Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Those who say in Time Street, but We

[Big Hartman]: are live.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Senate appropriations. We are continuing with the testimony of the fiscal year twenty seven budgets, and we have the Human Rights Commission in with us today to go over there. Why don't you introduce yourself?

[Big Hartman]: Hi, thank you. I'm Big Hartman. I use theythem pronouns. I'm the executive director and general counsel of the state of Vermont Human Rights Commission. Thank you for having me in today. I feel like I was just here, so great. Yeah. I did print out copies of my memo about our fiscal year twenty seven budget. Do folks need that? Sure. For some reason, I only have five copies.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: I wish I was on the committee. Does the mem I'm assuming it's. Yes. Yeah. I think memo understands first.

[Big Hartman]: Yes. I also brought, again, five copies. In my mind, that's how many people are in this committee, obviously. I don't know. Of our annual report and a mid year fiscal year twenty sixth report in case people want to see kind of the big picture of our work, you know, if you want

[Committee Member (unidentified)]: them in front of us.

[Big Hartman]: And how much is it? Yes. So, yeah, feel free to take those. But I am not sure if you want me to go into too much detail, but in general, we are still going to be planning that we cannot receive any federal funds next year. So that is resulting in a bit of a shortfall from my point of view. And in order to meet the target, recommended by the governor, that is going to require us to have a roughly $65,000 vacancy turnover stated.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Yeah, gonna give that, because that's a pretty big number on your side.

[Big Hartman]: Yes, it's quite bigger than in recent years. Last year, we were made to budget in a $25,000 vacancy turnover savings, and it did end up that we had one employee lead. Our director of policy education and outreach, Lamoille Garcia, left in March, and I did not fill that position until July, which meant that I was doing those two jobs for that period of time. It's that type of holding out on hiring that is a real strain on the office whenever we have done it, and it really leads to incredible burnout. But that, I am not foreseeing with our nine staff who are all fairly new. I'm not seeing any reason to believe that we will be able to realize a $65,000 vacancy turnover savings. If we were to do that, that would mean that someone would leave partly through the year, and I would not hire anyone to do that work.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: So you filled the position that Amanda had told? Yes. Yes.

[Big Hartman]: We reconfigured it to a director of community engagement position, so it's purely focused on education and outreach with the community, as opposed to trying to also juggle that role with all the policy demands on our office. That was really hard. Lamoille was always spread way too thin in that role, trying to do kind of three things at once.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: So right now, you've had no vacancies.

[Big Hartman]: We have no vacancies, and all of my staff are fairly new employees. I'm not expecting anyone to leave, and if they did leave, would absolutely need to fill that position right away in order to continue to process our complaints do the work of our office. Everyone's extremely busy every day.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: So it's likely you'd have to come in for a budget adjustment next year. Absolutely.

[Big Hartman]: Yeah, that is what would happen, I would furlough the staff for about one or two pay periods would make up the difference. Those are the choices that we would be having to make.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik]: Senator Perchlik. Thank you for this big. I'm wondering, on the 95,000, which you are proceeding on the assumption you will not have. Is that I don't see that figured here in terms of what you're looking for.

[Big Hartman]: By 95,000, I assume you mean the the money we've historically budgeted to receive from HUD?

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Yes.

[Big Hartman]: Yeah. We are the the budget book, as it's written, is in envisioning purely general fund

[Committee Member (unidentified)]: to to maintain our office. So in other words,

[Senator Andrew Perchlik]: you're gonna be debiting that amount from what your bottom line is. I'm just wondering the relationship between that and what I'm seeing listed out on the second page.

[Big Hartman]: The governor's total recommend is if you want, we could look at the ups and downs. Don't know if that would be helpful. The other three the other four items on that list that I put at the bottom of my page too, those are my asks for above the governor's recommend.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik]: I see. Then does the 90 being absorbed somewhere.

[Big Hartman]: It's yeah. We have a little bit I mean, I think it's really that it looks like we won't need that much. If you recall last year, there was an additional $250,000 given for our base funding for the two new positions. It's looking right now that we are not needing that full amount to pay the salary and benefits of the two positions that we hired. I hired folks, especially the staff attorney, like I hired an entry level, so we didn't need to use the full amount that we anticipated for that position.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik]: Okay. Then am I right in saying that the governor's recommend plus sixty four five would leave you where you are now, And then the other three are so so in in essence, what would it be? $3.68. Like, one mean, really, I'm looking for four or something would leave you where you are now, but you're asking for $3.68 more. Correct. Okay.

[Big Hartman]: We are asking for three additional positions. If you recall last year, I was asking for eight. Yeah. I got two additional positions. Those folks are fully, they have an enormous case load each, and so we're hoping to continue to be able to achieve our mission, especially in these times when we are not able to rely on federal government to further with us in enforcing our civil rights. The three positions we're requesting, one is to do the policy side work, the legislative and policy side work. Every year, there's another working group or advisory council created that the Human Rights Commission is tasked with serving on, and we really aren't able to do a lot of proactive policy recommendations to the legislature, even though I think that there's a strong need for that kind of work. So, we'd like to have a full time policy position, as well as a fifth staff attorney investigator to enable me to accept more complaints. Every year, we turn away over 100 people who want to file a complaint and have generally articulated a private patient case discrimination to us, but we turn them away because of resources, because of the age of cases that we already have in our backlog. So this would enable us to process more investigation complaints and also assist if we do have a case go to trial, assist our senior counsel as second chair. And then also with our enforcement actions, we have between fifteen and twenty cases in litigation at any time, and we have one attorney working independently on those. It is standard practice for HRCs like ours to have at least one paralegal position to support with complex litigation and documents and clerical tasks that our lawyer is doing now. So, are additional base initiatives that we requested from the administration. I was not given any explanation as to why we are budgeted to have a vacancy turnover savings like this magnitude and I was not given any explanation as to why we aren't getting more physicians as we've requested.

[Committee Member (unidentified)]: So I'm looking through your report and also read your letter. The question I guess I have a question about what pressures are being placed on the organization as a result of obviously HUD is one, vouchers are another part of that. But what pressures, if any, are you feeling as a result of immigration, naturalization issues, if at all, Or is

[Big Hartman]: it all more internal to housing complaints, so on? I think especially because we added immigration status and citizenship as legally protected categories last year, we are getting more inquiries from folks in that community to file new complaints with us. So that is adding things on. We also need to find interpretation for a lot of those folks to ensure that we're having effective communication with them. It's definitely an added burden on our team, and we want to be able to do everything we can to protect those folks from discrimination in Vermont that they may be experiencing. Primarily, we're seeing that in housing. Yeah. And we're feeling the pressure of the housing crisis that as people are up against a wall and, you know, may get a no cause eviction, They think it's probably discriminatory. They have a choice of, like, becoming you know, running out of options for housing. More and more folks are calling our office, and they're not having as much support from advocacy organizations that are also losing funding from the federal government, like Vermont Legal Aid has often represented folks that have complaints with us, or at least done initial referral intakes, and then sent those to us. We're having to bear the brunt of all of those intakes now without the benefit of those folks first getting sifted through or filtered through the legal aid services because of the reduction that they've had this year.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Is there a question? Of your list of the three, you know, clearly the 65,000 is

[Committee Member (unidentified)]: the most important.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Yeah. But of the three, is there a pecking order to the three?

[Big Hartman]: It's been really hard for me to think about that question. Is is enforcement more important than policy that aims to prevent discrimination from occurring? You know, it's a tough balance there, but I think in terms of my burnout, a policy director is the top pick for me, which is why I listed it first. Thank you. You know, I I, you know, can't be the only voice of good civil and human rights policy in the state. We need more input, and it does go hand in hand with the community work. The community is really where the ideas are coming from of what's needed, but also we see trends and patterns in our office, and we're not able to run a testing program, we're not able to do long term studies, we're not able to issue reports about the substantive issues of discrimination that folks are facing and give the legislature the kind of meaningful input you all need about what we need to do to expand our legal protections here. How can we shore up or fill the void based on what's happening at the federal level?

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: I had a question on other personal services. That was up 250, then that went back to zeros.

[Big Hartman]: Okay. Yeah. I I did wanna address that. So that's in the ups and downs. Yeah. The form that I hate, maybe even more than any other spreadsheet that I have to look at. So that's found at page 10 of our budget book. This happened in prior year.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: I have to be online. It's AJP. I'd say who is.

[Big Hartman]: So, and yeah, and you'll see it throughout that. What they do when you give us new positions is they put it on the personal services line, And then in order to put it on the lines that all the other salary and benefits are taken out of, those lines that it it comes off of that line and gets spread out on the other salary and benefits lines in the budget. So it's a that's a wash. Looks like we're we're getting this big salary increase, but it's really just money that's going from one line item to another line item. And it hurts your brain, but it that's what it's doing.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Okay. Thank you. That makes sense.

[Big Hartman]: Yeah, and I just wanted to note that with the governor's recommend, we're actually, the recommendation is for us to operate on even less fund overall budget in fiscal year 'twenty seven than in fiscal year 'twenty six. While we appreciate being added in the BA, in the budget adjustment to fill the shortfall of not having federal funds this year. By not filling that shortfall again next year, we're just delaying that problem. And I don't envision a world in which there's a $65,000 natural savings without a significant decrease in services from our office. Yeah, so I think on page 15, is that the page you were looking at with the change in the personal services? It's a net negative 5.1 change because it's a, that's all we'll actually need, but on the salary and wage line, it looks like we're actually getting a 20.8% increase, and that's just because we're shifting that personal services line up to the salaries and benefits lines.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Ollie or Jason, I assume you wouldn't have anything to say about why we would the savings in their budget that we don't think is going to happen. Yeah, that's a decision by the administration, yeah.

[Big Hartman]: Just one other point I wanted to make is about our carryover. Since there's a page on here about the carry forward, I just wanted to make clear, and that's on page 13 of my budget book. I'm not sure if there's a different

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: What the budget book? I was looking

[Committee Member (unidentified)]: at Yeah.

[Big Hartman]: So, I just wanted to mention about the carry forward. We actually had a $49,000 carry forward. We had a balance of $49,000 at the end of the year, largely because the Budget Adjustment Act gave us some more money, it came in at the very end of the year where I couldn't have counted on it being received before the end of the fiscal year, basically. But the administration did not authorize us to use that entire 49,000, and instead said that we had we could only plan to use $12,694 with the balance, maybe it sounded like was meant to be preserved for the Pay Act. So that was something new that I haven't seen happen before. And we had put forward a carry forward use plan that was this 7,800 to do some more printed materials. And we had much more, I think we had around 40,000 that we were proposing to use for a website redesign. They said you can use 3,000 of that, which is not going to pay for a website redesign in any world. Because we don't plan on receiving federal funds and not using that money for those purposes, it's just going into our salary and operating expenses, our general, you know, operating expenses for the year. So I just wanted to explain that piece in case

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: So those three things you're not gonna do any of those three things?

[Big Hartman]: The furniture cost was made. That was ordered before the end of the fiscal year. But the other two items, we just are diverting that money to pay for our regular operating expenses, salaries, and benefits without any extra things happening this year, because we're really just trying to make it through the year without HUD dollars that we had budgeted for. Excuse me, babe? Yeah, if I might. The Reserve for K Act that you had put in your carry forward, that is not included here because it hasn't been appropriated yet. That's actually in the spring. And we actually will request that, but it's reserved in your carry forward for 4PM. Just so you know, is, it is still there, it's just not appropriate for that. In prior years that we've had a small carry forward, we've been able to, we've been authorized to use all of it, so this was just a different way of doing it this year that I hadn't seen in the past. Although, the year before, we had a, like, $1,300 carryover. I think, though, the year prior to that, we had, like, $1,600 that we were authorized to use for various wherever our company was at that time.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: And then you're all exempt employees?

[Big Hartman]: Yes. Nine exempt employees.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: What what what pay increase were you able to do?

[Big Hartman]: So we get whatever the administration says it is at the start of the next fiscal year. I believe this year it was 3.9. Yeah. And we generally forgo merit increases, and we just get that once a year increase if it's authorized, which it isn't every year.

[Committee Member (unidentified)]: That's fine.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Thank you. Are there any other questions from the Human Rights Commission?

[Committee Member (unidentified)]: Alright. Thank you.

[Big Hartman]: Okay, thank you so much. Did anyone else want my booklet of our annual report in

[Committee Member (unidentified)]: hard copy? I didn't think so. That's why I only brought mine. But you get it. Thank you. Thank you

[Big Hartman]: so much.

[Committee Chair (unidentified)]: Thank you.