Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Beth Quimby (Member, House Education)]: Welcome

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education)]: back to House Education and House Ways and Means joint hearing on September as passed by the Senate. We are continuing to walk through a side by side of the differences between what passed the House and what passed the Senate. We are on page 57 of the side by side.

[Rep. Beth Quimby (Member, House Education)]: Sounds good.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education)]: Around there. Anyway, we'll pledge counsel to reorient us and continue presentation?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Perfect. So I remain John Gray with the Office of Legislative Council.

[Rep. Beth Quimby (Member, House Education)]: I'm still Beth.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep. We're both still with the office

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education)]: for

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the time being.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education)]: Before we start, did we get all the answers to the questions from before we broke for the roll call votes? Not hearing anything from ways and means, so continue. So

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the remainder of my sections, we've now switched out of school construction, and we're really just dealing with some conforming changes to foundation formula transition measures and reports. So section 79 is a set of repeals of now superfluous Act 73 secondtions. They are superfluous because they have been repealed and replaced with new sections here that are substantively the same, but catch up to the timeline. So they're really just changing the timeline. The new addition that you see in the Senate proposal here in Section 79 is that there was a point at which the ballot language amendments were consistent with what passed in Act 73, meaning that both bills could be merged without needing to repeal the Act 73 measure. There's now sufficiently robust changes to that section that we need to repeal the Act 73 language and just replace it with this new section. But know that it otherwise preserves all of the pieces of the Act 73 language. It just reflects the latest updates from this bill's process. Section 80, this is your EOP transition. It's truly just aligning to the foundation formally going effective FY 2030, so 07/01/2029. It's just moving all those dates forward to that date. This is the phase in. Exactly, exactly. And that's where you're going see the next couple of sections. Section 81 is the same. It's your supplemental district spending cap. Previously, you would have gotten to the 5% cap in fiscal year 2040, and now you get to it in fiscal year 2039. Yep, just state changes. Section 82 is the same. This is your homestead property tax rate transition accelerated forward by a year. Okay, sections eighty three and eighty four relate to Department of Taxes reports. The first of these is the homestead property tax rate transition report. You may recall that this was previously included with the above section together in Act 73, but it technically needs to be effective now so that they can do the work. So that's why the House passed this as a separate provision. It is substantively the same as what is in Act 73, but now you have a due date of 12/15/2027 to align with that accelerated timeline that the Senate is proposing. And much the same for Section 84, this is your Department of Texas report on an alternative homestead exemption structure that's been accelerated to the end of twenty twenty seven. Section 85 does have a substantive change to the directives to the Ed Fund Advisory Committee. You may recall as past the House, the membership and directives were quite reduced. This is instead of something that aids with the transition to the foundation formula, it's something that kicks in after the foundation formula is here and provides a sort of regular set of recommendations on technical things related to the foundation formula. The new piece that you see highlighted here is that the committee would annually recommend the appropriations required to fully fund each school district's educational opportunity payment under the foundation formula for the current and upcoming fiscal year. So basically, this would just be a math check. It would say, take the latest student counts that you have available for school districts, multiply it by the base amount as inflated to the fiscal year under determination, and it's going to tell you what each school district should receive as an EOP. This is included to check whether the legislature is doing its job in providing the full EOP, but it really should be a math check. You just multiply the student count by the base amount. And you've accelerated the Senate has accelerated the first meeting to following the start of effectiveness of Foundation Development. So accelerated it by one year. And then you have all of your effective dates. And it's, as you would expect, this is just the accelerated timeline for that foundation formula rollout in FY 'thirty. It also includes accompanying changes to accelerate all the tax policy pieces that have not been discussed in here but related to your property tax classifications, regional assessment districts, those pieces, they've been accelerated a year as well to align with. They maintained the timeline of multi year rollout that they had, but they're accelerated to match with the same rollout as the foundation portfolio. You'll recall that while there's no inherent link between the property tax classifications and the foundation formula, the way that the actual statewide tax rate is structured assumes that there will be multiple tax rates applicable to different tax classifications, so they line up. That's it.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education)]: I might ask if you would just not return on the screen, but just return to the topic of supplemental district spending as it relates to school construction. Yes. Let's say your district wants to pass a pond for whatever the amount might be, you pass it, that becomes one form of supplemental district spending that you're obligated to pay every year, and that's separate and apart from the supplemental district spending as envisioned under Act 73. Yes,

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: yes. I heard the discussion earlier that there's kind of like two distinct forms. The way that I would talk about them as similar and the way that I would talk about them as distinct, and maybe it's more helpful to draw what's distinct. The way that they're distinct is what is required to authorize them for a yearly incurrence of your supplemental district spending tax rate. For school construction, it's a one time authorization at the start for ongoing the full length of the bond, your annual debt service costs. You go out and authorize that once, and there's a special ballot provided for just that. And you may have a separate ballot provided for your regular supplemental district spending, which is truly just a one time cost. It's not an ongoing annual cost. So the way that they're distinct is really that it's a one time authorization for your school construction costs. You obviously have gone through a bond vote and the like to get to this point, but it only requires that one time authorization. A school district can't back out one year and say, we're not going to vote supplemental district spending to cover our bonds this year. It's like, no, you've already authorized it for the full term, and this is your annual ongoing cost, and it will be covered through your supplemental district spending tax, which is structured in the same way that the tax is structured for any other kind of supplemental district spending. It's just not subject to that annual vote.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education)]: And if a district chose not to pass a bond, then four years down the road had a year where they weren't passing anything for supplemental district spending, that is still part of the supplemental district spending tax rate, even though

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: there was no other something. They didn't need a ballot in that year. They just have that rate incurred. And if you're in a year in which you're debating covering both annual debt service costs through supplemental district spending, maybe you've already authorized them, but you have those costs and you're also considering something else you want to purchase in supplemental district spending, the ballot that you would get would reflect the total tax rate required to cover both. So you would know exactly what the tax rate is going to be for both. And it would say that even if you vote down these extra pieces, you're still going to have your annual ongoing cost.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education)]: And this is, of course, in an era where we're probably not voting on school budgets because it is now the educational thing. That cleared

[Rep. Beth Quimby (Member, House Education)]: that up, I think. It just gives the voters a reminder that they already have this previously approved construction fees when they're voting on new supplemental spending.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Exactly. The concern was that if you didn't say something about it, then voters might say, Why is this tax rate so high to cover this amount of supplemental electric spending? And then vote down something that they actually want. But that's not what the full tax rate accounts for.

[Rep. Beth Quimby (Member, House Education)]: It's not that it's a separate, if you already authorized and passed or on a separate ballot.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And the statute is clear that there's really, it sets up the form for two separate ballots. So one for the one time authorization and one for your regular supplemental check.

[Rep. Beth Quimby (Member, House Education)]: Thank you. That's helpful.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education)]: Ways and means, any questions? Right, seeing none.

[Rep. Beth Quimby (Member, House Education)]: My questions that I raised before remain, and I do think it has to be worded really carefully on the ballot, but just the ongoing obligation to pay the bond that you voted for for this particular product in this particular year remains. And just so I agree that, is the wording is in this for the ballot language, is it? Did I miss that? Is the wording in this bill for the, is the ballot language wording in this bill or did I understand?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It is in this bill, yes. It is. And there's two separate ones, so let me call them out clearly. If you're trying to find the ballot language for incurrence or authorization of indebtedness, which is not the supplemental district spending, but just authorizing the amount for school construction costs that you haven't yet issued, if you're looking for that ballot language, it's in section 77A. And if you were looking for the language for the supplemental district spending ballot, which is really two ballots, one for one time authorization for school construction and one for ongoing regular costs, Both of those ballots are contained in section 78.

[Rep. Beth Quimby (Member, House Education)]: 78 or seventy seven? Seventy

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: eight has the ballots for supplemental judic spending. And 77A has the ballot for bonded authorization.

[Rep. Beth Quimby (Member, House Education)]: Thank you. Thanks, John. Sure.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education)]: Committee, questions here? Very thorough, thank you. All right, I think this wraps our presentation. You can go ahead, don't take us off live, but I don't have anything else for ways and means, just a few scheduling issues for our committee. Thank you, ways and means.

[Rep. Beth Quimby (Member, House Education)]: Thank you, we're gonna go hear other bills and always fun to hang out with you all.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education)]: All right. I just want to run through sort of us hanging out there and what's going on in my head with them. Miscellaneous Ed, we will probably not change and vote to concur. So you just have to go back in your mind and remember the presentation. I think if there was any differences here, it was over the increasing size of the HHP advisory group. Just to remind everybody that that's a very small portion of the entire bill. PCBs, we are awaiting from the Senate. It's not the bill I would choose. However, it pushes the deadline out, nine years, that's as good as we're gonna get. I don't wanna do any risking of that bill not passing. So if it's okay with everybody, I think we will just vote to concur with that. And I would say that the usual people we would have in here talking about PCBs, wanna make sure that that happens. Three thirteen is going to be a roundabout thing where we are going to have to listen to a presentation of an amendment that has nothing to do with education. If that all gets worked out. This has to do, if you guys remember the roll call we had a while back where most people voted for it, but some voted against it and said, for this entire bill, except for this one small section, that small section is being pulled out, the rest of it is being attached to three thirteen with permission of all parties to

[Rep. Beth Quimby (Member, House Education)]: And have not to is that maybe today? Don't know.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education)]: But yes, yeah. But it's even more complicated because we actually amended the bill, and it's gone through four committees. So do all four committees have to hear the amendment? Okay. Be determined. Let's see, nine fifty five we just heard. Stay tuned for the plan on that. I think that's it. That's all we have. Any questions from folks? Just keep an eye on your texts and emails about coming back Did to we do something with 09:30? Sorry. 09:30 is gone. Yep. So it was the absenteeism, and so it's concurred. It's off to the governor. And that is same with Pre k. The pre k. All done. All right. Good