Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Hi. We are live.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. We're live. This is Senate Appropriations Committee. We are doing fiscal year twenty seven budget request. Today,

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: have some pleasure with the department

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: of the current lottery. We're gonna add gambling to the name of your department? If you'd like to. Because it doesn't say

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: anything about No. I know. We we batted sports wagering two years ago. Right?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So well, if you wanna put that in the budget, they're changing your department name.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: We might want to wait until a few other things move Okay,

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I'll let you introduce yourself for the record and give us your presentation.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yes, good afternoon. My name is Wendy Knight and I am the Commissioner of the Department of Liquor and Lottery. Happy to be here. I'm gonna talk about FY27 budget request. And I guess I would ask the chair, where would you like me to begin? I have a very simple budget in a way to present. We are requesting, asking for a budget that's a million dollars less than last year. Yeah,

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: that's good. Mean, if you have start. Yeah, that's a good start. If there's any other highlights

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yes. That you wanna provide? Yes. So I feel like this committee knows the department. I don't feel like I need to go over the overview, right? I mean, we regulate liquor, lottery, tobacco, and sports wagering. We run enterprise funds. That's the Division of Liquor Control and the Vermont Lottery. That's where we bring the revenue to the state. The other enterprise fund is sports wagering, and we generate money that way. I can go through the ups and downs if that's where you would like me to start. We I can say the only initiative we have is a policy initiative, and that's digital lottery to modernize lottery to allow the purchase of lottery tickets via phone and Internet. Senator Brennan is a co sponsor of the bill that's in the Senate bill. There's no budget ask attached to that. It's just a policy bill.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So you're not expecting a revenue change

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: based revenue? There is projected revenue, but it wouldn't hit in FY twenty seven.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Okay.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: It would be FY twenty eight because if the bill passes and we have the ability, the specific authority from the legislature, we would then do an RFP, select bids, you know, negotiate a contract, set up a vendor. That vendor would take six to eight months to come on. So we're not looking until the 2027 if all those things line up, so you wouldn't see revenue until FY twenty eight.

[Senator Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: Is is there an estimate of any kind?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yes, there is. And so the first year, the estimate is 2,400,000.0. The second year is just shy of 5,000,000. And then the third year is 10,000,000. And that's additional revenue coming from online lottery. Yeah. The other thing is that in states that have legalized online lottery, you see that the overall retail sales also increases. So you would see we would expect to see an uptick in the overall sales of of Vermont Lottery. So in New Hampshire when they introduced iLottery a year later, they saw the total, I'm sorry, the retail sales also increased by one point or one or 2%. So you would see that as well. And that's primarily because we're bringing new players to the Vermont Lottery space. Do you want me to talk about the ups and downs? Yeah, mean, I guess I could talk a little bit about the FY twenty seven revenue projections, because I know you're all keen on the revenue, right?

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Yeah.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: And so, so that's great. I was just going to give you that information and have to find it on another piece of paper. All right, well let me give you the ups and downs first. How's that? Before I talk about actually, my finance director is here, she can correct me. But as I recall, the FY 'twenty seven projections for Vermont Lottery to transfer to the Ed Fund is $32,000,000 That's what we're projecting for FY '27. And then the That might be So I'm

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: gonna stop.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Think it's 34. Thank you. Tracy, can you, do you have those FY '27 projections so that I don't stumble over numbers? Do you have those Tracy FY '27? Not, we can

[Tracy [Last name unknown], Finance Director, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: do I do have the FY twenty seven projections for liquor control. We're projecting 19,000,000 just just under 19.1 For lottery, we're projecting 33,241,000. And for sports wagering, 6,700,000.0.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Great. Thank you, Tracy. So that's FY '27. And we are on track for meeting our FY twenty six transfer projections.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So that $33,000,000 your circle lottery target number? Yeah. That's what you put into that. Is that what the governor put into the budget that we would receive that from lottery?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yes.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yeah. So, well, as I understand it, that's what we we give it the finance and management management is an estimate of what we will transfer from Vermont Lottery to the Ed Fund. It actually doesn't go in the big bill, but what goes in the big bill is the liquor control money, 19,000,000. That's what we're projecting. And that goes into the general fund. And the sports wagering, 6,700,000.0. That goes into the general fund. So those make it into the big bill because they're projected transfers to the general fund. So on your page 21,

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: the target looks like it's 34.89. Oops.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Am I reading that right? Which is different than the numbers Yeah. Tracy gave.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Page 21? My page 21. It's the last page.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Sorry. Last page on the one that we had.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Oh, this is what my page 21 looks like. Yeah. That one? You

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: can read it on the very bottom.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Good lord. Does anyone have a magnifying glass?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah, I'm looking at on my computer.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Hold on, okay. Thank you. So you're looking at the 34.8?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Division of Vermont Watery.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I assume that's me or maybe that's the 26 number, because it says 24, '25, and then it says target.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yeah, that might be the FY '26. Tracy, I don't know if you have any knowledge of that, because I'm looking at the Target.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I guess the target

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: is Yeah. Guess the question right. Is it a target for FY '26 or '27?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Guess it makes sense that it'd be '26.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Why don't we give that to you instead of sitting here and trying to read numbers?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, just like overall, but it seems like you did reduce it.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yes.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's '26. So you are reducing it given the water Correct. Sales are

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: We've reduced all of those revenue projections. So initially for FY '26, we, you know, we originally had so our projection for FY '26 transfers for liquor control, for example, is $16,000,000 and change. That's actually up from the original, which is almost 15,000,000. But the other two are down. So we have revised our expectations, revenue projections over the last couple of years because we were seeing lower sales. Right. And then the sports wagering we talked about when we saw higher payouts, winning payouts, see less adjusted gross revenue.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And even though liquor sales have a declining trend line, slight bump for the, it was on BA. Right. Because it just, so it's more like a fluke.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Think that we, again, it's not, it's just revising an initial So I think because we were seeing sales trend down, we were concerned about being too rosy with our projection. So we're really kind of restricted in the fall when they came up with those initial projections. We wanted to, make sure that we were Better to

[Senator Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: estimate. Okay, that's fine.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: So we will get back to clarification on the FY '27 projected revenue. Right. Yeah. Sorry. That f

[Tracy [Last name unknown], Finance Director, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: y twenty seven was what I gave. The I believe '21 is looking, page 21 that you're talking to was our original target for '26 and we have revised that down. So when does '20 is correct?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Do you have this chart with a column for '27?

[Tracy [Last name unknown], Finance Director, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: We don't I I don't have it right now, but I can certainly get that to you.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Yeah. Whenever you Yeah. That would be helpful.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: That would make sense. Thank you, Tracy. Mhmm. Okay, so if we can just go through the ups and downs, it's again, I mentioned that the overall budget request is a million dollars less. That's because last year, we had requested an additional 1,800,000.0 for the additional work that was needed on what we were calling the B2B, and that's the website for on premise licensees to be able to order in a much more efficient way. That that was really a one time ask, and somehow it got built into the base. I see. So we're taking that out. Okay.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is that project done?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yes. It is. We launched it in the fall. It's doing well, and and we're working on educating the licensees about it. We've had some really good testimonials about the ease of use. Obviously, it's a shopping experience that shows all the products where you can find them, you can reorder. For if you're ever on a online shopping site where they allow you to order again, that's we have the same idea. So it's much more efficient. It's open twenty four seven, obviously, so people don't have to walk into a store or take the business hours. They can do it after their shift. So it's a really efficient way of doing business, which is what we want to do because we are regular, but we're also run businesses, and we want to ensure that people that have to do business with us find it a positive and constructive and efficient and less burdensome process. I will just kind of go down here. Personnel services, you can see that this is really salaries, health insurance, retirement, childcare, workers' comp, none of which I have control over. So I don't have much to add other than I gotta figure out how to cover it by asking you for the appropriation. We the line you'll see is employee pay grade and stuff not covered in chart. That is something I have control over, and that's reclassifying certain employees and offering them promotions. And so that's something that we really try to find ways to ensure that people are recognized for their work and get compensated for the work that they're actually doing. The reduction in the contractual third party miscellaneous, that's because this was there was a reduction in year three. This is a three year contract of a point of sale hardware. So if you go into an eight zero two Spirits agency store, there's a point of sale system that we operate, the department does, and there's another point of sale that that agency store would do for beer wine. And we own the contract and that's just the reduction in that year three contract. Going down operating expenses. Yeah. Good property. You see, you know, we've some insurance have gone down. That's car insurance again. I don't have any control over that. ADS allocated. That's the core enterprise service. You'll see a 157 no, almost a 156,000 ADS is, I'm sure you've heard from ADS and other agencies. But

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: your SLA is down 100%.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Our SLA is down because they're moving it up to the core enterprise services. So that's why you see that.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Do you do any online advertise or, like, social media advertising?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Do Yes. Of course. Yes.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Do you do you happen to have a breakdown of your advertising?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Where where are we looking at?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I'm just just line three from the bottom when you're up to them. Five one sixteen, one one advertising. Oh, it's advertising TV. So that's just your TV?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yeah. So we're doing some additional advertising on television. That's where the $37,000 increase is. We were we've done we're doing a couple of branding campaigns. One is eight zero two Spirit Stores, having people understand that when they shop at eight zero two Spirit Stores, they are supporting their communities, So supporting where would that be elsewhere in your budget? It wouldn't be here. Yeah, there's other line items for advertising and marketing. This is just the increase.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So if it's not here, it's just

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: staying the same.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You know what it is? Your overall?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Could get it for you.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah, I did.

[Senator Virginia "Ginny" Lyons (Member)]: Did I see one line item on a reduction in expenditures on responsible gambling. Is there a reason that okay.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: For my ups and downs?

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: That's a no. Actually the end. Yeah.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: So I have to find out where you where you're lucky. Can you tell me the thing? It's way back on page. I'll find it. I'll find it. Okay. So what we do, we maintain our own budget for responsible gaming, and we've actually increased that. That was increased last year. I'd have to look to see. So we're doing we have a relationship with the Department of Mental Health where they are servicing the responsible gaming program, and they take care of players. But we do our own responsible gaming messaging. And so we, for example, have a partnership right now with the UVM Athletic Center, and we're it's both sports wagering and moderating. We're talking about responsible gaming. So we're doing actually more of that.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Okay.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: I don't know I know we increased it last year, and I'd have to see where it was.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Page 15. Fifteen, five hundred sixteen thousand eight hundred fifty.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Oh yeah, I see we're down, yeah, down a little, almost, yeah, little over 11,000.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: No responsible.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: I mean, I think part of it might be that, and I will get back to you, but we had allocated 90,000 last year, and maybe we didn't spend that much. And so we're trying to true up, what we call true up. And so maybe the 78, which is a decrease of $11,000 just kind of is truing up what actually we spent. But we can find out and get back to you.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And I see all your information here. Senator Watson, do you?

[Senator Anne Watson (Member)]: Well, know, chewing up makes sense. And I guess I would make a note that I I wonder if there's more ways to spend that. And and I I just say that just because, like, I mean, as I am in the high school on a daily basis and teaching personal finance, there there's a lot of interest in people getting help for responsible gaming. We actually our director of sports wagering is often asked to speak in in high schools and talk about, you know, financial controls and what sports wagering is. So, I mean, I can take a look at this.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: I mean, we basically have allocated more money towards advertising in general over Vermont Lottery for Vermont Lottery for liquor. Mostly because we're trying to do those brand campaigns. So we developed two brand campaigns, one on Vermont Lottery so people understand that the lottery revenue, 100% of the profits go to the education fund. And we actually, comparatively to other states, we invest very little in marketing and advertising on Vermont Lottery. Obviously, with the sales down, we need to do some advertising when there's a new launch, a product launch. You know, if there's a jackpot, people wanna buy it, we do a little promotion around that. And then on the eight zero two Spirit side, again, I started to mention that we want people, if they're going to buy alcohol, to shop at an eight zero Spirit store. We don't want them to go to New Hampshire, and we don't want them to go to New York. We want them to support the local communities and the local stores. So that's why we've done that. We've been promoting the some of the eight zero two Spirit agents so people understand that these are fam a lot of times family owned, multigenerational, you know, etcetera, etcetera.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Can you talk about the position? So you had a on the reclassifications,

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: like you had, I can't remember where we had that.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: 55, yeah, we're spending $55,000 more in the requested budget. Did you RFR five positions that were one

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: No. You just changed five?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: These represent people that have been promoted. So when you have in the private sector, you can say, oh, I have some extra money and you're doing a great job and I'm going to promote you. In state government, you have to do a reclassification. So you take their position.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So you did five separate requests?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yes. They're all separate. Right.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You didn't you didn't do like a

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Oh, I have done those before.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. This definitely those before. These are five specifics. Correct. To give them an increase for the work of that position.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Correct. Okay. Yeah. And then

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: you have no vacancy savings? No. And you're not expecting because I tell you it's zero for Correct. After that.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: We our positions don't stay vacant. We host them, we recruit them, and we hire for them. We don't ever have a problem, save for our warehouse workers and our providers finding people to work with.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And you're finding your staff and loved ones with the work the way it is. Well Now even with some declining revenues.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Oh, a little bit of declining revenue? 2% down? No. The staff is quite busy. We have about 72 employees.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: It's a $280,000,000 enterprise. Yeah. They do great work.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. I don't have any other questions. And I yeah. You have all the other budgets left out here, I can I can tally up the advertising stuff that I want to? Anybody else have any questions for the commissioner? Do. Question what the lottery numbers are gonna be?

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Okay. All

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: right, well, you. You're welcome, thank you. If you could send us the FY '27 Yes,

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: you will do that, thank you. Thank you, Tracy.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: We'll have the Defender General come on up.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Thank you.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Thank you. How's everybody doing? Good.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: How many times have you done this?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I'm good, man. I'm good.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: I was actually gonna say this is my twenty seventh budget. Wow.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: I was just wondering. And who's

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: the first guy who ever appeared in front of dealing with somebody else's budget?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I'm pretty sure I

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Probably me.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: It was you. I just have to get myself in here somehow. I like the way the flowers appear really huge and the

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: These are on the screen.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: It's very festive. I'm not sure if, like, curate it. No. I'm here. There you are. I'm here. How are I had to connect to the Internet. I had to Yeah. You know? I always like to come a little early and do it in advance, but

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Here you go.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: You know? And here I am. And I'm going to share my screen. K. And that's my screen. Good job. Alright.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Success. Just

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: in case I can't see, which is quite possible. Alright. So, I mean, you know who I am, but for the record, I'm not the lawyer, a defender general here for the fiscal year twenty seven budget.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: when I did this in the house, I had an hour. So I know this is shorter, and I'm gonna probably go through some stuff that maybe you're not interested in or maybe you are. But stop me along the way and ask if you are. I put this in because sometimes people don't remember what I do even after all these years. But you can read that on your own. I'll send this to you after I'm done. I run a public defense system, among other things. But that's the general gist of it. The important part about this, kind of hard to see up there, but it's important to understand our budget. Just in case you need a review. We have two sides of the budget. We have the public defense side, which is the primary public defender offices that are both staff and contract offices. They also have serious funding units and case load relief contracts under them. And then we have the conflict side, which is referred to as a signed council. So the signed council conflict side, which has all of the conflict offices in the various counties and serious selling units and case load relief contractors. We, of course, do both criminal and juvenile work. So we have two sides of the budget. It is actually an issue when I show you the budget. Is a summary of what the Governor's recommended budget does and what it doesn't do. What it basically does is continues the current service level for what we have. It provides funds for the salary and benefit rollout. Last year, I was reappointed to another four year term. Coinciding with my the beginning of each term, negotiate four year contracts with the primary public defense contractors. So I can very predictably let you know what it's going to cost every year. This, as you would expect, but this year is year two of the four year contract and 'twenty seven will be. And it provides for funding of that. It has increases that I have requested for the serious felony unit contracts, both on the public defense side and conflict side. And I just wanted to tell you something about that. In fiscal year two thousand and two, which was the first budget that I administered, the serious felony units which handled murders and life and prison cases were established, initially appropriated $150,000 per unit. At that time, we were in some fiscal difficulty. Howard Dean held the money. And I went to him as soon as I was appointed and said, I can implement these at $100,000 each and save you $50 a unit. And so he released the money. Since that time, I've had incremental increases in those units. And right now, they're getting paid $150,000 per unit. So basically, right now we're paying them the same as they were originally funded in fiscal year two thousand and two. And so I'm increasing those from 150,000 to 200,000. And maybe twenty five years later, we'll never mind. In any event, we also have an increase for third party services. And really this is about investigators. I've been in a ongoing conversation, shall we say, with investigators. I hate to say that or dispute, but there's probably a little of that in it too. A couple of years ago, I raised some $40 an hour to $50 an hour. But apparently, that's about half of what neighboring jurisdictions are paying. New Hampshire is anywhere from $90 an hour to $150 an hour depending upon what type of investigation or work they're doing. Massachusetts over $125 an hour. The Feds are paying $125 an hour. They've asked me to boost them to $100 an hour, which wasn't budgeted. But administration put some money into our other personal services lines to cover third party services. But it's only on the assigned counsel side. I asked for it on both sides. I don't really understand why it went on one side and not on the other. Maybe it was an oversight, maybe they just balancing things. I know how these budgets work, of course. There's also some money in the cover, like, rents and things like that. We changed a couple of offices last year, had to get into a different space because the landlords weren't renewing. You know? I don't know that you want to hear my complaints about how BGS negotiates rents, but I will tell you that when we're asked to do a budget that has a 3% increase and then BGS negotiates a 20% increase in your rent, That doesn't really wash, so I end up having to get involved. And BGS gets annoyed with me. That would be a mild word because I cut them out of the negotiation and end up negotiating directly with the landlord. We ended up getting about a 7%, but it's still not 3%, but it's not 20% either. So it's very I asked him, I said, you know we're doing a budget increase of 3%? No. Have you talked to finance when you're trying to negotiate a 20% increase in my rent? No. Anyway, so I have to do what I do. In any event, I always put this in there because what else can you do if you don't brag? So we've been within budget for twenty four consecutive years without budget adjustment and stayed within the budget. We really lean into our conflict, our signed counsel conflict contracts to prevent cases from going ad hoc. They save over 75% compared to cases that would go ad hoc. The ad hoc caseload since when I took over has dropped over 84% because it's being absorbed by a predictable and less expensive way of doing the work. The hard things that we're dealing with are that there aren't enough lawyers, honestly, in Vermont to do the work overall. We are just part of a bigger symptom. But it trickles down, so to speak, to the public defense system, both on the juvenile and criminal side. And keeping those contracts in place, that's the whole key to how we can make this all work and how we've made it work, is making sure that we have adequately funded caseload relief and assigned counsel contracts. The bottom line is I have a lot of difficulty hiring people. I haven't hired anybody at entry level in seven years because I can't nobody take the job. So our entry level is around 65,000 a year, and I've hired people in the 85 to 90. And that is just enough to get them in the door and then keep them for a little while at least. We don't have people now who very few come in and stay for thirty years like they used to. But if I can get five years out of them, then I'm doing great. Have not been able to hire a data manager position, so I've got multiple people kind of as part of their job. They've got little pieces of it to get it together. So there's some delay in our data manager and getting our data out and ready. We target certain things so we can create our contracts and that sort of thing and use the sort of algorithm that I developed a long time ago to try to predict what caseload is gonna look like. And here's the one thing that I am going to again now we're talking like four or five years in a row. I think it was an oversight last year. Last year was a good thing that our training was funded. Remember that? I do remember that. However, it ended up in one time money caught in the face. So you got the money, good thing. You'd like to get it backwards once in the base, and it's not that much. And the amount will talk about what I get there. Sometimes these things take a few years. I get it. Yeah,

[Senator Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: I do have one question. Matt, if go back to

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: the previous page here. Your private investigators, are these contractual positions? These aren't classified positions? They're nothing. They're ad hoc positions. They have their own businesses, and they're not under contract with us because they do work for insurance companies and other types of things. But because of conflicts that arise in the staff system, we have to do and use independent people. And so there's a number of companies around that have investigators, and we pay them. Right now, we're paying them $50 an hour. They want 100 to bring them kind of consistent with other people around. Depending upon what happens, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to get them there, but we'll I will be able to do something. So Thank you. All right. Just so you have some idea of what's going on in fiscal year 'twenty four, we had increases overall in our caseload. We're following and I have the data now for '25. Coming out of COVID caseloads, you might imagine, right through the roof, Double digit increase posted in cases and in charges. Cases are basically people. Charges are dockets, how many charges they have. Largest increase as it was in fiscal year 'twenty four was in others, which is probation violations because we slept on probation violations for a couple of years. And as people started coming back into the system, those started to increase. So our total overall felonies were up over 6%, misdemeanors are up 9.5%, and then with the other charges we're seeing double digit increase in fiscal year 'twenty five. I also have the first half of or I have fiscal year 'twenty five for juvenile cases. And overall, we're basically flat for juvenile cases. And you see this 11% reduction in termination of parental rights cases. Get better then because there was an 80% increase the year before. So we're down compared with the prior year, which was a historic increase. Others were basically either flat or, not significantly up. So but anyway overall we're flat just termination patients are down. And this is the '6. For the '6, we've seen a 6.7% increase in cases, that's people, and 4% increase in charges. Again, other cases which are probation violations are way up. And this is on top of years. We just keep stepping up, stepping up, stepping up. Contrary to popular belief or whatever the narrative is out there, our felonies are not up and our juvenile, our misdemeanor cases are up about 4%. I list these by counties. Some people are interested in their own county and how's what I'm doing. How's my particular county doing the first half of the year? You can check that out at your leisure at another time and I'll provide this to you so you can do that. We have it.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We have it on our order of slides is different, but I think we have all the same.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Do you slide do you have in that?

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: That's interesting because I don't know how that would happen. Maybe you're ahead of me.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Maybe you

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: don't have this one?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I don't have this No. Some of the other that

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: I'm just looking for it. We don't well, I haven't found the we're gonna have the I haven't found the one you've been working from.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Do you

[Senator Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: have special access that we don't?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Well, can clear this hypothesis could have not happened. I didn't get a senate version of this document, so I grabbed it from the house. So if you added something between seeing the House, then that could change. But

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Yeah. Don't It

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: should be the same document as the House.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: It's not the same. Yeah. The one

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: of the things I noticed in the House

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: is that some of the some of what was provided wasn't right. Mhmm. And so I corrected it. And so this is the version.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: This isn't yeah. This You don't

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: have this one. Yeah. Some of it is the same. Some of it is.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: I would love if you guys could send me this new fresh copy so that I can replace Yeah. That is good. Yeah. I'm, of course, very interested in them. Can we and so just looking at Washington Yeah. Can we see that that it's it's down significantly.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Do you have any sense of of to what we can attribute that to?

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Let me back up one slide. Washington was not easy out of those in the family cases, and Washington the prior year was also not particularly high. I don't know.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Okay. It's just curious.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: You know, sometimes what happens is when you get a new state's attorney

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Mhmm.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: They don't they're not quite up to speed.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Sure. Or maybe they're doing things differently.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Or doing things differently. And they also get down you know, when state's attorneys change, then they a lot of times, they'll change the whole staff. Mhmm. So they hire new lawyers. So if they were down lawyers, prosecutors, then they aren't bringing the cases.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Gotcha.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: I know that as far as like backlog goes, Washington is not doing great even though their added caseload for this period of time is bad. One of the things that I think that you should remember, remember I came in, it might have been joint justice oversight, and I was like, we've a big problem in Chittenden County.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yep. I remember that.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: That was the '6, And that was huge. That was like a 40% increase in a quarter, like 39 or something. And I'm like, I don't know if this is a blip. I don't know if, you know. And then after the second quarter, now we're flat compared to the year before. So it was I've seen this before. Like, you stick around for twenty five years, you see a lot of things. And one of the things I was wondering is, yeah, is there something going on here? I wasn't quite sure. But will it even out over time? What happened is it did even out over time in Chittenden County, and we are basically flat compared to the year before. Now there were increases the year before, but the bottom line is we aren't having that locket shift that we saw the first quarter, which was because when things happen in Chittenden County, it's a big issue because it's 40% of the state caseload is in Chittenden County just as a matter of population. And this is just kind of a graphic way of showing over a period of time, you compare '25 to '26 and where we're at. It basically is telling you the same thing as what you saw on the other slides. I want to talk a little bit about this backlog because everybody's concerned about that. This is kind of the gross numbers and what I did is highlighted four specific areas. '25 started as calendar year '25, so we're in the middle of fiscal year '26 at the time. Or no. Yeah, fiscal year 'twenty five then became 'twenty six in the middle. Looked just like the year before. Backlog was up to 14,000. You see these little dips as you go along. It seems to drop in the beginning of the summer and then skyrockets back up in September. But oddly enough, this year, unlike the prior year, there was a market decline went, as we got to the end of the year. This is kind of gross numbers for your particular counties and this goes into data that I'm kind of going to kind of show you the graphic version of, but this is you can find your own county and follow or sing along, as I said. In any event, if you remember 'twenty four to 'twenty five, this is what that backlog looked like. The dotted line was the kind of trend line, right? This is where I was, know, made the analogy of, you you were paying off our credit card, making the minimum payment every month, right? You'll get there eventually, but you know, it'll you thirty nine years. However, this is what it looks like now. When you started 'twenty five at that 14,000 range, then there's been a huge decrease during calendar year 'twenty five. And so we seem to have turned a bit of a corner. This, by the way, has absolutely nothing to do with the effort in Chittenden County that Yeah, recently I don't call it that. What do you comment, Matt? The multi docket court, because I think all the courts are accountability courts. And that was just I mean, you know, you get a brand stuff, I guess, but I didn't choose that. Defenders often call it a three b court because that was the courtroom that it was in Courtroom. In Chittenden County. But they really get annoyed at the whole the branding. But I told them, you know, get over it. In any event, big decline. And so this I always bring you this every year. This is fascinating, this whole thing. Should if you don't listen to anything else, listen to this part. This is 'twenty three, 'twenty four, fiscal year 'twenty three costs. And as we would always show you, ad hoc cost per LEC, which is lawyer equivalent caseloads like a full time employee, right? Cost per LEC for ad hoc was $671,000 As I've always told you, assigned counsel contracts, the most inexpensive way we do business, what we lean into, and why I never understand why more money isn't put into it, because if you like double what they're getting paid, it'll still be less than other ways of doing business. In any event, 183. The primary public defense contracts are 02/25, and the staff officers are three zero two. This is where it starts to get cool. This is we redid these numbers for fiscal year 'twenty five. And as the cost per LEC for ADVOC dropped from what it used to be, the assigned capital contracts and public opinion. It's all with the same trend, like it all relatively. But here's the cool part. We've actually become more efficient in all levels of the way we do the business compared to like five years ago. So the overall cost per LEC has declined since fiscal year twenty twenty three, and I can tell you why. Some of it is good, some of it is not so good. Staff public defenders are handling more cases per attorney and with newer attorneys because we had a bunch of people retire. So the cost is cheaper. And that's why the PD staff, although just a little bit, but they decline. But they're also more efficient. It's not necessarily a good thing. Signed council contracts have gone up a little bit. Mean, I'm sorry, assigned council contracts, that's I'm looking at the bar. When we signed council contracts, they've dropped as well in cost per LHC. Why? I'll just Chittenden County is always like a good one to talk about because they have large numbers, right? So the overall trends you see statewide are often mirrored in Chittenden County. Two years ago, I had five conflict contractors at the first level. And then I had two backup contractors. And then I had a third person who was taking all the conflicts from all those, plus I had five case load relief contracts that were handling statewide but were focused on the North. Right now, I have four conflict contractors in Chittenden County. All right. I also have I have case of relief contractors up there, but I have two. And they're also assigned statewide. The bottom line is contractors left, and I didn't have people to replace them. So the existing, the people who stayed got more caseload and a lot more money. I mean, they're getting paid a lot of money to handle the caseload, but there's only four of them. That's not good. This is the indicator of what's going on all over the place where there's a lack of lawyers who are both qualified and even willing to do this work.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Senator Brennan. How does the more money that they're getting paid is, like, in overtime, or is it because they It's not in the case by the

[Senator Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: It's case by the Not by

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: the case. What is it? It's by lawyer equivalent caseload. So I set a minimum payment of $150,000 per lawyer equivalent caseload. And that's the minimum, right? And so when these contracts traditionally have been fractional, so somebody would have half an LEC, so they'd get $75,000 a year minimum to handle it. Now that they're doing 0.8, 0.9, they're basically getting 150,000 or more. In places where I really need them, I'm going to pay them more because I can't afford not to have them. And I got to kind of overpay a little bit to get them there. Even at that, even if my average payment per LEC is about $2.75, It's still cheaper per LEC now than it was in fiscal year 'twenty three. The public defender contracts, you see the increase of $2.25 to $2.40 per LEC. That is an increase because I entered into the four year deal. So they get we went through a big inflationary period during the last four years where they were getting like 2% increases. That make up for some of that. But what you'll see over a period of time is that their increases compared to the overall costs are basically keeping up with inflation but not beating it. So you're going to see that running at approximately 4% increase overall. And then here's the one that I find for me loving this stuff, ad hoc counsel. So ad hoc counsel was six seventy one, about six seventy two per LEC coming into the and then in '25, that dropped to 553,160. Why? Because we have such a small number of cases going into ad hoc. And here's the key. All of our felony conflicts are getting diverted to caseload relief contracts. And as a result, the only thing that ad hoc is covering now is misdemeanors. And the caps on misdemeanors is lower. So we're actually able to reduce the cost per LEC for ad hoc because the cases that cost a lot that would go to ad hoc are not going. Like from my perspective, I know this is not that exciting for everybody else. This is like amazing stuff. And so it just shows like the whole model like works from a fiscal standpoint. I could use more lawyers. This just kind of shows you how ad hoc and different types of cases. You know, we started in 2002, but like this goes down to almost nothing for juvenile clients, very few criminal clients and felonies and overall. So I put this in here because you already have those. This is the one thing that you're familiar with.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: I got that.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Yeah, so I'm not too worried about that.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You have the training, Brad. Didn't see Yeah, stay there. I was going to ask that question.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Okay, here. Last slide. Don't look at the one that you had from the House. This slide particularly was screwed up on that document. This is the one that's important. I'll send it over to you. But it's really kind of easy. What is unfunded that like real money is the top line. We got when the administration did the recommended budget, they gave us the money in assigned counsel, which is the conflict side. But they didn't give us the money. They gave us $2.50, I believe, in assigned counsel. But they didn't give it to us in public defense on other personal services side. All right. The other thing is they didn't give us the increases in our cost of contractors. This is one of the things in my existence over twenty five years, which they don't always understand where the thinking is. The cheapest, most efficient way to do business is to sign cancel contracts. If you're going to give anybody more money, it should be them. But they don't. And they didn't. And that's the $2.50 that I was asking for. And then the final part, which is, again, the 80,000 is not new money for training. It's the same money. It just was in one time money, not in the base. And it has now become my white whale to get in person training, $80,000. It's not like a lot of money. It probably doesn't even make a difference. I mean, what? I was back in the face because I gave it up during COVID when we couldn't train anybody. And ever since I gave it up, was the dumbest person on the planet to give up anything ever for but we couldn't we couldn't meet. So we why didn't we do any grand? But now I got I go, put it back.

[Senator Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: I I would just suggest you not call it your white whale. That's kinda not the way you wanna go.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Yeah. Well, yeah. I know. It didn't didn't work out. Because they

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: have yeah.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Yeah. I know.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Well, well,

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: yeah, you know, it is a quest. This

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: what about the ring? Oh, there we go. Oh, that's a better one. So, the ring. If

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: you can give me a better better analogy, The feel unfunded additional needs, put in there just so that I bring this up every year, and I know you've got to do what you do. But the special fund, we get around $600,000 I think it's $5.89. As a spending authority, we haven't come close to that in seven years. So every year we start off with approximately a $290,000 hold. I've just come to expect it at this point because it just I know that's the place you could fiddle around with things and get budgets work. The other thing is this year, when they came back from administration, the vacancy savings was $610,000 No way in hell we're going to get $610,000 in vacancy savings, period. It's not going to happen. We have had turnover in the last couple of years, but it's like we have churned churned that out. And we, you know, we might have some turnover a little bit, but $6.10 is ludicrous. Not never gonna happen. Yeah.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So you know

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: So, you know Matt, I have a

[Senator Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: maybe it's unrelated. Maybe it's connected under another name to something you've already talked about. I was talking with state's attorneys, and one of their complaints was that they didn't have any money for qualified experts, and they made it seem as though you had an unlimited budget somehow for for qualified experts. And I was I know your budget results are very tight.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: So I was wondering, what is your view on that? Well, they won't like to hear this. I don't have any police force. I don't have the Vermont State Lab. I don't have the Department of Mental Health. I don't have the agency of human services, all of which, when we are litigating cases and trying to find placements for people in places that DMH, for whatever reason, can't seem to find. Or like in our state where we have no place for co occurring disorders for mental health and substance abuse, we are doing that social work. They have social workers, they have law enforcement, they have all of these things that investigate cases and they can test DNA, they can do So when we're dealing with this stuff, we have to that's constitutionally based. So we have to be able to challenge the state's evidence, we have to be able to develop our own evidence. All of that stuff for them is done by other agencies in government on behalf of the state. That having been said, when they don't like the results that they get, like say somebody does a competency evaluation and the independent one that is ordered by the court and they don't like the result. They, in the past, now I'm talking about when I was practicing and even in the first probably half of me being Defender General,

[Senator Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: that

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: was like the state's expert was whoever it was. Well, they don't like the result. If we didn't like the result, we'd hire somebody and say, examine it, see if what the state did was right. And so then ours would say, no, they're wrong. Well, then they want somebody to counter that, but they're basically getting two bites of the apple could be the first one.

[Senator Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: Yeah. And I take the point about them leaning on other state agencies and resources.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You

[Senator Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: should I'm just wondering in your budget, where does that money come from?

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Other personal services, both it's PB OPS and assigned counsel OPS. And and what is that running here? Total?

[Senator Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: I mean, what do you have to draw on per

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: year for for other personal services? The amount? Yeah. Can that's this is why I have the financial director here.

[Senator Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: I'm just curious because it was it was represented to be an and it was

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: services? Yeah. It's a couple billion dollars right there. And so then But that includes, that's not just experts. That's also transcripts and mileage and investigators and whatever. But that's in the OPS line. It's other personal services. It does include our investigators and our experts.

[Senator Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: So you think it sort of balances out as long as they're willing to use the state resources and not looking for another bite at the apple if they don't like the result? Yeah. I mean,

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: that's that's kind of that's the general feeling. I mean, the bottom line is the idea is that the state has law enforcement to investigate crime scenes. Things like that. We don't have that, so we have to use investigators.

[Senator Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: I have just never had a conversation with anybody about, you know, your side versus the other side in which you were portrayed as having a lot

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: of money. So in that one narrow instance What we have is people who are hired by us to do this work on an ad hoc basis, basically. What they have is preexisting, like, law enforcement and the like. And the thing that I think that they probably if I were them, what I'd be saying is, yeah, but they're not under my direct control, which is true, they're not. And so when they don't get the results they want or whatever, they would like to go find somebody else, And they probably don't have enough of a budget to do that. But, you know, my feeling is, well, you do have all this other stuff. I mean, I'd rather have all the prompts, you know, personally.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yeah. So what's in the the adaptive planning spreadsheets. So in total, which does include our contracts for the governor's recommend for 27, public defenses seven million two fifty three and assigned to counsel is 8,000,120.

[Financial Director, Office of the Defender General (name unknown)]: So that covers our contracts and our investigators, so the way

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: it's lumped a little bit differently here.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Yeah, doesn't break out the OPS line, that's the that's all contracts.

[Senator Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: And and it's not it's not, you know, necessary right now to have them figure out. I was

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: just curious. Yeah. The you know, that's the bottom line is what we're trying to do is case law on it and constitutional case law. Basically, we have to have the ability to test the state's case. Their evidence is what was produced by police, by the state lab, by the Department of Mental Health, by anybody who is providing evidence in the case. And sometimes these arise a lot in these mental health cases where somebody is found incompetent and then we you know, they don't they don't like that result. Mhmm. And that person may end up being effectively a defense witness. They wanna hire somebody else and they might not have the money to do that. Thank you. But it's, you know, what result do you get? Yeah. Anyway, that's it.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I have a question on your ADS on page 29 or list 29 of the your house document. The ADS allocated fee is going up 175%, $195,000. You did they tell you anything about why that?

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: No. But if that's kind of these interdepartmental things are like money in, money out. We have

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: it down to 40,000. We've seen some other people because they changed the SLA, but that's they're only down 40 on nine, up to a 195. Some of them have been a little closer.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: My guess is that it has to do with our ongoing contract obligations with the various people who are administering our case management contract. We have multiple people under contract to, like, administer that. Your idea or that you're doing directly?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: This you're this many paying Dave.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Yeah. Both. Yeah. She is. This Katrina. You know Katrina? Yeah. She's been around a couple of years. Laura Evans is still consulting fifty four years in, but she's we figured we'd let her retire at some point. She tried six years ago. But, you know, that's just those aren't, like, budget pressures for us because they it's almost like they write their own checks. You know, these this is reminds me, like, the feature space stuff. It's just They

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: just tell you what it is, and you gotta put it in your budget. Did you have to,

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: like I

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: mean, for for your total budget, 195 is a big number, but it's a big it's a big jump. I guess it would be 155 difference if you'd have the down of the SLA agreement.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: I don't know what's driving specifically the 150. I I just know that it I know it's all balled up in the case management system because we have multiple contracts that it's all passed through to ADS. But sometimes they don't sometimes they don't, like, send us bills. And and so, like, what they forgot to do last year, they stick it this year. I don't know exactly understand what they're doing, but

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And your vacancy savings number, did you say that that was just given to you by the Yeah. The governor's to balance your budget to that 600,000? Yeah.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: There's nothing we have to do about that at all.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Maybe they try to break your record and not having to have a budget adjustment.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: I don't think they can do it. Hope they just keep keep increasing your vacancy there. Well, yeah. If you keep doing that and then, you know, always, you know, $300,000 over. It's that it's that unbranded. That that second line, which is I'd say it's not real money. It's just like you know when you start planning that that means, oh, I don't hire somebody for six months as opposed to for a full year. I eliminate a contract in a particular, it's all a matter of how you, what leverage you pull, what you push, which I know those by now.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So you will budget to that $600 if you have to.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: Well, I'll budget to whatever you give me. Yeah. Because I one of the things I mean, the statute says that I'm supposed to live within the budget. Yeah. And if I could do it without, like, constitutionally causing a crisis, then I'm gonna do it. We've been at much worse times than what I'm dealing with right now. Know, the during the administration and the Douglas administration during the big recession, that that was fun. So this is I can do a lot of things. It's just I'd like to not make it stressful on people. Good.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. I understand. Any other questions? Lieutenant General? I'm all set. Thank you. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thanks. What do

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: I need?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I don't know how it ended up in a one time funds. I thought

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: I thought it was the baseline. I