Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: We are live.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Live set of appropriations. Case level seven. Okay. Yep. And we're going through the f y twenty seven budget and questions we had in certain sections as it came over in the house, the Department of talked about substance misuse. And so I'll let you introduce yourself for the record and talk about that. There was a specific question also around birth control centers.

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: For the record, my name is Maggie Hope. I'm a financial director of the filing house. My name is Emily Trigger. I am the division director for the Healthy Harmon's Division of Substances Program. So, our understanding is that you wanted a little bit more information about the Substance Misuse Prevention Special Fund today. And just to kind of start, I wanted to provide just a brief overview of the fund because it is relatively new. The legislature established, legislature established the fund, it was determined that 30% or up to 10,000,000 of the cannabis excise tax is what's flowing and feeding the subsidy.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Whichever is the lower number?

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: Whichever is higher. Higher. High. Up to 10,000,000 would flow into this special fund. And at the time of the twenty twenty six bucket budget rec bucket rec budget recommendations. Sorry. I'm talking way too fast. There is an estimated 6,750,000.00 that was going to be in the fund. So, that was the number that we, the administration provided for our budget recommendations. And that was passed. So, budget 2026 passed was at 6,750,000.00. That was 30%. It was not quite 30. Or yeah. Sorry. Yeah. That was the 30%. We didn't reach that. Right. And then we were closer to the value.

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

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: And then, in addition to our base budget request, the Senate added some one time funding in '26 for recovery residences, recovery centers, and there was a third one for Mentor Vermont. I will note that the recovery centers and residences had to have not with speaking language added, because according to the authorizing statute, that is not an allowable use of the prevention fund.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It's not prevention of recovery, that one.

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: Yeah, the language is, I forget exactly what it says, but it's for substance use prevention. It's a little brief.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Even if you're preventing somebody from relapsing into the That's just the way it would work.

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: Yeah, when the twenty sixth one time stop at it, it was determined that the notwithstanding, like, it should be from there. So, between those one time appropriations, we were at the full, you know, we have appropriated what we thought, what we financed with estimating at the full amount of the revenue that was gonna be in that fund. And then additionally during BAA, there was about another a gross 400 ish thousand added to recovery centers, but only a portion of that was substance abuse prevention fund, because the house didn't want the fund to go into a deficit. And then, switching gears, that's kind of current year, '26. '27, our '27 budget request reflects the we have 9,500,000.0 that is estimated to be in revenue for that fund. So, that was our full amount of our budget request this year. And the health department really focused on that increase in three major areas, which are kind of following our twenty sixth, and that is the Vermont Prevention Lead Organizations, school based prevention programming, and then there is also funding for 11 field based staff within the

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: health department. There are 11 new staff.

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: I'm sorry, 11.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: A lot of new staff or is it about

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: No, they're existing. Yep, existing. They've been existing health funding staffs. That's where I'll turn it over to Emily to talk more about panel process. Just to give the group a sense of how the BKLO system works through conversations over the last five years, and even in a recent round of community roundtables, which some of you may have participated in last October, One thing that we're hearing a lot about is wanting to make sure that communities have some influence in regards to how the program is implemented in their region.

[Emily Trigger, Division Director (Substance Use/Prevention)]: So over the last couple of years, we've implemented the new Vermont Prevention Lead Organization structure. We have four Prevention Lead Organizations across the state. They have a very comprehensive process from needs assessment, strategic planning, then a comprehensive competitive RFP process to develop relationships with community partners to implement a complement of substance abuse prevention activities in their regions. There are four parts to that process. The first part is very, the prevention world in and of itself is very data focused. As part of what they do, they gather data at the regional level, they identify evidence based practices and prevention science, and they engage local partners. They develop a draft five year strategic plan that focuses on regional priorities. They then facilitate a competitive process, or an RP process, to create sub grants in their communities, so not only do the VPLOs themselves issue direct programming, they operate as a fiscal agent within their communities. How many EPLOs? There's four EPLOs, and I believe 64 right now sub grantees in that space. At one point in time, I've been with the division since 1996. At one point in time, for example, we have three organizations across the state. We've had some pretty tremendous growth as a result of this funding and implementation, so now we're at 64 partners across the state. That's separate from the number of partners in our inmate school districts and Supervisory because that is a separate campus.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is it staged roughly each is four districts out of the four areas of these different? Yes,

[Emily Trigger, Division Director (Substance Use/Prevention)]: yes. So there's, I'm not going say it's necessarily the four quadrants of the state, there's a little bit of misogynyness. You have a sort of Franklin, Chittenden, Washington County, you have a Rutland to Addison, you have a large region that sort of covers the southern border a little above the right hand side, and then you have sort of the Northeast and other partners in that spot. The competitive process, which does seek to address geographic and population disparities, they then move on to the final phase in this phase, which is board allocation. They are required to have a regional funding advisory board that allocates the funds and they are required to have a diverse board representation and then have a balanced funding approach across the prevention model.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: How much of this money goes through this model?

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: Our proposed budget for M. Seven is 5,000,000.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: For this?

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: Yes, for the D. Killam.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The 99 adjustment staff and other central Yep.

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: We had about 1,500,000 proposed for staffing and then 3,000,000 proposed for that school based initiatives. And that was it was in our budget testimony, a breakout of kind of that. Level.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The stemmed out? Yes. Okay. And is the five ninety divided equally into four regions, or is it population in phase?

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: It's a mix. So there's a base appropriation, because infrastructure can be similar in any area, you know, you need some certain subset that's equal, and then the rest is allocated based on the size of the catchment area and the feed side. I believe, I don't know, not to put Amy on the spot, we did send some information the other day about kind of our proposed budget for each of those four VPLO regions and then the school population areas as well. Okay. I'm sure it's hard. How we're breaking up that 5,000,000 and 3,000,000.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Did you have anything else you wanted to say? No. So the question, so the, we just gave the recovery centers money in last year's budget, it was through here, but it was you're saying we've not withstood the prevention fund, the language of all of us more. Yeah. And it was one time. Correct. So, would there be any money for the recovery center this year?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: Not

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: without having to kind of have us reallocate and rethink how we're we're giving out the nine months.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Would they apply for VPLO, like if they had a recovery center in one of the regions, would that be something that they would apply to that competitive process?

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: The purpose of the VPLO funding is for substance misuse prevention, so any vendor in a catchment area can apply to provide the services that are part of that needs assessment and strategic plan. Recovery center based operating, we support in a variety of other funding sources that are not in this space.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay, and now what do consider as part of that plan. I

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: would not consider it in that space. I think that substance abuse prevention, which really focuses on population level and intervention based levels, to be quite frank, we have statewide reach right now for our recovery centers across the state. We are only serving 64% of Vermont's middle and high school students in the school based services space. As far as where we're looking as far as the reach, we have a wide band across the middle of the state and the Northeast Kingdom to support our schools. So any, there's other, we have numerous other sources that support the recovery center space that we could have conversations about in that space. Within the state

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: or within Birmingham, or both?

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: From my perspective, we have three funding sources. So, have the GC Investment that supports recovery centers in their base operations. This year alone has had about $3,860,000 I believe this year. We have the Stateful Pruittenden Response Grant, which is issued by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration from the federal government. They received just under $2,100,000 in that space, and there is funding from the Alternative Payment Settlement Committee that is currently supporting recovery coaching in the justice involved pocket.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Do you have a question? Just to

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: let you know that the Center of Health and Welfare is working on articulating language for the criteria about how the fund is used. There's nothing really in statute right now that guides that. So we try to put something together that will capture the intent and what's currently described as the goals. Yeah. I

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: think that answers your question. For coming and providing the information. Yes. Appreciate your work. Thanks for the time. You did? Oh, okay. You can join us right

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: up here. Oh, you can. We're ready already. Here.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Unless you wanna wait ten minutes. So we're moving on to Chief Recovery Officer, Mr. Farnam. We talked about this is something that, if I remember correctly, wasn't in the House budget, but was in the technical letter from the governor's office or from the sector administration. Am I right or do you know?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: So for the record, Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer of State. This was a last minute addition to the House passed budget where we didn't have time to fully talk through the best mechanism for including it, and that's why we've got some proposed tweaks to the structure for the Senate to consider, mister chair. And was it in do you

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: know, Amy? Was this in the technical under these changes that you're asking for?

[Amy (unidentified staff)]: The the disaster recovery, yes.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, the disaster recovery, yes. You're not getting the rentals. Right.

[Amy (unidentified staff)]: After five. Not after five, but thank you.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: The second item, mister chair, was an oversight Let it not get transmitted like we don't intend to.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. But you're prepared to talk about multiple? Absolutely. Okay. I'll start with the disaster mitigation. So the question, they want do you wanna move it to AOT or the house move it AOT?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: The original the house had put the funds in the community resilience and disaster mitigation fund, just as in the heat of the moment, a place to park the money. However, we I talked this situation through with both AOT and Vermont Emergency Management. And Vermont Emergency Management, because this is all road and bridge infrastructure that was damaged, they don't really require any oversight of this of these grants, so there doesn't really need to be an extra relationship that could slow things down or unnecessarily complicate things. So that's why we're suggesting one time general funds for the, directly to agency transportation.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Because these projects, even though they're on the municipal network, AOT is involved in the project.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: Yes, AOT has reviewed all of the estimates, the infrastructure in question is being built. AOT standards in most cases, or all cases, I believe. And then the the largest addition in h two of the just the programmatic criteria, that wasn't intentionally left out, but it was just program design that didn't make it new version. And the intention here being to make sure that it's linked to reimbursement for we want the grants to be for repairs and reimbursement for activity that's actually occurred. We wanna make sure, you know, we're not just sending the towns the money in the Virginia zone or whatever. It needs to be for the specific infrastructure that was damaged. Okay.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: What was it? 1

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: point something million? 1.347107, that number is 50% of the estimated repair costs, as of last month.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I believe the town will be the other one. Yes. Because there's no federal, really, we got rejected and our appeal got rejected.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: Right, they would have received 75% federal, and then between 3070% of the non federal share would have been state, but we, unfortunately, don't believe we can fully step into the shoes of the federal government and completely fill the gap there.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Not very big shoes.

[Amy (unidentified staff)]: So just as a question, for with the the transfer, are there things that would be that that money would be eligible for if it was in the municipal disaster? I'm I'm forgetting the the exact that it would not be eligible for as a as basically a grant from the AMT.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: That's an excellent question, senator, and the main reason we proposed striking is the deposit in that is because that fund was created to be a hazard mitigation and a proactive fund. It was not created to fund repairs from storm damage. Mhmm. And putting this money in that fund does kind of increase the scope and would have required notwithstanding language, or adding a whole new category of eligible uses to that fund, we wouldn't recommend. We don't we don't believe it's the right approach to expand that fund to cover storm damage as well. We wanna keep it focused on mitigation and forward looking efforts to reduce risk.

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

[Amy (unidentified staff)]: To be proactive.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: To be proactive. Yes. Okay.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And the AOT isn't having to spend any money? No,

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: not on this. I mean, I think there's a possibility that these funds, as well as other federal programs, might be combined to try to affect the repairs, but I don't think there's any specific there's no additional specific money from AOT here. It would be a handful of grants, for projects that they've already scoped out and understand very well. Mister Chair, one kind of the number that we proposed, one three four seven one zero seven, that does not include a bridge that was damaged in the town of Wheelock because there is an incredibly complicated backstory for that particular bridge, and it wasn't included in the in the submission to FEMA. It may have been ultimately deemed eligible by FEMA if a disaster declaration had been approved, but it's very, very, very complicated. The town took an alternate project instead of repairing the bridge after '24, and that might make it so FEMA would say they're ineligible for further assistance. It's not a question FEMA would answer for us, as a hypothetical. Okay. So, Wheelock is and we don't know actually what the bridge in Wheelock would cost to replace at this point.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is it a sounder, is there a

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: temporary bridge in there? It was it was damaged in '24, and then it was damaged again in '25, significantly enough that it is closed at the moment. There are seven households, but they have access through a class four road that was upgraded to class three, and so they have egress, they have access to their homes. It is certainly an inconvenient situation for some of those households.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. But we're dealing with that in other parts of the transition. Yeah. All over the place. Right.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: We've got leaks everywhere. Yeah.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Trying to get more help with the. Okay. Anything else on that? Nothing

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: on on that item. Okay.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And so this that that's in half, though. So we don't need to change anything. That's just helping us understand what was happening. You guys are okay with the language of that?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: No, these are recommended in the technical letter. We include as recommended amendments to the

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: House I have much of that.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: We don't have that heading. It's page 21 of the technical

[Amy (unidentified staff)]: Do we have the section ahead and push it out?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yep. Sure is. Understood. Any further? Yeah. Call something else other than the technical? No. It's under it's under Adam Gretchen. Yeah. Okay. I have to see. He has

[Amy (unidentified staff)]: the technical.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You know, because it it it was issued after he was here. Mhmm. Right. So they just said something over here. Okay. So there is language that you need for that? Yes. Well, because in the house, it was in in the prevention, disaster mitigation.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: And and it did not have any programmatic criteria.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Your amendments on this are all in red? Yes. There's nothing else. Any questions on that? We can fix it with the emergency rental assistance. So

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: this language is relatively short and simple, but the the backstory here is a little more complicated, so I'll get into that. So there were two emergency rental assistance funds for Vermont that resulted from the pandemic. The ERA one allocation of 200,000,000, which we sent back about 32,000,000 of that money through, mostly through early recapture by Treasury, and then 152,000,000 in emergency rental assistance too that ended on 09/30/2020 So the the end of that period of performance was 09/30/2025. We had accepted that emergency rental assistance funding through the other joint fiscal committee AA-one process, and so we had received the programmatic approvals. And then when it became clear that as Treasury rules changed over the several years after being released, that we were going to need to to move some of that money around in order to maximize the use of the ERA two monies in the state.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You have this in the footnote?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: So this did not mean, this is the item that did not make it into the Templeton letter, mister chair. So this one pager with the language that I sent yesterday was the first time the committee has seen this. Yes.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Why don't we print out a copy for people? Mhmm.

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: Is it that's what we have on

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But we don't You

[Maggie Hope, Finance Director]: want this one?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I can grab mine for actually. It doesn't have a computer. So

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: in the 2024 budget, AOA was given the authority to reallocate emergency rental assistance to against general fund, free up that general fund. We were basically trying to maximize where we applied ERA to so that we would limit as much as possible the federal dollars sent back to treasury at the end of the day. And so with our language, we didn't we when we talked about it, we were talking about state funds versus federal funds, but when we drafted it, we just put general fund. And what happened is when we peeled apart how what eligible uses there were in the state, at DCF, there had been some uses of the cash fund that were eligible for ERA two. So we applied the ERA two against those eligible uses. We spent the federal funds because we have the authority to do that, but then we didn't have the authority to then take the funds that were freed up by the application of ERA two away from the DCF. So they're sitting there until we can get this authority to move them back. And one reason that's important is because we had some programs at that we ran through the Vermont State Housing Authority, and Treasury determined some things were ineligible, and so we had to swap general fund for those ERA two uses because they determined this was instances where I had approved the repair of affordable housing units that were going to close and evict the residents because of black mold or damaged roofing, and I didn't wanna see people get evicted. So I approved the use of ERA two to do that, and then Treasury later came along, analyzed our use, and said, no, that's not an eligible use of emergency rental assistance to keep affordable housing units open. I disagree with their interpretation, but we are where we are. And we were able to apply the emergency rental assistance to in other places where we had spent general funds, take those general funds and cover the Vermont State Housing Authority grant and kind of square that up. We also had some treasury, since the transition of the Trump administration, has become increasingly aggressive about their definition of what constitutes fraud and peace. And how much of that they expect the states to In most federal programs, there has been a historical standard where if you keep it below a certain percentage, they say, good job. You managed your fraud, and we're not going to recapture those funds. The current treasury, with some other things, they haven't demanded recapture of us yet, but in some other states have demanded recapture of every payment that is identified as potential fraud.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: As potential fraud?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: Yes, so there's a nebulous risk there that we cured as much of it as we could. We we started with we had some cases. I obviously can't discuss the details, but we worked with the FBI on certain cases, so those were absolutely fraud. So we cured those first, replaced those with state funds so that and if we get a successful recapture, then the state would get paid back that money. Historically, if you identify a fraud case and you're doing due diligence to get that recapture, if the funds are returned, the feds receive that money back, but they don't expect the state to pay them back for fraud that they identified and are trying to solve. But the current administration does not take that approach. I think Massachusetts got a particularly large repayment demand, So that's what a lot of this authority was used to mitigate was ineligibility determinations and to lower our audit risk. I will say, mister chair, that we were I was hoping we would be able to spend every penny of the 152,000,000. We were not able to apply every last penny through this authority, mostly because the affordable housing rules that the ERA two money came along with, they were so stringent that they don't match our projects that the HTV is doing. And DHC did a huge amount of work, was able to apply some funds, but it went to the minority of their projects because it was requiring, I think in many cases, like, either 50% or below or 30% or below. So that's the context for the request for this language, and really the addition is that in addition to general fund, we just want to be able to transfer those cash fund monies to complete the accounting transfers that kind of balance the books.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. That seems fine. Anybody have any questions? Thanks. Now, Howard, do you wanna give us an update on the spending of the other recovery funds, the RF funds? Absolutely. All going good?

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: So through 12/31/2025, so as of a little over three months, four months ago, we had $74,000,000 of ARPA funds remaining to expend. We are just now collecting the data for our next quarterly report. We'll have an update available to the legislature early May, maybe the May, and we'll be able to compile that. We are seeing a concentration of risk at the moment, that many of our water programs still have a significant amount of unexpended funds. Those are obviously very important programs. Is there like wastewater treatment? Yes. So, extremely important programs, but also programs that historically, those projects have had difficulty completing on time and on schedule. So I think even going into, I think all of us that talked about ARPA appropriations early on knew that that was a potential risk. I am developing a reallocation strategy. We do still have the ability to reallocate funding between ARPA programs. And then the main difference is that in 2024, the agency administration was able to do 250,000,000 worth of swaps as long as we kept the programs net neutral. Right? We were moving funds, but we were retaining and not changing the legislative intent of any of those programs. Right? We were taking 5,000,000, replacing 5,000,000. We no longer have that full authority. What we can do is propose reallocations, which the Joint Fiscal Committee can can then approve. And then in those cases, so hypothetically, we could take money from water projects, which we obviously want to avoid doing, but we could put them against broadband projects, which are also important, but don't have as many links to housing and other things as water projects. That would be an instance of taking from one program and increasing another one. That's one thing we can do. It has to be for an award that was established before twelvethirty onetwenty four, so at this point I've asked the programs not to close out awards, because if they close it, it is no longer something we can reallocate funds to. So

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You have to reallocate it to something that could spend the money by December this year. And they would have to spend

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: it by December. The the nice thing about broadband spending is that that is happening a lot. There's a lot of spending there. It's a very broad eligibility category, so it could be used to reimburse spending that's already happened, but just wasn't covered by ARPA. The other approach, mister chair, is we established interagency agreements to keep the door open on applying ARPA funds to payroll. Rehiring of public sector capacity was one of the eligible categories in ARPA. Now Vermont didn't really do that. We created programs. But if you look at the Treasury recording, we did do that because AOA took the ARPA funds from a program, applied it to public sector staff, and then gave those programs the money that was freed up. So we may propose reallocating funds from a project that can't spend the money in time by the end of the year and put it against payroll, that would then have to sit on the bottom line in the general fund until the budget adjustment act, because the Joint Fiscal Committee wouldn't have the authority to move that general fund back to restore that program. And then we would only be doing that in the case where our program literally cannot spend their money, and we would be sending it back to Treasury otherwise, but the legislature could choose to restore the funding that was freed up, but that would be a a legislative

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: choice. There was no fair bad option, so you don't have don't end up in December. Right. Yeah.

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: Is a likelihood that we'll end up returning some amount of ARPA funds just because of timing. If things are returned in December, someone sends us a check back and we won't have we won't and and if it's late enough in the month, we just won't be able to reapply it. Right. And then with emergency rental assistance, we're still receiving checks back from programs, people returning those funds, and we don't have any choice other than to just send it back to children here at small unit. Those are relatively small, but it's kind of an ongoing activity. I'm hopeful that it will be down to between 40 and 50,000,000 left to go after this, when we compile this quarter's data, but some of that, like I said, is concentrated in certain programs, and they're not programs that the administration would recommend reducing funding to, it's just challenging projects to finish.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay, well I hope for a good construction season. Thanks for your years of work on that. You're welcome, Mr. Chair. And I

[Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer]: think, actually one thing you said there that I want to highlight is the construction season in Vermont provides us with an extra hurdle, right, because a lot of these projects we're hoping to use the fall of this year to finish, and that is bringing that playing in really close to the landing. So in most cases, we haven't wanted to approve timelines that tight, but we may have to take a risk on some of those projects.

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