Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Okay. We're live. All right. Welcome back, everybody, to House Energy and Digital Infrastructure. We're having just a kind of informal chitchat with our colleagues on appropes or our colleague on house appropes to make sure that we are ready to start taking testimony on the FY twenty seven budget so that we

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: can

[Speaker 0]: prepare to submit our budget letter to approach. Rep Kaczynski, thanks so much for being here. Let's introduce ourselves real quick. I'm representative Kathleen James from Manchester.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Scott Campbell from Saint Johnsbury. Richard Bailey from Mobile 2. There's Morrow, Windham, Windsor, Bennington, Southworth, Caledonia to Christopher Howland, Rutland Ford.

[Speaker 0]: Dara Torre, Washington two.

[Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Bram Kleppner, Chittenden 13, Burlington.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Laura Sibilia, Windham Timmies. I know you all. Right.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: So for the record, John Kaczynski our representative John Kaczynski here is on the appropriations committee and have several budgetary areas, and two of those relevant here for this, community here broadband here at Clear Living and Public Service and Public Utilities. Public Utilities are kind of really under Public Service Department here. So I'm just here today just to take a look at some information here that chair Robin Shai, chair of our housing union appropriations sent on the fifteenth of this month. I help folks think here a bit about some differences here in terms of roles of policy committees here. You'll see these listed here. I'm not gonna run through all this necessarily in order here, but we certainly can. And to kinda help, each committee here kind of desperate care. So we have we are holding testimony here for, you know, policy new policy or legislative pieces coming through if there's appropriations attached to that just to kinda help equip everyone here as best we can here to ask good questions and probing questions. We can't always get down to the weeds of every single line item here on an appropriation, how much we're spending, $10, we don't do that here. But we do wanna make sure that we understand what appropriations may be requested, what has been appropriated here in the past here, and what changes may be kind of coming along here based on changes in any one of the agencies and departments here in state government, and certainly how those things may be tied to specific goals they may be having from even like from the current fiscal year into the next fiscal year, and perhaps what some of those focus indicators might be. Last session here, our committee is well known for asking lots of questions here as we need to do that, and certainly the other committees here as well here. But it really kind of helped us to kind of like set the stage for some things we can help other committees do as well in preparation for discussing and asking good questions taking testimony in regard to what the groups that you need.

[Speaker 0]: Have a question. Just backing up a little bit. I I know that a props worked really hard this year to get a budget memo out to all the state agencies and tell them that we wanted to do things differently this

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: year. Correct.

[Speaker 0]: And not speaking to props as much as other people do. I know I've heard Chair Shai often say, it's not just about the ups and downs, it's about much more than that. And I was thinking to myself, what are the ups and downs? So can you just explain to us what you guys are looking for this year that's gonna be different, maybe, from the state agencies, and how we should what we should be expecting to see?

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: Sure. So, you know, excuse me, as each department comes in to meet with our committee here and provide testimony from their budget here, They always kind of give an overview of what their agency is responsible for here, and they give us a pretty good outline of that. When they start getting into the budget, parts of things, up and downs, just that, what things maybe they may be spending a little bit more money on, like per line item here, what was made less than. So that's kind of the ups and downs pieces right there. It's not that we're not interested in those items there, but what does that mean? And here, really kind of like in the larger picture of things here, again, kind of based on, you know, it could be a change in personnel. It's a bit more specific, if they have to add personnel or if they're willing to reduce, personnel or change perhaps the roles of personnel here across departments. Does that make sense to everybody here? Yes. And just one quick example here, but especially if there's anything new coming along, any new initiatives, what's that gonna look like? How might that influence their budget overall here for the next fiscal year? But also in terms of how it will certainly affect the overall budget here for the entire state of Vermont here with how that's divided.

[Speaker 0]: Have you started receiving presentations yet? Are they looking different?

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: Yes, today.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah? Are they looking different? Is it

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: Well, this afternoon here, this afternoon we had Adam Gresham come in the Commissioner of Finance and Management here to actually go through the budget summary here. I can pass this around here just so you know what it looks like. You can find this on our website here for sure. And that will be listed there as one of our documents. You're free to please do. We want you to kind of look at that stuff so you're gonna know what the overall summary looks like here. But there's also a language that gets attached to that. I'll just pass this the other way around here, which goes through here on the change kinds of things, one time appropriations that maybe different departments and agencies are looking at here. It could be perhaps a change in language here, technical language here, to kind of state how appropriations may be individually allocated different parts of an agency or department. And we just went through that with the Sarcoidosis.

[Speaker 0]: Okay.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: So we just finished that. But there's a new version that's attached. It says in our website. If you look at, like, today's agenda, for example, know, Adam Gresham came in. There was a listing for the budget summary here, but in this one that says upgrade it because we're missing a page. Invert myself. One page out of the 34 or eight are down. So that's where we kind of begin. We all heard the governor's budget address. As soon as he was done, like, ten minutes later, we were down in our committee here to kind of run through at least the budget summary to kind of get started on that day, also from. So he he will come in here periodically to give us any potential updates on things, again, on kind of the economic forecast, which you all kind of heard of report here was obviously that, because that does impact what we may have here for available available funds here.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. Thanks. Alright. So back to the back to the January memo.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: Right. So if you take a look at the the memo here, chair Shai, if I let her know, today, I was coming up here to give some testimony here on this, and I think one of the things that helps our committee here is for you folks to ask some really good questions, if anything at all that you're curious about in terms of any things that may impact the subject, that actually can help a department or agency by the time they come to us here. If they haven't come to you first here to perhaps help them to better put the presentation of this here, okay, to us here. And, you know, I think, you know, what there's some things here. So helping appropriators understand the need for resources, for example, here, the impact of proposed spending. Sometimes there's one time asks here for funding here for a current fiscal year. Is that something or is there funding that they're looking to kind of add to the base? They may have gotten a couple of one time appropriations in the past cycles, and now they're gonna add money here, perhaps, to the base for very good reasons. And maybe they have I'll give a a personnel example here. They may have had limited service positions. Some of you have been here for some time to understand what those things may look like here. We need their, it's a defined period of time which they might have in person to provide work here for a department or agency. But now they're looking to kind of make that more of a permanent part of the budget because they need that person here. That make sense? Okay. So feel free to jump in if you have questions about the things I'm saying here. Because we we we take a look at a multitude of different factors here when we're looking at the budget items here. But it's not just about the money here. At the end of the day, we have to draft a budget and present it here to the general assembly here. It does make a thief about the money here at the end here. It's really asking other kinds of questions here that may impact some thoughts here for agencies and departments here. It may cause them to have to go back and do a little bit of homework and come back to us. And if you turn over to page two, there's some categories here. I think one of the things that's really helpful here for our committee here, as we're all assigned different budgetary years, so in addition to the ones that's on your list here, I'm also the liaison here for things like transportation, which is a huge area funding here that we provide here to that particular agency here, broadband, public utilities, public service, all of higher education, which includes the Vermont State College system here. That includes the Community College of Vermont. I have VSAG, Student Assistance Corporation, provides scholarship funding here for students in the state and also the University of Vermont. So I have all of that, which is a sizable amount. And what we all do as committee members with the areas of budget that we're responsible for is we do our best to try and meet with each one of those agencies here in advance and come into our committee. And it helps us to just be better educated prior to them coming here, we can kinda help answer questions, which we had some testimony here today in regard to a couple of different groups that are responsive for reporting that would like the University of Vermont, for example. So, Adam Gresham, the commissioner of finance and management provided an overview of what they're looking for here. I can easily make a comment. I've met with them, and this is why they're making this rich in the past year for their budget. So that helps us here, internally here, but when you do meet with like other, like today's testimony you just had here was primarily about in regard to-

[Speaker 0]: It was about their annual energy report, we do have

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: They may have provided a little bit of budgetary information. I don't know. Perhaps not.

[Speaker 0]: They're actually coming in later this week. Okay. So I guess just to give you a little update, we have a hearing or a meeting on Tuesday with the agency of digital services to hear their FY twenty seven budget request. So we've got ADS, I know that's Marty, but we're doing that next Tuesday. Public service department is coming in this week to talk about their FY '27 budget. Community broadband is coming in this week to mention any budgetary items they might have. And I wanted to get your advice on this. Public Utility Commission sent me a letter and just said there's nothing in the budget that impacts us. So I don't know if you still want us to do our due diligence or

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: We should still do your due diligence.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. Have them in anyway. Yeah.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: Even if nothing's really gonna change for them. Okay. Like last year, they've been with us. There wasn't a whole lot that was really changing, quite frankly, at all other than, like, you know, the 3% usual increase in budgets to kinda get the personnel and all the things tied here to that here. And it was good for us to have them come in so we can learn a little bit more about not just what may be happening in the next year here, but things in the future here as well.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, I'm glad I asked.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: Yeah, so it's good to still have them come in. They may only need, I don't know, a short amount of time to say nothing has changed from last year other than but don't be afraid to ask about things that may be huge they thinking about in the future, things coming along here for them. Okay. That was really helpful. Okay. Just so you know what to expect here, perhaps. And I think with any of the departments that I commit to provide testimony here, looking at, like, budget documents here, what did things look like in the previous year here? Are there any large, you know, substantial changes or perhaps decreases? I know one agency that's gonna come with me with us here shortly. They'll let us know that they're looking to actually increase things here significantly to kind of help with overall costs, but also just operational pieces. They don't need to be performing any longer or in a different way. So, we're always looking for that information. Understanding something about the function of the org organization here, the agency, the department is really important here. And we can kinda look online and kinda get all those good stuff in terms of what their mission is, what their goals are, what their objectives are. I And think that's really an important thing, or what their goals might be here per particular, financial year. Okay? Look what they do. So under public service, there's there's a a three year review. Do you know what that's all about here?

[Speaker 0]: The telecom plan? Yeah, the

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: telecommunications plan. One that's actually it's been every three years they have to engage in this. And it's a fairly substantial cost here to the agency and the state here as well. So, actually would like to suggest that you move from a three year to a five year. So, because every three years, they feel like they're constantly kind of working on this, and it's a 6 figure cost here to the agency. They can speak more directly to the exact actual cost. Have you met with them about that?

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, we were just talking about it earlier. It's 450,000, and we did hear their pitch, basically, that we expand that timeline from every three years to every five years.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: And I I made a brief mention today. It was 6 figures and close to a half million dollars per year. No. Every three years was. So Yeah. Yeah.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Would just note the department used to do that in. There was a lot of contention in this building, and so the contracting for that to be done outside of the department was relatively new. In the last six years, probably.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: As I've been Depends on you've been here

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Depends on who appreciated it before. It's a fairly contentious report for whatever reason. Okay. Thank you.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: We'll be learning more about that here shortly. Sure. Asking why programs exist, like what's their purpose? I mean, we clearly fund lots of different things, all good things here, know, early gear here. A lot of those things are funded every year here. Are standard kinds of programs that we all enjoy here, constituents enjoy here. And some kind of ask, do we need to keep funding something here? And I think you can kind of perhaps maybe get to that kind of question if you're thinking about, you know, the goals, objectives, performance indicators. We asked a lot of questions about that last year. Not to try and delete your program or whatsoever, just kind of help us better understand its purpose for receiving funding, but continued funding and the value added, I think, is really important. And again, it's not always about money. Sometimes there might be technical changes that need to occur here to make it better direct or perhaps create better and higher efficiencies here with the work that they do. Or perhaps to maybe spread the load of the work a little bit more evenly across all the personnel that collects and work for all the agencies and departments. That's what helps us. Questions you were thinking about, perhaps?

[Speaker 0]: Do folks have questions?

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Just say that not a question, but I like the the emphasis on using the appropriations process for government accountability that we could do a stronger job as a body doing oversight and accountability, and you guys have the leverage points. And so having this kind of thing being more explicit and more rigorous is

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: really a great direction to be going in. We do our best to, you know, think about the larger affordability piece right here. I mean, you know, I I was first appointed four years ago. They're not quite to the bed, but getting close here for sure. It came halfway in, and and budget that we passed in that year was $8,000,000,000. And so think about where it was in 2020, four years ago, 2022, and what we're looking at here today. And, you know, things just certainly cost more. We understand that here, but we have to just Our committee does our best to stay within the parameters here of the governor's recommend, right? Because he provides a recommended budget here, and we get information here about that, and that's included in this survey right here. But we'll be receiving much more specific reports here per department and agency. And that's our job here, to stay within our means the best we possibly can. It's not to say that we wouldn't, you know, recommend or be spending a little bit more in this area or that area here that may exceed the governor's budget here. We're to pay close attention to where all the money is coming from, and that's an important aspect of if it's coming from the general fund, is it a fund, is it a one time appropriation, is it something that's been in place here for the last ten years or longer.

[Speaker 0]: Are you one, do you know when our letters are due yet?

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: I don't have that date. Robin will or chair shy will send that to each of the to let you know what the date of that is here.

[Speaker 0]: And that will come with I'm wondering if she expected I assume we'll receive I I'll watch my inbox.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: Watch your inbox. I assume that'll into the first day of, like, week four. Okay. So we're just getting into our testimony here with regard to the big bill.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. Great. Because I assume that'll come with some thoughts on if she if they want the or the committee letters to look any different this year or to be any different. Sounds like they might be a

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: little different. Don't know the answer to that. Think what they wanna hear from each of the committees here as you receive testimonials, what kinds of things do you think are really important to support here, especially if it looks like there's gonna be an increase in something here. And the letters they were received last year didn't collectively hear, I'm not speaking to your department, your committee, excuse me, specifically, but they all varied here in terms of they didn't necessarily support every single task that any particular agency or department case requesting through testimony at various committees. Okay. So they really try, I think, to try and prioritize those things.

[Speaker 0]: Prioritize. Yes. You know, that's always a request.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: It is. I mean, there are just there are things that change in a department's budget that just simply need to change. It's if we don't do that, we're gonna lose perhaps our scope and scale in terms of our service to our constituents in the state. Yep. That's the way

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: I look at it. So I had a question about a specific line item. We have a we have a table here of of our sections of the budget or section of the budget that would be under the the purview of this committee. And they are they they don't all only one of the four appears in the in the table on page 24, and that's the budget summary. Budget summary.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: Right. Not all things may show up there.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. So is it where would we find those other planets?

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: That would come from which department which area you're looking at? Well, ADS, public service, and Yeah. That would end up being in their proposed budget. And

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: and the community broadband and the BBC. So course. Do you know I ADS is the one that shows up.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: The other

[Speaker 0]: Oh, okay.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: The other The others don't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that would show up in their individual, more detailed Okay. Budget. We have to sheets. And hear from them. Is that what you're saying? Right. And you can you can always send those and say, can we see this in advance? And I think all the agencies try to send things to us in advance, sometimes in advance because they're trying to just while they're working on the remainder of the presentations, trying to make sure they educate each of committees to understand all this person. And I think that's a really important thing. Now when I met with public service last month, they did give me a couple of sheets to us. We met at lunch on our way to 04:00 meetings here. And so what I have here is what they shared with me a first piece, which is the budget development form that they complete here for Department of Public Service here overall. These are overall budget numbers here for them. And I have one here for community broadband, so I'm happy to leave these with Alex. She can make copies of them.

[Speaker 0]: That'd great. Yeah. A little sneak Just

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: give you a first sneak peek. That's all. Okay. That shouldn't be viewed as the definitive budget So that you're receiving Perfect. Least give you a sneak peek of what things might look like here. And that includes what things like in terms of a sub total of, like, increases or decreases, for example. Decreases will have parenthesis parenthesis around them. Increase is just a straight number. And some of those simply reflect just cost of, operational. Typical 3% increases based on the total budget here for sure. And and that also includes, at the end of the day here, what the governor's recommending here for their total budget. So I have one here that represents broadband is is a interesting one because nearly all of their money comes from The Fed. The federal government. Mhmm. Yeah. So just take stock and hear about that. The rest of the falls are just, you know, operational. It's the things they're currently doing here for sure, administration wise, and, public service represents, what they're doing in total care. So I'm happy to leave these with Alex and That'd great. Little sneak peek on that. If I don't have a digital copy, then I submit.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. Do we have any questions? Great.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: You got them all.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you for thank you for indulging me. I I just Sure. I knew the budget process was changing, and I thought it'd be great for all of us to hear, you know, what the deal is. Yeah.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: Understand. Question, actually.

[Speaker 0]: Yes.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: What are you viewing if the biggest challenge this year?

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: Oh, well, I think we're still kinda waiting to kinda find out what the details, you look like on each one, the big the big issue. The big bill. The biggest bill here as we don't know. So, you know, trying to anticipate we we can't anticipate everything, but, you know, what might we expect are places we may have to try to backfill the best we possibly can to keep services provided here for for all of us. So we all take advantage of those services. Maybe not now, but it's a point in time. Right? I'm up to you with Medicare for these days here. You could say congratulations if you want to.

[Speaker 0]: Congratulations. Alright.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: So so just you know, that's not super precise here, you know, here, but we we have to just make sure that we're not dedicating too much to one particular thing here in the event that we have to do some of that to backfill a particular place. You have to think about that for sure. You know, hopefully, here, we don't know what's gonna happen here. I know the deadline for moving everything through is end of this month. Twentieth. Yeah. So in terms of the federal.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, okay. I was on crossover.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Oh, oh, it's you're thinking way too far ahead. Yeah. As

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: far as the the interest of federal, that's kind of issue. That's kind

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: of our biggest Yeah. Right. We're trying to

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: The next the next shutdown. Well, you know, we had senator you know, senator Welch when he was here last week came into our committee and that was here for a while. It was really helpful here for us. He didn't have a lot of specific guidance here. Just hurry up and wait time here for us. And there are some things, clearly, that he supports and he support as well and and other things that we can really get a chance to speak with him about, but they're all waiting, like all of us, to kinda find out how things might move here. Things have passed out of the house heading or to the senate here at some stage of the game here. Like, rapidly, people have a chance to kinda take a look and see strategically what they what their priorities might be as a as a senate. And that's what we have to think about here too. You know, what are our priorities here? And don't be afraid to come downstairs to Room 9. We're there all the time. Monday through Friday these days here. We're happy to have visitors. But if you have questions about things, don't be afraid to just stop down and say hello to us. It's great. Alright.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you so much. That was very helpful. Yeah. Alright. I think we are done for the day, although I want to look over the agenda real quick.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Madam chair, I think we should congratulate Alex because she's on the wall.

[Speaker 0]: It's like fireworks.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: We just had our new one that showed up. Last week as well. These things change.

[Speaker 0]: Let's just look ahead at the agenda for a minute. Thank you so much, Alright. Tomorrow.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: It's just two one eight sheets.

[Speaker 0]: Sounds good. Yes. We are still live. Thank you. I just need

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: to get I'll be back for myself.

[Speaker 0]: I it's fine. I'm live. So tomorrow we're gonna wrap up our testimony on H527. Folks you're still welcome to submit public comment. And then we she dropped off the agenda. We're gonna get her back in. I thought it would take her longer, but Ellen is working on a revised version of that bill for us to look at. And so we're gonna need to have Ellen come in to walk us through that and we can consider the, you know, we'll have something to look at. So 05:27, we'll hear from Will Dodge tomorrow and then we'll start, we'll shift to committee discussions, looking at legislative language, and trying to see if we can get something that we can vote out of here. Then our draft our committee bill on consolidated or basically in a broader sense moving copper to fiber and public notification process around that. We're going to hear tomorrow from consolidated Fidium. We're going to hear from Hunter and we're going to hear from the smaller telecoms. Yeah. Hunter's coming back. We're gonna get an update from Green Mountain Power and then we're gonna quickly walk through H seven ten. That's the single plant bill, definition of plant that Ellen can show us the language. And then I just invited Renewable Energy Vermont to come in and give us their feedback. We're hearing from the c u d oh, yeah.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Is the language in seven ten mirror what the PUC Yes. Together?

[Speaker 0]: We basically just sent them the report and said make a bill.

[Rep. John Kaczynski (House Appropriations Committee)]: So but

[Speaker 0]: but I we're gonna have to walk through it. Oh, yeah. Let's see. We're hearing the CUD we're hearing from the CUDs and the broadband board so we can hear about their budget. More discussion about 07:10. I put potential vote on there just being optimistic. Obviously, if we need more testimony or have more questions, we're not gonna vote it out. But it could be easy. Famous last words. Yeah, I shouldn't have said it out loud. More conversations about the consolidated bill. We're hearing from the E911 board. Then we have the department coming in to present their budget. And they also have some requests they would like to make of us. They're calling it a technical corrections bill. And some of their ideas include two things we heard about today, shifting the cadence of the telecom plan from every three years to every five years and sunsetting the board that keeps asking every year, will you please sunset us? And they had some other things in there too, but I'll let them come with their request. Then I had a possible vote on Friday on h five twenty seven. I don't know if we'll be ready. So just so you guys know, when you see votes down, that's me thinking maybe. And making sure it's warned if we do vote. Maybe vote out the consolidated bill on Friday. And then, we're gonna start taking testimony on h seven eighteen, and that is the week. So as always, let me know if any questions, and we've got a few things we're gonna try to cram in here. But I think we've got a good week. We're done. We can call 5.