Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Good afternoon. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Monday, 03/16/2026. It is just after 12:30, and we are in the whole stretch of a very busy week. This is our week to pass all the bills that are coming to us and the budget by Friday night. Passing your seat belts and all that good stuff. So we're going to start right now with H-six 60, which is the opioid abatement special fund appropriation. We've talked about this a number of times, and I think we have a recommendation of how to proceed at this point. So I'm not sure who's coming up first. I'm sort of thinking this is your bill tip. Katie, can you them? Talk Yeah. I think they should come up just once. Okay. Great. Good afternoon.

[Eileen Dickinson (Member)]: Good afternoon.

[Katie McLennan (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Katie McLennan, Office of Legislative Counsel. Let me share my screen with you.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I know

[Katie McLennan (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you've walked through the underlying committee report from Human Services a couple of times at this point. So I will skip to the proposed appropriations amendment and tell you the differences. So a big discussion, the last time I was in the room at least, was there are four appropriations that were in play, the conversation was whether they should come from the Opioid Abatement Special Fund or Prevention Misuse Special Fund. The change you have from the underlying committee report is moving those appropriations from the prevention misuse special fund back to the opioid abatement special fund. So that is what the scale of highlighting is, as it's moving the appropriations from one place, from one special fund to another. And so they're being added here. And then you have this new language that says, unless reverted by a future act of the General Assembly, the appropriations made in the print of this section shall carry forward until fully expended. So again, those are Where is that last time? Page four, and then the middle of the page is subsection B.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Oh, I see. And line 11. Just to make that crystal clear. I mean

[Katie McLennan (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Not

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: to make crystal clear for you, but that there wasn't anything in the prior authorizing legislation that made it clear that that money would carry forward.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay, so for example, up on line three, number 12, the 200,000 for distribution to interaction, If they don't spend it all in one fiscal year, it automatically carries forward until they spend the 200,000. So there's no new appropriation, it just spreads The it all

[Katie McLennan (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: next three sections of the committee report, Bill, dealt with past appropriations that were either not fully expended or the program had wrapped up and there was still some money left over. That is mostly being dealt with in a new section of this bill that I am delighted to have Grady tell you about. It's technical. But because there were some language changes, this section two is being retained. And for example, some of the changes from the House Committee report, when there is a discussion about satellite locations, the original authorizing legislation directed a facility operated by DOC. And that's being struck through here from the Committee on Human Services. You're just retaining their language changes that they're making there. Next is section three. The only change here is a typo I caught. I was glad I had a vehicle to put it in. Each ongoing funding proposal considered by the advisory committee shall include a sustainability plan from the applicant to ensure consideration of future expenses and available resources apart from the opioid abatement special fund. Section four, there was already a language in the bill, a subsection B, the Opioid Abatement Settlement Committee was not going to accept new proposals for fiscal year 'twenty eight unless it was previously identified as ongoing money with the intent to review the outcomes of existing programs that were funded through the opioid abatement special fund. Subsection A is being added in this appropriations committee amendment that honor before December 1. The Department of Health shall review all previous appropriations from the Special Fund and make recommendations to the Advisory Committee, the two policy committees, which appropriations could be funded in future years by Substance Misuse Prevention Special Fund.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So we're moving the money back that Human Services had proposed to put in the special for the misuse substance misuse. We're asking them to look for the future on whether they could be funded. Yes.

[Katie McLennan (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This is the technical reversion section that I'm going to let Grady explain to you. So I'm going to just scroll past it and say your effective date is July. But I'll let JFO handle their inversion piece.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Katie, who's next?

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Katie, there's another sentence in section B that after long term sustainability, we had added the freight and the appropriateness of the Opioid Abatement Special Fund as a funding source, where applicable. So involving the Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee and not just the Department of Health and looking at the overall picture of funding, of programs and determining, well, which might be good for base, which might which might be, be to somehow fund through some other means, whether it's the Substance Misuse Prevention Fund or, I guess not the Tobacco Fund.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Does A cover it? Does A solve this A problem or

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: charges the Department of Health,

[David Yacovone (Member)]: to review. This

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: involves the Opioid Submit Advisory Committee in that

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: As review as long as you're going to

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: review it for these other things, you need to review it also. The appropriateness of the Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee. Because know I can talk to you about the way in which that funding is winding down until we get on the Purdue settlement. And the rationale for holding off on any new appropriations in

[Katie McLennan (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the coming year. Thank you for the reminder. So we have it. This is draft 2.1 that I just pulled up. So you have 1.1 listed on your website. So I will make sure that Autumn has this language, but I appreciate the reminder. So page seven, subsection B, funded through the Opioid Abatement Special Fund to assess effectiveness, long term sustainability, and the appropriateness of the Opioid Abatement Special Fund as a funding source where applicable.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: But that's the only difference between these two versions. Between one point one

[Katie McLennan (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: and two point one. Dave?

[David Yacovone (Member)]: I just wanna make sure I understand the implications of the section that says the committee won't approve any new proposals in FY twenty eight until Could you just go over that again for

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: me, Yep,

[Katie McLennan (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that's this language in B. So in previous years appropriating from the Opioid Abatement Special Funds, sometimes some

[David Yacovone (Member)]: of the

[Katie McLennan (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: appropriations have language that indicates it's an intent to continue funding those programs or positions with opioid abatement fund money, and that those items that have previously been indicated in legislation to require ongoing funding from Opioid Abatement Special Fund, the committee will accept those applications in fiscal year twenty eight. However, it would not accept new funding proposals, and it would instead, the committee would instead spend its time reviewing the outcomes of programs and initiatives previously funded through the special fund to assess their effectiveness, their long term sustainability, the appropriateness of using the special fund for that purpose.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Thank you, may I madam? Go ahead, go right ahead. This gives me a little pause. If I'm correct, and please correct me if I'm not. My recollection is there's approximately two hundred, no, it's gone down around two fifty deaths a year due to opioids. And I'm wondering somebody could come up with, hey, they did this in California or they did this in Oregon, and it's been evidence based and demonstrated to be a great idea, let's put it on the table. And our folks might say, sorry, it might be a good idea, but we're still studying the effectiveness of older ideas. It might've been good, it might not have been good. Why would I and what I consider to be crisis, the word crisis is overused, a serious, serious problem in our state. I'm uncomfortable hitting the pause button. Am I misreading things?

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: I'm probably best equipped to answer that.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: You go ahead. It

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: was the Human Services Committee determined that, I mean this was its suggestion, because there hasn't been a review of the impact of all the money that's gone out from the front. And I think that they felt that it was cleaner to say, okay, with the exception of these four things, Overdose Prevention Center is not mentioned here because it's not being given a new appropriation because it is carrying forward money from the prior allocation. But there are, I think, are four main things that have been indicated to be annual appropriations that are systemic. I agree with you, Dave. And I think that Rep. McGuire and Wood talked about it a fair amount and felt that it was, we needed a step back and take a look at that in conjunction with looking at the Substance Misuse Prevention Fund and how we're spending that money and is it being spent effectively in order to kind of do right by that fund. Because for the last couple of years we've funded a whole lot of things. Many kind of smaller initiatives and the committee has expressed an interest, which I share, in making sure that we're spending that money, which is not unlimited, on strategic things that contribute to strengthening the system. And not a little program here or a little program there. That is a risk in holding back.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: There is a risk in holding back for a year.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Some of the money that is, I mean if it was a brand new thing, I don't know, I yeah, no? Sure, yeah. I'm not stupid.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Can all

[David Yacovone (Member)]: sit there. For

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: the record, Noel and I will jump to the school office. Maybe I'll provide a little context that might help. So there's a lot of moving things. First off, I think every so all these proposals are coming from either the health department or the opioid special or faithful committee, whatever that's called. And in theory, they're putting them forth because they think all of those ideas are good. So they're putting forth ideas that they think meet that criteria that you were suggesting, an example of Oregon. So the problem is that it's a finite fund. We know that it's going to be coming to a point. The other issue is that some of the money that was appropriated two years ago hasn't actually been obligated. So there's a lot of money that's been appropriated and unobligated. So if you look retrospectively, you can see that there's programs that got all their full appropriations. There's some programs from two years ago that haven't even gotten contracts on yet. And so there was a sense of like, we have a lot of really good ideas. They want to step back and say, let's just look at what we've done before we start taking in new ideas because they're all good ideas, right? So think it was just like a step back because it is a finite fund. So I think that was kind of the thinking of it.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So I'm looking at that sentence where it says instead shall review the outcomes of programs and initiatives previously funded through the earthquake, then a special fund to assess. Now what you were just talking about was efficiency. Some programs haven't been able to

[David Yacovone (Member)]: get off the ground or haven't been able to

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: do so they're not sufficient.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Sometimes it's just like nobody put an RFP in.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Right. So I'm wondering whether if we change that language a little bit about, say assess the efficiency, effectiveness programs, and long term sustainability of the fund. And we got where applicable, it's all applicable. I would strike those last two. Any suggestions on that language? That makes sense to anybody?

[Katie McLennan (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Dropping that last phrase that's not in front of you, it's in the draft 2.1, and the appropriateness of the opioid abatement special fund as

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: a funding source. So take a look at 2.1, Autumn is now posted to our committee page. So refresh your computer, and don't look at the one that doesn't have a bunch of yellow lines on that. Lines 13 through thirteen and fourteen there should be some yellow highlighting and then you know you have the right draft. You don't have to write that one? We were given the incorrect draft.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: 2.1. Yeah. 10:53AM.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So this is in section four?

[Katie McLennan (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, page seven.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Page seven.

[Eileen Dickinson (Member)]: I'm not

[Katie McLennan (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: sure you want to draw where applicable because it talks about long term sustainability And some of the appropriations and projects funded with the opioid funds have been one time programs. So I think that is where appropriate is modifying the fact that not everything is meant to be an ongoing program.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: I don't what I called up on the computer, it doesn't

[David Yacovone (Member)]: have any yellow on it at all.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Did you update it? You can look at it wrong.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It in there.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Yeah. There you go. Now he's good. It's undoubtedly derived from too short.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: See, your wish is hard command, it's all done. Does this,

[Eileen Dickinson (Member)]: do these changes in section four relate to the discussion we had on section four, actually part of the discussion at the time that we looked at the original fiscal note that the Opioid Abatement Special Fund is one time only, and the Substance Misuse Prevention Special Fund will be ongoing, is smaller. But we should look at them differently. We did talk about that, that that was one of the things they wanted to maybe change in this. Put it in a different bill or So or is that what does it relate to that?

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I think so, but let me talk a little bit about what I was gonna talk about, and maybe that answers your question. And if it doesn't, we can revisit it. The point I was gonna make from the fiscal standpoint is this amendment is trying to do two things. The first, and this is why Grady's here, to clean up the reversion language. The reversion language was actually a recommendation from the health department that said, Can you please add this to the bill? And we added to the bill. And then when we looked at it, Grady looked at it and was like, we need to make this more in tune with how we structure the budget in terms of reversion. So just clean up on the reversion. So there's no changes to what's being reverted. It's just trying to match it up to the format that we use in the budget around reversion. So that's just clean up language. That's the first thing. The second piece, and this might answer representative Dickinson's question, the Human Service Committee had recommend putting those four items, which was $640,000 They felt that it was more appropriate coming out of the Substance Misuse Prevention Fund, which comes opioid, it comes from cannabis dollars. What this bill is doing is putting it back into the opioid fund. And there's a reason for that. And that's that there's not enough money in the substance misuse special fund to fund these things. There was $128,000 left over and we spent that in budget adjustment. So representative Bluemle and I, presented three options for representative Bluemle. One would be you could change what's in the substance misuse funds, that they have some proposals for how that money's been spent, and they provided that to us. So you can reduce some of their proposals. The problem is that we didn't have enough information about what the impact on reducing those proposals might be. Do they have contracts already? If we funded them, would that actually not make it effective because we're taking away some of the funding? Was not enough information about it, which I think is why that language around looking at the substance misuse fund as well as the opioid fund is in there. For the future. For the future. Second option would be leave the substance misuse fund alone and instead just put it back into the opioid fund because there's money there to pay for this, even though it's That's

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: where the original recommendation came from.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, those four items, there were several items that, and if you have, I don't have it with me, but the sheet that had all the comparisons directly, you can hold onto it, it's fine. It had the recommendations from what was in, so there was two recommendations around the opioid fund. One was, and you received both from the health department. One was what the health department thought the recommendation should be, the other was what the, they call it OSAC, which is what the Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee felt. And so what the Human Services Committee is they weighed both of them, and then their recommendation was a combination of both of those. Those four items, the $640,000 came out of the OSAC recommendations, but not out of the health department recommendations. So OSAC was recommending that they be used with opioid dollars. The conversation in human services was, well, would this be more appropriate in the substance misuse fund? So that's why they put it there. Representative Bluemle and I had the conversation that the money isn't there unless you take it out of something that's already been sort of obligated potentially or allocated. We're not sure. Or a third option, take it all together, which I don't think was an option at all.

[Katie McLennan (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I mean, I think that

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: I was present for the conversation before they recommended taking it out of substance misuse prevention, where they talked about, well, we need more prevention. We want to fund prevention. These look like, I mean, they were familiar with these programs. They recommended that they be funded. And don't think no one was in the room when the choice was made to take it from the Substance Misuse Prevention Fund. And I talked with Rev. Wood. I think that there are questions that the committee has and that the Senate Committee has about the Substance Misuse Prevention Fund, how that money is used, whether it is serving the priorities that we want it to. And yet, this committee doesn't have the bandwidth nor the expertise to sorry, our committee can't really make those recommendations except arbitrarily, which

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I wasn't doing. So I think we're trying to set it up for future recommendations to be in the appropriate place, rather than trying to make the decisions ourselves on where it should be, which is why TIFF is recommending just agreeing

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: to help you out versus what the Senate committee agreed on. I do know that the Senate committee is going to be taking testimony on this use of the substance use prevention. They can

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: do what they want. Exactly. But this is cleaner, I think, doing it this way.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: It felt cleaner, at least to me.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's the purpose of the assessment and

[David Yacovone (Member)]: the review. Right. Exactly what you had.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right, so that's why that language is in there to do that. Okay so are people kind of clear on all that? Brady is there anything you'd like to add? Would you like to explain the reversions?

[Grady (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I think Noel pretty well covered it, but yeah, in section five, so the original bill as recommended by oxygen services had three reproversions amounting to a little less than $1,500,000 Those initial appropriations came from 2023 out of 2022 which was making appropriations from this fund. The way that it was current or originally drafted in the housing services report was actually reducing those prior year appropriations and in fact I believe you can't on appropriate once you've appropriated, they've closed out fiscal year, you haven't formally do a revision and say that section five it's the exact same dollar amounts, it's just clarifying that you have to actually refer it that way. The only thing I would flag is this section was requested by the Department of Health but that carry forward language that's being added in the house appropriations report to the appropriations being made in this fiscal year or this coming fiscal year wasn't there was no carry forward language for this 5.2 appropriations. Right. So those were carried forward with excess receipts authority. So these were versions, well, unless the department actively requested another excess receipt to carry those funds forward, these funds would revert regardless of that in this current fiscal year. So it's thousands of factors, really.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah. But it clarifies the way there's appropriations, there's reversions, there's So they're doing it the right way. Wayne?

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So anybody happen Did you hear anybody hear any testimony as to why the money wasn't spent and why the resolution would be the burden?

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Are a number of reasons. I mean, there are sometimes I mean, for whatever reasons, a lot of contracts weren't executed until well beyond the new fiscal year. And so it's taken a lot of time to get some of the money out. And sometimes the projects themselves are complicated enough that it's been a challenge to set them up. And so it's a mix of things. And the Human Services Committee asked a lot of questions about why is it taking so long to get some of

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: the schmuck So what's the contacting problem on the provider side? It is shared.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: It's shared. It depends on the actual grant.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: There's been a lot of grants over the last three years. In one case, I think that they were able to execute the contract for cheaper than was appropriate.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: And sometimes, an organization need to get insurance for this new project, and it took much longer than they had anticipated. I mean, it's just, there are different reasons for it. And I think everybody's trying to work harder to make sure that the money gets turned around. I just want to make

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: sure it wasn't on the state side.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, well, think it's shared. I think it's

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: a shared responsibility. There are probably some reasons for the state and some reasons on the other side. I said, insurance takes a long time, and you can't do a lot about that. You have to take your insurance. The

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: only other thing I would add is that my original fiscal note had the net impact. But with the appropriations that were in the bill and with the reversions, it was 4,520,000 was the original bottom line impact for the opioid fund. When you add the $6.40 back in, the bottom line is 5,163,000.000. So $640,000 more. And I'll have an updated fiscal note. I have it drafted. I just didn't present it because it's not finished. You haven't voted on it. I can't Right.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Okay. What remains in the front? You have my cheek here.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: At that time, there was Who made this sheet? There was a balance. Think it was, so as of end of, so it was about 11,800,000.0 at the time, and then with $6.60, it's 7,300,000.0. But if we do this, take another $6.40 off, so it's like six point.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So everything's in the black.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Everything's in the black. And there's a Sackler settlement for roughly 20,000,000 ish in. We don't know what is coming in. It's the last tranche of money we're gonna get. The attorney general, I think, thinks it's gonna probably be a one lump sum versus some of the other ones that are kind of trickling in. If you look at my old fiscal note, you'll see I have sort of an allocation and spending, what it looks like through 2037. I always recommend don't spend $20,000,000 until you have it.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Absolutely. So just to sort of sum this up, we're moving the original appropriations from the opioid special fund back into the opioid special fund, not touching the Substance Misuse Prevention Fund. We're doing the correct reversions. And we have language in there to pause, look at effectiveness, and all of those things so that we understand it better. So this feels like a stronger build than what came to us from my perspective, those standpoints. David and Wayne?

[David Yacovone (Member)]: I think you

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: were very confusing about

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Tiff, do you know, did both House Human Services and the Opioid Advisory Committee, do they both agree on doing no expenditures in '28, or was it one or the other?

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: This was not a discussion that human services had with the opioid abatement.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: They did not know

[David Yacovone (Member)]: what happened.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, settlement committee, advisory committee. But a member of that advisory committee serves on Human Services, Eric Maguire. Supported this. And supported this, yes.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: And was it unanimous amongst the committee?

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: It was nearly unanimous, if not.

[Eileen Dickinson (Member)]: Pardon?

[Katie McLennan (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't remember the vote.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Yeah. If not the vote, the discussion, did anybody talk about an alternative to doing nothing?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Well, they're not doing nothing because there are certain programs that are continuing. Oh, I understand that.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: I mean, new.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's just not new until they

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: It's just there are a lot of underspent grants, grants that will take until maybe at least the middle or two thirds of the next fiscal year to expend. And so this is where the committee seemed to feel most comfortable, given the table that they saw that Nolan had about the impact of the spend down on that fund. Department of Health just came out with a strategic plan around substance use programming and its reason of what is most effective. And the Human Services Committee wanted everybody to be on the same page. And that this fund and the Substance Abuse Prevention Fund to be aligned with where we want to go in the future.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: I appreciate it. I'm informed, I'm not persuaded, but I don't want to hold things up.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So the vote out of human services was ten zero. On the original bill. But they they put So the money being spent, they they agreed on all the money that's being spent. We're changing the source of funds for that, those things.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: But we did not put in putting a hold on.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: They put the pause on. They put the pause Yeah, right. Wayne?

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: I just want to say that I agree with you, that I think this is better than what we got. My concern is that we spend the money wisely, don't It squander actually gets effective pretty much whatever it is that we're going get out of this. So

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I would like to have the committee vote on this bill,

[Eileen Dickinson (Member)]: if people are comfortable doing that.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So I'd entertain a motion to This is as amended. Oh, it's probably slow because we're getting the record back Age in June, was it originally amended by Human Services, and then as amended by us? Yes. Okay, as amended by Human Services and further amended by appropriations? Recommended

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Recommended by the Right?

[Katie McLennan (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. You're amending the committee

[Eileen Dickinson (Member)]: to require our Human Services. Okay.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: As recommended by human services and amended by appropriations.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Okay. We're going need a lot of

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: those pieces of paper today. This week.

[Katie McLennan (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This week.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Tomorrow is our big building. It's not our only building.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: We're going be having to go back and

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: vote on a lot of other ones that we've already heard, once we have a sense of the money and where we want to spend

[David Yacovone (Member)]: it, that we need to have. Do I

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: have a motion?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I've asked for it, John.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: I'll forward that motion. Second?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Wayne? Okay. Any further discussion at this point?

[Eileen Dickinson (Member)]: Seeing none. Whenever the clerk is ready.

[Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Representative Bluemle? Yes. Representative Dickinson? Yes. Yes. Representative Feltus? Yes. Representative Kascenska? Yes. Representative Laroche? Yes. Mr. McChartney?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: McChartney? Yes. Mr.

[Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: McChartney? Yes.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Thank you. And Tiff is the reporter of

[Eileen Dickinson (Member)]: the bill. Thank you. We

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: have wrestled that one to the ground. You all, the fiscal and ledge council that was working with many people to get this out. But we're in the same thing.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So, okay, do I have the amendment twice?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: 2.1 should be on our committee page now. Is

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: that the amendment?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: The amendment is 2.1.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Okay, 2.1.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So, we have people coming in at 01:30, which gives us a little break. Just to let you know, I think our agenda got a little bit switched this afternoon. We're going to have James come in first and talk to us. He'll have spreadsheets about all the budget priorities that everybody sent in to him. So thank you for doing that. Got them and he's putting that together. I think we're going to have what everybody did, but anonymous, so your name isn't associated with it. And then he's working on sort of how many votes each one got. So we have a sense of the priorities, not just for each of you individually, but as the committee as a whole. So he'll present that. We'll talk about that and just see what we see. And then Emily's going to come in and talk about the different sources of funds so we can see if we have enough money to do a lot of the things that we like to do. So, that's where we'll go with that this afternoon. Then we may talk about, I guess I had said that to autumn, whenever it was, process of bills that still needed to be voted on. So we'll talk about that then too. So unless there's any other questions, we'll just go