Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: This Friday afternoon, February sixth. And we're gonna have the first of our official budget presentations that we're gonna be doing a lot of next week as well. But wanted to fit the Human Rights Commission in this week because it's kind of follows from our earlier discussion earlier this week. And before BIG gets started, we have a guest in here, Tricia Black, and she's the executive director of the Addison County Unit for Special Investigations. And she's come in, and I told her we would stop the train and let her introduce herself.

[Tricia Black]: Yes, good afternoon. I'm Tricia Black. I'm the executive director of the Addison County Unit for Special Investigations and the Addison Children's Advocacy Center. I'm also the chair of the legislative committee for the Vermont Children's Alliance. Well, I'm just here to observe and learn and listen today.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: And a couple of the bills that she has been interested in was the hearsay bill and the voyeurism bill. Well, pretty excellent this week. Hope that you were fresh in the

[Tricia Black]: Yes, sat in gallery this morning, so yes I was able to see in the Senate.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Great, oh great, welcome. Thank you. You're welcome to stay as long as you want or leave whenever. No pressure. All right, thank you very much. Big, over to you if you could introduce your or identify yourself for the record and proceed.

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Okay. Hello. Let's test the sound. Are you hearing me Okay?

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Yes.

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Great. Thank you so much for having me in again. For the record, pronouns, I'm the Executive Director and General Counsel at the State of Vermont Human Rights Commission. So we did already talk a bit today, this week actually, about the work of the Human Rights Commission, and and we touched on some of our budgetary needs as we are all, you know, trying to confront and address the human rights crisis that is upon us right now. As we are less and less able to rely on the federal government to be actively involved in civil rights enforcement, the burden of that work is falling almost exclusively on agencies like the Human Rights Commission here in Vermont. So we are very concerned that the governor's recommended budget is not going to enable us to meet the needs of Vermonters in these times. So I'm not sure how Far in the weeds you wanted to go with this conversation. I did submit a memorandum for your committee that gives you a summary of what we talked about. On Tuesday about our lack of federal funds, which has historically been under 10% of our budget, been related to our fair housing activities and our cooperating agreement with the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD. Based on HUD's actions in the last few months and its guidance memorandum for moving forward, we do not expect that in fiscal year twenty seven we will receive any funds from HUD. Would the committee like me to elaborate further on that predicament?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: No, I think we understand I guess as much as anything, I'd want to understand what is in the governor's recommended budget. Is that something you support? Is there something more that you're advocating for? And if there is something more that you're advocating for, what are the arguments for that? So that's kind of what would be probably be most helpful for our role in the whole budget discussion.

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Okay, great. So on the second page of that document,

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: I

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I'm have gonna stop you for one second because we got four documents. I just wanna make sure I'm looking at the right one. I have the civil rights summit report, the annual report fiscal year twenty five, fiscal year twenty six, mid year report at a glance, and summit report slides. Which one should we be looking at?

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: There's a supplemental memo that I believe I submitted yesterday.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Oh, okay. Alright. So maybe That's

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: a that's two page PDF, and I can put it up on the screen just so at least you have reference today. Okay,

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I apologize, Big, for interrupting. I just want to make sure we have that in front of us. Is it under Big today, did you say?

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: It looked like it was. I went to BIG, and then I, as a witness, and it's there.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Can it be put up on the screen also?

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: I can absolutely share that.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Could So you give me a link for that? I mean You're set to share

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: it right away.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: You just have to share, babe.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Great. Okay,

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: so this is what the memorandum looks like. And on this first page is just a narrative about particularly the issue with our lack of HUD funding for fiscal year twenty seven. And then I go on to describe one major issue that we have with the Governor's recommended budget, is contemplating a $65,000 vacancy turnover savings. I think the exact figure is $64,500 I think I spoke with your committee about this on Tuesday, that it is very difficult to foresee savings like that to be achieved by a small team of nine, somebody leaving and holding a vacancy open for that extended period of time to achieve that savings. I have spoken with a lot of committees this week, so if we didn't talk about that, please let me know and I can elaborate further.

[Deb (unidentified attendee)]: It's me, Deb.

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Okay. I'm starting to feel like a little bit of a broken record, but that's Okay. No worries. I'm going to scroll down to the bottom of this memo so you can just see some of the big picture numbers. Okay, the governor's recommended budget total is 1,358,757. I want you to know that 90% of that budget is for salaries and benefits for our nine employees. Then there's a very small percentage that are just up. The other 10% are almost exclusively fixed operating costs, things that are that are non negotiable, like our fee for space, our use of IT services, our other very small amounts that we have to pay to the various agencies that service us as a state agency, and then our per diems for our commissioners. We are not given a budget for outreach, education, or any prevention work that happens solely by our labor. So it is very difficult to envision a scenario where we realize this magnitude of a vacancy turnover savings without a reduction in services. If I don't have an employee leave in fiscal year twenty seven and I don't keep that position vacant for several months, The only other way to achieve that savings would be to furlough staff temporarily. Yeah, it's something that we really need to avoid doing if at all possible. So the the minimum ask that we have for an adjustment to the governor's recommend would be for us to be credited that $64,000 I also want to point out that the Governor's recommend, as you see it here, is actually $27,000 less than our current fiscal year total budget. So it is a reduction in services, and this is the not the time to be reducing our human rights enforcement work.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Right, okay. Can you say that figure again?

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: It The total recommended governor's budget for fiscal year 'twenty seven is $27,000 less than our fiscal year 'twenty six total budget.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So not a 3% increase, which I thought was kind of across the board kind of an increase?

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: I think it has to be less because we had to do that 3% because it's 3% of state dollars And we are anticipating this loss of federal dollars. What we had budgeted for fiscal year twenty twenty six, our current year, I believe was right around 93,000 from HUD. Okay. So that with the loss of federal funds for of in such a small amount of federal funds really, we were asking that the governor recommend a budget that would make us whole and enable us to continue at least our full operations as they are this year. We had also requested the administration provide funding for three additional positions. I think that we just we talked about that a little bit last year last earlier this week, but I'll just kind of give you a recap and I have a little bit of a description above here of those three positions and why we need them. I know I talked with you about the need for a policy director. This I think that there's really some big picture work that is desperately needed in the state to examine the effectiveness of our anti discrimination laws and make recommendations and issue guidance documents that the public is desperately in need of, particularly when at a time when we are seeing our federal governments removing a lot of their prior guidance documents. So for example, HUD withdrew a number of extremely helpful guidance documents around fair housing and reasonable accommodations this year, among other topics. And those were documents that we looked at all the time that we would, you know, use in our trainings for property managers and housing providers. And we really need to fill that void by issuing those similar types of guidance documents for the public, and we just it's very difficult to contemplate having the bandwidth to do that with our current staffing levels. We are also requesting a new addition of a staff attorney investigator. Last year I asked the legislature for three new staff attorney investigator positions, and we were very, very grateful to get one for fiscal year twenty six. I'm trying this year to make a more conservative request, recognizing the budget challenges that we all face with, you know, all these questions around federal dollars. So I am not making the full laundry list of new positions that I requested last year. I'm requesting fewer, but one is a crucial position would be an addition of another investigator. This would enable me to accept more cases for investigation. Right now, I absolutely decline more cases than I accept, and it does definitely, I think, shakes the public's perception of our effectiveness and our willingness to address discrimination. In addition, another staff attorney investigator would help us speed up our complaint processing time, enable us to investigate more cases, and also potentially serve as a co counsel for the current, all of the litigation that we have underway. We just have one litigator working on those cases, and it is out of the ordinary to have just one attorney in certainly some of the cases that are complex and, you know, we are outmatched with by attorneys on the other side. Finally, we're asking again this year for a paralegal position. Every other Human Rights Commission agency in other states, folks that I've talked to, all have at least one paralegal in their office that would assist primarily our litigation work, you know, performing those clerical and document related tasks needed for effective trial preparation, but could also assist with some complex cases that folks would like us to investigate, but we just don't have the staff to be able to navigate large volumes of document submissions and evidence. So the current, you know, so the total for those three estimated costs for the benefits and salaries of those positions are listed in this memorandum, and that can give you a general sense of what our total budget request is and why. Are

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: there any particular questions? That's exactly what we need. It's really helpful to have that memo and to have that laid out for us. And will go into all of our consideration as we hear from all the various other entities. I certainly hope that we can find room to push for at a minimum those vacancy savings. But we have to hear from all the other folks that are kind of part of our budget oversight. Barbara, go ahead.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Thank you very much. I'm wondering if you could share with us what your allocation is this year for space technology, the things that you said are non negotiable, and what the figure was last year?

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: That would be in the more detailed budget book. Okay. So if you would bear with me for a moment, I can give you those numbers. It's, you know, in the budget book, oh, you know, the spreadsheet.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: I was trying to open it here. So

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: one of the ways that we organize this information is with what they call the budget development form, the ups and downs. Yeah. A document I loathe deeply. Yeah. That hurts my brain because it doesn't give you the totals. It gives you the changes, right? So even that is simple. Yeah, and what's in parentheses is meant to be an increase in all of the numbers. The other numbers are no, I've got see, it hurts my brain. But I'll I'm happy to walk you through a little bit of the ups and downs. And this, like, top section, the top half of it here is really the salary and benefits piece. So on its face, it looks like we're getting this big increase in salaries and wages. That's really just because when we got new positions created last year, they put it in this other personal services line item below where you see this 250,000. So they're trying to reallocate that. It looks like an increase, but it's really not. It's just moving from this line item to these other ones.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Got it.

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: So those are pretty much a wash. And our fee for space charge, you can see listed here. These are changes in our operating expenses. It looks like a total increase in our operating expenses of 35,596.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Is that based on personnel numbers, so it went up partially because your FTEs went up?

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: They don't tell me anything about how they calculate this. Interesting. Know the fee for space doesn't seem to have reflect how many people are in the building, just goes up every year. That's how much we pay BGS for the building we use on Baldwin Street. It's gone. It went up much more than this last year. The year before it went up, I want to say, by like 9,000. This year it only went up by 2,500. And our ADS fees have gone up. This isn't something I know anything about or how it's calculated. It did go up significantly the year prior as well. And, you know, the other changes are, I think, really just a reflection of everything in state government costs more, and so we pay these other agencies for a lot of services and just, you know, to have our technology and to have some HR services and to have the business office assist with our invoices and payroll. And so that's a very nominal increase. And the other thing I would point out here is the vacancy turnover savings line. It's it was last year. We were we were required to budget in a $25,000 vacancy turnover savings, so that is increasing thousand 920. That's how we get to that $64.05.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Thank you. Alright.

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Down here, you can see what are what we were appropriated this year, 1,385 thousand, and then how this Governor's recommend number is less. And there's a typo in this. This bottom blue line is the 2027 Governor recommend. And that's where I got that $27,000 decrease in our overall funding for this year, for this coming year.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Something we should get that for? Do you want to I

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: think it's in the budget. It's in the budget, but I couldn't make it. I wasn't able to make it big, so I probably have to print it. It was too small to print. Okay. Oh, okay.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I got you. So we do have it somewhere else?

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Yes, and I'll pull it

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: up sometime. All right, any other questions for Big on this issue? Don't see any. Thank you again. That was very helpful. You've armed us with what we need and with the knowledge that we need to have on our contribution in this whole discussion. Really appreciate it and have a great weekend.

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Too. Thanks so much everyone. Take care.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Thank you. Thank

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: We're going to stay live because I think at any moment we're gonna have a special guest appearance from somebody who's now walking again. Judge Zone is coming over to That would be really special if we had that. But no, it's Judge Zone, and I want Tom to be back because he's mainly here to kind of address that question on the bill we were looking at this morning as far as how, you know, is E and F different? And No, we're not gonna bring that up with him. It'll just surprise them all. I will go off live, I'm unable to do that because I'll just sit here and behave. Let's talk about our weakness gonna

[Tricia Black]: put the button over

[Bor Yang (Executive Director and General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Oh, you think she wanted Yeah.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I suppose. I

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: That's why it's all right.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: All right. We're gonna be back momentarily.