Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Welcome back, folks. This is House Corrections and Institutions Committee. It is Thursday, February 5. And we are back on the capital bill, and we are working on Section nine and also a little bit on Section 10. And we're going to start out with the drinking water revolving loan fund. And we have Emily Bird with us. Emily, welcome. This is really your first time on your own. That's fine. Here. And we're used to Eric Blatt, so bring us some new light.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you, Tim Bell. Good

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: afternoon, Madam Chair and committee. Thank you for having me in today. My name is Emily Bird. I'm the water investment division director at DEC, and I'm joined by my colleague, Patrick Monks, who is our water infrastructure finance program manager. And today, we're going to do a walk through of sections nine and ten.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Do you mind advancing to the next slide?

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: And here's an outline of our presentation. I'm going to start off with a table giving an overview of the line items that we're going to be talking through today in sections nine and ten of the capital budget adjustment request. And then from here, I'm going to dive into sections 10, which is on clean water, and just do a a quick reminder of the clean water board and budget process that informs the allocation of those dollars under Section 10. And then I'm going to turn it over to Patrick, who will give an overview of our state revolving fund programs. And that will touch on both Section nine, the drinking water state revolving fund, the SRF match, and then section 10, clean water with the clean water SRF match and pollution control grants. And then there's a couple of policy proposals that are at the end of the governor's recommended capital budget adjustment bill, and we're gonna walk through those with you as well. I understand there were some questions about the status of some other capital bill funds through the municipal pollution program, and we will also touch on that when we cover the municipal pollution control grant. One thing that

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: we usually get, it's not a handout, but I would like to get, is a list of communities and projects that will be receiving drinking water revolving loan fund money, clean water revolving loan fund, and municipal pollution. We usually give those forms. It shows what communities, the priority, where they are on the priority list. If they've gone for a bond vote, or if they're due for a bond vote, we can figure out the cash flow. We always get a list. We always have to ask. We used to automatically get it up to a few years ago. Now we have to ask. So I'd like to know what communities are receiving money. FY '25, FY '26, let's say anticipated for FY '27, so we can figure out the cash flow. So that would be for drinking water and clean water, and also for the municipal pollution grants. Because we're gonna get questions from colleagues. I've got a project in my town. What does the money do? Why didn't we get the money? What's going on? And it's good for us to have those documents. Plus it helps us when we do markup. Great. Yeah, I think Patrick will touch on some resources that will help with that, and we can certainly send follow-up materials to file with your committee as well. That's important for us to have that. Right. Thank you. Next slide.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: Okay. So here's a simplified table that should correspond with the row numbers in your master spreadsheet for the capital budget adjustment. Today, we're going to be walking through, for row 73, the 20% state match to our federal drinking water state revolving fund capitalization grant. And that will help us with funding, completing the match needed. That's for our federal fiscal year '25 award, and then projecting out what is needed for our next federal award for federal fiscal year '26. And so we're coming in through this budget adjustment for an additional $2,500,000 requested there. And Patrick is going to get into some more of the detail on why there is an increased ask in this space, and it has to do with how things work in the federal budget related to congressionally designated spending. So we'll get into that as part of our presentation today. So that's the 590,000? That's the 2,500,000.0, the 2,498,000.000 that is requested as part of budget adjustment this year.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So where's that $5.90?

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: That was appropriated already in state fiscal year '27, I believe.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Bonded. Bonded.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Bonded the May. Okay. I was looking in the wrong I was looking in the wrong column. Okay. So in '25 I mean, FY '26, you didn't have any appropriation from us because you had money, the previous appropriations that you hadn't quite gotten out the door because some things had changed. So you didn't need any money in the f y twenty six budget. Yes. That's why there's nothing there in the f y twenty six budget because they didn't need it last year. So we anticipated 590,000 for f y twenty seven. The governor has proposed is an additional 2.49 in cash, not bonded, but cash.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: So we'll we'll walk you through the details behind that as we move through our presentation. And we were in last week with Ben Green, where we were able to present to you on the budget adjustment request for Waterbury Dam project overrun. That that was covered last week, but happy to answer any follow-up questions on that. And then moving down to section 10, these are the DEC line items only that we're covering today, but this is part of an interagency budget process. So we'll be addressing today row 88, state match to the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. That's the 20% match that, similar to the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, is going to help make our federal fiscal year '25 award whole and then also cover what we project as need for federal fiscal year '26. And then we will also address municipal patient control grants, which are posed at $3,900,000 this year. Can we follow that? Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Sure. No, I'm serious. Did the committee follow that? Because that's brand new for a lot of folks. So what she just said was Clean Water Revolving Fund, the $1.5776100 goes towards our full match for the federal fiscal year '25 amount that's available to us. And then, and I'd like to know what that amount is of the 1.577. And then the remainder of that would go towards the federal fiscal year '26 amount. Federal fiscal year '26 ends in September 30 this year.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: So we receive our award notification for federal fiscal year '26 in the July timeframe and usually get that grant in house sometime over the summer and then have some time beyond that. So it's slightly out of sync with the federal fiscal year calendar.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You also have I'm just gonna throw a curveball, but the feds give you 18 months to match the money. So we don't have to put up the full state match to receive the federal fiscal '26 match because they do it over an eighteen months period, which then crosses over to other fiscal years on our end. So we don't need to put the full amount upfront. We can do that over a couple of our fiscal years and not lose those federal dollars. It's complicated.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: Yeah, it's real complicated. Appreciate the complexity there. We typically try to make sure that we have secured the match needed at the start of the grant so that there aren't any surprises in terms of our ability to draw down the full grant amount. But there certainly is, as part of our work planning with the EPA, we indicate how the match will be paced out over the course of that grant, and so can look at some capital considerations. If I may just Edrick, is there anything that you'd like to add to that?

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: That says it well. It certainly has complexity on

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: the credit as well to get that spread out over time.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: In the past, and this isn't you folks, but in the past, what was happening, they would ask with all the money up front, and then it didn't have to be matched for a year and a half to two years, which really put the capital bill in a bind because there was money sitting out there that they didn't have to use to match the feds for another year, but they were sitting on capital dollars. So we've changed that over the years to make sure that our match kind of tracks what would be available in our fiscal year, what would be available from the feds. That makes sense to folks?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Mhmm. Mhmm. We are in the past, we used to do math when we were

[Edrick (DEC staff, last name unknown)]: funding a project and get

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: a certain amount of match dollars and certain amount of grand dollars. And at some point in the past, moved to using all the match dollars first, to get their direct fee to the GBA. So I wonder if that is when things switched to us getting money, how does it spread out over time?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Now we spread it out over time. So you can't bank it because it was being banked.

[Edrick (DEC staff, last name unknown)]: Well

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Could you just detail again what the you said the 1,577,000.000 is the full match, but did you break down what the federal fiscal years are by 'twenty five and 'twenty six? What was the amount for both of those?

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: Sure, yes. And we'll get into a little bit more of the dynamic at play with our federal award that caused this, But it's roughly $750,000 delta that's needed to fully fund our federal fiscal year 'twenty five award. And then the balance is projected as match need for us to bring in the new federal fiscal year '26 award. We're going to get into this in a little bit more detail a little later in the presentation, or we can jump ahead to that piece of the presentation if if you would like to cover that now.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: So just a quick point of clarification. You're saying that in order to fully meet the needs from what's presented in this little spreadsheet, there's 750,000 additional dollars?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's off the 1.577. 750,000 of the 1.577 is to make our FY '25, the federal fiscal year '25 whole. Correct. Okay. So that will draw down as much money as possible that we're allowed through the feds for their federal fiscal year '25. Okay.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Okay? Yep.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: Thank you. And then

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the balance of that will go towards the federal fiscal year '26 that begins October 1. But the federal fiscal year, what the feds do for the amounts that are coming to the state is over an eighteen month period that the state can match those dollars. The state doesn't have to put up the full amount for f y the federal fiscal year '26? Yep. Okay. So that's an important thing to ask for the remainder of that 1577. How much of the federal fiscal year '26 does it draw down? It's not the full amount, I would say.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: So what we are requesting here would cover the full amount needed that we're projecting for the FY '26 federal award? For over that eighteen months, beginning

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: from October to October.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: Oh, apologies. So the current grant that we're operating under is the federal fiscal year 'twenty five, and it came in higher than anticipated. Maybe it would be helpful to jump ahead to the slide that addresses this. And so right now, we have already in hand our FY '25 federal award. That came in late last summer, right, Patrick? And it came in higher than we anticipated. And this slide helps to kinda walk through the the reasoning for that. So each year, we estimate what is needed for a match based on an anticipated federal grant. And grants are typically consistent year over year, so assuming roughly level funding is a safe assumption. At the federal level in the federal budget, congressionally directed spending or earmarks are deducted from the same plot of money that funds the state revolving funds. And so depending on the status of funding for earmarks, it can cut into what we would receive for our SRF grant. Those earmarks specific to Vermont? Or is them are? So is it their whole pot on the federal level

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: and all the earmarks that come out

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: of that, regardless what state it is. That's correct. So there's one pool of funding at the national level. All the CVSs, the earmarks, they go through the congressional review process, the ones that get funded and skim off the top of that pot of money. And then what's left gets allocated out to states based on a formula. And so at the national level, the fact that there are earmarks can cut into what's available to states. This dynamic affects Vermont as well as other states. And so it can make it really difficult for us to anticipate what our federal grant will be. We were expecting CDS to bite into quite a bit of our FY 'twenty six federal award. But with everything that was happening at the federal level and the budget, there was a continuing resolution that ended up without funding the CDS projects. And so we ended up with an unexpected increase in our federal grant for FY '25. So now we're coming back to your committee this session looking to make the match need for that increased grant amount whole. And that's the $7.50. That's correct. Alright.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Troy. So to clarify, you don't need more money because earmarks skimmed too much off. You're asking for more money because there's more money to match.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: Correct. For FY '26. Yep.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Right. I'm about to ask for a list of those earmarks or where I could find them just so I could start sending some angered letters.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: On on that, we have been engaged with our congressional delegation on this really challenging dynamic, and they've been incredibly responsive to the concern. And they are working to put in a proposal through the Water Resource Development Act of 2026 or WRDA to hold harmless the SRF from

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Nice.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: CDS in the future. So we are expressing a lot of support for that proposal and hope that this won't be a dynamic that we have to juggle in the future for our SRF program.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Let me know if you need a signature.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Appreciate that. So members can see how this plays out. So if we can match what we're allowed to match as money in that big pot, $7.50 will allow us to bring down more than we anticipated. Right? Which then means those dollars will get back to our municipalities quicker. Because these dollars all go to our municipalities for well, we're in drinking water. Right?

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: This dynamic is playing out for both. Yep. So it's both drinking water and clean water.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the more money we can get in, the quicker it goes out to our towns to do the infrastructure upgrades that they have planned. That's how it works. So

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: that's a little bit of the background on the increased match ask for both drinking water and clean water to make our f y twenty five grant full. That's the one we already have in hand. And then also to cover the match needed that we're projecting for federal fiscal year '26. And then in addition to those two line items in the budget adjustment request, we also have the municipal pollution control grant request.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I want to go back up to the drinking water. The 2.498, how much of that is to match the federal fiscal year '25?

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: I believe roughly half of it is to make the prior year whole. At one point. Apologies. I don't have the number right off the top of my head, but about $1,200,000. And I can send a follow-up note with more exact figures. Apologies for not having that handy right this moment.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: That's about half.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, about half.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: That's to make FY, federal FY twenty five point And

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: then

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: remaining half is guesstimate as to what we're going need for FY 'twenty six, federal

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: FY We'll 'twenty receive a notification of our FY 'twenty six award amounts, typically in July, July 1.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Even though it's almost at the end of the twenty sixth fiscal year. Yeah. Because on the federal level, it's been in place since October '25. You've got conflicting

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: fiscal years. Yes. That makes it Confusing.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Between the state and the feds. They're not on the same time frame. And on the federal level, they don't have to give the money up front. They have a year and a half to dole out their portion, which then changes our schedule because our fiscal years are diff Mhmm. So it gets a little complicated.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Well, that's a this is the first time this has happened. People are asking for money from years ago. But Mhmm. No?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I think it's the first time without so many earmarks. It's the needs. Yeah. Okay.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: I think there's always a little bit of because we're projecting the need, and then we come back and may need to reconcile and shore up. So there's always a little bit of of of flux there. But we'll keep a very close eye on that and make sure that, especially if there's concern around cash flow, see if there's anything we can do to expedite the spend down of the state match sooner in the process, if

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: that would be helpful. So I'm going to throw you a curveball. If you don't know the answer, that's fine. But the IIJA, the Structured Jobs Act, we got a lot of money for our clean water and drinking water on that. And municipal provision grants. So we'd like to know at some point where we are on all of that. I'm not sure of that later on in your slides, but we And that was a four year, five year?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Five year. So that book lasted five years.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So FY '27?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Federal '26.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Federal '26.

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: This is the grants we'll

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: apply for and receive this year.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And it ends in October year?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: That's when grants roughly go out, and then we'll have twelve to eighteen months to. This is the last year we'll get this is the last the last grants we'll get under.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: For which fiscal year?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I called them the federal

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: it was federal '26. That's what they're that's what they're labeled.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the federal '26 expires September 30 this year. Yes. So then there's no more IIJA money after that.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: That's correct.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We're So gonna get any of it and we did put aside blocks of money to pull all those down. Match. So we're whole on that. But I would also like to have a list of projects that are being done with that as well. So there's a lot of money going out to our communities for wastewater, drinking water. And there's municipal pollution money in that too. For that, I believe.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Yep. Which are your programs? Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because I'd like to get all those list of municipalities. Sure, we can follow-up with that request. Thank you.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: Right. Kirk, if you don't mind advancing. Just a quick reminder around section 10, clean water. This section of the capital bill is recommended through the Clean Water Board's annual budget process, and it ends up going out to multiple agencies across state government. And I looks like you'll be hearing from at least from a Housing Conservation Board today and likely other agencies on this as well. So each year, we look at what is available from the Clean Water Fund and the revenue streams that support our Clean Water Fund special fund. And there has been a legacy of roughly $10,000,000 from the capital bill also contributing to this body of work. And so each year, the Clean Water Board convenes public meetings where they put forward a budget recommendation for this whole budget, including Clean Water Fund and capital bill dollars. It goes through the public review process. There's public comment and public hearings. And then the board makes a recommended budget to the governor, which then ultimately gets loaded into the governor's budget recommendation. So when you're reviewing section 10, that is part of this clean water board budget process. So here's a snapshot for the state fiscal year 2027 clean water budget. Roughly $30,000,000 are coming in as projected revenue for the the three revenue streams under the clean water fund. We are requesting $10,000,000 additional from the capital bill that's reflected in the budget adjustment. And then there's an additional 5,300,000.0 of an an unanticipated revenue that came in higher than we previously projected from prior years that we've allocated as one time funds to address some budget gaps. And so that brings the clean water budget to a total of $45,200,000. In statute, the state of Vermont has committed to funding the Clean Water Initiative at 50 to $60,000,000 a year in order to meet the federal EPA's expectation of our plan for Lake Champlain cleanup.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So, I just want to be clear on this 5,300,000.0 estimated state fiscal year twenty seven one time funds from unallocated unreserved Clean Water Fund revenue. Is any of that true or any capital budgeting that also includes cash? Is it

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: just from the state budget general fund? This is just from the Clean Water Fund special fund. So it's prior year budget or prior years closing out with more revenue than we anticipated. And so we roll those over to the next fiscal year budget, and we target them toward one time uses that help to supplement our base programming. So that 5.3 is just the Clean Water Fund Special Fund. So was that more revenues? We switched. So is that more revenues that came in than anticipated, like from the from the meals tax, property transfer tax, clean water surcharge and any unclaimed bottle deposits? There was more that came in than we were anticipating. Yes. Correct. Although that trend is slowing down, and so it's looking like that this might be our revenue trends are slowing down, and it's looking like it's turning in the other direction. So we're certainly monitoring that very, very closely and adjusting our budget as needed.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the 10,000,000 is what we usually carve out. If you remember last year, when we did the two year budget, this particular section, that lean water section, we had a 10,000,000 on the bottom line, but it hadn't been allocated to different line items because we wait for the Clean Water Fund Board to make their recommendation. So that's what section 10 is. Thank you. Does that make sense to folks? Yep.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: Great. And I think with that, I'm going to turn it over to Patrick to walk you through a little bit more detail on the State Revolving Fund and PC grants. Thank you.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: People confused? It's just

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: less than I always had. It starts making sense.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's You're

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: four? Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member (likely Conor Casey)]: You mean? Just like so. And so

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Yeah. And then it's not backed all the way through on the clock.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: For eighteen months. Okay. Let me explain the spreadsheet here that Shawn brought up. If you look on f y 26 and f y 27 and section 10. K? F y 26, we have these items for dollar amounts that are allocated for different items. Correct? Water quality grants, municipal pollution grants, all the way down. And it shows a total of 10,000,000 in FY '26. If you look at FY '27, there was nothing in the columns for those projects except a total of 10,000,000. So we put aside last year in FY '27, dollars 10,000,000 to go towards section 10. The Clean Water Fund Board meets during the summer and fall and make recommendations in the fall for the upcoming fiscal year. And that recommendation includes the 10,000,000 in our capital budget. So we got the report, I think it was like, October, November, around there. We got the report in terms of what the board was recommending us to us to allocate that 10,000,000. And what the board recommended was 1.5 and water quality grants for AG, 1.577 for the clean water, 3.9 for the municipal. So everything that you see in the gray columns and FY '27 that's highlighted in yellow for each of those projects is what the clean water fund board recommended. So that's why the columns in the blue in FY twenty seven are blank.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: As we wait for the recommendation.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Gotcha. Okay. Okay. So Shawn asked that question, so

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: I thought it would be

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: good to explain it to everyone. Does that make sense?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Yeah. Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Headrick.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I'm Patrick Monks. I'm the program manager with the Water Infrastructure Finance Program at DEC. And I'll give you a quick overview. Chair Emmons did a great job describing what the SRF does. This is just a tad more detail. So combined, drinking water and clean water SRF funds provide essential funding for municipal and drinking water projects. We provide low interest loans. Technically, loans don't charge interest. They do charge an administrative fee that works the same way. And that interest rate is ranges from zero to 2.75% for municipal private entities. Some of our loans are are offered with what we call subsidy or loan forgiveness. The amount of subsidy that we're able to offer is dictated by the terms of the grant that we get from EPA each year. SRF funding is often combined with other state, local, and federal funding. And all projects, all construction projects are ranked using our priority system.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So maybe if we can go back and just talk about what's for infrastructure projects, what is it that we fund?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I'll get a couple slides back. Okay. Just in terms of the priority system, in any given year, we have typically more demand for funds than we have funds. So all projects are scored and ranked, and funding is made available to the highest scoring projects. The way the state revolving fund works, each year on the left side of the slide, you'll see we get a capitalization grant and during the BIL years, we've had multiple grants from EPA. Those are combined with the 20% state match into the revolving fund. We make disbursements out to eligible projects. Projects are receiving loans from us, those loans are repaid back. So over time, the body of the fund is able to grow and fund more projects as demand increases over time.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So in order for those dollars to go out to a community, a community needs to have a bond vote on their project. So their project could be a 10 or $15,000,000 project, but the full amount of 10 or 15 is not paid for totally by the state.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Yes. They have yeah. They have to have the bonding capacity to borrow that money in the first place. For on the clean water side, we offer loans for the planning, design, and construction. The municipal side, a lot of a lot of our loan activities for wastewater treatment, stormwater projects, the private side, some wastewater and also stormwater. Municipal projects do receive first priority, so we only fund private projects after all eligible municipal projects are funded.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What would be a private project?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Could have on the natural resource side, typically where we see more of the private activity would be projects seeking to do stream corridor protection, restoration. And we could also have an indirect wastewater system on the private side. I I don't know that really seen any go forward in the last few years since I've been here. Some on the natural resource side, but that strong demand on the municipal side. So that's typically uses all our available funds. Drinking water side is very similar. We're also offering funds for planning, design, and construction. Eligible systems are limited to what are public water systems, meaning they're they're regulated under the, say, drinking water act by the drinking water and groundwater protection division. So they can be privately owned, but public regulated water systems For wells, which we refer to as sources and drinking water lingo, drinking water treatment, all sorts of infrastructure, drinking water tanks, pipes, etcetera.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So folks remember the Guildhall Essex Courthouse conversation with the sprinkler system. The town drinking water system couldn't handle the sprinklers. And I asked the question, have they been in contact with DC about possible funding for updating their drinking water system? So

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I don't know you may

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: not have heard from them or you may.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Maybe they're starting with the drinking water protection division, those folks who assess the eligibility and work with the system to help steer them in the right direction when they come to us for funding.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So if they were if they pursued that, they might have some opportunity to get some state funds, which is through the other part of our capital.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Each year, we issue our annual intended use plan for both clean water and drinking water. It's a it's a federal requirement, and it essentially spells out everything the program is up to in terms of what do we have for funding, how our priority system works. That includes the project priority list, which, again, is the list of all the projects that have applied for construction funding and it ranks them. That's what we need to see. Yes. Yep. You should have a copy of this presentation. These are links to the intended use plans. And included with each intended use plan are those priority lists. We can go through those and provide you, like, an update as to where last year's project or the current year's projects are in terms of, you know, to your point, whether they're in line to to get a bond vote.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, we need to see that so that we can see how our money is flowing and what the real need is out there. We need to see that.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Just in summary, over the last five years, on the clean water side, we issued 105,000,000 in loans to over 120 loans. Drinking water side, 154,000,000, over a 172 loans. Past year or two have been really busy. And at least on the clean water side, should be on pace to have a record year. Just a summary of the capital the cap grant and match requirements as as you've heard. Each capitalization grant requires 20% match of one to five ratio as discussed. In terms of the total grants received from EPA over the last five years, clean water side, 74,800,000.0, and on the drinking water side, 187,600,000.0.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Is that fiscal year or calendar?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: That is state fiscal because we report EPA on our activities for the state fiscal year, I believe.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And did any of that include the IIJA? Yes.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Largely, the IIJA funds are, in effect, blended in. I mean, some are very specific. Some are for emerging contaminant projects, so they can only go to projects that qualify. Some are for, like, service line replacement, but a big chunk of the IIJ funds are what are called supplemental to the base grant, so they're managed the same way. But yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's all included in these totals?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Yes. That differentiated. Yep. That's total activity. We

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: can get from Scott how much for all of that we've put aside. Because I don't want

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: to go.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: There's millions that we put aside. There's $89,000,000 for municipal pollution. We put aside a lot of

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: It's been a huge and essential infusion to the program. I mean, provided additional funding these past five years. But again, those loan dollars will be revolving back into the funds to fund future projects.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That's the goal, Mary. So it's safe to say that the revolving loan funds are revolving well?

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Yes.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay, because it was one year I asked that question, the former met person that provided the information after he told us they really weren't revolving well, so I'm happy to do that.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Yes, I mean, it's always work with our borrowers to have their projects move along in a timely fashion to get to completion so they can enter repayment. We have lots of small communities that face any number of challenges, and so it's always a little bit of a challenge there, but they're definitely revolving back out. I skipped the changes to maps because that was covered. Municipal Pollution Control grants are grants, they're not loans. State revolving loan fund is loans based on the funding received from the legislature. Each year, higher scoring projects may receive grant funds. They're typically I've been with the program, I guess, going on five years this summer. I believe all the pollution control grants have gone to projects that were also receiving a state revolving loan fund loan. They're issued in conjunction with loans. Can you just offer like, how

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: do the municipal patrol pollution control grants differ from the clean water grants?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: In my presentation, when I talk about grants, I'm talking about the grant that comes from EPA to us, and that capitalizes our fund for loans. These are separate. They're state funded, and they're a grant that goes to the community. Okay. So if you're

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: How are projects different?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: They're typically not. Municipal pollution control grants are almost always gonna go to wastewater treatment projects because they are the highest scoring often on our priority system and they're essential funding for the communities that get them. They're not a huge chunk of the funding that we offer. In our funding, we may have identified 80,000,000 in need and we have 4,000,000 pollution control grants available. So it'll go to the top two, three, four highest scoring projects.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And do some projects get

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: them from both both funding sources? They will get they may they usually get both a loan and a pollution control grant.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So do we still fund for phosphorus removal the full 100 percent? Does the state still fund that for the communities? Because we did that way back. Don't if we still do that.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: There is no not currently. No. You know, we receive a certain you know, a certain percentage of the capitalization grants from EPA can go need to go out as loan forgiveness. It's difficult to offer 100% forgiveness to any given project category and to ensure that those funds are, you know, equitably distributed to to all projects or to as many projects as possible. We also find that when we offer a 100 loan forgiveness, it's a little harder to keep the project scope in check, whereas keeping some skin in the game on for the borrower helps maybe a link to keep overall cost down.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But I do remember there were phosphorus removal projects in municipalities that the municipal pollution grants paid a 100%.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Oh, pollution control grant by mistake.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. And we pay a 100% of

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: the phosphorus removal upgrades. Depending on the amount of PC grant, PC for pollution control, it's easier to say. PC grant availability, you know, like, a project may exceed availability.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We've been behind in payments to these municipalities, but we did catch up in that. And also, yes. Yeah. That projects do can stick around for a little while.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: And to be clear, we fund up to 35% of total costs.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So that's why we need to see the list for the municipal pollution grants in terms of what's the priority, what's been done, what's in the hopper, so that we know how far down that list, We are told 3,900,000.0. We need to know how far down that list is anticipated to go. Because right now, we're just seeing numbers on the page. Sure. We don't have the data to back up those We have the overview of what the program is, but we don't have the data to make our decision when we do market. Okay. And I'm asking for the data.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So that the committee knows what we're funding. Because right now, I'm not so sure the committee members know what we're funding.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And higher priority points are more likely to

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: get the money accurate? Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It has a number of times. Yeah.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I mean, I I had a I went to a Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce dinner the other night at the Capitol Plaza, and a woman from Barrie tapped me on the shoulder. And she was like, you know, we have a non drinking, you know, water, you know, notice because there's carcinogens in the water. So I was just curious as to is that on your radar or is that Barry's situation to get out in front of that? Certainly, do not drink order would have come from our department. Yeah. So that's troubling, you know, In Vermont that people aren't

[Unidentified Committee Member]: being able to drink safe water.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: And do you know about this? I don't. But I wouldn't necessarily. I'm sure the folks in the drinking water in the groundwater protection division do know, and they're the ones who are tasked with both ensuring that systems are testing and monitoring to identify pollutants as as they're as they're encountered and to provide the technical assistance and to also steer them to us to provide whatever assistance they might need and that we can offer. Yeah. They certainly wouldn't be out there without the state knowing. Yeah, yeah. That's what like a situation like that. Just be nice to have that list of chair of the vaccine. Thanks very much.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: You're welcome.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I don't wanna move on to this until folks are clear and see if you have any questions about the drinking water revolving loan funds, they've presented so far clean water, revolving loan fund, and municipal pollution. You have enough information to make a decision on Marco?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Well, you know, we should see the, you know We need the

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Printing them

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: with the updated notes. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: To see them loose.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: We absolutely need to see those.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: Okay. If I may, this is Emily Bird. Can follow-up with a direct submittal of the intended use plans and attach to that as the priority project list. It's also linked in our presentation file. And so that is a good indication of the projects that have been ranked in the queue. And then this spring, there's another batch of projects that are submitted for our next intended use plan. So we can certainly follow-up with list of projects that are in the queue and happy to answer any questions on that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you have to get through a town meeting because some of those towns are gonna be voting on some of those projects, then it's going to list what the project is as well. I

[Unidentified Committee Member]: just had a question based upon what Shawn had asked you, representative Sweeney. Being that you're one of the top people within this water, municipal water, but also clean water, and all of that, why won't you not leave off the VA project that's having problems, right?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: There are hundreds of regulated systems, and my role in the Water Infrastructure Finance Program is to administer the State Remodeling Loan Fund, pollution control programs. I don't have involvement with monitoring results from those hundreds of water systems.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I just don't know if there was, like, communication amongst the team that kind of talks about the different issues that are out there that may need to

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Oh, absolutely. The the the project development staff and my team meet weekly with staff in drinking water and groundwater protection division, tracking projects from the earliest of stages that might need assistance, working with those systems to guide them through. And as that once those projects do come to us, coordinating with them in terms of, you know, that drinking water division reviews the preliminary engineering engineering reports, engineering service agreements,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: and it moves on through our process. And so Troy has the list.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I have.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Is it drinking water or clean water?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I went to drinking, but gonna I'm about to clean water didn't

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the the whole thing.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: No, that all goes down.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's all of it together.

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: I know

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: it's on our website. Yeah. So let's move on to there is language that's being proposed on the back of the bill.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Get my bill.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's being proposed. It starts on page six. And seven and eight. K? Go out your book. The governor's project.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: What did you say?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It starts

[Unidentified Committee Member]: on

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: seven. It's basic starts on six, but it really goes to seven and eight. My

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: first slide covers section eight. Go ahead. Okay. Yep. Section eight, the proposed language covers 24 BSA section 4,752, which includes a definition of disadvantaged municipality. This has bearing on just the drinking water SRF side. And where it refers to municipality, it also refers to privately owned regulated systems within the municipality. Term is important because if a borrower is a disadvantaged community, they can qualify for a longer loan term, which reduces the annual payments, the lower administrative fee, potentially down to 0%, and they can potentially qualify for up to 50% loan forgiveness.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So it's important to see what the definition of disadvantaged municipality is.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Under that current definition, it means a municipality that has a median household income that is less than the state average median income, and that the user rates are greater than 1%. So that category that we described it is it's lower income and their user rates are pretty high.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What is the median household income in the state? Do you know? Does anyone know?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: It's around 80, isn't it? It varies widely by community, that's for sure. It varies widely by community, but the state gets lower. Think I would have guessed 60. Know what?

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: It's 60. 81 to 85.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The state? Maybe. Who

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: was right? You were right, Shawn.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Who was off for the record? Just kidding.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Gotta get you where I can, Heather. I didn't say that. I not involved

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: in that. I just And

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Shawn, the second category okay. Sorry. Just a really quick question. So you're going to forty years with that. Do the water systems last forty years? They can if they have to have an asset life determination that the useful life of the asset can't exceed the long term. Correct. So forty seems like a lot. Yeah. Some infrastructure has that or more. As long as somebody's thinking about it. Thanks. I'm sorry, where's that 1%? Because I see two. That's On A? Oh, it's on A, sorry, I was on Sorry, I was was on on And so then the second category would be a large system or municipality whose median household income is above the state average, but whose user rates are greater than that percent of their median household income. So not low income, but very high user rates. And if they meet those categories, as we go through the loan review process, we follow a series of steps to first extend the loan term, lower the interest, and then offer principal forgiveness to get them to the point where their user rates are no more than 1% of their income. I know it's a it's Go ahead.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: It would seem so in definition b that you can have an extremely high income, low density population community that qualifies for that subsidies, which doesn't seem like it's the intent. No, it is not the

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: intent. I haven't seen that happen. This is existing, and I think it has been the definition quite some time. So I think there was a lot of thought given to that. And I think it's involved going through these calculations, but I think it works to meet the intent.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I think also we've got water districts. And this is where your drinking water projects are too. There's many water districts out there that are considered a municipality. So if you got a small municipality, and you got a small municipality next door and another one, they could create a water district. Then the water district

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: A lot of our a lot of our systems are fire districts formed for those purposes. Fire districts. Fire yeah. Fire districts and they are they are municipality. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: that's where this language because we did this in in this committee back I think it was in the late nineties. We did this because the feds allowed us to start putting an income, some graduation in terms of the drinking water we've all been long fun. It was in the late nineties.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: That's right.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Did that. Some of us have lived this.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: That's very helpful. So I apologize, there's a lot of text here, but this is what the language that is proposed. So an issue that we have encountered working with some of our borrowers, the manufactured housing community. We've worked with the Manufactured Housing Subcommittee of the Affordable Housing Coalition. Over time, they've provided a lot of feedback on our intended use plans. And they've identified that that sector, I'm kind of jumping the D here, The manufacturing housing community has very high infrastructure needs. A lot of these communities are older, and their infrastructure needs upgrade. And they tend to be very small communities in terms of our borrowers. For them to qualify as a disadvantaged community, they are a manufactured housing community, mobile home park within a community that has a higher income, it's hard for them to show that they are lower income, unless they do an income survey. Income surveys, they hire consultants to do that. The results, if they don't get significant participation, that may affect whether or not they're able to demonstrate that they meet the requirement. And I believe it is felt as like one more impediment for these communities to get through the overall process, permitting, design, funding, etcetera. And so they have asked us to try to find ways to streamline it so they can address the significant infrastructure needs in these communities. So D is intended to, you know, yes, those other requirements are still at play for other communities, you know, below state median household income, etcetera. This would allow certain resident owned manufactured housing communities that have be nonprofit and resident owned and registered with the Department of Commerce and Community Development. They would essentially automatically qualify as disadvantaged community. We have realized that that we still might need to propose some additional changes to the statute in order to fully implement that because first test is like, yes, we're disadvantaged, but then as we're still requiring median household income information from them as we go through the steps of extending term, lowering interest, awarding subsidy. So, if okay with you, we might seek to reach out to Legg Council to work on some potential modifications, but the intent will be the same, to just, again, relieve this community or these communities from having to jump through several layers of hoops that really, I think, based on the preponderance of evidence, these are very high need communities that are very important source of housing to make lives easier for them and and the consultants who represent them.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So our Legis Council is in the room. So if you could submit some of that language on gray corner there. So could you explain what a manufactured housing community is? Is it manufactured homes that are built off-site and then delivered in two sections and put together? Is it mobile homes? What is the definition of manufactured housing?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I believe it's mobile homes. I suspect there's a definition within 10 BSA, it's 6,254. And they have to be registered as such? Sorry to interrupt.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, has to be registered and reside in a nonprofit and have to be listed and all. And all the home parks are registered. So would it be in a mobile home park?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I believe they're synonymous. I think there was some I think that I'm not an expert here. I think there was some awareness that mobile home park was a misnomer and that these homes really aren't mobile. They may have been brought in on wheels, but you can't go moving around. But I think it's essentially the same communities.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So is this connected at all with the governor's executive order?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I think it's good. Yes. It's definitely in keeping with promoting affordable housing and increasing.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But was this part of his executive order?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I don't know.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: A full?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I don't think so. Don't believe this part

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: of the executive order. This policy proposal has been vetted up to the government's office. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: we should work with our respective committees that deal with housing, make sure this is in tangent with whatever direction they're working in, and maybe even environmental community as well.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: What

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: does C?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: So C is a little broader. If we have C, we could do D. So c basically says, now, the definition of disadvantaged community is set in statute. On the clean water side, it's not. In both cases, have both state and federal guidelines as to how we define these communities. On the clean water side, the analogous term is affordability criteria, and we have the ability to amend those affordability criteria in the intended use plan. So if we're getting feedback or we've identified a a gap in our overall approach, we could modify those those those criteria. Know, the intended use plan goes out for public comment. It's reviewed by EPA. And that approach has worked. We don't we haven't modified it in the last five years, except to add categorically manufactured housing communities on the clean water side. They categorically meet the definition of affordability criteria or disadvantaged community. Again, that's on the clean water side. So we were seeking to be able to do the same thing on the drinking water side. And if over time, we are, you know, again, receiving input to suggest that modifying those criteria to to better meet the intent of providing assistance to the Spanish communities, we could modify those criteria in the intended use plan. So if C were if D was not changed as c were, then we we could make that change or propose that change in the next next intended police plan. We added d to get there quicker and to provide certainty to that community in response to their the comments we've received from them over time.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the intended use plan right now for drinking water revolving loan fund, right?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Sorry, go ahead.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The intended use plan that you have right now the drinking water revolving loan fund. You don't have You have an intended use plan, right? Yes. It does not include consideration for household income, user rates, socioeconomic indicators that determine the priority or does it?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Those factors can influence the the scoring for projects, but it doesn't grant those projects, again, longer term, lower interest, or long principle forgiveness. Intended use plans reference this definition, but we can't modify the existing definition of disadvantaged community in the intended use plan. It's statute. And it's a very workable definition. It's just not flexible.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So this that this C allows the flexibility and how you define disadvantaged municipality in the intended use plan.

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Yes.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Again, there are also federal side boards. I don't have the exact quote, but very similar to indicators here, user rates, socioeconomic, household income. States don't have the ability to define disadvantaged community however they want. And again, they they are the intended use plans are are reviewed by US EPA each year.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Whoever's reporting those has to pay attention because it's not me. Putting that out.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Got it. Anyone

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: that has questions?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I think it was

[Unidentified Committee Member]: time to

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: ask. Yeah. Lot of them. If we're asking about the executive order, what did

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: you what

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: did you mean? What did you wanna correlate between the executive order and what we're talking about here with mobile?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: D. D. Was any of this connected to what was asked in the executive order back in the fall for how's Well,

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I think we have not I would speak into being in keeping with that. Yeah. It's just it's just fee relief for mobile homes and stuff like that. There was not probably for mobile home priority processing.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But this is where we need because house house general and housing is looking at that exec. They've been working on executive orders, so we've gotta track. Yeah. Are people clear on this language?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Yes, but not necessarily the intent or how far I can go. And I don't know if this is the right forum for that or not. For instance, you say C is broader than B. Is. And D speaks specifically about manufactured housing communities. What else could C scoop up that is not that? And I don't know if that's the right place to ask that.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: What if we're going to do tiny home communities or

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: homeless pods?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: They wouldn't be an eligible borrower in all likelihood, you're referring to the community that houses it. I think, at least in the case of the manufactured housing communities, there's a lot of documented need in terms of the insufficiency of the infrastructure and the cost that they're facing. Another factor could be the predominance of pollutant. A lot of communities are dealing with emerging contaminants. Currently, we've had some good grant funding from US EPA that are required to offer a 100% forgivable loans. This is the last year of that funding. So I think some communities may be facing a long term burden that isn't necessarily reflected in their income and their user rates. Don't really have Sitting here, I don't have any particular change or community of mind that was just to have that flexibility. Again, we do have that flexibility on the clean water side, and we've been, I think, very conservative in terms of how we've used it.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Can I ask you? Yep. Oversimplified, because that's the way I have to think. This is help to those that need it. What's driving this change? What's driving it? Yeah, I mean, is there particular areas that we feel like can't make it happen and this is gonna help them out or why it's an incremental change helping communities out. Get that, but nobody's got enough money. Why is the governor suggesting this is where we want to put more money?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I think it's an important housing sector with high infrastructure needs. You know, they don't mess, you know, isn't necessarily the majority of the state's population that's affected, but it's a significant part. And there's no simple solution to addressing infrastructure and addressing housing. So this is a very simple and limited change. It's certainly deep to We've heard repeatedly from projects that are trying to go through our process that this would make their lives easier. And not just easier when they face pulling together the funding to update the manufacturing housing community is a real challenge. They've got to seek funding from multiple parties. It's a lot of engineering, lot of planning, lot of design, coordination of construction or other non water related infrastructure needs. We could ease that path a little bit. That's why.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah, I'm not a guess. I just wonder why in this particular, this tweak,

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I mean, I know we all need more affordable housing, but I mean, it's just, I guess, yeah, you you answered. Okay. Thank you. It's where he thinks he. So let's go down to

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Section 9, because I know it's due in and we're running late. And then we have Hillary scheduled to walk us through the draft for the corridor.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: All right, so this is also related to housing. It's a different sections, statutes and rule. Section nine of the bill covers 10 BSA sixteen twenty eight. And this covers chapter two of the environmental protection. Those are the rules that our overall program uses to assess the priority of projects. Projects. Statute describes what has to be in the rule. There's a rule that has those things. And there's also a component of the rule that talks about what a municipality needs to demonstrate if they want to seek our funding to extend wastewater service to a portion of the municipality that does not have it and where that is outside of a designated center. So our current rule was adopted in 2017, certainly with an eye towards preventing scattered development or small, whatever you wanna call it. And so, the current requirement is if a municipality wants new wastewater treatment, either a new treatment plant or service outside a designated center, that demonstrate that there are no reasonable alternatives, that there's rules in place zoning to prevent scattered development, and that there's a significant health problem that'll be most cost effectively addressed by this new wastewater service. So first, is there a problem that's getting fixed? If so, is this the only reasonable alternative? And do you have zoning controls, etcetera, to prevent scattered development? This proposal, so that is perceived as a burden to extending sewer service in areas that might accommodate additional housing, to have to go through those steps of the process. So the proposal here would allow where a municipal sewer extension or a new treatment plant or a new service line, if that is being done to accommodate new housing or to reserve capacity for new housing, then the current requirements would be deemed to have been met. So instead of having to demonstrate to us that, again, there's a problem, There's no other alternative, and there's zoning to prevent scheduled development. It wouldn't have to do those things. If the project was being done to accommodate additional housing, it wouldn't have to do those things.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Environmental because you're not withstanding. You're doing a big notwithstanding, and you're also notwithstanding the rule. On that one, we're gonna need to do a

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: little bit of work. John? Yeah. What's what's the definition of scattered development? I don't know. You got

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: to go back into Title 10. Okay. Is the environmental title, Title 10. The previous language is in Title 24, which deals with municipal law. Title 10 deals with environmental law. So you have to look at which title you're in. So it's 10 BSA. That's environmental. We won't have to really reach out to our colleagues to get some help on this. This one is more complicated, I think, than the first language model.

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: I would agree.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: There's implications, particularly when you say we're not withstanding. Anything else? And we'll look towards John to help us too on this.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Yeah, I'm sorry. Do think I have one more question, Chair. It's just the final clause in the proposal or that reserve wastewater capacity for new housing. Restate or restate or or Sure. Sure. A wastewater treatment system can be expanded and designed to not necessarily accommodate immediate housing development, But the community can reserve capacity and capacity can be measured in hydraulic capacity, how many gallons per day, but also wastewater treatment plants have permit limits regarding biological oxygen demand, phosphorus, etcetera. And they can say, we're going to reserve some of that capacity in the treatment plant only for housing. Next.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I know this has been a heavy lift. I know some of it's been easy to follow and some of it has not. So thank you for hanging in, everyone. We will be spending committee time working on this.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Thank you very much. We do

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: have fish and wildlife out there in the hallway. If you need a break, take a personal break, but don't do it all at once.

[Unidentified Committee Member (likely Conor Casey)]: Agree with this one. I

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: know we're running late. Thank you. So I appreciate you having patience. We are still on Section 9. And we're doing, if I get focused here, lines 78. And also we did talk, we did through the dams. Yes. And, we'll start with Line 78, which is your major maintenance and infrastructure.

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Great. I guess for the record, my name is Andrea Short sleeve. I'm the chief of operations for the Department of Fish and Wildlife. It's nice to see you all again. With me today, I've got Dylan Sickles, who is our fish culture program manager Elizabeth Strattenden, who is our director of finance and administration and Eric Palmer, is the director of our FISH or FISH division, excuse me. So I know I think we sent over spreadsheet that outlines some of the things, so I'm happy to take any questions you have.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I just looked at the spreadsheet. Okay. We haven't looked at it before. Great.

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: And I should also mention, we just got off the phone with Adam Miller in the hallway, and he says hello.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Sorry. There's only a few of us left. So there are no recommended changes for this. But there's 1,100,000.0 and that's why $26 then $1,000,000 and $27 So we just need an update on where the money flow and spend. And this is the sheet, if you could go over it for us. Sure.

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Well, we can start at the top with our infrastructure projects related to our conservation camps, at Buck Lake and Kehoe down in Castleton. All of the projects are gonna be done before the camp season begins, which is in June. And so we're just waiting for the weather conditions and being able to start those construction projects.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: All of those will be done, the puck and the keyhole.

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Correct. Yep.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Done by summer.

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Done by summer. '26. Yep. We have 900 Vermont youths attending those camps that we need to assume that all of those are done in time. And then moving down to the residents and offices, Majority of those are for our fish hatchery residences. They're, just related to regular upkeep of those buildings. We have a number of transitions happening with the tenants moving in and out. And so a couple of the projects are going to be delayed until during the summer just related to those moves.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So the two Bennington ones are right at the Fisher. Correct.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yep. Yep. You. Yep.

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: And similar with the Keoh residence, that's at our Green Mountain Camp, our Green Mountain Conservation Camp in Castleton, like I mentioned before. And the projects at the Sandbar WMA, we were replacing the roof. Contract is in process. We're gonna be using a standing seam roof there and, should be a nice durable project. Am I looking at old one? Sorry,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: no. Fish culture.

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Oh, my mistake. Yeah. So I can I'll actually pass that to Dylan since he is the expert in the room talking about.

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Yep, well thank you, Andrea. Dylan Sitchell is our Fish Culture Operations Manager. Yes, we've got a whole bunch of projects in five different facilities going across the programs. We usually ask for that. We're excited to have most of

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: those projects being able to be done before.

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Our Walla Hill facility has some electrical and recirculation equipment being done there for our tying with our walleye programs and some of the other species we raised there and

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: stomanas.

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Bennington facility, there's a listing of a head box grain with a large number there. We're actually having a project done there for our ponds that we've done this summer. We got it out to bid a couple times. Actually, as a reference point, we put out the bid last year and the price came in significantly over what

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: we had available. We put

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: it back out this spring and we actually got a price below we had available some written by for the workshop project as well so we're excited to get that work going.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: So it's

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: been a significant savings almost a half $1,000,000 difference in price

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So they're on that project.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I want to know, did Jennington save some money for

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the state?

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: You're back in there, it?

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: You're waiting for the butt.

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Our Bennington facility, our Ed Mead facility, and our Bald Hill facility also had turnover in our management staff there. We had three managers over thirty years at East retire,

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: so we lost a lot

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: of institutional knowledge. We've gained some stuff there, some of other staff we have there, we've learned from them. So a lot of these projects are going on where things are put in place and we're continuing with the staff we have there going forward. Our Bennington facility has some tree removal we're working on. Filter roof as well. We're working at a well there. We're getting taken care of too that's out for bid and done here this summer as well. That's our expectation. Our Wheat facility has several projects involving electrical work, whole barn that we built staff on-site. We have one of the most impressive engineers in our program out there who can actually build and take care of most of those projects internally with our staff there by this individual leading the projects. We've saved hundreds if not thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars at that facility by having our staff there take care of those projects internally. He's an excellent welder, fabricators, we've got lots of projects going on

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: there on-site that's taken care

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: of by the internal staff. The pole barn is one of those. We ran into a time frame this year, we're going have walleye coming in soon as well as our Salmanas that came in this fall. They got that pole barn built within the time frame within some other internal issues we had going out. Some BT buys and some other things that came up, but we we got it done. So it's in process. It was up to

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: that gate to see

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: the building being built as we speak, so we're pretty excited about that. We have our wastewater plant being taken care of there and some flooring as well. Roxbury, we had some historical work on our airbrush barn there last year, so it's finishing up there as well. The building was actually moved off its premises and the foundation was redone and put back on, so it was a big project taken care of. We're drilling a well there as well to help our water infrastructure needs there, well aligned as well. Salisbury had some work with the study we're working on. It's a bigger picture that we have with our process that we submitted last December for our hatchery review and all. So we're working on a feasibility study there with that as well as the larger study. Like the fact that our well house repair and lighthouse, we were working on those and alarm system as well that we're trying to take care of there at the facility. And our heavy equipment, we've a few items we're looking to purchase involving a trailer and some other pieces we had to get there for potentially a UTV as they call it. I'm trying to say the universal vehicle and all for that. I'm not saying it right, but the Gator kind of thing ourselves for that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So a

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: couple projects we'll work out for the properties there, just a heads up on the streets.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Where are we with the Salisbury?

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Sure, which part of it? Our Salisbury project, there's multiple pieces there and I'll talk to the study we're doing overall. We've actually enlarged that we have a hired consultant on board who came to all five facilities this past spring to do our fish hatchery program as a whole. McMillan Incorporated out of Idaho this year. We're working with Bennington right now on our reports and we hope to have them by June 30 for a review of all five of our fish culture facilities across the board. That's a bigger study we're working on with the process there with Salisbury and the effluent and wastewater processes. We are talking directly with DEC, we're having a lot more meetings with that. Eric is here as well and probably speaks to some of that too, but that's something we're working on with them directly on this to make sure we're moving forward with that facility going into the future there as well.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: When does the permit expire for that?

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: The permit expires as of 12/31/2027.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Twenty seventh. Because we, for the committee, was a proposal to close down Salisbury. We put in a study to really look at what would it take to keep Salisbury open, but also what would it take to upgrade our other hatcheries to incorporate what is currently being done at Salisbury. When are you anticipating that report?

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Large report from the consultant we've hired for this is supposed to be by the December, excuse me, June 30 this year. So they're working on it as we speak for the bigger study. Should show how

[Unidentified Committee Member]: the hackers work across the board.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: one of the questions I had walking in, which I think you're kind of covering is concerns I keep hearing about maybe the potential of any hit countries closing us. So we'll leave that there for now so you guys have been answering. But the other question I keep hearing over the last three, four weeks is whether or not the money has been distributed to the walleye.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: We're gonna get there. We

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: are. I'm in advance.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Jumping shark, not for walleye. Sorry. Can I get there? Do want to go there? Go later. Okay, fine. And then just that you had mentioned that you lost at Bald Hill, you lost three of your senior patients? It

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: was three different hatcheries. We lost our three managers, one at Bennington, one at Bald Hill, one at Ed Lee.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: And you've not replaced these guys?

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: We've replaced two out of well, replaced all three.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Oh, you did?

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Yes. Yes. We had two staff, one at Ed Lee and one at Bald Hill, who were at the assistant level, ready to move up. So they

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: moved them up. So they were just like in line to take that position?

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Yep. We So were able to move forward with those. We do have an open position at Bullock Hill, we hope to fill at some point, but it's the position that the system had previously. At our Bennington facility we did bring an individual in from outside. Stole We an individual that was a very good candidate for our monarch. Virginia. We

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: hired him before. So he

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: and we moved up to the position that had been for the assistant that was there. We were also able to fill that one. We brought an individual in, stole him again from Georgia. So we've got some

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Wow, solid was stuff outside going of the state.

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: I will speak if I could just for a second. We actually have

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: a fish culture school going

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: on right now. I believe this has going on all this week because I think in two weeks from now and again in the March. We brought in our six or seven people that are new on our team across the board for the last two or three years that we take them up and make sure they're skilled at the skills we need to do for our hatcheries and know all about hatchery management techniques. And our staff there and our program within the Vermont staff actually teach that course. And we have space that we've been able to bring in other states. So we've had approximately seven or eight other states here this week.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Wonderful.

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Connecticut, all the

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: way down to Delaware, New York as well, Pennsylvania. Staff from all their teams are here this week to learn from our team about how to raise fish the best way within their program so they can train their staff up to be the best fish cultures out there

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: as well. So we've got a lot

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: of work going on internally to bring our staff up the farm.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Do those other states pay for that at all?

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: We offer it free to our standards. We have the knowledge, we actually took it even virtually this year. We have staff coming across from about 30 or 40 different people around the board at different times learning about fish culture and our programs as well. So we're sort of a leader in

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: that status as well across the country. Okay, that's great. Thank you. Anything

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: else on the fish head choice

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: for that?

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: No. Okay, great. Okay, so now we'll jump to WMA improvements. The majority of our capital asked for WMAs goes into infrastructure projects statewide. We just wrapped up some really big projects, including a

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: lot of roadwork at Bill Slatik following the floods. She talked about last last session with us, right?

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: I believe so. Yes. Yeah. And then we also completed a workshop at the Dead Creek WMA down in Addison, which was a project that took quite a while to get done, but it is done and it looks great. And so this year we'll be focusing on roadwork at the W, the West mountain WMA, and then also focusing on our dams, which I know Tim came and talked to you, I think, last week about. So all of our all of our capital requests for our WMAs are matched with federal dollars or or Pitman Robinson dollars. And so we're using the capital money to leverage about three times more money from from the feds to accomplish these projects. That's basically a three to one match. Correct. Yeah. So it's it's it's great. The Weyerhaeuser line, that is part of our an agency wide requirement to to pay Weyerhaeuser to keep roads open for access in in those properties. And so this is just our portion, and it's just for annual road upkeep and access. We'll have I do wanna flag that. I just spoke with John Austin, who's our wildlife director, and he said that that, contract with Weyerhaeuser is being renegotiated right now, they will be asking for more money, just to kinda keep up with the the increase in costs. And so next year, when we come, for our capital bill, we will also be asking for some more money to do that work. So now we can talk about the sandbar, WMA roof replacements. That'll be on three buildings. Bids received, and contracts are in process, and these roofs need to be replaced in April due to, federally endangered bats. So kind of, make sure that we meet the timing for that and we plan to. And then the statewide dam repairs and maintenance oh, skip the Slatic WMA FEMA match. I don't have much to say. It's earmarked or it's waiting for the invoices of projects or do. Okay. Sorry. So just waiting for invoices from FEMA. And then the line for the statewide dam repairs and maintenance, that will be used at Fairfield Swamp, in Fairfield. That dam in particular is fairly expensive. It's we need to be putting some money into it to maintain right now so it doesn't fail, but we're also hiring we've hired engineers to redesign the dam for some alternative designs and and paying engineers.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's it's quite expensive. Sorry. Just wanted to flag that.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: Okay.

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Think and then moving down to our shooting range improvements. That those that project is currently in process right now.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And so you got the old the old one? Man,

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: just wandering all over.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Okay. Perfect. Fishing vessel on board and patrol.

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: That's it. Okay. Great. Well, electro fishing vessel, we're actively working with BGS. We've gotten three bids, and our fish biologist, Shawn Good, is is working with the WACA to get the design and purchase the boat that he is looking for. And then for the warden patrol boat, Major Reed is getting revised quotes from BGS. So she reached out and got a bunch of quotes in order to make an accurate ask for the capital bill. And, we are getting fifty, fifty, 50 from our recreational boating safety grant, from the Department of Public Safety and the Coast Guard. And so as far as we know, all the funds are secure, that'll be happening.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So these dollars of 2.55 come out of fiscal year 'twenty four and 'twenty five? Because they don't it doesn't track for what we have right now with '26 and '27. And I'm seeing in the box at the bottom, capital appropriation balance. You've got the

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Let's speak with them.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Qualifying numbers, which I'm assuming is when it says twenty four zero one at the end and twenty five zero one, is that your fiscal year?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yes, it is.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: It's 25¢,

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: if I may. It was allocated in 'twenty four for 'twenty five, and then allocated in 'twenty five for '5.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So it's a calendar year.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: It's when it was yeah, when we made the decision.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Still doesn't track.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: No, it's a different number.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No, but it does well, it's close. But what we put in in FY '26, which we did in calendar year '25 was 1,000,105 and here you're 400,000 short. So where it says 1.104. So is that the FY $26 No, I'm sorry for the confusion. These are the balances envisioned January 31. So that's remaining balances, not appropriated. But it tracks with your project balances that then you intend to get all of those out pretty much by September 30. So what fiscal year are you working with these appropriations? There's 2.5 plus million in projects. Do you anticipate having done by this date? Do you anticipate having those to be much done and expended by the bulk of them by September 30 year. And then you've got some that are gonna go beyond that of 152,000. So the 2.55 was

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: The 2.4 one line is what's left of the fiscal twenty five funds. And the 2,501 line is what the balance of the fiscal twenty six funds.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And just so you're aware, madam chair, on Scott's, doubt on January 28. I've got the FY I'm going to call it the '24 what was just referenced as FY '25 at not 1446, but 12/4844. So it's a fluid it just depends on what's been put into vision and what hasn't been. So there's, I would imagine, invoices here that are being cleared as we speak.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's why it's 4,000 less. That one seems to so between the f y twenty five and f y twenty six appropriations, you're gonna be expending all of that, the bulk of it, by September. I have a 152,000 that's far beyond for that. So what are you anticipating with an additional million plus in f y twenty seven? If that's what you're due in FY 'twenty seven? That's a good question.

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: The list that's developed. I've been a bunch of happy projects. I don't have enough time to bring up.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And then I'm going to lead in a little bit to the walleyes because we have appropriated 25,000 last year to the department for walleyes, and that was discussed in the conference committee, that those dollars will now be part of the fish and wildlife budget. So was that an anticipation of doing that within 1,000,029 in FY '27? That was our intent.

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: If I speak to that, then I would suggest we'll find $25,000

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: in the mine under the hatchery program

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: for that. That was the plan. It would come through, it would be incorporated within our project, via separate line item in spreadsheet. Troy. And

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: just to anticipate, nothing in here about funding fishing

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No.

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: That's for mayor.

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: No. That typically shows up in the other side of the budget. It does.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: It doesn't.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Just completely separate. It's not We pushed it out there, I think.

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Yeah, and that happens without us involved. It's pass through money that we do not advocate for.

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Heard.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Do I repeat your question?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It was just answered. It's in the budget.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: No, but they haven't received According to the wall, I think

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, they haven't received the money. Actually,

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Elizabeth, the contract was fulfilled as of last week, right? So it's the sign and all these. So they shouldn't receive that money anytime it hasn't been executed.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: As it was appropriate for you folks

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: for FY '26. But going forward, it's to be included in your budgets because you're the ones who are really doing the work once the Walleye Association does their cons, but then they also help with the tanks. But it's really you folks that manage this once it gets there. That's the shift that we made last year.

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: We'll bring Eric to put their perspective.

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Yeah, I going to say, know that Eric Palmer, chief of fisheries, Vermont Fish and Wildlife, I know that the committee had a number of questions last year about why does it talk from the Senate and why doesn't fish and wildlife just ask for it directly. And I was around for that history. And back in the late '90s and early 2000s, we had kind of a contentious relationship with the LCWA. They felt like we weren't doing the right things, and some of our meetings were a little bit fractious. And frankly, we didn't even know that they were asking for capital money.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They kind of went around you.

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Yeah, they went around us, and they went to somebody who had a very sympathetic ear, which was senator Dick Moss.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Moss.

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: And he was felt that they were doing good things for Lake Champlain, which he cared a lot about. And so that's why the money started showing up from the senate side, in senate institutions instead of coming The original

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: started in the house with it before then. Okay.

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: When we were asked to comment, were holding the Senate Insertations. And we said this is not our request. It's not the governor's request. We can't speak to that, but we can say we're getting along quite well with the LCWA. And that relationship has proved to the point where they started spending some of that money they were receiving to send our staff to trainings when our budgets were tight. We said, We can't afford that. We will pay. So the money started to go to us through the LCWA and then come back to us. And then as the ponds proved to be less effective than rearing fish inside our hatcheries, inside the Bald Hill hatchery, in the Ed Weed hatchery, they started saying, We're not going to spend our money on our ponds anymore. We want to buy tanks for the department to raise wallet. And so now it's at the point where we have that money. It's really coming full circle back to our department, and it really makes sense for us to be stepping up to making the request. That's But

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: we own the tanks. There's three tanks?

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: They buy them, and then they give them to us. And so we've never had any sort of MOA with them as to loans them. But once they're installed in our facility, we said these are now considered Ishmaela property. But they're bought not just with the capital bill money that comes to the LCWA, but some of the funds that they raised through their bank and other labor. They were putting up 100%

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: of the money to buy those trains.

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: But they are housed in our hatcheries and operated by our staff.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Now that relationship is a much better working relationship. The tanks are permanently installed in our hatcheries, so it needs to come through real efficient while we're Completely.

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Just explaining the history of why it didn't start out that way.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That was good. Thank you. It was Troy's smiling ass.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: My bad.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we should get a list of what you're anticipating for the FY 'twenty seven on 01/1929. Just send it to Tate would be great. If we have questions, we can ask you folks to come back.

[Unidentified Committee Member (likely Conor Casey)]: A broad question. We've been hearing a lot of damn testimony this session here. I just think, I asked it the last thing folks are in, but I don't think I totally understand the logic in the departments under A and R, each having different dams, right? Because at the end of the day, as it was said, you're biologists, you're not like damn mechanics there. So, it feels like it creates an unnecessary level of bureaucracy to have to work with DEC rather than just ship them all under DEC, let them run them. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Well, I would probably entertain what Eric thought. You've been around for a lot longer and knowing the history of how we've acquired dams on our WMAs and our fish pond. And maybe you can speak to that.

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Yeah. Our department needs to be very much in favor of owning dams, building dams, maintaining dams, to provide fishing opportunities. In fact, we own a bunch of land that's labeled as pond sites, there's no pond there because at some point we were like, this isn't such a good idea anymore. A couple of our dams are high hazard dams. They've got liability, and they cost a lot of money to maintain. And I think our department is the largest dam owner in the state. Not sure the exact number, I think we have 27.

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Oh, it's 70.

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: 70?

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Yeah, we have a lot.

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: We just got the registration fee for ending '27, so maybe we'll make it a bit smaller. If DEC was willing to take them

[Unidentified Committee Member (likely Conor Casey)]: And

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: honestly, DEC has really stepped up and taken responsibility doing the survey, the maintenance, asking for the capital funds, looking at all of the state dams equally. And we've really benefited from their leadership on that. So they've really stepped up, but still the onus is on us to make sure that our dams are safe and that we've got emergency action plans. And we also have to, frankly, work with flood lake associations who may want us to manage dams or water levels differently than we do. So they're a liability, they're a challenge. We acquired them to create fishermen. Good luck.

[Unidentified Committee Member (likely Conor Casey)]: Yep. Thanks very much.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Was just gonna say, if you think about that, there's no real damn good solution. Because you're gonna want you have the issue of ownership. If you put them all in DC, for example, then they're like, hey, we want to put a dam in this location for fishing or wildlife opportunities. And they're like,

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: well, we're looking at it

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: from an engineering position. So no matter who owns them, there's going to

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: be conflict. And that's kind of a crappy situation, hard situation, tough situation. Complicated situation. Complicated situation. Challenging.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: I'm just you made me think of it. There's no right answer.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, we may be thinking about some of that when we do markup, or we may not. We'll see. Anything else? So get back to us with your listing of how are you going to spend that $1,000,000 plus?

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Just a shout out if I could for a second. Fish culture, we're getting ready to do stocking season again. Representative Greer, I know

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: that I'm here tonight, we

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: have to find us some stocking, pick us up.

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Then we're out again that we're happy to bring them to the home we do and by all means our hatcheries are always open seven days a week or then every Friday. It'd be great somewhere in arrangement if you guys are out and bell and

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: want to figure out to see our facility

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: and see the funds being used in place and all, please come. We really support that, we want you guys there.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Come on

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: and see

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Oh, our

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: we'll be evanked and folks are there all the time, so we'll be stocking. Start. Stocking usually is in full motion by mid April, late April through early June.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And you keep me updated.

[Unidentified Committee Member (likely Conor Casey)]: Yes. Yep.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Abigail, our assistant director Yeah.

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

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: sure you hear about

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: it.

[Dylan Sickles (Fish Culture Operations Manager, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Make sure you guys hear about those.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So it might be worth sometime in April, we have some low times where we're looking for that. It might be

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: a good field trip for

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the committee if it's nearby.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: If anybody wants to come, Fairfield has a beautiful swamp. And if they presidential.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You for having the patience.

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Oh, you're good.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay, pull out your bill of $5.05 9, come on up.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Grab Grab Grab one. Grab one.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay, Hilary.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Welcome.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we have a new draft on H1.9, draft 1.1. So we know that we bring us through this.

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Good afternoon. Record for Each Other Aims for Office of Legislative Counsel. I'll go ahead and share my screen so you can see draft language. Alright, we have it up here. So on Tuesday, we talked about making five key changes that are reflected in this strike all amendment to H five fifty nine. The first key change was that the bill previously referred to the parole board director providing training. And in each of those places where the bill refers to a parole board director providing training, The committee wanted to add that the chair of the parole board also had a role in training. Second key change was

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: Sure, Hillary.

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: Yes. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: for folks who have the paper copy, the yellow does not show Okay? In the So what Hillary has done, whatever it's yellow and highlights is new language from the bill. From the bill. You have to have the bill in front of you, the original bill.

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Next time, I'll give Tate a heads up when it's a color printout. It doesn't print,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: or does it?

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: It would be like gray. Yeah.

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Just We'll work on yeah. I will work on making sure there are highlighted options going forward. We can both make that happen. So I'll do just a quick overview of the five changes. And then as the chair said, a walk through to show you, and you can see in yellow here, any change in language from the bill version. So that first key change was referring to the chair of the parole board in addition to the parole board director in terms of training. The second was removing one area where DOC was given a role in training, referring to making determinations of parole, which the committee heard was something that the parole board did based on a separate evidence based tool. The third was deciding not to add term limits. The fourth was adding consultation with the parole board director and chair by the governor before appointing a parole board member.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And the fifth was adding that We gotta go up so folks can see it. Yes. We will turn to

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the specific language instead of the summary. Oh, okay. Just reminding the five things that when you see the language.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: That's your school. Yep. Okay.

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And then there was adding, as far as practicable, that the governor make appointments considering a balance of different knowledge and experience. Okay.

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: So those

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: are the five key changes. We'll now turn to the language and see what that looks like in the poll. So in section one, we have this section referring to the powers and abilities of the DOC commissioner. You'll see that we added that along with the parole board director, the chair of the parole board has a role in training and that the DOC role in training does not include topics related to making determinations of parole. So in the ultimate bill, this will just read on topics related to criminogenic behavior. The committee will see a clean copy, but just so that you can see how this changed from the last bill draft that you saw, we've left it in with the strike through and just highlighted in yellow. Any questions about the changes in section one? Perfect. Moving forward to section two. I'm sorry that this cuts across pages. This section talks about the board and the board members, how they're appointed and their terms. You'll see that this section is now broken into a couple of subdivisions just so that there's not a huge long page covering a bunch of different topics. So the new A1 says that there will be a pro board of seven members. This is where the bill had previously suggested adding a two consecutive term limit as shown by the strike group. The amendment removes that suggested addition. Subdivision two now covers the governor's consultation and the kinds of things the governor has to consider in appointing members. So this first sentence in subdivision two, this is page two, lines six through seven, is that prior to appointing a member, the governor shall consult with the parole board director and the chair of the parole board. That's language loosely taken from 16 BSA sixteen ninety three. There are a couple other ways to phrase this. So if the committee is interested in that, this is not the only way to describe the consultation requirement. At the end here, this adds that in addition to giving consideration as far as practicable to geographic representation of the state, The governor shall also give consideration as far as practicable to balance of different knowledge and experience. So the beginning of the sentence lists out the kinds of knowledge and experience that are relevant. And this requirement refers to a balance of those things that are mentioned.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we spent quite a bit of time talking about this. I think this is distracted. The governor needs to reach out to the borough board director and the chair. People still comfortable with this? And then the governor needs to take into consideration criminogenic behavior, that the person has some knowledge or experience, criminal genic behavior, mental health treatment, substance use disorder, or serious criminal rehabilitation, which is carried through from the bill. And we have also added at the end of that, and has a balance of different And that the board, I would assume it's the board, has a balance of different knowledge and experience, or is that the member?

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the way this is phrased is that when the governor is appointing members, the governor will consider as much as practical members that represent a geographic representation of the state and a balance of different knowledge and experience. So the way it's drafted, it refers to the whole board, but it is phrased as essentially each time the governor is appointing a member, the governor will be thinking about geographic representation of the state and a balance of different knowledge and experience.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Good question. When you're aware that you're going to lose a board member, are you usually the first person as the chair to know that?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Mary Jane, she's the director. So which one would know? Would it be the chair or the director? So Mary Jane, if you could identify yourself.

[Mary Jane (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Mary Jane, sort of director of

[Andrea Shortsleeve (Chief of Operations, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: the poll board for the record.

[Mary Jane (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I think it varies. Sometimes the member will talk to the chair. Sometimes the member will talk to the director. Sometimes they will talk to both of us. I know about a month or two prior to the end of terms, the chair will reach out to all the members who are expiring to see, just to to talk to them about if they are looking for reappointment, seeking reappointment or not. But there are times where the member will also have that initiate conversation. You

[Unidentified Committee Member]: typically know before the governor knows that there's gonna be a spot open, I guess is what

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm trying say.

[Mary Jane (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: If somebody is planning to leave, Typically

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: that would, yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So if the chair, if the person has a conversation with the chair, does the chair then let you know?

[Mary Jane (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: So then the chair does let me know and then one of us will reach out to the governor's office to say there's anticipated vacancy because the vacancy could be in the middle of someone's term or it could be at the end of their term. We've had them vote.

[Unidentified Committee Member (likely Conor Casey)]: Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So, is basically making sure that you have a say in the selection as opposed to the governor just

[Mary Jane (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: because there have been times where we've had a vacancy and we have been given a member has been appointed and we did not know

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: This their is a real change from current law in terms need to consult with the chair and executive director. Yes.

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And as we talked about Tuesday, it required opportunity to provide input, but this has not changed the governor's ultimate authority to appoint. It's prior to appointing a member. Mhmm.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So what if the governor already has someone in mind, hasn't appointed him, plans on appointing him in a couple of days, and reaches out to the director and the chair, but already has someone in mind.

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think it's prior to formal appointment. I'm not sure how much statutory language could address that particular scenario, but it's certainly a possible one.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The governor could have someone in mind. And the conversation we had was prior to even having someone in mind that maybe the role board could weigh in with the governor in terms of what's needed. We sort of talked about that. This one kind of says prior to appointment member, it could be the day before.

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. So the examples we have in statute all kind of hinge on that formal appointment. So whether it's saying in making appointments to the board, the governor shall consult or the governor shall appoint after consultation or prior to appointing a member. Those are the three versions from existing statutes that describe this consultation requirement. I'm not sure any of those quite address that scenario, but I'm also not sure how much statutory language could

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: be

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: crafted to require the governor to do something other than provide an opportunity. I think shall meaningfully consult. But at that point, it's a loose enough word, but I'm not sure you're really structuring that consultation any different.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm picking up on what Mary Jane said, that when they are notified of a sitting member not seeking reappointment or resigning, it is the director for the chair that notifies the governor. I wonder at that point if there's a way for the board to weigh in in terms of what knowledge and experience they really need. They could do it at that point. I think some of

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the discussion the committee had on Tuesday did talk about kind of more specific procedures around this consultation. If the committee were interested in spelling out some more detailed requirement, such as what the

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: chair is

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: describing, that upon notification of a vacancy, the parole board director and chair of the parole board shall provide the governor with

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Could submit. Could submit. Yeah. I do that now. I take

[Mary Jane (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: it upon myself at times. Like when our chair vacancy came up, I notified the governor's office of the chair vacancy, also provided with a list of duties of what the chair I consulted with the chair and also provided list of duties, list of information. I try to give that input now, but it doesn't mean a future director would

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, that's my question. You do that now. There's nothing that

[Mary Jane (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Says I have issue.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That says that you have to do that, but you do this. So I wonder, I'm just kind of playing with this if we did it both ways that when the board knows there's gonna be opening that they would submit to the governor what Mary Jane currently submits. And then prior to an appointment of the member, the governor needs to consult back With the board. James and then Joe.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: For me, I like the language as it is. And just as in the government side of things, like the way I always think of separations of power, be I'd very uncomfortable going much further in that with him or her, right now to him for governor, but that's their role. And so I don't know that I would want to

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: go further just because the way

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: I look at government, but I do like the language we have.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Also you could be made aware of a vacancy that's going to exist in a year. It's not a good bridge. A different administration as well. So I would suggest to stay silent on that particular piece. Which piece? What do

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: you mean? As to what we do when there's

[Unidentified Committee Member]: a notice of vacancy. The notice of vacancy could vary very much by duration, how long you had before the vacancy actually exists.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, governor appoints and senate approves. So you're gonna have a governor appoint in November and a different Senate approve January. It's an election year. I mean, those are all the variables. I mean, where are the folks on that? The board have a little bit more input prior to the governor coming up to appoint a member or wait until the governor has made the decision? Prior to appointing a member, the governor may have already made a decision on the member.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I think the board can informally can inform the chair and or the director.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Mary Jane says she does that now, but with a new director, there's she's just taken it upon herself to do it. When there's a new director, that may not happen. Because there's nothing there's nothing indicating that the director does that.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Ultimately, the board communications can come from the chair anyway. Right? You're not gonna have individual board members communicating with the administration.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It could come from the chair or the executive director. And right now, it's the executive director who gives that information. But there's nothing that is telling the executive director to do that. Current ones taken upon themselves to do that. So you get a new director, you're not doing.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Couldn't you say that both of them should take the company?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Well, that it's

[Unidentified Committee Member]: and sayings.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That's exactly what it says because we were almost at impasse Tuesday regarding the matters. Because I come from chair, but some people prefer directors, so we just use both. Right. And this turned it

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: to be urgent.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm saying a little something different. I'm listening to what Mary Jane stated, that when they know that there is an opening, they notify the governor. And at that point, Mary Jane submits information in terms of what they need for more balance and knowledge in the board, on the board. That's done now. Mary Jane has taken that upon herself to do that. There's nothing asking her to do that. What we are saying right there is that prior to appointing a member, the governor shall consult. That's what it says, shall consult. And what I'm putting on the table is the governor could already make up their mind who they want and consult the day before they appoint the person. So what real input does the board have in that?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Well, they don't. It's at the discretion of the governor. Regardless

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: of what we put in there, it's still his appointment. Right? It Has to be approved by the Senate, but it's still his appointment.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Well, not these to appoint them.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Only saving grace may be that it says shall Grace. Because the two members, the executive director and the chair of the parole, could kind of, you know, say we need to talk further with this and I would hope that a governor would look to listen even if they had kind of in their own mindset already had someone picked that they would listen to knowing what is needed on that room. That's just my humble opinion.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Ahead, any color?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Instead of saying prior to appointing a member, can we say upon notification of a vacancy?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So it would be upon notification of vacancies that the open air shall consult.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So it doesn't say many, it says shall. Yeah,

[Unidentified Committee Member (likely Conor Casey)]: I actually like that. I might be cynical, but at the end of the day, the governor's gonna do what the governor's gonna do, right? Like, I kind of think to some extent, the best you can do is force the conversation and the governor, whoever that is, is going to consider it a meaningful partnership or not, where it's a back and forth. And if they want to rubber stamp someone, it'll be the illusion of input. Right? And they'll do it anyways. But I think if you do that, at least it gives a bit of leeway.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: No problem. Yeah. Well done, Troy.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Are we good with that, Troy?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Here it goes. Second.

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Connotification. Excellent. So the next amendment will reflect upon notification of a vacancy, the governor shall consult with

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: the pro board director. Can you check the pro board?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Does that work? It works.

[Mary Jane (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I'm just looking at the language in the director clause down in section three to see how that consultation worked, too, because there's consultation there before the governor's appointment as well.

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The last two changes in the bill are part of that first key change that in two other places where the bill talks about trainings provided by the parole board director, this amendment adds in collaboration with the chair of the parole board. So this is page three, lines 12 through 13. Says that at least annually, each member of the PRAL Board shall attend trainings designated by the PRAL Board director in collaboration with the chair of the PRAL Board. It's the language added in the amendment. And similarly, on page four, lines eight through nine, when it's talking about the director providing training to the board in collaboration with the DOC commissioner and the chair of the pool.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: That's that there.

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Any other questions about the amendment?

[Unidentified Committee Member (likely Conor Casey)]: This is all great, Hillary. So nothing in this bill at the moment still addresses a couple of the big questions. How do we get them a separate line item? And the attorney general conflict is very real and very big and something we should remedy immediately. So I'm just wondering where we would want to go from here as far as

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: those two issues. There's also should it be under the secretary of the of the agency of human services

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: and

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: not DOC? Yeah. So since those

[Hilary (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: issues were still being considered by the committee, they're not reflected in this amendment, but I understand there might be some other witnesses here today that might further the committee

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We've tried to get secretary of the agency of human services, and they couldn't make it in today.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: It's not. I wouldn't agree that it shouldn't be under the secretary. That's my opinion. It's all it is. This happened.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No, it's Agency of Human Services. It's a Sanders.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Oh, Anderson. I'm sorry. Sanders. Oh, Sanders. Yeah, so I'm the secretary.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Anything else for Hillary? I'm assuming maybe we have the AG's office here. I don't know if you'd be interested in testifying. Anything else for Hillary? Okay. Thank you.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Have a good day.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So Todd, are you the one coming up?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Sure, do you wanna talk about conflict of interest?

[Todd Davis (Assistant Attorney General)]: I'm going to suggest my colleague, Tim Conor.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay, that's great.

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: So Conor is the chair of the AHS Legal Unit at the AGO's office. Say that title again. Chief of the AHS Legal Unit at the AGO's office.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you're chief of the Agency of Human Services Legal or in the Attorney General's Yes. We have a lot of new folks here that are new to this whole environment. I just wanna make sure they understand. So you're there on behalf of the Agency of Human Services, and the Attorney General Services. Yes. It's all over school, but

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: I'm really here to respond to inquiry.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the attorney in the agency's office that's assigned to the agency of human services represents both, or did up to recently, both Department of Corrections and the parole board. Yes. How did that work?

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: Practically speaking, we just would essentially put an ethical wall between the two subunits of the corrections litigation unit. The corrections litigation unit is the unit that handles all of the corrections litigation. So they would put up an ethical wall between the two, and they just wouldn't discuss what advice was going to Mary Jane and the leadership and the advice that was going to the parole officers as they were presenting cases. So that's how it's worked since I arrived in 2020. So it's awkward. It's not ideal for the same law offices to take two sides. And so the ethical law was necessary.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It could be conflicting sides.

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: Absolutely. And it happened. We would take positions. You know, I would advise Mary Jane and the board certain things, the team that was responsible, it was basically two on one side and two on the other. And the team that helped the parole officers present the cases would take an opposite position. And we technically, we never, not technically, we literally never discussed the advice we were giving with each other. But it's less than ideal, it's awkward, and it does need to be fixed.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I'm looking for what you think how it should be fixed. Right. But before I get there, is it my understanding that the parole board now has no legal support from the attorney general's office? You still do? It is 10 right now. Because I have in my notes that that's going away or

[Mary Jane (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I mentioned that there's some conflict, I think, that's been brought up with the attorney. This is something I'd look at, Todd or Tim, to talk about with their policies and procedures about representing a quasi judicial board. But as of now, nothing is changing. You're still represented. And right now, Tim is our interim attorney.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I don't know about James.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Yeah, we're just talking a lot of

[Unidentified Committee Member (likely Conor Casey)]: the budgeting stuff. So, is the pine coated by the AGs and then paid for by the parole board in any way? Or is it just kind of a pro bono time on your part?

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: It's just part of our responsibility. I don't want to go to pro bono, but it's part of our responsibilities to advise Mary Jane. And I don't bill for the hours and we don't time bill.

[Unidentified Committee Member (likely Conor Casey)]: Because I'm just wondering if there was a way of coming up with an estimate of if the board contracted out for legal services, what that would be as opposed to bringing on a full time council, which of course is going to be ongoing expense and very expensive.

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: We did put a line item, I think it was a couple of years ago, I'm looking at Mary M. And it was $25,000 is what our estimate was annually pay I to a law mean, I would say we have regular conversations, but we could go weeks without talking. I mean, it's not a daily relationship. So we estimated $25,000 to cover a law firm. We did solicit for a law firm. So ideally, the advice to Mary Jane would come from an external law firm, I think, and we would pay a contract to do that, which is not unusual.

[Unidentified Committee Member (likely Conor Casey)]: Really? It's not through dumping a number, actually. That was gonna be much bigger.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Much was it?

[Unidentified Committee Member (likely Conor Casey)]: 25,000.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: A couple Well,

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: years ago. Mean, we haven't That was

[Mary Jane (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: the initial number. I've also heard numbers of, I don't know where that 25,000 came from. I also don't know the budget stream for the AAGs. I don't know if it's a line item in the overall corrections budget. I don't know how exactly that works. That's another piece I'm trying to figure out. Do we have a portion that we paid towards that payment or not? So the budget is something that I don't know. Also, I have also looked at estimates too of 25 to 50,000 potentially. If it was a little bit higher towards the 50,000 mark, it might be a little bit more appealable to somebody to come into the contract versus.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm going to interject here for the five folks who are working on DOC's budget. This will be something to

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: be quiet when

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: they come in to talk about their budget in terms of what is their budgeted amount for the parole board and what does it quote. Mary Jane, it might be good for you to sit in. You might post. James?

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Probably because it's really more what's your solution and depends on what your solution is on my question. As I look at it, it's two state entities, which should be represented by the state lawyers. Maybe you guys got

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: a great answer and I

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: don't need to get into the details of my question based on yours.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Do you have any thoughts how to resolve?

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: I think number one, you partly resolve it by having outside counsel handle the advice to Mary Jane. So that removes us from that side of the conflict. And right now, the way we're doing business is that we're no longer representing the probation or parole officers, probation parole officers before the board in presenting the cases. So in essence, it

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So even DOC without representation.

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: At DOC's request, we are we are no longer representing the parole parole officers before the board.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So do those parole officers have any representation? We've got someone here from DOC. I don't know if you can answer.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Gary Marble, deputy director of field services. Nope. We do not. We present the goal is to present just like we do for court, which would be that we totally present our violation evidence and let the board make their decision as an independent board.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Are are the officers comfortable with that?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I don't know. If I could speak as an officer that when Iowa is an officer, can we get it that way? We're fine.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: To the parole board or to the court?

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: To the parole board.

[Eric Palmer (Chief of Fisheries, VT Fish & Wildlife)]: And the court.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Really, it's not our job to determine the outcome. It's really just to present the impartial information the best we can. It's a violation based on evidence, and we'll let the court decide that as a The issue that we've had is that we want to preserve the independent decisions of the board, and we feel that we've come into some conflicts sometimes when we hold a different position. That's bound to happen when we're talking about complicated cases. My understanding with the way the board is structured is to maintain that independence from DOC.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I just wanna get this clear. So DOC has recommended that the A. G. Office no longer represent the P and P officers when they're going before the parole board, but the A. G. Office is still representing the parole board during those hearings?

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: Actually, no, I would say it this way. DOC has, I think the way that this, our representation of their rural and probation officers before the board, the way the statute is set up is that we may represent them on request of corrections and corrections is no longer requesting that support. So in response to that, you are no longer providing that support. So that is done. Second part of that is, am still representing I want to say advising. I advise the board through Mary Jane, to be honest, but I do have direct communications with the board. So I think that's accurate. I am advising the board in operations when I do attend. And I say I, I'm temporarily in the position, but my

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So CAG's office is still representing the board. However that goes, it could be representing Mary Jane, it could be representing her chair, but that gets to the board. You're there for the board.

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: And we are giving that advice right now. And that and we are looking to outsource that to that contract process we just talked about.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And that would come out of AG's budget?

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: That would be DOC's budget.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That'd be DOC's budget because the parole board's under DOC. Yes.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Your role in advising, is it during the hearings or is it in between? Between?

[Mary Jane (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Form litigating if we are in civil court.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I just need

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: to see what there was a distinction or

[Unidentified Committee Member (likely Conor Casey)]: I wanna make sure I

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: heard in between is what I heard. Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So which prime

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I don't know if this was already covered or I missed it, but when was the change from representing both sides and having a ball between to doing it this current way? Or did this just happen over time? Is there

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: Actually, in the last few weeks. We've we've

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: we've rolled that out.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So it's included So you rolled that out, and that will be connected with your general fund budget, I'm assuming. So in your FY twenty seven general fund budget, is there money to still represent the parole well, it's in DOC's budget. So you wouldn't know. I don't. And and I and we've been handling so so in terms of an

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: AGO budget, it's it's we have people. We've been providing those people. So it's it's it's status quo for us, to be honest.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But DOC reimburses the attorney general's office, sort of? It's an internal

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: I think if I could try, the DOC pays for the attorneys that, you know, my attorneys that are in the DOC litigation unit are paid for by DOC. I'm not. I'm paid for by somebody else. But that's really, as I see it, that's how the money flows. There's no separate, like, chunk of money that comes over to us to pay for that portion. Just like the statute says, they can ask us to represent the board. Look, to be there for the parole officers, but but they've no longer asked us to do it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But the money is still in DOC for legal representation from the A. G. Office. Yes. Even though they

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: Attorneys to support the litigation that they want support.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So what's DOC's general counsel, not the litigation for Lauren? DOC's general counsel. Her name is Laurie Fisher. Laurie? She used to be in

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: the AGL litigation unit. So that's

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: why it might get a little funky. Okay. So she's representing one part. And then another part for DOC would be represented by the attorney general's office.

[Emily Bird (DEC Water Investment Division Director)]: Yes. And there's a range of litigation that comes our way, so it's not just the court stuff.

[Todd Davis (Assistant Attorney General)]: Todd Davis, Assistant Attorney General. I think when I first testified on this bill, and I don't think I did a great job explaining it, but this brings a very important focus on the way the AGO generally is structured. So all of these positions are DOC positions. They are funded through DOC's general fund appropriation. They operate as assistant attorneys general and are supervised by the AGO. But the appropriation all flows through. It's not an interdepartmental transfer or anything like that. It's ARDOC positions. In fact, most of Tim's team, except for Tim and I think one other attorney, are AHS position members.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And you're housed in the attorney general's office?

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: No, we're embedded.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You're in where?

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: Embedded. We are embedded in the agencies. So my attorneys

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So are you up in Waterbury?

[Tim Connor (Chief, AHS Legal Unit, Vermont AGO)]: Yes. And throughout the state for other agencies. So we do all

[Todd Davis (Assistant Attorney General)]: of AHS's agencies. And so the question about how the duties get divvied up, the AGO as a general matter is authorized to represent the state in court. So litigation unit, as Kevin just said, is like that's all the litigation that may come from any entity, with

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: a few

[Todd Davis (Assistant Attorney General)]: exceptions, mostly inmate lawsuits. That's what that unit handles a lot of, grievance procedures and otherwise. So that may be now the general counsel's office. So there's a little bit of watch. But the parole board is an aspect of the duties that those folks do on behalf of their client, which is DOC. Tim kind of directs or oversees that kind of directs what they do. But it's not like there's a line item that says the parole board, it's this many hours, you're going to pay X amount. It's the duties of that unit. The 25,000 appropriation, it wasn't really an appropriation. And I say this because my old job was at AHS. DOC earmarked some money in their general fund budget to respond to this concern from the world. As Mary Jane said, the '25 ks, we put out an RFP and didn't get anything. So the money, I believe, would turn to DOC on this, is still there because it's never been spent.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: I think it just rolls forward.

[Mary Jane (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: It's not there anymore.

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: Not okay. It was there for both.

[Todd Davis (Assistant Attorney General)]: So to Tim's point, I don't know if that responds to the need for the counsel role, the advisory role for the board. Because the board still makes its own decisions. The lawyer is not saying yes, no. The lawyer is saying, here's how you answer our public opinion.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: When the money rolls forward, does it keep accumulating? No, no.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: She said it's not there,

[Todd Davis (Assistant Attorney General)]: it doesn't sound like it's still

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: there. But it's The money

[Mary Jane (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: left in FY twenty six. It's no longer in our line items, and it is not being proposed for It was used for offsets, I believe, in FY twenty six. And then in FY '27, it was reminiscent pleasing.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So James, did you have something?

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: No, I was saying that's very informative. Learned a lot from that.

[Unidentified Committee Member (likely Conor Casey)]: I could just make the point that I think the current situation is, of course, unfair to the parole board, but unfair to DOC too, in many ways, because we're asking them to do a lot and also has to prioritize staff for another entity, essentially. I think that just furthers the need to separate the budget line item there.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, I want to make sure, too, that DOC doesn't need legal advice. And what was just testified from DOC, that the officers don't need legal advice because they're only presenting evidence to the board. So we have to be on the floor with this mess.

[Todd Davis (Assistant Attorney General)]: A few minutes ago.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. So we need more committee time to talk about to be real clear about the attorney general's conflict. We have more clarity now than we did when we started, but I wanna make sure that we're all on board. We also need a discussion about the line item situation. Is there something else I'm missing? For that? So we need to have some committee time to talk about this. And we need to get the agency of human services secretary in. I knew there was a third one. We'll see about having the parole board under the HFA secretary as the chair of the board recommended. Anything else? So we will schedule that. I think we have a full floor today. I'm assuming. I don't know. I haven't even looked at the

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: calendar. Amendment.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Is there an amendment? One or two. From Anne?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I think so.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes. It'll take

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: some time.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Wish they have an agreement. So it looks like we're probably done for today, but just kinda circle around depending on what happens on the floor. Sure. And we're back here tomorrow. It's Friday. Eight days. No. After the floor. After

[Patrick Monks (DEC Water Infrastructure Finance Program Manager)]: the floor. I'm just testing it. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: let's go off of YouTube, and we'll see folks on Friday unless some things by miracle were done on the floor.