Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: This is live. Say it up there. Live. Okay. Good morning, everyone. This is the House Human Services Committee meeting here in Room 11. Thank you to everyone for being here. And thank you to the witnesses who have made time to be here today as well. We're going to be concentrating on two main areas, the first being food insecurity and the second being housing insecurity. And so we have been, as probably most people have seen in the news lately, the legislature and the administration have been working hard to try to address the immediate needs of Vermonters around food insecurity. And so we're going to hear a little bit more about that. And we are also going to hear from community providers about what they are seeing in the community in terms of the impact. And finally, we will take a break. But the other thing that we are going to take a particular look at is the impact on Afghani refugees and their access to food, given their special immigration visa status. So with that, I would love to welcome Miranda and Leslie up. And Bart, I know that you're not on the agenda, but I know people are going to have some questions maybe when we get to the Afghani stuff. So just want to give you a heads up. Okay? Thank you. Welcome to both of you.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Good morning. Thank you.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: And the first thing I want to say is thank you for all of the work that you have been doing to make sure that Vermonters have access to food despite what's happening in Washington right now. And we have appreciated working together on trying to ensure that this emergency state funded benefit is as seamless as possible to Vermonters and really appreciate all the work that I know has taken behind the scenes with you folks to make that happen. So I just wanted to express the state's gratitude.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Thank you very much. I'm gonna, for the the record, record, Miranda Gray, I'm the Deputy Commissioner for the Economic Services Division.

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Good morning, Leslie Wisdom. I'm the Food and Nutrition Program Director with Economic Services. And then logistically, would you

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: like me to share a PowerPoint?

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Yes, you can go ahead and share your screen.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: And

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: folks, we have documents on our committee's webpage for you to look at as well. Do we have your document on our web page? I don't think

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: so. If there was

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: But we will, eventually.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Yes, you for sure will. Okay. Or in the queue and to you. Okay. So yeah, now that I've worked through the logistics, thank you for having us and for the appreciation. There has been a lot of work that's going on behind the scenes. And we have great partners within the agency of digital services, as we really needed their help to be able to do what has been federally mandated. So the flow, we thought we would talk to you because it just gives you a sequence of where we have been. HR1, that was implemented on July 4. So we're going to talk with you about that, which leads into your question perhaps.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Can I interrupt just for a moment? I just realized I'm sort of out of practice. We're not going to go through all of the people in the room, but we should do introductions around the room because we have a special invited guest. As I was looking around the room, I'm thinking, people are going to think represent Bloomling as part of human services. While that would be lovely.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: I know this is my fondest aspiration.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: I have invited her. She has been very interested in this and following along all of these issues. So we'll just do a quick around the room. So let's start with you, Representative Lemley.

[Rep. Tiff Bluemle (Burlington, House Appropriations) — override]: Yep. It's Lemley from Burlington, and may I sit on the appropriations screen?

[Rep. Daniel Noyes (Clerk)]: Hi. Good morning. Arabic LaGuardia, Robinson. Devon Bishop, Colchester, Virginia 20 District. Anne Donahue, Northfield in Berlin.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Teresa Wood, Bolton Bealscore, Huntington and Waterbury.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Greg Garofano, Essex and Message, Johnson.

[Rep. Daniel Noyes (Clerk)]: Morning, Dan Noyes. I represent Wilkett, Hyde Park, Johnson, and Belvedere.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Hello. Esmichael, Hartford. To Phalea McGill, Bridgeport, Middlebury, New Haven, and Wakebridge. For this Debbie, Westford, East Milton.

[Rep. Daniel Noyes (Clerk)]: Good morning, Representative Gilles Snyder, Representative Brandon Poweredstaff.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Thank you. I'm sorry for the interruption. That's a little out of practice with the whole committee here.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Not at all. You're getting us warmed up. Yes, so we thought we would share the changes that we had to implement through HR1 because we have been very busy this summer during that, then get into the guidance that we received from the USDA about the November benefits, and then end with what is good news, but still a lot of work to come, the emergency board meeting that we held yesterday and what was passed there. Sounds good. Perfect. All right. And I'm also going out of practice with Zoom. So if I forget to move slides, please let me know. So as I mentioned, HR1 was enacted in July 2025, so it was on July 4. And there were significant changes. And I will say, I think we're going to be talking about this more than once. We've had a couple of months to be absorbing all this, but it's significant. And so any questions, please let us know. There is also a legislative report that we submitted that gets a nice summary. And I will say it's kind of at that moment in time because things can change to evolve. But it does give some nice background, and that is also on the website. We have changes. So we had some changes that we needed to implement for October 1. Some were supposed to be sooner. You could do that at the state, but things take a little bit of time. And then changes that will go on for the next two years and potentially into the future. And you'll understand more about that when we get into some of these slides. There's just some potential dominoes that can happen into the future. And as a state, we've really been trying to make sure that we're complying with the federal law because it has such significant impacts to those that are on SNAP. Happy to have conversations about that as well, but there are pretty significant implications. And one of the things that Vermont was able to do because of getting so much of HR1 in place timely is that we have a hold harmless month. That was this month, October. And so if states hadn't quite gotten something right, you weren't going to get an error for that. And so that was really key for us, too, to be able to see, Okay, did we not quite get something the right? Because we can fix that. And we are fortunate that we are one of the states that we're able to get into any place.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Because we don't have this on our website yet, is there a way for you to make the print a little bit bigger for some of our folks who can't quite in the audience?

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: That bigger on your maybe. Know there seems to be no in between.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Can have folks send it to us?

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: It should be routing. Okay. Yes. Hopefully, as I'm talking, it will It will appear. Okay.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: All right. Laura, you can just interrupt us and let us know when that happens.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Happens. Maybe even Monica, if you don't mind sending it to Laurie directly. Okay. Thank you, Brenda. Okay. Yeah, because now I feel like That's Okay. Easier to see. Yeah. Well, that's good. It's a little funky on my side. That's fine. I'm going pick up paper, too. All right. So we are going to try to break this out, although the flow is a little we're trying to find the flow that works best. Effective next October, a significant change for SNAP now is that the administrative match has changed. Currently, it's fiftyfifty. Next year, it goes from 50% to 25% federal and 75% state. So we are taking on an additional 25% of the costs as a state.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: And how much is that?

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: So that's an approximate $8,000,000 extra a year. And that's, I would say, the base understanding that we have that could be impacted in other ways. This applies to administrative costs of the outreach programs as well. It does not apply to summer EBT. So as you might remember, we implemented that program just last summer gosh, that feels like it was or SNAP employment and training funds. So those are carve outs. So that's a big change and one that we'll be talking about as we get into a legislative session. So the next big change that also was implemented through HR1 is how important our payment error rate is. So right now, when we received this, we had an error rate of 5.13%. So we're below the 6%. Being below the 6% is the most ideal. When you go above 6%, then we'll start being a state match of 5%, 10%, up to 15% for states. So this is the part of where I'm saying we're trying really hard to make sure that we are doing things correctly, that we're watching our errors. It is still a little bit tricky. The errors are both those that we might make as an estate, but it is also if clients fail to report information to us. So it's not necessarily something that we completely control, but we are trying to we've done a lot of trainings for our staff. Need to do trainings. How can we help educate the sponsors on when they need to report things to us? But we're just there. I think we're at 5.93% now. So it's a cumulative, and there's a lag. So we just reviewed May, and that's where we're at now as a state. This becomes really important. For state fiscal year '28, states will have the option of looking at either state fiscal year '25 or '26. So we're still wrapping up the 5.93% as part of state fiscal 'twenty five. We've just entered federal fiscal year 'twenty six. And so that was part of having this month, October, being held harmless was really important. We want to start off as strong as we can and keep our error rate below the 6%. What are the things that normally cause errors, the types of things?

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Yeah, so payment errors are essentially error dollars that we either overpaid or underpaid a household that they were entitled to. So when a sample is pulled from our caseload, it's reviewed thoroughly, and any dollar error over or under contributes to that payment error rate. So it's a calculation that's cumulative over all of the months of the federal fiscal year. And I can share that there's 53 states and territories that run the SNAP program. There are only nine. We're one of nine to have an error rate under 6% right now. So 44 already know that they're likely, if they don't reduce their payment error rate very soon for 'twenty five and 'twenty six going forward, then they will have significant financial liability.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Yes, go ahead, representative. Donna,

[Rep. Anne B. Donahue (Ranking Member)]: that's, for instance, the first from 6% to 7%. That five percent is not added to administrative. That's the cost of benefits themselves? Yes. So what do we have an estimate of what that impact would be if we didn't need it?

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Yep. That gets up to yep. No problem. If it's a future if it's a future slide. Yep.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Thank you. Representative Cole.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Thank you. I'm wondering which office is pulling those samples, and how often are they doing that?

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: We have a federal every state and territory that runs SNAP is required to have an Office of Quality Control. So those are state employees that are obligated to fulfill the federal mission of reviewing cases. There's multi layers. The state quality control reviewers send their results up to the federal quality control reviewers who subsample a sample of their cases and say whether they agree or disagree. And we get monthly unofficial reports every month. And at the end of the federal fiscal year, all of those results are certified. And that is also the state quality control reviewers are required to complete a really high percentage of cases, 98%. If they don't complete that percentage, that also impacts our payment error rate.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: I'm not sure I understand what you said. Complete 98%. Does that mean that it's not a sample, that they have to review 98% of all recipients?

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: So the sample that they pull, they need to thoroughly complete that sample, but we're not always able, so they get in contact with the Three Squares Vermont household. Those households don't always want to interact with the quality control review process, and so they work hard to seek other information directly from sources, for example, from landlords to verify rent or other. So they

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: have to complete 98% of their sample? Yes. Okay.

[Rep. Daniel Noyes (Clerk)]: Yeah. Go ahead. Are these new positions?

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: No. Those have been around for a long time. Yeah.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Probably when we get to the the budget, we'll probably want a deeper breakdown of really what makes up that administrative cost since, you know, FY '27, we're gonna have to be bearing a higher rate of that. Go ahead, representative Bishop.

[Rep. Doug Bishop (Member) — override]: Thank you. So for FY '27, if I understood correctly, we could look back to state FY '25 or '26 to pick the more favorable one and keep our error rate below 6%. For fiscal year '25, the May number you've given us is 5.93. Is that a snapshot of one month, and was the one month before 5.13? How or is it cumulative? So I guess I'm trying to figure out how close are we for the year versus a one month snapshot of being at 6%?

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: So the 5.13 is our overall federal fiscal year 'twenty four. So that's for the entire year. The 5.93 is accumulative, so through May. So it goes October through September. So we're at 5.93% now and still have a couple more months in last year's federal fiscal year to get through to see where we're going to land. We're hoping, because there is some ebb and flow, because as Leslie had mentioned, there's a number of factors in how big the payment error rate is impacts that percentage. And so we remain hopeful that we'll stay under the 6%, but we won't know for a couple more months.

[Rep. Doug Bishop (Member) — override]: And I'm sorry. Maybe you just answered it with that last phrase. I'm not sure I understood it. Federal or state fiscal year? Federal. Federal. Okay. Thank

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Rep Dunhuis, to your question, if we had a 5% state match, that would cost the state about $7,500,000 annually. Thank you.

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: So

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: this, our co workers, SNAP Education Fundramental Group, that was one of the things in HR1. And so this was it was money that we passed through to the health department. And then they passed that out to other partners. And this was something that happened relatively quick and that we didn't really have much opportunity to look into what might be done there. How much money was that?

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: It was just under $500,000 annually.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: And I'm presuming that that went out to community partners of some sort. That impact was really on community providers and the people who access those education resources through those providers.

[Rep. Daniel Noyes (Clerk)]: Madam Chair, it's posted now. It's posted.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Oh, thank you. It can show up in the comments.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Thank you. So folks, you can refresh your computers, and the presentation will show up.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Thank you. So effective July 1 that were implemented for October 1, So part of the law said that we had to remove some exemptions, and that included for those that were experiencing homelessness, veterans, and youth who had aged out of foster care. It's also changed the following exemptions. It limited the child in home exemption to a child under the age of 14. It used to be 18. And it expanded the age range for those who are subject to work requirements, and that was 18 to 64, and now it is for 18 years of age to 54 years of age. So this impacted what people would need to do. It also added a new exemption. So for those individuals who are Indians, urban Indians, California Indians, and other Indians who are eligible for Indian health services I just want to peek and make sure that I don't get into what we were able to do because of a part of it was in the budget language. The budget language, we were directed to use exemptions that the state had because we had some extras. Maybe you should take this part because I'm like, I have to be in justice already. Extras isn't quite right.

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: The state fiscal '26 big bill directed the department to utilize its bank of discretionary exemptions through September 30. That bank of exemptions goes away October 1. That was a federal change. So we utilized those exemptions to exempt the folks who were losing exemptions or newly subject to the work requirement through September 30. And we also were able to utilize those exemptions to make sure no one closed benefits in October. Serendipitously, this is complicated, but there's a three year clock that we have to follow that resets every three years, and it gives everyone three pre new exemptions, three months of exemptions, and that happens on November 1. So right now, those who have this new work requirement, who we haven't already identified another exemption, have three new free months that they can use and retain their food benefits. So we've noticed every household that is subject to this change in the work requirement. We've made a phone call to every single person who's now subject to the work requirement. That's about 4,000 notices and phone calls. We also looked into our eligibility system. If we could identify another exemption that we knew about to the work requirement, we applied that. But the hope is that the households got this notice. They may not understand it right away, but we're hoping that we can get in touch with them. And we're working with our community partners as well. Because while they have these three free months, we can work to identify an exemption if one is available or find out and update our eligibility system whether they're meeting the work requirement. And we can even backdate that to November 1, if it's applicable, if we're getting in touch with them in, say, November or December or January. So it gives us a little bit more time to make sure folks don't close benefits for not meeting the work requirement.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: And what kind of referrals do you make to folks who maybe have had difficulty finding employment? Do we refer folks to VR? Do we refer folks to the Department of Labor for their work resources? Or is it you only talk about SNAP and you're in, you're out, you have these things. But how does that work?

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Great. No, that's a great question. During the interview, well, first, we run a SNAP employment and training program. It's a federally required program that we work with a network of providers, including the Department of Labor. We work closely with HireAbility. And Invest EAP is actually our case management source for employment and training. And that network is really skilled at reducing barriers and getting people connected to supports to gain employment or education. Our staff also have resources where they can refer folks to. And our staff are really skilled at applying exemptions. So maybe someone hopes to meet the work requirement, but they have a situation right now that means they can't meet the eighty hour per month work requirement. We have an exemption that the federal term is fitness for work. We don't love that term. So we've actually, working with Hunger Fevermind, have tried to rebrand that to a personal obstacle or barrier. And what that exemption means is they can't currently meet that eighty hours per week because of a situation specific to them, but they hope to, so they can get that exemption from the work requirement for up to one year at a time. It depends on their situation while they work towards that. Thank you.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Yes, go ahead, Brooke. Sound nice.

[Rep. Daniel Noyes (Clerk)]: Do you have a staffing capacity to implement this work requirement monitoring and helping people?

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: So at this time, and I think some of it's going to depend on the level of engagement. So we've notified everyone, as I was saying, we really had people end up with four months to be able to engage with us and to see. Some folks might choose to not. So I think it will be evolving. I would be happy to have that conversation in maybe midwinter. And I just wanted to sorry, jumped ahead. Slide 11 outlines what Leslie was just saying. So sorry, the flow. I decided sorry, I just thought it appeared nicer. Thank you. You're welcome.

[Rep. Daniel Noyes (Clerk)]: Oh,

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Brenda.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Go ahead. Represent steady. So, out of 60,000 recipients, 4,000 have been identified as being able to work, or does that mean out of the 63,000 that some are already working?

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: We have many working families who receive preschoolers from law. For 4,000, we did not have information in our system that they were eligible for another exemption or that they were currently meeting the work requirement. But it doesn't mean that they weren't either exempt or meeting. We're just trying to notify them to get in touch with us to let us know their current situation. And do you have a number of the 63,000 recipients that are already working? Do you have a number? I don't have that off the top of my head.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Okay, thanks. So another change that happened I'm going turn this one over to Leslie because this one is another one of those complex ones is that the utility amounts had changed.

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: So there, previously before HR1 well, let me back up. Three Squares Vermont benefit calculations are really complicated, and we factor in many variables, including income and deductions. A utility deduction calculation is part of what we call the shelter deduction. We used to be able to leverage a federal policy called Heat and Eat that allowed us to give everyone maximum utility deduction, which gave them the maximum shelter deduction, which gave them the highest benefit that we could. HR1 changed the ability to use this Heat and Eat connection. So now it's only available to households with an elderly or disabled member. So other households, we look to see if they pay for heating or cooling costs, we can give them that larger deduction. If they don't pay for heating or cooling costs, we look to to see which utilities they actually pay for. So if they paid for two other utilities, like electricity and water and sewer or trash, we could give them what we call the medium sized utility deduction. If they only pay for phone, we can give them the phone allowance. So we have been working really hard for everyone who calls us to find out who's losing this higher deduction. If we don't have information in our system that they pay for heating and cooling, we ask them, do you pay for any part of your heating or cooling costs? You don't even have to pay for the whole bill. And if so, we can update our system to give you this higher deduction. This is skipping ahead a little bit, but I think it makes sense. We implemented so all of these fundamental policy changes to HR1 that directly impact beneficiaries, the work requirements, the utility, and we're going to talk about noncitizen, they were all effective upon passage of HR1 July 4. The federal government expectation was that we implemented on July 5. That was near impossible, so we've been implementing as soon as we could. Every October 1, we get updated information from the federal government around it's basically a COLA, cost of living increase to the tables that we use to calculate the deductions that we're able to use, and all of those different variables that go into the calculation. We implemented the utility changes when we implemented our October 1 cost of living adjustments. The good news was that fewer households than we anticipated were negatively impacted by this utility change. For the most part, Three Squares Vermont households all received a small increase in their benefit. There were about 2,600 that had a benefit decrease, and a lot of that was because of this utility change. And then a very small handful of households, I think 36, no longer qualified for three squares per month. But again, if they got a notice from us that said their case was closing, they could have called us, and we would take that opportunity to review their utility information to see if that was what caused

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: their closure. Represent Donahue.

[Rep. Anne B. Donahue (Ranking Member)]: So I'm gonna begin with an assumption that you can say is not accurate, and then then that that ties to the question. But, you know, I assume somebody's renting a place and they don't have to pay utilities, it's because that's included in the rent as opposed to they don't have any you know, it's free. Is there any way that that can somehow be divided off from the rent in calculating to show the fact that they are in fact paying for for heat?

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: You just really quickly identified some of the very nuanced ways that we have to apply this policy. And I'm happy to share some frequently asked questions that we do for our staff, but there's a difference between heated renters or someone who's sharing in the rent and has a liability for some the utilities. And we have to look at each case individually to see which scenario they fit into and whether they are allowed to have this utility deduction for three squares per month.

[Rep. Golrang "Rey" Garofano (Vice Chair) — override]: Representative Garfunnel? Two questions. One, the 36 that are no longer qualifying for the benefits, are those being disqualified because of changes in HR1? Or are they being disqualified? Do you know why they're not qualified?

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: That's a good question. I don't think I can say I know exactly why every case closed. Every October one, when we get all these updated cost of living tables and information from the federal government, we run our entire caseload through the eligibility system to see how it impacted their benefits. So when we did that, there are many different factors at play. Some cases could have actually just not heard in recertification paperwork. Some, it could be because of this utility allowance. Some could have income changes that we're applying when we're running everyone through the system. So I don't have it's not I can't say that everyone closed because of HR1.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: And then

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development and Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: I have one question. Are

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: you all tracking the administrative cost of how much more it is for state government to implement the changes of HR1? And then a follow-up to that is I understand that there may be some federal grants available to help pay for some of these administrative costs that the states are incurring to cover the changes in HR1? Is that on your radar at all? Are you

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Well, can't say this is a federal program, and we're used to federal changes. I think this is the most extreme change we've ever had to implement. But it is our job to implement federal policy. With respect to grants or other No. There was potentially one grant that the Agency of Digital Services had said that there was maybe something out there, but I haven't

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: seen anything more about that. But certainly, if you have information, we welcome it, because I think it is sometimes we're so busy trying to implement everything, but to be able to see what else might be out there. So we're probably missing something, so please share. We welcome that. So another change came about through HR1 was it limits the categories of non citizens who are now eligible for SNAP or FreeSquared. So it removed eligibility for refugees and ASALis. And then there's the list of who are eligible now. And again, we put this programming in place for October 1. And we did have there was 119 households who were impacted. Sorry, there's a breakdown. Is it 83? It should not be similar. No, you're close. 86. 86 households who had partial reduction. So that's telling us that there was That's 33. Sorry. That's 30 Here you go. It's many numbers.

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Miranda and Leslie, comedy. We reviewed eligible noncitizen households before HR1. The good news is more than 500 households were not impacted by the changes in noncitizen eligibility. The bad news was there were 119 total that were impacted. 33 had a partial benefit decrease because one or more household members was no longer eligible. And then 86 households closed because they didn't meet the current non citizen eligibility. Do you know how many of the 86 were

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Afghan refugees with special immigration visa

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: status? Not the exact number, but it was a much smaller, a smaller network of the 86.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: And also embedded in these changes and so this isn't something that we have any control over, which has created some confusion. But the federal government updated the Thrifty Food Plan with the cost of living increase. So this is what Leslie was talking about. There's also a piece that says in this legislation that the Thrifty Food Plan really can't be increased for the next few years. So what we were able to implement that did help a fair amount of folks happen, but what we know is that the 50 food plan will be updated again for a

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: couple of years. And has that normally been

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: updated annually? Have they changed the schedule, I guess, is my question. There's generally cost of living increases, but it's the reevaluation of the plan, which it wasn't reevaluated. It was recently reevaluated a couple of years ago, but it hadn't been for decades. And that's been a criticism of the SNAP program, that it doesn't reflect what food actually costs. So that reevaluation in any future years has to be cost neutral.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development and Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: Is like

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: I know

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: that seems a lot. Oh, yeah. Yes, go ahead. Remind me what the Thrifty Food Plan is.

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Yeah. It is a market basket. So the federal government determines the Thrifty Food Plan, and they, I think statisticians are doing all this work, but it's a market basket of the cost of food for a very low budget household. So if you were trying to buy the most nutrient dense, low cost food that you could to support your family, that's what the Thrifty Food Plan represents. And it's a table of maximum benefits, SNAP benefits per household size. So that's the most any household could get is this table, which for a household of one is $2.98. When we're doing the benefit calculation, we determine net income while we look at income and deductions. And we take 30% of net income and subtract it from that number, the maximum number, because the expectation is that this is a supplemental program, and households are expected to spend 30% of their own budget on food, and SNAP can supplement the rest. So the most a household of one could get is $298 a household of $4 is $994 But generally, households get less than that if they have any income.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Yeah, I just wanted to be clear, thank you, you just

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: made that point. That's up to $298 It does mean that everybody gets that. Okay, thank you. I'm going to encourage us to move along because we're nearing on $9.45.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: We're going skip eleven because we've already gone over that. We

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: just went over. I should have just kept

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: that. So now we're going to hit it completely. And we got notices in October. Think we're up to a total of four notices from the USDA informing us that November benefits had to be suppressed. They couldn't go out. So we have been incredibly busy working to suppress November benefits. So this was programming that we had to do. And I think, as you all recall, we are an archaic IT system. So it's not nimble. It's not something that can happen quickly. So we have been working on that. We are able to suppress benefits for November 1. Our next call to action there was, how do we unsubpress? We want to be able to do this as quickly as we can as soon as the federal government reopens, which I think we all are hoping will be really soon. And then yesterday, I presented a plan to the emergency board, which is that we will state fund the first fifteen days of November. So we will be getting this message out to Vermonters. We also, just last week, had the ability and started using the technology to be able to do automated calls just because we will properly notify people as well. So we will put notices in mail, but we know that it's not going to reach people timely. So we are using automated calls. We're hoping to be able to use text functionality as well because it's something brand new that had to be built. It's just taking us a little bit to evolve. But to be able to call all Vermonters that receive benefits to let them know that there will be fifteen days. We are hoping it will be on or around November 7, the spend bill will be there. And we also were able to give the Vermont Food Bank $250,000 which they will be sending out to the cash out to local food shelves to be able to purchase more food. And so then we're working on communication around how to let Vermonters know that as well. Because it is one time, we don't want to set our food shelves up for not being able to meet needs later on, just knowing that they are so incredibly overwhelmed already, but that there is this resource, knowing that there are going to potentially be seven days in the beginning of this month that people won't have access to food. So that is our good news, is that we will be able to support the launchers. And then we have also agreed that there is an e board meeting planned for November 13. If the federal government does not reopen, that we would come back and discuss about what to do.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: So I have had people ask me, so we're going to issue a benefit on or about the seventh or the full fifteen days, but there'd be a delay. So what happens if federal government comes online or,

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: lo

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: and behold, they decide to use the reserve funds, all of which seems unlikely, but on November 10?

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: So people have asked me if folks would get a double benefit somehow, or what would happen in that case. Yes. For example, there is language in the postern that was passed yesterday. So the federal government is to open tomorrow. Then the benefit, the fifteen days, wouldn't go out, nor with the $2.50 I might have to back up. So I think the 250,000 is already. So the benefit itself wouldn't go on. But if it was the tenth, the benefit goes out. And I think that is what we have tried and had a lot of conversation around, is because that would be income. It is one time in nature, and we are allowed to have and jump in any time where I don't quite get it right. But we are allowed to be able to exempt one time non reoccurring benefits that households receive. And so that is what we would share with the federal government if they picked a case from this month and saw that there. That's what we would share. And we would have policies and procedures about what this money was and why we did it.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Okay. So just to restate that, make sure that I'm understanding it. There actually is the possibility because our systems aren't nuanced enough to be able to do this on a more nuanced way, I guess. So somebody could receive a benefit that if the federal government reopens and it's before the fifteen day period is over in November, then whatever prorated share of that fifteen day cash benefit that came from Vermont dollars would be considered income. However, you can do a one time exclusion. For one time cash payments, can do an exclusion, so it would not affect their income calculation in the benefit. Is that right? I got it. Did I get it? Okay.

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: And we're hoping that the federal government will fully fund November SNAP benefits, but I think that's also

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Yeah. All right. Who knows? Who knows? Yes, go ahead.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Would it impact our error rate at all? So it potentially could if they said, no, this couldn't be excluded income. It was counter. But I think that's where we're feeling confident that it's a one time, it's very specific, that it can be excluded. But yes, that was good pick up on the nuance. Feel like we had to juggle.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Yeah. I think you've laid the picture out that it's complicated. When you hear in the news and you just talk about SNAP benefits, it just seems like, Okay, write a check for whatever, dollars 200 a month. You're painting a clear picture about the complicated nature of the business. Any other questions before we wrap up with these witnesses for right now? You both so much. I appreciate it.

[Rep. Daniel Noyes (Clerk)]: Actually, I'm sorry, madam chair. May I ask one question? Director Wisdom, earlier talking about the error rate, if I understood correctly, you said an underpayment is considered, an error. Is that correct? So would the same be true for a nonpayment? If someone was due a benefit and they did not receive it?

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: We have two different kinds of error rates. We have payment error rates, which is solely underpayments and overpayments. Improperly closing a case or not approving their benefits is called a CAPER. And I'm lacking what that acronym stands for, but it basically means we improperly closed or denied. That does not go

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development and Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: to the payment error rate.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: And it's only the payment error rate that is impacting whether or not Vermont has to contribute towards the benefit. Okay. All right. So thanks for asking that question because we had understood that denying a benefit or closing a case was also an error rate. And it is an error rate, but not one that counts towards the payment error rate. Right. Okay. Thank you. Got it. Okay. Thank

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: you.

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Thank you so much. We'll see you back in a little bit. Well. Okay. Next, we're going to be hearing from the Food Security Director at Capstone Community Action and Executive Director at the Family Center of Washington County. You're both welcome to come up together or if you want to come up separately, doesn't matter to me. Hi, Lisa. Are you doing?

[Rep. Daniel Noyes (Clerk)]: Good. How are you?

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development and Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: Thank you for joining me. Thanks for having me. My name is Liz Sharp, and I'm the Director of Community Economic Development and Food Security at Capstone Community Action. I've met once a few years in previous testimonies. Thanks again for having us today to talk about the situation we're in right now. So one of the programs I oversee at Capstone is our food shelf. And we are one of the largest food shelves in Central Vermont. Like all of the other community action agencies, they also have food shelves as well. So my story is probably very similar to what their story is, but I'm just representing Capstone at this point, which is Washington Orange and Memorial Counties. I did submit just a letter to the committee. So I'll sort of be drawing from that letter, but really I'll just be kind of speaking from the experiences that I've seen over the last couple of weeks. So we have definitely seen a really large increase in the number of people who haven't used our food shelf visiting us in the last couple of days in particular. We've been short staffed, so I've actually been overseeing the shelf and taking people's applications in and hearing their stories of why they're visiting us. Some of my stories are in here. So you're saying new applications? New applications. Okay. Yep, new applications for folks who are anticipating not having their food stamp benefit on the first. So I've seen families come in. I've seen a lot of folks who are working folks who rely on ThreeSquares, but know that they're not going to have their benefit right away. And they're stocking up. It's been, hearing some of the stories And I'll be kind of candid here. It can be frustrating working in the food shelf, right? There's a lot of people who have a lot of needs. There's a lot of very poor people who use our food shelf. And sometimes I look at people and I say, Why aren't you working? You're a young man. Well, yesterday, I had this young couple come in with three kids. And the woman tells me that she's a bus driver for the schools. And she's 37 years old and she had a heart attack last week. So she can no the bus. And so longer not only can she not do her job, but she also is not going to have her three sprays benefit right away. And she's got three kids. And so those are the things that I don't always ask people, right? I just Sometimes you make assumptions about who uses food shelves. And you know what? It's all walks of life. Another guy that came in yesterday, he came up to me and I didn't understand what he was saying. And I finally got out of him that he had a brain injury from serving in Iraq. And he gets $1,000 a month as his retirement. And he's not gonna be getting his food stamps. So I had never met him before. He doesn't use our pooch shelf, but he needed to use it now. There are I was speaking with a woman in the lobby, and this story's in here, those two stories are not in here, who, she was probably my age, who suffers from seizures, and she's on special medication that requires her to eat special food, she has to eat three meals a day. And she said her food stamp benefit is used to buy the special food that she needs to eat so that medication works properly. Food shelves don't have that special food. We don't have fresh fruits. We don't have oranges and pears. And we have apples because we're from Vermont, right? But we don't have some of the things that people need and they rely on their food stamp benefit to help them. This problem, the next, maybe it's just a week before people get their benefits. But we don't know, right? We don't know how long this is going to go on. And it's just, it is the answer that the state comes in and solves all the problems? Probably not, because I don't think we can, right? And I know that the charitable food system cannot replace $12,500,000 worth of food benefits. I know Berry, for example, has a couple of churches that are going be open tomorrow for their food shelves. And I imagine the rest of Vermont is doing some similar things in their communities so that folks have food available to them. But food stamps have been something, Three Squares, have been something that we've had for many years. And people have, you know, normal, regular people, working, non working, a lot of disabled people. We have a lot of disabled people who use our shelf, a lot of older people, they rely on it. It's a part of their income. If you were to see the incomes that most people who come into our food shelf have, dollars 900 in a social security benefit, Some retirees making maybe $1,100 a month, and that's all they have in Social Security. So having the food shelf having the Three Squares benefit as well as the fuel assistance goes a really long way to making these people have a dignified life in their homes. The Community Action Network right now is, aside from all this, we're also facing federal cuts. One of our core foundational grants, the Community Services Block Grant, we don't have that grant yet. And that helps fund My Food Shell. That grant has thankfully been put back in by both the federal house and senate, but because we're in a shutdown and because there's no budget, we don't have that money. And I believe some of the community action agencies may be at risk of having to lay people off because they just don't have the reserves. They rely on this money coming in. I believe NECA has already sort of reduced some of its hours on its food shelf because of that. We also lost some federal grants for our food shelf, which one was the local foods procurement assistance program that gave us anywhere from 15,000 to $25,000 where literally 100% of the money went to the farmers, nothing went to Capstone. We just administered it and we bought local foods from three area farms. That money is gone. The emergency food and shelter program funding has been paused indefinitely. That helps reimburse us for our food. So really, at this point, we're relying on the philanthropic dollars to help us fund the food shelf. We spend maybe $120,000 on food, but we get about $500,000 worth of food. That's not even the grocery store prices. That's sort of the subsidized prices, right? So, I don't know what the calculation would be for a grocery store price. But we, as community action agencies and as sort of leads in working with folks with low incomes, we're seeing this not just with the SNAP cut, but with all the other federal cuts that are affecting us as well. Weatherization, Head Start, for example, we have our grant, it begins in August, so Capstone's okay. The others have a November start time, so they're not okay right now. So there's a lot happening as a result of the things happening on a federal level. But just drilling down to the food security issues, it has sort of a snowball effect, right? If you don't have your federal funding, you can't run your food shelf. And if you lose this funding, you can't buy the food to run the food shelf. So, we really do appreciate the efforts that the state is making to come in and fill this gap. But really, we should be outraged, and we should be really forcing the federal government to realize that this is not good for our state, and it's not good for any of the other states either. So that's basically my testimony, to just let you know what it's like on the ground with the folks visiting our food show if you have any questions. Thank you, Liz. Appreciate that. Questions from anybody here?

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Appreciate the fact that you and your fellow community action agencies and the other food partners around the state are there for people. I know in my community, we've had three food drives already, and people have been really quite generous, more generous than you might imagine. And every bit of that's being used. Every bit of that's being used at our local Waterbury Commons market. So I think that the efforts that you're making into here is sort of the pocket that you have in Barrie, in particular, is interesting to me. The numbers there are much different than the

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development and Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: Yeah, I would say that for SNAP benefits, it's around 10% for Vermont. And in Barrie, it's 26%. So it's more than double the number of people who live in poverty and the number of people who receive three squares benefits. It's it's

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: a big impact on these families to not have this benefit. And thank you for highlighting the overall issues in terms of cash flow and the Community Services Block Grant. And those are funds that flow directly to community action, not through state government. And so delays in those have big impacts depending upon the cash flow and days of cash on hand for different agencies.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Is there a question? No, she's recording me. Could you ask her to shut it off, please? Esme is recording me. Okay. Because I had to check-in.

[Leslie Wisdom (Food and Nutrition Program Director, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Because I have something going on on social media. Okay. Okay.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, VT DCF)]: Can you ask her to stop recording me, please?

[Theresa Wood (Chair)]: So let's take a brief break right now. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren. You're welcome.