Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Let's go on. Let's get this party started. Let's get nuts. John, when do you have to get out of here? Don't you have to get out here? I gotta be in Room 11 at nine. Okay. So you got

[Unidentified Committee Member]: twenty minutes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So welcome, folks. This is House Corrections and Institutions Committee. It's Thursday, March 25, at thirty, morning meeting. And we're gonna be going over with our legislative council the first draft of the actual language of the bill for our proclamation justice capital bill. This will be a committee bill, so there's no number to it. John, I'm gonna turn it over to you walk us through. And for the committee, this would be a good check-in terms of language, but also a check to make sure the language tracks the spreadsheet in terms of what we're changing. It's only going go over what we change and make sure that the numbers track the changes that we made, the dollar amounts. Do you have something you wanna share?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: For the record, Scott, we're gonna. The draft John sent me at two in the morning. Oh, wow. Doesn't match the spreadsheet that I gave you Friday because there have been more changes. I have to go through and look.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's fine. You can't expect John to do everything at 01:00.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: How many of should have worked those for each To be fair, I did work till three. Other work did do after the capital. Less important. So did you get the big

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: box score, Brian?

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: I also got up at six, so I could start back.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Gross. What a good one. Take my chocolate.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Are we live right now?

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

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm surprised.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. No. Alright. I'm Brian Gray, also the counsel. I'm just gonna preface this by saying, obviously, given the hours that I just talked about, I haven't had a chance to double check last night in advance of sending to Tate. Both Scott and I were coming through this morning. I've already noted two things. So I have them written down and I will call it out when we get to them. One is a piece that Scott also just emailed me on, so we're in agreement there. And the second piece is I realized I have made it a policy section, but I'll call it out. And you guys already know the language. It's just that I didn't duplicate it here, it's the budget language. So with that, I will screen share. I know, so sloppy.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Go.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: So for those of you not familiar, the second year of the capital bill looks quite different from the first year. Right? In the first year, you're standing up a full set of sections and you have line items for each project. As the chair noted, this is just gonna be speaking to the pieces that have changed. So it's gonna be instances of it's gonna be amendments to particular sections. So the first piece is section one, this is updating the legislative intent to reflect the aggregate totals. I would say, don't worry about these figures until we've wrapped everything else because these just need to reflect aggregate figures. So we will confirm those at the end once everything else is agreed. Section two, I do wanna call out when something is accepted and it's not included in the gov rec and it's something that the committee has proposed. The gov rec doesn't have amendments to the underlying section two, state building section. So note that any change that you see here are what the committee proposed. But we

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: do need to put in changes that the governor recommended.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: In cash or?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Both. Because major maintenance, they've added $1,200,000 in cash to the 8,500,000.0 that they put in last year.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Right, so the cash will be in a later section.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you're going to carve out the cash in the bill?

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: The cash is in a separate section, exactly. So if tracking over the spreadsheet, looks different than in the bill itself.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Got it.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: So section two, can think of as just the bonded office So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: if there was a change on the bonded amount, that got included in this draft? Exactly.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: And I will call those out. Like you noted, anything you see here is if it's highlighted, it's at the committee's request. If it's not, it's drawn from the gov rec. So in that case, the updates you may recall are for three acre parcel stormwater compliance. In aggregate for the section across both f y's twenty six and twenty seven, you had reduced by 1,500,000.0. And the way that you did that is by taking 400 k from the f y twenty six three acre clients, and then zeroing out the 1,100,000.0 from f y 27. You took 1,500,000.0 for those. I am gonna call it the major maintenance, and this is a piece I'll need to be confirming with Scott. But basically my understanding from the tone of discussions is that major maintenance is where you tend to apply the overflow. So if there's funds remaining. So similar to section one, this will be kind of a last figure to confirm. And I've applied what I understood to be the amounts of bonding dollars available left over after all of the other bonded dollars have been added. But again, Scott and I will be talking once we can connect this morning to just make sure they all add up. But the first piece at the committee's direction was dropping that 1,500,000, pulling 400 k from the three acre in FY '26 and pulling 1,100,000.0 in FY '26. The other changes that you see here, one is just textual, removing the word historic from state house replacement of historic interior finishes. The other pieces were for 120 State Street HVAC, reducing that bonded FY '27 from 2,000,000 down to 1,000,000. And then this is something that I don't think could have been reflected in the spreadsheet. It was something that we talked about yesterday, but adding 1,300,000 in FY '27 bonding for the State House entryway upgrades.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So there may be, depending on testimony for today, there may be some language to this. We don't, I don't know. But I know the committee is concerned about parking. We may want to be more descriptive in terms of what is expected back January.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Design documents, that type of thing. May Perfect. Explain this follow-up on the line.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Sounds good. I'm not gonna hit you with the updates to the aggregate totals because they will just be a final piece I put together. I did create my own spreadsheet, so this will be easy to update and we'll have double checking as well. Section three on page three, these are your updates to the food and services section. I think these are exactly what are in the gov rec. Similarly, section four, ACCG saying that they got right. Do you have some updates here to the veterans themselves then? Expect that there may be some thoughts as to how to best approach this. So the first piece that you see in subsection b here is there have been requested some flexibility to move funds. So that's what you see here is we'd already granted the CEO of the Vets Home Authority to transfer unexpended project balances for its f y twenty six appropriations in the air handlers and laundry facilities. This would expand that flexibility to add in the new subsection c 1,250,000 in FY twenty seven for sewage system upgrades. We do have separate pieces later in cache also. That's just an unfortunate thing about the way that capital build is structured. I think you guys are used to looking across the length of the spreadsheet, and so you'll naturally be talking about, oh, we want flexibility across these sections. We typically haven't authorized transferring cash and bonded dollars interchangeably, but this is an extension of flexibility within the Veterans Home section for the bonded dollars. And what you've added here is 1,250,000.00 for those subsystem upgrades. Does that make sense?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But it's from previous cap. What we're doing is the elevator works. So

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: we we do I when I did a first pass of the draft last night, I had language to allow flexibility within the cash section for those. But then what I saw is that you guys had outright reallocated dollars from the elevator. And so it didn't seem like you needed the flexibility there if you're outright reallocating elevator dollars.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you don't need to on the spreadsheet, we have talked about elevate sewer system and elevator upgrade, and then the language is just sewer system.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: You will see when we get to the cache section that we have sewage system out there because we're reallocated.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: In cache.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. It makes it much harder to talk about.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: I'll just say if you want more flexibility here, tell me what you'd like and I can add it in. This is just my best attempt to deal with the differences in cash and bond dollars and try to create some trackability essentially.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, for the elevator, it was an effort kind of for bondage jobs. And we're reallocating 500,000 of that.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Exactly.

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

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: And in an attempt to try to get at this piece, you know that typically for reallocations we say to defray expenditures across sections two through 16 if it's bonded dollars. And then we say to defray section 19 expenditures if it's cash. In this particular instance, while I don't think it especially matters because you're comfortable within the broad pool. Because you were targeting the elevator dollars for this, the specific reallocation is to defray expenditures within section six. So it is targeted at this. I don't know that practically it has a especially meaningful effect, but it makes clear your intent in reallocating the dollars.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So, what we did, the governor put in, just for the sewer upgrade, half 1,000,000 in cash. So, what we ended up doing was moving that cash. We zeroed the cash, and we said we're gonna bond for 500,000. And then in the elevator upgrade, which is bonded dollars, we moved half 1,000,000 of that bonded dollars to add to the 500,000 that we've just moved to bonded. So that's 1,000,000. And then we wanted to up up the was for the sewer upgrade. They needed 750 total. So we upped the half million to two fifth another $2.50. And so that's $7.50 to the sewage, 500,000 for the elevator. And they're all more to bond.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: I I suppose the question is here whether you want an additional call up upgrade in this line item. I understood it to be that you wanted these for the sewage system and were specifically reallocating elevator funds.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You need the elevator language here, because that that 1.25 is for both.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. That's fine. I was just thinking that if we're reallocating elevator funds and then putting them toward this

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

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: That meant that it would not intended for an elevator.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I I would be clear. But that's to understand that the 1.25 is for the SOAR upgrade and elevator upgrade. I think we need the lenses here.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: I I can do that. I agree with your assessment. I'd understood it not to be for those purposes because you were reallocating elevator funds, but I see what

[Unidentified Committee Member]: you're saying.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. There's half 1,000,000 already left.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: That's that is a simple fix.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It gets complicated, and it doesn't have to be explained like this on the floor. It's that, you know, doing 1.295 for sewer and elevator upgrades. We don't have to commit in. But when we explain that to our counterparts in the Senate institutions, they have to understand where we're going. But people on the floor don't understand.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: It's simple enough. Section six, this is the I said that I noted two things in my review this morning just before I came in here where I realized I had something off. First was the omission of the duplicate budget language. The second is this section six. I don't have anything highlighted here because I wasn't trying to identify a difference with the gov rec. This is intended to match the gov rec. I listed one figure incorrectly, and I will call that out for you. That's on page five, the municipal pollution control grants, put in 2,000,000. This should be 3.922. And the effect of this is that it leaves the aggregate totals for the FY '27 and and total appropriations for section 10 exactly the same. Basically, I put in the wrong figure, and I reduced the total appropriations because I put it

[Unidentified Committee Member]: the picture as the way. So it's 3,922,100.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: 2,400, and the result is that your totals for the section are the same. You're appropriating 10,000,000 in both '26 and '27. That's my mistake. If this matches the gut wreck.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: It's pretty cheap. Mary, can you pull the chocolate from him? He can't be making mistakes like that.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Got one already. Those lawyers. It's section seven. This is amending your judiciary section. Again, this one matches the cover. So I'm gonna note anything here. Reallocations, we do have some updates. Wait. Oh, that's gonna be in cache. We'll have cache updates, yep. I should call out and saying that now, when I say section 14, I'm referring to a section that is within the bonded portions of the capital bill. You

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: may agree. Yep,

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: we have a new board.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: for reallocations, You're gonna see highlighted language. It's at the bottom of page seven. This is the piece that we were actually just speaking to. This is taking the 500 k from that 2023 elevator upgrade.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: FY '24.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Which is the 2023 capital bill, applies to FY '24. 500 k to defer if it's been approved authorizing section six. And, yes, that is your Veterans Home section, and I will update the line item in section six to call out the elevator upgrade piece as well. On page eight, taking $63,413.15 from old money, enhanced nine eleven board, these are the compliance grants program. Those may be broadly available to any of the bonding sessions of the capital bill. We also have I almost wondered if this was a joke when I added it in.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No, it's a clear box.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: It is in couch cushions.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: $03 which I'd be happy to provide to the bonding sections of this bill if found made it. It. Dollars $0.03. I didn't want to keep it from you all.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That's why we get sent down here, right?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's always 2¢ worth, it's 30¢ worth.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, even more inflation later. This is from state owned forest and recreational access points. And then another piece that I don't think shows up on the spreadsheet because it was something that we talked about yesterday in Subdivision Q 26000 from the agricultural fairs and field days. This was one where I wasn't sure actually which specific act to specify, and I think it would be helpful to So Scott and I were talking about this. Our understanding of the practice from the agency of administration is that they use oldest dollars first. And so it may be that the '22 The reason that you have the '22 focus is because that was the year in which a grant went out to Franklin County, which didn't expend the funds. But if those dollars have been spent up already, old government, that particular act, and they're just treating the annual appropriations for this purpose, because each year they're getting the same amounts for the grants. We just need to pull from some same line item in a subsequent year, basically. That's the thinking. But it may be helpful to know what has been fully expended and what hasn't. So what you have here is taking from FY24. Does that line of thinking at least makes sense? It's trying to pull from available funds. I think they're all treated fungibly because they're all for agricultural field days and just making sure you don't say we're reallocating from actually fully expended funds. That's the thinking.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you just are picking up the capital bill from '23, which is really the FY24.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: And you could even choose last year's, right? Reason I tried to, in some ways, was trying to gauge, well I don't want to pull from a fully expended year, but you also want the advantage of reallocating older dollars as against newer because those will need to be reallocated sooner. So I tried to guess at a year that I think might not be fully expended.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So one year they did not get money.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: FY '26.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That was last year, '25.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: FY '26, I think.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, we're in '26. Oh,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: you're right. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. Correct.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I just want to understand here. So we're talking about 26,000 that was FY '22 money. So expended in action results from '21. You're saying that might not be there any even though so we have to but we still have to reclaim it.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Uh-huh. Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's in tracking with the agency that they me on funding. Spend for the Ag fairs, we give 300 or $3.50 a year. So when they divvy that up between the fairs, they're gonna spend the older money first. So, that 26,000 from FY22 has already been spent distributed to other fairs. But it doesn't. So I asked her, I said, if we pull the 26,000 from the Ag Fairs that was targeted for Franklin County for that particular year, is that gonna leave you in the hole? She said, no, because they've got that continual money coming in. And right now they're holding back from that continual money coming in. They're holding back those 26,000 plus another 60,000. This is almost 90,000 out of all the appropriations since 'twenty two that they're holding for Franklin County Fieldings.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: So that does create, and I'm thankful that they did not exploit it, a loophole where they could just reinvest that 26,000 across their other.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They're reinvesting the old 26,000.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: But what I'm saying They're the They're being honest with their books. And, again, I appreciate that, but this is an exploitable loophole.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Mhmm. For the repo.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Because they could just say, no. That's it is. It's it's 24 money now. It's it's not technically 22 money. I'm I'm glad they didn't do that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No. They didn't.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And I don't know if that needs to be fixed.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But I wanted to be clear with them as well that this is old money that was targeted to Franklin County field days. And if we pull this 26,000 however you operate using old money first, is this gonna leave a $26,000 hole in money you have available right now to go forward with the ag players?

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: That's just because they keep good books. That's because they

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: keep good books. It could have.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It could have.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I don't know how to fix it. To play out Troy's point, it's not $22 It's all. So it doesn't have to be a good book. That's not common. The only way they would have to be what do they get? $300,000 a year? If they were somehow in a scenario where they were holding so much money in reserve Right. That that it aged, but they would have to holding a lot more money than the 90,000, for Franklin.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: John has to be in the

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: I will have to run a second, but I do have some thoughts on this, if they will stay in my brain. Take your point to be that the shall shall clawback is sort of meaningless if you just always have access to computers and dollars. But from a practical constraint standpoint, I wonder if just the way the programs work reduces some of the anxiety around the situation. Because the expectation would be you're sending out grants that are going to be used. It's different than a kind of appropriation in a general project in section two or three where we're thinking this could change quite variably year to year, I think there might be reasons to expect There's always gonna be Yeah. More steady pickup. So maybe it's maybe it's less of a practical concern than it it might seem, but it does seem like it's an avenue. I will have to run-in a second. I think that's actually all of the updates to the reallocation section, so that might be a nice place to stop. We would come to cache next, and I expect there will be questions, and I will not have time to answer them.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Section nine is the cash.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Exactly. Page 10 is the start of your cash sections.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And also, John, because I know you and I went back and forth on the language of certain capital projects versus appropriating. Yes. The big bill, they have an appropriation of cash for $17,000,000 plus this year. They didn't list the projects, but they have a line that appropriates the cash in this bill, the $17,000,000 whatever. So that's a big bill. I saw it yesterday.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: So when I do get to speak to the cash section, I follow the approach that we've taken in the past, which is to authorize.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right. Because we don't appropriate this bill. We authorize. We authorize the money for the projects. We authorize the projects. We authorize the money, bonded or cashed. It doesn't matter. It's an authorization in appropriations of health rates. So, what is your schedule? You're tied up this morning. You're tied up this morning. Why don't you reschedule this afternoon in case you would be able to So

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: the one unfortunate thing is I have the yield bill.

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

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: So I will need to be on the floor for

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: to be on the floor then.

[Brian Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: So if if you're on the floor, there's no timing issue between us. We'll be on the same schedule effectively. Otherwise, I'm generally available, and I just have holds on my calendar for the capital bill. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, this was all up in jail. One thing we might do, just came to my mind, I don't know how long the judicial retention that starts at 10:30. Do you think it's gonna

[Unidentified Committee Member]: take till twelve? Oh, I'd say there's a good chance.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I was hoping maybe if we

[Unidentified Committee Member]: You could have been talking. Right? Each one

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: of them. I know. Some of us have been through this. Not to retain a judge before. It's happened. So, I think I'm the only one month that even realizes that So, we're now type folks. We've got language coming in. It'll be from Michael O'Brady. Language use in our capital bill. And we'll, of course, just follow-up with YouTube because I think we're gonna be waiting for a little bit. So let's go off to YouTube, and we'll be back shortly. Thank