Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Committee staff (unidentified)]: We are live.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: This is senate appropriations. It's January 29, and we're going through the FY twenty seven budget request. We're not done with the budget adjustment yet, but we're switched back and forth. But today's back to the '27 budget request. And at first, we have the Department of Libraries. So, commissioner, if you wanna come up and you could introduce yourself for the record and if you have anybody else here with you, you can introduce them.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Thank you. Good afternoon, my name is Catherine Del Neu. I'm a state librarian and I'm the commissioner of the Department of Libraries. I'm joined today by assistant state librarians Tom McBurdo and Jeanette Schaefer, and we're also joined by colleagues from the Agency of Administration's Financial Services Division who make our budget and us look good. Holly Baruth is here and also Harley Allman. Thanks. I'm here today to provide you with information about the Department of Library's fiscal twenty seven budget and to answer any questions that you might have about it. Just some information about the department before I take your questions to share what's going on and how we do it. We operate within the Agency of Administration. Our offices are currently located at 60 Washington Street in Barrie. We lease space there from the Mountain Historical Society. We have a team of 18 permanent staff members and two limited service staff members who are focused on two capital grant programs with one time federal funding. We have physical collections at the Department of Libraries, State Library, and Able Libraries. The State Library collection primarily includes Burmastiana, or The Fun, Unusual, and Strange Things About Art. I love that word. I know. I had to learn how to pronounce it when I became a student librarian. The collection, The state library has a long history. We're actually in, I think, our vicentennial during this year. So, we have a lot of materials going back related to legislative history, state history, the history of the state. If you are interested in the occult movement from Vermont's past, we've got some collections for you.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: Is that all in your building? That

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: is. Yeah, we have closed stacks, and if somebody wants to use our collections, or has a reference question for us, then we retrieve those materials for them and open them to the space to use the materials. We also have a limited repository of federal documents, and we have a growing public policy collection and a library science collection, and a children's materials collection. We also have the Able Library, which is a collection of resources and services to meet the needs of Vermonters who have visual and brief disabilities. We also provide materials for the correctional facilities and these other state institutions. In addition to physical materials, have collections of electronic resources, including the online library databases, the Unity Learning Platform, and the Petersons Career and Pest Learning Platform, and the Files Project app, which has e books and the audiobooks. We provide access to all of those resources through our reference services with the department, through interlibrary loan, and by direct access to people who make appointments at the state library. The ABLE Library provides the bulk of its materials through The United States Postal Service, That's a free matter for the whole method of conveying those print materials and audio cassettes. In addition to the resources that we have in the State Library, the department's also responsible for providing access to a law library. We do that through an annual grant to the Vermont Law and Graduate School and their community legal information center on

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: this part. Is this old State Law Library, all that material get moved to the law school?

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: I was not here at the time that the change in the location took place, but I believe that the law the law school library had many of those materials, and so some of the things that the department had was duplicative. But the great thing about the situation we have now is that they have trained law librarians who have both a JD and a Master's in Library Science, and promoters can access those services well more than the forty hours a week that we ask them to be available. People can go there, they can, at the law library, at the graduate school, they can use a certain area that's designated for them, and then get reference help and access, direct access to the collections.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: Designated for the public. You have to go to South South Florida. It does not look at online. Have to go to South Florida.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: No, you don't have to go in person. You can also email them, and they do a lot of reference services for the law library through email, and by telephone. They actually do support folks who are in the correctional system as well.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: Right.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: And, they are branching out in an additive way. This isn't something that we have granted with them to do, but we have begun working with public libraries to make some of the materials accessible at public libraries, so some of the online resources that they have. So, they are very active and do some continuing education for library professionals through the department, and they're really trying to promote use of that service because it's a great resource for everyone. A lot of what we do is to provide those services that I've mentioned, the library collections, to you all in the legislature, to Vermonters in general, to our specific patrons in the correctional facilities, or the Able Library patrons. But there's another component of our work, and you can see this a little bit in statute. '22 VSA has Section six zero five and Section six zero six. One of them focuses more on those functions of the state library, and one of them functions more on the department's role in supporting public libraries across the state. So, that work, we primarily do by offering workforce development to people in Vermont who wish to enter the library profession, or who are already in the library profession, but lack formal training. So, we have a really robust calendar of continuing education for library staff and public libraries. We also provide consultation services, so if people run into a problem they can't resolve at their local library or the board has questions, they come to us. Something folks are sometimes surprised to hear is that every public library board in the state has at least five members. So, if you think about 186 public libraries, five trustees at least per library, you realize this is a really big cohort of over 900 folks who are all pulling together to support public library service in the state. We also administer federal and state funds that support public libraries. The Institute of Museum and Library Services federal funding is one of the programs that we administer bringing those federal dollars to support public library service and all library service in the state. We grant funds to public libraries in support of summer reading programs for youth and also in support of the interlibrary loan programs. If you turn to page four of our budget book, you'll see that the department's work is primarily funded by a combination of general funds and federal funds. The general fund appropriation in this year's recommended budget from the governor would make up 63% of the department's budget next year, and the department is hopeful that it will receive roughly 1,240,000.00 from the Federal Institute of Museum of Library Services grants to state federal. And that ongoing annual federal award comprises nearly a third of our regular grading expenses.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: But is the IDC that direction next month? Let me look at that. By chairman?

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: I believe that those are the interdepartmental transoms. I didn't touch on this, but one way that we provide access for you all and for departments within the state, and agencies within the state, to load resources. In addition to having the click program, we also contract for access to the Westlaw databases, and those are paid by the folks who use them. So, we bill them each month, and they pay each month. So, all of these interdepartmental transfers, which my colleagues in AOA finance handle, typically, are helping to offset that cost. So, there's no use of general fund or federal funds for that service, access to Westlaw databases.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: No, are we using Westlaw, not nexus? Because the state house uses the other one,

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: so I don't want to It's a little bit complicated, actually, and I'm not sure why there are two separate, I'm not sure the history of it, but I do know that when I came into my position, the state librarian signs a contract and we put it out to bid, and so through that process we chose Westlaw for that service. The LexisNexis service is also conjecturally related to the Department of Libraries because we distribute the materials, the green books that are printed by LexisNexis, for example, we distribute those to the executive branch. We are also involved with LexisNexis kind of

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: I was wondering if we're, at the legislature, just doing a solicitation and choosing one, and the other is choosing the other. If we combine it, could we get a better name?

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: I think that that could be possible. My understanding is that the way that the solicitation with LexisNexis is, at least the one that I'm aware of, is particularly for green book printing, so the statute printing. I'm not sure how they're providing other resources.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: Yeah, but you can do a LexisNexis search, but maybe Westlaw search is better if you're looking at precedent, maybe it's more time, I don't know, I'm not talking.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Yeah, it's interesting. The LexisNexis is the authoritative, the LexisNexis version of statute is the authoritative version It of is a little bit of a question mark that I have had for the time that I've been with the department. So something we can look into more to see if we can have any

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: additional steps. Yeah, and we'll also ask the legislature council why they choose that over, maybe there's a way to give you both or something that makes a change.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Yeah, I believe that the annotated aspect of the statutes is a proprietary product of LexisNexis. Yeah. And so, that might be something that's not available through the Westlaw product. Yes. What we're providing through Westlaw isn't necessarily just access to the Vermont statutes, but to a full framework of federal and other states and our states' legal documents. So, is a little bit different of a product, which could be how two different RFPs would have. But we have a different contracting process.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: That is true. The lex test on our website is just for Vermont statutes. To take a stand up.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: I'm happy to go down library rabbit on any topic, so please ask whatever you need to know. I understand that this year the legislature asked for some slightly different materials in our budgets to evaluate the budgets, so I just wanna call your attention to a couple of things. ARPA Capital Projects Fund report for our department is on page 14, where you're administering 14 grants to public libraries in Vermont that are funded through ARPA Treasury dollars, and the Capital Projects Fund is particularly aimed at getting high speed internet access to Vermonters for the purposes of telehealth, workforce development, and transition. Those projects should complete as scheduled by the end of this current calendar year. And you might have seen one that's for libraries literally on the move this year. The Johnson Public Library moved from one location to another to get out of the flood plain, and it was quite a an exciting thing for the community.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: Was in

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: the middle of a rainy morning, and there were hundreds of folks out to see the library very slowly. It's not raining in

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: the morning.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: It's raining middle of the night. It was middle of the night when it started, but I joined them and because it was going on for hours.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: I've got pictures if you

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: want. Did you go?

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: It's just yes. My district. Yeah.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: It was it was really wonderful to see so many people out and to see the community celebrate the the movement. The new library's location is right next to the community pizza oven, so we're all looking forward to when they open and there's a big party for that. So, that's on page 14 with the amounts of funding that each of the subrecipients are at age 10 and what they're working on right now. Two of the projects have completed. That's the project in Brandon and the project in Hardwick, the Jubilee Library. Those two libraries have completed their work.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: Can I ask Zarkidol if she has to finish by June?

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Has to finish by December 31 of this year.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: And on your total, the 3,900,000.0, did you land within the governor's 3%? It'd be helpful on these metrics that we had the prior fiscal year, so you have some comparisons.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Yeah, I think

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: You want your percentage increase?

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Yeah, we can see that, I believe, on page 17.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: I was looking through your spreadsheet so I didn't see it.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: See. It doesn't have the percentage.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: Yeah. That's a big one.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Well, that so let's see. I think page 23 might be helpful. The major budget object comparison, this is another one of the new documents. It shows the general fund percentage change. So we actually are a little bit higher than 3%.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: So it shows you, just for the general problem, and not overall, any doctor?

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Overall, it's at the bottom, it's a great example.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: On the bottom, page 23? Yes.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Oh, there it is, the final line in gray. That's a subtotal of

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: You have subtotal on gray at each.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Grand total of plants, 1.7%.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: I don't see that. It's the last box. Oh, I see. It's the second. Sorry. It's the second. Right. Thank you.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: I do wanna mention one thing with the federal funds that you see in the bid box there, you'll notice that there's subtotal that there's a decrease. Some of that was truing up the actual number so that our budget matches the specific amount that we anticipate from our federal funding. In some past years, it's been a little bit higher, and that was just kind of an estimate, and this is more trued up. So, the amount that you're seeing in the federal funding, the 1,240,000.00 is consistent with what we are very hopeful that we will get from the IMLS grants to states program. And you haven't had trouble that others have had with federal funds being delayed or withdrawn, or? Oh, we've had troubles. Okay. I was gonna

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: be surprised at least then.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Yeah, we have had an interesting, probably thirteen months now, twelve months now. We've, there was, there was an executive order about eliminating the institute at Museum and Library Services, then there was the lay off of many of the staff to support that program, Then, there was a lawsuit that Vermont participated in because there are statutory obligations that IMLS has. The Grants to States program is one of the statutory obligations. Vermont and the other states won that lawsuit, but now it's open to appeal. We have colleagues, we have many fewer colleagues at the Institute of Museum of Library Services, but we're still proceeding on with our work. We just submitted a couple days early, Janet Schaffer, which is one of our assistant state librarians, submitted our annual report for 2024? Yes, for fiscal twenty twenty four. And we heard back almost immediately that they reviewed our report and that they had approved it and they were very appreciative and indicated that the department has really kept within what the federal allowed activities are. And so, we're continuing on. We hope that our IMLS colleagues and their partner will be funded. That particular entity within the federal government is, their funding is in the Labor, Health, Human Services Act, which is part of that kind of bundle of bills that I heard on the radio on the white over didn't pass, but not sure what's going to happen. So, they've been shut down and we've kind of waited to draw money until after they reopen. If they get shut down again, we'll wait again and draw down after they reopen. But we've changed our procedures a little bit. We draw more frequently, we continue to operate until something definitive happens, which we don't think it won't.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: Or if it's definitive in a good way. Yeah. Okay. Thanks.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Oh, our hope is that it will be definitive in a good way. The grants to states allocation that's in that bill that was passed with bipartisan support by both appropriations committees and then by the Senate and the House. It's just kind of been bold into this other bill. It's actually up 1,400,000 votes for its twenty twenty five amount. So the legislators themselves are showing strong support from the library services, which is great.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: Yeah. It's good. Anything else that you wanna highlight for us? Or

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: I I just appreciate some of you all for the the attention to any of these things about libraries. I know that you had some new pieces, and if you you know, new elements in our budget that you wanted us to call out. If you have questions about any of those documents, any further questions, we're happy to answer.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: Did we ask you to do this color coding, or is this your idea? Which page? Page eight, where you would like

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Oh, that's my own special thing. Let me talk to you about that.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: Seems like a librarian. Nothing a librarian would do.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Oh, it's totally a librarian thing. Because when we were faced with the, I'm really glad you asked about this, that my color coding was not for nothing. So, when we try to explain our budget to people, they get very confused, because we're using a combination of general and federal funds for almost everything that we do. And a lot of the things that our small team of consultants are doing, their salary is paying for work in a lot of different areas. When we had word that we might not have federal funding, we understandably became very concerned because that's a third of our budget. It could mean a third of our services, a third of our staff, and we have a lot of statutory responsibilities. So, what Assistant State Librarians, and Schaefer and I did, along with the help of our trustee colleague, our executive staff assistant, was to really roof everything that we do according to statute. So, can see, if you start at the top of page eight, you can see in 22 DSA section six zero five, the first item that we must do, that we shall do, is listed there, and then the money that goes toward that is listed. The shallows are all in green, and you see, you can just keep flipping, and it's like a sea of green. And the maze are the things in blue, which we're not, we already don't have a lot of money to spend off a maze activity. And if there's no mention in statue, but it's activity that we've historically done, we've put that activity in orange. It just helps people to orient a little bit, and then within each of these boxes, you can see the cost in fiscal twenty twenty six, the cost we've got in our budget for 2027, and the portion of that activity that's paid for by general funds and then penalty funds, or interdepartmental transfers in the cases of the West Squad database.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: And you weren't just thinking on yourself first, special grants or something?

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Yeah, for example, you may have heard of the Vermont Youth Book Awards, like the Golden Dome or the Red Clover Book Award. Those are things that we have traditionally supported. Those committees are committees we traditionally supported, and it's not called out statute that we must do that, but we do a fair enough to support those literacy forgive programs.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: Is your technology are you on your own or are

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: you part of the ADS? ADS supports our technology. We do have a technology consultant in the department, and he provides consultation and support to public libraries technology topics. So, have an outreaching library focused technology piece, and since we have him, he helps us interface with AES and speak out of English.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: Sure. Oh, yeah, here's your SLA for AES within the grant application.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: As you look at this, you'll also notice these are just the programmatic elements, not the staffing costs that might be captured elsewhere. But, if somebody were to say there is no IMLS funding, we would say, well, here are the places that are being used. Where would you like us to change statute? Because we can no longer do everything without full funding.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: Okay. Thank

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: you. I appreciate your questions today, and I appreciate your noticing the color. Yeah. I

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: was like, gee, did we ask them to do that? That's

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Good idea. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much.

[Senator Richard Westman (Acting Chair)]: Thank you. Thanks for all your support, Lauren, with the library.

[Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries]: Oh, thanks. You're very welcome. Happy to. Okay.