Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Conor Casey (Member)]: To get a ton of questions.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Hello, folks. This is house corrections and institutions committee. It is Friday, February 20. We're here this morning a little bit after 10:00 with department of buildings and general services to continue going over their FY twenty seven general fund budget. So I'm assuming it's Emily, Deputy Commissioner. And we got this document from previous. Yeah. And we are starting. And then, of course, we had these questions that five members of our committee came up with, possibly ask. And we left off at surplus property. That's where we left off. And I know that you folks, Paul, had sent a whole explanation of your fleet program. This could take up two hours for the conversation, I think, with some folks.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: Yes. That was, I knew you had said you might want us to come back, but I'd also taken note of some of the questions that were asked. So we thought we'd just send along responses to some of what we heard in questions. Let's continue with where we left off with the surplus property and see what time it

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: is because people are concerned about the time. Okay. Particularly me. So it's all yours, Emily. If you could introduce yourself for the record.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: Or happy Friday. I am Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services. I will dive right in. Surplus property. This is a combination of function for state and federal surplus. This is a really small unit based in Middlesex. They really exist to dispose of excess property. And then the money is returned for state operations. They also attempt to increase reuse of equipment and conserve acquisition and disposal costs with managing surplus property. So from a budgetary perspective, just a 3% increase in the governor's recommend for the state surplus budget based on personnel costs that we've talked about through the previous units that we went through previously. Three FTEs in this program. Any questions on state surplus or I can move right along to There isn't a separate breakout for federal, but it's a similar Same staff, same program. It's just when they take surplus property and dispose of it. So you're on surplus property?

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay. Because the screen up there is something different right now. Something happened. There. Cole's not awake. That's

[Unidentified committee member]: not the page. Okay. That's where we just weren't.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The rest are too awake.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Conor.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, sure. I'm like, we could just out of curiosity, we don't have any, like, trailers and surplus at the moment. Right? They're like temporary purchases. I knew, like, the Middlesex, like, if we decommission those, those would go to surplus, but there's nothing in there now that, like

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: Not off the top of my head that I'm aware of. Usually, I know sometimes they come through and we help deal with disposition of trailers, but I'm not aware of anything at the moment. Okay. I can look it up and- Yeah.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: I mean, just to be totally transparent, you know, we're looking at maybe some increased space for corrections for folks to meet with lawyers. So I just wonder if that would be maybe a place we'd look first.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: Okay, I will. I don't think so, but I will verify.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So this this may be new to a lot of folks here. So could you just explain some of what you see as items that come through surplus property?

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: Yeah. I mean, the classic example that I think of is office furniture. Someone's moving out of a space or upfitting a space and they have all these old desk chairs that they don't want anymore. It'll go through surplus property. But there are many, many other types of things that'll go through there. For example, collecting sharps from the airport. That's a very popular thing that surplus does is we'll collect sharps from the Lahey Airport and we'll sell those through an agreement with the federal program. Also, vehicles, surplus from fleet can go through there or even like AOT vehicles. Sometimes that's a popular auction that's held. So it's really a wide range of material that they deal with. And state police vehicles as well? I believe so. So who bids on these? Who has access to purchasing property? The public. And it can depend, again, on what the item is and whether it's an auction or whether it's visiting our warehouse in the case of furniture. Or we do sometimes partner for an online auction. Auctions International is the partner that we work with. And we'll put some of those higher dollar or rare or niche items might go through that route.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That might be something you just want to keep in the back of your mind if an organization back home or a municipality is looking for certain items to also check surplus parking. And even us as individual folks, we can check and see if you might be able to find. That's a sharp.

[Unidentified committee member]: What is a sharp?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's when at airports that they're pulling out, like, jackknives and Oh. Knives or scissors or things

[Unidentified committee member]: like that.

[Unidentified committee member]: Commiscated. Okay. Gotcha. Exactly. I was like

[Unidentified committee member]: Was there a slide that shows what the revenues are for the surplus property?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Not in this not

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: in the operating budget presentation.

[Unidentified committee member]: That's fine. That's great. All

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: right, Office of Purchasing and Contracting. This is the office that oversees purchasing and contracting for the state, really through management and compliance requirements that are dictated by statute and administrative bulletins, particularly bullet in 3.5, which you might be familiar with. Explain what that is because we have

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: so many new people here who probably haven't heard of bulletin 3.5.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: At a very high level, it

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: is

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: a document that outlines requirements for how we purchase products and contract for services for the state. You would have to go out to bid. Essentially, you have to go out to bid. There's requirements on how the contract process flows. All of that, it's very prescribed. And really, it's to ensure that state monies are spent appropriately and wisely and that procedures are being followed so that it can be audited, etcetera, through the process. So office of purchasing contracting, we call it OPC, really is that centralized purchasing function that brings their expertise to the process, although especially for the larger agencies and departments, they also have certain delegated purchasing authority and work really closely with our team as needed. So when when an entity wants to like, I'm just going to use a DOC with well path. That's a contract.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They have to abide by bulletin 3.5 when they go out to bid. And when they are ready to go out to bid for a new health care provider and DOC, do they work through BTS to do the bidding process or are

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: they on their own? Generally, would work through BGS.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So most contracting that's done, like if there was a department that, well, I don't think I wanna use that example because then you have to get ADS involved. I was thinking of updating their WiFi or Internet or their IT system and all of that. They would have to go through ADS as well. But what are some of the contracts that go through BGS through Bulletin 3.5?

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: So there are very, very many. Just to share, some of them are statewide contracts, which means that they can be used by any agency or department in the state, and many of them are also available to municipalities. So that's, again, part of the goal is to bring efficiency through combined purchasing power and also help municipalities so that they can access our contract terms as well. Just one example could be. Salt, that's one that there's been some issues with supply this year, but salt contracts run through BGS. That's something we develop in close partnership with the Agency of Transportation. Accessibility services, like for website accessibility issues for ADA, like coming up into compliance, translation services would be another example. Commodities generally like uniforms or work shoes, like our team uses those. So it's really a wide range of if you can buy it, if it's something that state government needs to buy or contract for. It can flow through the bulletin 3.5 process.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: So like, you know, like bottled water bottles, Vermont pure in a DCF office for a secure shred. Does that all go through BGS or with the department's contract individually on that type of stuff?

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: Generally, it would flow through BGS. There can be for smaller purchasing that they can do on their own purchasing authority. Like if you're going to go out by a case of water or something like that, like that

[Unidentified committee member]: would flow

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: through BGS. But if it's an ongoing contract, that would typically be held by BGS.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: It's a big shout out.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It is. Yes, it's more than BTS. What about a contract for telecommunications within DOC? Would that go through you or is that just going to be through DOC?

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: Generally, that would go through us. I'm going to follow-up with more specifics. It can get complicated when there is a technical component and when AVS has a role of the process.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. So I think initially, what we would think of purchasing in contract being the committee that deals with the capital budget, we think the only contracts that will be going through this part of the Department of BGS would be the contracts for construction work for our projects. And that's not that. It's for all of state government. So that's why it's really important for folks to understand that BGS is more than building buildings and mowing lawns.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: OKC does also help with those contracts.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: A lot of people will

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: follow buildings and grounds. Yes, they do. Yes. Right. But the Office of Purchasing and Contracting, those are procurement professionals. Our director of purchasing and contracting, Deb Demore, for the past year, she served as president of NASPO, which is National Association of State Procurement Officials, which is a huge honor for Vermont to have a leadership role at a national level. And there are also cooperative purchasing agreements through that organization where similar to the concept of us having statewide contracts that are available to municipalities, NASFO strives to get almost national contracts again for that combined power for the states that we can access. So it's a really great organization that our office has been able to have a really active role in, which is very helpful for us. 16 FTEs in the office. The governor's recommend is about 3,400,000.0, which is a 10.3 increase. This again is personnel costs as well as like we had talked about last time I was here, just a shift in timing for how we are funding existing positions. So previously, some of the positions were funded on the back end through an excess receipt, whereas we are proposing to put it on the front end and really just build it into our budget on a forward looking basis rather than funding it on the back end.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Since we're asking questions, I'd be curious of the 1,400 active contracts and 27, how many of them are competitive versus single source

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Roughly. Okay. We don't do many single source contracts, do we?

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: That is not the default. Will follow-up.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because bulletin three point wants to make sure want

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: competition, but how many you don't have competition on is what I'm

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: trying to find Right. But bulletin 3.5 is to ensure that you do not go to a single source. But there are times that no one bids on a contract. Then you go back out for an RFP and then you only have one bidder.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: Or when it's so specialized or so critical that there's really only one appropriate contract. So I will follow-up with you on that.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Did you say, what does ISF stand for?

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: Internal service fund.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Right. And then what's the insurance you've got to do? The increases in insurance?

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: That is something we're seeing across the board for healthcare cost increase.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Oh, yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Cost increase, and sometimes you have no control over cost increase. DGS

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: does not.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I would imagine it's sort of active

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: contracts. Health insurance.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: And your question.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, this is insurance for their staff.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: For the sixteenth. The state doesn't state does contract for health services for employees?

[Unidentified committee member]: Well, what they do, but I

[Unidentified committee member]: think what they're saying is they don't have

[Unidentified committee member]: any control over the premium increases.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Understand. Because they're single source again, but k.

[Unidentified committee member]: Yep. And you can only control you have is roofing people, which is not something I'm I'm thinking.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: Planning and property management. This is the property management budget. This unit is overseen by director Eric Pembroke. Their mission is to provide facilities management and oversight of our leases. So they also focus on space planning, space assignments and space move requests. So they really help support agencies and departments in taking a look at the space that they have, what changes if they're if they have an issue, like what can we do within the existing footprint to make it better? Or if they need to make a move, we help them with that planning process, the move process, or if we need to lease space. They are essentially the leasing agents and work with landlords as the primary point of contact. We will generally we hold the leases on behalf of the tenant agency or department. So the property management fund, essentially, when we have a lease, BGS will pay that cost directly out of this fund and then back charge the tenant agency or department. Governor's recommend is roughly 1,900,000.0, which is a 9.3 increase. Again, these are personnel costs. And just like the previous slide, it's really a timing change of instead of relying on an excess receipt on the back end, we are building it on a forward looking basis into this budget, which we really think is a better practice.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we have 89 active leases across the state. Has that increased much over the past few years, or are we staying pretty steady?

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: We are staying pretty steady with that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And what activities would be in those leased buildings? Do you know? Mean, warehousing state employees, obviously. It range, really.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: Primary example is typically going to be office space. So National Life, this committee took a tour last year of that. That is leased office space. That is an example of a large lease. There are examples of smaller ones, particularly in corners of the state where we might not have as much state owned office presence, but we need a footprint for an agency or department who needs to be there and we have leased space there. So that's the typical example for more specialized functions. Generally, we will look to have state owned space. So for like a courthouse, really prefer to have state owned space there for a variety of reasons. Hospital, similar concept.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And I know that we've done this in the past, and I think it's by statute as well, that if you have a concentration of leased space in a community, you have to balance out the cost of that versus the cost of owning a building. And sometimes the lease costs end up being so much higher that then you propose to consolidate all that into a state owned building. Correct. And we have to and and by state statute, if you do that, then that state owned building should really be targeted to be in the downtown of a municipality. And that's been in place for years. Years. So that's just kind of the process. When we closed down 108 Cherry, when we decided to sell that building, we had a lot of the agency of human services direct client services in that building, and we had to move folks into lease space around Burlington. But we did that. Yes. So I just want to get some balance there for people to understand some of the mechanics of leasing space.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Assuming the five FTEs are part of the 11 the energy. Yeah.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: That's, yes, that's a good point to call out is that the energy office, five FTEs are housed in property management. The energy office also, there are two project managers in design and construction that are focused on energy projects. So it's really seven people that are spread out between two units. And the rest of the 11 FTEs are generally, again, space planners. We have a space architect, leasing agents. And also, I know I've shared with you before the Spacebook and the inventory that we talked about with respect to age 50. This is the group that really does that analysis. They do the space book every year. They are really the experts on the state's land holdings. So that is this group. The fee for space program, this is really our biggest unit. This is operations and maintenance. So this is, again, the meat of BGS's operations, where it's led by a director, John Hebert. This is everything from the custodians that you see in the buildings, folks working on the grounds, the way up to skilled tradespersons who take care of our buildings and make sure that they're running as they should be every day. This also includes our safety and security office, which you heard about in detail yesterday. So those two groups are included in the fee for space budget. And again, just to call out for BGS, this is our largest concentration of FTEs with over two twenty eight. And again, also, I forgot to include the curator. The curator's office is in the paper space as well. So safety and security, operations, maintenance, and the curator. So again, this group is really focusing on maintaining our 3,000,000 plus square feet of state owned building space in our grounds, and then providing that safe and secure, healthy working environment for state employees. So overall, the governor's recommend is about $41,500,000 which is a 5.3% increase over last year's budget. This is really driven by personnel costs, which we saw consistent with all of the units across PGS, as well as just an increase in the cost of maintaining our buildings. The costs have gone up if we go in to do a repair. It's just costing more than it did in the past. And also, we've seen an increase in our utility costs as well.

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

[Conor Casey (Member)]: how is it calculated? I've never asked that. Is it just pure square footage? You put a cost to it or like, is a prison different than another space? So

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: fee for space is charged by district and it is based on actual costs over two years. So we look back and say, what were the actual costs? And then we calculate a rate for that district based on what that actual cost was previously. And we do break out prisons or correctional facilities are treated differently because their costs are

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: just So so

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: for example, the State House is part of our capital district. And so the way that we staff those is that there's a district facilities manager. Right here in Montpelier. It's Gina Gassisto who oversees the group of folks who are working in the facilities every day within the district. So again, it's a district model. Statewide is covered. Montpelier is the costliest district from a fee for space perspective, really just driven by the nature of the buildings here in the State House.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Great place to

[Conor Casey (Member)]: live generally. Is.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: Yes. But it is based on actual costs. And so the things that will go into the fee for space budget, again, including our operating costs, could be, for example, if there is a request from any agency or department for some paint, that wouldn't go into our major maintenance bucket. That's going to come out of fee for space. So that is something that would be absorbed by this budget. If there was a more significant renovation, we would look at, is it a structural need? Is it something that we're seeing from a maintenance perspective? That's where it might go over to major maintenance. And if it's something more cosmetic, like the agency and department is initiating on their own a space change, like that might be something that might go to their operating budget if approved.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: That's really helpful. I actually, you know, been here a long time. I never know. How does it work in the back end? Just a question. So like every budget has the fee for space line and for different departments and everything. Are they right in BTS like a check once a month or is it all just handled like on the back end?

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: It is. It is billed through. FSD, the Financial Services Division, which is part of Agency of Administration. So they're the ones who really calculate and communicate the rate annually in collaboration with us.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: And

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: that's a process. But it is a billing through FSD. I don't know all the details of the billing process. But generally, that's how it works.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So with the state hospitals and our secure residential as well, we're paying fee for space? Yes. And it all comes for fee for space, that all comes out of that department's operating budget. Correct. The general fund is paying fee for space, and that fee for space amount goes to PGS. Then PGS pulls that money out to do just maintenance of the building, custodial, mowing the lawns, that type of thing. So the general fund, it's circular.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: Information of heat, everything building related. It's similar concept to paying rent in a private leased space. So it's really the tenant agency department is paying rent through fee for space for the services and the space that they occupy. And generally speaking, we found that fee for space is more affordable depending on the lease than lease space.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And that's how you balance lease space versus state owned. Another calculation in there. So there's so much hidden that actually happens within BGS that nobody even realized that BGS is a hub of state government operations. If you don't have BGS, you don't have the operations of the state. You really don't. And when we had to go through COVID, BGS was right at the forefront, trying to figure out how to deliver, continue delivering services to Vermonters through our state employees and our departments and agencies, because everybody was closed up. That must have been brutal.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: They worked all hands on deck. So I wish I had gotten the number for the number of work orders. So you can see in the performance measures the number of work orders completed on time. And we have a system called TWIMs, which is, I wish I could remember the acronym, but it's essentially our platform for where folks can go in and if there's something that they need BGS to fix or address in their office space, they can go in and put in a And it can range from, I want you to move my bookshelf to, there's a major problem with our HVAC. And so those are the things that the team, they triage every day, the work orders that come in and respond to them on a priority basis based on the time sensitivity of each request. But really, they're very busy. They strive to be friendly and responsive. So I'm just curious in FY '25, the performance in terms of percent of work orders completed on time

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: and prevented maintenance completed on time. Why were the numbers so low compared to '24 and what we're seeing so far in FY '26? Do you know? Was there a shift? Was there loss of

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: employees? You know anything? I do know in some areas there were some hiring challenges, especially in the trades, specialized trades. I'd have to dig into a bit more on why that year in particular was a dip. I don't know the answer. I do know that there's been a renewed focus on let's make sure we're responding to the tickets that come in and responding to them. So there's been a renewed focus on that. So we saw it kind of go back up, and we're hoping to be even more back to where we were previously in this FY '27. It's a dip from FY '24, so I just

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: wondered what's going on there.

[Unidentified committee member]: It is only one year, so you think it has to be something specific that caused that that wasn't a long term issue.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That we know. Right. So so your whole fee for space for money that is really coming in. I mean, you're expending it, but you're also getting that money in as well in a way, but you are expending this as 41,500,000.0. And your total budget is about 63.5. So this is the bulk of your general fund budget. It's providing the services to keep our buildings going. And you need people to do that because the buildings don't take care of themselves.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: And again, security as well as part of this group. And again, we talked about that in detail yesterday, but similar concept. The buildings are running with operations and maintenance, and they're also safe and secure through the security function. This fee for space,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: you're getting a revenue coming in because it's expense of all of our departments and agencies. Feed for space, when they're looking at the general fund budget, feed for space is an expense on all departments in state government. And that fee for space dollar amount those departments are paying, correct me if I'm wrong, goes into BGS. And then BGS expends that money to maintain our buildings and maintain maintenance that may need to be happening in that building, custodial, maybe minor upgrades to that building.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: Correct. And again, since it's based on actuals, we're not making revenue off of the other agencies and departments. If anything, we try to get it as close as possible where the costs are going to be covered, what we can expect and plan for as best we can. And we try

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: to get as close to that break even point. So that $41,500,000 in simple terms, real simple, is divided up among all of our departments and agencies paying in that amount for fiscal year twenty seven. That's the target. Sorry.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: With the HOA and the housing complex. So to pay in and

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: maintain everything. Yes? Yeah. But it's all coming out of our general fund. It all comes out of your base your general your big bill. It all come I'm just trying to connect. It's all coming out of the big bill. And that that fee for space is included in the DCF operating budget. It's included in DOC's operating budget. It's included in, I would assume, AOT's operating budget, all of that. So whenever we're looking at those individual department budgets and the big bill, a part of their budget is paying through fee for SNFs. Questions? That's a big chunk of money, 4.5. That's two thirds, three quarters of your budget. Your overall budget is about $63,000,000

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Great.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: I mean, this is, again, where most of our employees are concentrated as well. That sums up divisions.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, we could get into fleet management if people wanted to, or we could really set up a time after we get through our crunch time to really do a deeper dive into that if people want, if you ever people are comfortable with.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: If you do wanna do a focused session, I could bring in our fleet manager, Stacy Desisto, and we could really go through the details, or I'm happy to go through questions now.

[Unidentified committee member]: I think it's worth

[Conor Casey (Member)]: a deeper dive. Seems like there's enough interest in the committee. Was that?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's fine to me. Might have an after town meeting. Are folks interested in doing that? Yeah.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I thought what you gave us, the page you have, is excellent. I only have both the one question about the utilization of electric vehicles versus old fashioned gas guzzlers. Do people like the electric or not? I mean, because we're mandating 75% of the new vehicles are electric or hybrid. People want to drive them, that may be a change we have to make. That's the only reason. I thought it was a great report. Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I think what we've heard in the past, it depends what part of the state person's living in. And if it's more urban, they tend to use more of the electric and the hybrid. The more rural, they're not doing that. So the concentration of those vehicles is more in the urban areas.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I understand we hear that. If you've got any data on it, that would be great,

[Unidentified committee member]: but I don't know it can do.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: I think it can be seasonal too, right? Like we discussed before in winter conditions where folks might have to travel back roads. They might prefer a sturdy vehicle like an SUV. And some of those can be hybrid as well. But they might prefer not to take an EV.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Not to belabor it, but if we should be mandating 50% instead of 75%, that's a change we could make that is better for everybody. But we don't know that if they're not being utilized or if they Maybe everybody loves them. Maybe it should be 85%. I don't know. But we've mandated 75. Is that the right number is all I'm asking.

[Unidentified committee member]: Right. But I I don't know

[Unidentified committee member]: if it's a today thing, but it's not a today thing. But at some point, like, when I'm when I'm at home working in a rental fleet, you'll have a breakdown by by each VIN number of utilization. So if you've got, like if I got a Toyota b z x four and it's got 12% utilization, my overall fleet utilization might be 80%. But that particular model, they're like, my that car might just not be getting news. And so maybe, you know, that particular car isn't a good value for the state for whatever reason.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yeah.

[Unidentified committee member]: But you can't see that from Right. This, in which case, maybe it shouldn't should be disposed of before six years or 80,000 miles. So I strongly suspect there are some of those, but that's I don't even know if that's really a committee conversation. That might be a sidebar conversation.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, that's right. I mean, we can do we can schedule some time after town meeting when we're not so into a crunch to really look into these numbers and the mechanism of the operating of a fleet system better. Because there are some questions, and I wanna be respectful of that. Because everybody owns a car. So we all know stuff about a car.

[Unidentified committee member]: But, I mean, and it's fair. And this is literally what I've done for a living for Right. Five years.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right. Some of us know it a little more than others. And some of

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: the vehicles are leased through an agency or department, so not in the motor pool. And that's where they are leasing a specific vehicle. And so if the hybrid or EV is not going to work for their operations, they will not choose that vehicle for a lease.

[Unidentified committee member]: And then that's another question. So if whatever department because most of the vehicles involved are not actually in your Your motor pool is only 47 units. And then the other sample size is what? Like, 600 units or something like that? Five nine two. I don't know if there's any visibility to the utilization of those vehicles or maybe there's not. This is maybe the agencies aren't keeping data, and maybe you'd only be able to look at the odometer reads to try to glean how they're being utilized. Yeah. And we have

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: the mileage and we can generally, we needed to, through telematics, do some analysis on how they're

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: being utilized. I think you've gotten a feel for some of the questions that members have. So we'll schedule a more in-depth conversation on this after we get through our crunch times. Then you can bring in the respective folks that might be able to answer the questions more in-depth because they deal with it on a daily to get into that minutiae. Mhmm.

[Unidentified committee member]: And then just before we leave there, in the maintenance, the actual vehicle maintenance, I suspect is Outstars. You just

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: Well, we work with garages.

[Unidentified committee member]: Yep. And then maybe how that piece works as well when we get to it. Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Uh-huh. Yep. Sounds good. Anything else? Okay. Thank you for adjusting your schedule quickly. First thing we knew, the floor wasn't gonna go long at all. So one bill we had was postponed, so that freed us up completely. So I wanna thank you for adjusting your schedules

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: such as Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We're gonna be doing just to give you a heads up, we've got next week, then we have town meeting week off, then we come back that following week. We'll be getting into the capital bill probably more. It will be after town meeting break for that. I was hoping to touch touch it a little bit towards the end of next week, but I don't think it's gonna work that way because we've got bills we need to get out that's not connected to BGS. So it'll be after town meeting. It will start markup because I wanna get the bill out. Gotta get it out by the March, I would say, a month from now. That's only about two weeks after we get back. So that's kind of the thinking on this end just to help you folks out. Because I'm sure once we start markup is when all the real questions will come in. And some of it will pertain to you and some will not. Just wanted to give you a heads up. And then after we finish our crunch, we can do the fleet management after town meeting.

[Emily Kisicki (Deputy Commissioner, Buildings & General Services)]: Absolutely. Have a great weekend. I hope everyone travels safely. Yeah. Let's hope

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: your best is safe. Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Thank you, folks. Thank you. Thank you. So I would say we are done for the week. We're still scheduling a lot for next week. We're having some conversations on Monday, a Zoom meeting with the chair of approves, chair of house judiciary, and representative to talk pretrial supervision, and accountability docket. So hopefully, we're gonna spend some time at the beginning of the week next week with pre trial supervisors. Martin said, can't we just pass out that bill that they've worked on and rubber stamp it? I said, nope. So, Well, why? I said, because we need to know where DOC is gonna fit into this for their supervision. But don't they have that internally? I said, No, that's by statute in the pretrial supervision. So what I'd like to do when we talk pretrial, we have PMP at DOC here, I really want to get a handle around the number of folks that they're envisioning, how they're gonna be spread out through the state, and what their role is. Is it gonna be to be in the court that one day a week for the accountability docket? And when they're not there, would they be doing pretrial supervision? Or is it just for pretrial supervision? What's what's the plan from DOC? Because we need that before we can take any steps forward for that. Okay?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Do they know that's the question?

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

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yeah. Good.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Tate's working on that. We gotta get that resolved. And I wanna know what the cash what what the I don't wanna say the cash, but the money is because it's 1,300,000.0 right now over two years. And I wanna know what is encumbered and what is not so that it continues into f y twenty seven. And in f y twenty seven, they're asking for 1,500,000.0 total because the base is 1.3.

[Unidentified committee member]: So they're asking for 200, I think.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And then 200 on top of that. So if they have anything left from the previous 1.3, might get at So we're trying working with appropriations for that flow of money.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: You're so good at knowing where the money is. I don't understand why this is so non It's not transparent. Why is this so elusive? It's in the general fund.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's in the big bill.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: So we just don't have visibility to that?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We don't work with the big bill. That's appropriations committee. They work with the big state budget. We work with the bonded piece. They've worked with the whole general fund and all the federal dollars and the operating costs. Right. But they just won't give us that information? Well, know that we know it because when pretrial supervision was first putting, when we were doing the work here in this committee, we knew back then, two years ago, we knew there was a cost to it. And we knew that if we rolled it out all at once in the state, it was gonna cost about $1.21300000.0 from testimony we received from DOC. And we knew just come because you picked everything up to the building and appropriations and particularly towards the end of the session, the money wasn't there in the appropriations bill at that time. And then it got put in during conference committee. He he kind of picked it up by osmosis and people talking and Dick Sears and I talking and then the chairs of appropriations talking. They said, okay, we're gonna find some money for this. And they found 660,000. We knew we couldn't carry that all out through the state of Wams. So the question is that 660,000 is there every year unless you add more money to it because that's your base. That's the base budget. So if you put 660,000 in FY '25 in your base budget for a particular program, in the appropriations world, that means it's gonna be in the next fiscal year 650,000. That's your starting point. So in FY '26, the current budget year, when the money was put in last year, they went 650,000 instead of $6.60. So for two fiscal years right now for pretrial, we have 1,300,000.0. And that's all in the appropriations bill. So that's why we have liaisons like Gina's for BGS to work with Wayne to figure out the general fund budget. And Shawn and Kevin work with Trevor to figure out the DOC budgets. And this pretrial supervision is part of the DOC budget, operating

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: budget. And

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: that's where you pick up that information. And then we looked at the list of, which I sent out to you folks. I do have it here, but I responded to it, so

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I don't know where I pulled it. I do have it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The letter from who have it because I responded to. The letter from appropriations in terms of those items in the appropriations bill, and we sent that out to you folks that had the pilot projects and had the 200,000 for the seven permanent employees. And that's what appropriations want us to weigh in on. So we know that there's 200,000 that the administration has proposed for the pretrial supervision program. And that's on top of what's already there automatically. And so that's how you kind of connect the dots.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Kevin, I don't know if it's relevant to your point, but whenever I do the repo stuff on Thursday mornings with Troy and Mary, Scott can run a report that'll tell you this line item has this much of a budget, this much has been spent or encumbered, but we don't know what they're intending to do with the remainder of it. We need to hear a story, basically. And they'll tell you how they're gonna spend all that money over the course of the year. Or they're not, you can take it back. Right. But I think that's the detail we're missing here, unless I'm speaking wrong.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That is the detail we're missing. Yeah, and

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: that makes sense. I'm just saying, it seems to me like somebody ought to have a spreadsheet. They can say, Here's the spreadsheet. Here's how much is 25, here's 26, and I'll propose another 200. To me, it seems like that should be transparent. It should be similar to what we do with our 50,000,000 every year.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's on the appropriations rule. Well, it's

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: in the appropriations If they're asking us to weigh in, they ought to tell us what we need to be weighing in on. And it seems like you're having to line up the dots rather than looking at the data. That to me, that's why I'm confused. It seems like that should be apparent. What was appropriated, what's being proposed as opposed to us having to talk to squirrel and say, How much are you willing to give us?

[Unidentified committee member]: To your point, Kevin, that exists. We just don't have it. It's not that nobody has it. We don't have it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Who should we ask? Appropriations. You've got Trevor. You can ask. That's why we have the liaisons.

[Unidentified committee member]: And it's not that you're wrong that we shouldn't have it, but I just wanted to reinforce it does exist. It's just we at this level of

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: the channel. Both Sweeney and I have failed at getting Squirrel to show us the spreadsheet that actually tells the story.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's gonna show you the money. Don't think

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Tell us

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: about think you've failed. I I just

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: You're learning.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. I wouldn't put it that you've failed, because I don't think you have. No.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: On every Thursday morning, Kevin, we're asking for a better story. I know you tried to tell us, but tell

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: me again. If you remember, when Jay Johnson was here, I asked those budget cuts. I asked directly. She's the administration. She's the one that helped put the budget together. And I asked her directly in testimony. The $6.60 and the $6.50, is that your base? She didn't know. She couldn't answer that. I needed to know. Is that your base, or is that a one time?

[Unidentified committee member]: Right. Get your point.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And how much of that is in the 200,000

[Conor Casey (Member)]: It should be.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's The 200,000 that you're asking for, is that on top of your base, or is it a one time?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: What you're saying.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I just

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: can't believe we gotta keep asking a question. Two weeks worth of asking a question.

[Unidentified committee member]: Well, I hear questions from last year haven't been answered.

[Unidentified committee member]: It's I'm not making excuses because I think it should be a lot more transparent. But I was like, we might be dealing with one section of the budget and people were asking are dealing with multiple sections. So it is incumbent on us to ask and put the pressure on them. I mean, we all deal with stuff outside of here too, are, I mean, outside of this community, but legislator that we need information from. We just have to hound people and

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: go, Oh yeah, I'm gonna get it you. I'm gonna get it to you. I understand how that works. Yeah. Trust me, I understand that.

[Unidentified committee member]: I think most of them are genuine. Think some people we run into the world, they'll just like stonewall you. But I don't think that's really, but who knows?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, the other thing too, is the legislature in terms of how our committees are structured is pretty siloed because you're there for the focus of a particular department you oversee or a particular issue you work with. Commerce Committee is in banking and insurance. We know nothing about banking and insurance. Agriculture is there with the agency of agriculture. Judiciary is talking about our judicial system. We're siloed in terms of our committees. That's why we have liaisons back and forth. And when just working on the driver's license, I made sure that whatever we ended up with, that our house transportation committee is aware of what's going on so they don't get blindsided. The budget is I mean, appropriations committees work and they're always working, they're never on the floor. You can sit in their committee any time.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I wouldn't want to be on

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: that committee.

[Unidentified committee member]: So if you guys are tired of listening to driver's licenses, I got to do an extra hour a day.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So anything else before we finish up? No, ma'am. Do I dare ask how it went, ways and means?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: 110.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, they voted it out, 110?

[Unidentified committee member]: Actually, it's

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: going be on the it'll be noticed on Tuesday and on the floor Wednesday.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Nice job, Troy.

[Unidentified committee member]: You ready to present

[Conor Casey (Member)]: any closer?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Scott did a great job. Scott was on there,

[Unidentified committee member]: and then corrections was great too.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Corrections was there too. Who was there for corrections?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Kristen and Hailey. Kristen gave to us. And she had the same follow-up pump that she gave to her. Did it occur to

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Did they basically did DOC support the bill at all?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: They can't formally, but they indicated that there's plenty left to do for these staff.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: There's plenty left to

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: for the staff members who are new, and plenty of good things for them to do when they're not focused on collecting these kids.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's really taken a lot of time from their part. Great. Did they say anything that the bill would have to go to a prose and all?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: They didn't know. Patty was just asking me that.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: They didn't indicate yeah. That's what

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I was just talking to him about.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Maybe He's gonna he's gonna report for them.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I have to check with Betsy Ann just to be sure. Maybe if you have time to do that before you leave, but check check with Betsy Ann. And I also talked to her about how you report it so you can also talk with her

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: about it. Okay. You

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: do the bill and the amendment together.

[Unidentified committee member]: I do. Yeah. Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we're done. I want everybody to make sure you drive home safely. Some people have a long drive up over the hill. Other people are going north, which will be fine.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Some people going south, big trouble.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So have a good weekend. We got one more week. We're really gonna push next week to get pre trial supervision, telecoms for DOC.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I want to

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: get the bill out next week and gender equity. Then we've got that whole substance use disorder treatment program thing that nobody knows what's going on with that.

[Unidentified committee member]: We

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: got another draft coming. And then we'll probably have a draft after that. Because chances are there'll be a change. It's going to incorporate the budgeting process that they talked about and the pilot project for the legal. And

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I've got another I've

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: got a question of DOC in terms of their budget, in terms of the staffing for their license plate. Don't wanna forget that. I wanna get that resolved next week too.

[Unidentified committee member]: And then the revised detainee and sentence identification, we have we're done with until you talk to the senate?

[Unidentified committee member (diarization overlap with Speaker 2)]: You mean for the driver's license? Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. I'm not voting that bill. It's ready to go Yep. On our end. Yes. But I'm gonna wait to make sure that all the ducks are in a row in the Senate Transportation Committee, and they're they're not gonna change any of the language. Once I get that, which will be the middle of next week, then we can vote that bill.

[Unidentified committee member]: Yeah. Just confirming.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And that will have to go to

[Unidentified committee member]: a ways Ways of means because of

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It has the word fee, which is zero. But it has the word fee. Impressive. It has a fee of zero.

[Unidentified committee member]: I understand.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's an automatic trigger. So that's our work for next week. We're gonna be cramming. And be prepared. If we have a and I know we're working hard, but I'm really rather put in the work now than do it the week we get back from town meeting and working late into the night. Yep. If we have time after the floor, the floor is so short. When we have time, I wanna come back and finish up if we

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: can. I know.

[Unidentified committee member]: Yes. Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because I don't wanna I've been here working in committee till 10:00 at night. It's not good.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Actually, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, I've been here Friday night till ten.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Oh, we've got

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

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: late nights. Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's dicey, and I don't wanna do that for my folks or myself. So we're down for the week. We can get off of

[Conor Casey (Member)]: you.