Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Hello, committee. Thank you for your patience. As I's were dotted and T's were crossed, which is the Ways and Means Committee. I have an idea what the date is. Oh, it's the tenth. It's 11AM. And we are going to continue our work on H95. The plan is to do a final walkthrough of the final technical tweaks we made from yesterday. And then we'll take a brief break, and then we will come back and vote. I'm hoping that that

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: Nice, I see it.

[Speaker 0]: So dramatic. I loved it. Do you like a tissue?

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: Quite happy soup. Oh, yes.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. So I'm hoping that everything will work just like that, and then we will get to go on today.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Okay. So we're going we're going over it.

[Speaker 0]: And then we're gonna take a brief recess as requested by the vice chair, and then we are going to come back together and vote. Come back, vote. And then

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: is there other work beyond the vote? With anything else?

[Speaker 0]: No. No. Representative Branagan, we can go home after that.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: Yeah. Oh. Yeah. It's been

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: such a long week. It has indeed. I don't

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: go home and make candy, you know?

[Speaker 0]: I know you do. Yeah. Yes. And I believe representative Higley is also bringing in candy on Tuesday so we can have

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: a candy tasting. Oh, it's the only competition. Really? Hey. We're on. We're not. Yeah. Beth. On, Jess.

[Speaker 0]: Printed copies are on their way any moment.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: You know,

[Speaker 0]: in the old days,

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: they used to say the first run of maple was restored. Cured all kinds of veil. It's a lot of magnesium.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's St. James, the Office of Legislative Counsel. We have for you this morning draft 4.1 and an updated timeline. Where would you like

[Speaker 0]: to start? I love the updated timeline. It's so centering.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: Doctor. Johnson's name?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. We didn't highlight anything to represent changes. Do you want to just go through the timeline, or would you like us to try and remember Draft 3.2. For the amendment, we have draft 4.1 today.

[Speaker 0]: Just like a zippity.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: Okay. Or

[Speaker 0]: we could just look at it silently while you sit there. That would also work.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Whatever option works for you.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: We're going to do let's feel centering. Let me

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: know when you scroll up. Unless

[Rep. Charles “Charlie” Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: it's gone from July 1.

[Legislative Counsel (tax/assessment sections) — name unknown]: Do you have the date on

[Rep. Charles “Charlie” Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: there when grand lists will start to include number of drawings per parcel?

[Speaker 0]: Jeff saw that. On the

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: bottom right, all on the top.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: April 1, right over here.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes,

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: this is a combination of effective dates and when things will happen.

[Legislative Counsel (tax/assessment sections) — name unknown]: It's good, Charlie.

[Rep. Charles “Charlie” Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Yep. That's was removed.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: February '7.

[Speaker 0]: You can just print a new copy instead of free

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: write down. Know, but I want to see my old copy to see what it moves.

[Rep. Charles “Charlie” Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Then I can see relevance.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: I just got rid of January 1 with all of our okay.

[Rep. Charles “Charlie” Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Prohibition on fees is in 07/01/2036.

[Speaker 0]: I didn't name it. It's uncomfortable to do a bill with this many moving parts and magnitude, and to feel like it's perfect, especially when so many hands are in it. And the bill is going to go to the Appropriations Committee. If we find a technical change we need to make, we can ask the Appropriations Committee to make it. We can make committee floor amendments. And then it's going to spend a lot of time in the Senate where fixes can also be made, or unmade, as the case may be. That's fine. Yes. So I very much want us to do the very best we can, and I'm settling myself into the fact that it will not be perfect and there is much space for improvement in the future. But with that, we are ready for language.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That is what I spent money on law school for, for sure.

[Speaker 0]: Those maps, the timelines? The timelines.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Feels good, actually. Take a break there.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So we're on draft 4.1. First instance of amendment has not changed. Remember, your first several instances of amendment, all of your instances of amendment, except for the last instance of amendment, are making changes to what House Education gave you. The last instance of amendment is all brand new sections that your committee is adding. So no change to the first instance of amendment. The second instance of amendment was new yesterday, It's not highlighted today because we've already looked at that language. And we've added a new instance of amendment, which is now the third instance of amendment, amending section 13, Union School District Creation Consultation and Facilitation in subsection B by adding a new subdivision six to read as follows. This is the section of H. Nine fifty five as amended that talks about study committee formation and work to study the creation of new union school districts. And this particular subsection is about the union school district study committee formation process. The new subdivision six is requiring facilitators to monitor the work of the general assembly related to education transformation and share the most up to date fiscal modeling with study committees.

[Speaker 0]: Those at the request of representative Ode, who wanted to make sure that they had the numbers as they came available. And it was the sort of a way that we can make sure that successful, very good work was available to those committees without doing anything inappropriate with how their tests are working.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And I should note, everything staff is going to walk through this morning has not been edited. So we will get that edited. The fourth instance of amendment has not changed, but it is highlighted because it used to be the third instance of amendment. Fifth instance of amendment does have changes in it. This is the amendment to section 70 of Act 73, which is the effective dates section. And the new changes here are adding one of the contingencies for the foundation formula and several other parts of this bill and Act 73 taking effect. But I think we collectively call this the foundation formula contingencies. So adding a date to that third contingency that JFO would need to produce this data by, and that would be 12/15/2029. Then, John, is this you?

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. So John Grahl, the Trusted Council. This is like you've seen for the other deleted sections in the Act 73 effective dates. Since deleting a corresponding effective date to a now repealed section, it'll make sense once we come to my sentence.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I'm sorry, was it, are we discussing this as we go through or we're just getting a lot for your first time?

[Speaker 0]: Oh no, we can discuss this we go through.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: So the way that contingency is written with all of the different things that have to have legislation passed, we're still in a situation where the foundation formula could be put into place without any more affirmative action on the foundation formula itself. And I'm deeply uncomfortable with that because legislation has been an act that addresses, is extremely broad, And it means that we have to have basically talked about all of these things, but it doesn't actually mean that we get another chance to vote after we've seen the impact of all the analysis and all the work that's going to be done on the formula. And I just feel like the contingency is not strong enough, given that the other contingency about governance change has motif anymore. I would propose that we add an actual affirmative vote on the foundation formula once the analysis has been done. If it's a good idea right now, the foundation formula, it will be an even better idea once we have more data and information in front of us, and once we're a year further down the road of districts coming together, and we'll have a better sense of whether they're coming together or not coming together.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, let's sit with that and go through the other pieces of the bill. Can you talk a little bit more about what it means to enact legislation that would enact it that addresses those things?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I see this in my head as two different things. Legislation has been enacted, I think is relatively clear, and that is there has been new law. So it's not that the general assembly takes action, it's that there's actually law that takes effect in whatever path that takes. Addresses, I think, is certainly ambiguous and is ambiguous. So legislation has been enacted. You passed a law or a law has taken effect that addresses the following. I think it is open to interpretation whether this contingency has been met depending on the actions that are taken to address these issues. Do

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I see the other changes?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: In the effective date section, no.

[Speaker 0]: I mean, just that you have in front of you?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, yes. Sixth instance of amendment is just highlighted because it used to be the fifth instance of amendment, and we do have some changes here. So we're still amending the underlying House Ed bill. This is the legislative intent language related to pre kindergarten education. Subdivision one used to read supports access for every pre K child with equal payments and equal educational standards, and that has been changed to equitable payments, equitable educational standards.

[Speaker 0]: Was there a request of the Superintendent's Association and the Business Manager Association yesterday? Okay. I mean, generally use equitable and not equal when we're talking about this kind of thing rather than I say

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: equal, I mean, one equals one. Yes, exactly. Equitable, I mean, one equals whatever that might be. Yes.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: But if they're at the ones asking

[Rep. Woodman Page (Member)]: I'm sure if we can go back to that real quick. We know they were both equal before Equitable payments, I can certainly understand that because of what was discussed, but equitable education standards. I mean, that means a different standard for pool, different groups, different meanings. I would think that would be a concern.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: Could

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: be an improvement because we have different standards for different programs right now. So in theory, this might be meeting us towards the same standards for all programs. Different programs in the same pre K, though? No, no. Pre Ks have different expectations. There are different standards for different pre kindergarten programs right now currently.

[Rep. Woodman Page (Member)]: So again, you want it to be equal standards, not equitable standards?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: This is not my language. I just I can't speak to what they thought they were getting here.

[Speaker 0]: What do people think about equitable payments and equal standards?

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: Think you can write a slide on that. What do you think is a positive and a negative impact?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Think my big concern with this is I don't know how you cost out the cost if you don't know what your delivery model is, so I don't understand. I see what he means.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: I'm wondering

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: the same thing. So the educational standards, is this the sort of EQS term of art that we're talking about? Because I know somebody You

[Speaker 0]: say it's got the EQS attached to it. It has a different set of licensing, but yes.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: So that's my question. I've watched some of the testimony in house ed, and there was a big discussion about whether there had to be licensed providers in every classroom in a private setting, and the expense of that, and the challenge that that would present for private providers. And so I'm guessing that equitable education standards is trying to get at, in a school setting, in a public school setting, you may need to have licensed teachers in the classroom because that's part of the overall EQS. And if you're in that school, perhaps you need to have it. And then in a private setting, perhaps there's more flexibility. And I think that's probably what that was trending. I'm only guessing, Rebecca said. I don't know what they were trying to get at with Equitable, but that's my guess, having watched the discussion, just how licensed people have to be and what those kind

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: of standards are on private side.

[Rep. Woodman Page (Member)]: Okay, so you're talking about not so much the standards of education for pre K.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Like who's delivering it and how it's delivered as opposed to because you're not gonna do a standardized test on a pre kindergarten to see if they're getting the same actual education. But maybe I'm wrong. I think there's a lot and we don't really know, do we? Because we've all seen class size requirements and it's unclear how those are all going play in. You can't have a class size of 15 in a home provider, but they might be approved to serve prequalified kindergarten. So it's going to look different in different settings. And then the question is, what is having fun? And if you've only got three kids, it's pretty hard to generate enough revenue to pay you a full time teacher's salary. So I don't know how a future legislature is going to try to work its way through that.

[Rep. Woodman Page (Member)]: Okay, thanks.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Okay, so equitable, equitable. Cool.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This is the JFO contractor report language in the same section. The changes on page 10, line six through seven are just updating to a more formal reference to the First Children's Finance Study. And then on line 12, subdivision B, this used to be at $1 and then it was Xs, and now it is finally $75,000 an appropriation to JFO for the contractor. Seventh instance of amendment has not changed, but highlighted because it used to be the sixth instance of amendment. And the eighth instance of amendment is your big wave and means addition. This is the last instance of amendment, and this is where all of your new sections live. I will just point out that the number on line six, sixty five, we are in the process, depending on changes you make here today, of tallying up how many new sections we've added. And we can't just subtract 22 from 86 because we've added section 24A and 24B, 24C. So all that to say that that number is going to change depending on where you get before a final vote. Data collection. This is the amendment to section forty ten related to collecting weighting category data for tuition students. I was not in the room when you all discussed adding some language around requiring this form. And I've done my best to capture what I think you were trying to get at with staying within, I think, the law. And so we're keeping the form requirement the same, but we're now requiring that the form is included with any residency verification forms and requests for public tuition funding forms required by a school district. You have to prove residency in order to receive tuition or to enroll in a public school. And so I was trying to tie those forms to something that you could legally require from for either enrolling the student or paying tuition.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Thanks.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Ed funding hasn't changed. Section 24 is the I think what we've been referring to is the top off provision, or preventing schools that are eligible to receive tuition from charging tuition or fees beyond the amount of the foundation formula that they receive for any particular student. Section 24A is new, and it is legislative intent to state that Section 24 only takes effect at the same time as the foundation formula, provided any applicable contingencies have been met. Then, John, do you wanna speak to this 27A?

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: So this, if you'll recall that previously this section was an emergency rulemaking section that had a more accelerated time model needed to carry into this year for your reserve planning child standards. Just to orient the group, this is something where can see the initial tasking was 01/01/2025. We heard requests yesterday to not have such an acceleration in linking process, so the former subdivision subsection B for this section that allowed for emergency rulemaking has been appealed. It has been pushed back to 03/31/2027, and new collaborators have been added to the Mont Superintendent's Association, on School Boards Association, otherwise same return on account standards, just not leveraging that super accelerated process for rulemaking.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thanks. And now we're in Section 27B, School Transportation Grants Report. We've added to the information required in this report information. So the lead in language is the report shall include information on the following: bus driver pay and benefits. And then we're now in the recommendation section of the report. So the report shall also include recommendations regarding And we're going to go to page 24, line 12, subdivision G. How to ensure a student who attends a CTE center other than the student's assigned regional CTE center due to enrollment constraints, program availability, or some other barrier has access to transportation to the same extent as students attending an assigned CTE center as provided pursuant to this provision. This has not been added yet, so I will add that section of law in. Current law requires sending districts to provide transportation from their students from the high school to the assigned CTE center. But if there's a wait list and a student is attending a program outside of their assigned CTE center, or maybe there's just program availability issues, there's no requirement for transportation.

[Speaker 0]: This is asking for a recommendation on how to rectify that. This was an explicit language request from the Commerce Committee for us to include this in here. Right, that's right. When I see student

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: CTE, if you haven't graduated and you're not, if you haven't graduated from high school yet, you're able to attend CTEs, is this correct?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It depends. There's a whole host of complications depending on whether you have a diploma, whether you're enrolled somewhere, whether you're part of the adult diploma program, whether you're an adult CTE. It's not a simple question.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: So all potential students are gonna be looked at here.

[Speaker 0]: Again, is a report and this

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: is what the Commerce Committee is asking for. That's fine. Can we also address the cost in this? I mean, there's SUs that send kids to six different CTEs.

[Speaker 0]: I think that's somewhere else.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: In this particular, this is a different thing because it's spreading. The more we spread kids like grass seed, the higher the transportation cost, and that has pretty potentially significant financial implications. I just think they should consider that. So just including costs in that list?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: To this subdivision G and the costs associated with any such recommendations?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Yes. Because if if we are

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: making it policy Wait. I'm sorry. Just before you

[Speaker 0]: start talking again, I just wanna make sure that that has the sentence that we're talking about.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I know what I'm gonna write, but I don't know if it's what

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: you want. I know. So can you thank you, Beth. What is it

[Speaker 0]: that you're going to write?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We're gonna keep G the same, and then I'm gonna put a comma after A2 and say, and costs associated with any such recommendations.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, great. Thank you.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And that's it for me.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Great.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: I only have one chance, so maybe it's just not offered.

[Speaker 0]: But not bothered what? Oh, you're welcome. You were totally gonna stay there.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: So Kirby P much to the council. Not bothered. What are

[Speaker 0]: you calling?

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: Bothering me.

[Legislative Counsel (tax/assessment sections) — name unknown]: The only change for my sections is to push back the date at which assessing officials would start to put dwelling units on grant list. Up until now, it had been 07/01/2026. This changes the effective date to 07/01/2027. And I added some clarifying language there to avoid confusion that it will apply to Gram List launch beginning in calendar year 2028. So effectively, would be 04/01/2028 is the first time that this happens, which lines up with the rest of the classifications timeline because tax in 2029 will start their transition. Well, 2029 is when tax will start doing it. And then leading up to 2029, the same year 2028 is when the transition provision would be going on for tax to start setting it up. So this lines things up where there's not as much gap as before and eliminates a year in which assessing officials would be doing work that at the time would not be used for anything. And

[Rep. Charles “Charlie” Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: then it

[Legislative Counsel (tax/assessment sections) — name unknown]: was the departments that thought this would be better.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: And the grand list assessment date is still gonna move to January 1?

[Legislative Counsel (tax/assessment sections) — name unknown]: It will, but at this point in time it will still be April. It was 2031 assuming H933 makes it all the way through. That's where that changes. It's in a different set. So launched?

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: We use that?

[Legislative Counsel (tax/assessment sections) — name unknown]: It's an old fashioned word that's always been used with the grand list and people often say, Why? And I say, Do we want to start using a different word? I mean, it doesn't matter.

[Speaker 0]: Certainly not today, Representative Kimbell. Certainly not today.

[Legislative Counsel (tax/assessment sections) — name unknown]: It's throughout statute. It's considered lodging it with the panel.

[Speaker 0]: Is that your only change? Is that the only change you have? Great, thank you so much, appreciate this.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Hi Greg. Okay.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Good morning. Good morning, James. I am John Grant. Legislative Council. And surprise, surprise. Screen share. Okay, so I'm just going to run quickly through the changes that I do have. Some of these appear in multiple places. First is gonna be on page 75. This is your intent language broadly for the school construction sections. This is the call out to one of the vision for the construction being catalyzed here. In the short term, catalyze the state aid program by providing state aid in the form of up to an additional 50,000,000 annually in state funding capacity to support the construction or renovation of school facilities, that support the consolidation of school governance structures to improve access to educational opportunities for public school students. That's the agreed language and you're gonna see it a few times throughout. The next place you're gonna see it is page 77. Just as I talked about before during Beth's section related to reserve fund standards, we have an update to remove the emergency provisions that were related to this rulemaking for construction. Again, this is something where independent authority already exists. That's what happened. And so this is saying, on or before 03/31/2027, we provide these rules, and then you have the updated call out as I just discussed, construction and renovation of school facilities, support the consolidations for governance structures, and improve access to educational opportunities for public school students.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I'm not saying we should change this. I'm just saying that the opportunities here are not in When I think about where it makes sense, I don't know how else to say this, except that when you think of Rutland, for example, there are five very small high schools with very few students, and they could serve of ProFound and Pro or Montpelier for that matter. Since we talked about Montpelier yesterday, the the losses of population are so profound, you could put multiple nearby schools into fewer buildings. It's not the governance. It's that we want these plans to be looking at how we are bringing high school students under fewer rules. And so my only concern with this is that the entire emphasis here is on governance and not on how do we take offline schools that are beyond their blight and in flood zones and think about a future where we're actually using their facilities to serve kids better. Does that make sense? And I think our obsession with governments is making blindness for the fact that there's some Underneath that governance, there has to be some intention to how we reorganize. And I

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: think

[Speaker 0]: everyone has exactly those scenarios that you're describing in mind as we go through this language, and I see what you mean about how it's not perfectly aligned with that. And there's a whole set of other prioritizations that are linked to this that do address that.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, if we could, I

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: have a question on page 75. Yes, the 15,000,000. In my notes, we talked, I think it was Mr. Kramer that spoke about possibility of conflicts with the CEDAC recommendations. Did we get any verbiage back on that issue?

[Speaker 0]: Yes, there's more Well, we didn't get language back from the Kramer, but we did address that. This is the intent section, but later on, you'll see how that's addressed.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: So when we come to the state aid section, we formally had a section that talked about provide undefined annual debt subsidies and provide additional $50,000,000 There is an update there, but that's correct. In the intent section, it's still staying. This

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: is, we're here at section 67 on line five, page 77, from line seven to line 14, I'm sorry, line 16, is that talking about the changes to the rules to address?

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: The way to think about this is when you grant, you are delegating related to an agency. So generally, that's extending a kind of legislative role to the executive branch. And so whenever you do that, you need to cap on the executive's discretion so that they're following a discrete set of outlines. And so that's what you have here is this is the legislature expressing its cabining of that rule making authority. It's saying, AOE, you have to adopt rules. It's not an exhaustive list of what the AOE will do in its full construction rulemaking, but it's saying you do need to do these specific things.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: When I also keep looking at governmental structures and am concerned about that, what that might mean to the agency and its rulemaking, then I'm just wondering if anything else that's been set out anywhere else is something that the agency will have to look at when creating the rules. When it's really, if we don't set it out here, it's what

[Speaker 0]: we should

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: If you don't say these things here, you have not provided the direction to the AOE as to achieving the things you want to achieve, assuming you do want to achieve them. Yep. Okay. Same update on the top of page 78, and this is within your report from the advisory board identifying opportunities at the end of this year for infrastructure. We can jump to page 80. This is within your we're looking at section 71, and what you may recall from previous drafts is that the there was an update to the advisory board's membership. It added a new ninth member as a voting member. Right? And that was your school construction program director. Just for orientation purposes, the advisory board is advising the AOE and having an AOE member as one of the members of the advisory board. That has been updated in this draft, no longer a member of the advisory board, but they would staff the school construction program director would staff that advisory board that would then assist. We can jump next to page 86. I think that this is something to represent a page that's concerned about remembering. So this is just for orientation purposes where we are in the draft. This is your core state aid section. This is the award of construction aid. You can see the amounts that have been discussed before at the top of this page. The new language you see replaces former subdivision c that spoke to that undefined debt service subsidy amount and the 50,000,000 in bonding capacity. What you have now is the treasurer in consultation with CDAC shall recommend to the house committees on education and the rights and means and the senate committees on education and on finance the annual total state bonding support available, and the annual debt for the subsidies reported under this chapter. So this is trying to address some of those concerns and ensure that there is no convergence between what's done here and the CDAC recommendations. Next is on the subsequent page, and this is stylistic. This is just giving the federal citation for the David Bacon Act, which is under those prevailing wage requirements. The next piece is on page 92, although I know there's a you do have a legacy debt A provision here, so I just want to call out what's looking at all of that. The next change is on page 92. I believe. And it's a solemn. This was at representative Ode's suggestion. It's a nice clarification in the ballot language that is provided upon the concurrent authorization of bonding for school construction and your supplemental district spending. This is clarifying what was the intent of the prior draft, that the estimate you get at the end reflects an annual for pupil supplemental district spending for future years.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: How do we do this, given that many of these bond schedules still provide equal payment each year, or is our assumption that we will have equal payment?

[Speaker 0]: I think the assumption is this is the best we can do in this situation, basically. I think it does make the assumption that it's a level of payment over time.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Which means

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: that the bond terms, just saying we may be mandating an assumption that has an impact on the cost of borrowing. Yes. Yep. Is

[Speaker 0]: there something you would like to do about that?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I can think about it. I think sometimes the more prescriptive we are, the more mistakes we make. Yeah,

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: another way to address this, which is maybe less attractive to the committee and it speaks to some of the final thoughts here, assuming current long term memberships is you're providing this to try to get voters to have a sense of the kind of obligation they're taking on long term. You don't have to have this final paragraph.

[Speaker 0]: We could take out the warning language.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: It does make a number of assumptions, including that the membership levels would be the same. And another thing you could say about it, I don't wanna suggest that it's unusual to include it because I do think folks will want to see something like that. The way that that translates into a tax rate is dependent on whatever the supplemental district spending yield happens to be in a given year. The fact that you would have an estimate of what your ongoing supplemental district spending per pupil might be doesn't necessarily tell you the yearly cost you're going to face. So it could be that it's not even necessarily providing the information that voters want, in which case, yeah.

[Speaker 0]: So you want to just take out that warning language? I think that's a

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: nice, clear, entire paragraph.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: That paragraph.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: Just take out spending of a certain number of bills, supplement district spending through calendar year X.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: That's the whole information that's being provided.

[Speaker 0]: But what if, I mean, it could also be twenty year terms or thirty year terms, represent a whole kind of a great point.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I think the question I have is we're being very specific about the language of the warning. What we're forgetting is if you just went to a district with a bond and you didn't present this information, they would slap you right down. And so I think maybe part of it is about what is it It could even just be that instead of specifying this last paragraph, you just say, and districts are advised to include information on X, Y, Z.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, and districts include information around their running all

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: the time, right? Right. I mean, if you didn't, voters would turn you down, as I think Charlie knows. So you have to be very You have to sell a bond. They're not just going to vote for it if they don't understand the implications. But I guess my concern is that every time we are very, very specific, we may force another behavior that may actually not be desirable. So we're cutting that paragraph. Forgot. So if you wanna add that we I don't think we've made donations are kept.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: Think you don't have to because as you know, this is presented concurrently with the bond authorization, which is gonna contain the terms that educate the voters. So I'm happy to strike that. The next changes are 95 through 99. These are the final sets of changes I have.

[Speaker 0]: At this point, I'm imagining that if anyone has an objection, are speaking up so that when it comes back, we're not we're okay. Great. I wanted to say that out loud instead of thinking inside my head. Great.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: So all of the changes that I'm gonna talk through here are related to requests from the tax department for the Education Fund Advisory Committee language that was set up in Act seventy three and two tax reports that were set up in Act 73, the deadlines that were provided. In section 79, you see added to the list of appeals from Act 73, the section 57 updates to the S Fronted Difle Committee. Just to explain what that is, Act 73, which did not create the Ed Fund Advisory Committee Act 127

[Speaker 0]: created the Ed Fund Advisory Committee.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: But dramatically amended the directives YouTube? Activities were dramatically amended the directives. That pretty seriously changed the scope of what they did. And it was on a timeline that would be in advance of this bill's timeline for the foundation formula. And so when Beth was walking through her sections, you noted that I called out the deletion of the corresponding effective date for that piece. Will come to amendments to the Ed Fund Advisory Committee. But here, you see the x 73 provisions repealed because they're being replaced with new updates to the Ed Fund Advisory Committee's directives.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Stop you in the middle of '93 before you scroll on. Sure. Excuse me. I mean, hope I could just say the

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: bond there,

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: but the indeed, I know I've said this several times. Have concerns about this that do nothing to do with public and private, but it has to do with the fact that the tuition cannot be the base plus adjusted weight because there are administrative costs that adhere to the district that have to be paid for out of that base plus weight. And so this is an overfunding of tuition students regardless of where they go. And I find this language very, very problematic. If you think of a K-twelve tuition district, if they had to pay the entire payment out, there'd be no SU to actually issue those checks.

[Speaker 0]: Can you work for next We have a few years before this would be enacted. Can you work on language for next biennium that will put a base payment in for exactly the administrative issues that

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: you're worried about? I don't mean, that's my point. This whole thing is a leap of faith right now, and I'm really struggling to have that faith right now, because we had a, I don't know what that weighting study is going do. I think there should be a fixed piece of the base and a variable piece of the base. I can certainly make recommendations, but this just objectively to me is an example of my concern that we may not understand what we're doing.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: We come to page 95. And this is, as I preface for the start of these sections, Department of Tax had requested some delays. So this is your home state property tax rate transition. You'll recall that I talked about yesterday how this is a this is something from act 73 that's been included here at the correct effective date. But now with the progression from the Department of Taxes was to push this property tax rate transition report back to 2028 in alignment with the other reports they're going to be providing. And you can think of that as aligning with the longer timeline that's envisioned here. On top of page 96, you also see clarification that it's Ensure that the Olmstead education program tax rates do not increase as part of transition between the foundation. Okay. The new highlighted section you see, section 84, there's another delay. In x 73, there's a report on our proposed alternative home set exemption structure. You'll recall that x 73 enacted a home set exemption structure. And then last minute, some folks thought, let's see if we can hear an update. That was intended to come at the end of this year, but again, with the delay, the homestead exemption wouldn't be effective until all the other contingencies here along with foundation formula. So delaying this report by two years to 2028. I mentioned earlier the repeal of the Act 73 provisions that updated the Ed Fund Advisory Committee. You can now see the new provisions here for the Ed Fund Advisory Committee. They changed the membership, and what's being proposed here to put it in a simple way is to create a more technocratic group is I think the language that was used. And so this is your membership would be less, I guess, political or agency involvement. You would have two members of the public with expertise in ed financing by the speaker, two members of the public with expertise in ed financing appointed by a big committee on committees, and then two members of the public with expertise in ed financing appointed by the governor. So trying to make this a group of experts in education finance. The powers and duties have been changed as well for the committee. This has been the laundry list of items, updating weighting factors, elimination of category of wage changes to income levels. And what you see here is now the directives for the Ed Fund Advisory Committee, and I'm on page 98. Recommend to the general assembly means to adjust the revenue sources for the Ed Fund, means to improve equity, transparency, and efficiency in the education funding statewide, recognition on the amount of the Ed Fund's stabilization reserve, pool district use of reserve kind of counts, which we're also gonna get other information on, and then the enactment of recommendations on the enactment of updates to the weights of categorical aid that are recommended by JFO. Thanks for opening it. Recommended by JFO or And

[Speaker 0]: this is because the way it was drafted a billion years ago, it had this committee actually doing all of the recalculation recalibration work, which was never actually what another part of the statute says. It's always been AOE and JFO doing that recalibration recalculation work. And so it's a weird duplication. The idea is that they are being sort of custodians of that process as a board of sorts, CDAC.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: I do not think you said custodian. As they can ask for funding. If

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: they're going play that custodial role, and I appreciate it, does it also make sense to put some important school boards on there? Because the choice of revenue sources is having a profound impact on our property taxes right now. Are we sending out

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. So the idea is that the sort of three appointing bodies could appoint someone from the school boards, but sort of all of the more The superintendents were taken out, school boards were taken out, the governor was taken out, the AOE was taken out. It's just sort of technical experts. And those technical experts, one of them could be a school board member. It just wouldn't be appointed by the school board's association.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: So we think being a school board member makes you a technical expert on No. Saying the opposite. Of that.

[Speaker 0]: So that it would be if a technical expert was a school board member, then the one of the appointing authorities could pick that person.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I understand. Question is, if I we support the idea of having six people with deep expertise of education finance, which is a pretty specific skill set? Yes. And does it also, in addition, make sense to have one person who represents school boards to tighten the connection so people have a better understanding of what's happening and not happening in the end of the and in the revenue raising? Because very small decisions that we've made here have a very profound impact on education property taxes that school boards cannot.

[Speaker 0]: I appreciate that. I think if we did that, then we would also need to add the Superintendent's Association, and then we would need to add the NEA, and then then we would need to add the governors, the AOE. It just becomes

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: a it's become sort of

[Speaker 0]: a natural cascade from there.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: So that's your your perception. I mean, I guess the difference I see is that school boards are democratically elected governing bodies that boss those other people around. I mean, just trying

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: to keep it small,

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: we appreciate that. It's a fundamental difference. I appreciate that. And they're also the ones who go face to face with voters, and they don't have to do that.

[Speaker 0]: Mean, lately, seems like they do, unfortunately. Yes. Yeah.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: I also need to call it a clarification. I realize your paper docs are correct. I have an old tab open. I made one update. It is in your paper documents, are correct. It's also in the post that I just literally have an old tab open. It should be enactment of any updates to wage categorical claims recommended by JFO and the agency of education. That is what's in what you have.

[Speaker 0]: Yes, that's what happens.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: Sub five. Yes. Sub five. And the editors will correct the number as well.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: So we're not gonna discuss putting in a school board member on this group? So

[Speaker 0]: this language went back and forth with tax and they also agreed to it. We would need to, I think, have them back. Let's just stay on it. So

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: those are your updates to the directives to the Ed Funding Advisory Committee. And the other piece that you see here on page 99, the first meeting was to be called this summer. And that's now pushed back to 2031. As you can imagine with the shift in scope as to what the committee is doing, more of like an advisement of the new structure that you do have rather than a committee that's getting you through a transitionary phase to that point.

[Speaker 0]: One clarifying question, Representative Holcombe, were you saying that a school board member should be on or school board associations should appoint a person? Yes. Okay. Thanks.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: And I'm assuming you can decide. Usually we just do the VSPA plus designee

[Speaker 0]: board designee. Anyone have any objections to adding that? No. What are we adding? Sorry. Of the appointing authorities on the list, the appointing authorities, the VSBA is also an appointing authority.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, so add a new form?

[Speaker 0]: Will you go up?

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: The way that it's done Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Will you scroll up to where it's committee and committees, etcetera?

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, it's That's this one here. Yep.

[Speaker 0]: I can't We're in different tabs.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: Ah, I have pretty sure it paused because I was trying to confirm. That's why we're Yes. Thank you.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Oh, cool. Thanks.

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: It's like

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: we're here. So I guess Rebecca, are

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you just asking to add eight back in?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Yeah. Yes.

[Speaker 0]: Let's add eight back in. Okay.

[Rep. Charles “Charlie” Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Was it that a committee doesn't make for another five years isn't a committee? Just land that up.

[Speaker 0]: Thanks, Charlie. That's really helpful. Sorry

[John Grant (Legislative Counsel)]: about the pause. I think that is basically it for my sessions. Also have, just to remind the group, if you're trying to confirm all the effects it takes, which that would be a lot of work to do, you would need to check both if that's sections for section 18 and this final section. The pieces that you see added on page 100, the new sections for that Home Set Exempting Inspector Report Delay and the amendments to the Ed Fund Advisory Committee themselves take effect on passage. But as you can imagine, the reports themselves don't come till later, both just changing the second law to optimize the set. The first meeting still wouldn't occur until thirty one for the advisory committee, but the updates that ensure they don't have to meet this summer happen right now or upon passage. The other little tweak here is to add for the callouts to act 73 contingencies. Kirby noted this on his walkthrough yesterday, but when he was trying to explain what the contingencies were, I think it's helpful to call out as amended by this act to make clear that to make sense of the whole contingencies, you need to live in two places, not just one. That is it.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you. So folks, we are going to take a thirty minute break. This is not a lunch break. This is a talk amongst yourselves and come back break. I promise to

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: go eat. So we had another meeting scheduled at noon. Are you saying we need to cancel?

[Speaker 0]: Was it a meeting from twelve to one? It's a twelve to 12:45 meeting followed by a 12:45 to one meeting. I would think that you might want to be available now, but it's up

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: to you. So I need to cancel all my meetings. Okay. It's yeah. That's what I just need to know.