Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: We are live.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Good. This is senate recommendations committee. We're going through fiscal year twenty seven budget request. There we have Children and Family Services here. Yeah. Budget presentation.

[Megan Tierney-Ward (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: Okay.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: So you heard yesterday from secretary Samuelson about the budgeting process for the agency. As part of that process, each department was asked to review programs using specific metrics for uniformity. We considered whether the program was effective, whether there was data to support the efficacy, and if other programs within the agency duplicated the efforts and impact on and we checked the impact on Vermonters, both if it continued or against. What you'll see in this presentation is a result of that process. We had to make cuts given the difficult economic climate and the absence of ARPA funds. My plan is to walk through the slides, the PowerPoint, and then Megan will go line through line for the on the budget part and show the team, obviously, if we're gonna answer questions. So we also I just wanted to highlight that we have a budget book and annual report. I think that was sent to you. So that gets into more detail than we're gonna get into now, unless you have questions that bring us into the details. But DCF's mission is to foster the healthy development, safety, well-being, and self sufficiency of Vermonters. We provide benefits, services, and supports to some 200 Vermonters every year, including children, youth, families, older Vermonters, and people with disabilities. We have over a thousand physicians in DCF. So changes to the state fiscal year twenty six base appropriation. We had a 4.7% increase to the state fiscal year twenty six budget, a 6.6% decrease to special fund, 14.3% increase to general fund and comprehensive, we're proposing a comprehensive housing initiative. It's a 31,400,000.0, 10.2 space and 21.21 time.

[Speaker 0]: Then, sorry, can I answer your question?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yes, go ahead, Sarah.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: What are the special funds that go into maybe that's outside of here, So

[Speaker 0]: are you asking about the special funds that are decreasing or all of our special funds into? If there's a lot, we didn't have to go into them. I'm There's a lot. In our budget book, at that the last section Okay. It's all of our special funds. It, and then it gets you explanations of that. Great, thank you.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: The next slide is a table of changes from state fiscal year '26 to '27 by funds and the center column is the adjustment. Like I said, Megan's gonna go into more detail on these though, given we have an hour of prison through some of that. So the budget instructions requested we illustrate funding source by division. That's the next slide. And that we highlight the largest funding sources. That's the next slide. And then there's highlights, the DCF initiatives and adjustments. So the subsidized adoptions went up, substitute care went down, the ESD reach up went down, support services went up, GA personal needs and incidentals went down, Eight for the aged, blind, and disabled went down. And three scores went up.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Commissioner, can I have you go back to the last slide? What do you mean when you have up to the top 10,000,000 earned? What do you mean by earned?

[Speaker 0]: So that's we have we get an award of federal funding, which you can't draw it down unless you have eligible expenses. So that's how much we were able to draw down in state fiscal

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: '20 Yeah. '20

[Speaker 0]: Oh, it's over. All of those are over 10,000,000.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But these are the ones so you listed the ones that are over 10,000,000.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. I get that. And then all the ones that were over 7,000,000 or

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: something like that. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: And then we have a lot of other

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: smaller awards. Okay. Thank you. So I have a question. Yes. You referenced the snap funding. Were these Monday monies that were received after the eboard released June?

[Speaker 0]: Yes. So this is state fiscal year '25. Oh, '25. State fiscal year

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: '26. Thank you.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: And then pressures, initiatives, others. So then the post one time appropriations, temporary secure treatment facility, 4,000,000, and the housing initiative is 21,200,000.0. There are six divisions within family services. The first well, this this slide shows the administration and economic services. They're bucketed together. Yeah. And and do you should I do think you it makes sense to go through these or you're gonna

[Speaker 0]: I'm gonna walk through them all in my go to the line items. This is just a high level.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: So if you wanna refer back to these, the high level, then it's good for you to have, but it breaks down by division. And then a couple of things just I think to point out. So the family services division, the substitute care caseload trend went down, which is good. That means there are less children in custody.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Are you gonna talk later in your about your production in the two one one hours? Yes.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: And then total subsidized adoption caseload trends went up. Child Development Division. We're going to get into detail about the funds there. Just going through the divisions. The next slide shows that more families were getting financial assistance. 5,000 more families started, we started to turn the curve stopping the decline of programs and the slow build, the mix of programs has also changed. There is an increase of about 1,200 in capacity.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And on the CCPAP, do you feel like this whatever this 12,000 number is not where we're gonna level off? Are you expecting a continued increase? Is this the program kind of reached where we thought it was going to get to?

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Think Janet, are you on? Do you want to answer that?

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, Child Development Division, DCF)]: So this is related to the childcare financial assistance on the last slide. Is that the question?

[Speaker 0]: Yes. Okay.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, Child Development Division, DCF)]: Well, we know that there are families that still can't access childcare because of capacity, especially infants and toddlers spaces. So I think there is still more room to grow for childcare financial assistance, but in terms of opening and launching and staffing a childcare program and having community partners or businesses make that choice, that can take a couple of years to actually have happen. So I do think there's some growth, but I think a lot of it would be in the infant and toddler space. And sometimes that growth is, they're growing at four slots, eight slots. It would be so there's some growth, but I think it'll be it'll be over the next several years.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: It's Jennifer Bluff. I'm the deputy commissioner for

[Speaker 0]: the child development.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, Child Development Division, DCF)]: Thank you, Sandy.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: And we have the Office of Child Support.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So what are the difference between those two graphs?

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Janet, you wanna talk about the difference?

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, Child Development Division, DCF)]: So this graph is showing total childcare capacity, So that's the number of spaces that regulated childcare programs are licensed to serve and we licensed by age. So you can see the infant capacity, toddler capacity, preschool capacity, and school age capacity. So that's what's licensed. Again, that's the maximum number of children that a program could serve. There might be a program that based on its space, might be eligible to serve 44 children and either based on their program philosophy or their staffing pattern, might decide they actually only want to serve 36 children. So you know, the true capacity is, probably a little bit lower, than this, but this is what's licensed. So you can see, it actually, while the, it has been fairly steady over time in terms of licensed, even though the number of programs has adjusted as there's related to family childcare and centers and after school programs, that mix has changed a little bit. And then the slide before was looking at the average number of children enrolled in childcare financial assistance. So you can see, and that this data is quarterly. So that's another thing. I think the next slide is not quarterly. I think it was annually. This slide is quarterly. So you can sort of see when, let's see, it was Q3 of state fiscal year '24 was when the big expansion in childcare financial assistance eligibility went into place. And then so you've seen the growth since then. You can see the growth.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right. It's not dramatic. I guess it's not slow, it's also not decreasing, which it was prior to the passing of bill. It's hard to tell exactly what growth is in the result of the bill.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, Child Development Division, DCF)]: Yeah, I think that there we have some other slides, I think, that can show sort of what the decreases had been and the fact we have sort of turned the curve, it seems like, on child care capacity now.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Okay. Then the Office of Child Support. And then the A to H blind and disabled out of economic services. So the case load adjustment there, a decrease. General assistance, That's the emergency financial assistance to eligible individuals and families. Also, in economic services. Then we have the governor's housing initiative, and you'll get into more detail on that too. Right? And we also, if you have questions on that, we can always come back. And

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the general assistance transition plan, is that part of your whole included in the whole housing thing or that's separate?

[Speaker 0]: So yes, so general, so on the previous one, we'll get into that more, but that's a reduction of base funding, which is then being utilized for other purposes for shelters and OEO. It we are pressing utilizing one time funding for the hotel motel emergency housing in '27.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So it

[Speaker 0]: looks like a big down, it's actually

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It's moving in somewhere.

[Speaker 0]: Moving to one time, yeah. And then there's the all the base money is moving to other base pressures elsewhere.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Which is part of the transition plan. It isn't Yeah. For the plan. Yeah.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Okay. So then that's the governor's housing initiative. It's the next three slides. Then we have three squares for a moment. There's a case load adjustment there. Same with recheck. There's a case load adjustment. And you can see the next slide has that there was some question about is this something new, but you can see it goes up and down. It has been up and down over the years. And then we have low income heating and energy assistance program. And then office of economic opportunity. And then OEO weatherization.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: On your what do you mean the revenue adjustment? So it went down 4,700,000.0?

[Speaker 0]: Oh, that's a that's a dash.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Just The hike.

[Speaker 0]: Cut off. Yeah. So it's a $4,700,000 revenue adjustment upwards to align with our award. We had requested

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: To align with your what?

[Speaker 0]: The award. The line of award in the mask. So it was we were always requesting more money via the earned for the excess receipt request. Right. Right. And so this is just a bill that is the base of what appears to be an ongoing increase.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Because in the federal appropriation was higher.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: And then secure residential treatment facility. We'll talk more about that in the

[Speaker 0]: FSD budget.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Disability determination services. And that we have as the last page is kind of a highlight. They have, the average initial case processing time is seventy point five days and the national average is one hundred and ninety days. And then initial decisional accuracy is 99%, which is among the top 10 states. And then it has how many they process. So it's just something we wanted to highlight if they do outstanding work. Everyone does outstanding work, but that's just something a metric that shows it. So now Megan's gonna go into the Yeah. The numbers.

[Speaker 0]: Did you want to put the up stuff up on the screen? I agree. So I'll walk through each of the appropriations. If it's okay with all of you, I'll skip over the salary, insurance, ISS, like those things that we do every year in each of the appropriations. But if you, just because we have a lot to get through, but if you have questions on any of those, I'm happy to circle back. Starting in our administrative appropriation, the first thing that's on there is TANF revenue realignment. It's similar to the BAA, which we discussed. Are taking TANF funding, putting it into Reach Up, and then swapping the general funds and putting it into admins just to align our revenue with

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: where we're able to earn it

[Speaker 0]: to maximize our maintenance of effort requirements for the state. So that's just a technical net neutral adjustment. And then it's also I will note that there's like three DAP IDs involved. So it's admin, FSD, and reach out. Have a temp staff cut that's eliminating two temp positions as part of our administrative efficiencies. We then have the Reach First admin cut. This is the elimination of one position in ESD. It's a one case manager position that supports the Reach First program as we are also, as we will get to later, proposing eliminating the Reach First program. And then we have some revenue realignments. As you might recall, HR1 changed the SNAP admin feature from 50% to 75%. And so we have two lines on there. One is just sort of some net neutral adjustments to reflect the revenues that we've earned in the past. And the other line is a Fed fund to GF swap to reflect that 25% of federal funds that we will no longer be able to draw in for our SNAP admin costs. And there'll be three lines on here for that. There's one in personal services, one in operating, and one in grants out. So you'll see those, you have to add them all together to get the full $4,500,000 impact. And then the last item in personal services is the housing initiative limited service positions. We're proposing 21 positions. We already have limited service positions. They're funded with one time funding. We want to build that funding into the base, although retain them as limited service. These positions would provide eligibility determinations, direct services, and administration in support of this initiative in a variety of capacities. And these positions, as I said, already exist within the DCF budget. So we are not requesting 21 new position numbers.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I don't understand what you are requesting. I mean, that's not new ones, and they're still limited service. Correct. Do you want them limited service in the base Yes. Instead of one time?

[Megan Tierney-Ward (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: Correct. Okay.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And then wasn't there a request mentioned yesterday for more snap positions because of the more more workload?

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: No. That was negative

[Speaker 0]: either. Okay. So then going into operate operating expenses, I'm gonna skip by all the ISFs. Our first one that's not an ISF is our income verification system. So ESD must procure a new method for verifying income. This represents the estimated annual cost of the contract and an external earnings verification system or EBS. And that is also in BAA. Then we have, again, the revenue true ups that we do every year. And then we have the SNAP admin federal share true up for our operating costs. Then we have a few operational savings that we're proposing realizing some savings by eliminating ESD's desk phones, instead relying on cell phones, Teams, and office location phones. And then also eliminating some supply costs and proposing eliminating several fleet vehicles that we are currently utilizing. So all of that is the changes to our operating budget and admin. And then for the grants out, again, you'll see more SNAP admin that's tied to our SNAP outreach grants. You'll see the elimination of the SNAP Ed program. That was eliminated as part of HR1 by the federal government. And then there's a two eleven hour reduction. And this is a reduction of hours for the two eleven emergency housing call center from 20 to operate only between the hours of 8AM and 11PM. Between the hours of 11PM and 8AM, hotels do not accept placements. And so the only thing that call center staff can really do is inform callers that they will need to call back later in the morning. So we just think that it's not the best use of state resources if we can't help people get into our house.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And that there's a global commitment part of that?

[Speaker 0]: It's 100% global commitment on it. Yeah. It's it's one of the investments.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But is there a general fund in that?

[Speaker 0]: Well, I mean, all global commitment is is is blended dollars, so it's part general fund part.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Don't know. You're just listing it as in the global commitment column? Yes. In that March, there would be a mixture.

[Speaker 0]: There is general fund to back that up in AHS' budget, but for DCF, it's a global commitment dollar. It's a blended dollar.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And what's do you know what the blend is?

[Speaker 0]: It's the FMAP rate.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Whatever that is. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: 50 Patients every quarter. Yeah.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Center lines.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member, Lamoille)]: So you're cutting the two one one, all of it, but you said you're only cutting it for access to shelter. So how does that how do

[Speaker 0]: you do that? Yes. So the overnight hours are only meant to be housing our housing call center. Think probably talk to it more, but yeah.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: So that's correct. Sorry for the record, Maria, great to a question on the economic services division.

[Speaker 0]: That is, so really the general service is when someone

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: could call and ask, how do I prepare my taxes? It's really a link that's supposed to go to 04:30, and then they are supposed to take over the housing calls from us at that

[Speaker 0]: point when state offices close, and they provide a coverage. They

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: They also also have have a a subcontractor who takes the later evening hours. And what we have found is that hotels aren't open and able to take people after an And then we also know that both of them two of them went in with the grant subcontractor are also not necessarily providing live call, you know, people are they're going to voice mail if they're able to into

[Speaker 0]: that school. So it's just not a service that's

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: necessarily working the way

[Speaker 0]: that it is to change.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 0]: So the last item in there, it's a little hard to see the full picture of our helping initiative as you go appropriation by appropriation because of the way our budget is structured, things are sort of scattered in different appropriations. So we put in there housing initiative and each one is the housing initiative to help you sort of see the larger picture. So the last item is of the is our next housing initiative item, it's natural disaster sheltering option. And this is funding to provide temporary shelter for housing in hotels and motels for households who have been impacted by natural disasters. This will be administered in collaboration with the AHS emergency management team who are actively providing these households already or will be in future disasters.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So

[Speaker 0]: is this

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: in the base? No. Okay. And supposing that we don't need it, does that would that carry forward to a future year? Like, would it accumulate?

[Speaker 0]: Not necessarily. It depends on how we close out our year, end of the year. Okay. That's great. Thank you. So family services then, unless

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: there's anything else on that here? Okay.

[Speaker 0]: So I'm gonna skip past salaries and fringe.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So the first one

[Speaker 0]: on here again is another TANF revenue realignment adjustment. Again, second part of that three part swapping of federal funds and general funds so that we can maximize our maintenance of effort Dollars. We have a revenue true up. Again, this is just a net neutral putting our revenue in the correct buckets. So in this instance, you'll see we had Medicaid. It was hitting operating and it really shouldn't have hitting our personal services, so we're just swapping that between operating and personal services and vice versa with general fund and some federal dollars. The social worker class action. Social workers received a class action last year that brought them all up a pay grade. And so this is the annualization of that class action. So

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: they received it last year, but for it took effect for everyone's sake.

[Speaker 0]: So it took effect this year, but because we didn't know about it when we

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: built last year's budget, it wasn't in last year's budget. So Was it in the beginning?

[Speaker 0]: It will be best to be a pay act this

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: year. So but you didn't have to pay it for this even though it was

[Speaker 0]: Pay act, I don't think it happened yet this year.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So it was for the '27 budget?

[Speaker 0]: So this is for the '27 budget, yes. But class action has already happened. We are getting paid the higher pay grade and we will cover the costs, post covering the cost of that via the pay act. That happens later this year.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: How are you covering it now? Well, so we have

[Speaker 0]: an appropriation for salaries. It's just

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: within your within the amount of money you have, you could cover it. It wasn't enough to need an adjustment.

[Speaker 0]: So I think we will need an adjustment. It's just that at this point in the year, we don't need it yet. But when pay act comes, will request as a pay act.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Or part of your budget?

[Speaker 0]: Yeah.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: This is the adjustment?

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, this is the annualization of pay act for next year. Then we have in grants out, we have our PNMI inflation factor. That's the annual adjustment that even calculates for all the PNMI rates to reflect the inflation impacts that those institutions face. We also have a transfer, net neutral transfer through CDD. We did some movements last year where funding got put into CDD, which should have been put in the FSD, so just correcting that. We have the transportation contract pressure that we discussed in BAA. Again, we continue to reduce elevated costs for our transportation contracts, and we don't really have a way to address that other than increasing the budget.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Can you give it to Apple again about transportation cost?

[Speaker 0]: Yes. So if anytime we're transporting youth in our custody, that could be to school, it could be to It's just it's

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: just children in custody. Yes. Okay. Yes. That's correct. Okay.

[Megan Tierney-Ward (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: For director Derek or Red King.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Just because there's more of it? There are more children in custody instead of the costs are higher? What what what is driving the cost?

[Megan Tierney-Ward (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: It's yeah. We don't have more children in custody. It's more that previously

[Sen. Virginia “Ginny” Lyons (Member)]: And and who's doing the transports? Who's doing the driving of them?

[Megan Tierney-Ward (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: Sometimes we have a transportation service that we rely on, but there are also occasions where family service workers are the way they're driving or case savings as well.

[Sen. Virginia “Ginny” Lyons (Member)]: Any anybody that needs background checks?

[Megan Tierney-Ward (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: Anytime we're having like a transportation service they're responsible for doing all the background checks. No, it's our workers, you you know, know, as as part part of of their their working. Working. It's their

[Sen. Virginia “Ginny” Lyons (Member)]: background checks. But are you paying for background checks, or are these the background checks that the state police are doing?

[Megan Tierney-Ward (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: If it's employees for us, it's our regular background checks. But if it's, like, one of our transportation services, they're gonna do background checks. K.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And they so they pay for it and you just it's part of their contract?

[Sen. Virginia “Ginny” Lyons (Member)]: Yes. And we just said we we never settle this from the state police. Okay. And today at the child care luncheon, the biggest complaint was about background checks. For your pre teen? Yes. For for workers and and child care.

[Megan Tierney-Ward (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: Do you have background checks for your principal and foster parents and things like that?

[Sen. Virginia “Ginny” Lyons (Member)]: I do. And and the only reason I ask is because the background checks are all over the map across all state government and a bunch of the DAs that we work with. Nothing's consistent.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Okay. That is one of the priorities for Janet Walker, deputy commissioner from CBD. And if we finish in time, maybe she can give you an update on what she's working on

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: there. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: So the next two lines are the case load adjustments that we discussed in our PowerPoint. So our substitute care costs are going down. So you'll see overall $600,000 decrease. And then our subsidized adoption case loads are going up. And so you're seeing an increase there, which are both trending in directions that we would like them to be trending in. We then have some proposed savings. So the first one is the post permanence program. And this is a reduction to funding support services provided to families after an adoption has been finalized. So this would reduce the eligible population to be just those who adopted it, whose adoption is facilitated by DCF. And then we have the Nurturing Parent Program cut. So this is a 50% reduction. So this is the program that provides parenting classes to eligible households. And this is administered by French Child Abuse Vermont.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Why was that cut?

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: We had to make hard decisions. So when we were looking at the impact across the board,

[Megan Tierney-Ward (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: this was one of the ones we decided to put forward. We

[Speaker 0]: then have the post adoption consortium program cut. This eliminates the funding that supported post adoption events. We, as you can see, had a budget of $200,000 but we only actually spent $2,000 of it last year. So it's an underutilized funding that we felt we could make a cut to without significantly impacting services to Vermonters. Then we have the Families First Prevention Services Act or FFCFA aftercare cut. This is the elimination of funding for aftercare services for each of the state custody and leaving residential placements, which was identified as necessary to implement the Family First Prevention Services Act. This was meant to provide services to youth after they exit DCF residential placement. One of the few items that prevents DCF from drawing down more than fourteen days of 4E revenue for children in residential homes. The larger issue that we're facing is the lack of a comprehensive child care, child welfare information system or CCWIS. And so we would not be able to draw in 4E even with the aftercare. Because we don't have CCUS, we haven't been able to provide this service, so it's not actually representing a loss of services to anyone at this moment in time, which is why we were proposing cutting out. The same goes for the prevention services cut, which is also tied to that FFPSA bill and similarly was not being actively provided because of the lack of our CCUS system. And given that it's not a loss of services to anyone and that we could not actually claim anymore 40 revenue anyway, this was another of the decisions we made as a copy. So that's

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. Fine.

[Speaker 0]: So moving on to CDD. Skipping past all the road thing. We have revenue realignment. Again, you'll see different just moving between major operating buckets. Mhmm. We have such a very small amount of travel savings in operating

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You don't have to tell us these things that are under $10,000. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: And then we have jumping down to grants, we have the childcare revenue adjustment. So as you recall, we are we have a new special fund. It's the child care contribution special fund, which is a payroll tax that supports our child care at 76. And in it, we get projections from the economists, the consensus forecasts. And last year, we aligned our revenue spending authority asked for the special fund to their forecasts. Their forecasts went down this year, and so we had to make some adjustments. So there's a line on here that's $2,500,000 down. That one is so that we can transfer We have put up spending authority in both DCF and tax for that, so it's like double counted. That's just a correction to take down the special fund and backfill of general fund and DCF, so we're not double counting that special fund. And then another line further down, you'll see the $6,200,000 down. That brings us into alignment with the economist projections for how much revenue we will actually earn from the childcare special fund. And then we have

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: to backfill that with general funds. Do you know what the total amount received by that tax? You don't have to know. I can grab that.

[Speaker 0]: I mean, if I need to get back to you on that too.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It's okay. We're gonna find out later.

[Speaker 0]: We're about to open it. But these invoice take longer than anything. So it looks like we would be proposing 85,900,000.0 across various locations in the budget. Yes.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So that would be the total risk collected. Yes. There's about a 10% reduction in the estimate. So

[Speaker 0]: then, again, we can skip over the the net neutral moves. So that brings us to some against some cuts that we had to make. So the first one is the strengthening families program cut. This is elimination of the grant program to families supporting childcare programs, and this is targeted to sunset anyways as the funds weren't adequately distributed across childcare programs. And we also

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: have

[Speaker 0]: additional funds that are available via Act 76. So we're proposing eliminating this program. The next one is the child care capacity grants reduction. And this was reduced to grants to support startup and expansion. After this cut, there will be 900,000 remaining in this line. And there may be some available from some of these one time federal awards that we've received such as Preschool Development Grant Birth to 05/2026 award. Then we have the Emergency Financial Relief Utilization cut. This reduces the funding available to support emergency needs for childcare providers who are at risk of closure. The remaining budget is aligned to what was actually dispersed last eight fiscal year. And then we have the childcare eligibility agreement efficiencies. And this is a reduction in funding to grants with our 12 community child care support agencies or CCCSAs. And this is based on the usage since the budget was doubled in state fiscal year '24. We have 2,500,000.0 remaining after this cut. Okay. And then the last item is the Children's Trust Fund cut. This is the elimination of contribution to Children's Trust Fund's annual grant making program for a variety of child serving programs. Federal funds have not been available for several years and this room would be not spending authority as well. Okay. That's CBD.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. General support.

[Speaker 0]: Office of child support, there's only been one line that I would note and that's the last line on there. It's the judiciary cooperative agreement. We're proposing reducing the general fund provided to the judiciary to offset some non 40 eligible family court costs as DCF has taken on more of this work and needs that to offset some of our costs. Aid to the aged, blind and disabled. ABD, we have to pay the feds to administer this program. It's a per payment. We pay them a flat level for every payment that they administer, and the cost goes up every year. The first line is just the adjustment to right size our projected needs for our costs. And then the second line is based on caseload adjustments. As you may recall from our PowerPoint, we are seeing it from a downward trend there. Moving on to general assistance. We have a proposed cut to the Social Security Specialist Agreement, and this is the elimination of an agreement that provides support to eligible households in applying for Social Security benefits. Analysis of the data did not demonstrate that there was a substantial increase in applications for or approval by the SSA as a result of this agreement.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And now is this a cut? Who had this grant?

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: Economic services didn't it was not billed. This those in our general case note for general assistance.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But no, was also up until they get there.

[Speaker 0]: The next line is the support services caseload adjustment. So this is an adjustment for the various support services that we provide out of general assistance. This includes burials, abortions, physicians, and dental costs. We're seeing increases in burials, abortions, and physicians, but a decrease in dentals. That's why you'll see an up in GF and down in GC. We have our personal needs and infantile case load adjustment. This is based on prior year trends. And so we've talked about it in our groceries, room and board, home rented room benefits. We recognize that analysis needs to be done on this program to understand this crossover between the populations in various housing programs and how that impacts the P and I utilization as we move towards that new version of the housing initiative.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member, Lamoille)]: Any questions? I know. Going up to the general assistance transition plan, What exactly is being cut there?

[Speaker 0]: That that that next one. Oh, okay. So the housing initiative that DCF has put forth as part of the governor's recommended budget prioritizes shelter funding and expansion. Consequently, DCF proposes converting the base funding for the hotel motel program in state fiscal year '27 into one time funds and allowing additional base funds to be invested in other components of the housing environment. This retains limited funding for the contracted hotel rooms and ESD space GA appropriation. And so you'll see when we get to Movio that there's some very large increases there for shelters. We do still retain a significant amount of money in in a one time appropriation for emergency housing in state fiscal year '27. So that exists as well.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We might have you come back just to talk about the housing initiative in the future. Just to really explain that in more detail at a later date.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. I think it it one thing that I tried to do on our budget book is I pulled out a whole separate section. It's just the housing initiative to try to put them all in one spot, and so you can sort of read through that too and to get the context of the moving the various parts knowing that looking at the upsets is a little bit confusing because they're kinda scattered around. So that's I wanted to see how that's general assistance.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You know where that is in the in the budget book? I just wanted to see where it looks like.

[Speaker 0]: It's after the section that has all the upstands in it. I bought it. It's called, like, housing initiative. It's a long document.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. There's one seven hundred pages. Okay. I'll look at it later. Okay. The

[Speaker 0]: the next appropriation is our three squares. This is the regular benefit case load pressure. SNAP benefits pass directly from the federal government to beneficiaries for all people who receive food only benefits on card. However, for those individuals who receive cash benefits, that funding flows from the fed to the state and then out. So this is just to show that we're seeing an increase in our risk weighted benefit caseloads and perhaps where we need the federal funding available as an accommodation for us. The next one is reach out. So the first line item on there is a caseload savings. This is an adjustment based on our consultant's projection and our trends that we've seen in the last couple of years after the cost per case. So we're seeing a change in the number of cases per month And this is an adjustment based on where we had projected it last year. The next item on here is our Reach First program cut. This is the elimination of the Reach First program, which provides short term targeted support for households as part of a diversion strategy. This is a program that was meant to divert people from Reach Up and only a small number of households are served by the program. We believe we can absorb the cost of this program within the Reach Up budget. And on average, we were serving about 15 households per month for an average of four months per household. The next one is the parent, pregnant and parenting bed reduction. So this reduces the maximum number of DCF contracted beds at Lund by three beds to a total of 23 beds available. Lund has not had more than 22 beds utilized at one time for over a year. So we think that this is even still providing us with a little bit of space. The next

[Megan Tierney-Ward (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: Go ahead.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member, Lamoille)]: I mean, just looking you indicated that the caseload adjustment was based on projections, but not on actual or trends?

[Speaker 0]: So it is based on actual. So we we have a consultant who looks at our actual trends, and she projects out. We use the actual that we've seen and we project it out into the future. And so looking at that, I just said it's compared to our projection for this year because I think sometimes people see the $3,300,000 down and they think that our current caseload is taking, but it's more like we had presumed a larger increase in caseload than actually materialized or it's a smaller it's a larger decrease than we thought when we built it. So the 3.3 is, again, based on what we had projected and what we're now projecting. Does that make sense? And then the last item, well, there's Social Security Agreement, which is the same thing that we talked about in GA, but it's for reach up. Again, we're not seeing a huge impact of this agreement in eligibility determinations by SSA. We are proposing cutting Reach Up housing agreements. The elimination of these grants which provide housing case management supports to Reach Up households, housing case management services are already available through other venues at DCF, making this a duplicative service. And then the last item is the TANF brand alignment. LIHEAP is again, as we talked about earlier, the adjustment of our federal revenue to reflect our current award total. Brings us to the Office of Economic Opportunity. We are proposing

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Was there an answer with the LIHEAP? Was increase? Was there also an increase to weatherization?

[Speaker 0]: No, there was not.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So

[Speaker 0]: the LIHEAP that's in weatherization is a swap between weatherization, special front and life, and economic services division. So the first item on here that I would note is that we are proposing transferring two of our limited service positions from ESD into OEO to be funded with HOP funding for State Fiscal Year '27. This was also in the BIA. These are positions that are really critical for the support of the farm in operating the HOT program, and they were housing related positions to begin with, so it's just a different aspect of our emergency housing and sheltering program. And then we have one EVAP limited service position that the EVAP funding is expiring, and so we're asking to backfill it again with funds from our cough program.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: What is EWAP again? I'd like to see

[Speaker 0]: rental assistance program. It was some fun it was a federal award that we got during the pandemic. Pandemic.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So it's continuing. It is just

[Speaker 0]: So the EUF funding is ending. Right. So we're back filling it with general fund.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But we're To finish it or would it continue? Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: No. To continue to support the housing program. Okay. We're doing operating.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And do would you can you remind me what the total is? So there's a 127,000 more. What what is the total in in Iraq?

[Speaker 0]: So Iraq ended. So this is a is this one position?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The only money in the program now, just 127,000 in general.

[Speaker 0]: Yes. So now that so ERAF is wrapping up, and so that position was working on housing agreements. It's not still working on housing agreements,

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: but This is just for the position? Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: This is just for the position.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Do you know how much money there is in the wrap?

[Megan Tierney-Ward (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: I don't know.

[Speaker 0]: It's across the whole state. Right. I'm the only one that got it. So I Yeah. I I don't You don't know

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: how much general how much state money is now being used for?

[Speaker 0]: I don't know that. In our budget, it's just this 127,000.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Just for the position? Yeah. Just for the position.

[Speaker 0]: But I don't know across the state what that will. So in the grants out section is where you'll see most of our housing initiative things. The first line item is the annualization of our permanent supportive housing program. We had some one time money we were using to offset this in the prior years, and now we fully utilized that or we'll have fully utilized it by the end of this year. So we are moving into needing to build out the full budget in the base. We have the Cole Brother Shelter. This is a shift from one time to base funding to continue providing the Cole Brother Shelters that have been stood up this year. We also have the base impact of one time housing opportunity shelter expansion investments. So it's investments that happened that are happening right now that need to be operated next year. So we need to build the operating budget into our budget. And then we have funding adjustments for HOP limited service positions. Those next two lines are the opposite of the ones we saw above. We're using some of the HOP funds to cover those positions so that we can operate the program. And then we have a bunch of housing initiatives. So I don't know if we wanna get into them right now or if

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: you want Yeah. I think just us reading here is enough. I'm seeing the dollar amounts. Maybe either health and welfare will spend more time on this, or we'll have you back to give some more details on this.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. It have to be both. I mean

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It might have to be both. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member, Lamoille)]: I don't know what's coming over from the house and a bill. There was discussion about a bill. I don't know what it is now. I have to match language with dollars.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right. Assuming the house is taking the same kind of money and doing something different with it, But maybe they're agreeing with you a 100%.

[Speaker 0]: Sounds like.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Okay. So we we don't need to go into the detail for that.

[Speaker 0]: But I will say that you can see that, you know, we took 7,000,000 down from the base in GA, but much more is being put into OBO for shelter.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So does that you took it out of the base and put it in this one time just to fund the one time. Was there another reason you made that switch from base to to one time?

[Speaker 0]: It went the other way. So we so we We

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: had base for the For emergency

[Speaker 0]: housing, hotel motel program.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But this is all base that you're putting in a few or this

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: is all one

[Speaker 0]: time? Yes. So this is all based for the shelter. So we took the base funding that we had for emergency housing hotel motels. We're now utilizing it differently, focusing it on shelter options.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So it's still in base. It's just

[Speaker 0]: on base. Yeah. But we also have one time funding for the emergency housing hotel motel program separate. Then we have the so, yeah. So just skipping over those, can see all that. More details on all of those in the budget bar. Weatherization, the only real thing to flag here is that we do have our again, a federal award that's higher than our spending authority. So we're asking for more spending authority. Just that $1,000,000? Yeah. Just the $1,000,000 Yeah.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's good.

[Speaker 0]: It's a good problem to have. And then we get to the secure residential treatment facility appropriation, which has one very small ISF line, and then a million dollars that we are building into the base for our West River Haven facility. And so DCF will have utilized all of our one time funding and secure treatment facilities by the end of next year. As we do not yet have permanent secure residential treatment facility in place, we will continue to use our Red Clover facility in state fiscal year '27. We will also be operating a short term stabilization treatment facility in Wyndham, which is called West River Haven. Combined, the operating need for these two facilities is over 8,000,000, but our base is only 3,700,000.0. So we're proposing using $1,000,000 of base fully fund for West River Haven since that's an ongoing program, and then we are requesting 4,000,000 of one time funds to cover the rent cover operations in state fiscal year '27 since the rent cover is temporary facility.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is that somewhere else? That's not here.

[Speaker 0]: It's not here. This is only based funding.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And why is it the Wyndham County Sheriff's Office?

[Speaker 0]: That's the location of the West River Aide. That's in the basement of that building.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Sheriff owns the building. I thought it was a floor above the sheriff.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: That's a

[Megan Tierney-Ward (Deputy Commissioner, Family Services Division, DCF)]: separate location called the rest stop that we use for temporary staffing of youth, but this is a in the basement where we've actually revamped the entire basement to create a real program for the vehicle. We have someone come in to operate the program. It's very enterprise in share.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Making co use of this building. Yeah. Okay. Continuing.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. And then DBS, it it not any this one line No area. Position for our technical need for that. But other than that, it's all just the basic stuff.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. Yeah. I think it's gonna be only the housing grant stuff. That's a big question. Maybe some other the cuts that you made, people might have questions. I know I've heard from some some of them already, as you can imagine. Any questions folks have for DCF? Anything else you wanted to tell us?

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, Economic Services Division, DCF)]: I don't think so.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And we'll look, we went through your slides pretty quick. If we look at those, if have any other questions, we know how to get ahold of you. Did you have

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member, Lamoille)]: I would just, I'm looking at the disability determination services And had where is that right now in terms of increase in numbers for requests or other given some of the concerns about long COVID or other disorders.

[Speaker 0]: We could have to get back

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member, Lamoille)]: to you. That's a question in my committee, I think. I don't think it's a question. I mean, it sounds more like a

[Sen. Virginia “Ginny” Lyons (Member)]: policy committee question.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member, Lamoille)]: I think Somebody has an answer.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Think I only get back to senator Lamoille. Senator Watson, do have a question?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: Yeah. I think I need one more time. The the TANF piece is broken up into multiple locations, but ultimately is a $4,500,000 Is that right? No.

[Speaker 0]: So you're thinking of the SNAP Oh, okay. The SNAP admin change. So the TANF is we're just realigning our federal revenue between our different appropriations. It's net zero.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: Mhmm. Well, so but it means that there's more pressure on the general fund.

[Speaker 0]: Not more pressure. So, like, if we're so for example, we're putting more TANF into Reach Up, and so it's so we take the TANF from and we put it into Reach Up, We take the general fund from reach up and we put it in that. And so that is it's just a swap of funding sources, by doing these moves, which seem really counterproductive and and technical, we allow ourselves to claim. We have general fund in places where we can claim more we can show more maintenance of effort, which allows us to buy down the work participation rate. Okay. And so that's that's the goal behind all these, like, net neutral moves.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The money going out for reach up? That was not changing.

[Speaker 0]: It doesn't change in reach up. It doesn't change in that state. It doesn't change in admin. It's just where we have general fund expenses that we

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: can put our maintenance back over for. Okay. It's just clever budgeting. Okay, well there's no other questions or comments. Can take a break. We're going to try to get S-two 19 to hear, We don't have our lunch counts on that tomorrow. So today, it's good to hear. We might not book the bill out, but we're just gonna get the sponsor to tell us about it and hear from lunch counts.