Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: Alright.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Welcome back, everyone. 11AM. We had a little juggle in our agenda, and we're gonna work on a jury request for the next duration of time leading up to the lunch hour. And so we have some guests with us today, one in person and one on Zoom, from the Vermont Council on Rural Development. And we're gonna start with, Jessica Savage, as the director of programs and strategic initiatives for Vermont Council on Rural Development. How

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: are you? Good. Thank you. Thanks so much for taking time for us today. Of course. Hello. So

[Denise Smith, Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development]: shall I get started

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: with a little bit of testimony?

[Jessica Savage, Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development]: I'll try to keep it short

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: and sweet on this cold February morning. So I'm Jessica Savage. I work for the Vermont Council on Rural Development as the Director of Programs and Strategic Initiatives. So VCRD, as we are known, is an independent, nonpartisan, statewide nonprofit. We provide facilitation, convening, leadership skill building, technical assistance, and on demand support for Vermont's rural communities.

[Jessica Savage, Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development]: You might have heard of our community visit process, likely has been in a community near you. We work all over the state. Rural is pretty broad when you think of Vermont. We convene statewide policy discussions on issues that impact rural communities. We have a board that is a partnership of federal, state, local, nonprofit, and private partners, a partnership that goes both ways and in the best case informs decisions and approaches at all of those levels. We are your state Rural Development Council. So for the past thirty years, we have provided technical assistance to rural communities from ideation to action planning to implementation. We work only where invited, and we always work as part of a strong network of state, regional and local technical assistance organizations. We create resource teams customized to the needs of rural communities and facilitate the connections to organizations that can provide the right resources at the right time. We're here to make a request that aligns with a study that was done by the state of Vermont, the Vermont Evaluation of Rural Technical Assistance. We were on their steering committee, and we really appreciate the state and UVM working together to listen deeply to Vermont's rural communities about their needs. What did they need for rural technical assistance? And the findings resonate with our experience working with rural communities. Towns told us, and we know, that they need coordinated, simplified access to not just information, but navigation of technical assistance. They need flexible and patient funding and support for all the phases of project development. They need us, Vermont's rural technical assistance provider network, to work well together, to talk to each other, and to have the time, staff, and financial resources and expertise to support them in their locally defined projects. If you want to hear more about Virta, you could definitely invite DHCD to come present about the findings in that report. I have copies of the report with me if you all want to see it. So we're here on behalf of this technical assistance provider network and Vermont's rural communities to ask you to provide $500,000 in the FY twenty seven budget to make good on what rural towns have told us that they need. Our proposal is simple and allows for implementation of some of the most impactful recommendations in the Virta Report. This proposal would provide backbone and administrative support to design and implement a TA and funding program that directly benefits our underserved rural towns and villages. Two, technical assistance resources, staff, and consultant time to provide custom resource teams for each community selected for the program. And three, direct support to towns. Most of the funding will be distributed through a grant application process, where towns will work with their resource team to use grant funding to pay for services that will help them make meaningful progress on community driven economic development goals. Projects could include housing, infrastructure, childcare facilities, climate resilience, and more. While this sounds ambitious and familiar, this is based because it's based on work that is already underway and that you have already supported. You supported the Municipal Technical Assistance Program over the past two years. It was an excellent pilot program that allowed the state, its TA partners, and local leaders to make significant progress on those types of initiatives I just named, childcare, housing, climate resilience. This MTAP funding just ended for most of the TA providers this year, and this proposal allows us to build on that foundation while incorporating recommendations from the Virta Report and the partners who are already at the table. Rural towns are being asked to do so much with decreasing federal funding and increasing complexity of the problems they face. Despite that, we know there are dedicated local leaders who are ready and willing to show up for the towns they love, especially when given thoughtful support to make their local dreams come true. So with that, happy to take any questions or thoughts.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: No, Ms. No,

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: Thank you, Jessica, Carnegie and Denise for being on the screen. We've heard a little bit about this in well, a lot about it in rural caucus, but the rest of the legislature needs to hear this as well. And this falls within our committee's jurisdiction in terms of the budget request letter. Could you please well, first of all, my small communities I know have benefited from this technical assistance in the past. And probably will continue to need to rely on it this year with the uncertainties of the federal funding that they may be expected, but maybe aren't going to get. There's so much uncertainty there. And they don't really have the time and expertise as pretty much volunteer select board members, etcetera, to delve into how to get this help and how to figure out if their grants are going to come to them or not. So my question is, who are the TA providers? Who are the technical assistance providers that this $500,000 will support? Right. Appreciate that. And yes, your communities are wonderful. So we have a team that's already working together right now. When we bring a resource team, it includes the regional planning commissions, the regional development corporations, often the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, Preservation Trust of Vermont, the Rural Economic Development Initiative at the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, and then really custom TA providers often. So if a community is prioritizing housing, we're going to bring, say, the statewide housing program manager from CDOEO. We would bring, say, Ever North or Down Street with us. We would be bringing the Vermont Housing and Finance Agency as part of this technical assistance team. And this is already happening, but this program would allow us to really do intentional wraparound technical assistance that really helps communities navigate that system. So we all play a different piece in the project puzzle, and this keeps us working together. And to follow-up on that, I really appreciate the naming of the organizations, because that really helps me put it into perspective for individual towns that I represent. My question just went right out of my head. I'm sorry. That $500,000 grant is a one time ask, is that correct? Yes, at this point. Okay, great. Thank you. That's all I have. Sure.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Anything else for Jessica?

[Denise Smith, Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development]: Can I just add something to that question? Sorry,

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: Denise Smith.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: I was actually just about to pivot to you. So yeah, table is yours. Free.

[Denise Smith, Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development]: Thank you. I'm Denise Smith. I'm the executive director at the Vermont Council on Rural Development. Thanks for fitting us in really quickly. I just want to add that the MTAP funding was really instrumental in expanding the work that we've been able to do as technical assistance providers and coordinating this together. And this is a one time funding to keep that work happening and hopefully be able to come back together with with more of a plan next year for this for this body to consider. But really, this one time funding is really to keep the momentum going. We have a little bit of funding to to have a facilitator continue to convene us right now through D H C D. But after that, we're not really sure what the waters are going to look like. And and I think that this proposal just really keeps us working together. It gives money directly to communities, as they're being asked to do more with less. So just really appreciate you considering this request, and having us come and explain why we're doing this right now. But that's really why we're putting this out there at this moment.

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: Thank you. Yes, please. I did want to mention if you could please send us a formal budget letter to our committee assistant, Nick, and to also, if you wouldn't mind sharing your written testimony with us, that would be helpful so he can post it to our committee page. Absolutely. And I have some handouts visually, and those are the reports for folks who are interested. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Anything further to add, Denise?

[Denise Smith, Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development]: No, really appreciate you taking time today and looking forward to working with you.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much for the time. I'm glad we were able to have a scheduling whole that we were able to provide you the opportunity to come in. So thank you so much.

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, thank you.

[Denise Smith, Executive Director, Vermont Council on Rural Development]: And thanks to Jess to being there in person. Sorry, I cannot be there in person today. Been there. I'll be there next week. I'll come find you next week.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Sounds great. All right. Remainder So, of the time, we were going to have a conversation around the budget memo. That's been a living document, a work in progress. And so, with that, I was going to hand the table over to Representative Hango, since she's the lead on that project.

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: Great. Thank you very much. We are going to get hard copies of the budget from sorry, go ahead, Jessica. From Nick. Thank you so much for making this in readable form for us. Really appreciate the big thumbs on the back pages. So we've had a number of other requests coming to us because organizations and agencies are finding out that GovOps has a huge jurisdiction. And that we're the ones that they have to go through to ask for money in addition to house their patients. So you can all take a look through this and ask any questions that you want. If you see your areas of jurisdiction that we've assigned to you on this worksheet that you have not gotten back to us about, and that's probably on the last page, It would be really helpful if we could, when we go offline, take a few minutes to contact those organizations and or your budget buddy in house appropriations to find out if there is an ask. And this year, I want to remind everybody that we need a reason for the ask. And it's helpful to note whether it's in the governor's recommended budget. And you all have the budget sections listed. We have a letter that I emailed everybody a couple weeks ago from Chair Chea about what we need to ask for from these folks that we're communicating with. And in that letter, there is a live link to the budget. And as we speak, House Appropriations is plugging dollar values into on that So live if you couldn't find out what your organization wanted last week, they may have asked for it at the public hearing that recently happened. And House Appropriations, our former committee assistant, Autumn, will have plugged it into their worksheet. So you can cross reference that before you panic and go out to the organizations themselves and see if they are asking for money this year. I think House Appropriations has another budget hearing coming up. So by the end of today, they should have this spreadsheet completely filled up with requests. This is what they're telling me by the end of the day on the thirteenth. So if you wanted to work on this before we meet again on the budget, which I think might be next Tuesday or Wednesday, that would be really helpful. So we have a couple of members who aren't here that have outstanding items. But anybody else, if you see yourself on an outstanding item, do you have any questions that you want to ask right now? I see I've got an additional one to add to it. What was that?

[Chair Matthew Birong]: I'm sorry to

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: get I got a new one give it to me, Vermont State Youth Council. Yes, and they came in the other day, and we have a letter for them. And the reason they got assigned to you is because they fall under, I believe it's the Secretary of State Office of the Agency of Education. And can I You just do have Secretary of State also? Yes. So can I just check that's the comma's in the right place, we're just missing a zero on the 140 pass? What page are you on? I'm sorry. On the third page, bottom of the fourth. Yes, there should be another zero. So it's on the end of that. Is their adios. Thought of something else that I was going to say. Question for Nets. Do you recall which day next week we are going to be writing our budget letter? They're here. A

[Chair Matthew Birong]: year ago.

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: The afternoon. Okay. So. Just quickly Tuesday at 02:00, we're going to actually build the budget letter. So we'd like everybody's information by Tuesday at 02:00. We'll communicate to those folks who are not in the room right now to work on their parts of the budget. But I honestly believe that if you click on that live link from House Appropriations, you're going to find a lot of the information you need, because they've been working really hard to fill that. I believe the answer to this is obvious, but I actually don't know. Can you explain to me why it's pertinent whether or not it was in the governor's recommended? It's something that House Appropriations puts on their worksheet. We just copied their worksheet. And it's helpful for them to know, because the administration comes in and presents a budget to them, and then all the individual organizations and agencies come in and present individually to them. And they have to reconcile it so they can report out whether or not they agreed with the administration's budget or they changed it. So they identify for each budget item whether or

[Unidentified Committee Member]: not it agrees with the governor or not. They do.

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: Part of the reason they do that is because they get asked on the floor when the budget is presented these questions. And it's just really helpful for them to have it on the spreadsheet, so we just added that column so we can be consistent. But we need to cross I was just trying to feel. We need to

[Unidentified Committee Member]: cross reference. So for example, all of mine say that they are in the governor's recommended, but it doesn't specify how much is the governor's recommended bill. So Office of Racial Equity could be asking for 110,000, the administration could be giving them $10 I mean, you know what I mean? I need to cross reference because it's not listed what If the governor

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: you look at the second page, let's take this one for example, from our access network, dollars 1,890,000.00. If you go all the way over to the notes section, the governor's recommend was only $1,350,000 So if

[Unidentified Committee Member]: there's a difference, you noted it that way.

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: Yes, because remember when they came in and they told us that they were asked by the Secretary of State's office to add community radio in That's for 90,000 something that was not in the governor's recommended budget. Plus, they're losing revenue from cable TV. 8% of their revenue is being lost. That adds up to $450

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I just wanted to clarify that I see how that was done on page two, row three, row two, but I wanted to make sure that that was the case every time it said, and governor recommended that I wasn't making a false assumption that by saying the governor recommended that it the amount that they're asking. So if

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: you look down at Office of Racial Equity for $110,000 which you have assigned to you, it says in Governors Recommended, that is what the recommend was. As far as we know, the Office of Racial Equity is not asking for anything additional above the governor's recommend. But House appropriations can change their mind. After they get our letter, for instance, if you had a compelling reason to ask for more than $110,000 and the committee agreed on that, we would write a letter to house appropriations and say, no, we really want them to have $115,000 and then approves would duke it out there, basically. So that's how that works. And then it all goes to the Senate after the whole House passes this. And the Senate Appropriations Committee and the various committees of jurisdiction go through the whole process all over again. That's why the budget is typically the very last bill to be signed at the end of the year. Any other questions from the table? Because if not, we could take some time offline to work on this unless we have something coming up really fast. I don't think we do.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: No, this is the last item on our agenda. I

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: think we had a question.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: I'm just trying to find a live link on.

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: Okay. I can resend that letter, or Nick can resend that letter to everybody in the committee? Because it was a while ago. Do you have Chair Chea's letter that you could send out to us? I have a paper copy here. I think it might be on our home page that approves.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Yeah, I have it in my inbox.

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: So, I don't know what I've done with my paper copy, but I can certainly find it and send it out to you if I can't find it. I have a question. Mine that deal with the incident notification, it says not now requested, but then it says in government recommended. What page are you on? I'm on page four, at the top, school construction aid and education funds. Okay. So it says none amounts requested, but it's been in the governor's recommended budget. So you will need to go to that link and look at B501.3 and find out what they have asked for because we're kind of the administrator of funds. That's why we get so many requests that don't feel like they're in our jurisdiction, but any funds that are set up, we have to administer those in our jurisdiction. So let me get that letter for you all so you can click on that live link and see if we can figure that out. But I think if nobody else has questions, we could go off live or

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Yeah, no, no, no. I think that's good utilization of time is that everybody kind of starts sussing out their individual buckets here. Just getting I mean, I really like the layout on this.

[Rep. Lisa Hango (Vice Chair)]: Thank you, Nick.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Yeah, Nick, you've been doing a great job with spreadsheet maintenance on all fronts. Thank you so much, sir. Yeah, so with that, we'll go offline, and individuals will work on their individual line items and just get more details. And then we'll be back at 1PM for a walkthrough on our reports repeal bill with Tucker Anderson. And