Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Good. Where's what was it? Morning? 10:00

[John Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: ish. Oh,

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: we're back at the Yield, though.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Really missed those twenty four hours we weren't talking about it. I asked John to share just all the language in it while we continue to all think our thoughts on the numbers.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: John, you

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: want to join us? Good morning, John.

[John Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Good morning. John Gray, office of Bledgerton Council. Beautiful sunny day.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Is it?

[John Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Here we are in happy State House. I don't know. I was trying to say something positive. It it is positive. Okay. I also have something positive for you. A bill, the yield bill. Awesome. So positive. I think this will be relatively simple to walk through. This is just collecting all of the items that we spoke about yesterday. So much of this you've already seen, and we're just gonna have placeholders for the yields themselves because those haven't been selected yet. So page two, you can see the form of how the yields will look at the point that those figures have been chosen. If you do choose to include something like a reserve, I would need to add additional language to capture this, but it's the typical language that we use, notwithstanding the non homestead rate and setting the property dollar equivalent yield and the income dollar yields. Section two is your cleanup for the statewide adjustment. This is amending the property tax credit chapter, and the simple way to explain this fix to the extent that anyone's interested in this fix is that Okay, that's great. I'm glad that someone's interested. The idea here is that as the statewide adjustment was introduced, it has to flow through to so many places in the different chapters, including in the education property tax chapter and the property tax credit chapter. And this fix is basically to insulate the property tax credit chapter from needing to have a bunch of tweaks. That's the way that I would describe this. And the way that it does it is by pulling in that term to modify the tax rate that's used in that chapter. Then you don't have to touch all of the income figures, you don't have to touch household the house site values themselves. You just can leave it alone. That's the goal here is to isolate it and not need future fixes. That is the is the thinking. And if folks are more interested in that, I'm happy to talk offline about how it works. Because it does undo previous changes to try to make this much simpler and avoid future problems. So you fixed it per year and then you you can't get here. I will say in the past, I have received the fixes, being new to this space. I also think the same one adjustment was just in the initial rollout phases. So I don't want to speak with too much confidence, but I've said about this and I think this will be a long term fix to the problem. But we will continue to think about it. Okay, thank you. Can you go back again? Yes, same. Statewide education tax rate, spending adjustment, and the statewide adjustment to taxable year. Want me to say more about this? No, this is talking about average statewide CLA, correct? So the way that I would describe this is the issue that arose in this context is because the yields that are set now reflect the statewide adjustment. And so the way Because the statewide adjustment is meant to be mathematically neutral, but just useful for presentation purposes on tax bills, because the yield already builds in the statewide adjustment, Effectively when you're applying the education property tax, you can think of your spending adjustment as reflecting your districts per pupil spend divided by the yield, which would be the old style yield multiplied by the statewide adjustment would be in the denominator. And then we cancel it out by dividing by the number resulting from dividing the CLA by the statewide adjustment, the same as multiplying by the statewide adjustment divided by the CLA. So you have the say what adjustment in the numerator divided by the state. Exactly. So it cancels out on the Ed property tax side. But for the property tax credit, we don't have the same offsetting. And so the way you can think of this is this says, it's the property tax rate multiplied by your spending adjustment, so that would be already reflecting the stay what adjustment in the denominator, and it's multiplying here by the stay what adjustment, so you have a numerator to cancel out. That's the way that it works. Just for giggles, what would happen if we got rid of the statewide adjustment? Your tax bills would just look different in presentation, and you would have to set the yield differently because now it includes the statewide adjustment, but We've discussed this previously.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Well, we just passed the statement adjustment

[John Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: three years ago? Yeah, it wasn't here. I'm refraining from describing any excitement at this point.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Today's supposed to be The other thing that would happen is the gap between a district sort of pre CLA and post CLA stuff with. And the first letter would

[John Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Mathematically, outcome should be the same. I think the benefit that I've heard described is that there's less blame placed on the CLA for the increase in folks' tax rates. Whether or not that's fair or not, I don't know. But mathematically, the ratio Doesn't change any math. I'm against feeling better. That's fine. Okay. So that's the state budget adjustment fix. Section three is you'll be familiar with language like this from the past, refunding City of Barrie for previous overpayments of their tax increment. And there's the sum that I've included. I think this is based figures from Kirby, where I believe we're seeing them from.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Which is from my website.

[John Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. Is from the city itself. And this should be the last one. Oh, really? As Armstrong told.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Can we also get that triple checked by the tax department?

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: Sorry to repeat that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Yeah. The TIF numbers just to make sure that Oh, sure. Yeah. Thanks. The TIF correction numbers.

[John Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: So the previous version of this you would have seen in years past was overpayments from 2016 through 2020, and it's picking up '21 through '24.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Last I'm gonna before the last I'm gonna make a public service announcement that there's a possibility that we'll need to be here at one and miss announcements. Oh, you can't do that. Okay.

[John Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: I've got a teleconference from one to probably 01:15. Okay.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I don't even know what bill we're working on. It's just a public service. We might need to be here at one. Okay. Okay. It'll be a really important one, though, if you're not here.

[John Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Maple

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: producers. Yes. Oh.

[John Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Section four, you've seen before. This is your addition of a inflator to the census block grant. So none of those should be new language. But just to remind you, it codifies the uniform base amount for FY '27. On page five at 2350, and it applies a three year rolling inflation based on HIPAA. Same language we saw last week. Front, and that is it. So struct language, because we don't need the transitionary language before, effective 07/01/2026.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you. Have any questions, thoughts on the language that's currently in the yield bill? Does anyone have anything that they think should get added in language the yield bill that they I have somehow lost? Or John has lost? Yes. Know that

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: it needs to go in the yield bill. It's just unclear to me. There's lots of things we haven't been able to model that would be critical to looking at a transition funding formula front. I don't know where we ask for those because if we don't ask for them, it's not clear to me. They'll be collected from districts. And if it's not collected from districts, it isn't available for us.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think a great place for that would be the Act 73 transition bill. So given that,

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: does it make sense if there are things that have come up in our committee that we think you need to draw? Does it make sense to prophylactically request that now, even though we have no idea where the appeal is or whether it's coming to us?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I love your word choice. There's going to be a bill that moves related to Act 73. Who knows what the shape of it will be coming from the education committee? We have a lot of content that we would need to put in it. So

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I think I'm asking a different question. I don't want to ask I don't know how we go about requesting things. I am concerned because there's data we don't have, which has inhibited our ability to model things, and it's even the pre K stuff. And so if we're going to get that data, we have to actively ask the agency to elect it in the districts or we're not going to have it. Do I send you that list and you send it to Beth St. James to prophylactically so they can be dropped into a bill when

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: it comes to Yeah, that would be great.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: What I'm worried about is the fact that I know they're flat out right now, and I think we're dropping a lot of balls. I will send you some suggestions.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: Okay, thanks. Representative Ode? I mentioned it a long time ago, and it's not ready. I don't think it's taking a while to read this bill, but it's the health care negotiations.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: That That definitely does not go in the yield bill, but I appreciate that. And I would recommend talking to the House General Committee about Because that is a union negotiating issue. And I do believe they have a bill on their wall.

[John Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Any questions, thoughts about the language that John shared with us? Okay. Thank you, John. Does anyone want to look at the outlook again with Julia?

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: I was wondering, is it a shortened outlook enough? Could we say the long end outlook, the longer one again?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Sure, it's just posted from last week still. The one with the how we're not I thought the one thing we had all agreed on was that whatever we do, we should do it uniformly. And so I so we cut the columns.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: No, no. I meant, isn't that how we used to have a much longer list when we looked at everything on the Outlook?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: It's still a little there. Really? It's still there. Uh-huh.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: Alright. Never mind. Maybe the

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: way Didn't we just insert scroll all the way down or something? No. Haven't gotten rid of rows.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: Nope. Alright. None of the rows are there. No. I have nothing. Okay. Cool. Yeah. It represents much room. And then she had said shorter, but I thought it's left hand.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: K. We removed the columns that were not uniform because I thought that was the one thing we had all I agree. Okay.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Representative Holcombe. The only thing that we other thing that we haven't discussed, and I understand why you don't want to discuss it, but it is having an impact across multiple other policy initiatives, is the decision to weight tuition counts. It is affecting who's getting hit by the excess penalty. It is affecting the degree to which the gap between homestead and non homestead rates for second homes is an issue in your district. It's going to affect the allowable growth thing that's probably going to get voted out of the Senate. It's going to affect the transition to in funding formula because what we're doing is we're forcing operating districts to subsidize vouchers. And if we're going to do that, I think we need to have that out in the order Because right now, we are setting up a set up and said there's some dynamics that are pretty much determining the future of education.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I am happy to schedule more testimony on that next week.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: My point is, I've asked repeatedly for some accounting. We can't even get the agency to report what those And the problem is we're losing vehicles. We won't have opportunities to address that because we've chosen not to address the variety of those that are currently leaving us.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I'm unclear what you had so I just offered to do a said that we could do a hearing on it next week, and you said we don't know what we need to know to even have a hearing on it. So I'm not sure what the hearing would look like.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: -I am commenting that there could be That you could put that piece in. Conscious of the fact that this body has systematically taxed some people to subsidize the choice that all evidence suggests is more expensive. I think

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: people might even say that about current use to some degree, right? Like there's lots of ways that the way that we, or what Carol was saying yesterday about my kid, I agree that it is something in the foundation formula that needs to be looked at more.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: It's not just the foundation formula. It affects who's impacted by the gap between second home and the non second home tax. It affects the excess spending penalties. It affects who's gonna be affected by the allowable growth that's coming over from the Senate. It's going to affect the transition because we're going to use the EOP, which is difficult when we have operating towns, potentially, maybe not to subsidize the towns that have been hyper subsidized inappropriately in transition to get them to level up. And it's distorting our understanding of what the cost of education is in the state of Vermont. And we're using a cost factor approach, which is based on current costs. It's not based on what we think should be spent on education.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: Have a

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: question about this. I wanna just stay focused on the yield for a moment, and see if anyone has anything else that they want to add on the yield. Okay, representative of your question. I want

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: to know, my thought is, if there is a fix to this, even if we don't have all the information from the agency, you still talk to the agency and you are familiar, very familiar with what's happening in that area, the state. So, if you have a particular fix, let's put that in writing, and then let's look at it and let people come in and give their pros and cons about it in the witness chair, and let's see if we can get some movement on that. When you explain it to me, I think we can fix that. Do you mean

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: the weights specifically or the left hand? I see how the weights are working in her area. So my understanding is that Representative Burkhardt submitted a short form, but

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: Did I see that somewhere? And

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: then I didn't I went looking for it on our wall actually this morning, and I didn't see it. To look at

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: the waiting. Where is it? I don't know.

[John Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: On 01/27.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: And and we have. I've shared previous But

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: where it where actually is the short form? Because I remember seeing it, like, getting referred, and then I don't see it on our wall. I don't know. Do you? Do you know where it is? It

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: should have been referred.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I actually have no idea where

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: it went. It never came So who doesn't have the language because

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: I sent that earlier? Yes.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: So can someone find the short form? We will do a hearing on it next week.

[John Gray (Legislative Counsel)]: Is it ahead?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you, John.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: It had to be if it wasn't here. I think this is very good. I think we should look at this. I'm glad. Good. I'm glad you're glad.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: So I don't hear any other thoughts from anyone on the yield bill. Katie is going to come in a moment. We think maybe. Check-in. Okay. Because $6.57 is we're not gonna be might not be able to have her her 06:57 because that's the fourth.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: And any other traffic for absorption? Okay.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thanks. We're gonna take a couple minute break.