Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Good morning. This is the House Appropriations Committee, Wednesday, 04/01/2026, 11AM. And we are continuing our education series. And now we're going to have Amy Pope from Joint Fiscal Office talking to us about the position pool and how well that works, because we had a

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: lot of questions during the budget. And it's still mysterious.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So we're glad you're here. Thanks, Amy.

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, Amy Pope, the Joint Fiscal Office. And I have a presentation I can put up on the screen, and

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: then we can talk from there. So let me see if I can

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: do that.

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: There we go. So I thought that for the position pool, that's what you asked me to talk about today. And I think to talk about the position pool, we also need to talk about the position cap. So those are the two items. And obviously, you can go in other places as we talk about positions. And I'm putting this up here. We put this up in all of our presentations. But also, I wanted to just mention that previously, from working with the Joint Fiscal Office, I worked with the Administration and Human Resources, where I was the position management deputy director. So I have some experience. But I want to be careful as we talk about things that I'm not speaking on behalf of the administration. I may know how they did it three years ago, and it could have changed. So I may just pause and say, that's a great question for the administration. So I just wanted to clear that up. And then for what I'll talk about is the position cap, the statutory authority, what the position how the process of the position sweep, and then what requesting a pool position looks like from the administration side. And then I have some thoughts for you at the end, and you can go whichever direction you'd like to go from there. Okay, so to start with the position cap, the annual language is in your appropriations bill every year. It's an A107. And basically it's saying that no new positions are created except for those that are either temporary positions or positions that are created in the joint fiscal committee process. There are grants that are approved by a joint fiscal committee outside of the normal legislative process. And there are positions tied to those grants for a specific purpose. So the cap is not about those, and the cap is not about temporaries. It's about classified and exempt positions across it's really saying across all three branches of government. And some of that, which I'll speak to in a little bit, can be considered. And just think about this as it's a budgeting tool that you have that you're preventing the growth of positions by having this position cap, which I just said that. So the position cap, it can be thought of as controlling personnel costs because obviously it's not controlling what the healthcare benefits are or those, and there's many negotiating benefits, but this is really about the number of personnel that you're controlling that cost. And in some ways, it's controlling the workforce growth. And the departments and agencies come to you during the budget process to say, we need more positions and we need more money. And so there's a direct relationship. It also forces departments to look at the current positions that they have. There are vacant positions that they have. They have a need of some kind. There's a new program or a issue or problem. And they look at their existing number of positions, are there opportunities to move positions around, reclassify positions, vacant positions? Are there other areas of government that they're doing? So this is where that position cap forces these types of conversations to happen. If they had unlimited enough amount, they could create any position that they needed. It would not force that looking at the current existing positions that they have, which I'm going to call position control, which is the number of positions within a department's budget. And then the other thing that CABP does is it creates budget predictability, which what I mean by that is if departments are not just creating positions as they wish, as they need, that means they're not coming in a budget adjustment and saying, hey, we needed five new positions to do this thing. We need a million dollars for that. They still may do that, but they haven't already made the decision. They haven't already spent the money. They have to come to you as Emily says, the power of the purse. And that is also part of that position cap. One thing I didn't say about the language that's in the appropriations bill, this summer, spent a little time looking back at many years of previous appropriations. I feel like I went back to the '60s. And I'm not a lawyer, so take this for what you want. But every bill had some sort of cap. And sometimes it was just this department has a cap. This area of government has a cap of positions. And so it's been used as a budgeting tool in a way and a predictable thing for you, for the legislature, even all branches, really, that it's a methodical way of they have to come to the legislature to ask for that permission to grow that organization. Do you have any questions before I it?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Just going back to the '60s, all the budget books, I did a similar exercise for Fish and Wildlife Purpose once upon a time. And it was hard to find the books at that certain point, but I didn't manage to find it back in the 60s. So just for general information, were you able to where did you get the ones that you

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: We have a library at Joint Fiscal. So what have you got? We have all the white books. So not white, but they yeah. I think they're black. I think the last time we I bought them

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: all within the agency. Sometimes I had to go to different departments, but I eventually found them. Yes.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Questions? All right.

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Okay, so now we're going to talk about the position pool. And what's interesting about the position pool is it's not in statute. But we use or when I say we, I'm sort of the collective we, more of the executive branch, uses two different statutes to create the pool. And I think this is where maybe some will be hopefully in a lightning moment for you. But it was for me when I was learning about this. So three, the essay three twenty seven, so go right down to B, says that any position that's been vacant longer than six months, which is something that you've probably heard about, is eliminated unless the secretary administration is saying that the position is essential and has remained vacant because of certain qualifications. And so the way so I'm going in a little bit into my previous job. The way that it was approached is positions when we talk about specific qualifications. It was really positions that are around supporting the 20 fourseven facilities. So correctional facilities, troopers, those types of positions. I think family service workers might have been also part of that. And those are never really touched. It's like those departments can keep those positions that are supporting those facilities. Then the other, everything else was looked at.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That's, I think I've got any questions. Does this

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: happen often that it gets Right. Yeah,

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: so I can get into that. I can talk about it now, or we Oh, can you got it? Okay, Ron. Yes. No, it is sort of an awkward, So amazing moment for here we go. So the other statute that we can use is three BSA222I. And this is an authorization that allows the Secretary of Administration to move vacant positions around state government. And by state government, it really is in the executive branch specifically. And you can further look at some other statutes where the authority is really just sort of like the administrative offices and doesn't really include the treasurer's office and the auditor. So any of the elected, even though those positions are attached to the executive branch, the secretary doesn't have too much authority over moving things around in that way. So this statute specifically says vacant positions can be moved. And so the way the pool is created is we're going to positions we're going to not sweep positions, but we're going to eliminate positions that have been vacant longer than six months. And then we can transfer them to other areas of the executive branch. And so the idea is we sweep those positions, we stick them in a pool until they're ready to be dispersed to another area of state government that the secretary believes is the right decision. Then we can go on to a little bit about how the suite works, which was the question that you asked. So there isn't a policy that it happens on this day of every month. But the positions are monitored on a rolling basis by DHR. There's lots of reports that come out of the system on how long a position has been vacant. And then they look at the ones that have been vacant for longer than six months. And then some position tiles are not swept, which I just mentioned. And then there's this transfer process into the position pool. And from somebody who had to do this work, we looked at I might think the position should be swept. And then I found out that maybe a person is on leave from the position, they're in another position on a temporary basis. So this position needs to be safe for them to come back to. There's just lots of circumstances that HR, every situation is unique, so it's difficult to predict the different things that might

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: happen. So

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: we create a position in statute, but that position once created nothing preserves that position. I mean, the statute creates a position, but two years later, if it's been vacant for six months, it could be swept. Is that correct?

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It could be, yeah. It could be swept. And it would probably, depending on how it's authorized, however you decide to authorize that position, it would be swept into the pool if it had been vacant for more than six months. There's a lot of caveats around that. There's not an absolute, but it would potentially be moved to the pool. Then

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: And I don't want this to sound the wrong way because I don't any I don't think there's anything thing like this occurring. But, like, are there any controls? You know, if we created in statute 10 positions for a certain purpose, would anything prevent the administration from just not filling those and then a year later sweeping them?

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And so I think that would be a great place to say, to ask the administration more about their processes. There's But there's nothing

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: that's statute.

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: There's nothing, unless you put it there.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: Yep.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: John? I

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: was just going to say, do you know what percentage of positions in the pool have been there longer than the six months? Like what

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: the ratio I

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: don't know the answer to that. But I do know from my experience is that there was a lot of back and forth in giving departments opportunity. It was a difficult position to hire. There's a lot of conversation, at least when I was there. So it would be a good question for the administration about how they're managing it right now, but I don't know the actual percentage, yeah.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: ask the same question, but just as a follow-up to that, I assume, because we hear it that, you know, there might be like 10 positions or six positions or whatever number here, it just takes time, that hiring process gets started, especially on something brand new we've never had here for an agency. I just assume those things just continue on here because we're in that process part of things here. But then we kind of find out perhaps that we just weren't able to hire someone. We come back to this during our budget conversations here. And that may be one of those things that maybe just can't find that person that's kind of fit. So things need to change in terms of maybe who's currently working with an agency or department to maybe just kind of switch things around here a little bit, fix it up in terms of, you know, can we bring, can we take advantage of who we currently have? Right. With some new training or someone coming from another area. So we don't always know all those numbers here for sure here, but that's part of the mix of it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Mike, then Lynn, then Dave.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: How does a reduction in force play into this? So we heard about transportation employees that were rift this year. What happens with those Depending

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: on how the positions were originally created. So if the position was a limited service position that was created by a grant for a specific purpose, through the Joint Fiscal Committee, for example, that position would probably be abolished because it was for a specific purpose. Positions that there's no actual specific authority around them are swept into the pool.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: So in the transportation case, there were about 26 positions that were created with ARPA funds for specific things. And so when they had to reduce, it was So that's limited. Easier they were limited service. So that was I would guess that would be generally where the choice would be if they're limited service before mid

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: long term.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: So Lynn and then Dave.

[Rep. Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson (Member)]: Yeah, I'm asking a similar thing and then maybe you've already answered it. If there was something that went for the flood mitigation type thing or some kind of specific purpose that we needed to hire people for something very specific for any number of reasons, Are those are they all limited service? Or how do is it the administration that comes in next, let's say, four years down the line or whatever, says, Okay, we've done that. We don't need these positions anymore. Do they go back to the hospital? Do they get ripped? Or how does

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: that work? Yeah, so I think the answer is it depends on how it was authorized. So it's it's a scenario based. So for your specific scenario, if the positions were created from a grant, again, for flood mitigation, and it was for a very specific purpose. Hate to answer that question without Sometimes a lot of this is what I've learned working in DHR. It depends, is really often. So you really need to know a lot of the detail before figuring out what the answer is, which I think is what makes this so complicated sometimes to understand because I can't give you a no, I can't really give you an answer for your scenario that you're mentioning.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah. I just want to follow-up. It seems like there's times when we do have people in limited service, we make them permanent.

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes, I'm sorry. And then

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: maybe they go back into the pool, but you still want to keep them because they have expertise, but

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: we need and somebody else may need them. Yes. I mean, it's just like Yes, am sorry. I understand your question, or what you're looking into. So for limited service positions, and say they were created by a grant that joined this book or maybe, and then you wanted to make them permanent, that process can happen two different ways. And the way you see it is they come here and they say, we want this position to be permanent, and they ask for your authorization. And you're really creating a new position, is what you're doing. And then there is a process. Administration could create, take a position from the pool, and use that as the permanent position now that you're moving this work from the limited service.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: You can go into

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: the pool again and send Yes, that that's right. You take someone out of the pool and put them

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: in that permanent position, yes. But Dave and Wayne.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: I had in the past argued that instead of focusing on a position count, which can get very political, this governor, you know, the number of state employees has grown by x, and that would create a real vice on any kind of workforce growth. And so I argued somewhat successfully in the Senate, at least I said, instead of looking at positions, go back for a three to five year period and see what percent of my overall budget is for personal services. We have personal services, operating and grants, those three categories. Now, in personal services are temps, limited service, everything, contracts and whatnot. And let me live within that percent, because as government grows, at least as government budget grows, it's often an indicator of more work on the workforce. So we would have tens, maybe hundreds of temps, and we would have temp agencies that were you paid a premium. They found the person for you, but you were paying $40 an hour for somebody who's getting 20. And the temps were less costly because there were no benefits, but it was a great opportunity to see if I was a good worker. So the normal churning that was going on, because limited service positions being limited most of the time, not always to three years, people are constantly looking all over state government for jobs and leaving. And it was hard to run a good shop with stability and tenure that people had. So I guess what I'm leading up to here is a question that it would seem to be more logical, as long as I didn't exceed a percentage of what we agreed upon was reasonable, my personal services expenditure history, why would anybody care how many positions there were as long as I was getting the work done? Has that ever been discussed within your history?

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes, so we did have the position pilot. Do remember Yes, I do. Yes, and so that was an effort to allow certain departments I think DCF was one of them that the idea was that, to your point, that departments could live within their budget and that any new positions had to be budget neutral. I think the language said something like that. And the request had to then eventually come to the legislature, just sort of like a notification that this is what we've done. But then we had to do a report. The Department of Human Resources had to do a report to say, is this really budget neutral? And it was really hard to say that it was. I'm summarizing what the report said. We could pull the report up and look at it. But I think the Department of Corrections, who at the time had a lot of overtime and temporary. And so the idea is if you create new positions, then you would have less reliance on temporaries and overtime. And know this current administration was not supportive of that philosophy, I guess you could call it. But managing to your budget is a reasonable request. It's not

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: too radical.

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It's not too radical. I think a lot of corporations manage their budget. So that's a reasonable

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: way to look at that.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Okay, Wayne? Just comment. The limited term conversion, I think we as a committee need to keep in mind that when we see those limited term conversions coming in, we're creating a new position. And we may not always think that.

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Right. If I could clarify that point also, it is a new position, but the limited service position is abolished. So in some ways, it's the same number, but really, a now it's a permanent

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Permanent jobs, yeah. When we're looking at that total cap for all the state government, we've just added that to it.

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Right. Okay. So transferable pool, we did that. So the position pool committee, I think this administration had been managing the positions differently. And so they have a full committee that's actually the Deputy Secretary of Administration, the Commissioner of Finance and Management, and the Commissioner of Human Resources. They're sort of the heads of the committee. Departments and agencies can request the position return to their position control. So there may be a position sweep and then the department sort of has an opportunity. There's a form they can fill out and request the position return back. The pool committee makes that decision. And then departments and agencies can also ask who come from the pool. There's a form for that. So there's a formal process, I guess you could say, to how positions go in and out of the pool. Sort of outlining this a little bit more, we have the position pool committee. The general assembly doesn't The legislative staff doesn't ask for positions from the pool. It's strictly a executive branch function. The general assembly has their own process for creating positions in which they then come to the legislature in January for a position. The same with the judicial branch as well. And other state offices typically also don't typically get positions from the pool. They may have in the past. But typically, that's why you're seeing those organizations the treasurer and the secretary of state coming in and asking for positions specifically from you, your authority, rather than from the pool.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: So in a case like that, we had a lot of questions about that when it came up with the treasurers, and I think with the Secretary of State's position as well If as they find that those positions, in the same concept, if those positions go vacant for any length of time, do they have a mini pool? Do they keep those positions or at least those slots available so that, for instance, there's an election person that we funded at least in here. So the election happens and you would think that you'd always need an election person, but you know and understand that every two years it's busier than it is. So do they get to keep those positions themselves? So when we create those positions for them and they get 50, they have 50 positions now, they can have them vacant and then refill them at any time?

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So typically my experience was that I would never sweep positions from the treasurer's office because they're under their purview. So if they have a vacant position for more than a year, then it stays in that position control under that organization.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Thank you. And because it was created by the legislature, so the only way that it could be taken back is for the legislature to take it back. Administration doesn't have the authority to take it back.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: Okay, let's keep going.

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So this is my last slide. So I wanted to just talk a little bit about the physician pool ensures compliance with the legislatively established physician cap. It may reduce unnecessary vacancy holdings by every having six months looking at vacancies. Departments often They're looking all the time at how they're recruiting and what's happening. The fixed position cap gives appropriators a stable container for budgeting personal costs, as I mentioned. You're not seeing a lot of that in the budget adjustment. Again, as I just mentioned, reduces the risk of mid year budget shortfalls. It's easier to estimate multi year fiscal impacts. So you sort of have an idea of what will be happening over the next couple of years. There's circumstances as we've seen over the past five, ten years now. But the departments aren't creating new positions. So that's one way that you are controlling what the future years will look like. And then lastly, new positions authorized preserves your flexibility to respond to emerging needs throughout the proper appropriations process. So really, your power of the purse, so to speak,

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: is

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: really the way in which physicians are created and authorized.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: So when we talk about reclassifying physicians, think the understanding is that job description, whatever it was, suited a particular set of characteristics for a while, and now it turns out that this job is more complex than we had thought, more qualifications are better. And so we wanna say it's class B instead of class And A we go through that and I know DHR looks at all that. And obviously it certainly may imply a change in salary range. So it does have an implication to the budget, but it still just keeps that post that position in the total cap. We just made that position more valuable. And so it does affect budget, but it still stays as a position of the whole. Yes,

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: thank you for that point. And I think you've heard DHR come in and talk about that the current classification, the system and the process for changing salaries is unpredictable for the budget. So yes, that is definitely one classification, health care benefits. There are definitely pieces that are unpredictable, but just the creating of new positions is what I'm yeah. Well, and

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: then the reclassification requests, the FRs, right, also add costs, even though the physicians are the same.

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Then you have a

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: whole group that does that, right? And that's what we had with the game wardens and the budget adjustment, right? And then they went up two grades. So there's only so much predictability. Absolutely. No, within the process. That

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: was a result of the union negotiation that happened there. But back to your position. So say you've got a vacant position, it's a classified position that is now vacant and the task that was being conducted is not a priority anymore. You get that position hasn't been swept by the pool and you want to hire somebody for new tasks that you get but that has to be reclassified. So you have to have new job descriptions and the whole thing and run that through the process to get that set up as a classified physician. Now you can hire into that to get your new task done.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: So it's not quite a sweet into the pool, but it's kind of permission to change what you've got and

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: To change your tasks that you're Right.

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: Which we have to allow for, because obviously, things happen with the time. Or a department will want to spend more time and people on a particular task rather than the other tasks over here, and they're willing to give up something else. Sometimes

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: you think those Or simply, we don't have any used to have data entry people just sitting there clicking away all day. They're saving a dime a dozen. It's not very hard to hire those in. But if I'm hiring a PhD that's specialized in Fish hive, Exactly, hive, hatchery, either nutrition or health, health especially. So now all of sudden you're looking at a much smaller pool of people available to come and get it. You're doing national searches, that sort of thing because we don't have the expertise here.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Right. Just classified

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: much higher up than really. This is probably a simple question, but we have temporary people. We have limited service people, and usually they're for a very specific period of time for very specific jobs. And then you have the permanent people. Do the temporary and limited service people, do they get benefits?

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So the limited service positions do have benefits, and the temporary positions don't have health care benefits or retire, those types of things. They get sickly. There are some

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Sometimes maybe this is not the case, but sometimes it's cheaper to reclassify someone and keep them up to do more work, because that's what they're doing anyway, than it is to hire two people at the lower level. They may have increased their credentials. There may be more responsibility. It's more complicated. And it's just better to keep the person in place, but then it's cheaper than hiring two people to do the same work.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: As long as they still is a forty hour week or whatever hour eighty

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: hours.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Exactly. I just wanted to Go ahead, Dave. Do we still use the Willis? Yes. The state government. Anyways, we would sometimes have to hire an economist, skilled person, PhD, and they might end up being a pay grade 24, pay grades go up to pay grade 32. And compensation wasn't enough to get them because the Willis, do you have any control over budget? I'm a researcher, I'm a PhD, you have any control over people? Nobody, I'm not supervising anybody. What's your analytical, very high. But it was one of three and it would slot them in because they didn't have those other factors and they may be the factors right now. And it was very exasperating because it was like, they can offer you, you know, and they'd almost laugh. Well, it pretty much wasn't.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: There wasn't any flexibility or room for highly specialized individual contributors. I remember when our bank went to these things, it was like, are you a manager or you an individual contributor?

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: You said, give me somebody to supervise somebody. I know. They're all

[Rep. John Kascenska (Member)]: of us. For asking for a special compensation for someone.

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Market factors. Yes.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: And that was in the budget, in the big bill, when it's talking about the positions, it's like here's these positions but the executive branch has the right to or the agency administration has the right to for non for example people that offer different pricing. But the Willis thing David is we've been hearing about that for the last couple years. The Willis thing is part of what the Department of Human Resources has been working through for years, but I guess they're closer now. They're supposedly within the eighteen months

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: think you have like 3,500 different positions and they're going to get down to under a thousand or

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: something crazy.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: Lot of the reclassification stuff, which getting both the unions and the administration and what you talk about Dave, just trying to get it all together so there's not a new position definition necessarily. Could be like copy person four rather than special Xerox person number. It's just that some of the Willis stuff has been, but at the Willis, how long has that been in?

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: 1981, I think. I

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: think so. Adjusted for any change.

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Probably printed by

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Cornwall. I think it's the mimeograph machine you got yesterday.

[Rep. Michael Nigro (Member)]: So that's

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: all I have for you. Okay. I have just, if you wanted to go into DHR's website about establishing new positions, you can see a little bit more information from that link. And if have you any other position questions, please let me know. I'd happy to help out.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Any more questions for any of right now?

[Rep. David Yacovone (Member)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Is always very helpful, and you will remember it. There's so much, it depends, which just makes It has to be flexible, but it's good

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: to have just a general sense of how it all works and what the statute is. Thank you for your time, So

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: my last job was on Pet's Bennington. We had a nice electronic system for doing all this stuff. So you go in there, putting in your position descriptions, and do the whole thing. We did everything online. Do we have anything like that here now? Is it all paper?

[Amy Pope (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I think that, to Representative Stevens was mentioning, DHR is going through a process right now, so I don't know what their new program looks like. But I believe that there's quite a bit of paper right now.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: That system done to work pretty well.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Amy, thanks again. Yes, thank you. So

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: committee, this is what we have before the floor. And then right after the floor, please come right back down and the capital bill is going to happen.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: I am going to be with Amy in Senate Approach from one thirty to about 02:15.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: May be, So already I'm gonna be asking you to start the pandemic.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens (Member)]: I've released from SAC at that point. So

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: that's the plan for the day. And then why don't we go off live