Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Good afternoon. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It's Bill Friday, 03/20/2026. It is 02:45, and we have a couple more bills to take up. The next up is the yield bill, H949, and we have John Gray from Legislative Counsel and Julia Richter from Joint Fiscal. If both of you or whoever wants to come to the table, we'd love to see you.

[Speaker 1]: Afternoon.

[Speaker 2]: It's

[Speaker 0]: hey.

[Speaker 1]: John Gray, Office of Letterson and Counsel.

[Speaker 3]: Julia Richter, JFO, good afternoon. Thanks for being here.

[Speaker 1]: For sure, happy Friday. And we have the yield bill. Just a second and I will screen share. Okay. So this is the yield bill. It contains the things you would expect along with a few technical provisions, which I can talk about as well. But I think the main piece to hit is the setting of the yields themselves. That you're gonna see on page two. The tech itself is gonna be relatively boring to describe, so I'm happy to turn it over to Julia for questions about the economic or other impacts. But this sets for FY '27 a property yield of 9,170, income yield of 12,576, and a non homestead property tax rate of 1.698. In addition, this uses half of 140 104,900,000.0 available applied against current year tax rates, and the remainder is reserved. As you see in section two, that 52,450,000.00 is reserved to offset educating property tax rate increases in f y twenty eight. And I don't know if you wanna join in with the I'm happy to go through the full bill or whatever is convenient to the committee.

[Speaker 3]: Madam Madam Chair, what would your preference be? Would you like us to talk through each section? They all kind of stand by themselves, or do you want to have a bill walk through and then just the walk through?

[Speaker 0]: How much do we need to know in the bill itself?

[Speaker 1]: I don't think you would expect me to I I can quickly go through the remainder of the sections, if you just want to knock those out.

[Speaker 0]: Then my favorite is the Education Fund outlook and then the fiscal note. So we want to do that, and then if you want to tell us what rep chair Kornheiser's gonna do for the amendment at the very fifth, because we're not gonna

[Speaker 4]: be with you. She's gonna do it. Yep.

[Speaker 1]: Okay. So I think it makes sense for me to just knock out all pieces and then take over again.

[Speaker 5]: That sounds good.

[Speaker 0]: Thanks.

[Speaker 1]: So section two creates the reserve. Section three is a technical change to clean up references to the statewide adjustment in the proper tax credit chapter. Section four, you may be familiar with this, but Barry overpaid its FIP payments. This is a refund from the Ed Fund. This is the section that representative Kornheiser has an amendment that's a technical cleanup. As you can see here, we referenced transferred from the Ed Fund to the city of Barrie. Don't have an appropriation from a particular entity. So that is what Kourneisler's opinion does. It's actually transferred to It's gonna be appropriated from the Ed Fund to the Department of Tax, who will then make a payment to the city of Barrie in this amount. Just because

[Speaker 6]: can't Exactly.

[Speaker 0]: Do what it says. We have to do it differently. Exactly. They're still gonna get their money just in the break.

[Speaker 1]: So no substantive change there. Section five is another sort of technical change to the census grant block in title 16. This is to provide an inflation adjustment for the uniform base amount from FY twenty seven forward. So instead of having this lengthy language which set up establishment of the uniform base amount in title 16, We can strike all of the transitionary language that got us to the point that we are today. And you can see at the bottom of page five, it just codifies the outright FY '27 figure and then inflates forward. And then last thing is the effective date, FY 01/2026.

[Speaker 0]: Julia would tell us what it all means in numbers.

[Speaker 3]: Yeah, so there's two documents on the committee page under my name. I guess, do have a preference if I start with Outlook or the fiscal note?

[Speaker 1]: What would you like? The outlook, please.

[Speaker 0]: I like the outlook. It's my favorite document.

[Speaker 7]: Oh, great. Okay,

[Speaker 3]: so the Education Fund Outlook, got it here, sharing it on the screen. You'll recall this is similar, but not an operating statement for the Education Fund. This is what we use in your house committee on ways and means as they're contemplating the yield bill to look at the ins and outs and the summary lines. So what we see here is just big picture orienting us. Column A is showing you the FY '25 actual. Column B is showing you preliminary. FY '26, it's preliminary, of course, because the fiscal year has not closed. And then lastly, column C, this is showing H nine forty nine, estimated impact of the bill as introduced for fiscal year 2027. So here in rows C, D and E, you see the yields and the uniform non homestead property tax rate that John spoke to. These have been set according to a number of parameters that I'll walk through, but they've been set at a level so that the education fund is fully funded after accounting for all forecasted education fund expenditures and subtracting out the forecasted non property revenues coming to the Ed Fund.

[Speaker 0]: So it's math.

[Speaker 3]: So it's math. The yields and the rate will result in an estimated average property tax bill increase for education property taxes in fiscal year twenty twenty seven of 7%. And this is compared to FY '26. I want to remind the committee that this is an average bill increase. So because homestead property tax rates vary across the state, as you all know, based on local per pupil spending, as well as your property tax credit, you will see wide variance beyond that 7%. So John mentioned this. Shall I keep walking through the outlook? Okay. The yield construct assumes the 104,900,000.0 general fund transfer of one time. You can see that captured in line eight. This construct uses half of that 104.9 for the purpose of uniformly lowering the average tax bill in fiscal year 2027. And then Section of the yield bill reserves half of that, so $52,450,000 for the purpose of reducing FY 'twenty eight property tax bills.

[Speaker 0]: So the decision was made to buy down property taxes over two years using the same $105,000,000 Correct.

[Speaker 3]: So half of it this year, half of it for FY '27, half of it for FY '28. The other piece I will add about one time monies in addition to the half of the general fund transfer that's being used to buy down property tax rates in FY '27. This construct also uses the entirety of the estimated FY '26 education fund surplus for the purpose of lowering property tax bills in FY '27. So it's that 52.45 of general fund, that half of the general fund transfer, plus the 22.33 of the Education Fund service.

[Speaker 2]: Wayne, just roughly and quickly, 7% is the average. What's the range?

[Speaker 3]: I've been asked that before. Unfortunately, it's an impossible question to answer because of the huge variance based off of both the local homestead tax rates of FY '26 and FY '27, and also the fact that we have an income sensitized property tax. So dependent on how incomes have changed and property values changed.

[Speaker 0]: That's why it's hard to connect the dots with the funding mechanism that we have. It's just you can't say if I cut my tax, my school board by a whole lot, I wouldn't save that much because it depends on what all the other schools in the state do. Tom, do you have a question?

[Speaker 1]: I'd like to get a

[Speaker 8]: little bit more remedial on this because I'm looking at these numbers on FY27. First question. Would be, first question will be, what will be the impact on next year's December 1 letter estimate based on this $52,000,000 thing we learned last year that the use of all of the funds accounted for 50% of the prospective tax increase in the December 1 letter. A lot of us don't politically, I don't believe it's doing it this way, I'm not interrogating you on why, but the what is the impact of the way that we're paying down. I view it as paying down the tax increase, not paying down the property taxes, we're paying down the tax increase. What will that have next year and the year after that?

[Speaker 0]: So

[Speaker 3]: a couple of pieces on that. To your point, it's using one time money for an ongoing increase. And so what that ultimately means is that once there is no more one time money of the same amount, we will see the property tax increase to the amount that they would have been in the prior years, plus the amount that they are going to be increasing in that year. For the purpose of the FY twenty eight December one letter, I don't know because we don't know what the budget projections are going to be nor what the revenue forecast is going to be. That said, the more one time money that's used in one year, the bigger the increase is going to be in the following year. The other piece that I will note is that the yield bill includes a provision associated with the property tax rate offset reserve, that 52.45 that's being set aside for FY '28. You may recall that the December 1 letter has a set of assumptions that the Department of Taxes and the JFO are required to follow all of these parameters for solving the December 1 letter. So it's a consensus exercise. And included in the reserve of the funds, JFO and tax need to assume that that $52,450,000 is going to be used to lower FY '28 rates. So you'll see that baked into the December '1 letter projection.

[Speaker 8]: So when I see on the top line here that it says $1.59 and you're saying that the uniform rate change is 7%, So how much of the 7% increase then is due now to the money that we spent on last year? If in December 1, if I was working with a number that 50% of it was going so 6% overall was going to be increased due to the pay down last year, how much of this 7% is related to the pay down from last year?

[Speaker 3]: I can't answer that exact question, but I can provide some information that I hope will answer the question, which is, yes, to your point, we see in line G that uniform increase of 7% compared to the prior year, you see the line below it. Line H is the education spending growth of 4.2%. So that's where you can see that difference in the property tax bill growth being larger than the growth in education spending. The challenge is that property taxes are also set based off of the performance of non property tax revenues and the growth in other education appropriations. So we know that non property tax revenues are growing at a slower pace than education spending. And so as long as the non property tax revenues are growing slower than education spending, you're going to see property taxes increase over time. And then you further That increase is then further exacerbated by the use of one time monies last year, the one time general fund transfer of 77.8 that you see here in line eight plus the 43 in net fund surplus.

[Speaker 6]: So just one last one. So

[Speaker 8]: is it fair for me to say that based on the school budgets that have been passed thus far, that the schools that the school the 4.2% represents an increase in what's been voted on and passed so far, which is less than the 6% it could have been from the December 1 letter?

[Speaker 3]: Yes, so the estimate has come down. The December 1 letter was 5.8%. Now it's come down to 4.2%. And I would just note that those percentages, education spending and ed finances is actually a technical term. It's the total budgets minus the offsetting revenues of a school district and the remainder is education spending. So examples of offsetting revenues are categorically state and federal government tuition revenues that another school district may pay, use of reserves,

[Speaker 5]: that kind of stuff.

[Speaker 1]: Okay. No,

[Speaker 8]: I just want to be clear that schools seem to be doing their jobs, lowering the costs.

[Speaker 0]: So the education payment increased from last year, from current year of '26 to '27 is 4.2%, which is the stuff we're funding. Last year, the previous year from '25 to '26, that increase was 5.8%. So we've gone from 5.8 down to 3.2%, so despite the health insurance increase of 15% and all the other things that are going on. So the school budgets, I

[Speaker 3]: think schools took it pretty seriously this year. The other piece I would note to this end, and this is something that Wei Zanif had spoken about, I know the committee is aware that each of these percentages is, of course, on top of the prior year's base, right? So the faster that the base is growing, a smaller percentage may raise the result in a larger increase. Maybe dollars.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, there's dollars and percents. It's cheaper than things.

[Speaker 3]: And if there's someone sitting at the table and looking at trying to calculate the percentage difference between the Ed payment in FY '26 and FY '27, perhaps you may not get to the 4.2%. And that's because the 4.2% is a reflection of the average. So it's an average at the district level, not at the aggregate.

[Speaker 0]: So glad you understand all this, Julia. So any questions on the outlook? So the decision that was made by Housewives and Means was to take the $105,000,000 and buy down taxes over two years and not use it all next year, which then we would have $105,000,000 gap to fill in one year, up from hopefully not our general fund. My

[Speaker 5]: brain's trying to get caught up with all this right here, so I might just need you to repeat some explanation here again, so I don't quite capture yet in

[Speaker 6]: my head here why we're doing this. Absolutely. So What

[Speaker 5]: we did in previous years, I'm gonna say, not just last year.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, you mean the buy down?

[Speaker 5]: No, No, I understand the buy down here, but

[Speaker 0]: The rest of it is what we do every year.

[Speaker 5]: I just need some more explanation about that. So that Whatever summary you can provide.

[Speaker 3]: Yeah, perhaps it'd be tempting for me

[Speaker 0]: to go to the funeral.

[Speaker 6]: Why don't

[Speaker 1]: we go to the physical That might be helpful. Why don't we

[Speaker 6]: do that?

[Speaker 3]: So as John walked through, there's a few sections of the bill. We just topped the Ed Fund outlook that we were just looking at was really reflecting sections one and two of the yield bill. So section one, this is the setting of the yields and the rates for fully funding the education fund. This is done annually. You'll recall that the yields are used for the purpose of calculating the homestead property taxes and the property tax credit. The non homestead rate is a uniform rate across the state at the equalized level. Big picture, those yields and rates are estimated to result in a 7% increase in the average property tax bill across Vermont. Those just scrolling down here to the background in details, this talks about it a little bit more detail in words. There's a couple of sort of big picture pieces that are beyond perhaps the quote unquote normal, whatever you want to call that construct. First, that these yields and rates assume that the 104,900,000.0 of one time general fund has been transferred into the education fund. That money is not transferred into the education fund. The education fund will be in deficit based off of these estimates.

[Speaker 0]: The

[Speaker 3]: second assumption included in calculating these rates and yields is that half of that $101,104,900,000.0 of general fund is used to buy down property taxes in f y twenty seven, and half is held in reserve for buying down property taxes in fiscal year twenty eight. We used the totals on the first bullet here. Correct. Correct. Because that would be a question for your housewives and needs committee.

[Speaker 0]: Well, didn't hear I your question, can't

[Speaker 6]: hear the

[Speaker 5]: Yeah, I just Well, she was going down through the first bullets here. We're gonna use half of the total here to buy things out for this year here, and so I asked, so, it's kind

[Speaker 0]: of why are we doing that? Why did they choose it to do it in two years Yeah. Instead of one

[Speaker 5]: That's my question.

[Speaker 0]: I guess, let me just

[Speaker 5]: I just wanna make sure I understand Sure. Why we're doing that.

[Speaker 0]: I'm gonna check to see if the chair is around to have

[Speaker 6]: her come down. Might be okay.

[Speaker 0]: I mean, can give you my personal reason. I think it's more fiscally responsible to do it over two years than over one year. Especially when I think about our budget for next year and where are we gonna be on it.

[Speaker 1]: I'm just asking about What happens

[Speaker 0]: to property taxes the next year if we don't do a more of a soft landing? But let me see if she's around. Okay, let's continue. Lynn, did you have Yeah, a just wanted to verify. It says here, 104,900,000.0 of one time general fund is transferred to the end fund for fiscal year twenty twenty seven. And that is what helped determine your yield and your tax rate in section one.

[Speaker 5]: Introducing debt.

[Speaker 0]: Just want to make sure. You have to add back half of it somewhere along this.

[Speaker 3]: Yeah, I'll go back to the forgive me if everyone on the committee knows this, but I think it's helpful to just take a step back and think about the way the education fund just works because it's so different than the general fund in some manners. And that's because the education fund is a self balancing fund using the property tax. So essentially, what we do is we sum up all of the appropriations out of the education fund. We subtract the non property revenue that is forecasted to come into the education fund. And then whatever that remainder is that needs to be appropriated or is going to be appropriated, but the non property revenues aren't going to make up for it, that's what property taxes need to raise or another revenue source. And so what the yield bill is doing is it is making the policy decision of how are we going to raise those property taxes. Are you going to raise more on Homestead? Are you going to raise more on non Homestead? Are you going to increase bills formally? And so in order to calculate those yields and rates, we need to understand both all of the appropriations estimated to come out of the Ed Fund, all of the monies being reserved within the education fund, and all of the non property revenues for transfers into the education fund. Sections So one and two, really, from my perspective of looking at the outlook and the ins and outs of the Ed fund, need to be considered in conjunction with each other. It's assuming 104,900,000.0 is transferred into the Ed fund. And that is, to wrap Dickinson's point, included in the calculating of the yields and rates. Section two is reserving half of those monies into an additional reserve. So if language is requiring that 52,450,000.00 reserved in the Ed Fund, but that 52.45 doesn't make its way into the Ed Fund, then the Ed fund is short because money still needs to be reserved.

[Speaker 5]: That helps me better understand.

[Speaker 0]: Okay.

[Speaker 3]: That's really why the calculation of the yields and rates are the very last piece of the puzzle. First, we need to understand all of the ins and outs and all of the movement within the fund. If something's going to reserve next year, those money will be taken out of the reserve theory if the general assembly follows the legislative intent and will be used as a non property revenue source for FY 'twenty eight bills. Maybe

[Speaker 0]: you can't answer this, but when we use half of the 105,000,000 to reduce taxes, Am I reducing taxes on millionaires and people in trophy homes? Everybody's getting some relief.

[Speaker 3]: Yeah, that's the policy decision in the way these rates and yields are calculated. A choice. Was there

[Speaker 0]: any discussion about sensitizing that in some way? Yeah, so, and I see that we have the chair of ways and means. Asked the chair, didn't see your what? I snuck in while you were asking your questions. And Chair Fornheiser, maybe if you want to bring your seat to the table, we'll just bring your chair to the table. We can just have a party. No, thank you. There have been some questions. I know you all worked hard to get to this yield bill. Questions about how you decided on the buy down the way you did. And then I think you heard Rep. Yacovone's question about is everybody earning, saving equally or whatever.

[Speaker 4]: Oh, thank you. Representative Kornheiser, Chair of Ways and Means, representative from Brattleboro, nice to see you all again. I think I was here yesterday. Was it? I don't know, actually. You don't either, so it doesn't matter. So the yield bill we've been working on since the first week of the session, we spend at least three hours every Tuesday on it and then sometimes the second day on it. As you all know, the way we fund education is every school district in the state votes on how much they would like to spend. We put all that together, and then we fund that with a number of other revenues. And the variable in there is property taxes. Education spending has been growing faster than the other revenue sources. And that means that property taxes, including the grand list values, and that means that property tax rates need to go up. As you also know, we're doing a lot to lower to try to lower education spending or stabilize education spending while maintaining great quality schools and strong communities. But that's all happening in another bill. The yield bill is just about the property taxes. As we've been doing our work, we've been trying to balance two really important pieces of the puzzle. We want to make sure that Vermont is as affordable as possible for Vermonters and keep our property tax bills as low as we possibly can. We also know that spending one time money for, and you all know this better than I do, spending one time money for an ongoing expense is not the best practice. However, to your Ways and Means Committee, it was better than the alternative, which is increasing property taxes even more than Vermonters can afford. We are also very concerned in the Ways and Means Committee, as you all are hearing appropriations, that next year's budget will be even tighter than this year's is, and that our revenues will be even tighter next year. And so as we were balancing the need for a strong general fund transfer to lower property taxes, we wanted to make sure that we were gonna be able to do something significant next year for Vermonters property taxes as well. Because even in our most optimistic and fast moving thinking, the work we're doing to stabilize education spending and really transform our property tax system to meet more of your questions, Representative Yacovone, is at least two or three years out. And so we wanted to build a ramp, and we decided that a two year ramp was the best we could do. And that is what we did. So we very gratefully accepted that general fund transfer from you all and used half of that to buy down property taxes this year. We use some from the bottom line of the education fund, around 20,000,000. I'm sure, Julia, I gave you the exact number. You don't need it from me. And then we set aside the sort of the other 50 plus for next year's property taxes.

[Speaker 0]: Dave, do you have another question? Go

[Speaker 5]: ahead, Thank

[Speaker 3]: you for

[Speaker 0]: your incredibly hard work. You had not Could you have taken the 50 some odd million and increased income sensitivity for those Vermonters who are eligible for that? Would they have received a bigger benefit than if you lowered the tax rate? And I realized roughly 70% of Vermonters receive help through that. Did you look at doing that?

[Speaker 4]: We very much looked at doing that. Julia Richard describes that sometimes as a balloon. You can squeeze parts of the balloon and sort of other parts And pop we spent a lot of time looking at what if we just moved one of those levers? And we had a bunch of scenarios. If you look at maybe our outlook from two weeks ago, you can see all those scenarios. But the one thing that the Ways and Means Committee could really come to consensus on was that given the real lack of flexibility in our current tax finance system with the Ed Fund, we had to have a uniform rate change. Because what happens if we just put it on, say, the property tax credit is that there are a lot of Vermonters who it's more affordable, actually, a lower bill for them to pay based on their property taxes than on income. And so we don't wanna The lowest income Vermonters are not necessarily the Vermonters who are paying based or who are receiving the property tax credit, even though all instincts would lead one to believe that. It's really a mix of income and property tax values and your town and your tax rate in your town and all those things. So we tried to a few different ways, and we can't. It's one of the reasons that I'm really excited about the tax pieces of the legislation we passed last year, because it'll allow us to be much more sensitive in the future. But it takes a couple

[Speaker 0]: of years. It takes a couple of years. We can't just do it Dave, it looks like you have another question.

[Speaker 1]: I'm good. Thank

[Speaker 0]: you. Don't go away. We've got any other questions. Where are we, Julia?

[Speaker 3]: I think we had just talked about section one and two, and then you have three more sections of the bill. Do want me to

[Speaker 0]: pull the fiscal note back up? Yes, please. Thank you.

[Speaker 3]: Okay, so we just talked about setting up the yields and rates and the related piece of putting the 52,450,000.00 into the tax rate offset reserve. Those are the components that are most closely aligned with the yield portion. And then there are these other more technical type pieces included in sections three, four and five. So section three is a technical correction for the statewide adjustment. It is simply that technical. We can talk about it in more detail if you're interested. But basically, it makes sure that property tax credits are being calculated the way that they're supposed to be. And we, being council, JFO, and tax department, are in consensus on how that language should work. Section four, this is the piece that Representative Kornheiser will be offering a technical floor amendment about. The big picture, this has to do with the overpayment of the city of Barrie for their PIP district in fiscal years 'twenty one through 'twenty four. So this is going to be $150,576 being appropriated. I know that's not what it says here, but this is what the amendment will say, appropriated from the Ed Fund to the Department of Taxes for payment to the city of Barrie. This amount is estimated to have a de minimis impact on the education fund and property tax rates. However, we do know every appropriation out of the education fund may result in the homesick yield and or non homesick rate needing to be adjusted to ensure the ed fund is fully Is

[Speaker 0]: this going to continue for a

[Speaker 3]: few more years? Is this it? My understanding is that this is the final year and I'm excited that Ted is in the room who may have more context.

[Speaker 1]: Hi, Bernard. Can I have

[Speaker 0]: a final question? Yes, because

[Speaker 8]: it was an error in

[Speaker 1]: the previous property tax management system, and I can't remember what our new week five, which will be resolved.

[Speaker 3]: Great. Thank you. So that's section four. And then section five, this has to do with the Special Education Census Block Grant, which is the categorical aid for special education out of the Education Fund. Big picture, when it was first established in Act 173, not Act 73. It was moving forward to this $2,003.50 dollars base amount. We are there, but the language did not include what happens once we get there. It seems to have been a technical oversight. So this essentially, as John mentioned, cleans up the language, puts this 2,003 and 50 base amount in the statute, and then continues to increase that base amount by inflation every year in the future. So because the agency of education assumed that this would be the base amount for FY27, there would be no change to the gov rec budget because that's what the special ed appropriation was estimating.

[Speaker 0]: This comes from the ed fund?

[Speaker 3]: Yes. Yep. This you would Not categorical aid

[Speaker 0]: from Washington, like

[Speaker 3]: other This categorical aid from the state education fund. You can see it in line 12, but line 12 also includes other special education categorically beyond the census block grant. But it's included in that 276,700,000.0 in line 12. And that's it.

[Speaker 0]: So I think the reason we got, I don't think we always get the yield bill, but there's this 105,000,000,000 that general thought, which is why we got the yield bill. Any questions from the committee on this? Thoughts about how you're feeling about it or anything else?

[Speaker 7]: Tiffany? Yeah, I really appreciate the difficulty of the work that your committee has done. And I just want to say to our committee that I do feel that we are missing a really important opportunity by advancing all of this, the money that was in reserves, or carried forward towards buying down property taxes because we know that we will not have funding to fund some critical investments we know we need to make, like in school construction and DDHI housing, things that the budget didn't allow us to invest in at all, and things that I don't think we're going to have money for in the next five years. I don't know. I'm not an economist. But I think that this has been eating at me for the last three days. I'm proud of the work that we've done as a committee, and I'm proud of the work that you all have done. And I am disappointed that we are not taking something from what this, the surplus that we have. Think we could make a very strong argument to Vermonters that this is an investment in their future as well. I don't know where we're gonna find the funding for school construction or DDHI housing, or that $18,500,000 that gonna have to pay out because we don't have the provider tax. So, I'm really, I just you know I'm honest with y'all, and I'm really not being critical of these processes. I guess I just needed to say, for my heart's sake, that I fear that we are missing a unique opportunity to make a few investments. It doesn't mean we wouldn't buy down taxes to some degree. And I really mean, Chair Kornheiser, not to criticize the work that your committee has done. It's a decision, this decision made through very lot of conversations in my body is hard for me.

[Speaker 0]: I think it was challenging in your committee too. You started on this in January and talked about it every week. And even so, getting to any kind of consensus where you could get a vote out was really hard. This was a six five vote. There were other options I know that were considered by the committee that couldn't get a vote. I feel like this is another example of what the House Education Committee is trying to do, to get people to agree on how to move forward with education transformation. And this was really hard. It's not like what they're doing. And even in House Raising Means, there was not an ability to get any kind of real significant consensus to get that out of it.

[Speaker 4]: We've looked at probably 20 different scenarios over the many weeks until the spreadsheet got much too wide for anyone's comfort or viewing. And I think, you know, as a body and the whole state of Vermont, we're really stuck between a rock and a hard place with, you know, constriction from Washington, really slow population growth, and takes a lot of time to make the kind of structural change that we're going to need to make to make a difference here. And so you all have really hard decisions. We had really hard decisions to make. And I think we came down with what where we needed to come down, but can make a This is

[Speaker 0]: a scenario that you could get in a photo. To be quite honest, out of 20 scenarios, this was the one. So it certainly wasn't for lack of time. We appreciate that. Just one observation.

[Speaker 2]: Given the magnitude of the personnel costs in the education budget, we're never going fix this problem unless that is addressed. Number of personnel we have, my observation having been for a business that we've managed for years, simple as that, see how it goes, but that's my opinion. I don't think it's going to fix anything until we address the number of adults with classrooms.

[Speaker 0]: And we've got to

[Speaker 6]: put into

[Speaker 0]: it. There are lots of issues,

[Speaker 6]: and aren't we glad we're not on that?

[Speaker 0]: John had a comment and then Lynn.

[Speaker 5]: I would never ask you to tell us about 20 options here in the deck, we're to tail off the discussion, because I know you've been working on this from the first day you all met as a committee here, but What would you identify as a key thing that kind of It was a hard vote here, at least, I mean, we have hard votes here, here as well, for sure on things we're all passionate about, things we're thinking about is trying to bring us to better place, because that's what we're all trying to do, so we don't end up with double digit rate increases after people have already received some kind of double digit increase in a recent reassessment.

[Speaker 8]: Know, the tax bill, all

[Speaker 5]: of a sudden, it's just the monthly type. I think that's what's been really difficult for a lot of the communities across the state. We all hear it, we all experience it here as well. Was there any key thing that was different about whether someone supported this or not, like a key perspective? Maybe it was just a better, like weeks and weeks of discussion about this three hours, not two days a week.

[Speaker 4]: I think we were balancing sort of the urgent needs of today with the urgent needs of next year and the urgent needs of the year after. As much as we, as a committee, might want to reach into school budgets and change them, that is not how our education fund works, we can't. And so we sort of had the bill. You all have the amount of money you have, and then you figure out which bills you're gonna pay with it to some degree. We have the bill we have to pay, and then we figure out how we're gonna pay it, which is a funny way to do budgeting. And so we were really balancing, you know, the folks who felt like we had an urgent and pressing need this year, and we had to put everything towards this year, the folks who wanted to spread that over as many years as possible, and wound up really in the middle between those two ideas.

[Speaker 5]: The reality is we can't forecast that far out.

[Speaker 4]: No, we really can't. But we know that next year is probably going to be high. Yeah. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, there's a number in here that I'm curious if you've got any testimony on, but I find it a little bit disturbing. And that's the statewide education grant list for referrals from 14.3 to '25 to 14.1 in '26 to 10.4 in '27. That's a pretty sizable decline.

[Speaker 1]: So

[Speaker 4]: the testimony that we took, and I think Julia could probably add to this as well, is that the grand list growth in Vermont is generally, growth or decline is generally not about an increase in sticks and bricks or a decrease in sticks and bricks. It's about the state of the real estate market. And I think we all know that we had a pretty sizable real estate bubble, which was good for folks who were selling their house and not really so great for the rest of us. And it's just the market is coming down. Slow down. It's the normal. The trench now. Michael. But who knows? Maybe it'll crash next year.

[Speaker 0]: There's a lot of uncertainty in this world.

[Speaker 1]: Okay. All

[Speaker 0]: right, any other questions? I'd like to vote on this bill, and so we can let these folks go. And I really appreciate you all coming down. Is there a motion to approve the yield bill, which is H949? Mike, is there a second? Is there a second? Are we going to be able to vote this bill out, by Trevor?

[Speaker 5]: We've been raising our hands a lot.

[Speaker 1]: Yeah, we wanted somebody else to

[Speaker 0]: do it. Yeah, I know, you were in the tag team for a while, you're resting. Okay, any further discussion on the yield bill? Okay, the clerk is ready, you may call the roll.

[Speaker 1]: Representative Bloomley? Yes. Representative Dickinson? No. Representative Feltus? Yes. Representative Kascenska? Yes. Representative Laroche? Representative Mrowicki? Yes. Representative Nigro? Yes. Laurel, yes. Representative Stevens? Yes. Representative Yacovone? Yes. Representative Chuck? Yes. Nine 20.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, yes, and that's this one. Tax, but it's education. I think John has stayed the bridge.

[Speaker 3]: Thank you all very much. Thank you very much.

[Speaker 0]: Thanks for all their work. All right. Thanks for

[Speaker 4]: your patience with that very large

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That could be a whole other conversation, but we will move on. Thank you. We're going to go right into the next bill, which is the emergency management bill. And I know Spyron and Tango is going get drug grade bill. Yes, whatever it is. I haven't seen it. Can

[Speaker 6]: you print a copy for me?

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, I need you to grab the you can grab the copies. We'll get organized here. We are going to do age nine thirty five, accolating to emergency medicine. Let's see. We have lost a few people but

[Speaker 6]: I just see the bill.

[Speaker 0]: Pardon?

[Speaker 6]: We're looking for threading it. Yep.

[Speaker 0]: It's been posted, so give it a few seconds and refresh your screen.

[Speaker 3]: Very bottom.

[Speaker 0]: Here. There it is. The YC has introduced. I don't have an amendment yet.

[Speaker 3]: Keep refreshing. It is. It just did. Just like the mystery. Tucker, do you

[Speaker 0]: want to come take a seat? And before we talk about the amendment, I mean, the deshells of the amendment, I can't remember what we did the whole spill, R35, right? Did we take something down this bill?

[Speaker 6]: We are.

[Speaker 0]: Of the things in this bill are going to be in the budget. Some of the things aren't going to happen. And I can't remember what else. But I just want to remind people that we did a bunch of stuff with this, and that's why we haven't been mentioned. I can't remember everything.

[Speaker 6]: But that's where we have Tucker.

[Speaker 0]: Why don't you start Tucker?

[Speaker 9]: Well, good afternoon, committee Tucker Andersen Legislative Counsel. You should be looking at draft 2.1 of the committee's amendment to H935. Would you like me to share my screen as I for do this

[Speaker 1]: you?

[Speaker 9]: Wow. Got it on the first try. Hey. I'm learning and developing all the time. So to reorient you to H nine thirty five, the last time you took a look at this, you focused in on two primary sections of the bill. One section of the bill, section 12, dealt with reauthorization of expenditures of funds that have been held in reserve for three or four years for purposes of the public safety task force and the build out of a CAD system. Within that section, this committee had asked for some additional benchmarks related to the authorization for the use of these funds, and I've highlighted for you in this first instance of amendment exactly what you asked me to do here. Maybe I missed a little bit of the highlighting. In subdivision a three related to the 4 and a half million dollars that's available incrementally, you expanded the period of use of this, portion of the funds to three years from two years. And in subdivisions a through c, you've spelled out more precise criteria for how this is to be used over that three year period. Going to be used to implement and expand the LMR network to include a statewide conceptual design, detailed designs for one or more proofs of concept projects, and initially implement pilot projects, and finally, to build out or improve 10 or more LMR sites, including equipment and antenna deployment at existing chosen sites. Kasir, should

[Speaker 0]: I know Marty did a lot of work on this with the folks in GovOp. Do you

[Speaker 6]: want to say anything about how you got to all of these? These items actually were spelled out in the detailed reports that have been produced by a task force and the Department of Public Safety that has been working on this project to improve public safety communications across all the various parts of state, not only state, but local governments as well. And some of you may remember this started three or four years ago in trying to determine how they can be much more interoperable and connect information and have much better communications. So there was a great refugee plan that was designed and that has been refined over the last couple of years, and I have copies of the reports. And they have settled on these three steps to really get them into being much more on the same page, getting state forces, county forces, EMSs, those kinds of guys using the same type of equipment so that they can talk to each other and pass the information back and related obviously to E911, having all that much better connected. So in the original bill, had said $4,500,000 and it sounded a little vague the first time we get it. So, I fleshed out what that $4,500,000 is for and it comes directly from their reports. Have some design considerations they have spelled out what they think they need to do in order to make these units across the state far more efficient. That's what this is that you see in yellow which will help further spend the money that was originally appropriated back in 2022 and 'twenty three. And it was appropriated, they started doing some work on it, then the legislature said, wait a minute, we need to have some more details. And so they put the money on hold until they come back with some plans. And these are some of those plans so that they are obviously asking for that money to be revealed. And that's what this legislation would do. It's not any brand new money, it's money that was appropriated several years ago, but this lays out how they are going to appeal that And then it goes on, this was the new other, the original part of the bill that we did not change. The task force itself will be disbanding next January, And yet the plans are all put together and the Department of Public Service, Public Safety knows what they're doing with it and will follow through with that. So that's part of what we have. And then we added in, some reports so that we know what's going to be done and mark May '27, January 28, January 29 so that we get a benchmark of what's going on on all this. And then there will be some money left at the end from what had been originally put aside. And we are saying here that the Department of Public Safety has to come back to us and say, okay, we've done these things that were laid out and probably they'll say there are more things that we could do and we would like to use this same money for that, those same purposes furthering that system. But the language here says you must come back to the legislature and ask for permission and show a plan of what you wouldn't do with

[Speaker 0]: the balance. So, can't just hang out there. If they don't have a plan then then you're almost like you're whole side So,

[Speaker 6]: that was the main change regarding the Department of Public Safety and the Public Safety Innovation System.

[Speaker 0]: That was the big amount, the two big amounts in the carry forward that we had seen. Did Arti miss anything?

[Speaker 9]: Nope, those were all of the changes in section 12. Okay, well done.

[Speaker 0]: So is everybody okay with that? We understand what we're doing with that? It's good

[Speaker 6]: to have an actual plan and some benchmarks and so we know what they're going do. The gov ops committee is obviously very engaged in this and they will follow-up on it. Yes. They will keep us informed. Okay, thank you. And then there were a couple of more changes.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, let's go on now that we've gotten to that part.

[Speaker 9]: So section 13 of the bills introduced contained a couple appropriations. That section has been struck and replaced with three new sections. So first, there was an appropriation of 70,000 something dollars to the agency of administration to have the Vermont Language Justice Project develop all hazards media, evergreen videos giving instructions in 15 different languages, including ASL for how people respond to emergencies and all hazard events. That appropriation has been eliminated, and instead, the directive to create this media has just been given to the agency. And in the following section, there's some contingency language related to both that program for the evergreen all hazards media and for a program that's created in section two of the bill is introduced related to micro grants given to technical rescue teams throughout the state, that the duties to implement both of those programs will not apply and will not be effective unless the agency of administration for purposes of the language justice project and the department of public safety for purposes of the grant program for technical rescue unless the department and the agency have enough funds currently under current appropriations to implement those programs.

[Speaker 6]: The technical rescue plan, they were creating a cooperative group of people who were involved in technical rescues and they had 25,000 they were going to give out $5,000 grants to up to five different entities to help them with equipment and we did not have money in our budget so we've taken out the money of the appropriation here but that said they can go ahead and do those programs if they can find

[Speaker 9]: money. As a point of clarification there, both of those figures were not more than statements. So an individual grant could be not more than $5,000 but some of the information that the government operations and military affairs committee received were that some of these grants could be as low as a $100. And so if there's $100 of discretionary funds available, they could still operate the program and give out one grant. Alright. That leads just the appropriation section. All of the appropriations are gone except for one, a lonesome $500,000 appropriation from the general fund to the Department of Public Safety in f y twenty seven for the Ready Response Grant program administered by Vermont Emergency Management. And to refresh your recollection of what this is about, this is a grant to a five zero one c three nonprofit organization that operates a food pantry to hold shelf stable food and bottled water that Vermont Emergency Management can then give out during emergency response. The very first part of the original available support still there has a fairly complete description of what those activities would be, and who's going to

[Speaker 6]: be responsible for them, and what they expect to do. So,

[Speaker 0]: James, did we also put that in the budget? Is it all right, and it's in both places? What did we decide we were going to do with that? So 500,000 appropriation that's in our amendment. We agreed to that. I just don't know mechanically whether we are gonna do it in the budget as well as here or just do it

[Speaker 6]: We in decided we would leave it here, you have all of the language about what it is and how you do it and I everything else is

[Speaker 0]: just want us to double count it if we

[Speaker 6]: don't want to, but yeah. Yes.

[Speaker 0]: We're okay.

[Speaker 8]: Leave it in the bill.

[Speaker 1]: Yeah. Yeah, that's fine.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, I

[Speaker 6]: can't remember what we decided on.

[Speaker 0]: And so my other question is that I'm not seeing the We took out the Vermont Access Network because that's going to be in the budget, and we aren't doing anything additional with urban search and rescue. Is there something in here that deletes those in the budget?

[Speaker 9]: Yeah, so the sentence of amendment completely eliminates the appropriation section and replaces it with the three sections that I just walked through. So yes, those have been taken out.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, so am I looking at page three, line 13, is that what that is? Yes. Okay, thank you. Just wanted to be sure that it wasn't just anything. Okay. So I think that covers all of the things that we agreed to do. Does this sound vaguely familiar to everybody of what we have done? Thank you all for the work on the amendments. I feel like this is cleaned up and is in much better shape. Was a lot better and clearer.

[Speaker 6]: I think it's clear, particularly regarding the public safety, yes, communications. Right. Okay. We want it cleaned up.

[Speaker 0]: Yes. Are there any other questions folks have on this? If not, I would entertain that we'll do two votes. The first one will be on the amendment. So is there a motion to approve draft 2.1 of our amendment to nine thirty five? Vote. And John. Wayne. I looked at Wayne and said John. Okay, so there's been a motion and a second. Any further discussion on the amendment?

[Speaker 1]: Steve, that's recorded. I know I should have checked that already.

[Speaker 0]: Who's it going to? Let's call the roll on the amendment Then we'll do the bills and everything. Representative Bluemle? Yes.

[Speaker 1]: Senator Dickinson? Yes. Sorry? Yes? Yes. Representative Feltus? Yes. Representative Kascenska? Yes. Representative Laroche? Yes. Representative Mrowicki? Yes. Representative Nigro? Yes. Ms. Squirrell, yes. Representative Stevens? Yes. Representative Yacovone? Yes.

[Speaker 0]: Ms. Schott? Yes. Seven zero zero on the amendment. And now I'll entertain a motion to support age nine thirty five as amended by us, John. Okay. And Dave. All right, the team is back after a little rest. Any further discussion on the bill? Just thank you all again for your work. Okay, let's call the roll.

[Speaker 1]: Representative Bluemle? Yes. Representative Dickinson? Yes.

[Speaker 0]: All right, you can see where we are in our agenda. Our time is almost caught up. Is that possible? That's because we kept delaying, and keep Juliupon, your time is almost caught up. So

[Speaker 1]: we are

[Speaker 0]: going to take a break for ten minutes. And at 04:00, we're going to do a little bit more of the budget, and then we're going to have two more bills, and then we might be done. All right, so let's go on.