is a $375,000 appropriation for, I believe, three positions.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I think there's some money for study thing and then positions or something. Perdience because there are three additional people on that committee, right? Not that that's as different. Well, I was reading the other ones, the one below it. Sorry.
[Unidentified Member]: This is the one that Trevor's been working on, right?
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Yeah, we're working on something. Yeah,
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: H eight fourteen was voted out of the general fund impact. H eight zero two is currently in ways and means. It's just something I keep an eye on. Don't believe it's appearing on Betsy Anne's tracking spreadsheet as something that's going to come before HACC. So that's something I have had my eye on previously. Don't know what caught my eye about it, but I don't think you're all six
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: that I would just
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: disregard that one for now and potentially forever.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And then
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: finally, H915, model bill, you've all heard about this, yet voted. There's no general fund impact as you all heard from Ted yesterday. And I don't have a total on your sheet just because things are changing so quickly. By the time I hand it out to you, the total will change it. I can tell you that the duplicated total, so new bill asks on top of what you all already received is just under $1,000,000 based on what I just walked through. Dollars $999,500,000.0.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: How does that work with $375 So you're saying stuff that hasn't been captured elsewhere. Yes. But it doesn't say what I would love to know what the duplicated amount is.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: The duplicated amount, as I just walked through it with you all, is 3,400,000.0. Okay. And that's all I have for you now.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Thank you very much, James.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And I don't know why assume we I will have an updated spreadsheet for you all tomorrow. I assume we may not walk through it all. I know you all are voting. You're looking to have your ranking sheets handed in by tomorrow, the day. So I will be paying attention to bills as they move throughout the day. And we'll see what information we can have for you all up to the minute before we leave tomorrow.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And I know a few folks here had questions with you, so we'll go off live, hang out, please. And so the
[Unidentified Member]: I work in the office.
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Yeah, go ahead, Margaret. No worries.
[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: I mean, puts the other chairs have an idea of what other bills may be
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: coming out this. That's what the cross tracking sheet is, and James has it, so I don't think we've got anything else. The ones we have at the top there of this bill sheet, there's an emergency management bill coming out of House GovOps, the miscellaneous tax bill. There's a miscellaneous ed bill, I guess. The homelessness response is the one that human services is doing. So we'll probably extract and it's the same dollar amount, the $82,000,000 for the whole program. And they've been working with the administration to put together that whole program. And so we'll probably account for the money in the budget. This is what we did at H91 last year. We counted the money in the budget, but the money will probably go with the bill. We're working that part out. So that's not going to be new money anywhere that you need to do anything with because that's that whole bill all by itself. But it's the same amount that the governor Right, there
[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: were two items that you had the governor had Right.
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: And then
[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: one time in the one times. Right. They're going to probably they're going to respect the dollar amount they need playing around with Right. Right. Absolutely.
[Unidentified Member]: That will all be agreed on. We won't have to worry
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: about They're working with the administration. They're working with DCF and the administration on all the parts of it. And, you know, as with anything, nobody's getting everything they want. They're compromising and finding out where the lines are and how far anybody can go and still agree to get a bill out. So the intent is that, as I understand it, is that pretty much everybody's going
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: to agree with it. You can worry about whatever
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: you want Wayne but maybe if you're not shipping a headband or something you won't seem to
[Unidentified Member]: worry about. You come in here with a headband.
[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Sticking out of your antenna. So a
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: tomorrow the rule is you're not allowed to leave until you hand in your information to James. You can do it by hand so he can read it, which maybe he'll take a look at before you just dump it and run. You can make sure you get it, or electronically, either way. But tomorrow, we're going to hear two bills. We're going to hear the second housing one, seven seventy five, relating to creating tools for housing production. So this has to do, as I understand it, with manufactured homes and some ways to do that more efficiently. And then the other one is the five nineteen, which is allow authorizing officers of the town of Randolph to join a retirement system group. So that's probably pretty short. And then on Monday, so we'll have time in between. You'll have time today. Keep working on your stuff. I will be around too if you have questions. We'll have time tomorrow afternoon as well. And Monday, we'll start at 12:30 with age six sixty.
[Unidentified Member]: And on Monday, I have a dentist appointment at 12:30, so I may be a little bit late.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: You'll miss the, yeah. We can hold the vote open.
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: We'll probably be voting on the opioids.
[Unidentified Member]: I expect I'd be here by two.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay, we're going to have the opioid bill at 12:30, so you'll be happily in the dentist chair.
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: So,
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: and then we, I want to spend some time on Monday, we'll have sort of a summary of what everybody did for their priorities, and then we can have that conversation about how to pitch what we did, where we see differences, make your pitches.
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: So with a little luck, we'll be through most of the bills, we'll have the rest of next week to focus on our bill.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That's right, that's my goal.
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: To it. You know, get out Thursday.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I was hoping for 05:00 Friday last year, and it was 11:15. I remember things happen. So we're gonna try not to, know, at least it wasn't one a. M. On Saturday, but don't know when that next week We may not have late nights on Monday, but we may not have late nights later in the week as we go along. As you know, we'll see how everything goes and what other surprises we have. But I will work with during fiscal and present you a draft budget, which I did last year, which is just for conversation to start. And then we'll use that to say, yes, no, let's add here, let's take away there, whatever. And promise I won't be totally attached to it. So I wasn't last year either. I want to build
[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: that hopefully we can all agree on. That would
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: be lovely if we can get to that. Sure. Okay.
[Unidentified Member]: Then we make our floor reports. And luckily, I've done mine, because I haven't lost it yet.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay, yes. Your floor reports. Change the numbers. All right. So any other questions at this point? If not, let's go off live, we'll be back on live at 9AM tomorrow morning.