Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Okay.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We're live. It's inappropriate.

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: It was a week now. We're

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: still going to budget adjustments and proposals. We have sheriffs and state attorneys with us now. Can you introduce yourself to the record, please? Thank you. Senator Singh Warren, executive director of the Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs.

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Good morning, senators. I'm Anne Newman, Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And also with us, introducing Lauren Flemons, who is not Annie's replacement, but her successor in our department, labor relations and operations. And Lauren has been with us for a little bit now, a couple months, yes, and is doing an incredible job. As you all know, our department essentially has our own HR, it's personnel and labor, because of the InRay elections decision, which many of you remember, and Annie's said many times. And so you're looking at our personnel, labor relations, and HR all wrapped into one in this room. So welcome to to Lauren, and I I wanted to make sure you all were familiar with her. Did you also remember last year, we took a position, fiscal IT position, and we're in the process of hiring that. We thought it was important to note that Annie Newton was doing essentially two jobs, fiscal operations and fiscal oversight and labor. And so we split those two, and we're in the process of recruiting for that right now. So Annie is here providing crucial fiscal oversight over me for the foreseeable time until as long as we can keep her. But that's some of the intro piece. Thank you for having us in. Just have a one pager for our BAA, which I know you're all probably appreciate. I do have copies, if anyone would like one.

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: I'll take one. No worries.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Just keep going around here, why are Sure. I also submitted, and I have extra copies as well, some data on the accountability docket in Chittenden. It should be on your website. And that is current as of last week. I have some updated numbers today, but it relates to our our DAA ask. And I might have Andy go through the numbers and the asks, and then I can provide some color commentary if helpful on the accountability guide and transport issues. Right. Thank you for reminding me section what what the section it is?

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: 205.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: 18O5.

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: 205 for the state's attorney's piece and two zero seven for sheriff's.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And the other last bit of preface is that our ask mirrors the governor's ask, and it should have started with that with respect to the DAA, both for our sheriff's public and our chief's attorneys. So I have two zero seven, not on the two zero five. I believe they put it in a separate section with respect to the sheriff's. Maybe it was He sheriff's two zero seven. Yes. The state's attorney piece. I think they may have put into a miscellaneous document at the governor's office. That's the worksheet. It's

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: not the time.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. Sure. The the document is further down. Yeah.

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Yes, the one time on page seven.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You haven't seen any worksheets that are that may be used to ending.

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Oh,

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: yeah. Second thing. Yeah. Now we go over here. Okay. Sorry to interrupt. Nope. And just starting with the accountability docket, just going back, in part, there's a lot of good conversations in this building and and senator Bert senator Norris' committee. We've been trying to find ways in our existing structures to move more cases more quickly. 50 of dockets are for people with three or more cases, so it's taken up a lot of our time and space in the court system. So we did a pilot program with the governor's office, the judiciary, governor general, and the agency of human services has been incredibly helpful throughout the whole process. We opened up a courtroom that was available to us. It's called 3B up in Chittenden County on the 3rd Floor, and we started to use it for people with five or more pending documents. When we started in October, we had, just looked at the numbers this morning, we had eight ninety open dockets with respect to the five or more category. That's not the total number of dockets. It's the number of people who've been advised. Actually, it's the total number of dockets. It was about 100 people. Parodying about 900 cases. Okay. As of yesterday, we had cleared five thirty of the eight ninety cases. So we cleared about 60% of those cases in just over two months, which shows you the power of court space and time dedicated where homicides and aggravated sex assault cases are not taken out of that court. So, as I stated across the hall, down the hall, not mission accomplished, mission is in progress, but it's been successful thus far. You started in October? October 20. So is it over? It's going to conclude February 9. There's a transition plan to still use the courtroom starting in mid February. And as a reminder, we were using an interagency agreement with the governor's office. So a deputy state's attorney from Washington County, who is co serving as a deputy state's attorney and a special prosecutor for the governor in that space in Chittenden, Zad Wait, who, at some point, when you should all hear from him at some point, because I do think it's very helpful to hear from him about what he's experience. But he has been the point person on the prosecutorial side and working with AHS, with Department of Corrections, and with our transport program as well in Chittenden County, which has been key to the to the program. So we've moved about 60% of the original cases. We have, right now, 29 active defendants accounting for about two thirty remaining dockets, which is fantastic. That's sort of where we started, where we're at. And I think one of the real takeaways, dedicated work time, flexibility work time. So we're not doing thirty, sixty, ninety days. We're doing next week, week after. We're gonna see, again, how are things going. And the second piece is having the AHS and support services right there, right there in the courtroom, or right outside of the courtroom, so that the connection to services happens immediately upon your court appearance, as opposed to figure out if we can get something. In a few weeks, we've seen that. That immediacy has helped. Obviously, substance use is underlying a lot of the issues that we're seeing across the state, and Chittenden County is and mental health, and I would say, to housing. So those three converging pieces are all very, very key. So it's been successful, and I'll let Anne run through the numbers, which are just about what I would call personnel services. The deputy state's attorney that we used up there, no cost to the state. Same salary and benefits, we just moved them up to Chittenden, no increased cost for that. No increased cost, but there's a cost. Is there something else that person was positive? We his cases were assigned and managed by different staff here in Washington. He's rejoining in sort of a dual role three week staff here in Washington. Yes. So I just got a couple questions. One is, is there gonna be an important three b project coming up, and who's that gonna go to? Are we gonna see a judiciary? Or because today, was it Windsor or Wyndham, introduced a bill Yeah. For a project on the same thing. I think that Chittenden County is unique because of the resources that it offers and the public defenders and the state's attorney, whatever. So I'm not sure every county has that same those same assets within their county here. So it's a little bit of a different situation here. So I'm wondering if we should, you know, as political, look at as a bill, maybe a rotating type of thing here about so we are gonna get a report. Someone's gonna get a report on this one. Yeah. And there's a data tracking report that the governor's office has been driving, and that's actually what is posted on your website, I have extra copies as well here of the data as of last week, including the types of sentences that have been handed down. But what you're talking about is key estimate. If we're going to try to move this other places, maybe it's kind of SWAT approach of not every county needs the same thing, not every county has the same access to services. So works in Chittenden is probably gonna be looking different here in a different county. But Lyndon County is one of the counties where we definitely need more space and time for this, for sure.

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: We've had inquiries from other counties too. We've Washington County, state's attorneys say, I'd love to have something like this. Rutland, Franklin, some of the counties where their cases have been exploding as a result of substance abuse, mental health issues, homelessness, all of that. So, I think the more, as people are seeing this success story, I think more people are going be interested in trying it. At which point, as Tim said, that needs a judge time, it needs a space time, and it needs a prosecutor and defense counsel. So it certainly has, in our view, proven to be a very successful pilot contributor. Right, so concurrent with what's happening in the courts, one of the things that we heard about during the summit for mental health and courts in September was from, it's actually from the Community Justice Center in Caledonia about how they coordinate services to provide information to the courts and have all identified services for folks. And I do have a bill in judiciary, I'm not sure if gonna look at it, but there's a robust program in, I think it's I'll say New Mexico or Arizona, always get a mix of, very, very expensive program but I don't think we need that. But we need to have that, the community services and access and know where they are at the same time that this court is going on, otherwise it won't work. So that was the motivation for my putting that bill in. And I know we have talked about other things. Absolutely.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Sorry to interrupt any about getting to the numbers, but I have another kind of overall question. Is there anything that you learned that was surprising? It seems to me that it would be kind of a no brainer that if you had a dedicated courtroom and a judge and an attorney, you're going to get through more dockets. That seems like it wasn't a surprise. How did we learn that we didn't already know? Or did this just prove the case that we got to put more resources into the new system? Yeah, I mean, so there's one piece that Annie's mentioning, just getting to your point. Having the AHS piece right there, and I say AHS and I'm using it as a synonym for larger services, but they've been very key and helpful. Having them right there, Howard Center and Chittenden, Washington County Mental Health would be here, seems to be one of the most important pieces to it, because even if you had the court time and space, and you're kind of moving through dockets, if you don't have the connection to services, you're going to see them. And the other thing we've seen from the community and the business community has seemed to respond to this as well, knowing that if someone commits their fifth retail theft in Chittenden County, they're going to get into court quickly and have to see a judge multiple times with a sure trial date. That has changed some of the culture and perspective. And also, the Chittenden County State Attorney's Office, Sarah George, working with us, has been able to, she's had her administrative staff assist with this, which gets through our VAA request, but she's been able to focus on serious cases in the other courtrooms. So that is a piece that we, I think we knew it, but we've learned that having that space to breathe in your major felony docket, and then a dedicated space and time for what I would call nonviolent felony docket, or misdemeanor docket, because there's nonviolent felonies that are in this court, that seems to be more important than we even knew before. And truly, if you have a fifth retail theft case, and you're trying to find your way into the court calendar in Chittenden County, you're competing with 24 homicides. Right. Not to mention a bunch of other serious case categories. Something we've learned is that the flexibility of court time, not just the access to the court, but the court being able to say, instead of, hey, when can we get them back? I'll see you next week. And just the surety of I'll see you next week and the week after seems to be sending a deterrent or accountable umbrella over the top of the whole program. Thank you. Yes. When when the program when the backlog is taken care of totally and the program is goes away. Right? It goes away at the three yeah. It's a three month The 3rd Floor goes away. Will will we eventually slip back into the same situation we're in there? So something that representative Oliver said, which I now have to quote, is that this is the way court should be in the general. So once we get out of this system of misdemeanors, file more misdemeanors than felonies, so we're always having the alligator ballot increase with respect to misdemeanor cases, because we don't have enough trials. 80% of our trials are still felonies. So we stack up those misdemeanors. What we hopefully have is a space where we are not just delaying justice on the misdemeanor basis of nonviolent felonies, but I think, to your point, this is the way court should be happening across the state in terms of not having to worry about competing with major felony cases. So I hope it doesn't go away in terms of what we're learning from it. Even if the courtroom, I hope the courtroom utilization continues as well in Chittenden, because they clearly have the volume. They filed twice as many cases as any other county. But it is incorrect. This is a file item in February. The special prosecutor is gonna move back to his regular job in Washington. We believe Judge Pat, the presiding judge, is going to continue to utilize He's a retired judge. He's the current presiding judge. Isn't he retired? Judge Maley is the one who's currently presiding. He is gonna be departing, we believe, but we think they're gonna still use the three courtroom for these types of cases, but we'll see how that looks in February. We can report back in February, see how that looks. So

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: the numbers that you see in front of you talk about essentially salary benefits and some small amount of money for operating expenses, which is basically in state travel. But let me tell you what the small amount for salary and benefits is. This topic happens really quick. As Tim was saying, you could be in there on Tuesday and just have it back in on Monday. So everything has to be very quick. The agreement's very quick. The filings have to be very quick. Any paperwork that has to occur to support this court has to happen very quickly. So our administrative staff in the Chittenden office sometimes have to basically, they have plenty of work all the time on their plates. And sometimes it's like, well, I can't get to these this word right here because I've got I've got to support the accountability court. It's happening quickly. I've got to get these things filed. So that amount of money is according to four or five of our administrative assistants who have volunteered to do a few hours of overtime a week, take two to three hours of overtime a week to catch back up with what was a pile of staff that they didn't get to. So it really is a small amount of money to provide our admins with some overtime.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: They get time and hand.

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Yes, the FLSA covered. That's what that is. And the expense reimbursement is basically to reimburse Zach has not yet put in any expenses. As Tim said, we didn't charge him for us to put Zach in this bad position. But he's been driving and doing other things and we basically left a placeholder for him if he had expenses that we didn't know about for him to be able to put in for mileage or anything else that he incurred. And so we don't think it will be much, but we figured we'd better put some money in there because it's to support the support. So the total amount of money for the the program is 36,848. And that's essentially most of that is is to provide some some overtime compensation to our employees who have volunteered. We didn't, you know, said, would you be willing? And, you know, all of our staff member said, yes.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Exactly that full time. But did there was some effect on the Washington County work as the other one full time attorney at this gun and baili court? I think I could I could speak with the Washington County State's Attorney, but we actually spoke to her this I did. I talked to her yesterday. Yeah. And

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Yeah. I I think Tim represented what our our state's attorney in Washington, Michelle Maloney said, which is basically her staff has picked up the slack. Don't know if there would be some issues for Michelle in terms of her staff, but that pot of money could be, we would be putting that in our overtime line. So if Michelle said, you know, got behind or Chris got behind, we would be able to tell Michelle you can tap into some of that too. I think they already have some additional support in that office that we gave them a number of years ago. Washington County, unfortunately, has been a busy area.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Everything I heard about the accountability part, like, other than that Washington County might be having some impact on that because it's one of our attorneys in the community. Yeah, one of the reasons that I made a recommendation for Deputy States Attorney Wade, because he's a resident of Milton, and so he was a Chittenden County resident, but he wasn't currently part of the office because one of the keys that we saw was not pulling from State's Attorney George's existing ranks, which are carrying out 24 homicides, but an additive piece to that Chittenden County operation. And he is, by the way, embedded in the Chittenden County State's Attorney's Office, and one of the one of the intern desks in the State's Attorney's Office there, embedded within her office, working in sync with Karen Staff. I'm sorry. Yes, Norris. So do we anticipate that the state's attorneys and sheriffs absorb all these costs, or do we anticipate cost from the general's office, or is this all voluntary? These only cost involved in a three d project?

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: That's what we estimated as our cost to support the program.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: For the SIS program?

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Yes. I don't know if Defender General Valeria would have any request, I don't I don't

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Judiciary had a vote.

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Judiciary might. Because they had they had a judge.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: A judge. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I suspect everybody will have some marginal office. Very good.

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: The sheriff's a little bit of a different situation along with that. So let me set the scenario. Last year, we came into the sheriff's rolled into June 30, the last day of budget year, and 12 of the dollars in the budget. You could say great great budget estimated. But the reality is we were sweating whether or not we didn't need to make final table the math. That was a really tough situation. This year what we're seeing is, just exploding the house in April for lots of reasons, let's just use one, the accountability court had us running really dragging up and chit. Secondly, we've been busy. The court system is opening. We've had more jury trials this year than we had in previous years. And when we used to be able to help get help from Department of Corrections when they were more robustly staffed. We could call and say, we've got somebody up at North I've been on And they got a trial. We need them down in Rockland on Monday morning at eighty, and corrections would move them for us to get them closer so that we basically were they were right there. Corrections doesn't has told us and had told us, you know, for months and months, we don't have the capacity. We just don't have the capacity to move people around. And I don't think that that is necessarily untrue. We had a very good relationship with our former center and I, but we used to be able to call out and say, this is what we're looking at. Can we help? And they would then they went to a new twelve days notice or we need whatever. At this point, they're basically saying we don't have the staffing to assist. So that has meant that we are running very, very, very rapidly. And lots of really long trips and lots of overtime. And our overtime line has essentially exploded for our state transport deputies. And so we're trying to work through what that looks like. In doing this, we've not only incurred overtime, but we've incurred a lot greater mileage because again, corrections is not moving people, of course, we're running the roads to grab them. Per diem use, all the things that we see related to the transport program have exploded. So sitting with the budget and the budget status is to where we are. As of today, we're we're way over and over, and we are working with the sheriffs asking to help us control. But the reality is, if the judge says, I want someone to court at 08:00 in the morning, we don't really have an option. Wish you a transport order. We Senator Watson here at 08:00 in the morning. We got

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: it You might

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: not get seen until 02:30 in the afternoon, and then we're dragging you back to her. So this is what's going on. And I know Senator Norris is well familiar with sitting in court, you know, in his private iteration of his career, sitting there hoping that the judge who had you bring somebody in at 09:00 in the morning is gonna see them. And 03:00 in the afternoon, you'll able to leave the watch and you come out and see them. So we're we we're working, we've tried to work, we are trying to work with Judge Sonne and Board of Administrator Brissonnes to try to get them to do more scheduling so that we are able to control the overtime at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day. Formally made a complaint about one of our judges and one of the captains who was holding all of our people to the very last case of the day. People when they would have us present there at the very beginning of the day. So we actually went to judge and said, this happens after a single day. Our state's attorney phoned him and burned him. So it's just unfair. We are we're we're bearing the the brunt of that overtime cost when they're not getting home to be at the all night. Oh,

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I was just gonna ask. $50,000, very rough Yes. Round number. Is it an estimate? Is it

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: It's a pretty good estimate. I took what we were spending every every payroll.

[Robert Norris (Member)]: You can

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: And I ran it like, if if if we continue with this pace, what do I need to fill the gap? It's between them. It's, like, 49,000 change, but it's close enough to say 50. So I do on all of these, I actually ran it against our bug status. Like, what are we what have we spent to date? What are we spending per payroll on all of these? And I came up with these numbers, hopefully. Now the hard thing tell is, like, this is sort of, like, the worst the worst part of this whole story is that in this this number to bring us to hopefully to June 30 without getting being in a deficit only does that. We have vacancies today that we we were to fill. We send it I called Senator Norris. We had a chat about this a couple weeks ago, but we have vacancies, including the vacancy, the position you gave us last year. In order for us to fill those vacancies, we would need to come up with for salary, for salaries, we would need to come up with 400 Well, there's four positions. So if you do the four positions with your salaries as they are in the budget, you may need $490,000 to fill the vacancies. Now what is in here is the half a position because, when we met with finance and management, they said, you've got a vacant position that was unfunded. We told you to come back and budget adjustment to ask for it, and we did. And the 53,000 is pretty close. It's budgeted in as step two. We actually need 59, you know, on a slicing it close enough. We can probably figure that out. But we want to be in a situation where we fill the vacancies that we have and the particular vacancy you gave us last year. We want to do that. I just want to say that if we move forward and, Senator Norris and I had this conversation. You know, would I would need to say to you, we will roll into will roll into June 30 with a way bigger debt, with a big deficit. This budget adjustment hopefully keeps us even keeled. But if we fill them, we will be in a deficit. We would have to be back here to the committee for budget adjustment for a big not not for 183,000, maybe for closer to, you know, 400,000 or more. And we just wanted to have that conversation with you and say, that's why we haven't filled them because we just are looking at what it would cost us to fill those. And that's seen a salary and benefits all of that. I'll give you an idea. I ran just one position at a step two, which is basically not an you know, it's not an original probie, but it's step two, would be higher than 59,883. And then you add in the retirement at 28.8%. You add in FICA. You added all the other benefits, including health insurance. Presuming the person that's gonna take health insurance was most of

[Robert Norris (Member)]: our our people would do.

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: And the total number of what we need to build one musician at step two is a 124,000. Now, you know, that's full full vote at a step two. So it's not shocking because in salary, you have all the benefits. It's not. It doesn't, shouldn't, nobody's fallen off and shared that number. But it just goes to show you, you know, I was looking at what did we budget. You know, most of what we have in the budget is in that range. For the four physicians that are sitting out there. In the budget for salaries. I just worry that, I didn't want to say to you, this will be good. Give us this money and we're going to be all good with budget adjustments. We will, if we do nothing else, we don't fill them. But if we fill them, we'll be back here next year talking to you about it. So I wanted to put that out to the committee as a reality and see if we can get a read from you on what you think.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, does that mean you're coming by next year to talk to us?

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: No.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I think it's on the right.

[Robert Norris (Member)]: I think it's used to. Please do. Well, and one thing I

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: might just add to the little color commentary. I unfortunately made a joke last year about holding getting held in contempt. Very nearly was held in contempt this year in one of the counties because I instructed one of our sheriffs not to transport an individual for a post conviction relief civil trial. Because I believe our program is only staffed, and only barely staffed, to transport criminal detainees who are presumed innocent, for an individual who has been convicted, with every PCR they're convicted. That is something we are not funded to do, and historically, the Department of Corrections was able to do that in the past, and I understand they have limitations now, but I was dragged up to a courtroom with an attorney, and had to explain the reasons why I instructed our sheriff not to make that decision, and I stand by that because the program, as is, we must prioritize people who are presumed innocent, and that is the priority of our program. There is pressures from many of the judges about us doing, bringing people in for divorce proceedings for detained people, bringing people in for torts cases, based on the literature, bringing people in for juvenile hearings where there is a detained encounter or a TPR. We have a very limited amount of money, $50,000 at one point, where the judiciary gets billed for TPRs, but that's not a long term solution for that program. It will run out at some point. We haven't run out yet. But I just wanted to say, all that being the context with a twenty eighteen level of detainees in our DOC population, we don't say no to judges who say, we want this person in here for a criminal case. We have pushed back with a transport policy that says, status conferences, I want you to ask the court. What is the purpose of the status conference? Is it to arrange a conversation about change of plea? Is it about treatment? If it's just a status conference, we hope that the virtual setup that we put in our facilities is still capable of doing the occasional status conference, because we don't think that people should be getting strip searched and nine hours in the car to have an eight man conversation with the judge and meet their attorney for the first time. So there is some pressures that are outside our control, which as you can tell, have put pressures on our budget. And in that light, we saw two solutions which are quite important. One is, recently, two weeks ago, an administrative order from the Supreme Court to help with conflicts, so where there's a priority issue. Two transport orders come in. We have been policing which one gets priority, and that has really bothered the third branch, and I understand why. I'm not a judge, and I'm basically trying to police the issue. So we are now setting up a process with the court administrator's office where if we're getting that pressure, we can send it to judge Zonay's office, and he will make the call about priority, not us, which is good, and we're working on that process. The other piece is block schedule. The best practice for detainees would be between really the hours of ten and two. So we're not incurring a 4AM ride or a 5AM drive around. And it's also better for the detainees to know, I'm gonna be seen between ten and two. I'm not I don't know when I'm be seen. I get brought there at eight, I get seen at 03:30. So we're working on that. About half of the courts are engaged in conversation with our office or with the sheriffs about block schedules, which is which is great. That will help eventually with overtime, but it hasn't we're not seeing the benefits of that block scheduling conversation yet. But we are engaged in that. I just want to tell you, we're not just asking for this year. We're seeking some solutions to help with our budgetary issues as well. I didn't understand probably what were saying about the vacancy saving thing. We gave you the position, but no, there was the one where we didn't give you the budget for, but that would be the 01/2020. So why the shortfall, or just because you had that much vacancy savings in your budget.

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: You eliminated most of our vacancy savings in last year, but what's going on is overtime and all of that gets added to your compensation, then drives up retirement contribution, FICA, all of that. All anything payroll related gets driven up if you're if you're if it's based on salary. But we're also running running high in terms of our per diem staff because we they just need more people involved in the transport.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's what Bob, what you're asking for is I've been just

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Yes. That's true. And over time and so really, it's the it's the mileage. Our mileage numbers are very, very high and that's us running around the state. So the piece about the vacancy, the vacancies wouldn't be there. This money brings us level and filling the vacancies which we likely use will put us over you know, by a fair amount, even by even by July.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Things like overtime are eating into the pot of money that we could have used to hire the vacancies, and that is something that we're trying to get our arms around. But if let's say there was no overtime in the last six months, we could've had some of those dollars set aside to potentially hire some of those vacant employees. So we that's not not the reality. And Was this part of your negotiations with the administration? I just don't understand why you didn't come in and ask for all of

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Some of that was, we were, here's your budget number for the budget the AA. We we talked about this with the administration's owners and said, we will support this this this amount that's on the sheet of paper funding, not the not the actual.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, would be helpful if you could do a handout of what those other movies are. I think that would be helpful. I mean, created the positions in front of them that we wanted to do to tell them. But it would be very contrary to say that we don't even fill them. But I understand the budget situation you're in, so I think I'm clear. Yeah,

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: I have all the numbers I can put together a quick memo and probably get it over to the end of tomorrow.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. That'd be great. Any other questions for sheriffs, former sheriffs? If not, I think we're good. Thank you.

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Thank you

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: very much for patience. We'll use a different person next time.

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Said, you know, thank you for some additional fiscal help. We greatly appreciate that support. So Lauren is here to take over the labor relations collaborations, which is what she's doing, and we are in the process of of interviewing, a candidate who will will say yes.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And you're gonna have some overlap, assume, again?

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: There will be some small overlap with me, you know, particularly right now during the budget season. I think that's important. But barbers still barbers are in the dean, who I think you all know, Barbara. Barbara's a great and to also be available to fill in, you know, if they if one item. Thank you. Thank you, folks.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Always a. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. K. Well, now I'm taught the past. A bunch of people came in when the past was up on the. Does that happen every day, mister Andrew? It's like the ring filled up. It

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: is. People get very excited about us. Yeah. We're a hot topic.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Invest different ways. Okay. So we're continuing on DAA with the tax department so you can introduce yourself in the record. Sure.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Of course. Andrew Stein, chief operating officer of taxes. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. So we have three main items in the BAA. The the first is a 1 and a half million up for the renter credit that's general fund. The second is a 1 and a half million down for the homeowner rebate, which is general fund. So I feel I'm gonna I'm gonna focus on those two.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Those are the only two.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Well, we have a third. Yes. In relation to we have a pilot special fund, $500,000 request related to the transition from the telecommunications property tax, the telephone property tax to Is

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: that in this worksheet? You know this worksheet? That's crafting.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: You know, it's funny you could bring that up because I had a little breakout of the exact items, and I realized I don't have it on me. I realized that when I was walking

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, the two of the home owner rebate and rent the retail at the very top of that.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yeah.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: B13713. Do you know where the other one is? I'll take a look. It it should hang in the I'll see your slide.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: I had a little cheat on my house for probation. Shall I start on those two while Yeah. If we're looking for that

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: third one? Top of page seven.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Top of page seven. Great. So starting with the renter credit, the 1 and a half million dollar up. So for f y twenty one, some of you or all of you may remember that there was an overhaul to what was once called the renter rebate, turning it into a renter credit, and that did expand the number of renters who were eligible for the credit. But year after year, we weren't hitting the 9 and a half million dollar appropriation for that. And so heading into well, last year was the the first year of of this new credit. So I guess it was two years ago, the legislature updated the renter credit to expand eligibility, and that also expanded, the group that got the the full amount of the credit before the phase out as well. And so part of the story here is this past year, the actuals came in $750,000 more than estimated. So we were able to work with the administration. Mhmm. We were able to work with finance management. I have lot of support there to figure out administratively pulling some other appropriations where we have balances and some other areas of state government where balances existed to find $750,000 or at that time, it was a little under $750,000, several $100,000 to keep issuing minor credits to people who needed them. Then we were able to continue in the new fiscal year when we got through appropriation. Now

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: we're in

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: the new fiscal year, and in addition to this policy restructuring, the renter credit increases because the program is indexed for inflation.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is that new is that one of the changes?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: That was part of I'm I'm almost certain that was part of the f y twenty one. I don't think I I the only thing that happened heading into fiscal year twenty five was really bumping up that eligibility, which was aimed at helping more renters and providing a higher average credit to those receiving all rent. And the other element here is according to the state housing authority, and our senior fiscal analysts when estimating this works with the housing authorities to get data, It seems that up to a thousand renting households will be losing subsidies between now and the end of well, pretty much in 2025 related to some section eight changes at the federal level. I'm not an expert on that. I have an explanation that I consent house representative, yeah, was interested in learning more about that.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Can you just slide on that in house general? They're talking about section a.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: We we haven't, but I've deferred to the housing authorities on that. That's that just factors into our estimate as to how much is the renter credit gonna cost because when those federal subsidies go away, our renter credit accounts for those federal subsidies. So when those federal subsidies go away, that increases the demand from your credit, and it increases the amount of money that our renter credit Well, you know, so the more there are in the

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: less money they have, the more monies that we pay.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Right? Exactly. Exactly. So maybe if there's in in the past years, when this change first went into effect, it was in the middle of co COVID, and there were a bunch of enhanced renter subsidies, if you all remember. And at that time, analysts thought, oh, it's coming in under 9 and a half million because there's all of these enhanced federal subsidies. So that's that's a major driver here. But over time, as those subsidies phased out, the the code renter subsidies, we still weren't seeing the whole $900,000,000 use. They may go up a bit, but $9,500,000

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Okay.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, it's under the price, because we're gonna see likely the VA some something going on the house on section eight vouchers. There's gonna be some dollars there, but we should think about how it's gonna affect

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: How it'll intersect with things. Yeah. Okay. And then on the homeowner rebate, what this is is this this is this is an appropriation from the general fund that goes to making municipalities whole for those income eligible homeowners who earn under $47,000, the circuit breaker, if all you are familiar with that term. So what this is, is that's that general fund appropriation. And that $47,000 number hasn't changed for a long time, and it's not indexed to inflation. Essentially, people are incomes are growing out of that space, and that's that's the general state.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is there a home value part of that? Well, we have homeowner

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: maybe. There is a home value component to property tax credits for this 47,000. I'm not certain if it intersects with this at all. In general, for property tax credits, there are, but I'm not certain if it has any some of this. I can certainly find updates.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So, basically, since it's not indexed, you're gonna have less and less for the year.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yep. Yep. And, I mean, it does depend on incomes. Right? There was a little bit of a bump around around the COVID era, and it's And it's went back down.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Totally coincidental, but the the two's exact

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: It's coincidental. Yeah. And they're they're round numbers. Say there aren't.

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Well They're

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: they're round numbers. I frankly, we probably could have gone down a little lower on the homeowner rebate. Last year, it ended around 17,000,000. I was a little uncomfortable because that number, it it varies from year to year a little bit, and it's been notoriously difficult to forecast for the analysts. That one's typically one was forecasted. It's a consensus forecast between our analysts, the current fiscal office. So it's been off by 10 to 15% at times over the past five years, so there's a little bit of cushion there just in case.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And the homeowner rebate, we haven't done any we haven't tried to work on that. There's a

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: actually, last year, the legislature passed an an update to this, but it's contingent on all of the other education finance and part of that actually give you the.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I've heard from some of my town clerks that they feel like a lot of people that could get it don't apply for it, and the people that need at least the the ones that are on top of it. Just from there, just knowing, you know, small town courts know everybody and their whole situation. I don't know if there's a way to be

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yeah. I mean, I do think and this is a this is a conversation that we're having in internally at the tax department, and it's something that our new commissioner will be here when we talk about the budget, is is pretty passionate about, which is, you know, service is the core value of our department, and how do we help people access these credits? Yeah. We just had expansion of credits. How do we help people who wouldn't otherwise access them? I personally speculate, and this is pure speculation based on anecdotes, that there are a number of people who don't file because they're concerned, they're low income folks and they're not filing, and if they were to, they're concerned that they might owe a little bit in taxes here and there, and if they were to file, they wouldn't owe anything in taxes, they'd be getting more benefits. So I think there's some outreach and education that we can and should be doing. And we have in the past, but I think there's more that we should do. Makes sense. Okay. There's also something that we're interested in exploring, it's for next year, but where might there be opportunities for us to help automate some of this? And if the federal government had continued to move forward with this direct file program, that would have made it a lot easier for us at a state level to move forward with automating a lot of patents filing similar to

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: what's Any

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: questions on those two?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay,

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: so the next one is for It's for appraisal work and

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So the

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: next one is shifting the telephone personal property tax and the telephone gross receipts tax to the property tax, and this is already in law, it was passed two years ago. Last year it was in the VA and it ended up in the budget bill because of what happened with the VA. And so the deadlines were bumped out, and we had a $150,000 appropriation in pilot. And what we were planning to do was use an administrative mechanism to pull that forward for a year. But because it was from the special fund and there was the notwithstanding language, when we went to do that, Commissioner Gresham and I chatted and he thought it would be best to bring it back in the BAA, which I appreciated, he just, you know, from a transparency perspective, thought it would be helpful. So then when we were going through the budget process, we decided, hey, instead of just asking for the $150,000 which was initially appropriated, ask for the entire amount that's going to be needed over a three, four year period to fully implement this, And so we're under contract for the appraisal work. This is the appraisal of telecommunications properties. We're talking about WiFi towers and fiber cables, all sorts all all sorts of television. Just for municipality? It it'll impact the education fund as well. So if there was a cost, there's a fiscal note on this that Ted Ted wrote. Great fiscal notes. There's a down down.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Good job.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Thank you. But here's the down. Was a down in the general fund and then up in the fund. And then municipalities, they're they're well, number one, you're gonna get consistency across the municipalities in terms of how this property is assessed because it's being done by the state.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is it just not just telephone? Maybe you said the phone review. It's other communication infrastructure?

[Robert Norris (Member)]: Telecommunications properties. Suggested telecommunication. Not electric? Not electric.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: No, electric's different. That was There are Yeah, there was a big statewide utility evaluation effort that wrapped up. We're actually no

[Robert Norris (Member)]: And lost it, and some towns won it, some towns lose, and we've heard from all the ones they've lost. Can you remind us what happened in that?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yeah, so previously, know, high level this was something, my understanding is it's something that the utilities generally supported their property In uniformity. Exactly, and their property is difficult to assess, and it requires a specialized somebody with specialized appraisal skills in that space. And so we hired specialist in that space to do a utility evaluation for the entire stay. And it's part of the grand bliss and, you know

[Robert Norris (Member)]: There's more details about what happened because there were some big losers. Okay. And I've heard from the losers.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Fair enough. They they were overvalued. So

[Robert Norris (Member)]: And you think this one It isn't overvalued. There's a whole Yeah. Yeah.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. That's Any interaction with transportation? Yes. Agency transportation because there's a discussion about whether telecommunications infrastructure and right of what it's owned by state should be paying agency transportation. Oh, interesting. And their report does was mainly, like, well, we don't know where it is. Oh, so so this is wonder if this if this consultant that's gonna be doing the inventory

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: This will be publicly publicly available.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So You know if it's gonna be, like, you know, GIS is gonna be that kind of level of mapping, is it just

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: You know? You know, I I our our I can find out what Okay. And and I have some details from the contract that I pulled out in my notes as to because I get updates as to how the project's progressing. So where we are in the process is the vendor has accomplished the following benchmarks, identification of the property classes that exist in the state, and the creation of valuation classes, essentially buckets for a model. And then an initial sorting of the data by location, owner, and class of property to get a grasp of the scale of the model and the information that needs to be requested specific to Vermont. There are unique requirements that are going to be necessary to value the different geographical areas in the state, mainly how to handle Vermont's unique makeup of towns and cities in this space, and the identification and separation of ownership of all the wireless communication sites and companies that are located in the state, and the identification and vetting of the companies and company ownership mergers and state to contact and send the information request to and try to consolidate what information to ask for, who to ask for it from, and have reviewed more than 10,000 items of initial information to try to turn it into something more manageable for the creation of these information requests. So that's where things stand.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I wonder if that vendor talked to AOT, which also had a vendor. They're I can't remember if AOT did it or if they had a vendor. It's similar scope of work, but it was only for telecommunications infrastructure within the right of way. Wasn't trying to identify, but it was kind of can we get money for it. And their analyst was, and the analysis was, they don't really know if it's in the right of way. They just know there's a line running this way, but does it go over the line, or is it in the farmer's field, is it in the right way? So they said it would cost too much to figure that out, but I don't know if this analysis will actually show us exactly where it is, or it doesn't matter where it is for your purposes.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: I'm not certain either, but I'd be happy to have somebody reach out to you.

[Robert Norris (Member)]: It's more complicated, you know, and when you talk about utility versus, you know Telecommunications. Yeah. Electric utility and telecommunications. Consolidated, you know, for example, I spent six years on the BEC board. 50% of the poles at BEC are utility owned and 50% are consolidated. Sure. And they share the POIS. And they already pay a property tax on all of those, so they have to know some and I'm wondering, does the tax department or whoever that does the assessment you just did the assessment, share that with with the transportation agents?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. I I never really get the report. It would be interesting. I just Yeah. Need to reach out to AOT who's working on that if there's because it could be help they could help this vendor or could help AOT.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: And and who was it at AOT? Was your child talking to y'all about, like, your?

[Robert Norris (Member)]: It was I Dan. Dan. It was Michelle.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It was I think it was Dan. I don't know why. I think that's a lot of the I don't know why Dan got that job.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Dan who?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Railroad right away. He's head

[Robert Norris (Member)]: of the railroad division. He's head of the railroad division. And but consistent Or could be Jeremy Reed.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Mhmm. And he could. You

[Robert Norris (Member)]: to move lines and poles out of the middle of field and move it closer to the road, because not only do you get the benefit of cleaning out the countryside by doing that, but you also have better access if something goes wrong. So the utility comes a bit and they already pay a property tax on those. So Yeah.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: We don't we don't we don't wanna we don't we don't wanna have redundancy in terms of the inventory.

[Robert Norris (Member)]: Yeah. So, you know, it would be interesting to see five g

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: They are getting some money. Some of these companies are paying AOT for the right of way. I assume they'd be end up paying for the right of way and the property. But maybe that's okay. They don't probably wanna be good. But I don't know. Those are two separate things of your your paying for the land.

[Robert Norris (Member)]: And it's really hard to figure out the difference between once a consolidated versus a utility because they share the goals.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. And then, so no other questions on that. You had some pretty large revisions in your budget.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yeah. Yeah.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I'm trying to know if there's anything to say about those.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: So sure. I'm happy to. Typically, our operating budget doesn't have numbers that large in our budget, which would be back here

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: at

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: some point in the next month, I imagine, on our budget, it's 90% salaries and benefits in IT. That's that's Just like vacancy savings? So a good chunk of it was vacancy savings. Had So, and it was really in one division, in our compliance division. We had a situation where we had a number of vacancies and then we lost some key supervision positions who were responsible for recruiting. So it was a tough year for our compliance division on that front. We have a great new audit manager who we're very excited about, shifted over from the federal government. And I anticipate that we're going to be reducing that vacancy savings number this year. We do carry savings, you know, $107,100,000 dollars quite considering this year. So it was above what we had anticipated. Then the other part of that was a number of IT expenses, just things like for our scanning project, for example, which actually this week we wrapped up the implementation of a major scanning project that was several years in banking. Some of the timing of when we would pay those invoices, for example, spending fiscal year, one phase ended at the end of one fiscal year, the invoice comes in the following fiscal year. We budget that about a year in advance or so. And when we budgeted for it, we were just wrapping up that contract, for example. And so when you have a big deliverable coming in, you know, the invoice for a big deliverable coming in around the end of a fiscal year following in another fiscal year, that can create several $100,000 worth of space. We had we had a number even in in the operation costs, our ADS expenditures last year were down. For next fiscal year, we're looking at them being up a bit, as we'll talk about in a month or several weeks, whenever that is. So it was a number it was a it was a number of things coming together. And ultimately, when our IT expenses were down, we have an IT fund, we typically do pay other IT expenses out of our general fund appropriation, the IT fund doesn't cover absolutely everything, it helps us a lot with everything, and so what we did is, for our integrated tax system, we have a roughly $1,000,000 licensing fee every year for that, and we paid for that out of the IT fund to save general fund. And essentially we knew general fund was going to be tight, our IT fund could handle it, and so we did that, the free option. So that ended up bringing this up quite a bit. Those were the

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Then there's a homeowner rebate in your reversion, but there's also the

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: That's the 50. That's the that's the the homeowner rebate in our reversion. It's the same story as the VA in the.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So it's additional. It's a

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: it's reverted to that. That it's because it came in. It was budgeted at, like, at half You have

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the 1,500,000.0 here, and then you have a 2,300,000.0.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yeah. So they're they're different different fiscal years. So the the reversion is from last fiscal year. And so we came in well under what was estimated. So when I saw that, I asked our analysts heading this budget cycle, not just the do a forecast for next fiscal year, but to reforecast this fiscal year based on what we saw So that's FY '25. And then use tax reimbursement, that is the money that the state pays out of general fund to municipalities to make them hold for current use. Current use, the cost of current use is a bit over 70,000,000 and about 75% of that is foregone ed fund revenues, and then about 25% of that is adjustable fund. And that's this appropriation, and it's based on an estimate. We know roughly what it's going to be, but we don't have all the information, and so but it's based on an estimate. It was off by about 1%.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Any other questions here?

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: I just wanna hear that one more time. So the current use program is costing the Ed Fund $70,000,000?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: So between the Ed Fund and the general fund, it costs a bit over 70,000,000 Okay. Yeah, it costs the Ed Fund. If you go to the PBR annual report, which this year it's a little bit delayed, we have a few new property tax system, bunch of new data is coming out of there. So I think it's gonna be coming next week. Okay. But if you look at last year's, it's gonna be up a little bit from that.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And I'm happy to

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: send it.

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Sure. Let me

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: take What percentage you said? Like, two thirds was education, one third?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: I'd say it's, like, about I'd say it's about, like, three I'm gonna say it's about 50,000,000 or so. $50.50 to 55,000,000. Send a request with an email.

[Robert Norris (Member)]: I know you're referring to this program. Something like that.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And as if in steady email?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: It steadily increases because we're talking about the difference between what would be assessed normally and what would be assessed if we weren't basic on these properties.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right, the value is up The to number of properties, like I

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: said, the difference. Number of properties is up to a bit. Well,

[Robert Norris (Member)]: it's not the amount of acreages. It's The first one's there's more properties because people are splitting up larger tracts of land. And the way the appraisal system works is you appraise by first acre, and then it goes down. And so if you have a 100 acre lot, and you create four twenty five acre lots, and they all stay in common use, you end up with four per stake percent. So the value of everything goes up. So when and we've long had this, and we're gonna get my opinion is that if you live in a a a community with where you put a large home and you have 27 acres and 25 of them you keep in the program, it costs more than if it's a 150 acres of a piece.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Has it is there a encouraging report other than the PVR report?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: It's actually The PVR annual report is a big section. It's it's great. It has a history And and and

[Robert Norris (Member)]: since you gave your opinion about this cost the system, I don't think it cost the system anything. What you do is you say, because you keep your land open, we're gonna tax at a lower level. And so I don't see it as a cost to this. It's a tax expenditure. Yes. A tax expenditure.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: The education fund part's the tax expenditure. The general fund part is an actual expenditure to the municipalities.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Because, yeah, we paid it to

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yeah, and it's about last year, the appropriation was about $20,000,000, so

[Anne Newman (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: yeah.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Does it ever come up without allowing out of state landowners to access the program?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: I mean, it might have, but I haven't heard anything about that. Yes. Yes.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That was brought up to me recently. I I didn't heard that. It's about

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: I think it's forties somewhere between eighty, forty five, and 50% of the land in Vermont.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's in the program.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: In in current use. So Yeah.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And Once we know who was the out of state landowners that didn't program?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: That might be very difficult to get out of them. I I would defer to others who who work in that data space. The thing is, like, the mailing addresses for the grand list don't necessarily match up. We're at perfect for you.

[Robert Norris (Member)]: The 50 guards would be the tenants of the program as always, it follows the land. Once the penalty is on, the penalty follows the land, it doesn't follow the rules of it.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Pat, did you have a comment? In the PBR Annual Report, your analyst did come up with a number based on the analysis owner's ZIP code. 23% of parcels are owned by proceeds living out of state.

[Robert Norris (Member)]: I think. You. Mhmm.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It's an estimate, though. Right? Yeah.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: That it's I've read from

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the report. I'm sure yeah. I'm I'm sure there's some squishiness around that. Alright.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: I I don't know, though. It might be some way. Yeah. I'm not I high level, I'm not the one to answer that, but I could find out if you want me to circle back on that.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Well, I'll let other committees take that up if they want to. You

[Robert Norris (Member)]: send out a tax bill, then you have to sign up for the program, and you have to produce your documents. You know, every ten years you have to redo your plan and everything. It's pretty easy to tell where where the documentation where you're sending all the paperwork. One thing I must be pretty close. One one thing that one thing

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: I'm not certain about is if

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: you have multiple landowners and some are in state and some are out of state, how to differentiate that?

[Robert Norris (Member)]: Most of those would be held, not in sole proprietorships. Most of those would be held in an LLC.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So it's where the LLC's place. Okay. Any other questions for tax or former tax commissioners? Any other? I have a quick question. For former tax commission?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: No, for you, Senator. You our point person on this committee still?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I am, I think. Great. I have to look at the chart.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: I'm just thinking for scheduling if you we typically do a deeper dive.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah. So I'll reach out and look at yourself. Very good, thank you. Alright. Thank

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: you. Appreciate it.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Thanks, folks. There's no other comments?