Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Good afternoon. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Thursday, March 19. It's still 2026, and it's 04:30 in the afternoon, and we are going to look at a draft of additional funding for the FY 'twenty seven budget. We had to a few more typos and put money in the right place. And that's why this took a little longer than everybody thought. So we think it's now as close to correct as it can be. This is still a draft. In a minute, I'll ask Emily and James to come up, and we'll talk about it. But just so the committee knows and anybody else who's interested, we still have a bunch of bills to pass out. We've done six today, which is great. I'd like to pass a few more out. The more we can get out tonight, the less we have to deal with it tomorrow. I'm hearing rumors that there might be a couple of roll calls on the floor. So here we are. So that's another reason I want to get as much as we can out today. So there's a couple of bills on here that we have heard about that I am getting amendments to take the money out because I'd like to pass the bills along. There's a couple of bills we're going to leave on the wall based on what we've talked about, or at least one. I'll go through it as we go through the list. But if there are other ones that didn't make it into the budget and there was money, I'd like to do the committees the courtesy of at least letting it go through the process and to the Senate from here. So that's the plan. So there might be maybe three more bills that we do today. I'm not entirely sure. Let's see. We'll see how that goes. All right.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Julie, could we get new copies?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We're about to get new copies. You. Drumroll please, Emily and James, would you like to come up? And it will be posted on our committee web page. If not right now, shortly. A reminder that we

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: It's not done. It's sad.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I have a thing on sticky on my computer. Nothing is decided until everything is decided. So if you're happy or you're sad, we're not done yet. Even if you're happy. That's where we are. Okay. So I think you want to pass things out, please? It's posted. So I did make a few changes from what I showed you all last night at 09:30 because I've had conversations with each of you and went back and looked at some things and heard some other things. Nolan was running around getting global commitment information. Catherine was reminding us that something wasn't based. It was one time. So we've had a few changes that may or may not look familiar. We'll just start at the top. Do you want to talk about the budget sources, Emily?

[Emily Byrne (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Sure. Let me jump in on Zoom so I can share it. It's on our committee page two. Yay. And it's been emailed to you, so if you want to look at it that way, have multiple options. Great.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Appreciate that.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We did it in columns this year for people that are listening and checking online to be clear what's base and what's one time. It was easier for me to think about it that way, and hopefully it's easier for everybody else to see what's where. Hold on.

[Emily Byrne (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Someday I'll learn how

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: to share my screen quickly. When you do, you can teach me because I'm not the one that either. There

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: we go. Okay.

[Emily Byrne (Joint Fiscal Office)]: All right. So for the record, Emily Byrne from the Joint Fiscal Office.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Jamie's got me at Joint Fiscal.

[Emily Byrne (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And so this is the spreadsheet that we put together for your discussions about the budget thus far. At the very top in the sort of purply color, these are the sources of additional revenue for the budget this year. The first change, and this should look familiar, is the miscellaneous tax bill changes of $9,220,000 So and that's net the FY 'twenty six impact and the FY 'twenty seven changes. So I just want to point

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: out that we have not yet passed the miscellaneous tax bill. If we don't pass it out, we don't have this money. Just say it. Okay.

[Emily Byrne (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Correct. The next one is the direct application of the interest that has been earned by the Technology Modernization Fund into the general fund. That'll be a one time source of funds for $9.4.9500000.0. Line three, we have a reversion for the emissions repair program at the Agency of Natural Resources for almost $600,000 I believe this was identified when you reviewed the reversions or the carry forward from the agency. The pretrial supervision reversion from the DOC based, sorry, yes. The 850,000 from DOC and then pretrial supervision one time reversion from one time appropriation at DOC for $650,000 And then in ADS, as part of Act 73, was a committee that was working on the maps as part of that, dollars 100,000 was appropriated to ADS to help with the Center for Geographic Information Services. They only used about $20,000 of that appropriation. So there's $80,000 left. That committee is done. So those funds are no longer needed there. And then an additional direct app from Agency of Human Services. There is currently a direct app in the base for about $4,600,000 This would increase it to $5,000,000 We just made it

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: a nice tidy round number.

[Emily Byrne (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So for those sorts

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: It's taken eight years.

[Emily Byrne (Joint Fiscal Office)]: The sources of the general fund, the base sources are $10,400,000 and one time $10.89

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: And

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: then we had some things that we did in the budget adjustment that we had to annualize for this year. And we knew that when we made the budget adjustment. So this should all look familiar. Some security costs from judiciary, the ERC tier one annualization, and the AAA's rate increase that we did. So that should all look familiar. Do you want to talk about the two TBDs under other bills? Emily did a really nice job, I thought, of organizing this in ways so that it's just not all over the place. There's some logic to it. So we have the bills, and then we have by agencies and departments, the way it's set out in the budget. And then we have another because nothing gets fits perfectly. Just those first two, sixteen and seventeen. Sure.

[Emily Byrne (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I can walk through those two. So the Pay Act bill is currently under deliberation in GovOPS. The numbers the governor's recommended budget had some amounts in it for the Pay Act that we talked about. In reviewing those numbers, it looks like there may be some additional needs for Pay Act in both the judicial and the legislative branches based on their calculations. It's not finalized yet, but this is just to sort of hold money in case those numbers need to go up. It's probably gonna be around $2,000,000 based on our initial estimates for those two branches, but it's not finalized yet. The actual appropriation for Pay Act happens in the Pay Act bill. So there will be no You won't see anything in the budget, but it will be sort of held for that purpose in the budget construct. The second one, in conversations with ways and means about what is likely to appear in either the education bill or the yield bill to be determined, it's anticipated that there'll be some changes related to the homestead declaration, I believe. And the tax department will likely need a position to do that. So this sets aside some money for the tax department if that were to go forward as it's currently being contemplated.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: But it's not settled yet. Okay. Great. And so, then in the rest of the bills section, we hope these all look familiar. We just passed out the data brokers, and the money's going to go with the bill or the $50,000 We passed out H-four 10, the recidivism and related criminology measures. That's the statistics stuff that's going to be in the base, and we passed that bill out yesterday. So we want to account for it. Adding a mediator position to the Remote Labor Relations Board, we're going to keep the money in the budget and not pass the bill, because the bill was about the position, and it doesn't make any sense to just have a whole bill about that when we're putting it in here and we're taking care of it that way. The parole board, age five fifty nine, we passed out last week. And so that money is accounted for here. As Trevor talked to us, some of that was coming from the pretrial supervision reversions because we're not doing that. We're doing the accountability courts instead. We just passed out the prescription drug card program. So that's the $50,000 at one time. We have not passed out H-six 57 yet, but we had to assume that we would for the purposes of this bill. And this is the amount of was this the Social Security? No, this was remind me.

[Emily Byrne (Joint Fiscal Office)]: The reach up. The reach up asset test.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: The asset test. And the truth is that we don't know what it's going to be. It may be less, it may be more, But this was the best guess that no one could do. And if we needed to do something in budget adjustment, we could. But that's what that is. Oh, the emergency oh, I didn't. Thank you. I do want to mention it because I'm on it. Okay. We have not passed out age five sixty seven yet. And depending upon what we do with that, this could come into the bill. But I think we'll probably pass out that bill in whatever form we pass it out in. But that's the amortization task force that has to do with the pensions. As we get closer on the pension spree, the volatility matters a lot more. So there's a task force to deal with that and have some consultants who actually know what they're doing help us out. And then, thank you. Six fifty seven, we haven't voted either. No, that's what I said. We have not voted that out, but we've put the money in here to account for it. That's why this can all change. You see the word draft in big red letters, everybody at the top. The County and Regional Governance Study Committee, H. Seven sixty two. I see that on our list. The status of seven sixty two, Lara? Think we voted that out. Did you vote it out? Yeah. Okay, so the money went with it. Okay. Great, don't have to worry about that one. H772, don't know whether that's gonna get voted out or not, but even if it doesn't, we've set aside 1,000,000 for the rental arrears program. We can deal with that on the budget if the bill doesn't go. Age seven seventy eight, dam safety, we just voted that out today, and the money is being accounted for here. Back to the miscellaneous tax bill, there were two parts of it that are money, that the JFO ten year tax study happens every ten years. And so that's $100,000 that we put in one time because it's once every ten years. That number before looked like 150 in days, and it's now been broken out. The fish and wildlife feed change, because it didn't happen, is 50,000, and that's in base. So that was how the 150 got broken out. Okay. So now we're beyond bills. We are looking at doing some rate increases for the DAs and SSAs, home and community based services. And that was in there before. Nolan did a little looking, it looks like the number actually came down a little bit. It still accomplishes what we're trying to do with rate increases. The healthcare, yeah Dave?

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: I apologize, can you just tell me a little bit more, is that a percentage across?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We can't do percentages. We cannot talk about

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: It's percentage. We can't. How not would I imagine the order of magnitude? Just can't talk about that. Is it, you know, is it key a or is it a

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: a particular record? We're trying to run a needle.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Can I talk

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: to Maybe we can talk off the record?

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Oh, no. No. Let it go.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We're trying to give more money to the agencies as we've done in the past. Thank you. Good enough. Great increase. The health care advocate was originally at one point about 110. We have not taken away money from the health care advocate, but there's more global commitment. And so that's down to 59,000 instead of 110,000. That's why that number is different. Because we took some things out of the bills up above, we did and because I talked to some of you about some of these things. So there's some other money coming to legal aid. The helpline funding, there's global commitment. So there's a $56,000 increase. That's $100,000 in global commitment. This goes way back. But the helpline doubled the number of calls between twenty three and twenty four from 11,000 to almost 22,000. And so we wanted to give them some support for the helpline there. Bridges to help, we had before. We've talked about that. 500, the free and referral clinics, 462,000. There's General Global Commitment as well, which between the two would total the nine twenty four, I believe. I have little x's on my

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: fifty-fifty match.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Fifty-fifty match. The home health skilled nursing is like the rate increase for the DAs and SSAs, but they're a different class. And this is where we get into trouble every year. We say, we want to help all these organizations, and then they're coded differently, and somebody gets left off in a budget adjustment, we're saying, because like the AAAs, for example. So we're hoping that this year we got it right.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: We have language on this.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes, and we have language. Dave knew, thank goodness you worked there, and you could explain all that to nobody. Knew who helped us. Anyway, that was what that was. We had two parts of AHEC, the primary care loan repayment and the doctor placement. There is a global commitment, I believe, for both of those. We don't have the numbers on here, but that's the general fund, dollars 21,000 for primary care placement, and then the loan repayment for 02/31. The American Heart Association is one time for the AEDs in schools of 150, the Youth Council for 140, the Community Outreach Program that all the legislators in Chittenden County and the police chiefs and everything, we talked about that before. And the day shelter, talked about. So these are not new. On the next page, we have elder care, which we chatted about yesterday, supporting our elders. The food bank is in two different places, and this is one of them. This is 400,000 to the food bank directly. We'll have to decide whether this is Vermonters feeding Vermonters or local food shelves. They were asked in both categories, and I did not make that decision, but thought that we could talk about what that was.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Was there any in the governor's recommendation for the food bank? I thought there was last year.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I don't know. I don't think so. No, I'm hearing no from people

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: who was don't a $5,000,000 ask from

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: the food bank overall. Right. And the other one for the food bank down under protection is the rapid response. The request was for 1,000,000, and we put half 1,000,000 in there for the rapid response. So the food bank shows up in two places. Prevent child abuse, which is also known as nurturing parent, I think, which has a proven track record. We put the funds in for that. There's some global commitment there. For 165, the parent child centers for 180. And I think there's some global commitment in that one. Don't quote me on that, but that's what I think. The two eleven contract, this is to help particularly from the four to ten o'clock time with staffing that, because that's when most of the calls happen. This is not the overnight. We discussed that, I think, already. Meals on Meals also has some global commitments. So we put half 1,000,000 in, and with global commitment, the total would be just over $1,000,000 $1,190,000 The disabilities housing coordinator and the deaf and blind support service provider, which we put that deaf and blind service provider back in. HomeShare, so they can expand for February, and Homelessness Vermont for February. And then under protection, and it's funny to see the Agency of Ag under protection, but that's where it is in the budget. So we have NOFA for the cash crop, cash crop plus, and what

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Crop catch.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Crop catch. You all know what I'm talking about. We've talked about the rapid response. We've had vacancy savings for the state's attorneys. This is a new one that we put in, which we all forgot about. But the home improvement specialist is that that's the person that is in the attorney general's office who, when people have a problem and they're not the person takes $4,000 for your roof and then never comes back, their only recourse is through the AG. This has been a limited service position. They had asked to make it full time. It saves millions of dollars for Vermonters. And so I took really really putting that back in there, putting it in there, because we've taken some other things out. We're not spending more money at the bottom, as you'll see. The defender general, we put in $3.50. Trevor, I did not specify. I'll break it up. Yeah. I thought I could let you do that. The Domestic and Sexual Violence Fund transfer is aligned with the Center for Crime Victim Services Grant Administration. I think that's the one where we did $3.50 in the fund transfer and then 100,000 Center for Crime Victim Services. The two worked together, and Trevor will explain it if you have more questions about that. But we did the same kind of thing last year. Vermont Access Network and Van Community Radio were both back in. The elections, every other year, he helped us stay as secretary of state with a general fund appropriation of $4.50. James has on his notes for next year, instead of doing four fifty every other year, it may make sense to do two twenty five every year, like the $2,002.57 payroll thing. So we aren't doing it this way. The Professional of Colors Network, it turned out that they only needed $75,000 So that's the number that we have in there. Human Rights Commission is the return of some vacancy savings and a position. And then in the environment section, we have the conservation districts for $300 and serve, learn, and earn, I think. Is it earn before learn or learn before earn? Must be learn before earn. Earn is the last word in that.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Or it could be serve, earn, or learn. Well,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: think it's in order of how you do things. You serve people, you learn a whole lot, and then you start earning money. Because people always serve, you earn money, and you

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: learn how to not have to work.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That could be your programming. And then we have some blood safety, which is back from Act 121. They've requested three positions. We gave them two positions. And then some other things at the bottom, the Arts Council, we typically give them the full state match so they can draw down the full federal funds, and that's $39,000 or 38,000 and change. The ethics position for municipal work. Then we have some one time for Advance Vermont for $200,000 There's been requests in the past, we did it, I think, last week to the Child and Adult Care Food Program, CACFP, that goes to the Agency of Ed for 182. Vermont, the Municipal Technical Assistance for $2.50, that helps I think, Barney, you described that well. They really can help the little towns and communities across the state who don't have they're a three person select board, and regional planning doesn't get out to them, and they need help with some of these things. And we got some money in for the 200 and fiftieth, so Mike can go. I will not forget your comment from yesterday. So that is $50,000 The Freedom and Unity scholarships for $2,000,032.03 20,000,000 rather, so that we can fully fund students whose family's income is up to $80,000 And then in the treasurer's office, an expansion of VITA, which is the tax held for low income folks, for another 150 and then one Vermont Legal Aid immigration attorney. So those are all the pieces. And if I have this do you want to talk about the bottom part, Emily? Sure. We didn't spend it all. That's what I'm going to say. But you can explain the other parts.

[Emily Byrne (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Correct. So there, after all of that, assuming all of the revenue pieces pass, there is a balance between both one time and base of point half $1,000,000. There's a little bit more, base spent as compared to one time. But if you recall in the governor's recommended budget, there was about $30,000,000 of base money spent on one time appropriations. So there is some capacity in the current construct to shift that around a little bit. It's

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It was like 30,900,000.0, I think, Correct. That the governor used Of base used as one time. So if we have to use 700,000 of that. 700,000. 700 Pretty close. And so, the end of the day, we have 540,000 left from the sources at the top.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Not bad.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Not bad. There we have it. And we have a couple of things to tweak for specifics so we can get language. And comments are welcome. Emily and James will put this in with the governor's spreadsheet, so we'll have a big huge spreadsheet tomorrow morning that we'll go over. I can take a look at them. As I've said, again, nothing's decided until everything's decided, but this is where we are based on all of our conversations.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Yeah,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: we good? Yeah, I can say. Yeah. We

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: do know that the angst upstairs is about where that one time money's coming from.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That's right. Just for the record. I recognize that, and that's why I had the conversation that I wanted us to have this morning, so that we're well aware of, we're making decisions intentionally. And I think that this committee has done a really good job of thinking things through in how they want to do this. So yes, nothing's decided until everything's decided. But that's where we are. And I will ask Emily and James to put it in the big spreadsheet. We'll go over it again tomorrow. You'll have time to think about it tonight. We will have to make our final decisions tomorrow. It doesn't have to be at 08:00 tomorrow morning, but it'll be tomorrow before we go home. Thanks for all your good work. You. You. The information that we've had.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Oh, they haven't started their hard work yet.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, they'll be working on weekend. Committee, we're not done for the day yet. I do want to try to get a few more bills out. We're just checking on some amendments. And then we can try to pass three or four bills out. And I think then that would be it for the day, for this. And then we have some bills to pass out tomorrow that we have to wait till tomorrow. I already talked about this, right? Did I already say this? Maybe I didn't. Maybe I can't remember who I've said what to. Are they on the floor? There's bill on the floor.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: The bills that we need to pass.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: No. We're waiting, because they had a zillion bills today. There's also some spreading out. There's some of us, people wanting to think about things. May have more amendments. Need to hear more. Tomorrow, we're going to pass out the miscellaneous tax bill that gets us our $9,000,000 to $10,000,000 We are going to pass out Teresa's homelessness response bill. I think we're waiting for an amendment, Marty, from the emergency management And on the that's going to be changing because there are some things that may be in our budget that they put in the bill, which we can actually take out of their bill. Marty's on it. Great. Let's see. I do want to pass out the ADA coordinator. I already have the amendment. We'll take the money out and send it to the Senate. I don't know what we're going to do about the tenant landlord bill. Will he vote it out or we won't? I'll learn more tomorrow. That's still in flux. But we did take some money out of that already. So I'm sure there are going to be amendments based on whatever they I've asked James to ask Ellen for H740 and seven eighteen, so they're building energy efficiency and the greenhouse gas inventory, to take the money out and pass it along. I want to give the respect to the committee superintendent. I want to pass it along. The money will be out. It'll go to the floor and go to the Senate, and then we'll see what happens from there. We have not passed out the unaccompanied homeless youth services. We heard that one yesterday. There's some money in the budget if we end up passing it out. That was 140,000. Lynn will need to pass out the Treasurer Omnibus bill, so we'll look for your recommendations on that.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Is that the one that has the unclaimed property in the Yes.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So we have taken out the part with the 75,000 for the amortization task force. The Medicaid school based services is coming into the budget. The Labor Relations Board mediator is just coming into the budget, so we're not going to vote that out. The data brokers, we already passed out. And the last one was the government accountability bill, which was $150,000 to join fiscal office. And it turned out that it actually if we did it this year, we'd have to do it next year. It has to be at least two years. So I made the executive decision to take it out. If we really need to put it back in, we'd have to know that we were spending $150,000 in BASE for one time for two years. But it seems like there's only so much we can all do. So that one would just stay on the wall for them. So those are all the bills I have on my Oh, and I remade

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: I don't think we're going to

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: get the yield bill. That was passed out from I will check on that.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: We do the capital bill?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: The capital bill is not going to be ready until next week, but we may have the T bill, right, Chris? That's part two. So that's why I want to pass out as many bills as I can tonight. And then we'll kind of be as far as we can get. Then we'll see tomorrow. Yeah. Questions? Dave, you're thinking.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: I am.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I was wondering if

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: I should renew my hotel room for tomorrow night.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I would. I I'm going to be semi packed at my house with things ready to either take upstairs to go to bed or put in the car and go home, depending I don't know where we're going to be tomorrow. Last year, we were here at 11:15, and so I stayed here. But you'll decide what it is you want to do. But I wouldn't count on, at this point, that it just never as as our intentions are, it never seems to be 05:00 on Friday that we're voting out the budget. We

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: need to review all the language.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We also need to review the language. So tonight, when we're done with all the stuff here, I'm going to go over to JFO and review the language with them, and then we're going to do the language here as well. I have no idea how much we have, but we'll start marking up on the language tomorrow morning. And I'm thinking I'd like us to start at 08:00 tomorrow morning. I just feel like the earlier we start, the earlier we're going to get down on the other end. I think that's as early as I can push it for me. She's going to stay alive. Well, we all need to get she rest. And if you want staff. Yes, and we need staff too. We need them healthy and lively. We're exhausted on Friday They got a lot to do this weekend. This is their big weekend. And then we'll be back in, remember, on Monday afternoon to look at it and do our final vote.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Do we have an update on potential roll calls for upstairs?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I haven't heard anything more. Does anybody Wayne or Harvey, have you

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: heard anything else? I have heard yes. It happened today. Bill six forty two. Six forty And

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: that's the Youth Offender Bill. Was up for you. They must have delayed. And that did not come to our committee. Looking at Trevor, because it would have been yours. Means the Fender Bill, they don't come. We're not

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: We don't have to go upstairs and vote on it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Well, the World Politics go upstairs and vote. This is not the week for the appropriations committee to go home while they're still on the floor.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: They looked at it. It's kind of funny.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We all bought it all. So thank you all for hanging in there. And just hang out, and we'll figure out when these amendments are coming. And then we'll come back and try to vote on three or four bills. Thank you all for your patience and being here this afternoon. And remember, nothing is besides. I feel everything