Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: We are five.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It's April 1, but no April 02:00. So we have the chair of house appropriations here with us to walk us through or just give us some highlights. Of H951, House's version of the FY27 budget. So welcome.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: Thank you, Chair of the committee. Representative Robin Shai from Middlebury, Chair of House Appropriations. And talk a little bit about the budget, the new JFO gave me some points that she thought you might all be interested in. I also have a highlight sheet and can talk about whatever you would like. To start, our unduplicated appropriations across all of the funds, general, federal, T Fund, Education Fund, was an increase of about $146,000,000 over the adjusted budget adjustment after the budget adjustment for FY '26, 1.6% increase. Just for reference, in last year when I gave this number, the increase in the previous year was 3.7% increase. So we are decreasing the increases

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: as it

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: were. And

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: the change in general fund over FY '26 as adjusted is about 2.1% just general fund, about $52,000,000. And that includes that's not our changes from what the governor did, that's the changes from the budget. We we did virtually everything. We agreed with virtually everything that the governor proposed in this budget. There were a couple of exceptions, but in general, by and large, 99%. We didn't spend a lot of time on that as much as we have in our years. So there's a lot of agreement to begin with. I know JFO will go over revenue and all of those pieces, so I'm not gonna attempt to talk about that. We did did spend about $9,000,000 in one time money, and I made it very clear to people who were involved, who were recipients of one time money that aren't gonna have it. One time is really one time, and we know that revenues are slowing, and they should not be counting on one time

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: money more than once, and so

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: just think about planning and how they would be.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: But some of the one time money, we proposed putting 1,340,000.00 into the Community Resilience and Disaster Mitigation Fund. That's at the AOA. We set that up a few years ago when the flooding started, and this was to support communities impacted by severe flooding in calendar year 2025. You'll recall that FEMA has denied the state money, so we thought it was important to support those towns. Not a 100%, was like 50, but there's money in there for that. We agreed with the governor on $2,000,000 for provider stabilization grants. Last year, think it was around 14,000,000, so the number's coming down from the past. About 180,000 to DCF for the parent child center network or concrete supports programs. I can't remember if that can be leveraged or not, but that's the general fund amount. We put in additional money from Meals on Wheels, about 500,000 in general fund, which when we use global commitment, it comes out to almost 1,200,000 available for Meals on Wheels for the elderly. We proposed some additional funding to promote legal aid, one for an immigration attorney and then another for the Legal Aid Helpline. The Legal Aid Helpline, two years ago, had 11,000 calls in the course of the year, and the next year they were up to 22,000 calls. So they have more than doubled.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: So getting some support for that seemed pretty important.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So is that really that would allow them to the same time you needed for twenty four hours, but they're not gonna do twenty

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: four not two one one. This is for the legal aid as a helpline. Okay. And the calls have doubled and they need support for those those calls. Yeah. We also continue to support home share, home share of 235,000 so they can continue to expand that's a homelessness prevention program as well as supporting often older folks who would like some help

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: and somebody living in the house. We did some

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: of that last year. We did a couple of things to relate to food security, half 1,000,000 to NOFA for their crop cash, crop cash plus, and farm share programs. And then another 400,000 for the food bank for their feeding Vermonters program. We also appropriated just over 2,300,000.0 to VSAC for the Freedom and Unity Scholarships at the Vermont University, which will also increase family income eligibility from 65,000 to $80,000 so that more Vermonters can go. UVM has a program, I can't remember the name of it, but they offer tuition for up to people income up to $100,000 So this is starting to raise that in the Vermont City University side. So those were some of the one time things, that's not all of it, but that's just some highlights of that. On the base side, we did some work in the areas of public safety with the state's attorneys, the defender generals, some more money for public defense contracting and training needs with Defender General, more security costs for judiciary. We supported Vermont Access Network, which is our local television. We also there was a request from the Secretary of State in addition, and sort of somehow related to Van, Vermont Access Network, for civic journalism, and also the community radio programs across

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is that all part of that one point in?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: No. They that's just for access network. There's 90,000 for the radios, community radios across the state and then 50,000 for civic journalism. The 50,000 gets matched by the Mott Community Foundation, so that turns into a 100,000.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: Last year, the fall senator. Yeah. So we thought

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: that was important. We also provided additional funding to the designated agencies, special service agencies and home community based services groups that could be, some of that was general fund and some of that was global commitment.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: The total was about 6,800,000.0 when

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: you combine, think about 2,900,000.0 was was general fund. Yeah, we've given them more in the past. This is what we felt we could do this year given the way things are and it may be tougher to do things in the future.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: So we wanted to find something here.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: We also appropriated funding for two of the AHEC area health education centers programs, two of the three programs. And the two that we opted for were they helped with primary care placements at no cost to the primary care practices around the state. We heard from practices, we said without that, I mean, one practice, for example, sent me a letter and said, we got a call from like a headhunting agency who said, for $20,000 we can give you the names of some doctors. AHEC will do this at no cost and help onboard them and try to match them and all of that. And they said as a result of the AHEC placement program, they just signed on a new primary care physician. They couldn't begin to afford 20,000 to get names. It's actually about 21,000 in general fund and then its global commitment gets it

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: up to 50,000.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: So that was one program. The other was 550,000, again that's global commitment and I think it's about 230,000 is general fund for primary care loan forgiveness to help primary care docs pay on the loans. So those are the two programs that we felt were really important to continue because of our healthcare system and the lack of primary care physician availability around the state. Let's see, I don't know if anybody could use some judiciary, but they, during the, a couple, okay, so, during the course of our doing the budget, it became clear it was agreed upon by the administration. You may have seen an article about the pretrial supervision program wasn't really working because we were doing the accountability course. So we took out money about, I'm trying to remember, it was like 850,000 baits and 650,000 at one time, and some of that was put back into criminal justice things. So that's why there's additional security and some other things related to hiring. And I can't remember all

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: the details of that. Under Baruth. Representative Chittenden, you saying that they couldn't expand the free trial supervision and we had

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: It wasn't that they couldn't expand, it wasn't that it wasn't working, it wasn't being used, and there was a lot of money going into it, and I'm definitely not the expert on this, But it wasn't being used. It was agreed by the administration and sort of everybody said, yeah, we we're doing this accountability court thing and that seems to be working. And because of that, they're not using this pretrial so that freed up money that we could use in other places, which is often done for them. We just a couple of language things. Last year, you'll recall with the changes in federal funds that were happening fast and furious in Washington, we asked the secretary of administration. We gave her a sort of spreadsheet of all the functions of government, and if we were getting losing federal funds at certain percentages, either they could make a decision to just notify us of plan or talk to a joint fiscal committee or maybe get the e board involved depending upon the amount of money. And so they've been keeping track. We haven't had to invoke any of that, but we did it just for one year to have the key track and then we put language in the budget to say, we want that to go out till 2029, just through 2029, so that we see this four years of and and keep track of potential federal contracts. We know things are gonna be happening. For example, in 2028, we're gonna lose 18 and a half million dollars in provider tax decreases and there'll be other things. We wanna just keep that going. There's we aren't fans of creating special funds, but in this case, we agreed to the governor to create a special fund for the Vermont State Police Radio equipment replacement. And so 500,000 is going in there this year and money, the idea is that money would go in each year and build about kind of like we have reserve funds for twenty three seven know, payrolls and things like that, we have that, and so that at the end of ten years or however much they needed it, they'd have equipment, they'd be able to purchase the equipment without one big huge expense every ten years.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: Put a there was a

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: developed education funding language we finally everybody seems to agree on.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: The Northeast Kingdom has been out. But yeah. I'm yeah. They're happy with it. Yes. But Well, I don't

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: know who on the side is happy with it, but everybody in the house and on the advocates and everybody I've talked

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: to at this point, AOE still doesn't like it. So Well Okay. I'm happy with that.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: She's Good. Yeah. Everybody else is very happy with it. And after six years, as senator Westman knows, of us trying to get this thing right We've been trying. And we feel

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: like this is the year.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: That's all I can say about. And we also accounted for bills separately, some are in there. The main bill, the most expensive bill, the governor had put in a housing initiative for about $82,000,000 and change that was sort of static throughout the budget, and then our House Human Services Committee put together a bill using that and working with the administration. It's H-nine 38, which I believe is now in Central Lyons. Yeah, we're taking it up soon. Okay. And so it's used to the exact same dollar amount, but it defines the program equally. They worked with the Human Agency of Human Services to put this whole thing together. The money is exactly the same. There's no new money. There may be where the locations are a little bit different, but the dollars are the same. It passed out of the house on a 01/1933 to four vote or something on Friday. It's now come to you. But they did work closely with that. So you'll see there's that's all accounted for in

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: the budget. We you know,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: we that's within the budget itself. There's some other bills that we we accounted we accounted for all the

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: money that other bills that

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: we approved in the budget, but the language for all the bills is not in the budget. So I think, Joy, just go

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: can go over all of those. Mhmm. What was

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the housing bill? Age?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: Age nine thirty eight. It's called the Vermont Homelessness Response Continuum. So that's got shelters and the housing opportunity grants and the temporary emergency housing, shelter development, wraparound services, all

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: big program. I don't see it in spreadsheet, but

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: Well, it's gonna be in our queue. Yeah. But it's all accounted for, and it's the same amount of money that was in the go. It's kinda h

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: 90, was that last year?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: Well, h 91, except that had additional money. This has no new money for much of There's not an extra $10,000,000. Right.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: But we just we covered it in

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the budget, and went on. So they got beat down. But

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: Right. Well, this the money is all covered in the budget, but that was where the governor put all the money

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: as well. Right. It shouldn't Yeah.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: It shouldn't be appropriate. Did I miss something?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And she's studied during this school. It is not in in a one time sheet, You can look at lines 10 through 14, and that's pretty good one to one of what's in h nine thirty eight and where it's appropriated in the in the one times, and there are also some corresponding sections in the base sheet.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: 82.63, something like that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: Right. So

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: you'll see spreadsheets and things about that, but it's I just wanted to make a point that it's the the committee the administration's committee worked with the administration, made sure the spreadsheets were correct and that, you know, we had had no more money than what the government could So it was a good collaboration to get that through.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: So I think

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: that's I mean, I could keep talking, but I think that's enough for now unless we have other questions. A couple of

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: questions about the health department and the AHEC funding. Yeah. It wasn't really clear to me when I looked at that. Were you trying to fund something specific at AHEC?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: There were three programs that AHEC offers and we funded two of them.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: Okay. Well, the number I couldn't make the numbers match to that in in that Okay. Yes. It's in one of

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: the spreadsheets that's specific about I don't have that. Normally, I do.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: I have to go find it. Yeah. They can No. I and it would be helpful if I could see what you were trying to find specifically of the programs that were there.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: What was their education, part of their education program? So we didn't fund the high school pipeline program. Yeah, that's it. We

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: funded physician placement and loan loan repayment. Because your numbers are the loan repayment was, like, 650,000 in total amount. And then so if I can get stuff off,

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: if you could Yeah.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: I I think, Jacob, I would probably give you all the details.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: This is probably more rhetorically out to the room. In the transformation funds, all of the other pipeline and workforce stuff in healthcare, you know, mental health, nurses, all of the others. There's transformation monies that went towards the funding of That's right. And I can't seem to find any real answers as to why primary care docs are left out. I think that was a federal decision. I'm I'm yeah. I I've asked those questions, and it it I think it's more complicated.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: It may be. And that's I I don't know that I can

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: get into it. But I I I'm just it I just Yeah. Find it interesting that that's the only thing Yes. That was left out.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: Yes. I agree.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Haven't really looked through it all yet, so we know where to find it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: You do. I am just around the corner.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Like, what you're sitting down, I don't even have to go upstairs.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: So I know that there

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: is a section in here on the opioid abatement fund, the language Yes. We're evaluating Yes. Its use, and we looked at that a little bit this morning in committee. Okay. And, also, you separated out the substance use prevention fund. Yes. Which was a good thing. Yes. I want say thank you for doing that. No. You're very welcome. And how soon the services also had something to do with that, I believe. So it was a it was a real team effort. We really get a lot of input from our committees because we have the time to do that. Yeah. They look at those things closely, so we appreciate it.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: Okay. Have a good one.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: Thank you. Thank you very much. We gave you a really good question.

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

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: the Good luck.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: Thank you. Adam Gresham, commissioner of finance and management. I guess it is April. Right? So every time around this time of year, I come and sit and let you go and think. So we dropped a letter in your inboxes and

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: on your

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: desks giving you the administration's initial responses. In my inbox is a longer and more granular letter to be called a technical letter, which I hope to go through this afternoon with my colleagues and have for you tomorrow by the time we get together in the afternoon. And a technical letter. That deals, as the name implies, a lot of more I mean, you get less policy related. In fact, we try to keep all policy out of the technical letter. But the combination of that and the letter from the secretary of administration you have on your desk are kind of our feelings and thoughts on the budget. So I I would start by saying, you know, we have to acknowledge that the house put in their budget, the vast majority of what the governor had requested in his. There are a couple of exceptions which I'll mention, but the reality is the house budget viewed very closely what the governor had requested. They went then further than the governor did. And so the house budget reflects a larger general fund request than we had originally asked for. But I will get into that. What I wanted to bring up is that there's basically five areas of of considerations we hope to make. First is on property taxes. In the budget, as you see, we are very happy that the house agreed with the governor to transfer a $105,000,000 to the education. We are less happy with how they will treat them. The governor had transferred that amount and asked for it to be applied to property tax rates in fiscal twenty seven. The house had said we will transfer that amount, but we will cut it in half and apply roughly 52 and a half million dollars to this '27 property tax rates and 52 and a half million to fiscal twenty eight property tax rates. When money's there, it can be used for other things. So we, again, thank the house for including that transfer. It is a lot of money. We get that. It's a lot of money. But they transferred it to the education fund as the governor asked. However, the way they did that, I believe in the yield bill, we were less pleased with it. Then, you know, we think that's a, it's an issue. Committedly 7% is less than the 12% that we had originally forecast by the commissioner, but it's not the two or 3%. The other issue and by the way, the governor does give a shout out to s two twenty, which is part of the transformation process. So we believe it will provide some relief. I believe the pro temps and they they will all over that bill. The governor, you know, thinks that's something that needs someone to support that. Don't know the details of that. Nonetheless, we're in support of that, and partly, that's the reason why we think that if if we can keep property taxes at a reasonably low level this year, next year, we'll have other arrows in the quiver. We'll be able to offset our tax increase including s two twenty. We're happy with that. One area of concern, and we've noticed we've stated earlier is just concerned with the higher order of spending. There's another almost 11,000,000 in one time spending and it's actually a little bit more than that, but controlling for the fact that one of the one time spending incidences of transfer for disaster, disaster mitigation. That is something that we did not get into the governor's budget. We just didn't get it by the time we submitted it. And we actually asked the house and they, you know, thankfully put in there some control for that. But, you know, there's about 10 and a half million of additional one time spending and a little over 7,000,000 in face spending. And, you know, I guess I would say that when we looked, you know, as houses come through markup, many, if not virtually all of those requests were made to the administration too. I mean, we had the same list. It may not have been in the same order, but we had a very similar list. Know, it's never easy to put together. But even when even in the good times when we had plenty, you know, fire hose coming in from up with rain coming out of it, it was never easy. But now it's, you know, more so. So the budget we submitted did not have everything we wanted to get, reflected but what we thought were the highest priorities the governor had. And so, you know, we were a little bit chugged in to see that many of the choices that we had made, particularly, you know, will say that impressively, the agency of human services in particular did a very, very thorough job for an agency that size. The secretary got together, all the commissioners, they got together all their folks, decision makers within the departments, and they thoroughly vetted it. Truly, it was not haphazard. And, you know, some of the changes they made and reductions they made were not stuff that they would really have loved to do. They had the funding to do, but they did. So they prioritized and some of those reductions, think, were difficult, but, you know, they made that decision and and moved on and figured out ways to deal with it and mitigate. And some of those things, in fact a lot of those things, were just returned. And to our consternation, some of them were factored into the base and returned at one time, maybe with the thought that, well, you know, we'll just wean these people over the course of a year. So we point out in the letter there are, you know, think two or three form of base appropriations that were made into one time. And, you know, again, we just think if we had all the money in the world, we would have put it in. We got it, you know, but I think particularly going through that, you will, having it kind of come back at you, no. It's No. Thank you. That was just fine. You know, the governor had ten one time appropriations in his budget. This one has 40. And if you add, I don't know, add a dozen more in other bills, stand up there. So, you know, we just think we're just worried by that knowing the financial challenges we face in the current year. So again, we, you know, we would ask the senate just consider prioritizing it and figuring out what we can sustain or we can't sustain it. We're just worried overall with a higher level.

[Sen. Virginia 'Ginny' Lyons (Member)]: So as you're talking about the decision making that went on, particularly with AHS, I know that we're all concerned about that. It's a huge amount of our budget. The World Health Transformation Grant wasn't available to us at the time that some of the decisions were made. So as we're looking at this I'm going to try to keep some of those decisions that are going forward in mind. So I don't know whether the where the overlap is here yet, but there could be some differences just depending on how the RFP plays out. And,

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: you know, to be clear, the the agency was aware of that grant, and we also were fairly confident that we would get something we didn't know why, and there were strings attached to that. And so some of the stuff could be used. So, know so, yes. But you're right. We didn't have the final we had a concept within the time of document. Our hope is that the use of that roughly $195,000,000 will be put towards areas where we have some weaknesses that either we're not addressing now or that we can address with the rural health transformation. So one of the structural issues of this budget is if you're going to spend more capital fund, you need to find it somewhere. Right? So they make a couple of structural issues here. One of which is represented in the miscellaneous tax bill that came out of House of Means and that I believe where there were a number of changes due to the federal reconciliation bill. And the decision was whether we're going to so called make up with the federal government on a lot of those changes or not. So, basically means along, you know, I think impressively with the tax department went through very thoroughly, came out of the bill that the administration is fine. That results in higher fiscal twenty seven revenue. I believe it's actually a small hit for fiscal twenty six revenue. But in fiscal twenty seven, that results in small revenues. So that is reflected in the part of the additional 17 half $18,000,000. I think part of that is drawing on that additional revenue from miscellaneous tax bill that shortly, I assume, be taken up in the senate. But part of the additional revenue is taken by transferring the earned interest in the technology modernization spectrum. And that just gives us great concern. I mean, if you read three S. A. 3,306, which is a short part of statute that they set up in the Fund, what it says there is the Fund has two sources of that. One, this body, anything you can transfer into it. Two, interest earned. Those are the only two sources of revenue they represent in there. And they also go on to say, right below that, that money in the fund shall remain in the fund three year end. So, you know, I'm carrying the points here. So it's clear when they set this up that they were trying to avoid precisely what happened here. And, yes, we not withstand statute all the time. But this, to us anyway, is particularly egregious in part because we have a lot of technology needs. We just have a ton of technology needs. You're all aware, the agency of human services seems to be the agency of technology modernization really. They're spending a lot of money there. But the same is true with many other departments. Know DMV, we know public safety. And in particular, we are going through ERP enterprise resource planning, ERP software upgrade or human capital management, which is another way of saying ETHR, our HR system, and our vision, which is our statewide accounting system. As well as STARS, which is the AOT accounting system that links up provision and FARS, which is the labor accounting system, which links up with nothing and is entirely useless.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: They're about the updating department. They said that they were in here yesterday. They're like, this year.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: Probably that one. Anyway, we have a lot of technology. And and one of our go tos was interest in. We did not deploy it in our budget because we are still thinking about our process forward with the ERP system, knowing that it was there, knowing that we would come to you with a suggestion to use that for additional money that we need to finish the year pieces of this in our minds.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You know how much is in the fund? Up to 9,000,000 with the earning interest.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: You know? 9,000,000. And and I think the fund balance, I'm gonna say, is in the $50.50 to to $60.68. 18. You know, again, keep in mind, one reason why they put in there the money in this fund shall stay in the fund. The issue shall stay in the fund is technology projects have really long for us. You know, you might for example, you put aside $30,000,000 for UI monitoring. Yeah. UI modernization. That's a three or four year project. Integrated eligibility has been going on probably since I was first in this building, not as a commissioner, but as a representative. I mean, a lot of these things have just long tails. So the money sits there and is drawn on. In some years, they draw it on very heavily. Other years, they draw it very lightly. But, you know, there's a tail there. So the fact that that fund has a balance shouldn't be surprising. It'll be drawn down and, you know, unfortunately, one day, would probably be drawn down nothing and then we'll have to replenish it. But right now, it's it's flushing. And the house removal of the interest is just one year.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: They didn't change the underlying statute that said

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: that interest are made in the time. They actually did, but they changed it to divert interest to the CIT fund deficit. As long as the CIT fund has it, CIT is a communication and information technology process. It's a long way of saying the the internal service fund that funds our ADS. We put $15,000,000 in there, but there's about a $30,000,000. 25. We just put it down payment. So what the house did was they're taking the interest this year for funding this bill, and then they said, in the future, interest will be diverted to the technology, pardon me, the CIT fund. Until that deficit is. I don't think that's the worst that I can. In fact, one of the comments I made was if you're going to take 9 and 1,000,000 from this fund at a minimum, use it to clear up the CIT fund. Don't use it for non related, what kind of appropriation. I mean, to us, that was real, you know, So and speaking of which, education transformation. So we've about the governor's thoughts on the transforming education process. More specifically in this bill, if you go to section E-five 100, which provides language on how the agency or education shall present their, not just budget, but their budget adjustment. And if you read it dispassionately, what we see is it's basically a middle finger to the agency for education. It's really, it's just like that. But there's also some really silly things in there. For example, they ask the agency a budget adjustment, and when they present their budget, to speak about what their anticipated carryforward is. Now if you would ask me today, right now, what my anticipated carryforward is, I'm going to say, zero. It's like asking your kid, hey, This is a vital thing. Do you really need that? You know, did you lose that this week? Well, you know, that's kind of stupid. How can they anticipate what their terrible board's gonna be? Their retention is to spend every penny because they were given just enough pennies to get through the year. And because they were given money for programs that are mandated for legislators, many of which, if not most of which, want. So

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: that's just kind of silly.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: Anyway, I would say that language is unnecessary. And many of the things they ask about, they present anyway. You know, an org chart, there's a bit about vacancies there that's making two prescriptive, but when they present their budget, that's what they present. But to ask them the additional question, it's just tend to single them out alone, it's really kind of what I think is appropriation, or they're changing how it's used. I believe the secretary was in here talking to you guys about it. Would just note that they're kind of in the foremost of getting that money out there. And so they were not happy with kind of course.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Can we have some of that part directly to

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: the district? I mean, give me the language specifics, but and I think secretary Saunders would be better to talk about that. They they just thought that it it kinda gets in the way what they're already ongoing to. And, you know, finally for kind of big picture, we would say the long term transportation a couple of people around the state who know more about the T Fund than I do, but one of our major policy was to try and and we've talked for years about taking the purchase and use tax out of the T Fund. And this year, we decided to get that car rolling. And so we set out a five year step down schedule to do that. The house, I think, agreed with the thrust of that policy, but they made it a one year change only. And they took out their second, third, fourth, fifth year step down. So next year, we'll be left with a smaller amount of purchasing use accidentally going of the end of month, but still roughly $49. And so we would encourage the committee to work with the administration to try to put that back in so that we have a level of certainty that come several years from now, the purchasing use tax will remain in the T fund where it's, I think, needed more than it is.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: would just say that we're very aware of it. You know, as it creates a bigger hole in the end fund and a bigger cliff there, our cliff just gets bigger in transportation. So we have holes in both both major funds. And the question is, we need something that looks for a longer term. I say this, but a lot of me say this in committee. You can expect contractors that are buying equipment, training men and women to build roads, to invest anything. And we're losing the capacity to do the work because organizations like Pike are moving crews to Maine, which they have in the last eighteen months.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: So in the event, you know, I can go through these quickly. Also with the age of education, secretary of service, which she was here, that I mentioned, he provided. That was one of the few governors recommends. We actually put that in the BAA and It wasn't independent. It was not they kicked out of the BAA and said, you know, we don't have time to deal with this. We'll deal with it

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: in the budget. It was too late to get

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: into the government's budget? Was yeah. I mean, we didn't we put it in the BAA. Right. And then they said that, no. We'll deal with it in the budget and it just stayed there. So that was one that was not in there, but it important to us. I mentioned earlier within AHS, there were a few programs that formerly were based for Vent Strategies Vermont, Howard Center Community Outreach. And there's also language to expand DCF supervised visitation programs. These are all one time funded, but they are based on. So our thought is, you know, we didn't ask for them in particular. We are

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: not telling you to put them in

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: the budget, but if you are gonna put them in the budget, they're not. So if you wanna put them in there at a minimum, they should be putting the base. And you know, maybe the house was saying,

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: well, we'll do this for one

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: more year, but you guys are gonna notice, I don't know. But that creates kind of a difficult situation. The rateable reduction report, was one note two years ago. Senator Lyons, you may remember it. I think that information is well known. Also in the ABS for the unfunded budget pressors report that we now have on the screen, it deals with a rate of reduction. It would be substantial. It would be substantial money and we don't have a rate of reduction because we want to, we have it because So we do have that report.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That was the there was a question of whether that works or not. It hasn't done.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: Yeah. Well, it has been done now. Okay. Hadn't been done earlier. And that that was honest. We just didn't get it out. That was our fault. The the language on the high end system facilities for youth in 300.1, you know, we would just say that the language appears overly restrictive, you know, kind of gets in the way of ongoing discussions. And they are developing a report. If you ask me why you'll have it, I can't answer that. I think it's sooner rather than later. I think they've done a fair amount of work on it and they're getting ready to issue it. They've got one in the works. So we, you know, HHS uses the language which is not necessary. The you're aware of our request for the $15,000,000 transfer from the higher education, the trust fund to UBM to help build a multi purpose center. This was a key part of what the governor has to do. We think we found a source of revenue that was bolstered by unanticipated but very fortunate contribution of $26,000,000 last year. So we're asking for part of that to improve score in EBM, noting that, you know, with past five or six years, we've sent almost 200 over $200,000,000 in one state. Some ARPA money, some coronavirus relief fund money, and impressively, I mean, this this body and, you know, we've got to get that system on the right foot. You know, we've we been is a different animal. I I understand. But, anyway, we we would invest the body to consider. And is there one question about that in your earlier statements about the Tech

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Mod Fund about not using money in a fund that was meant for a mistake for something else? Isn't that why you're putting this? This would

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: be used for higher education. Yeah. But we happen to stay in a hotel right next to the university. I went to the early morning walk around campus. We saw four just on a walk, which wasn't the whole campus, four cranes. And these weren't little cranes. These are the ones with the lights on top. They'd like to keep planes from running into them. These were the amount of construction is just my goal. But I think they also have free permission They're competing for the same students. Yeah. And it's anyway, I just point out that that, you know, this is it's not a considered amount of money, but it's not a bucket for them either. Think this is important for them, and I think it will be an economic development tool for our team. Anyway, moving on. There were a couple of ANR. The first is a bit of a poke in the eye to the commissioner of Fish and Wildlife. I think it's unnecessary within the and Wildlife, Department of Fish and Wildlife budget. They assume additional revenue from a public access license that the commissioner wanted to create and initiate for fiscal twenty seven. That is within his or her statutory duties. And this was something that they thought long and hard about. And it's along the lines of the kind of the old mind that we don't need higher taxes, you just need more people paying taxes. And, you know,

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I think there's a lot

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: of truth to that within mission modeling. They a lot of the areas or land that was accessed by the public. If you're a hunter, you pay, you get a hunting license. If you're a boater, you get a boating license. But if you're a kayaker or small ramp operator, you don't, you're using that same access here. And the thought was if more people could be encouraged just to pay for the use of state property, we would all be better off. Anyway, the House decided that, and they can do this by for public access sites controlled by fishing wildlife. They can set these and develop these by whoever. And that was done that way to allow the commissioner some flexibility and allow him or her to manage the department and the revenues coming to the house. The house decided that that that didn't work, and this would need to be done through a fee bill. And so they've asked for a report to be made, presented in January about what the bequest is, and what they thought to do. So not only are they clipping the wings of the commissioner, but they're putting us off each. So that $50,000 that's assumed to be in DFW, so the House backfilled that. But there was also an assumption that as there was more people who were buying these licenses and more compliance with the new rule, those revenues would pay down from $50,000 to somewhere between 200 and $300,000 looking to what other states the thought was this nice to make up for one year, but it was so I don't know if that answers yet. But I think, you know, again, as importantly, this this just seemed a bit spiking.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We have a fish and wildlife coming in tomorrow, but we will hear from that tomorrow. H nine eight nine thirty three is the. That's the number.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: Did you speak to the amount of revenue that that that bill would bring in, anticipated new revenue? It was 50,000 in fiscal twenty seven and then in the out years. You know, there's always a ramp up as people buy these licenses. Some would know about it and so on, and unfortunately, we thought it would be about a quarter million. That was our best guess based on, you know, looking for other states too. Which were DFWs. So is that section of

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

[Sen. Virginia 'Ginny' Lyons (Member)]: So, thank you. I guess I would just say I was surprised because this idea has been around Yeah. For a little while. I mean, I I was surprised that the Department of Fish and Wildlife, you know, thought they had this authority to make this new kind of license. So, anyway, I'm I this is something that I that I know could be relatively controversial, you know, because it's it's sort of charging people to just be out on on state land, even if they're using it for some different purpose, let's say, maybe bird watching or whatnot. So,

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: anyway, it feels like the kind

[Sen. Virginia 'Ginny' Lyons (Member)]: of thing that could have that or a good process would be useful to have more conversation around. Yeah, anyway, I guess I'll just leave it there. Just seems like there's, more thinking that I would like to I'd like to be about that.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: I'm sure the commissioner and or secretary, they have already. To be clear, this is predominantly about public access. Not about benefit areas with binoculars. It's mostly about using facilities that need to be maintained or subject to deterioration and reduction. Who's a motor boater or a boat that needs a registration needs to pay for work and does, or a hunter that they're in these areas that need to buy a license. So for an angler, you know, anyway, it's more of an I'm getting above my knowledge base here. I'm sure you have a deeper one, but I just wanna make sure I wasn't misleading.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well

[Sen. Virginia 'Ginny' Lyons (Member)]: Okay. Right. Some of these, public access points do have, there there's interest in people using for other places. So, anyway, thank you.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That would be each and the other committee. They have one? Yes. There's a lot more to it.

[Sen. Virginia 'Ginny' Lyons (Member)]: We've yeah. We've had some just a lot. For that. This has been going on for twenty years so it's not new. There's been a lot of testimony I on can remember having folks come in from Fish and Wildlife showing me the decal that you were going to get when you had this license to put on your canoe or your kayak and access the fishing access area. There's a lot there and there's a lot of potential for for us to consider. Yeah, I'm not necessarily holding it.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is the official wildlife commissioner available and has the support? Do other commissioner status? I

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: believe FPR may have a suitable making a We're gonna see

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: a majority of bill poll. DMV increased the. So

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: I think I've said more than I know on that. This is one that I think is important, the reversion section B102, there's a reversion of almost $600,000 from one particular appropriation that's made in 2024, the emissions repair program. That program is changing, as I can understand the thought behind reverting that money. What I can't understand is why there was no check on how much was actually available. So the reversion amount is for the this higher appropriation was $600,000 back in 2024, of which $2,000 or so less. They're reverting $596,000. The challenge we have is about $200,000 of that is already incomparable. We have contracts with all services, Citco and Vermont Tire Service, to operate the program for us. So we would need to go back to them and get out of that contract if you wanted to revert that down. The actual available amount is somewhere in mid 3 hundreds. But importantly, you know, this bill, unless you guys do extraordinarily fast work, this bill is not gonna pass May. So if that will continue to be spent down because they will be operating the program. So for all intents and purposes, it means that there's probably more money or pardon me, less money in this version than is in the operating scene. Our view is it should be the medical. But, you know, it's not just this. You know, I guess from a policy standpoint, current year reversions are just a crappy that we get to make appropriations for a reason you want us to do something. You know, six months later, to turn around and say, well, in the clinic, it's really spot. Now in this case, this has been outstanding for two years, three years, but the money was carried forward under the Secretary of Administration's Career Board Authority, and as soon as it is carried forward, the spending authority is removed, is renewed, and it is spent, or, you know, they they get it suspended. So

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: it

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: it's just difficult to do current human returns. But, you know, at the very least, if you're going to do that, if you and there are times when we'll be in really tight financial situations where we'll have to look for that, but at least work with the administration. You know, ask us what's your income, you know, don't revert something that's already out there. So that's really more the policy angle. It wasn't so much the specific appropriations. And the final thing is the governor in his budget had recommended switching the fund source from 139, which is the reappraisal and listing appropriations from the And general fund to do that, not just for one year, not we didn't have an upstanding language, we had a change in statute that wouldn't make that a permit so that from this day forward or from the time this budget passes forward, 139 would be that source would be special funding and a special. The house, not only did they even move it up idea, I think they retroactively made it available for fiscal twenty sixth, so I thought that must have been a great option. Which, by the way, it was from our budget. Anyway, so we were charmed by that, but we were disappointed to see that they, instead of changing statute to make this part of statute statute, they just now speak the current statute. And they took out all the language. I think there florid in florid in that. I think I think there was was one particular lady on the stand who stood up and spoke. Yeah. I think I happened to

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: be watching at that point because they didn't like that I was probably

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: I'll just hold my comments on that. Substance of her argument. Yeah. Because I don't want senator Baruth to write down this workshop.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It's keeping a pound. I would

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: barely say that this is money that comes from the towns and the reappraisal and listing program goes right back. It's Right. Pay on a per person basis for maintaining their municipal brandness, but also for helping us with the statewide groups. And there's some money used for education. We would just say, look. You know, what this means is we'll have this debate over here. And I've kind of debated out. So I just think we just think this is very appropriate use of that bond. So I'm just putting statutes of. That does it for me, mister chair. Yeah. Well, thanks. My best to keep the tone down. I'm checking out. I appreciate it.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: You said crappy idea under a black. Yeah.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I'll put all these quotes up on you. The board.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: Okay,

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: any other questions for the commissioner, comments? Any last words?

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: Thank you for hearing me out. Thank you for seeing me, and we'll be in touch.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The GFO, you wanna walk us through the spreadsheets?

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Always. You don't wanna take a break?

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: Should I stay on this? Great. Mhmm.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I don't think we need a break.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: People wanna go home. Yeah.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Alright.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: People don't seem to take breaks regardless whether I allow them to take a break.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: One chocolate chip.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: I

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: really Just a glass piece. So

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I'm gonna pass out one time, but do you want me to pass that another? We

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: should probably start with the past? Maybe past the

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: first. The

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: base budget is probably where we should start.

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

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: And we'll end with the.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. And then you also have

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: one more in that.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Tanya, we'll get the spreadsheet. It's picking up.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: I I will get at least making that. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: Yeah. And

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: then you

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: still can't see it. I'm trying to make them more. They keep adding stuff to it. Yeah. Think it's hard for me.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We've worked what's the best of these two or you wanna tell us away, guys?

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: I'll tell you.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: One time. Us why.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: We have a one time. Right? Already?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, yeah. But then we have another one. We have another one. We will find out later what the difference is. So right now, we're

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: in the orange.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: You go to Zoom.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Always forget to do that.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: Do we

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: also have these on our website? Yes.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: And they're on the JFO website.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Went to the JFO website.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: These are the, like, the house has passed.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: Cool.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: So I can start quick. So for the record, Byrd, the joint fiscal offense, here to talk about the FY 2027 budget as passed by the House of Representatives. In front of you, we'll start with the base sheet you were talking about. At the very top, and I believe we looked at this when I was here at the beginning of the session. It just didn't have the house column. So we talked about the governor's recommend. We walked through all of that. Basically, the house column shows us what the house did and then you see the differences from the governor. On here. At the very top, you'll see the sort of the revenue picture for the base budget. So we start with the revenue pieces or no. Sorry.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: That's the

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: other sheet we start with revenue. On this sheet, we, summarized sort of your general, what's the base changes, the typical changes we think about are the annualization of pay act, changes in retirement costs, the healthcare increases, just sort of natural growth in the operations of state government rather than sort of policy changes or decisions to eliminate or add programs. That's in line one. The Pay Act in line two, this is the actual Pay Act appropriation for the FY '27 salaries and collective bargaining agreement that was adopted by the administration. The Pay Act bill itself was added to the budget in the house, in the house. So the section at I think of the budget is the pay act bill itself. So at the end of the budget, you'll see all the changes to the statutory salaries, benefits, the adoption of the other piece of the advice bargaining agreement that are required for pay act and appropriations for the FY27 and FY28 salary increases.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: If sign a new unit or something, What changed between the governors? Yeah. So I was gonna ask. Oh. 280,000.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: I think the collective bargaining agreements weren't completely finalized. Amy actually worked on all the pay access, so she's the expert on that.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I thought it was finalized and stuff.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: So Amy Pope joined the school office. So the administration sort of does their best guess for the budget when they're putting together in January. And then the HR has all of the, they have a huge model that they use to So,

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: find high growth, it sounds like

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: a percentage, but this is like

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: It's sort of, it's all the ups and downs of the contract. So, that was a lot of it. We

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: did have, we reevaluated, we, meaning the legislative branch and the judicial branch, reevaluated the numbers that were recommended by the governor, and there are some increases compared to the governor. The executive branch PAC needs went down. The legislative and judicial PAC needs went up. Which that might be something to talk about later in more detail at the meeting. But there was based on some further analysis, that number in aggregate went down compared to what the governor recommended. Line three is the pension increases for things like the teacher's health care, the pension plus payment, and vsters.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So is it just this isn't when you say increases, additional or this you you should mean the pension.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: I said increases for the for the teachers. For the last year.

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

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: then the base transfers in line four, the biggest base transfer that we do annually is the transfer to the debt service fund. That's north of $70,000,000 There's also $17,000,000 transferred to the cash fund. And then, I can't remember the exact number, a couple million dollars that's transferred to the Tax Computer Modernization Fund from the general fund. I'll also note on the cash fund pieces, there's sort of, there's always a back and forth. The governor recommended that those appropriations happen in the Capitol bill. The house did what they have done for the last couple of years and have moved those appropriations into the big bill. So, the spending happens in the big bill. The how to spend the money similar to other bills like the transportation bill or the education stuff happens in the is in the cap bill.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is a base cash fund transfer just not formula? They just decide if we're gonna move back to dollar bill.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: There is a formula in statute. The statute around it says May. So it says up to 4% of and there's I don't wanna get it wrong, but it's like four percent of the net debt service payment.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's the lower so we do that so that we lower our or lower our

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: And the administration has in the last couple years followed that formula to come up with the amount that gets transferred to the cash fund, and this year the house also followed that formula. There was no change to the governor's recommended transfer to the cash fund. There were changes to how to use the cash fund, and there were some reversions that the house corrections institutions identified. So they're reverting some bold appropriations and then reappropriating it, so there is a difference in the amount that's appropriated and the amount that's transferred to cash funds, but in aggregate at all.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Or you said they spent it only on things that

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: you would normally bond for?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Are they required to do that?

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: They're not required to do that.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That was the purpose of attachment.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Correct. Well, think some of the other purpose of attachment too is that sometimes there are things that sort of live in the in between space that aren't necessarily things you would want to bond for twenty years, but also aren't necessarily operating costs, so have a longer lifespan. So I think there are some things that may sort of be in that in between space, but it's usually more

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: and a half. So like $10,000,000 plus cash fund transfer? Seven. Seven.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: So then from the in terms of changes to the beef appropriations, you'll recall there's some changes in how EDS is paid for, both in the new general fund appropriation, that's on line seven, there's a reduction in cost across state government, that was netted against also some changes in how the allocation is going across state government. So there's about a $15,000,000 general fund increase related to the agency of the need services. Those are recommended by the governor and approved by the office. Do you want me to go like in detail on all these or?

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: I don't think so. Mean, you

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: can give us a very high level of questions. Maybe on the board there's a difference. Maybe you could spend more time, but the fact that the house and the governor agrees.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Then keep going. Thank you. That's cool. Okay. And these are relatively straightforward. So for line eight, there's an additional position at the tax department related to changes that were proposed, either the yield or the miscellaneous tax bill to change the way that the Homestead Declaration is working. The department made conversations around The department didn't explicitly ask for the position, but the department indicated was that if those changes happen in the yield and education bill, then they would like to get a position to do the work. So long as that work moves forward in the yield or mislead use tax bill, then that position would be needed to support those changes.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah, we didn't it wasn't in the letter, so we assumed that admin didn't have student fee of a problem.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: On line nine, the shifting the OPEB investment consulting expenses to the PIC. This is related to the treasurer's omnibus bill h five six seven. Would shift the consulting expenses to the pension fund associated with that. So, the the pick or pay for it out of the corpus of the pension funds and then, the treasurer's office no longer needed those funds to pay for the investment consulting contract at the treasurer's office.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Are all of 56 appropriations in the bill?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: I don't believe, I can't remember.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: So I

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: think there's several.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: There's several changes related to May too and there's some other, that's a good thing to have Chris come in and talk about. There are a lot of like moving around of allocations between the pension funds. If you look at the web report or in the bill, you'll see the treasurer's office, state student retirement, and OPEB appropriations, all of those are sort moving around. Line 10, added funding for a position at the Labor Relations Board for a mediator. This was associated with changes in funding at the federal level where there used to be federal employees that would help places like school districts or municipalities and others. Media contract negotiations. It was a free service provided by the federal government. Those positions at the federal level have been eliminated. My understanding is the house wanted to add a position at the state level that could provide that service to the rest of to municipalities and school districts, whoever needed it in lieu of the federal program.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Just to deal with labor

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: Do you know if the federal position was being utilized and so this was a necessary replacement?

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: That's my understanding. That would be a good question for labor. The only thing I would flag on this, and this is a small minor technical detail that will probably show up in the technical letter, and that if you decide to fund the position, we will deal with, but it was created as a classified position in the budget, and it needs to be an exempt position. So if this goes forward, we'll make that change. Additionally, on line 11, they added a position of the Ethics Commission to help with work in municipalities. Right now, I believe the ethics commission is supposed to help municipalities with ethics type functions and there is no resources to do that. I always get the reappraisal listing. We talked about that. The DG's office is about $88,000 to fund. There's a position to do home improvement work to help people that have issues with. Mhmm. This should be familiar. This puts that money in the base. It was a limited service position. Post funded with one time money. This makes it permanent.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Did the governor have it in either one time or base? No. It

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: wasn't in the government's. On line 14, some funding for the defender general for training and for contracts for case related case administration.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: There's the training. It's not since it's

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: The $80,000. Yeah.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: 15 of the judiciary, additional funding for security for security contracts. So just increase the amount of money available for negotiations with sheriffs. Just what, there was What? No money in the

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Does this deal with the hourly rate issue?

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: It doesn't get them to the same hourly rate as the Department of Mental Health is my understanding, but it would provide more, it would be, give them some more capacity to increase or to negotiate a potentially higher rate, be subject to negotiation.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, we don't know

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: what that is. I'm looking at this figure right now. We're not was that 57?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: They asked for this. 75. Okay.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: I would check with the fiduciary on what this might spoke

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: with them today.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Well, that would get that. The next three lines for the state's attorneys and sheriffs and the victim's advocates, They put in funding to eliminate the vacancy savings that are in the base. 100

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: of them.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: 100% for all three, is my understanding. The next three, the House agreed with the Governor, funding for the positions of the military, Vermont support, USS Vermont support grant, group grant. Slide 22 is where we have money for the Center for Crime Victim Services for Grant Administration. Cannot remember, James, I don't

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: know if you know off the top of your

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: head, which grant you're gonna help administer?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: No, the idea behind James, the idea behind this is CCBS administer several grants, some which are state funded, some are general or federal funded or funded through state through general fund, and this would be to help support the administration of general fund funded grant programs center. This is the prime move?

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Center for

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: crime victims. Center for

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: line 20 three, this is just a net neutral move. The funding for supervised visitation has been appropriated to the Center for Crime Victim Services and they transfer it to the Department for Children and Families Family Services. This would just make that change in the base so that they wouldn't have to go through the exercise of transferring money every year. Then I'll go down to line 26. So putting base funding in $450,000 into the Secretary of State's office to fund the Vermont Access Network.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So that in in the highlight sheet that represents what I was reading up was 1.8. And

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: then the so there's already some money in the base budget for front access network. It's 90,000 of one time money, I believe. Right.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I think it's 1.2, was it? This one it was over a million dollars. Yeah. 1.2. So this is what we included, Brady.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Yeah. This is

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Also, there's a rate increase by far.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Yeah. Correct.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But the highlight changes at total. Yep. And that in depths in from the well, the nineties of the radius, which is what they got right in the nineties. The radius is separate. The 90 is actually separate from this four fifty. Let's see. We'll see you later on the 100

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: On the one fifty. Correct. On line 27, the human rights commission, they eliminated the vacancy savings there and added a new position. I can't remember what the position

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: was for.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Maybe your James.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Believe it's a staff attorney. That's. Yeah. That's.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: I'm sorry. Where are we?

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: We are That We're was 20 gonna jump to line 30, and then there's gonna be a couple oh, yeah.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The line What is the CCB? The the new appropriation.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: That is that has to do with it's a technical change. The way that the money that was in the camp that the cannabis money flowed last year as it all went to cannabis special funds and then cannabis control were expended and then it came to the general fund. So, you have to kind of like reverse it in a weird way. It's I can spend too much Yeah. But they now have rather than have full special fund of spending authority, they have spending authority of general funds. And the fund the money that was going to that fund goes

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: to general fund.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: So, the next two on lines 30 and line 31, you may recall from the Budget Adjustment Act, there were two rate increases that were not included in the FY26 budget that the legislature decided to include in FY twenty six, which was for the last quarter. So, this, though, because those went into effect in the Budget Adjustment Act, they need to be annualized and included in the FY twenty seven budget. So, these reflect fully annualized general fund component of those appropriations for AAA case management and then tier one enhanced residential care ratings. The next two lines, line 32 and line 33 are also related to providing additional money to the designated agency, specialized service agency and home community based services. There's a little bit more money provided for skilled home health rates, But those funds get matched with federal funds and part of Medicaid, so there'll be a total of almost $6,500,000 of global commitment for rating purposes with the DAs and the SSAs, home community based services. Line 34 is a program at the Department of Mental Health. I believe this was one of the ones that was flagged as being eliminated in the Governor's budget, coming back in by the house. On line thirty five and thirty six, this is what representative referred to with the primary care loan support. We can senator Westman, we can look at those numbers.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: Data and it could make some mismatched or something.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Line 37 is a net neutral change related to the school based Medicaid program. So, the bill, you'll find there's a programmatic change. So, the agency of education historically has operated a program whereby to help support schools drive down Medicaid funds for students that are on Medicaid and that are providing services in schools that qualify. Administrative change has been proposed where that program is going to move from the agency of education to the agency of human services. The language to make that programmatic change is in the bill. When we were reviewing that change, the agency of education still had appropriations out of the special funds that's utilized for that program. In conversations with the agency human services, we determined that it made sense to just have a clean break and have AOE not utilize that fund anymore and have just the agency of human services utilize it. So, we just had basically a funding swap where we moved spending authority from the special funds, all through the agency of human services, and then gave general fund out of the agency of human services and gave it to the agency of education so that just DEVO will have

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: spending on that fund going forward.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Line three zero eight is additional funding for the Bridges to Health program. That's been was in the budget last year. Line 39, harm reduction services, another, this is listed in the section of the bill related to HIV and AIDS funding. There was a small increase to that in the Budget Adjustment Act. So this brings it forward into FY '27. And then line 40 is additional funding for free and referral clinics at the Department of Health. Line 41, I believe, while this is the same as the governor, I believe, as we just talked about, you asked me where you would see the money for the housing changes that were in the bill that's passed the house and I responded, it's complicated. This is part of that. 10,000,000. The house works within the amount of money that the governor had set aside for housing, emergency housing funding. So that money, you know, doesn't change, but it's the the programmatic directions on how to use that money has changed in the bill. That's how we open the house.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: What's that number? House bill? Nine thirty eight.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: Nine thirty eight. That's the one we're talking about earlier. Mhmm. But all of the money in it. Yep.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's where all the money's at?

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: That's

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: where my money's at.

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

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Line 42, this is the rate increase for DAs and SSAs. Not all of the money that runs to them is gold med and magical, so there's such general fund, straight general fund that runs. Line 43 is additional funding for the two one one contract. I understand you used to cover evenings. On line 44, this is a net neutral change, and they have a good funding. So this is, again, related to September moving money within DCF. The total budget stays the same. Line 45, this is the other side of the transaction I mentioned before, Center for Primary Services, moving the money for the supervised visitation, UDCF, so to be voted earlier. Line 46, is the same as that school based Medicaid change, put in the general fund. When we were figuring out how to move all the money just to DCF, to debug, we learned that there was some of that money that was actually going to DCF, we're cleaning that up. Okay. Shouldn't go there anymore. So this fixes it.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: Norris should it go to AOE?

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: And it's not gonna go to AOE either. Goes to DEVA. It'll log in to DEVA. Yep. Same with line 47. The answer is complicated related to how the housing bill moves money around. Same with line 48 on the next page. Line 49 is a technical correction. You'll see in line 53, there is $880,000 at Dale for the Opioid Recovery Employment Program. That should have been in the Dale Administrative Appropriations. That's just a technical change. In line 50, they added a disability housing coordinator at Dale. Line 51 is also related to the rate increases. Same thing. Some of it's only general fund. Line 52, the Deaf and Blind Support Services. My understanding is this is to provide services to individuals that are both deaf and blind to help them communicate with folks. There a federal program that went by?

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: Their funding.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: The funding went by.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Do they do you have a does JFO have a position table? Can create a task.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Yeah. That would be a good thing to have someone walk around. Later on speaker next week, for sure. Okay, we'll go to line 55 for the reduction in pretrial supervision funding. Reb Shai mentioned this out there. Eliminating some of the pretrial supervision, the 850,000 is coming out of DOC base for changes related to that program. In line 56, this is the additional funding needed for the healthcare advocate. It goes to the Green Mountain Care Board. If the Green Mountain Care Board matches it, then it goes to AHS. Provide additional credit for them. Line 57, one was in the government's budget. Line 58, this is the other side. This is the final transaction related to the school based Medicaid change. Then skipping the next bunch, those are governors. It's on line 63. This is one of the items that Commissioner Gresham mentioned, but $50,000 to backfill the elimination of the fee at the Department of Fish and Wildlife, leading to that access areas. Where is that? Is on 683. It was $50,000. I did I

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: did have a question on just from my own, University of Moncks College, whatever else. CCV is not a state entity or state psychologist. It's a state

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: Predominancy college. State psychologist.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. Sometimes BSE, they use different

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: In the budget, they show up to the state college. Line 64, department VSC

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: is the Community College. CCP.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Line 64, the Department of Environmental Conservation, two new positions support the implementation of Act 121, the flood safety bill, I believe last year.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We want We didn't have flood safety. There's no one that said, approved safety. It's Oh, nice. Flood safety, we passed the bill that needed positions, but we didn't run the position.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: That's fine.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: I understand the

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So the bill originally authorized up to 15 positions at the agency, but funding was only provided for 11 of those 15 authorizations. The authorization for those four unfilled positions has expired, so this language would authorize and fund two additional positions over the 11 that have been filled.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Alright, and then on row 66, we have federal matching funds. The Arts Council, they need a little bit more state match to be able to fully draw down their federal funds. I believe this has been in the last couple of budgets that you've seen. So, that's all of the changes to the base appropriations that the House made. And Smith's progression indicated as Bert and Brett Shy, it's about 7,300,000 higher than the Governor. Additionally, we talked about the reserve, but line seventy and seventy one, this is the amount that needs to go into the stabilization reserve and the 20 sevenfifty third based on statute.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It's based on the appropriated FY26 amount, right? Correct,

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: the budget stabilization reserve is based on appropriate FY 'twenty six appropriations.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So, know that as soon as you pass the bill, what it's going to be done to you?

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Yes, we know that. Sometimes, you'll recall last year, because we were doing a budget adjustment in the budget, and as move prior year appropriations, that number gets changed. But there aren't any changes to FY '26 appropriations currently in the vacant house. In the C section. Yeah. They don't there are no appropriations. There is a C section.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: But just no appropriations.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: No appropriations. That would impact in general, though.

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

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Then there are three, starting on line 73, there are three other bills with base appropriations in them, and these three appropriations accompany the bills. So, these would need to be carried if the Senate decides to pass these bills. I'm not an expert on these bills, but two of the judiciary space and then

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: H-four 10 to 72 allowed DPS to contract with CRG. Is

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: that an issue? Is that in judiciary?

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: We have in our committee now and

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: act on the bond.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: Yeah.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Then five fifty nine relates to the parole board. And then six fifty seven, this one is, the bill itself eliminates the asset test or reach out, as the suits would. This is their anticipated additional cost if that happens. So then, that's the total appropriations. So the governor was at 2,000,000,006 and $13,000,000 The house is at 2,621,000,000 And then if you look at the revenue pieces, so we take the forecasted general fund revenue plus what will come from the property transfer tax and then direct applications. So direct applications are money that's transferred to the general fund. There was only, most of that comes from the Department of Financial Regulation and a couple other places. And we can walk through the direct apps in more detail at another time. The House made one small change. They increased the direct application from that AHS Federal Holding account. There has historically been about a $4,600,000 transfer from that fund. They increased it to $5,000,000

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is your number on the difference from the governor on line 79 the right number?

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: It might not be. Something looks funny on that. I'll look at it. And then after that, we have the revenue changes that are part of the miscellaneous tax bill, H-nine 33. There are two changes in the, or there are three changes in tax credits, two of which go into effect in FY 2027, and another one that does go into effect later, Downtown Payment Assistance Tax Credit and the expansion of the Downtown Village Tax Credit. Additionally, on line 90, there is some additional revenue associated with the necessary blinking and decoupling associated with changes to federal tax provisions that occurred in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. So, typically, in a lot of years, depending on what's going on with federal tax policy, the state links up with the federal, with the tax policy. In this case, if we had fully linked up as we had, there would actually have been a decrease in revenue, both in the current year and in future years. So, the House Ways and Means Committee worked with JFO and the tax department to figure out a solution that would result in a reduction in revenue to the state, and in fact, revenue to state a little bit. That increase is offset by the change in the allocation of yields of rooms tax. So, you may recall in the governor's recommended budget, there was a shift of the There was a step down of the purchase and use tax from reallocating the amount that went to the education fund versus the transportation fund. That left a shortfall in the education fund of $10,000,000 The governor then proposed to transfer $10,000,000 from the general fund to the education fund to keep the education fund whole. The House did a similar thing, changed the allocation of the purchase use tax, or rather changed, the Governor proposed changing the amount that was transferred. The House changed the percentage of the purchase and use tax that was dedicated to the transportation fund versus the education fund. The net effect was a $10,800,000 shift, or was about a $9,900,000 shift. And then, in order to keep the, rather than do the transfer from the General Fund, they changed the allocation of the Meals and Tax from the General Fund to the Education Fund. The net change of the meals and rooms tax and the purchase and use tax on the education fund was zero. The general fund loses the $10,000,000 from the meals and rooms tax instead of transferring out $10,000,000 to the education fund. The net impact is $800,000 So that changed versus doing this transfer.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: How does that $800,000 impact off? Meaning, 9.9 to the T Fund, and you're showing that gap with more money. So

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: a little extra goes to the Education Fund, and then the House accounted for that change in their constructs. And that was the number, right, to keep the percentages as round numbers. That's how they shook out. So, it was as close as we could get percentage wise without Okay. That's a percentage. Yeah, right. I can't remember off the top of my head, but it's the percentage that goes to each fund shifts. So that's not missing. So, with that, that generates some additional revenue for the general fund that's utilized by the House. And so, the Governor's constructs had about $31,000,000 of base funds being utilized for one time investments. The House's budget has $27,000,000 of base funds being utilized for one time investments. That makes sense.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Cool. It's on base. Base. Yeah. So it's where the one time is not the big word. But This is all base. But this in the one time is where there's a difference between bigger business. Mhmm. We have some committee members that need to leave at 03:30.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Great. I should stop We

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: could start this and stuff, or you could just explain if there's a difference between this, or we could wait till Friday to hand out this.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Oh, wait. Why don't I go with the differences?

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: Okay.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: It would be good for you to study it. Right?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Google study it.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: You can ask me really hard questions.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: I've got a tough question.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The difference is between this one.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: It's not your call, but what's the difference cheap. Yeah. Between a percentage and just transferring the money? It wouldn't it be a lot cleaner to just transfer an u ten and ten? Wait. But senator Westman has a part of me. Yeah. I I don't like it anyways. It does. So Yeah. Don't have to think But that's not your fault. I know you didn't make that decision.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Yeah. And I think the if you change the percentage in statute, right, then it is a statutory ongoing shift in the how you're dedicating the revenue.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Especially for purchase and use because that keeps you going up on inflation. You just did 10,000,000 a year, it'd flat.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Then, you know, it goes in

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: If go into a recession, it'll be a down.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right, you're done. Yeah, we should have a base. Can you no lower than this percentage, but no lower than that.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: There you go. Thank you. What happens if it is?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We take it from you.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: Oh. Oh. That was a great one. Okay.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: You wanna know the difference between these two?

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: Yeah. One of the

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: There's not that much difference.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: This need to study.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: Vertical one just gives the general fund changes in onetime appropriations. The horizontal one gives you a full summary of VA 1,100. So one of the questions that could get asked is why do you skip Oh, yeah. So, like, this sheet with the general fund doesn't have a B1100H. That's because B1100H is a transportation one time appropriation. So there's special fund and transportation fund and other funds, government funds, federal funds that are also appropriated in the one time section. So this gives you a better bigger picture of all of those.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: These are just the big funds. This is all the special.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: This is all of it. And this is just the general fund.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is everything that's in here in here? Yep. Not everything in here is in

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: here? Correct.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Or nothing that's in here.

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: No, everything on here is not here. Not everything on here. That is a crock. Because this one

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations; Middlebury)]: is Uh-huh. This is all of

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: my times? All of my All of my All of my Regardless of the source. Correct.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: And this is Jesus.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Even though they're the same size.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member)]: She

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: The printer only has three choices. Take your size.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. Well, we will study it. Great. And then

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: you come back to the factory.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Are you able to come back to? I so. So I mean, mean,

[Joint Fiscal Office analyst (name not stated)]: here to help you guys for the next three days. That's mostly what I need do.

[Adam Greshin (Commissioner of Finance & Management)]: We'll take a question. We're the. Yeah. Any other

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: questions?