Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: We're we're talking about

[Speaker 1]: We're dabbling. Okay. We are starting the caucus of the whole report, so to speak, of h nine fifty one. The big bill, the budget for FY '27. I am during this part, is in the caucus of the whole so that there if there's more informal questions and JFO staff is out there, but they'll probably be in here. So if we need them, it's easier than so we don't have to recess several times during questions. But my goal here is just to give explanation kind of the budget process and then go over all these handouts you have just so you could orient it to them. Maybe I'll give you a few examples. But then the committee as a whole, all seven committee members will talk about their budget sections and give you examples from these spreadsheets. So overall, the appropriations committee tried to create a budget that was balanced four ways. You've heard of the analogy of trying to have a three legged stool. You have all three legged. All three legs have to be in balance for the stool to work. Well, is a stool with four legs or some people call it a chair or maybe a table. So but we have four main principles that I think that we're trying to stay with. And one is it's a balanced budget. We had to stay within the means. What what what revenue did we have available to us? That's kind of a given, but an important part of leg of this chair. Two is meeting the needs of Vermonters. This is the basic needs, food, housing, health care, clean environment, and the functioning of basic government, including public safety. And we need a functioning government. So we're funding the basics of all state employees and the basic workings of our government. Three, the third leg is saving money for an uncertain future. So this is our reserves, our set asides, our contingencies, and also importantly taking care of our future pension obligations, which in the past years, this is a leg of the chair that did not wasn't there or was cut short. And so we're making sure that we're meeting those obligations so that we can have a more secure future. And then the fourth leg, which I think the the senate did a spent a little more time on than than the house, is investing in our future with economic development And making sure that we're not getting into kind of a poverty mentality and just back at you know, battening down the hatches that we have to at the same time that we're we're meeting the basic needs that we're investing in the future. That we need to have a vibrant economy so that we will have budget dollars to meet future needs, and that we can now do so with taxes that Vermonters can afford. And it it's a tough process at times. Tough decisions had to be made, And honestly, there are some decisions that I did not like making, but that's the job. We had tens of millions of dollars in asks above the money that is appropriated in this budget. If you include all the money that was asked from the public hearing, it was close to 200,000,000 of asks above what we could fund. And these include asks that of in bills that were were passed like a house bills and senate bills as we're working on the budget. So overview on how the I just thought it would be good to remind folks how the budget is created. Back in the fall, I think they start in December or September, the governor's finance and management office starts working with all the agencies on the on the budget. So they basically have four months. They work on presenting a budget. They have it done. December into January and present in January. The house started taking testimony on the budget and they met even in December. And then earnest when the governor presented the budget on January 20. So they and they didn't pass the test till March 27. So they had it for nine weeks. We had it for three weeks until we passed it. So it's just an which I've mentioned that just to give you context of how much we rely on all the work of the governor and the governor's budget staff and the house and all the the work that they do. They have much more time and kinda people to work on it and then also the the the staffs that are helping the governor's budget, the house's budget, and ours is is really important. So, I'm gonna go through the these different handouts. I'm gonna first go over this one which is the highlight document created by JFO that we've looked at. So in the in the top, it gives you the gun these both of the tables on here give you the sense of the the money that we're working with. If you look at this table, the the first column at the top is the general fund. If you did the math there that you'd see that we're at 2.36% additional funds than from last year. And if you go all the way to the right end of the column, that 178,000,000 changes, that's only one. 9% difference than last year. So, it's not a huge increase from prior about the money that we had to work with but we're lucky to have more money than we had last year to to work with. Then, you look at the the the other table below the table on the top, the general fund budget construct. At the bottom, you'll see this is in million. So, this is $70,000 is the unallocated surplus. So, there's tiny bit of money we left as sort of a cushion at the bottom and the this budget does not include any money for the legislature if we stay past May 15, which was the date we budgeted for. So we will need some extra money if we stay longer. So the first page is just the budget context and the general overview. You'll notice on page two, these are the budget increases from of the base. So these aren't the actual appropriations to the base expenditures. These are just the increases. And so we broke it up in health care, human services, housing, and various others. And these aren't all of them. This is the highlight document. These are ones that we just were notable for different reasons. I'll give you a couple of examples. Romanette four, this is money for the free and referral clinics throughout the state. There's an increase of $924,000 These free clinics are for people that have no insurance. There's been changes to the federal insurance program, which I'm sure you know about. So we have a huge increase in the amount of Vermonters that don't have insurance. So we thought it was important to support these free and referral clinics. And this item, not unlike other some other items, it tells you what their total funding was. So last year, they were 1,600,000. We gave them this $9.24 increase for a total of $22,500,000. You don't always see that, but so that's just important to remember that these are the increases to their base. So once it's in the base, it it just gets built in every year after that. Down in the other column, I think it's important to mention some things that we added that the house didn't have. So in number five below is for the early childhood licensure program and s two zero six. If that bill was to pass, these are positions in SOS to to operate that program. That's the bill hadn't passed when the house did their budget so they didn't have to think about funding some of those things. A couple other items that aren't on here that we had to do that the house didn't have is we had an a request from the sergeant at arms for the increased security for the single point of entry. That was $60,000. Another item that we did that the house did that I thought we'd mention in here is relief for dairy farmers from the the high fees that some large and medium dairy farms had. We reduced those fees to reduce the economic pressure that the dairy industry was having. That was 253,000. So on page three is the highlights of the one time appropriation. So the base is just that. It's just a kind of the base budget of of different expenditures in parts of government, and the one times are just that. This is using money that we don't think we would we can't count on having again next year and I'll talk about what those are numbers are but this is just a highlight of things that we funded with some of that one time property. Some items that were not in the house on under other number five, the 300,000 for non emergency medical transport. The 1.5, we added one. 5,000,000. This is room in at eight for the edge. We do another 1,500,000 for AOE for education transformation initiatives. We added this is not in here but a couple other highlights that we did that the house didn't do is some some money to open new adult daycare centers. There's S two forty three, the language justice project that that the house didn't have that bill. So, we had a $150,000 for that project. So, that's the highlight sheet. That just is giving you some examples of the kind of work we do. So the next one is the base sheet. So we start this is this sheet that has kind of some orange at the top. I guess on the no. The teal page one has teal or aquamarine on the top. At the top, it says

[Speaker 2]: Tiny tiny tiny type at the top.

[Speaker 1]: Yep. You need your reading glasses. It's appropriations and transfers is the is the top. So that's kind of give us gives us the sense of the money we have to work with with the budget. So the first line is just if if all the government agencies basically get what they got last year plus a little inflation, the governor set a 3% target for all parts of government and most of them were there under a couple had to go over but for special circumstances but basically, that's the 2,300,000,000 that you see on line one and then there's some other additions, transfers, then you you get kind of what the base budget is when we're starting. This $2.5000000000 dollars and then everything below that are the changes. The changes that the house made, the changes that the governor proposed, the changes that the house made, the difference between the house and the governor, what the senate appropriations amendment does, and then the difference of the senate appropriations from the house. And then in the far right column are notes that just give you a little more context. They're color coded. If you're not good with colors, we apologize. We gotta find a more accessible way to print this out, but it it'll tell you whether it was just if it's purple, it's other. If the governor did it, it was in black print, the house red, and the senate in green. So you can look through those and get an idea of some of the base changes. Also, just so you're oriented to the columns, the first column is what says SEC. Those are sections of the budget. And we'll I'll go over the addendum, which is kind of the the the bill per se, and then those are the sections of the budget, or you can think of the sections of the bill. The bill the budget always has the same kind of section construct of these numbered sections in b and so forth. I'll talk about those. Then the department is the acronym for the department which sometimes is you might know what the acronym is but sometimes they're kind of confusing or you might be an agency you're not too familiar with. So you can we don't have a key on here but so we could ask a little description and then as I said, the different different items that the that the governor in the house did with the basic expenditures. So, the the overall, the budget is lower than the house's expenditure by just $700,000 and 6.5 more than than the governor proposed. If you go down to the bottom line one zero two, the second side, you'll see the balance used to cover one time appropriations. So there's that in the senate column, $28,000,000. So after the base expenditures, we had $28,000,000 that we could spend on one time ex expenditures. That's kind of money left over. You could see the difference between the house. Sometimes there's sometimes the difference is shown on this line, the difference, but it's, you know, you can do the math. We were a little we had a little bit more money that we moved to one times in the house, a little less than we moved from the governor. So then the you'll notice one of the big expenditures is the the the kind of the one time transfer of that $70,000,000 for the property tax relief. So we spent a total of 1,490,000 in in base base, but a 100,000,000 of that is that buy down in property tax. So it's really about 49,000,000. So that's the base spreadsheet and you might hear some more about these as we go through the language in the bill. And I and maybe I should stop from reach sheet if anybody has any questions on the highlight or the base sheet. Okay. Senator Clarkson.

[Speaker 2]: Thank you, Andy. I just, I just wanted if we go into being present with our constituents, I think on all the health care expenditures, and I applaud your efforts to fund free clinics, which are going to be so critically important. What was taken away from Vermonters so that people really can take on board through the Affordable Care Act was

[Speaker 3]: $60,000,000 roughly. Is that right?

[Speaker 1]: I don't know if in subsidies or

[Speaker 2]: premiums from the exchange.

[Speaker 1]: I don't know if I have that number off the top of my head. What was

[Speaker 2]: taken away was a

[Speaker 1]: huge money.

[Speaker 2]: The additional 924,000 is, while wonderful, a drop in the bucket. We have seen articles in the last two days of the number of our constituents who are now operating without healthcare. We all know people we know well who made choices to not stay on the exchange and to go without healthcare and just Right. Roll the dice. I applaud this effort. I just want to remind everybody that this is a drop in the bucket and that we are really facing a a huge crisis as much as we're facing with housing and with mental health and with everything else. This funding I think is going to cost us more money. And so I applaud us, but it is not the fix we need to actually make Vermonters healthy and safe into the future or our budget. So this protects future spending in a modest way, but I would just remind us all that we are this is a huge challenge for Vermonters going forward.

[Speaker 1]: Yes, well said. And this was the ask of the free clinics. I mean, we gave them what they asked for. We didn't cut that short for whatever what that's worth. So any other questions on the first two handouts? Okay. So the the one time expenditures, we have two different spreadsheets. I will go through this one first, which has the colored bars. Again, the kind of a teal at

[Speaker 4]: the top. This

[Speaker 1]: is all the one time expenditures of general funds. The others everything on this sheet is on the other one time sheet, but the other one time sheet has one time expenditures that weren't general funds. So other special funds or federal funds, but we wanted did you have to see all of them? They're all in the addendum in the bill, but this way, it's a little easier to look through really quickly and see what what expenditures we did. And just like the other sheet gives you kind of the one time revenue we have working with up at the top, the 149,000,000. You know, it's it's the 28,000,000 that I talked about that we carried forward from the base appropriations. And then we have things like that 71.67 on line three. That's the money we're from '26 that we set aside for property tax relief last year. This is moving it forward available and we just we do that again. We move it forward for for the property tax relief as as planned. Same with the 30,000,000 above that on line two. So, the top kinda just shows you what we're working with and then below that what the governor did, what the house did, what the senate did, and work through that. Some of these things like I'll say like lines 13 through 16 are all gonna be figured out the details of NH nine thirty eight. And maybe Senator Lyons will talk about that when she speaks, but we're just kind of reserving all that $21,100,000 and it's gonna be figured out in the bill. It's not delineated in here for all of all the all the work dealing with emergency shelters and homelessness issues. You know, the biggest one time is that that that movement of the 71,600,000 carried forward. You know, luckily, we had a good FY '26. So, we had that money to carry forward. I don't know if we're gonna have that next year, and that's some of the work that we did was like, we're not expecting that much of a carry forward from this fiscal year into '27. So, yeah, I this was carried forward from FY '25 into into the current year FY '26. Then that there's the '24 from the base sheet, then all the differences. So the total differences with the from the governor is we spent 11,400,000 more than the governor and $7.04 than the house. The biggest chunks of though are the $4,000,000 that we did that the finance committee did for the renter credit. That's a big chunk of that money. We had some economic development appropriations that the governor and the house didn't have that adds to that. And we asked the 1,500,000 for education transformation additional money. So that's those some a few big chunks equal that 7,000,000 or and 11,000,000 more than the governor are really can be pointed to just a few few larger appropriate one time appropriations. And then a lot of just these are the tough decisions where it's in the big picture, not a lot of money, but very important programs, all all needing money, all gave very good arguments about why they were essential, but we couldn't fund them all. So that that is the example of the kind of you'll see what decision decisions we made. And like I said, they were they were all difficult decisions that we didn't always enjoy making. So that's the one time sheets. Is there any question about the one time sheets?

[Speaker 5]: I've got a question, mister president.

[Speaker 1]: Yes. Senator from Washington.

[Speaker 5]: Line 89, education fund for property tax relief. I see we got the buy down money in there. Is that all being spent this year from the senate proposal?

[Speaker 1]: Yes. And that's in the yield bill, which is different than the house with the yield bill coming out of the house, split it for two years. That's right. And so we appropriate all in one year here, and then the yield bill language has it all going in one year.

[Speaker 5]: Thank you.

[Speaker 1]: So buy it down to the three point something percent. Three point eight? Three point eight. By using all of it. Yes. Your question?

[Speaker 3]: I have

[Speaker 0]: a couple. Legal on line 23, the legal aid helpline, was that a position?

[Speaker 2]: Which page do you want to find?

[Speaker 0]: The first page, line 23. The person's?

[Speaker 1]: Yes. Legal aid helpline.

[Speaker 0]: It looks like we did not concur. Oh, wait. Yes. Yes. We did not concur with the house addition. I'm I'm curious what the addition was for.

[Speaker 1]: I think it would I I can't can't remember if it was a specific position or just the the $660,000 and then but it would with global commitment would be a 100,000 or maybe it's a 160,000 total. If there could have been a position in there, I don't remember. The NFL remembered. You're not a position. Or you don't remember?

[Speaker 6]: No. They did hire there is an attorney in addition to this, but the helpline is

[Speaker 1]: Yeah. And this attorney this 200,000 on line 24. So I think I think it was maybe it was contract work. I can't I can't remember exactly. So we could

[Speaker 6]: I think there's some reduction in the need as a result of the Medicare Advantage of crisis that occurred, and now I think it's subsiding, but we can check that.

[Speaker 1]: We did get several asks from legal aid, and this was one that

[Speaker 0]: Okay, well the reason I asked is because I know legal aid has been doing a lot of housing support work and I know that the need for that is only increasing.

[Speaker 1]: Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: And so I'm just curious what that helpline is for. My next question is about the reduction to Meals on Wheels with the increase in food insecurity. What is the reasoning behind not feeding seniors and people with disabilities? What far is that? That is line 25.

[Speaker 1]: And you will see a similar reduction from the house position on many of the food programs, but you'll see an increase to line 22 for local food shelves. Alright. So the $700,000 on line 22 for local food shelves was taken from the Meals and Wheels program, some of the food bank programs like Crop Cash and other programs like that, they all got reduced by the amounts that you'll see, but it all went to line 22. That's $700,000. That $700,000 is gonna be sent out to local food shelves, and I have a list of all the the food shelves in here. I think it was a 123 food shelves, and I could show you the list if you wanna see exactly which ones they are. But, basically, the idea was that the the food shelves are kind of the the local food shelves and are the kind of first line of defense for hunger. That's where people will first show up especially if there's somebody that isn't like part of Snap or part of a, you know, ongoing food needs. If they find themselves in crisis, they'll go to their local food shelf. So we wanted to support those with more direct food. They're I think all all volunteer run. I don't know if there's anyone that have staff. I was told they're all volunteer run. So it goes directly to food aid to those local food shelves. So that was the decision we made. But we we in the past have increased Meals on Wheels, but we we wanted to support the local food shelf, so we took it from the other food program.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, I appreciate that. My concern with that is that Meals on Wheels serves people who may not be able to get to their local food shelf due to disability or their age and most local food shelves are no longer delivering so I'm worried that we may be leaving people hungry who can't get to their local food shelf.

[Speaker 1]: Yeah, that's important. And just for context, there is a base appropriations of 2,300,000, you'll see in the note there. So Meals and Wheels will get their base appropriation. This was an increase. So they will get an increase of 380,000 in the senate construct on top of the 2,300,000. So they they are getting their so we're not reducing their funding from last year. We're maybe not meeting the need. I I I think your point is well taken, but that was the one of the trade offs we made.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. And do those changes to the food programs leave any federal match dollars on the table? Because I know we get federal match dollars for crop cash. I believe we do for Meals on Wheels. Yeah. I just wanna make sure we're drawing down every federal penny we can.

[Speaker 1]: There is there is some global commitment federal dollars that that are not drawn down when you reduce some of those programs.

[Speaker 7]: I

[Speaker 0]: think that may be my last question for now.

[Speaker 1]: Okay. And then if you have other questions after this, obviously, you can ask them while we're in session on the floor. Okay.

[Speaker 2]: Ask a question? Alright.

[Speaker 1]: Senator Hardy.

[Speaker 3]: Okay. I have a couple of questions. One is on this line 13, the reduction. Are you not agreeing with the house on a position for the ethics commission? Think you

[Speaker 1]: Is that on this line?

[Speaker 2]: Sorry,

[Speaker 3]: I might be on a different spreadsheet. The one that has orange on

[Speaker 1]: it. That's the base.

[Speaker 3]: Line 13,

[Speaker 1]: I was

[Speaker 2]: trying to

[Speaker 1]: find that.

[Speaker 3]: That's the base funding reduction. You did not agree with the increase that the house gave them for a position to do the municipal work. And I think you described that in another thing, context that you just didn't give them the extra work, but that was a bill we passed two years ago. We gave them that work two years ago and never funded it.

[Speaker 7]: Right.

[Speaker 3]: And so, it's the law that they're supposed to be implementing and they're not getting the position to do it.

[Speaker 1]: Yes, and we we I think they asked for three positions to do the work that they that we asked them to do under that act.

[Speaker 3]: And the House gave them one and you're taking it away or?

[Speaker 1]: That that is accurate. The House gave them one. The House also gave them more work. And so we got testimony from the ethics board saying you're this is a net neutral position because you gave us the work that we that would be equal to the position to do the Right. To the handbook and to do trainings on the handbook. So they were they reiterated they did needed the three lawyer positions to to do the work. I think

[Speaker 3]: So are they getting any position?

[Speaker 1]: No. They're not getting any positions in the senate construct. And now that that's an example of a of a of a difficult decision and and an interesting point when we pass laws, but that we didn't give them the money when we passed the law.

[Speaker 3]: Well, it was in to be to be clear, it was supposed to be in the budget then, and the senate took it out then.

[Speaker 1]: Right.

[Speaker 3]: And so the senate keeps taking out funding for the ethics commission. It leads one to wonder how committed to ethics is. So that I think that's concerning that we're not funding the ethics commission. I also had a question. There were a couple other senate bills that had one time funding in them and I don't see them on here so I'm specifically and specifically I'm thinking senator Watson of S 325 there were there was funding in that bill for housing and also for community engagement. Did that make it in? Yeah. It's in the It's in here. It is in here?

[Speaker 1]: Okay. Yeah.

[Speaker 3]: And and that thank you. And then I was wondering if what happens I know that there are some things that are put put on a contingency line and one of those is funding for the Farm and Forestry Security Fund. And I'm it doesn't I don't see it in these spreadsheets, so I'm wondering how that works.

[Speaker 1]: Yeah. I was gonna mention that when we go over the addendum. It's there the that's one of the sections I'll mention. But there's it it works as if if there's money at the end of this fiscal year, it says these are the things that will be funded in order with that extra money.

[Speaker 3]: So is that carryover from this current year?

[Speaker 1]: From yeah. From fiscal 2020.

[Speaker 3]: Of these things that are in the budget don't end up, excuse me, happening.

[Speaker 1]: Me what do you mean not happening?

[Speaker 3]: Well

[Speaker 1]: Like, if we have a if we if we come in under the budget, like, if the revenue is below what we're expecting, then we'll have to do some kind of rescission and none of the contingencies would be funded and something else would have to also be cut. And that's we have this whole process for rescission if we if we get to that point.

[Speaker 3]: Okay.

[Speaker 1]: But there isn't like a rescission list. Like the I think the governor proposes a rescission plan to the e board.

[Speaker 3]: Okay. And if the on the contingency list, if there's an amount listed, there's not so I know that I think a million dollars is listed for that fund. But if there's only a 100,000, would it get a 100,000 if it gets down to that?

[Speaker 1]: Yes, there's it's second on the contingent list. The first thing on the contingent list is 4. Something million for the tech mod fund that we had took some money for some one times but the governor's office really wanted us to try to put the money back into that. They need it for the ERP projects, the computer projects the state is working on. So let's say we end this year with $6,000,000 The first 4.8 would go to the Tech Mod Fund for that amount of money. Next million would go to the farm security fund. There's a caseload reserve $5,000,000 for human resources in case we have more federal drawbacks as Senator Clarkson mentioned. And then there's a big chunk of money that would go to next year for federal issues or property tax buy downs or other things like that.

[Speaker 3]: Okay. So there could be partial funding for some of the things on the list?

[Speaker 1]: Yeah. So if there was only 3,000,000 next year, it would all go to the Tech Mod Fund and the farm security wouldn't wouldn't get funded. Okay. Senator Ram Hinsdale.

[Speaker 8]: Just back to the ethics commission, it was news to me that the director of the ethics commission was on a sabbatical. We have a policy in place for for any position that receives public dollars that we don't have the capacity to do paid sabbaticals I imagine it was not paid for with any public dollars.

[Speaker 1]: That did not come up with the testimony other than it was noted that she wasn't testifying and presenting as she had in the past of the board chair. Did all the work on advocating for the ethics committee. We didn't take any testimony on her.

[Speaker 2]: We didn't either and we shouldn't find out. I mean we'll just find out. It's easy Yeah. I

[Speaker 1]: believe the House government operations committee took testimony she's not being paid.

[Speaker 8]: I think they're still looking into it. That's what

[Speaker 7]: I heard this morning. All right.

[Speaker 1]: Yeah, and I think this the this issue and some other issues are kind of one of the contributing factors to to the not getting funded I think.

[Speaker 2]: But that's quite honestly an agency of administrations issue and HR issue. So I but I do think that are not funding the ethics commission is really becoming it's a huge challenge. Mean it was a huge lift to create it. I mean there was a lot of resistance in creating it. What are we all so afraid of? I just don't get it. And we now have a functioning ethics commission with a strong board and they are ready to do the work we have asked them to do and we continue to cut them off at the knees. It is really a, it's it's a little shocking that we are not willing and we get a really bad grade on ethics in nationally. Right. Fair enough. Yeah. We all think we don't have a problem. We have a problem. And we need to address it

[Speaker 8]: as a matter for the government operations committee to look into. I don't think it's a budgetary matter if the director was on sabbatical that makes it difficult for the appropriations committee to do work on the budget side when it's a policy question of how well it's working. The board has been very articulate so and very present.

[Speaker 5]: Well and I would just add that in my office I've gotten quite a number of calls from people having ethics complaints in their town government and absolutely nowhere to go and so it is definitely an issue around the state.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Definitely. Majority of the complaints coming in are actually municipal complaints. I think it's really problematic that we're not funding them doing that work and growing the work that we're doing. To senator Clarkson's point, we get a d minus in

[Speaker 2]: ethics Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: As a state, and I I think we should really be striving to do better.

[Speaker 3]: And we took extensive testimony on this two years ago when we passed the bill, the Government Operations Committee did a lot of work. We heard from town officials and people all over the state on this issue. And I agree with the Lieutenant Governor that this is people don't have a place to turn and we need to fund this this commission. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]: It was an example of one of the the decisions the tough decisions that we didn't enjoy enjoy making for sure. Any other questions on the one times? So the other handout you got was the thing that's called the big bill senate web report. This is kind of it's the full web report. This is a truncated version. This is 31 pages. The full version is a 131 pages. And this is truncated just to changes to government. So for example, you won't see anything in here about the lieutenant governor's budget because the lieutenant governor budget actually was less than it was last year. And we agreed with the governor and the house that we were okay with the lieutenant governor spending less money than he did last year. So I didn't include the things like that in here. So you won't see so if you're looking for a specific section of government, it's not in here. That's because they just were within their 3% inflationary increase, and it really wasn't anything to to point out. So the the members will go through some of these things and describe all these changes. You'll see the the the budget, how this is structured. You'll see the the budget section number, the title, the last year's money, what the governor did, what the house did. And if there's a change, there'll be a little box below that says what the change was, and that's changed from the governor's recommended. So this starts with the governor's recommended budget, and if there's a change, it would be in here, and then the change would be described in those little boxes below. And I I I will go through some as the other members will. But that's just showing you what this document is. And if you wanted to see the full report, it's on our website. It's also on JFO's website. But this if you're ever looking for something, specifically a number, go to the web report, do a control f, and then you can find it. It's an you can also do that with the addendum, but sometimes it's helpful to do it in the web reports. You see all the the numbers. And the web report has all the all the stuff that we saw in the one time sheets and the base sheets are are in there. So for the final handout, which is just the bill that you're the the the senate amendment that you're gonna be voting on, I'll just describe this a little bit. So on page five of the addendum, there's a little table of contents of the of the budget numbers of the of the whole the b sections. And then notice that the b section, the e sections kinda go together. The e sections are the language. The b sections are just the the numbers. So you'll notice if you flip through the beginning of this addendum, it's all just numbers of all parts of state government. And if you if you find one you're interested and you're like, well, I wonder what they said about b five zero six, you just go to e five zero six. And if there's language, that's that's where it would be. So section b is all the the base appropriations below the number 1,100. And then when you get above 1,100, that's all the one time appropriations. So sometimes we talk about the the 1,101 time appropriations. Section one zero one, which is on page 61, that's the contingency list that senator Hardy was asking about. That's section b one eleven o one. And that that shows you the numbers and the wording of the contingency list. Section one zero two on on the next page, page 62, is the cash fund that's in the capital bill. So we take the cash fund since that's cash from the general fund that they're spending in the capital bill, that has to be in the budget. So section one zero two is the 23,400,000 of the cash fund. It's you'll hear all about these things when you get the capital bill, but they're all here. And I think there's even an amendment that there were some errors in the cutting and pasting of this list. I think the dollar number is right, but the list some of the list is wrong. So you'll see you'll you'll hear all about those appropriations on page 62 when you when you get the presentation on the capital bill. Section c are changes to the the or the c section are is this changes to this year's fiscal year. So sometimes last year, if you remember the governor vetoed the Budget Adjustment Act two or three times. So we had to put all the budget adjustment act in here. This year, we just have some slight changes to this year's fiscal year on here. That that starts on page seventy sixty four. So you'll see on page 64, an example of that, section one zero two changes language from last year's budget. We had $74,000,000 set aside for things like property tax or federal funding shortfalls because of the renter rebate amendment from finance, we had to change that to 71,000,000. So that's an example of a change in this year, this fiscal year that we have to make. And there's some other of those in the c sections. Section d is transfers and reversions. This includes education transformation language when we added the 1,500,000 per ed transformation. That's what the the d section is. It's just any transfers or reversions in the budget. And section e is all the the language sections. As as I said, it matches up with the the b language, the b numbers, if you're looking at it that way. What section? That starts on page 75. The section e. If you go to if you go to page 75, the first e section is positions. And it just runs through because often when we make appropriation, you'll need specific language. The money is gonna go to this agency, and they have to do it by this year, and then you need to do a report. So you'll find the language for appropriations in this e section, which is kind of page page 75 almost to the to the very end. After the e section is the pay act, and that that starts in e one zero eight. So I so I guess the e section doesn't go to the end. The pay act takes a big chunk of that. Section e is this I mean, section f is the pay act. Think that starts on page one zero eight. So if you're interested in the pay act, go to page one zero eight. I think that's where f starts. So that's what I said here, but I no. It starts on page. Oh, no. No. It it section f starts later. I don't have the right page number here on my notes. Looks like on page one twelve or something like that. Yeah. One fourteen is the is where the pay act. And the pay act was added to the budget. Sometimes the pay act travels by itself, and then we just put the numbers in the budget, but the house appropriations took the pay act and put it into the budget. So when we got the budget, the whole pay act was already in there. There, I was just gonna mention that there is why I was mentioned page 78, there is a study about Pay Act, specifically around exempt employees and how that formula is created and how it impacts exempt salaries as compared to classified salaries. We spent some time on that in the committee, not enough, but there is that study I just wanna point out. Section E108 page 78. And section G is the effective dates, little larger effective dates than your normal bill. I just wanted to point out, we might also point out when some of this will be repetitive when we go through the actual amendment. But on page one twenty nine, this e part of the effective dates is important language that we added that we've never had in the budget before. We added 30 positions in the budget. A chunk of those positions, I wanna say like seven or eight are contingent on us getting a positive economic forecast in July. Because we were concerned about adding positions and then if there was a need for a decision, we didn't wanna hire people then tell them like, oh, just kidding. You're now laid off because we don't have the money. So a chunk of the positions, has the e those e numbers in there, you would go and look at which ones they are. But there's a a construct here that says those will only those positions, the e 100, e one eleven, all those positions will only take effect if there isn't a reduction of 1% or more from the consensus forecast at the July. Or if there is a reduction of 1% that the fiscal committee says, even without reduction, we think it's important to keep those jobs. So the fiscal committee, if the reduction is more than 1%, joint fiscal committee would have to meet at their July or September meeting and say, we're gonna fund those positions anyway. So that was a new thing that we did that I don't think we've done before, and that kinda goes to one of those legs I talked about of having a stable chair is that we're protecting ourselves from just kinda an unknown future and feeling a little uncertain about the economic situation that we're gonna have next next fixed fiscal year. So those are all the handouts. That was what I was gonna go over in the caucus of the whole. I have the question of senator Chittenden.

[Speaker 9]: So, my question is, and I don't see a change in here, but I 99% sure this is an appropriations question that does intersect with aspects of this budget. The Vermont League of Cities and Towns is making a pretty eloquent case that as we're seeing more and more revenues going into the from the local options taxes from towns opting in at a higher rate since we made it easier for them and with the Wayfair decision when them collecting these revenues even in small towns with just deliveries that the surpluses similar to what we did in previous years. I think it was as recent as Lee as last year, they're asking for the allocation from the pilot fund to going back to the communities to be shifted from 7525% to eighty and twenty. Yep. I'm curious if your Senate Appropriations Committee had took any testimony, considered that, and also what are we doing with the the monies that in excess of the pilot fund? And if you said that while I was out of the room, my apologies. But any comments

[Speaker 1]: I waited till you left. We did talk a lot about the pilot funds. I don't think we had the league in to talk about it, but but we heard they did make that pitch last year when we went to 70 to 75. They wanted to go to 70 to 80%. Basically, if if well, we heard in going over the the pilot fund spreadsheets tables. If you do that, then we will we would run out the surplus. So right now, is like a $10,000,000 surplus. The transportation fund moves 3,000,000 of that to local roads, and it has a construct if there's more surplus in future years. Some of that goes to local roads. If if if you get to 80%, joint fiscal projections are in a few years, you would you wouldn't have a surplus, and then that you would run low. But we don't know. There's the argument that the league makes is like, more no more towns are doing it. There's gonna be more money. The surplus is gonna grow. At least my take was, let's wait till that happens. We don't wanna promise the money, run the surplus down, and get to a point where we were before I was here in the senate where we weren't making the full pilot payments to the towns that have state property because we didn't have enough in the pilot fund. So I think we kinda wanted to have that discussion when the pilot fund was more stable. I think in the future, if if the surplus starts to grow, then it's a I think it's a stronger argument. Right now, the surplus is set to shrink even at the 75. So if we move to 80, it would shrink faster. The argument is that it would grow with more towns doing local option taxes, but until that happens, you know, several towns tried to do it and then voters said no. So we'd rather wait to see it growing before we make that change. At least that was what decision I made. There wasn't really a decision point to be made on it, but that's that's that that basically is my position. Yes. Can you go

[Speaker 10]: I'm back on this.

[Speaker 1]: This The highlight highlight sheet. Yes.

[Speaker 10]: And I'm on page two in the other section. Romanette three.

[Speaker 1]: Romanette. Yeah. Aren't you glad I added Romanettes?

[Speaker 2]: I'm so glad.

[Speaker 1]: I had to force JFO to do that. They did they wanted bullet points. I said I want Romanettes.

[Speaker 10]: So there's some evidence that the Vermont State Colleges have been adding administrative positions while potentially cutting some teaching staff and with either steady or declining enrollment. And I'm just wondering the 3% increase. Is that do you give any you know, do you dictate where that money goes or provide any guidance?

[Speaker 1]: We do not. This is just a flat 3% to their appropriation, and I thought an earlier version we had what their total was. Does anybody at GFO remember what what the totals was? Because sometimes it's helpful because it's it maybe I just added the dollar. Before it's at 3%, I added the 4.11 so you could do the math. But we the basic answer is no. We could. Like, it it would be within our jurisdiction, but this is just saying, here's an inflationary adjustment to your base appropriation from the state.

[Speaker 7]: Thank you.

[Speaker 1]: Hey, Andy. It's on Yeah. Line number, the 3% actually, 67. What what line is it?

[Speaker 9]: On the orange. 67

[Speaker 1]: on the orange. 67? Yep. That's the one we're talking about. I know. You just wanted to bring up six seven. Know. Yeah. So Yeah. So the 67, 68, 69 all have showed the 3% increase. It doesn't tell you what the total is, but it shows you so that on the other highlight sheet is the total of those three, but you can see UVM is 1,720,000.

[Speaker 2]: May I follow-up a question on that? Yeah. Just generally, our objective over the last six years, more than that is to been help our Vermont State University survive and flourish. Where are we on that financial bailout and is this 3% the only what additionally are we spending on the Vermont State University to keep it to keep the foundation solid. I'm not asking the right question but you know

[Speaker 1]: what We did a big transformation plan a few years ago and I think it was a three year five year plan.

[Speaker 2]: I think it's $25,000,000 so.

[Speaker 1]: Dollars 5,000,000 a year for five years. So last year was the last year of that plan, they got their last $5,000,000 bump. Okay

[Speaker 2]: great, thank you. Because that in I think we have to look at all these pieces that were in context of.

[Speaker 1]: Were And from all accounts, we'd spend more time last year since it was the last year, but that it worked. Like that Yes. Both state colleges and the community college are stable and and, you know, not we're not at the brink of the closing as we were five years ago.

[Speaker 2]: Which is great.

[Speaker 4]: So is it Andy?

[Speaker 1]: Yes. Senator Westman.

[Speaker 4]: If you look at the one time list for general fund and big sheet on line 62, you'll see treatment immunity. Yes. It says to VSAC that it's 2,300,000. That really increases the tuition, on the household income per student. It raises it from 65,000 to 85,000. All of the students that are Vermonters that are Vermont State University would go from 62,000 to 85,000.

[Speaker 2]: That's great. Can everyone hear that? I mean that's just that's a great piece

[Speaker 1]: of news. That's line 62 on this one time sheet, money extra money for P sec. Which

[Speaker 2]: is great and if people didn't hear that, they should hear that because our constituents need to know that.

[Speaker 1]: I will be talking about that. Yeah. That's part of our presentation.

[Speaker 2]: Good news. One piece of good news.

[Speaker 1]: You have a hand up. Yes. You. Senator Harrison.

[Speaker 3]: So on the seat that we're on.

[Speaker 1]: Okay.

[Speaker 3]: The one time appropriations, the bills with one time appropriations. Line 73 h two eleven data brokers. Looks like the house put in some funding, it out and said do not concur with the house. Is that bill dead? No.

[Speaker 1]: I think the bill is still alive.

[Speaker 2]: That was 02/11 and it's not dead and that I hope will be negotiated with the House of the Senate. Okay.

[Speaker 1]: And I think we did there were I want to say there was another part of the bill isn't there another appropriation from that bill Amy? I think it was $20,000 for some some other part. Think the 50,000 was to figure out how to how to erase your data or, like, get out of

[Speaker 2]: deletion at least for the Secretary of State's office to do.

[Speaker 1]: Right. So that

[Speaker 8]: But we should be clear. They can't achieve that with $50,000. It's to

[Speaker 0]: study

[Speaker 1]: that It was a study of do,

[Speaker 8]: which we may not have the money.

[Speaker 1]: And there were Yeah. So we

[Speaker 2]: They took it out.

[Speaker 1]: We did take that out. Yeah. There was some another thing of the bill that we did find. I want to say it was $20.00. This was $50.00.

[Speaker 2]: But thank you.

[Speaker 1]: Okay. Any other questions? Yes, Senator Scott.

[Speaker 7]: Yeah. On the line, I'm looking at the general fund one time appropriation fee, line 76, dollars 300,000 for fuel sales registry fund. I couldn't find any associated language in the section for that money? I know that bill is it's over in natural resources and energy right now. So what's 300,000 paying for and is there any associated language?

[Speaker 1]: There would be. So what I just want to make sure we're on the same.

[Speaker 7]: I'm on line 76 of the general fund one time appropriation.

[Speaker 1]: Okay.

[Speaker 7]: The the house had no money and the senate has $300,000. Yes.

[Speaker 1]: I think the let's see.

[Speaker 2]: It must be one of your bills.

[Speaker 1]: It's $7.40. Yes. So we we set aside that if the bill was to pass. So, like, if the bill doesn't pass, we won't need the money. But that was money that we were told from ANR was needed if the bill is to pass.

[Speaker 7]: So the language is in Senate Natural Resources Energy.

[Speaker 1]: Yeah. So the language is in a seven forty. So there's no language so that this section of the one times are with the bills. So these appropriations travel with the bills. So if the bill doesn't pass for some reason then it wouldn't

[Speaker 2]: It would go

[Speaker 7]: to the bottom line.

[Speaker 1]: Yeah. It would go to the bottom.

[Speaker 7]: Okay. Thank you.

[Speaker 1]: Any other questions? K. You can have other questions in between second and third reading, of course, or while we're on the floor in second reading. So with that, I think we can end the caucus of the whole.