Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Your last. Okay. Welcome back, folks. This is Health Fractions and Institutions. It is after 12:00 on Friday, January 30. We are working through a little bit. We're gonna be taking a late lunch. We have with us James Stuffy, who's catching his breath. It is James, not John.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It is. Yeah, James. Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: James Stuffy is with the Joint Fiscal Office. And he really staffs more of the Appropriations Committee, which deals with the general fund budget. Our bill is intertwined with the general fund budget to a certain extent because we have the cash, and it's appropriations that appropriates the cash. We don't appropriate it. And James has been talking to some of the other committees in terms of what the budgeting process is, how it operates. I'm assuming from the time the administration puts out the requests in the fall to how it gets developed and then presented to us as the legislature, and then just how the budgeting works. I thought it would be really important for this committee to hear this. We're part of that budget, though he's not going to focus in on the capital bill. It's on the general fund because I think it's really important for all members to understand what the process is for developing the general fund big bill. So James, it's all yours. If you could introduce yourself for the record, we don't beat up on you too much. That's awesome.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Thank you, I appreciate that. For the record, James Duffy Troy's fiscal office. It's a pleasure to be here with you all today. And thank you for the introduction. Yes. So I worked at JFO last year on the revenue team, on the revenue side of things. This year, I'm on the budget team at JFO, specifically staffing house appropriations. And in that capacity, GFO has been assisting Chair Shai and the committee members of house appropriations with putting out some new guidance to executive branch departments and agencies this year at the beginning of the legislative budget cycle to improve. The goal is the responsiveness of the information that you all will receive from executive departments and agencies when they come to present their general fund? Oh, sure.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No, this is a good place to interrupt because I've got five members of this committee who have been tasked to look at this new way of asking questions to figure out their budgets. So this is really important to Conor, who's not here, and Mary

[Brian Minier (Member)]: And Brian.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And Joe and Kevin to really pay attention to this because this is gonna help you.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: And I I read the slide. It's pretty explicit.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, sometimes people like to hear it, too. And

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: so hopefully, this is the first year that these new instructions went out. It was a memo sent at the beginning of the legislative budget cycle back in October. Of course, the budget cycle itself starts about nine months before the legislature ever even hears from the governor with his recommended budget. Think that's always good to keep in mind that this is a train that has been moving for about nine months by the time legislators see the GOVR Act. Agencies start working with central administration and the governor's office, receiving instructions from the administration on how to prepare their budgets, looking at their forecasts, their caseloads, different If you're agency human services, what are you forecasting for caseload and service utilization in the year? And of course, those forecasts always change. That's why we have a budget adjustment. That forecast is a forecast. It's never 100%. But that's a process that's very much in progress by the time you all hear from agencies and departments. But this is being the first year of new instructions. Hopefully, you all will be pleased with the format that agencies are coming to you as they present their general fund requests. And on the other side of things, so we have hopefully improved some of the communication going out requests together to help your question information you seek from them. A copy of that memo was received by policy committee chairs and advisors a couple of weeks ago. I sent a copy to be posted on your website. I also have a hard copy that I'll pass around. I know folks have a different appetites for hard copies of things, but I always bring them in case. And if you wouldn't like a copy, feel

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: free Oh, to

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Just leave

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: it on the table and I'll grab them on my way out.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: This might not be new information to you all.

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: And I

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: think some of the suggestions here, feel free to take a look. I won't run through them exhaustively point by point, but feel free to ruse, ask any questions that come up for you. Some of them may seem, I think they're still useful to ground asking agencies to start with describing the problem. This doesn't happen all the time, sometimes you might receive a general fund request, a one time general fund request meant to solve some pressing crisis issue in a department or agency. And folks don't always know how much background you do or do not have on that particular area of departmental operations. And agencies, they're subject matter experts, which at the time, they're in the weeds every day. And as with any subject matter expert, sometimes it's useful to try to pull folks back and say, Wait, I actually were not operating from the same set of assumptions and background information here. Explain further committee the history of this problem, what problem you're trying to solve with this appropriation, for example. And don't be afraid to do that. Don't assume that you should know if they're kind of starting in the middle of the narrative in that way. Think another Again, I'm not going go through these exhaustive, but another way to start peeling back the onion of an appropriations request and starting to figure out what the committee's priorities are, are asking questions like, What happens if we don't do this? Who suffers? What new functions can we not perform? What might we have to peel back if we don't make this appropriation? Are we losing the services that are currently provided? Are we failing to expand services? That sort of thing. That kind of counterfactual poking and prodding might help you uncover your own priorities. And I'm starting to use the word priorities because I'm to shift now to the next part of this conversation, which is after you hear from the agencies over the next few weeks, you will be asked by a House Appropriations Committee to provide a committee letter to help guide their appropriations decisions. And this is where the team effort of the legislative committees really comes into play. You all are subject matter experts in your budget area. House appropriators are operating at a 30,000 foot level for a lot of the time. They have to make decisions about funding and appropriation across the entire state government. There's more information than they can ever possibly wrap their arms around themselves without all of your help. And so the budget letter is the key memorialization of your advice as the experts in your budget area on what you recommend. I think you've seen in a couple of fiscal years. And so this year, perhaps even in recent years, getting firm recommendations of priorities and funding priorities from policy committees will really help the appropriations process go smoothly. I think the challenge with being a policy committee and hearing from the departments and agencies that you know well and getting $2,000,000 requests for one times is they all sound really worthwhile and worth it. Maybe often they do, most of them do. But a budget letter that doesn't prioritize requests is much harder for the appropriations committee to work with when they're up at 11:00 at night trying to decide how they can allocate the remaining $500,000 that we have for one time. It's totally hypothetically. So I think the one thing I would say to the committee regarding the policy letters, to the extent that you all can consider a tiered approach or a contingent list for things that you recommend funding requests out of the general fund that you recommend the committee consider. Say, these are our top priorities for this reason. Our first priority as a committee was maintaining current services. And so we recommend these funding requests to do that. Then we prioritize expanding services that would be new, but we think are particularly right, for example. That scheme is much more helpful to the creators in those game time decisions than receiving an unprioritized or untiered list of recommendations. You're often familiar with what those requests might be. Maybe they're from general fund, the administration, maybe you're hearing from outside advocates. Maybe there are bills out there floating and have appropriations attached to them. All of that would be really helpful to see reflected in committee letters. Again, I apologize if any of this is new. I know many of you have been through this process several times by now, but just spreading the good word and the good word of the basics to policy committees ahead of communication that you'll be receiving from house appropriations in next several weeks. I think you all can expect to hear from Chair Shai with policy committee instructions on sending your policy letters in the next week or two. In the past, I think committees have submitted their policy letters to the Appropriations Committee about by the February. School be at federal project.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: James? I mean, I'm sick. Joe.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: To answer the word.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: In our case, we're kind of a hybrid. It's not so much that So think a more appropriate question for this committee would be how much of the cash that's proposed by the administration to be directed to the capital bill does appropriations need? Yeah. Thank you for that question

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: because I should I should have clarified at the beginning. I know you all have your own separate but related cycle. That's right. You put together the capital bill, which is folded into the big bill. I'm not as familiar with all of your work on the capital bill. Scott is our kind of subject matter expert on that. I reviewed your committee letter from last year, and I'm aware that there are general fund requests that I think exist outside of the capital appropriations process, which is why I'm most prepared to speak to you. But I do see Scott is in the room.

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: maybe Well well, just to restate the question.

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: Yeah.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: So bonded dollars live here. Okay? They don't get but but cash is appropriated by appropriations. Mhmm. Although there is some of the administration proposes to use here that sits at the discretion of appropriations. So last year, we had some some of the cash traveled to the general fund that was originally earmarked for here. Mhmm. And so the corollary of that is, obviously, we can't fund as much stuff if we don't have the money back on the grid. So it's kind of like inverse to what it would be for a standard policy committee. Maybe the question could be, What would be the contingency list for things we wouldn't fund?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Think you're talking insurance. We we're we're a dual money committee and policy. Yes. So in our world of the capital world, we work a lot with BGS. So appropriations committee is gonna ask us to look at the BGS operating budgets. So that's what the five of you will be looking at is the BGS operating budgets, connected to our capital bills, not connected to the cash fund. It is their operations and general fund dollars support their operations. They have a lot of divisions. They have a lot of moving pieces. It's not just taking care of buildings and mowing lawns. They have risk assessment in there. They have printing, they have property management, they have the fleet for our vehicles. They have so much. And those are the areas that the committee needs to figure out what questions do we need to ask of each of us when they come in to talk about their general fund budget. Then we have DOC, which is a whole different world. They have a lot going on in their general fund. General fund's about 240,000,000. It's all general fund, very little, if any, federal. They're providing a lot of services. So for the five that are working on this, you gotta figure out what are all the things that DOC's providing? And then we have to do a deeper dive into that and say, are these programs working? Are they being effective? How long have we had? That's what I think we need to get at that Appropriations Committee wants. Is that correct?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. And thank you both for that clarification. That is the piece that I'm speaking to today. You all have your own domain over the bonded items in the capital budget. But that's exactly right. Agency budgets, DOC, BGS, their base budget proposals, any one time requests that might be attached to the agencies, that sort of thing.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: So this is an example. We saw last year, and it wasn't the intent of the testimony, but it was a derivative. There are some electric vehicles in VGS that nobody drives because they don't like them. So would that be appropriate to make a recommendation? Why are we

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That would be a question that you buy. It's not that we would need as a full committee to ask BGS when they come in to talk about their general fund budget.

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: Is that

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the thinking, James, something like that?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's certainly within all of your discretion. That is kind of your area of the budget as it pertains to the general fund and those kind of oversight and follow-up questions on program application. So that's not too granular?

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: No. No.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I would say Thanks. And you all

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Their have your own fleet service is a big part of state government. Mhmm. They have all the fleet vehicles. And any state government, part department or agency that wants a vehicle for an employee to go somewhere, they have to go through BGS to get that vehicle. So BGS is the home of our fleet vehicles. So if they've got issues, is it working having so many electric vehicles? That's the question the u five could come up with and say for the fleet, these are the questions that we as a committee need to ask us. That's a program.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And this is the art, I think, of gathering information that that is ultimately sent to the appropriations committee. Right. That sounds like a completely appropriate oversight and program implementation follow-up question that's well in the case purview. Is it attached to a funding item for that given year? Is it attached to an appropriation line item? Is it a salient feature of their budget request that year? Maybe, maybe not. I'm not familiar with that particular example. I don't know if it is. So some things might be well within your purview as oversight over these agencies, but not as pertinent to that year's budget cycle and the appropriations considerations before the committee or house appropriations. And that's where you're all kind of approached to how you facilitate that testimony in committee becomes the art of getting the information you need for your policy or for your committee letter to house appropriations and what you conduct here as And part of your review

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: just at the risk of beating up on that example, so if you're up and I've run eighty, ninety unit fleets, So, I mean, you've got acquisition costs, but you have ongoing overhead costs. You have individual unit utilization, like, are the units we're just not using? The overall utilization, you know, what are your disposal opportunities? So just because you're not acquiring something doesn't mean that there isn't overhead involved with owning a unit. Absolutely. There's there's like there's a concept called based on the cost of a parking space. So you look at the the the the operational cost of your fleet and then divide it by the number of units you have with all your overhead, and you're like, well, this vehicle cost me $43 a day to be parked here, and we're using it, whatever, four days a month. Is is that a good value? Absolutely. I

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: think the other thing that that speaks to is is one time versus base. Like, it's it's easy to scrutinize one time appropriations because they're all itemized and neatly presented in in the gov rec. Base kind of accretes over time, and it it can become difficult to follow-up on things that are nested in a departmental base, such as fleet operations.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Do people understand when he's saying the base, frozen, the cat? Folks understand that?

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I think I do.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: It's your variable cost, basically. It's your operational expense. Think it's Can

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: you explain it a little bit?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Sure. So with one times, I'm still coming up with a way to explain one times. It isn't just It's a one time appropriation, right? But it is a single discrete, single fiscal year appropriation. Maybe there's carry forward authority into But future fiscal it's a one time request. It expires. It reverts to general fund at a

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: certain So one fiscal Yes.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And again, there can be carry forward. But basically, for a short heuristic, it's one fiscal year. Base is the foundational department budget that carries over from one year to the next. The next includes salary, fringe, benefits, building maintenance, of those things that are baked into the core agency budget that's then the foundation for the next years.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It doesn't go up. Persists

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: over time. Yeah.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: So yesterday Let me try. The governor's executive directive to generate a report of all the properties that may or may not be usable for affordable housing was a one time occurrence. We're trying to change

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: it. Was different.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: It's not a budget.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's not

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: a That's example. That would be a one time cost that unless we change it and say, do it for five more years, that would be a one time expenditure

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: and after that, it's done. But its EO wasn't funding based.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And it's not funding based. So, an example.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: It was absorbed within the existing organization.

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: But Okay. That's not a good one.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: But if you went back to the car Uh-huh. So purchasing the car for fleet is a one time appropriation. But the overhead, be it personnel or space or maintenance for that car, that's based because that's part of your ongoing

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: of your ongoing One would assume. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You would you would hope that that's what the agency is doing, right? If if you know, if you're more than one time funds, they're considering the implications for base going forward. That's another very good and important question to ask.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So yesterday, had Jay in here. Pretrial supervision. In the FY '25 budget, we appropriated 600,000. Right? Yes. That project completed.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: We did.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So they added in this year's FY '27, the administration wants 200,000. So the question is, is that 600,000 that was in FY twenty five budget, is that in the base so that it's there's a a $600,000 appropriation in the FY '26 budget? That's the first thing. If there isn't, then that 600,000 was a one time. Right. So the 200,000 that's being asked for f y twenty seven, is that part of the base or is that a one time? So that's the differentiations between base. The base is your ongoing appropriation. So

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: you're getting corrections. Think last year's budget is a little quicker. Fiscal year is a little over $200,000,000 in aggregate. I think 02/15 is the number six that I had to go Colby. But would it be appropriate to say you know, right now, we just and the BAA had just passed the house today. There's a a overrun for well pass because of a higher population within the facilities. Would it be appropriate to say, so we're just given that figure. We're not given the contract. Like, would it be appropriate to say, we wanna see the contract?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's I mean, I think it's it's

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: just 8 figure. It's an 8 figure item annually, which

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Good. Well ask for the contract. Mhmm.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: And I think Well, I that that's the purpose of this conversation. Yes. That's

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that would be completely appropriate for your role. Absolutely. I think the question that I would leave you all with, or the challenge I would post you all with, is to look at the time you have the agencies and departments in committee. And remember, too, that you can always talk to them offline. You can ask GFO to help you get information, to follow-up on a question you have. Your time with them in the room is often quite brief. And so you might have something that is very It's a good line to follow-up on and pursue, but can be done outside of committee, either through requested agency or through working with JFO to get you more information. If you want a copy of the contract, one of the expenditures on that contract. And to exercise that judgment, like, what do I want recorded in the meeting? And do I want all of my fellow committee members to hear? And what can I follow-up on afterwards? And there's an art to that, and it's also up to your own judgment and how you all want to run your committee. But that's the consideration I

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: would leave you with for that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So Will, I and then

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: think, James, that was a good point that you made about how the base funding carries over to the following year, but you can still change it as long as you're able to dive into it and really know what those core costs are. So I forget what last year's program was. I thought if I it was $221,000,000 of base funding and about 14 or 15,000,000 in one time funding for DOC. I don't

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: think very much one time.

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: And maybe I have that wrong. It added up to about $2.30 something million dollars. I thought it was that breakdown. But then we just did the BNA, which adjusted that core the base funding for the

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, and the interesting thing about adjusting base funding in the BAA is generally, you actually can't do base adjustments in the BAA. Things will live in the base section, but unless that base is then proposed in the next full fiscal year bill, if it's base adjustments in the BA, it's effectively a one time unless it's re proposed in the following year's full fiscal year budget. That's a small nuance.

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, no,

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: no. But you're right. Yeah.

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yep.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: And there's one thing to follow-up on, but

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: it just slipped my mind. Hopefully, I'll remember when we share.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So what we have established here is five members of this committee are going to be working with this memo to figure out what questions we should be asking as a committee when BGS comes in. So we would need an idea of their not departments, but divisions, their responsibilities divisions, so that we know and the five folks here would help the rest of us. They'd come back and say, these are the questions that kind of need to be asked of these different divisions or operations that they do. And then the same thing for DOC. So it's to help us spend when that department comes in with their general fund budget request, we as a whole committee at least know some direction in terms of what to ask of the person. So we're not starting scratch. That's what these five folks need to focus on.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Is there a way to get to after asking a question? I sometimes, as I'm sitting here, I don't want to determine whether someone in the agency's trying to hide the information or whatever they're doing, they're not maybe giving you the full picture. How do you dig that out deeper, or do you go through you folks in joint fiscal, kind of help us get that information? Because I've sat through testimony even this week that I was like, okay, we've got the money, but we haven't accomplished it. So what are we doing with it?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: You're winning, sir.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: And so that's the challenge for me. We can write the questions, and I think we'll do an appropriate job. But are there areas within agencies that they could say to us, well, that's off limits? Is there anything off limits, first of all?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You wanna answer, Scott?

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I can chime in, Morrissey. For the record, Scott, when we're joining the fiscal office, one of the things that we do, I do know, repo committee, and you've seen us, we have access to look at all what they're called the debt IDs, is the number assigned to that dollar amount to say $400,000 for this study, did you do anything with it? We can look and see what expenditures were expended. So every one of these departments is going to have a business manager so you can ask them show me the accounting of what you were given and where it is.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Now a lot of what

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: you hear with the capital bill is project based, right? And let's say like, you know, the Windsor courthouse, how much money did you get, how much money did you spend, what are you going to do with it? But for some of these other aspects, could ask BGS, not Joe necessarily because he does the construction stuff, Emily or Wanda might be able to say, for the fleet management, for the security, give me that cost breakdown, show me the cash flow kind of thing. And that's where I would go to get those kind of questions.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Yeah, just wondering like how granular we're going get on this stuff, right? So like, so DOC comes in and it's like we've got this program divas. It's a full time position of two three quarter full position. We get to throw a grant through DOC. Like, will that grant appear on any or is it just going be lumped into a big line item? DOC grants, you know, it's.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: From

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: the point of view of what I see in the accounting systems, there should be specific department IDs assigned to all of them. But the tricky part is understanding what the numbers mean and how it applies. Because sometimes you'll see even on the capital build repo, reallocations it says BGS various projects. Great. Various projects? And you might see a DOC grant, $25, even the cultural historic barn grants, that kind of stuff, what we have in the Capitol Building just say $25. It's just counts as a grant. So it's there, but sometimes you have to dig a little bit more and understand when you see the report, what the numbers mean, how that applies to lab and the actual Because the budget will say x amount of money to, trying to make something up, my Arts Council for their 125 grant programs. And the debt I'd use tied back to the budget for them, so you should be able to find them.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: So yeah, it's tough because we need to have some background to even know what to ask for, right? So it's a bunch of grants. Is it like a question of how far do you go? Because it's probably $25,000 grants from DOC too. So is it all grants over a certain level we're looking at? And we ask them for a list to space it out. And then how much do we go into each one of those? You know, it could be like this could be a whole session.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Everybody wants to weigh in here.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: But to me, you're asking that question because you're curious. So guess what? As the five review, that's a question in my mind. Do you ask them offline? We don't have to spend an hour of committee time doing it, but that's the things that we go and talk to them and say, hey, listen, this is various items. Can you break this down for us in more detail? And you guys give us Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: I mean, guess I'm wondering what the, you know, the folks downstairs or upstairs want from us, you know?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: James may be able to answer that. What do they want from us in terms of Conor's question? You went through it a little bit at the beginning. You kind

[Conor Casey (Member)]: of missed that. So how would we prioritize being that we've got the time frame? We'll be marking up the budget, you said, in, like, three weeks.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Well, the letter will be coming out prior to that.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Right. I know that, but I'm saying, so how do we the group is going to have to obviously start next week immediately to get this.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But you're not doing the work for the committee. I know. You're you're setting the framework in terms of what questions we should ask. So it's not that you're gonna find the answers. No. We are. It's the framework of what questions

[Conor Casey (Member)]: we all need to answer.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It's like stuff like

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: the question you were asking yesterday, Chair, like, Okay, you're going down to the biggie once a week. Are you coding that separately? Is that part of the project? You know, you can like stuff you could spend

[Conor Casey (Member)]: a long

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: time. James, do you want to answer your question?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: All in consideration. I mean, these are all big questions. Like, how do I allocate our scarce time? How do I decide? Question, big picture question. Do I focus on the granular operations of this unit? And the frustrating answer is it depends. But I would say this. One, JFO is always a resource. If you want to dive deep, we can help. As Scott said, we can help do some of the middleman work in connecting with the business managers who have that information. Two, I would say the line for you all is what information do I need personally to feel like I can make an informed recommendation to the appropriations committee on how we prioritize funding requests? Maybe for you, that means you have to go really deep on how something is working. Maybe it means you stick to the 30,000 foot picture of what does your program do? What happens when you don't do it? Okay, great. That's enough information for me. So I would say it depends on the individual committee member and the committee itself, what information you all need to feel like you're making an informed recommendation for the corporations. Brian,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: you had your hand up, and then we'll have his hand up. I think Joe,

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: you have the time. Should get out of here.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We can't be back. Yeah.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I I'm more than happy to to come back.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Brief. So if we dig too hard, just say, here are the name of house appropriations of Galfetti.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: What was that? I'm sorry?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: It's not my turn.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Brian? That's

[Brian Minier (Member)]: not necessarily for our guests. I mean, we've been given first principles by JFO. Seems to me to get the questions that you want,

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: we need to hear from the vice from you and from

[Brian Minier (Member)]: the scheduler what we've gotten in the coming week. There's no in between right now.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: There's no in between. From probes in terms of what is being proposed in the general fund budget. They're going to be getting that out, I would assume, by the end of next week because they've been working out

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, that sounds about right.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we don't know what's I mean, we know there's 200,000 for the pretrial supervision. That we know. But you're looking at their budgets in general, not just the ups and downs.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: No. I understand. I just think there's no there there yet.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right. We'll

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: That's okay.

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: Do we does appropriations have a template for how they want us to prioritize all the funding? Is there a scale? Do we just make up our own way of doing it? Like, is there any preferred method that you guys have?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Not as far as I'm aware, but I do know that there are all the previous policy committee letters are on the House Corporations website. I can the link with the committee if it's helpful to look at examples. Every committee has done it in their own way historically. Don't think House folks want to impose a particular template on

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The way you list it, one, two, three, four, five, that wasn't your priority. Right?

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: So then that's what

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I had

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: in my I've also seen it as buckets like, oh, we prioritize this bucket of things and that bucket of things in no particular order within those categories.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Upstairs, we've done high, medium and low base.

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: You're right. It's how you choose to do it. Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Perfect. Joe?

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Oh, I'm good. You're good.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I really appreciate that. I know we have you scheduled and you've been pulled in all different directions, but we are also a money committee. So we kind of understand some of the moving pieces, but I wanted the folks to have a better understanding of the general fund in general, because I know that pops up questions for the committee. So as said, we've got five members as a subcommittee just kind of looking through to come up with some questions that we need to ask as a full committee, not for them to get the answers, but in order of the structure of how we as a committee need to approach BTS when they come in with their operational budget, when we see the approves document, the same with So would you be available to these five folks if they've got some questions as they start working?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's absolutely true for all.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Got to understand this.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah. Scott is always yeah, we're happy to tag team requests from the committee. And truth is, there's 17 people at JFO. So if you send a question to one person, it's going to find its way to the right person. Scott, myself, the budget side of things, we're both happy to do what we can. I'll also just make a quick plug. You may know this already, but the House Corporations Committee members each have a buddy system, of, right? But you have a liaison to House Corporations. So I see Representative La Roche is your budget buddy for BGS, and Representative Squirrel is he he handles DOC. So those are two big areas

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: for already have our two people.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yes. But you can look right over on our dry erase board. Love that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we have two folks to work with Trevor. My heart's still.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Going to.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What happens in our winter since.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Not because we're efficient. We just can't remember.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's correct. I'm just excited to highlight those. If you if you want to coordinate with house preparations, know what your counterparts, your liaisons are working on and asking, might be able to compare notes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It would be really helpful when BGS comes to present their budget downstairs as well as DOC. The liaisons are there. It's really important.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Thank you all for having me. Thank

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: you, Susan. James.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: James, we'll call you back. So before we finish, folks, so Kevin and Shawn, please reach out to Trevor to find out when DNC's budget's gonna be presented. Okay. So you can be there. And then Gina's not in today. And we'll reach out to Gina and make sure she checks with Wayne for what the beaches. And that would be a good starting point as well. One other thing before we leave, H540, it's a reparative program working group. House judiciary did a walk through yesterday. And on a straw vote of eleven zero three, they support the language.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Eleven zero three zero.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Eight zero. Oh, okay. I say eleven

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: zero three.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Eight zero three, straw vote. They support it. Yep. No changes. So I would like to vote that out on Tuesday.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: If you

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: could put that on schedule. You still I'm not presenting. Yeah. I'm speaking. You know what bill we're doing?

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: I believe yeah. I do. Yeah. Absolutely.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We'll have Troy's backup. Okay. I

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I I don't recall there being any So could have flags on that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No. It's not. Good.

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: Oh, my

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: speech is easy. Yeah. It's too easy.

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Up. Lay up.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Made it. I I know.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: On the issue of the On the issue of the thing the present issue has had, multiple questions asked, and this is my take. I'd like to share them with you even though you're hungry, and I am too. Yes, we're in a conceptual phase, but everything in life is conceptual, right? I mean, till you get to the actual thing is conceptual. But as far as what to ask, James answer, I think you did a great job of this. Like every one of us is going to have something else that triggers us. Like this doesn't sound right or whatever. There's big potatoes and small potatoes. And you ask how granular? If you're dealing with a company that bought millions of a lot more blades, you'd worry about a dollar per blade. We don't. BGS, you're not going to ask them about the long blade, right? But if the car fleet, if they're spending x millions of dollars on the car fleet, that's a pretty reasonable thing to ask. But as James also said, if it's not in the budget this year, it's not going in our presentation, doesn't mean you can't ask a question about what happened in the past. But it has nothing to do with this year's budget. And so you might say maintenance or whatever, yes, but that's not aligned. That might not be the line item in the budget. Just hopefully that made sense and maybe just people staring at me. That's fine. I mean, it's just an example. It can be anything, but it's conceptual. Like you're

[Scott (Joint Fiscal Office)]: gonna ask different questions.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: I have a different question maybe than somebody else has for the veterans zone. You know, we had to ask, we went deeper on small potato in the scheme of things, items of the washer and dryer, right? Because we weren't getting the answers. But sometimes people have the answers and that's not to pick on one person. So it really depends on what you're hearing from testimony or what you know about something that maybe somebody else doesn't know or you're gonna start drilling home. Maybe, you know, Brian knows something about a specific part of BGS that I never even thought you bring it up. I mean, I don't know, but you do, do you know I mean? So just, it's okay to ask the question. Also the big part, I think Alice would agree with this, as little time as there is outside of committee, there's also questions if you have personal or more intricate details that, you know, just make an appointment with Wanda or with Emily or whoever, Joe or whatever it is, or, you know, people in DOC. Anyway, that's my rambling. Sorry.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we've got about two more weeks of testimony on the capital bill next week, and then a little odds and ends the following week, and then we're gonna start up market. Okay. Capital bill. I'm still gonna be pushing to get these some of our bills out. So next week, we're gonna be working on some bills and good to go.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Anything else? I ask the question? No. If we what what is what is the five of us availability for Thursday noon on the fifth?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I my Thursdays at noon are done. And so I I gotta That's not good for you. Thursday Thursdays are not

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: That's a good example of an offline question because that's not for everybody in the committees.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's I have to of you. So it's

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: really down. I'm trying to get to a place where

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Well, let's go on five more.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. So there's five of you. That one's gonna be a dicey one. So if you need some time and you want some time when we get some things scheduled, we can work work with Tate and Maine. Maybe we can bump some things around. It should be probably more towards the end of the week because you haven't gotten a budget yet. But it's in the plan.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Let's get together, the five of us, for reading ten, fifteen minutes just to talk.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. You can on Tuesday. You have caucuses and then lunch. We're not back.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: God only knows. Yeah. Tuesday. Fine.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: It's where we can come with.