Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The commissioner with us today. So I'll let you introduce yourself and your team and give us your education. We can take down this silly

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: of operations.

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: I'm Sean Kussner, the deputy CFO. Okay. Welcome.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: We're pleased to be here this afternoon. You know, we had to make some scheduling adjustments. So I just want to be straightforward around our time constraints today. So I will be with your committee for thirty minutes. Jill is able to stay another fifteen, and then Sean will be staying behind and can provide me a deeper dive into the budget upon your meetings. We have with us, we intended for both our full budget. We have shared with you our budget book, which goes into great detail around how we're making strategic changes around aligning our resources in the areas that are most impactful to elevating educational outcomes statewide. We also have provided or put together a response to the house budget. And so we'd like your kind of direction on where you would like us to start. We can begin by providing an overview of our house response or with our budget. So I wanted to defer to you on one

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: If of the there's one part that you feel like it's better to be delivered by you as the commissioner, we can start there.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: So we'll start there then, that'd be helpful. So the house budget, there are significant concerns that we have with the amendments made from the governor's original proposal. Is this one

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: of your handouts or is it just?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: I believe that this one provided. This should be the custom on the need that says fiscal year 2027 budget h September. We send you over a lot of materials. So I just wanted to acknowledge that. Okay. And you might reference it as well with we sent over materials that we had provided to house appropriations on March 10, which was an update on the use of our act 73 appropriation to date as of March 10. So there's sort of a cross reference. Okay. And I think it's important to have a bit of a context around the work that we've been doing within the agency of education. We have undergone a significant reorganization to ensure that we are aligning our expertise and teams and projects in ways that will add the most value to the field. And we have focused on establishing our strategic plan, which has five strategic pillars. Those pillars are aligning our efforts to improve academic outcomes, expand pathways to post secondary success, and support safe and healthy environment environments for all schools. We do appreciate that within the house budget, they have included a provision to move our limited service positions that were reflected last year into five permanent positions. Those are positions that were put forward as part of our education transformation request and are also the team building back the agency's field facing capacity to provide that level of support around operational and academic efforts. However, there are a number of provisions within the current house budget draft, which will complicate the agency's ability to lead and carry out the work that the state is expecting us to deliver upon. Just to make a final point on it, last session, we brought forward to you a budget transformation proposal. Within that proposal, we detailed all of the ways that the agency would be using those dollars to guide the change management process that is required for the transformation. All of that was approved, and we have been working towards implementing all of those practices. The current house proposal actually takes those funds away and really takes away our ability to deliver on that progress. It's challenging because in the agency we have been navigating a lot of federal uncertainty. Some of the shifts we're seeing in the current house budget proposal feel very reminiscent to when our ESSER dollars were taken away during the Trump administration. That was very stabilizing and created a lot of challenge for us to have continuity around the strategic priorities that were established. Particularly, we have a lot of concern that the reversion funds for literacy are not included in the House budget. Act 139 was established as the most comprehensive literacy improvement effort that we've had in Vermont. It did not come with an appropriation. And so what we have done as an agency is be really resourceful in identifying funds that are currently available to us, actually realigning the use of those funds to literacy because of its prioritization. It is disappointing that the literacy funds for a request of $700,000 are not included in the house budget. And it's important to note that those don't represent new money. It's really a reversion to better align resources at the agency to promote statewide improvement. So you actually heard from us on this. We had it in the ADA request. You were quite supportive of it, which we really appreciated. House appropriations received that same testimony. They declined to include it in the ADA. For doing so. And as I signaled back then, well, we'll come back to you for the FY twenty seven budget. This was in the governor's request. And, you know, so if you have I I submitted that testimony again, so you have sort of a reminder of the long history of those funds. But what is sort of critical to remind us of is that these are not new dollars. And in fact, originally, they were federal dollars. So we were asking for a simple revision and reappropriation. Absent those funds, I just wanna be clear about the risk. We will not be able to carry out the really critical work that the agency has been tasked to do to support teachers, classroom teachers in improving their literacy instruction. So that's that is the consequence of not having those dollars. There there are no other dollars. We're we're really using this astronomer, like I said, we're planning every penny right now to really maximize our support for the field and our strategic work. So the risk is quite high. We will have to not unfold next year's time.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Their budget transfers out that 700,000 as well as other unobligated or spend funds from that 73?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: It doesn't even include the reversion. So those funds would just go back into the the general fund plot that we've come. Because they were a turf forward dollar that we asked for.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: They they take them, spend some of that.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: And then in addition, they take the we had originally asked for just took a $4,000,000 to support a transformation that was further reduced in the budget last year to just about 2,800,000.0 that included the five committed service positions Right. Which we've asked to make permanent. They further reduced that down and leave us with $800,000.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Mainly, what they took was money that was unobligating. Is that what they did, like or I can look at it later.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Yeah. I mean, we have obligated some of these funds. We have live RFPs. I mean, we are we are a year into this work. So it's it is a really disruptive action on their part. And what they're suggesting to do with it is to grant the funds to districts for administrative costs related to education transformation.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And you hit the document you referred to earlier that you gave to the House, that explains what Paul does Act 73

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Yeah, we're working on it. You can see the way we've been bringing funds to maximize the work. So as as I said, we're trying to be as resourceful as possible. We're pulling every funding source that I've got, general funds and federal dollars. This is some of the acts that we need to read, transformation dollars to be able to elevate these major strategic initiatives that were required to undertake.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And this this memo to the house committee was from February 24 about about a month ago. Is it basically the same? No big changes to this table?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: No. No. The the dashboard RFP is left.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. And so was Act seventy three, four, five positions? That's what they authorized?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Act 73 is five positions. They were limited to service for eight months.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Are they all been hired?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: No, it's very challenging to recruit four positions. Eight months. So as we're recruiting people to leave the field and leave their district jobs, that's a very high risk for them unless they can have guarantee and assurance that that will be a more permanent

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Have you been able to fill any of this time?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: I have one. That I'm in the process of onboarding. And I mean, were just very frankly, we're incredibly lucky to get her. And she's coming from the field and is exactly the person I wanted to hire. She's taking a very good risk on us. And those that are in the interview process are kind of waiting for a signal around more. So you can see, we started recruiting these positions way back in winter and where it's

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So that's one of the reasons you want to switch to Perchlik.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Yes, absolutely. And typically with a limited service position, they do three years.

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

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: can plan for that eight months is quite challenging for, these are very senior level roles. So they're high level leadership positions to take that level of risk for short time is really reasonable. So that's one of the reasons is to be able to fulfill the recruitment, but also we have always seen these roles as instrumental to supporting education and district quality, and we've long heard criticism based on what happened to the downsizing of the agency years ago during the recession that many of the roles that were reduced were those field facing roles. This team helps to build back out the field facing support that we can provide to our districts. And then as part of our reorganization and strategic plan, we're adding more emphasis on our team members being more embedded in the field. So this really does signal an alignment with our direction as an agency and being responsive to the field.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And was there also a perm one for permanent position for special education? Mhmm.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Yes.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is that until?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: We are in the final process. Negotiate. Yeah, we're in salary negotiations.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's also like a senior position.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: That is very much so. Yes. And in addition to, so there's I think two things that are occurring in the house budget. One is diverting dollars that were originally appropriate to the agency into grants for the district. And then there's also provisions that provide restrictions on how we're able to use the funds that are appropriated to the agency. And many of those restrictions are problematic for us to be able to deliver on the leadership responsibilities. So we are going to have further conversations with the house to understand that, but to your benefit within this testimony, we do have a table for each of those line items and identify where we have opposition to those amendments and why. And so if I can orient you to that, can walk you through some of those areas. In terms of the, there's some restrictions on us being able to do

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the- This is the table where you have the budget section.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: That's correct. Yeah. So related to the education transformation, as we've expressed, we do oppose withholding restricting funds in administration six. Those have already been approved and appropriated by the legislature. Specifically, this work, we have some concerns around the underlying policy choices around the shift in funds. We'll be presenting to House Education after this meeting to really elaborate on that. We also recognize that within this, there are some restrictions on our ability to do data visualizations and dashboards, which is challenging because we've long heard that we need to have greater transparency around our data and that that is going to be a critical factor for the districts to support continuous improvement and for the transformation efforts. And I think I'm gonna kind of have a couple other areas. I think those are the main ones that I wanted to make sure. And then we've talked about those that are CPs being a challenge because that is an interruption in our ability to deliver on three per month.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: How much money is that in that section? Section c one zero three. This is you had a total or is it just part of the restrictions is also a big part of it, it's not just the

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Yeah, so both the restrictions are on those dollars not being appropriate to the agency, but more to the district. Then we have opposition to many of the terms around the use of this fund. Sean, do want to expand on the extra dollars?

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Looks like 1,400,000.0.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. We'll learn more about that as we go through the house budget. We don't want to look at that yet. And then you stood on the 700,000 for the literacy items. Do you remember that?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Good. Glad. I did warn you that we'd be back and talk about it. Yeah. I mean, I think it felt like a pretty simple ask particularly since it wasn't newcomer. So it was surprising to see that omission. And we are really making progress on this despite the starts and stops from the kind of reversal of federal dollars. So being able to ensure the field that they're going to get some continuity in the way that this is rolled out is really important. And again, just that risk is that there are no other funds available. We are already bringing in federal dollars that we have at the state level. We're already reverting FY '26 funds, you know, that that we were able to do without needing kind of full reversion permission because it was already within our, what is it called the DAB? Yeah. And then DAB stands for I just called DAB. So we were really bringing to bear every time that we can in the absence of any preparation for the work.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And while we're on this kind of general topics, are you worried about any further federal cuts or anything on Verizon that we should be aware of?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: I mean, this point, our understanding is that it's level funding. Their Yeah. FY '26 is what we use to fund our FY '27. So what that's saying to the field is that they can expect level funding from basically the budget that they're currently living. I think the bigger concern is more about basically the dismantling of the Department of Education. Were just talking about the other day. We have a grant amendment to submit and we're hoping there's someone on the other it's that sort of level of uncertainty.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Lack of staff.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Lack of staff and go ahead. Yeah, the strategy around dismantling the Department of Education is moving those areas under different agencies. They have interagency agreements, which the Trump administration has really positioned as proof of concept. They're now in the process of doing additional interagency agreements. There's some contemplation around living special education. Movements have not yet been finalized, but are really significant. The proof of concept that's often cited is the movement of the Perkins grant to the Department of Labor, but that's a much smaller amount of dollars. The movement of the title funding to other agencies is much more significant. And so we are really pressing upon our congressional delegation, the importance of making those funds available. As of July 1, say available, not just that we get the grant award, but that we can draw down the dollars. And I was just in DC earlier in the week, and there's a lot of conversations of trying to move to a new system. There needs to be an evaluation of whether they'll be read it on the new system within these other departments to actually deliver on this obligation to the states on July 1 and there has to be a point in time kind of a go no go, where if they're not able to deliver on a new system, that we would wanna make sure they could use the existing systems to get us the dollars. So those are the conversations we were having with our professional delegation in DC this week, is just making sure we're tracking that in terms of the access to the dollars and having visibility to the project management process that's happening at the Department of Education so we can evaluate if there needs to be pressure put on those decisions of how the dollars will be distributed. And then there's also the question around training. US Department of Education is from what I gather in the process of doing a contract to provide training on these new finance systems. We don't yet have the details around that, but that's a lot of what the state chiefs are advocating for. This is a bipartisan issue where states just need to make sure that they can access the dollars, that their accountants and their team have the training in order to be able to draw down this fund that distributes to the district. That's more of what we're Yeah, and there's some really, I mean, we're talking about is really mechanical kinds of things. So Sean, you got to experience this when they moved the Perkins grant over to DOL and having to get fully reregistered into a new system, there is a significant delay in heartache and, know.

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Eventually, started working.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Yeah, but it was months, right? And it seemed like, you know, the folks at USN were not necessarily coordinating the folks at the Department of Labor and that in triple zone. It We're also keeping, we're monitoring any new terms. So there could potentially be new terms which require a substantial more documentation on a frequent basis that it would be hard not just for Vermont but many states to comply with. So those are the things that we're monitoring right now at the federal level. Right now, we're not anticipating cuts in funding. There is some indication that there might be an increase in IDEA funding, but we haven't yet received confirmation of that with the President's budget, but that was signaled to state chiefs earlier this I I think, senator, last year towards the end of session, I think we came in and gave kind of a final federal update. We can offer to do the same again. Like, before you all reset, this is where we think we're at, and we will let you know, you know, join fiscal committee, you know, or you work at a session.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. That might be that's some problems. Like Yeah. We're we're can help all our level funding and know the other extra from our terms

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: We're managing through a tremendous amount of uncertainty and because of that the agency has identified the need for even stronger leadership and that's why we focus so heavily on developing our strategic plan and being really clear around our priorities as a state. What you'll see in our budget book is everything, all the budget decisions that contract negotiations, how our teams are organized are aligned to these priorities with the intention of providing that stability to the field. When we aren't able to access dollars from the state that we thought we could access, it becomes really challenging for us to deliver on our leadership responsibility. And so we welcome the opportunity to talk more about that. We want to have full transparency in terms of how we're using the dollars. I wanna also note that for all of the projects that we're implementing in the field, we have organized opportunities to get input from our field partners. So in our budget book, as you look at all of the initiatives that we're resourcing, those have been really co designed and developed with input from the field. So as an example, as we're really rolling out the number of training to support the implementation of ACT 173, which is really around improving quality of instruction and access to support for our students. We engage the field and thinking through how should we build this out? What's the timing of this? How does it align with other training that we're doing so that we can add the most value and be impactful to our shared goals.

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Okay. Does

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: any other committee members have general questions before we move to the kind of more of the budget presentation? So do you want to walk us through

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: your Yeah.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: So we went Usually, I I speak on your behalf for the secretary's message. You know? So why don't you give kind of that brief slide, and we can probably let the secretary go. She So can get to the next round of this one today. So you've seen our backup documentation. We really took the budgeting process, as we always do, with a concerted focus on how this is an expression of our priorities. This past year and a half has been really intensive work in lifting up the priorities for our state and ensuring that we could evaluate how we were using our resources at the state agency to support that. So it has resulted in, as I mentioned, really significant changes in how we are operating as an agency through our realignment of work, and also making sure that we've really been resourceful, how we can stretch our dollars. So you'll see in the budget book, there's a lot of initiatives that we were able to put forward without any new appropriations. And that's because we've been really thoughtful and also discerning in how we're organizing our time, our resources, and crafting our initiatives to make that impact. Do have within our strategic plan, as I mentioned, we're organized by five pillars. Within those pillars, we have identified what we're calling accelerated initiatives. That's important to note because while we're developing the long range vision for education in our state, we know that we have to be responsive and agile to the emergent needs. What you'll see in our budget is a focus on resourcing those key initiatives now that we know are going to be critical to advancing and elevating those goals. What we brought forward in the state house. So with the CTE transformation, this is really building upon our shared vision of expanding access to high quality career and technical education and ensuring that we can have earlier exposure in middle school. The proposal that's brought forward is really about universal access to CTE and moving towards a single governance entity that will allow us to have more consistency in terms of quality and support for current technical education with some intentional alignment to the work of the districts in creating that coherent instructional program so that current technical education really becomes part of the way that we deliver education. A part of this is also modernizing our current rules and processes as well. Chronic absenteeism, as we noted over the last several years, has been a challenge that all states have tackled with particularly after the pandemic. There's been a a rise in chronic absenteeism. One in four students experience chronic absenteeism.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So How does that define so many days per

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: 10%.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: 10% of the days for the whole school year?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Yes. So that averages out to about two days per month. But we have many students who are well above that. And they tend to be in most vulnerable populations. And Vermont has not recovered around chronic absenteeism to the extent that many other states have. And so this is why it's an area of concerted focus for us. We're still lingering at that 25% and we have a lot of other states that through really big statewide efforts have been able to get back down to that like eight to 10%, which is, you know, that's pretty good to be at that level. And our policy is focused on clarity around definitional terms and also the process. Our efforts are also very much preventative in making sure that we can lift up some promising practices that other districts have done effectively to prevent that. We have truancy as part of that, but that really is at the tail end. So we're creating a process that is really much more responsive to the needs of the students and also clarifying points of escalation for districts so that there's more consistency because we have heard a lot of feedback from districts around responsibilities and when things need to be escalated. So this very much is an interdisciplinary approach to the work. We've had partnership with other agencies in formulating this along with the field. And the sense of this bill is that it passed out of house education unanimously, which was really fantastic. We were so pleased to see that kind of coalescing around the issue. And now it's over in the Senate. We look forward to providing, you know, answering questions or providing to senate education, but it did pass out of house with strong support. It's very foundational, right? As we're as we're digging into doing the policies and procedures and best practices, first, we have to have some good foundations and shared definitions to work from. So this is like step one of a multi year strategic plan. Beyond the statutory changes that are recommended, doing intensive partnership with the healthcare community as well with UBM and we've co hosted trainings this year. There's a lot of work that's happening within the field as well as we stashed for changes. And then another key area of focus for us is finalizing the decisions around Act 73. We recognize that within Act 73, there were intentional decisions that needs to be made this session. And so we've continued to be supportive of sharing data, information, research to help support and inform policymakers in finalizing those decisions so that we can really advance the goals of Act 73 and build an education system that truly is world class and is overcoming what we currently see as an unfair system, which didn't separate disparity in terms of the access to opportunities across our state. We're very much committed. That's actually where Secretary Saunders is now. So I can jump over. Thank you for having us.

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

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Alright, Sean, I'll jump over and then you'll get to be in the hot seat. So Sean, if you wanna advance. And so I take us to slide 14, and then I have to also leave and and Sean can take you down into the details. Okay. So our strategic pillars that we've been talking about. So this is our thrive three to five year strategic plan. The agency has not had a strategic plan since 2014. So that's a really long time to go without sort of a clear North Star. And one of the very first things that secretary Saunders did when she came in was after the strategic plan. We were, you know, dusting off old things and one of our first big all staffs, we did kind of a quick poll of the folks who were here. How many of you were involved in that strategic plan? I think like three people raised their hands and we said, okay. We're not we're not doing that again, the next time we do this, everyone's going be able to raise their hands. So we are in the environmental scan, which is sort of defining the problem, looking at all the data, putting out a lot of reporting, validating what we're hearing in the field. We've established these five pillars, and then within those, we're now in the sort of actual, like, breaking down and planning, defining the goal areas, what are going to be our key performance measures, what does success apply. And that work is being done through steering committees, are largely made up of members of the field and other education leaders. So each of these pillars has its own strategic steering committee with about 20 to 25 people on it. We just finished our first round of meetings there. We'll be meeting all through the spring. And then our goal is to actually publish our strategic plan in July. At which point we're really then we get into the implementation, the measuring, the evaluating, the adjusting. Right? So then you get into that continuous improvement cycle. And this is how we've also aligned our FY27 budget. So having really clear priorities around what we're doing in a kind of resource limited environment that we're working in with, We run a very small agency. Right? So we have a really limited number of people, so we're the best resource for work. So improving statewide academic performance, expanding college and career readiness, promoting safe and healthy schools, supporting operational effectiveness, and ensuring high quality special education services and differentiated support for all students. And you can we can link to this. We've got a website for all the details on this. And then within that, Senator Baruth, to your point, we are sort of waiting for the plan to be done to actually start doing some accelerated initiatives that we know we need to get moving on. We've done almost all of these without any additional appropriations and it's really being done by aligning resources within the agency and having folks who focus on specific work. So you've already seen Read Vermont. This one we do need some additional funds. That's what that $700,000 request is for. We also have a math pilot that we're tentatively branding Count On Vermont. If anyone has any pithy and this might be a good area for you. Any pithy, we've been workshopping. We tried Vermont counts and I think there was a Vermont count, so we just smack that gap. So yes, please send your ideas. But we're we're starting this very small with a few pilot districts because we know that literacy, math and science are three of our foundational areas. And what we're really finding is when you get to the college and career readiness, what we're seeing is that students are not able to take advantage of dual enrollment and honors courses and AP courses and even CTE because they don't actually have the foundational skills in place to do so. And senator, bet you experience those in schools all the time. Right? So it really becomes very rapidly an equity issue. Alright. We also have safe and healthy schools. So our everyday counts, that's our chronic absenteeism campaign. We're about two years into this work and we're going to be really working to get the statutory changes done, hopefully this session. We're already working on the model policy, procedures, best practices. And then really our aim is to turn this into a school issue. Chronic absenteeism is not a school issue, it's a community issue, and really thinking about how we expand this so that everybody kind of has ownership of the kiddos and ensuring that they're getting to school. We also are going to be really focused on HHB, gazing harassment and bullying prevention. It's a major area of focus. And as always, when you're talking to me, you're also gonna be talking about school facilities and stay there for school construction, which we all know continues to be sort of the albatross that we've got to figure out here. Operational effectiveness, we have one example here, but I would just say we are looking across almost every process that we have within the agency and looking for ways to document it, improve it, look at cross training because we're such a small agency. We frequently have, you know, a person, right, who knows how to do that thing. So we really need to be cross training so we reduce that operational risk that has been very typical of the agency for a really long time. And also looking at improving our data, reporting the timeliness of data, we have to do this in partnership with the field. The field gives us the data. And so we have to ensure that the data that we're receiving is high quality, that we are able to turn it around in a timely manner, and then make meaning out of that data so that folks can use it for folks in this building, folks in schools, at the state agency can use it for strategic decision making. So this is an area that we've been really focused on for about the last eighteen months or so and will continue to be focused on. And then 173 implementation. So 173 was passed in 2018, and really due to, I would say, just a variety of confounding factors, including the pandemic, Really, the implementation never kind of got off the ground. And so we're going to do it. The the best practices and the lessons from acronym 73 have not changed. And so we are bringing to bear some additional funding resources where again it's not new funds, we're using some federal dollars, we're using some carry forward, we're using a whole variety of rated sources or resources to do trainings which are kicking off in the next few weeks and we're going to carry through for the next year at sort of every level of the system down into the classroom because really the lesson of 173 is if you want to tackle special education and the rising cost of special education, you've got to actually start in the classroom and improving what we call tier one instruction. So the general ed classroom instruction that you receive every day. So that's going to be a major area of focus

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: for us. Okay.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Alright. We've already talked about I'm sorry.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Let's skip down.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Okay. So we've already talked about the the reorganization. You can see the general structure. The the key drivers in our budget so Sean, I can't really do the numbers. Alright. I mean, it's been a minute since we've done this. We were we had our showdown for a while. Right. And then I get I think I get slide 14. Oh. Pop out.

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Our '27 budget request is for 2,730,000.00, our billing, sorry. And that request that represents an increase of 102,000,000. Majority

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: of

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: that or more than that is the same way Penn Spending Grant. And then we have some reductions in our federal funds. COVID fund reductions there. And then you'll see a $17,400,000 reduction in our grants for the Medicaid program that's shifting to AHS along with other language that's happening this legislative session. And then our personnel and contracts and operating costs, our operations budget for the agency is 42,300,000.0 this year. Small increase of 1.1. Key drivers there, you know, naturally decreasing some contracts. Again, more pandemic funding expired, and then we're refocusing our our resources some. And then our personal cost, have 10% increase in health care and some back office increases that happen per year in the insurance, single one of

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the things on the vision,

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: the hospital vision, HR, and ADS services.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: This one's yours?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Okay. So we can do this very briefly because you've actually heard from us on this several times now. So we only had two new requests in our budget this year. So the first was taking those eight month limited service positions and making them permanent. So that is that one and then to putting them into the base permanently. And then the second one is for the literacy reversion and reappropriation. And again, reminder, these were originally federal funds under ARPA SFRF. They were turned in through AOA administrative action into general fund and now we are asking for them to be reverted and reappropriated so that we can utilize them because our IT contracts are coming in under budget. It's actually why we have the funds available. It's miracle of miracles. And so we'd like to be able to use them for literacy instruction.

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

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Simple budget requests.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Alright, and

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: then Sean, go ahead and teach this. So

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: you'll notice in the house budget, we've combined two appropriations, the two appropriations that covered our operations activities, so finance and admin and then services. So we've combined those into one appropriation this year in a request, and you'll see it that way in the house version the budget. So we're looking to gain some efficiencies in the business office, and it more aligns with how our new structure in the agency after our New York last fall.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: So traditionally, was sort of like a finance admin side and then we always called program was the other side, but our new organizational structure is academics, operations, which includes things like safe and healthy schools, child nutrition, which are largely programmatic, quote unquote, in nature, plus finance, DMAD, other areas, and then our strategy accountability. So one appropriation made a lot more sense. And the other aspect of it was in light of the federal uncertainty that we experienced last spring, we found that being able to be more nimble is really, really important because we don't anticipate that that would be settling down. We are always able to provide any level of detail that you're interested in in terms of transparency of reporting. We have layers and layers and layers of drill down that Sean and team are able to provide. So it's not a less transparent system, it's just more nimble and efficient.

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

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Alright. And then we are some of the numbers. So our all of our appropriation, and it's broken out by a specific category, personal services, operating, and grants. And we're comparing last year's budget to this year's request. And you'll you'll see the increases that totals over 102,000,000 that we looked at before. And then looking just at general fund, personal services operating grants and then your general internal fund, you're right, broken out. See the changes here. Not a whole lot to talk about there, just normal increases.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: There a reason that flexible pathways there was no entry? Is that just a kind

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: of student? That's a portion of dual enrollment. It's half of the dual enrollment option. We've been able to live with it at that times two. So we work within that. These are the other funds that special funds that

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: are on the departmental transfers.

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: And here we're seeing a reduction in your contracts and personal services at the federal fund. And then the grant reduction is federal funding and special sort of Medicaid, point 4,000,000 moving to AHS to show that.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I just skipped to slide 24. I'll just stick with the numbers. Sure. And

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: this looks at just our operations budget. So education services appropriations is the newly combined appropriation. And we're seeing a reduction of 21,300,000.0. Again, that's mainly the Medicaid special fund moving to HS. A little more details on the grants or the source of funds.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The federal funds?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Just submitted the last of our pandemic for a 100 and

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: persons an

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: hour ago. And

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: then physicians, we're we've got 180.1 in our Ed Services appropriation, we

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: have a 2.9

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: in the after school appropriation, making about 183, and we're seeing the funding, our positions are funded. One thing you'll see in the House bill is they've shifted our Medicaid spending authority from, they're gonna move that all to HS and in return we're getting general fund. So if that passes this year, we will have a Medicaid fund. So 18.38 will go over to general fund.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: On your position, how many vacant positions do you have these days?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Right now, we've seen an uptick, and it's been largely due to the the hybrid work standard.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: An uptick in vacancies?

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Yeah. Mhmm.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: So in January, I think we had 18, and that included the five limited service positions. So we were that was really low number of vacancies. That was very normal turnover. Think the last time I checked, were just about 30. And we some of that is also as folks have retired, we're actually reevaluating the position and then we have to move through the HR process. I would say HR has some pretty significant backorder.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Don't say anything better than HR.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: So I would say they're I mean, if they another department that's probably under resourced and understaffed. So I think they've got some pretty significant backlogs right now, which is still going on.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So you're out over 20% or so that's your hope to do.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Yeah, mean, an all hands on deck to get those positions posted. I would say what I find encouraging is that we're actually seeing large numbers of candidates and the quality of the candidates has really significantly increased. Might be benefiting from what's happening at the federal level to be honest, but we're seeing almost every position, you know, well over a dozen very highly qualified candidates. So that's really encouraging. And we are starting to see more folks from the field actually replying for us to work at the agency, which is also encouraging because we're not particularly competitive with UK wise.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Just wondering of the candidates that you're seeing in this little mini search, are they amongst them primarily or?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: It's a mix, actually. Yeah. I would say last year, we saw a lot of out of state candidates who were being laid off from various federal positions.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Makes sense.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Yeah. I would say at this point, it's more mixed, but we do. We we always have a quite a few member of federal or out of state candidates. Yeah. And we're very clear with them that the expectations that they move to Vermont. And then we all cross our fingers and hope they have health. So yeah, we have more vacancies than I feel particularly comfortable with at the moment, but we are I think every every team has some candidates that we're going to bring on board in doing that.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. Maybe move to slide 29.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Just wanted to show off all of the grants that we manage.

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

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: 91.

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: So this is our Ed Fund comparing last year's budget to this year's, showing the increases in our personal services operating and all of the the grants under the education fund. I think in the house budget, they dropped the education grant by about 30 based on the budgets and how they came in versus.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Because they're gonna send it somewhere else or because of the federal grant?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: No. From from local budgets that were

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: passed. Oh.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: So it's their their Bring them to them. Yeah. Yeah.

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: This The 2,100,000,000.0 was based on the estimates from around early December. So now that more time has passed and we received preliminary audits, they could drop that number.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: And senators, I apologize. I I'm Yeah.

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

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Talk to strike in the night from

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

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: all so much. If you have any additional questions, please let Sean know and we will be responsive to them. As I said, we sent you over a ton of materials. So as you're looking through it, just let us know if have any questions. And thank you for your time.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Thank you. So the universal meals continues to drop in cost. Is that a trend you're gonna expecting to see more of?

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: I think it's probably right sizing to where we were estimating a need and we have a small decrease this year. Think in the budget adjustment we dropped it a million. When

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: it was passed, the former member of this committee, Senator Starr, always thought once we got it up and running it would be much lower number. Okay. Seems slowly heading towards his number. We haven't quite gotten anything. And we never will. He was toward the end, he was saying it was a pittance. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: Bobby always had a deal.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And transportation goes up

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: just because of That one, we grow with inflation. And

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: this is the grant, after school is up

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: to 50% of their costs? Yeah, and I think we're paying around 44%. So the growth of that What

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: do mean you're not paying 50%? Isn't it a categorical grant of 50%? Yes. You don't pay the

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: full 50%? No, we reduce it down to the appropriation.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So if you don't, you don't fund the 50% based on available funds. It's like, it's a maximum of 50%.

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Right, right. So we collect their their allowable transportation, know, act at 50% for as long as I know it's been more than our appropriations, so we reduce it down.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And do they, is your appropriations specified with the transportation portion of this, or you guys decide how to allocate that within the overall education budget? How much we Like, if we don't say you shall use this much money for transportation, I assume we don't do that.

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: It's it's it's it's on appropriation. So, yeah.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Within with the agency. You No. I mean You have a line item.

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Yeah. It's

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But we could change that line item. You could. Right. Yeah. No. Just don't remember ever having that conversation. Okay. Because, yeah, Senator Watson and I have some people that are very unhappy with their bus service because they don't have a bus service. But they used to have a school bus. Now they don't have a school bus on one whole road. They just said, not gonna take the school bus down the road anymore. Okay. Cost cutting was one of the reasons. Yeah. Is it because of the condition of the road or the No. Think it's a combination of costs and the bus company saying, I don't know if it was staffing. I haven't looked in total, but they were given costs and just that that's what their contracted bus company said. They couldn't do that route anymore. So they just cut a whole route.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: Oh, so it's not one road. They a whole route.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: They cut the whole route, but the other roads got picked up. Like, they they had three routes. They took the two, but maybe more than one route. But the people on that road are just Really?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Out of luck.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Out of luck. Yeah. Wow. But I assume that I assume it's well, I guess if it's always been under, you haven't been at 50%, they're not expecting 50%. Right.

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Okay. Yeah. I think that's the

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: end of our our Yeah. That's what the big numbers yeah. Any other questions? Well, I'm just noting that universal school meals has come down by, like, 8,000,000. Yeah. And then millions too in the last year. I think it was the first number was 29,000,000.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: It was high. Yeah.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So it's gonna come down 11,000,000 from that estimate. Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll look through the other information and get more information about the house then. Great. If we have questions, we can order to find it. Yeah. Alright. Okay. Thanks. We can go on mute while we We're off mute. Okay. Welcome Commissioner. We're sorry we were going through our Gen Z side. Yeah. They didn't get to hear any of that. We are on mute. Oh man, you missed the best part. You missed the best part, yeah. So Commissioner, we will let you introduce yourself and members of your team and give us your presentation. Can you hear us?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: We can. Can you hear me?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yes, we can.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Okay.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Go ahead.

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: You bet. Hi, for the record, my name is Lindsay.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: Evening's flat.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Lindsey, what's your last name? Oh. Are you having problems?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Saying your ear.

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: I'm hearing myself back like twenty seconds later.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Oh, that's annoying. We don't think it's our side. Everything seems fine over here.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: There's no echo over I'm

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: gonna log out and log back in.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. Good luck. Do the other members of ACCD want to just introduce themselves so we can do that while we're waiting for the commissioner?

[Lyle Jepson (Commissioner, Department of Economic Development)]: Well, we can jump right in. Lyle Jepson, commissioner for economic development. I'll pass it over to Heather.

[Heather Pelham (Commissioner, Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Good afternoon. Heather Powell, I'm a commissioner of Department of Tourism and Marketing. And I can see Dan next.

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: Afternoon, everyone. Dan Dickerson, Director of Administrative Services for ACC.

[Nate Formalarie (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Nate Formalari, Deputy Commissioner for Department of Housing and Community Development, sitting in for Alex Farrell today, the Commissioner.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Welcome, Nate. How's it now, Secretary Farrell?

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: I think it was user error. I had a window open from the, the YouTube livestream from earlier. So it was my own bad. Thank you. I've, I've canceled that out. So hi, For the record, my name is Lindsey Kerley. I am the Secretary of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development. And I want to thank you for the opportunity to present our agency's FY twenty seven budget, and talk a little bit about our priority requests. Before I get into details, I want to briefly describe what we do because it ties directly to why these investments matter. At the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, our job is to make Vermont a place where people can live, work and stay. In practical, in practical terms, that means we help businesses start grow, we help them find workers, we help communities build housing and strengthen their downtowns. And we promote promote Vermont as a place to visit and ultimately to call home. We do this across all 14 counties with a team of about 100 people who work every day with employers, municipalities, and families to connect economic growth with housing and community vitality. At its core, our work is about affordability. If we don't grow the economy and increase our housing supply, we won't solve that challenge. I also want to acknowledge the committee's work and the full Senate's work this week on advancing land use and housing legislation. We really do appreciate the thoughtful debate and the progress that's been made. And we look forward to remaining committed partners in getting things right for Vermonters. As you make budget decisions, I want to be clear about what our team considers essential. The House version of the budget included three targeted investments that are critical to maintaining momentum on housing and economic growth. First, 4,000,000 in base funding for the Vermont Housing Improvement Program or VHIP. VHIP helps bring housing units online and into the market by supporting landlords to repair or rehabilitate or construct units to make them available to Vermonters. It's one of the most efficient and economical ways we can increase our housing supply. And more supply is directly tied to improving affordability. Second, 800,000 in one time funding for the Manufactured Housing Improvement Repair Program, or MER. We love our acronyms. MER is about preservation. It provides grants to homeowners who can't afford to make critical repairs like roofing, heating systems, structural fixes, so they can stay housed. And it helps ensure that we don't lose housing while we're trying to build more. And third, dollars 150,000 in one time funding for our international office contract, which is through this contract Vermont has on the ground representation in key international markets, which is something our small businesses cannot replicate on their own. The team works with our team to connect Vermont companies with buyers and distributors, helping them navigate foreign markets and build long term relationships that are needed to succeed internationally. They also identify and cultivate relationships with companies abroad that are looking to establish a presence in The United States. In United States, helping us to recruit and new employers who will bring investment into Vermont. So the result is new revenue coming into the state, stronger businesses, job creation, and a more diversified economy, all again, support long term affordability. So I just wanted to make a strong ask that the committee consider to carry these forward into the Senate's version of the budget as well. These are not new ideas. These are proven tools that are delivering results. And if we pull them back now, it would really slow progress at the exact moment when Vermonters are expecting us to move faster on housing and affordability. As you can see, I'm joined today by our commissioners and a deputy commissioner, and our director of administrative services, Dan Dickerson, who is going to take you through the agency's budget now. And I'll stay on the line for further questions. Thank you so much.

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

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: Good afternoon, committee. I guess before I dive into the leads and put you all to sleep, I guess I would pose the question to you of whether you would like to, I guess whether you prefer to hear from the commissioners that are requesting either base or one time funding and and dive into the specifics of those, or if you'd like to just get an overview of the agency, which I can I can provide either way is fine? But I didn't wanna immediately start going down a rabbit hole and then have you pull me out.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I mean, can go through the slides. We don't need an overview of the agency. Okay. We wanna stick to the numbers in the slide. That's okay.

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: Have already made. Anne, why

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: don't you go through what you and what we went through before. I don't think they need the whole load of hay.

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Okay. Understood.

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: So there is a slide deck we had provided house. Hopefully, you all have access. Like, I can try to share my screen, although I'm not sure that I have the privileges. But if you have it in front of me, I can just walk through. So within ACCD, we're made up of of four departments, the Department of Administration, driven marketing, economic development, and and then housing community development. And as secretary currently noted, far as our base budget, there are no real big requests other than well, I guess one significant request, which is the 4,000,000 for the Vermont Housing Improvement Program. Just to give a little more detail, what we would intend to do with that is is grant out 3,750,000.00, and then the remaining 250,000 would cover our administration, and we intend to go to the physician pool for two positions to support that program once the budget is signed into law. But that's really all we have in our, in our base budget as far as a new funding request. And then once again, as noted on the one time side, there is the the 150,000 to support our in market representation in Montreal, focusing on the Canadian market, and then 800,000 for MER. One clarification I wanna point out on the MER funding is that this is not it's not a new, it's not a new ex expenditure appropriation request. We we are repurposing some money that was previously, appropriated to us through the emergency board back in 2023 after the flooding. We received funding to support manufactured housing owners that had had their home flooded and and was condemned and needed to have it removed from the property. We had some leftover funding from that, about 830,000 that we've offered back as a reversion, of which 800 would come back to us for MRR, which we think we can readily get out the door. So we've basically, that's a net neutral request. So in total, on the all funds side, we're looking at about 75,000,000 of expenditure for the agency. This is on slide seven of the slide deck if you're following along. One new piece here that I'll just call out, especially for Senator Westman as he's on Senate Transportation is, in statute, we are are directed to receive transportation revenues from a fee that's charged to EV owners as well as, I think, portions of the fee that's charged to owners of hybrid vehicles. And those are intended to be used for EV build out at a housing complexes. So we've had an ongoing partnership with EOT where, you know, they've essentially been appropriated the funds, then we executed MOU to then receive them and spend them. This year, we're doing it a little bit differently to cut out a little bit of the overhead, which is we're asking for a direct appropriation of transportation fund to support the program. So that way, you know, it that's not a little bit of the paperwork that's needed between the two agencies and allows us to to receive the funds directly and and move them a little bit quicker. So you will see that in some of your documentation as a new transportation fund appropriation. And I just wanted to call that out as something somewhat new, although it's an ongoing initiative. Hopefully, I explained that clearly, but Sometimes it's

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: hard to hear hear you. You're too your mic sometimes gets picked up and sometimes it doesn't.

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: Okay. So,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: Dan, we're talking about surcharge on the registration in transportation now. I think the Transportation Committee will need to understand where the Commerce Agency is and the grants you've got out and the structure of what the House has been trying to do with vehicle miles traveled. And so I'm gonna have to come back around and talk to you

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: about that.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. Understood. And would would Bronwyn still be the person to come in and talk or would it be you, Zane?

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: I think he would be the most appropriate to just discuss the programmatic angle of of EVSE, but I'm happy to provide support or I could stay offline and just if she has questions for me. But but I think Broadway is the best person to have in.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: Megan, the staff and and her into own transportation to talk to us about this.

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

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: Beyond that, as far as the numbers, I think I don't think there's a whole lot of additional detail, that's really changing year to year. The only other piece that I'll walk through is, within the ACD, you may notice a large increase in in federal funding, and that's just due to the, the recent award that we received to the Community Development Block Grant disaster recovery dollars, which was 67,000,000, where we should have a majority of that funding obligated before the end of the current fiscal year, but we anticipate that there's gonna be some residual that will get that will need to be obligated in f y twenty seven. And so we are requesting spending authority for those dollars in '27 to the tune of about 19,000,000. And then what will be an ongoing cost of a much smaller of probably about 3 to 400,000 a year is just the we have two positions dedicated to administering those CDBG Doctor grants and those individuals will be with us for several years. That'll that spending authority will stay in our budget going forward, But there will be this sort of one time piece that of about 19,000,000 that we hope to have obligated and then it would fall back out of the budget in FY '28. So hopefully, that's that made sense. Been happy to answer questions. Beyond that sorry.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: What was that? Go ahead. You can continue with your Okay.

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: And and that's you would see that in slide 24. We have an an ups and downs document for DHCD. Other than that, I don't I know you wanted to give us to give the quick overview, so I I don't think there's a whole lot of other specifics that I would Do you I guess you have questions.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Like I Yeah. Sometimes your mic still cuts out. But I do have some questions. One was just why you decided to cancel your Dun and Bradstreet. It's not a lot of money, but I just wondered, is that just the cost savings or were they not providing the the day you just weren't using that membership?

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: So that contract was held by the Department of Labor, and we were splitting the cost $50.50. And the Department of Labor opted to not renew the contract. And and instead, what they worked out with us is if if we need information, they thought that their I think it's the labor market analysis division. They thought that their team there, Matt Barowitz and and his folks could help us work through the data needs. And then if, you know, if there was a cost component, if d I if DOL thought they needed to be reimbursed, then we do have some money in our budget to to reimburse them, but they didn't think the Dun and Bradstreet contract was necessary. And so we were dropping the costs due to that cancellation by DOL. Okay.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: On the international business development, Secretary Kelly had mentioned key international markets. Is it just I always thought of it as Canada, but what other efforts are being made? Or what other markets?

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: We work as businesses need to be in other global markets. We do work in those areas. Lyle might have more to add other than that. But to your point, it is largely used for our relationship with CIDEP, which is the contractor in Montreal. But there like I said, there are times where businesses specifically need navigation services beyond that market.

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: Can what how what is the cost of that contract versus the rest in the 115?

[Lyle Jepson (Commissioner, Department of Economic Development)]: Would you like me to jump in here, Lindsey?

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: That would be great. Yeah. Because I'm yep. Yep.

[Lyle Jepson (Commissioner, Department of Economic Development)]: Primarily that funding is for a contract. We're going to need to go out to bid on that again. Our focus has been Canada. That is a market that it's our number one trading partner, and we want to continue to do that. So what you're looking at in at a $150,000 would be a renewal for actually two years of a site up type contract, but we will need to go out to bid on that. As far as what Lindsay was describing earlier, we we certainly don't ignore other markets, and we'll be entertaining some Taiwanese folks on Tuesday. As you may know, the Japanese were here this week, so we certainly are reaching out to other markets, and we do have some international money built into the regular budget that we are able to then go to specific events if they are, if they will benefit Vermont, and so we we don't go to lots of overseas events, but we go to several.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: The present contract with the subcontractor in Montreal is how much?

[Lyle Jepson (Commissioner, Department of Economic Development)]: Right now, the current contract's about $75,000 a year. The reason is you're seeing a $150,000 is we like to maintain a contract over two years, which is the process that we have followed in the past. It provides continuity and relationship building. Will it be the CIDEP group, which is, you know, specifically one organization? We don't know yet because of bidding requirements, we'll need to go out to bid.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, I have a for your the CHIP program. I wondered if you could give us an update in that of that program where we think it just started last year. I just haven't heard much about it recently like that. Has it been successful, things like that?

[Lyle Jepson (Commissioner, Department of Economic Development)]: So the you're you said chip?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Chip. Yeah.

[Lyle Jepson (Commissioner, Department of Economic Development)]: Yep. Yep. So we are expecting to have robust applications for that. There are pre applications that are coming in right now. It's been a little bit slower than we expected, because of town meeting, and now the towns are beginning to, pay very close attention to that. All the webinars for CHIP had more than 200 people attending, and so we we very much expect that there'll be robust use of that program. We are working, with, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. They received a $500,000 NBRC grant that will be technical support for the municipalities in helping them get to go or get to yes on submitting, an application.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's a competitive program.

[Lyle Jepson (Commissioner, Department of Economic Development)]: It will be competitive. There's $200,000,000 available per year over a ten year period of time. It is a significant infrastructure program for which we thank you very much. It is the beginning of what we hope will be significant housing development.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: No money has gone out yet. You're just building it all up and doing the trainings and the webinars and getting people ready to approach it.

[Lyle Jepson (Commissioner, Department of Economic Development)]: That's correct and it's really not money going out. We would love to have someone from the Vepc team come and talk to you about how that process works. It is very much like a TIF, only it's a very small one per community.

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

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Quick question. Yes. Do you have any data or information about the effect that that are where I don't even know where the tariffs are right now at the federal level, but what effect are they having on our relationships, international relationships, if any?

[Lyle Jepson (Commissioner, Department of Economic Development)]: Well, it has not benefited our relationship with Canada, certainly, and that is why we really would like to maintain our contract with staying in close contact with them. There are definitely examples of particularly around steel, and there is a project that I know very well in Rutland that has had an increase in their cost of their construction by more than $1,000,000 just because of steel tariffs. So we were very fortunate. Tim Tierney, our international tradesperson, received a congressionally directed spending grant of $250,000. We are going to begin to roll out webinars and information to the business community around the state so that, they have the most up to date information available. You're going to hear that the federal government says yes because of the Supreme Court ruling, the money is now going to go back. I'm not holding my breath right now as to how quickly that may or may not happen, but we're going to stay on top of that so that the folks that did pay higher prices, may get some money back.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Thank you.

[Lyle Jepson (Commissioner, Department of Economic Development)]: Will individuals will individuals get money back? We don't know. So because at the end of the day, we all paid the tariffs.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Yes. You're right.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I'm not holding my breath. The the positions, remember that that was an issue, that was something I think you requested last year the budget maybe two years ago. Is that part of the 4,000,000 or that's separate? Mentioned going to the pool for those positions, is that, can you just talk me through the positions for the VHIP again?

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: Yeah. The the cost for the new position is included in the the 4,000,000 total request. And so we estimated the cost would be about 250,000 of that total 4,000,000, and then the rest we would provide as grants. We will be going we do intend to go to the pool for those two positions after the budget is signed into law. We have folks in a limited service capacity covering the program now. So we I think the anticipation is those folks would have an opportunity to potentially fill permanent positions going forward.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It's not two new positions. It's kind of you're creating two positions and the limited the two limited service positions will be eliminated?

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: Yeah. Those would expire.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. So you run the program with the two staff?

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: Currently, yes.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. I had a question on tourism, the program. There's a slide on this. I wondered if you could just, I didn't know, maybe I didn't know about this, but is there, what's the budget part of the GROW program? Or is it just kind of built into the other programs?

[Heather Pelham (Commissioner, Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Sure, I'd be happy to answer that question, thank you. So the GROW program that stands for grants for relocation and outreach work, this is our program to help support communities as we're looking to welcome new residents to the state. So it's basically a grant program where we are providing capacity funding to local organizations to provide that one on one level concierge type service to folks who have raised their hands and say they're interested in moving to Vermont. It's a program that really looks at helping folks make that jump to move here and then also to make sure that they feel welcome. So there's both a recruitment and a retention part of those programs. And so we grant that out to, there are now 15 organizations throughout the state who receive that funding from us. We're in the second two year cycle of that grant. It's been hugely impactful for the folks who are doing that work on the ground, and this is the strategy that we have found over the years as we've kind of looked to how can we reverse the demographic trend that we see and encourage more people to move here that this level of service is really what helps make the difference between somebody deciding that they might just think about moving to Vermont and actually doing so.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: What's the total budget? Like what's an example of like a grant amount and like a grantee? Like the Broadland Regional Chamber kind of thing and how much money?

[Heather Pelham (Commissioner, Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Yeah, the maximum grant that we provide is $75,000 a year. So we do it in two year cycle. So the maximum grant is 150,000 that we would offer. And really you know that's meant to acknowledge the fact that this is time intensive work and so the hope is that that covers the equivalent of about an FTE or at least as much of that as possible so that we are able. In the past organizations like you know the Rutland organization that you mentioned were doing this really on their own time sort of a bit of a volunteer basis for us. By having this grant we now have a contractual relationship with them so we're able to get much more robust reporting on the activities that they are conducting. Are they connecting potential residents with employers? What kind of events they're having? What sectors are they coming from? And so forth. So we have a much more in-depth look at how the effectiveness of that money is in these local communities.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: What's the total budget? Is like over a million dollars if you have 15 of these?

[Heather Pelham (Commissioner, Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: It's a million dollars. It's part of our base funding for talent attraction period. So it's about 700,000 that's within the grants. And the additional is for paid marketing and other support to make sure that Vermont is top of mind as people are thinking about places that they might want to relocate.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Do you feel like the 15 is Do you have all the regions covered? Are you still trying to recruit other?

[Heather Pelham (Commissioner, Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: We do now. I have all the regions covered in the first two year cycle. We did have a few holes, but we were just able to bring on Lamoille, Franklin and Grand Isle which were the previous holes. We also have one of our grants is to Vermont Professionals of Color Network and now we also have a grant to out in the open so we're able to provide specialized services for folks who identify as LGBTQ plus or BIPOC who might want to speak to somebody about those issues in particular in addition to somebody in a specific region.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay, thank you. And I had a question about S-three 27, the economic development bill that we just passed. There was money that that committee, in particular the chair keeps spending my year about about Brownfields. And that there was no money in the governor's recommendation and they wanted another 3,000,000. I'm not trying to put you in a weird position in relation to the governor's proposal, but is there like existing money in there? Are you, I assume you're still working on Brownfields. I just don't know if you could say anything about what the current situation is with the Brownfields program because there is some concern that by not funding it, we were killing the programs.

[Lyle Jepson (Commissioner, Department of Economic Development)]: Lindsay, you want me to take that?

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: Yeah. I'd be happy to have you take it. You bet.

[Lyle Jepson (Commissioner, Department of Economic Development)]: You could say what you just said over again if you wanted to say that. All of the housing developments, as you are aware, not all, many housing developments start with the dirt, and there is a lot of dirty dirt out there. Right now, there is a big question out there, and you are grappling with it every day, and that's the cost of education. And so I think that as we look at how we spend money system wide, if there is a way for us to get more Brownfields money in the future, that would be great. But in this current year, as you know, it is a very tight year. And so we have foregone a request. Certainly, it's up to folks like you if you wanna put money into that.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And you are are you working on programs now, like, from past appropriations?

[Lyle Jepson (Commissioner, Department of Economic Development)]: Absolutely.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You have projects in the pipeline. You're not doing any new grants, but you're working on projects.

[Lyle Jepson (Commissioner, Department of Economic Development)]: Yeah. We do not have funding for new grants. We have asked. We've sent in a congressionally directed spending request to senator Welch's office to see if we can get some Brownfields money through that process. So we are actively reaching out for other pools of money because we recognize, as you do, how important the Brownfields program is. If this is merely a temporary pause, okay, but we will need to come back in the future at some point and talk about brownfields again.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So the the staff that work on that program have enough work to do this next year without a new appropriation? Absolutely.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: And will we know about, and will we know about, any chance of success with, senator Welch's office?

[Lyle Jepson (Commissioner, Department of Economic Development)]: If we were so lucky to get that, I don't expect there would be funding until fall.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. I think, ideally, you find out in the late spring, early summer, and then Right. Then maybe don't know if you really kinda get the money in the home.

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Correct.

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

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: And just for folks I'm sorry to interrupt.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Go ahead. Go ahead.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: I was gonna say

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: for awareness, like, for projects that might be funded through the CHIP program. The infrastructure money, as I understand it, can also be used for, you know, cleaning up dirt as well. So, we have a little bit, like you said, that's still in the pipeline. You know, hopefully at some point, the federal funding will come back to us as well. And we hope that, you know, projects will keep moving forward in the interim. But as Lyle laid it out so perfectly, I won't reiterate. We just we have to make some tough choices right now.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right. Okay. Alright. Well, I think everything else is pretty straightforward that I saw. If we look through the materials and have any other questions, we'll track you down. Unless you have any other any other last questions for the committee or final comments from the secretary?

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: No, I'm fine. We haven't heard from the deputy commissioner and also Nate, I didn't know if there's anything you wanted to add. Largely, obviously the 4,000,000 falls within his department. Just Nate, in case there's anything you want to add, please.

[Nate Formalarie (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Dan did a great job. Only thing I would add is that current funds, obviously federal funds and then a couple tranches of one time state money has all been obligated. So that program is coming to an end with its money at this point.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That was ARPA money or some other money?

[Nate Formalarie (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Housing & Community Development)]: It started as ARPA money and then you folks have funded it with state funds and a few one time allocations, the most recent of which was last year. And those funds are allocated at this point or obligated, I should say. It is a reimbursement program, so it takes it a little while to ask the money to actually go.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: In any way, real quick, on the VHIP, do you have from other applications a wait list

[Sean Cousino (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Education)]: or if

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: there's new funding you would kind of put out a new solicitation or is it just kind of a rolling basis?

[Nate Formalarie (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Housing & Community Development)]: It is rolling and it's regionally the program sees more demand in certain regions than others. So some regions may have a wait list right now, others may not at this point. But it is a rolling application throughout the year.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You allocated it by region?

[Nate Formalarie (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Correct.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is that by population, It county or

[Nate Formalarie (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Housing & Community Development)]: is through the home ownership centers in each region. So, know, rural edge, Cornerstone Partners, Down Street Housing, each get equal splits.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: They get equal splits regardless of their population coverage?

[Nate Formalarie (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Believe so. I I can also double check that or Dan, if you have

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: don't I don't think it's I don't think it's equal. I think the the homeownership centers with within regions that have heavier populations tend to get more, and then the the lower population regions tend to get less. So it's I think there is some proportionality based on population.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay, good. Okay. Well, you. That's all the information we need. Unless you have something else to say.

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: No, thank you so very much for your time.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah, we'll be in touch.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Thanks, have a good weekend.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education)]: You too.