Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Morning. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Wednesday, 04/29/2026. It's just after ten a. M. And we have the wonderful folks from the Joint Fiscal Office here to talk to us about fun fiscal facts and other good things, I'm sure. Thanks for coming in this morning.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Welcome for the record.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Emily Burns, the joint fiscal office.

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I normally wait. Grady Nixon joined fiscal

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Real quick. So we're not here to talk about fiscal facts. We're here to talk about a different thing called fast facts. Fast facts. Sorry. Knew it was just was gonna intro it as to where we got here and then have Grady speak more about them specifically and more depth about why we're doing this. But so last summer, we're thinking about how there are lots of questions that we get over and over and over again at the Joint Fiscal Office, which is good, right? That there's things that people are thinking about. And it's not all from legislators, right? We also get them from the public and from lots of audiences and try to think through a way that we can make that information more easily accessible to the public, to legislators. I want to say it was done for the purposes of saying like, here, read this, and then if you have more questions. But it also simplifies correspondence and providing information so that it's consistent across analysts and whatnot. So we developed this fast facts type thing. The goal is that it's two pages and thought it would be a good thing to more formally introduce. They've been out when did you publish them? March?

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: February. February.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: We were a little juicy then.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, just a little bit. We published the first five. We have some more in the works. We've been talking We've started to talking about what to do this summer. But that was the sort of like How we got there, what we're thinking about, as opposed to like, here's an issue brief. It's 19 pages long, and it has a lot of charts, right? To keep stuff simple, They'll link you to more information. Those are where this idea came from, what we've done. Grady, dive in even further, show you them on the website. And then there are some quick things that you guys can all think of as we walk through them of things that it would be and similarly, you all probably get lots of questions, the same questions on things. If there are things everybody always asks me, what's the computer modernization fund? Why do we keep putting money into it? If there was a one pager that said, this is the purpose, this is the statutory reference, etcetera, this is the report on it annually, then you could just hand that to your colleagues similarly. So that's where it

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: came from.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So that's the big picture. I'll agree if you take it from here.

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Can elaborate

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: more on The E Board and the Joint Fiscal Committee, because lots of times, people want to put legislation in to have and think that those two committees could do all kinds of things that they don't necessarily do. That's a good one. I'm going to write that down. I'm afraid of Liz. Okay.

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, so Emily, I think summed everything up very nicely. It's a pretty simple idea, but just for the small picture. As Emily said, wanted to have a document that's not so in-depth as a report on and not so detailed as an issue brief. We basically wanted these to be simple, high level documents that we could either pass off to a legislator that is asking us a question or, for a legislator to hand a document to their constituents that would be more, readily publicly accessible than some of those deeper dots. So if you have constituents asking you questions, you know, we hear a lot about the Higher Ed Trust Fund in the news these days. What is that? Then you have a document yourselves that you can pass off to a constituent as well. And then to that point as well, just making sure that we have uniform information on these sort of weedy topics. So the idea we had is there are a lot of these perennial thorny issues that can be complicated. And we just thought that we could do a better job simply explaining them. And something we were focusing on for these is really the idea that this is a one to two page primer on a subject. It's not meant to make anyone a subject area expert. It's not meant to provide the answers to every single question you might have. The idea is really to give someone enough information that then they might know what questions they want to ask about that subject coming forward. So just give you just enough information that people can actually have a thoughtful and considerate conversation. Or, you know, say you have a bill and it's on a subject that you know nothing about, you might be able to go to our website and get up to speed a lot faster than you would otherwise. So on our website right now, if you click on publications, and the website doesn't freeze, And then go to fast facts here under other publications. So you'll see still on the left, we have fiscal notes, fast facts, fiscal focus newsletter, issue briefs, and reports. On the bottom right here, you have fast facts on the right column under other publications. And as Emily said, right now we have five published.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Oh, interesting what the very first one is.

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So complete coincidence. So right now we have one on the higher ed trust fund. We have one on gasoline taxes, one on cannabis tax revenue, one on the pension plus payments, and one on local option taxes. So I'll just go to the I'll pick a random one, the first one that's easy. So this is a document we put together on the Higher Education Trust Fund. And you'll see we say what it is up top. That's just a quick one to two sentence executive summary explaining what the fund is, what its purpose is, and when it was created. And then we say how it works. So we tell you just right at the top, how money gets into the fund, who manages it. In this case, it's the state treasurer. And then how money gets out of the fund. So the higher education trust fund, the most important source of revenue in terms of this legislation this legislative session that's being discussed is that excess estate tax revenue. So any revenue above 125% of the state tax revenue that's forecast in the consensus forecast is then directed to the Higher Education Endowment Trust Fund. And then in statute, the treasurer can withdraw up to 5% of the fund balance based on a rolling average of the past 12 quarters. That goes equally to UVM, the Vermont State Colleges, VSAC, provide non loan financial aid to Vermont students at Vermont post secondary institutions. And then there's a provision that allows for up to 2% of that fund balance to be distributed equally to UVM and Vermont State Colleges to increase the endowment, if they have private endowment match. And then on the second page, we have a little bit more detail on how the fund's been performing. And a graph just showing authorized distributions from the fund from 2000 to 2025. And then something that we also thought would be important for these documents, given that these are just sort of a primer, is in each of these we've tried to then say, where can you go to learn more? Where can you access more information about these?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: That's great. Yes, I would want to see the statute and I could now click on the statute. This

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: looks great. I love it.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: I wish you had it ten years ago, sorry.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: But the in 1999 we talked about this, was was it part of Act 60 or was it Act 60 adjacent? Was it created They were. No, I know, but I'm sure there's somebody there's somebody in the attic that knows. I'm just kidding. We talked about that when we talked about the trust fund that it was set up in 1999, which is which is when we did act 60. So it was established

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: in act 27 of 1997.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: Wasn't part of act six titles. Great. That's all I'm I'm

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: just And that's a great example of you know, I wrote this one, and I don't have that off the top of my head, but the document had a quick access to the resource where we could find the answer to that.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: And you put the right thing in there for you

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: to answer that question. So it works. Tom Little came in here when we were discussing some of this a while ago. And he was in the legislature, and he was the one who was instrumental in helping set it up. He was representing Shelton or whoever he was. And he said basically it was UBM, Vermont City Colleges, VSAC, all those fighting over how they were going to get money allocated for their scholarships or whatever they had. And they came up with this fund, this setup, and that was the intent and that's what they did, kind of performed pretty well. I guess there had been a We went through a period in the early 90s, late 80s or something where there were well-to-do people. Freeman's father died and then was about the way they had this money coming in that was not something you could count on, you couldn't put in the budget, but there were things that they needed to use it for. And so they thought this would be a good place to put this. It's sort of a windfall of money. And there's a steady amount all the time, but the windfall of money were important. Believe Howard Dean covered his deficit with Buck Freeman's.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Yeah, so Buck Freeman's AIG, the insurance company. And they were in stock. Dollars 14,000,000. It was like The state tax.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: But the point is that that was what he And he saw this as a way to create a fund that would help with higher education scholarships. And it's been here since.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So, that was the first one. One thing I would just throw

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: out there too. Plan is to update them every year. So once we have a big library, that'll be part of it. Right now, the summers we're going to

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: build, in addition to all

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: the other reports and analyses and meetings and stuff that we're supporting, we'll try to build out the library and then work on. If there's any statutory revision, we'll make sure that they're up to date. Of these, since they're going to be financial, are going to have new fiscal years' worth of information. We'll get those added so that it's like a they're not static. Sometimes with issue briefs and those sorts of things, they're incredibly useful. And after a while, the data becomes static. So by keeping them short and sweet, we can keep them up to date. Yeah.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Very silly. Go ahead, Martha.

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: I like that you have kept the format

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: of your publications very, very similar,

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: but these are slightly different. The purple. Exactly.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: That's the light, it's very helpful. And you're matching the fiscal facts today. Oh, today, yes. That's why we picked

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: the The facts facts. You

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: must have known so. No, but I

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: think that it ties it in with the whole marketing scheme of your brand website.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: You've made this one purple.

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: We didn't want to go too far away from the iconic JFO brands. And it is

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: like And purple is fun.

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And so, yeah, as Emily noted, the goal is to produce a significant number of these over the off session so that we have a bit of a library for the next biennium, and then update them each year so that they're current and remain useful. And then as Emily said at the beginning, just kicking this off, we definitely want to hear from legislators on what subjects would be helpful for them. So the chair mentioned the sort of statutory powers of the joint fiscal committee and the emergency board. That would be a great one. Do you have any other ideas? And also, not just things that come up in your legislative work when you're in the building, but questions that you get frequently asked by constituents. Because, again, the the idea here is that it's not just something that JFO can hand to a legislator, but it's something the legislator can hand to a constituent.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And sound like we know what

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: we're talking about. It's great. Excellent. So pension plus.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Oh, on that one. Sorry, I cut you off.

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So sometimes I find myself in a situation where I don't have a Chris group right next And to this one is great for that, when you're in that sort of nightmare situation. So this this document goes into the pension plus payments, and it breaks down, what the history was in the overview. So you'll see as part of the broader pension reform effort in act one fourteen, the general assembly committed to make additional state contributions to the state employees retirement system and the state teachers retirement system. This is what's known as the plus payments. And they're made in addition to the actuarially determined employer contributions. These began in f y twenty four at 9,000,000 per system, were 12,000,000 per system in f y twenty five, and will be 15,000,000 per system in f y twenty six, and in each subsequent year until the respective systems are 90% funded. And then again, we have some background information that goes more in-depth. And then on the second page, you'll see the impact of that. And this, again, is just to sort of synthesize this information quickly on this complicated subject. So you'll see what the intent was, the background information on that, and then the actual progress that that's been making. So figure one shows the unfunded liability of vSERs, and then figure two shows the unfunded liability for VSIR's.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: And so is that line that's going across not just artistic, but going getting to the idea of we're closer to 90%?

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Exactly. So that's the expected unfunded liability balance at the end of the fiscal year. And then this one is a three pager, which Yeah. We're hoping to keep these two two pages, but then on the third page, this shows just the breakdown of employer pension costs in FY twenty seven, which is just some specific fiscal year information that is helpful for legislators in understanding pension costs. So you'll see it breaks out the unfunded liability payment, the employer normal cost, and then the plus payment, which is the little green bar on top, which is 15,000,000 for both systems in f y twenty six and going forward.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So if we hadn't gotten behind and made the legislature or the governor hadn't made the choices in the nineties, we wouldn't be paying a 107,000,000 to visors and a 177,000,000 to the teachers. That's almost 300,000,000 plus the fifth the $2.15. So it's a lot of money we're paying for that decision. Fair choice. Never mind. I'll take us down a rabbit hole. I'll ask somebody else later. Okay.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: And then

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I'll just show you one more just so you understand. Again, this is one for local option taxes that, Chris Rupe and Ted Barnett put together. Again, it just briefly explains in the overview section that statute allows for Vermont municipalities to adopt local option taxes at a rate of 1% on sales, meals and alcohol, rooms, or any combination of those three. Contract transactions that occur in the municipality. And then it explains that there's currently 38 municipalities

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Hold on. Excuse me.

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That levy a lot. And so that is a great example of something that each year we would update, next year, there will presumably be a different number. And then in the call out box here, the main thing that would be important for a legislator to quickly understand is the percentage rate of the lot, and then also what that breakdown is. You'll see here as of 10/01/2025, lot revenues apportion 75% to the municipality and 25% to the pilot special fund. And then in the how it works section here, again, you'll see the recent the bit of historical context, the recent split was seventy thirty. This changed in 2025, per act 57 to increase the municipal share to 75%. And then the general assembly explains what the pilot special fund does. And so this is one of those things, again, where when we talk about lots, we're also talking about the pilot special fund. And so it's, on its face, it shouldn't be a simple thing, but then it gets more complicated. We just wanted to figure out a way to quickly bring all that information together so someone could understand the whole scope of this picture rather quickly. And so this just explains, there's the general payments in lieu of taxes, pilots, to municipalities that host tax exempt state owned buildings such as park infrastructure, AOT garages, office buildings, and VSC buildings. And then it explains that there's a 192,000 for corrections, pilot payments, and then other uses that are largely for municipal programs and support. You'll remember that, in the budget adjustment and your budget bill, the pilot special fund was used for to pay for the appropriation section b one thirty nine for, grand list litigation assistance. And then on page two, you'll see this is a bit of the context of the changing pilot special fund revenue and expenditure and ending balance in this graph here. And as the committee might recall, part of the reason that the pilot special fund split between municipalities and the pilot special fund was changed was because in, recent history, there was not enough money in the fund to fully cover pilot payments. In more recent history, the fund actually has a surplus. And so there's been discussion of what to do with that surplus and what's the split between municipalities and the pilot special fund ought to be. And so this just, again, briefly goes through that context, that historical context so that when someone is discussing whether or not to change that split or what to do with the pilot funds and how much surplus is in that fund that the general assembly have a bit more understanding of that.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: And is there, statute that looked at, or is this mostly is there something statue about things?

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. So that's something that we actually missed on this one. Apparently, we should have that final section here, and we can update that to have where to be. So there is the pilot Yeah. Exactly.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Two statutes.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: One thing that would be tricky to link is the appropriations piece, because it's going to be buried all across the budget. That's what that table will show, with the reference to the act number and the section of the budget and the authorization of lot and the pilot special funds we will add as a link. Cannabis. Yeah,

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: so we also have ones on cannabis taxes and gasoline taxes.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Gas taxes, that's great.

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: We're currently working on a couple of other ones that we're hoping to publish soon. And then, of course, again, if any of you have ideas about things that you think would be, you know, suit well suited for this type of document, please let us know.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: Just Go ahead. Just comment on your little footnote on on page one number two down the bottom. The ANR pilot fish and wildlife. It's it's using probably a mix of general fun and special fun from the the wildlife and which is only important because they don't usually get much genital. Which one's that one? Page one, the very bottom little sub two Is

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: that which

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: In the pilot oh, pretty slick.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: In our DEC. DEC would have all general fund, but or maybe not.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: I know if it is. I should remember this.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: So fish and wildlife?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: No. Well, back in the old days, we didn't have any general fund at all. So it's all being paid out of that fish and wildlife special fund. But now it's don't get too much. It might be a mix. Mix. I'm sure it's going to change the The

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: calculation of the pilot payment for ANR that would be another good one to follow-up. The calculation of the pilot payment for ANR is different. The calculation of pilot payment for that could be at buildings.

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: That's that.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I think the buildings are treated different from the Land. ANR buildings are in block payments, but the land isn't. We'll work on it. Stay tuned. Add it to the summer project. All

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: the fish and wildlife lands were bought with federal money or have federal money on the bottom, so I would assume that that would.

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, again, that's exactly what we're hoping that these documents can do is get everyone on sort of a level footing in terms of the basic information relating to these so that then you know exactly what questions you want to follow-up with and get drilled down deeper into the reach of these subjects.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: This is really nice to have. I have to think about what constituents asked. I can say here. Well, bundles, yeah, obviously, always start a big question. Try to explain that in their pages as

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: well that you know that field then has provided for ways to meet.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: You can do all the math pieces across so we can hand that to them and then they could go

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: oh well now I understand why I

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: don't understand it right.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: But the other piece that it comes across, the information is nonpartisan. And so, you know, posting something like this on print for form or giving it out, you know, I mean, if I handed something out to somebody just just because they would think that it had a bent to it that came from where I And it's like, no, this is what at least the House system believes. This is what the House,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: know,

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: Arden, knowledgeable people have put together. And I love the idea of the footnotes or the links because again you can look it up. We're not experts at all and so the old idea of saying hey you can look it up yourself, know, doesn't usually go very far unless the link is live and it goes someplace. So thank you for making it so.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And I think to some the build on each other too, right? Like think the gas tax one is a good example of we can't do a two pager on the T fund. It's big. It's complicated. There's a lot going on there. But we can do a one pager on the gas tax and on the diesel tax and on the DMV fees and some specific how does this program work? Over time, one

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: about sales tax and education fund. There's lots of Liquor funds, gambling funds.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's one we get a lot of questions about.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: There's all

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: the sports wagering money. Right,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: so much. Same with cannabis.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I forgot where it went already.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: When you update cannabis to also show what the consensus revenue forecast has on the workers? Because it's just not going to be $300,000,000 or all the stuff that people think it's going to be. So that you have it up through projected FY '26, but you could do the forecast just to add it to.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: What will happen when Barbara opens up?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: It'd be nice if this all would automatically update, that's probably

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: I don't think that's Well, he's about

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: to pitch you on AI.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Is greaty, radiomatic here, Chris or whoever, JFO, great. Thank you, guys. You're always coming up with

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: wonderful Thank you.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So if you think of anything,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: you know how to find us.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Guys really never

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: realize what you did on your spring vacation.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: I'm sure there's a gazillion things to do to find out lots of stuff. So thank you very much. This is great. We're going to move right into the library. Okay. It's through you all later.

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Okay. Like he said, he did vote for a few weeks.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Is? And Tucker's here. Tucker's a library person.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: We're gonna vote on it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: We're not going to vote on it until Thursday because it's going to be on the floor next week, so we don't want to mess things up. This is when we had it scheduled, so we'll continue that. Maybe Yacovone needs hers as well. Tucker, do you want to come up? I see that we have Brett Brown here from Health Education. You must be the reporter on the education side. I'll be the reporter. So if we end up having more policy questions, we'll ask you to come up as well. And we'll have Tucker at some point, but in the meantime, we have Tucker, we'll have Ted.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: All right,

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: Good morning, Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel, Excited to be one half of Tucker and Ted's excellent adventure through the Before you start Yes.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: Sure in

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: your funny pictures. I I do, but I don't show pictures of my babies on the livestream just because there's, you know Yeah.

[Grady Nixon (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Price is

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: But I do have a very adorable three and a half week old right now.

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Three and a

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: half week old?

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. Who does sleep very well, which is why

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: If you wanna stay here and

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: sleep on our chairs,

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: you're welcome to Very comfortable.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Oh my god. Congratulations. Thank

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: you. Is this your first? Second. Yes. Both massive, uncontrollable boys so far. And, yeah, the new one, Hugo, is already trying to slither all over the place, which is a bad sign because his older brother is two and, like, three feet tall and, like, forty five pounds and can reach everything on the counter, but doesn't have the cognitive capacity to know what knives are yet or why we should the old. Snap the child safety lock off the drawer and take a knife out and swing it around the house of the dogs and stuff like that.

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: You guys are having a fun time.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: That's bad signs for the future. Help fit in

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Gotta wait till they're 13.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: Help fit

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: in the Vermont wilderness for sure.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Well, we're glad that you made it here, and we promise not to swing knives or do anything.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: If you did, I'd be used to it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: You know what to do.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: We have a protocol in

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: place. Okay.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: You should have s two thirty two as passed the senate. I skipped section one because they are factual findings to the general assembly and typically don't find their way into my testimony because they are your investigative findings, and the legislative counsel won't correct them unless there's a legal assertion in there that it's inaccurate. Sure you that in those five instances of findings, there are no legal assertions that need to be corrected. So we'll skip to section two, Vermont Libraries Day. The overview is there will be created a Vermont Libraries Day, third Monday in October. And before I proceed, just wanna flag there's no appropriations in the bill. My understanding is that it perhaps came here because it went to senate appropriations because originally there was a division in how a certain grant fund would be split between state entities for purposes of disseminating those funds down. That's been stripped out. So there's also no impact in how state spending will be carried out procedurally. But I'll flag that for you as we go through.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Okay. So if there ever was a whiff of an appropriation at any point in the history of this bill, we get it.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. There there was whiff. Okay.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: A ghost. A ghost of appropriations.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. That's right. Alright. Section three amends the after school summer reading and early education special fund language in two different sections in 2016. So first in 16 VSA section 51 in the universal after school and summer special fund, the high level overview is that language is added to ensure that public libraries are called out as an eligible recipient of these grant funds. Then, the agency of education is given discretion to allocate a portion of the funds to the Department of Libraries. So the Department of Libraries would be the only state department that could represent subrecipients and apply for a grant here. That's on page three, by the way. And then additionally, there's authority for a coalition or group of libraries to come together to apply as a single applicant. So this doesn't change the amount that comes from the cannabis, it's just expanding allowable uses for that Santa Ana fund? It allows the Department of Libraries to apply for some of that money to then give sub grants to public libraries. It also allows a group of public libraries to apply as one entity. Oh,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: okay. Great. The

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: next big change is the addition of that subdivision e, if you're on page three, line 10, which essentially requires the agency to create a shorter, simpler application process for certain types of nonprofit entities. So they're called out as small community based organizations such as rural public libraries. In subsection b, which governs the composition of the current advisory committee for this program, the state librarian is added as the ninth member of that advisory committee. And then finally, at the top of page four, new language in subsection e requires on an annual basis the advisory committee to hold public input hearings. In section four, the early education grant fund, statute is amended to just ensure that public libraries are expressly called out. So public libraries are already included in the larger categorical descriptions in the section. There's just an including clause so that you can see expressly public libraries are included as eligible recipients. Section five amends the duties of the Department of Libraries to ensure, if you can go all the way through pages four and five here, that within their duties, it's recognized that the department now has digital and physical collections of materials. It's not just physical collections anymore. And at the end, the duty to, well, discretionary authority to provide book service by mail or bookwagon is struck, and there's just a general reference to interlibrary loan. So my apologies to all of the fans of the book wagon, but doesn't get a call

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: out anymore. Book wagon. Where did that go away?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: I mean, the actual book wagon. I've seen more than it has.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: In the education committees in both chambers now, I've testified that I was from a community in Massachusetts where the book wagon was vital and still exists to this day. It's a minivan with a box of books in your bag.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: I love it. The mobile book, mobile book, mobile one. You know book for people. Yeah. So they've, yeah. Don't know if

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: they were asking years ago, there was one.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: There a great story that took place in Kentucky about that they would go on horseback to these Appalachian communities and deliver books I wish that, one woman was like the librarian thing. True stories, very interesting.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: I've heard of writing courts, but now there's writing libraries too.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Oh yes, and in fact, this is an area, I'm really going off topic here, but it wasn't a library. There was a genetic thing that a lot of these did, there was a group of families that had blue skin. Yeah, it's a real thing. Mean, you can look it up and see pictures. And so one of the women who had blue skin was actually one of the women who did the libraries on the books and encountered issues, as you can imagine. It was really interesting, but it was about libraries. People want books, doesn't matter where you are. Okay.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: We're on section six, page six, line seven. This is statutory construction related to the authority of municipal corporations to appoint library trustees for public libraries. There's a problem that's standing up by the definition of public libraries for purposes of this entire title, which is that it includes private libraries that are open to the public. And this particular subsection of law was being interpreted by some towns to allow their legislative bodies to appoint the trustees of private libraries. So this new language attempts to control that interpretation of law.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Do we have many private libraries?

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: Many. Yes. So in fact, there's a lot of what are known as trust libraries that are incorporated under title 22, where there was an endowment at some point to establish a library. And there's a trust that is overseen, of course, by library trustees. And in the past, in Vermont law, there was a lot of specific language separating the duties of the formerly very important municipal office of the trustees of public funds from library trustees because they are separate corporations.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: Here we go.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: Section seven relates to municipal bonding for public library improvements. Flag for the other committees, no substantive change to the law here. Municipal corporations already had authority to issue bonds for public library improvements and for private library improvements. The amendments that you're seeing here just, eliminate some confusion because private libraries had a specific callout in this subchapter, but public libraries did not. So this adds in terms for public libraries so that it's clear, yes, you can bond for improvements to public libraries as well. Finally, in section eight, there's the repeal of the audio visual revolving fund. Don't know if Ted included that in some of his testimony, what is in the fund, what it relates to. But by and large, the statutory terms around this is that the receipts that went into this fund are exclusively those from postage for mailing certain library materials such as CD ROM and DVDs, things like that.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: I'm reading his the fund is no longer relevant as AD material is treated the same as other library materials. Yes.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: Yep. And that's it. The effective date is 07/01/2026.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Anybody have any questions about this? So I'm just pretty straightforward.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: Could we just delete a special fund?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Well, did we delete a special fund?

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, you revealed it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Well, good

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: on us.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: Well, good on them.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: That's one. $3.99 more to go. Great. Thank you, Tucker. I don't see Rep Brown, is there anything you want to add to this?

[Rep. Brett Brown (House Education Committee, bill reporter)]: I think that Walker Cooper was excellent. He covered everything. Don't have any questions. Great.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: I'm not seeing any, and I do want to let Ted have his thirty seconds of fame on this. So why don't we go on live until Ted shows up instead of us sharing the screen.