Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: We are live.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Live center appropriations going through the FY '27 budget. One of the things in the budget this year is the Pay Act, so we wanted to learn more about that. We have Commissioner Pat Brennan to talk about that, but we're going to talk about the reclassification project and how that relates to part of it. Why don't you just blind him for the two conversations. I know you have some slides that say, hey, I don't know. Do you need to do the classification while Doug is available? Yeah. Right.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: We can do that. And Doug was going to put out some slot. He was gonna actually share his computer with the slides. Okay. The classification problem.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: He's keeping on it. Alright. Okay, so I'll let you introduce yourself to the record and give the presentation.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: My name is Deb Fastidge, I am the Commissioner of the Department of Human Resources, and with me is Douglas Pine, and he is Director of, lots of things, but he is here today representing our Modernization of Career Architecture and Pay Project. And because at the state, we like to have acronyms for comes the MAP project, which is actually pretty cool because what we're doing with the new classification system is we're creating this big map and mapping jobs into various various structures. It's it's a great need for the project. So just to kind of start out, to kind of level set, Act 27 funding last year. We got $1,750,000 general fund, the classification modernization project. And after a competitive bid process, we awarded the contract to Mercer Consulting. We contracted with them and we began working with them right after the money was approved, so in July 2025. We are now about nine months into the expected twenty four month project, and we are meeting our project milestones. We spent 20% of the project budget, or about $304,000 We're doing this to modernize our state government's classification and compensation systems to support our recruitment, management, and retention of well qualified and diverse workforce. The objectives of the project are to organize jobs, map them into a clear, logical job architecture that reduces the number of job classes, facilitates career advancement, and promotes internal consistency and equity, and simplifies the administration of this program. We're implementing a modern approach to work measurement to accurately assess our job roles, and developing a comprehensive compensation framework, which will include a philosophy, pay structures, and administrative guidelines, considering both interest equity as well as system of market competitiveness. And then another big part of the project will be to train and educate managers and employees on the new system to build understanding, consistency, and trust. Our goal and guidance are to establish a standardized, meaningful career architecture and pay structure that supports our employees' career goals, and our state's recruitment and retention goals. So, we're working in collaboration with stakeholders across the executive branch of state government, and also more external stakeholders as well. We've met with joint fiscal office on this project, and then we've also talked to judiciary some, and of course our labor partners are a big part of this project as well. This will be the first major review and update of our classification system and compensation since 1984, so over four years. And we are definitely probably one of the last states kinda initiating this effort, so it's well, it's well needed.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Was all the state at one point known for Willis?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: No, no. Everyone has their own. A few states maybe use Willis, but Willis is kinda unique. It was an offshoot of a very well used system called the Hay System, and it was kind of a, Mr. Willis worked for Hay and then he went by a maze on instead of a, I'm not gonna say one man chocolate, but he created his own maze system. But it was based on that, so it was very similar to the management tool that was widely used at the time, but most organizations are moving away from that type of a system. So this project will cover our classified employees across the executive branch.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Are we moving to something that upper states are doing or it's too early to say?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: It'll be customized for us. So we're in the positioning measurement tool called Willis, which is outdated, hard to understand and use, and doesn't have any technical support. Our employees don't have a predictable, clear view of their career and salary trajectory. Budgetary impacts in our current system are unpredictable. In fiscal year twenty five, the estimated annual cost of our classification reviews was 8,200,000.0.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: These are the RFRs.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: The RFR, yeah, requests for reclassification, classification review. And so those can be initiated by management, also by unions, or by the employee. And because it can be initiated any time, it's hard to predict what the financial impact's going to be and we don't know the financial impact until after we do the analysis.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And HR does the analysis.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Yes.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And this is $8,200,000 that's the cost of the result of the HR, not your administration.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Correct, that's the result that employees, above and beyond the raises that we'll see from Pay Act, employees got based on either, generally from moving from one pay grade to another. So some of it was a rich promotion and some of it is actually looking at the job and saying, okay, this job should be classified higher or lower or the same.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: If you do one, you gotta do them

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: If you're doing a flash review, you have to do them all at the same time. And we have a whole time period for when those are due, those are due at the end of the summer, and then we have three months to get those all done, so it's a big chunk of work that

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: we do. And this should lower the number of RFRs?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: This should, our goal is to reduce the number of classifications overall and then reduce the number of requests for reclassification. Yep. One of the things that we have is we have over 200 job classifications, 2,000 job classifications, which is really an unyielding number. There's no way we could redo those every, know, can't look at those every year, even every five years, would be a huge challenge. There's many employee centered department specific and redundant job classes, which leads to inconsistencies in pay assignments and pay within and across departments for pretty comfortable work. Because if you're doing an administrative assistant in, say, human resources, then you're looking at an administrative assistant somewhere else. You might not be doing those all at the same time. Anyway, it's a, so our goal is definitely to get consistency across state governments. It's pretty, the process we have now, and the system we have now is pretty well disliked, everybody. For various reasons. For various reasons. So it is time, it is time to do something now. So here's how we're doing it. We've got four phases. We've completed phase So it was basically examining our current classification and compensation system. We did a lot of stakeholder interviews. We got a lot last fall. And that helped us align the project and the scope with our vendor. And we are now in phase two. We're establishing what is called architecture and developing career leveling guide, mapping the existing job classes into the architecture and leveling the new job descriptions for each new title. So we're doing that with about a thousand job titles. And then we'll be conducting work concessions with state, processing the government to validate the job structure and the mapping and the job descriptions that we've created. So we're partway through phase two. Once we get to phase three, we'll be doing a market analysis of seven fifteen benchmark jobs. There'll be a recommended case structures, and recommended market adjustments, and recommended best design and alternatives. At that point, at that point, it's, you know, obviously there's financial considerations, there's collective bargaining considerations, so that phase three is not just the, it's not just the report that we get. It's then thinking about how do we implement, what parts do we want to implement. There's, phase two looks short, but it could be a little longer than that. And then the phase four is recommended revisions to our current compensation administration guidelines and identify areas for improvement. So once we get that information, then we make recommendations as to where to go next.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And the funding that we provided last year is good enough to get one in the phase we're in, or is it?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: The funding, $1,575,000, begins to cover, it is the cost of the contract.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The whole,

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: It's through phase four. Yep, it's the cost, it's the vendor cost. So that's it, and then know Doug Pine has been running this live from this long, so I don't know if he's available to ask questions as well, or if I missed anything on his spoke, he can speak up as well. So happy to answer the questions.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So any financial impact will just be the impact of the change to the jobs, basically. Right. That's unpredictable at this point.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Right. And if we, in the end, it's

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's an impressive number.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: It's highly unlikely our vendor will recommend exactly what we have, like a pay structure. I know you're pretty familiar with our classified pay structure, but we have a pay chart with different job grades and then 15 steps, and that's pretty much what most folks have. Is that a modern pay structure? Whether it's legal or not, what do we have, what will we have money to implement, and what is something that we could agree to with our lawyer partners as well. Those steps are down the road, we need to

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's just separate than the classification system.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: That's, that's kind of cool. It's moving kind of beyond just the classification piece to a full modernization. But the classification piece, that getting rid of the Willow system and moving into this new Java architecture and leveling guide and new mapping, that is, that's the first phase and that's what we really, that's, it's really important that we move forward with that.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You need to do that to do the whole cost, the pay charts, you'd want to keep a pay chart. And then with even the question of whether you do steps or do it in a different way, that all could be in play.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: That all could be in play. As said, it's unlikely that the consultant would recommend exactly what we have, but also unlikely that exactly what the consultant would recommend would be agreeable to either the administration or other group partners.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Will the recommendations from the contractor be public? Well, the contractor said this, HR thinks something a little different than the legislature. Schneider, will we?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: I think it's sometime in the process, but we're not there yet. Don't know if we can answer that one.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: What was the question?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: The question was, will all of this information be public?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Like the recommendations from the contractor Mercer, will we have those and then also have the administration or HR recommendation to consider both? We just haven't what you recommend after getting the recommendations?

[Doug Klein, Compensation Manager, Department of Human Resources]: I think we will have a joint recommendation. So we'll work with the consultants to issue a final report with the recommendations.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Yes. Okay.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: For everyone to consider. Anybody have any questions on the reclassifications? I did say at the beginning of the pay accident budget, no other setting There's no other setting committee that's taking up the back. Sometimes government ops does that. So since they're not doing that, it's not the reason why we're trying to learn more about it here.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Great. So would you like us to move right into Pay Act?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. And I don't know if

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Do you want?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, Adam could go up there with you. I just saw that Adam, our Commissioner Gresham, had slides. I don't know if he wanted to make a presentation.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: I had a

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You also have a

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: I have some written comments, but I don't if we'll work together and then we can talk about that. Also, I have one of the folks in the room that can answer questions as well. John Barr, who's our director of labor relations over there. Doug Klein, who does our compensation, is still on remote, and Darren Foster, who worked up a lot of the numbers and worked with the Majority Life Fiscal Office, put in numbers, and he's the bill. We've got a lot of folks who can answer some questions, if

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: you Yeah, you don't really have slides.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Have some

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: letters. Robert, what I was hoping to get from is a better understanding of the process, what it is, kind of what, I know a little bit of this has been talking about Commissioner Gresham, like what's the process, and then I know the committee has some questions that we're getting to.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: And I did provide written testimony that is kind of an overview and the purpose of PAY Act, it's to funding for pay and benefits in the collective bargaining agreements for fiscal year '27 and '28, and also includes funding and parameters for treatment for employees that aren't covered by the collective bargaining units, or collective bargaining agreements. And then in the past, PAY Act's either been part of its standalone bill or incorporated in the BID bill. I don't know here it's in BID bill. Finance and management usually reserves money for Pay Act in the budgeting process, and the appropriation and funding are generally included in the Pay Act. This is generally based on the biennium, because we typically negotiate two year labor contracts. So, we do this once every biennium. And then, I encourage you all on behalf of the Department of Human Resources, because it's committed to support pay act, and to fund our collective bargaining agreements, and fund the increases for fiscal year twenty seven and twenty eight for our employees that aren't covered by the collective bargaining union. And I can just give everyone a brief status of our collective bargaining negotiations. We've completed negotiations with the non management and supervisory bargaining units of the Vermont Stee Employees Association. An agreement in principle has been reached with the Vermont Troopers Association, but we haven't finalized the language. We haven't completed the negotiations for our corrections barking unit. Judiciary and state attorneys and sheriffs conduct barking with their VSEA unit separately, but the funding for these contracts are also included in pay act. We worked with Ledge Council and the Joint Disposis to come up with the numbers to put into the Pay Act.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The Pay Act is what's called the Collective Bargain Increase plus non exempt. Right.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: The collective bargaining agreements are basically included in the appropriation piece. All the money for that is in the appropriation piece, and then what you can see laid out there is some of it is elected officials, board members, judges, agency secretaries and commissioners. Some of them have statutory salaries.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: And if the salary itself is in the statute, then that's laid out specifically in the bill. Then for much of the secretaries and commissioners, they're matching salary. Actually, the base salary is in, is what you're seeing in the Pay Act, we are authorized to provide them with up to 150% of their base salary through this. Is what authorizes that if money wasn't appropriated, there might be some room for some of the secretaries and commissioners for raises if they weren't at the maximum already, and the same deal with the officials or the board members. If for some reason they were not at their maximum salary, then there would be some room there has their statutory salaries. If you want those to increase, then they would be in the pan.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Just to clarify that there's an, when we go through all the budgets, the collective bargain benefits are in each agency's budget. So Pay Act also includes that money, or is it just for the non, for the exempt Pay Act includes For the upcoming year.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: The money for the pay raises for the upcoming year?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: For everybody, or for the Everybody.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: No, for anybody. Payback includes So the base budgets are the It's kind of the base that this is like the extra that we're getting includes raises, and, Adam, maybe I don't know if you want.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's just the money. Even though we were we might have said, like, okay. Tax agency, we're approving your budget, but in their budget is that money that the pay act of the payment actually comes from.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Right. And so to I mean, kind of the simple way to explain is we give pay act for the upcoming budget. Then that is baked into the base for the next budget year. And then the next budget year, we give pay act for the following. So part of it, I mean, reason is that oftentimes when we do the budget, we don't know what the pay act is. We make estimates, but collective bargaining may not have concluded. Sometimes it does or sometimes it does. But the pay act that we give out this spring, actually next month, will be then part of the base amount that departments and agencies budget for next year is. So they annualize that in their base case. Okay.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: And one of the things that I just show in my written testimony was just some of the terms, The highlights of our collective bargaining agreements, if you folks are interested in hearing that. You do those with us?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You wanna?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Yep. So they're two year contracts beginning 07/01/2026 and ending 06/30/2028. July 2026, there's a 2%, what we call across the board increase, plus the continuation of steps. And then in January 2027, another 2% across the board increase, plus the continuation steps. People aren't gonna get to that, they are continuing. Then in 2027, it's 3%, or July 2027, it's a three year across the board increase. So, one of the things that you see in PAY Act this year, you're gonna see three columns, because there's actually three raises. There's a July raise, a January raise, then another July raise. Another thing is we're going to be, everybody will be on the same holiday schedule, so F, Juneteenth, and Indigenous will become official premium paid holidays beginning in July 2026, and then Bennington Battle Bay will be a limiting from the list of paid holidays. In this, will that be now with the correction party It

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: still be a holiday.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Will still be a holiday. If you wanna take that day off, it will be either of your game policies.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Because you're a host of Senator Sears. Know.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: It's the law. And I think a lot of employees will take it off the stairs.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And there was a bug in the right because of Right.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: And no one else had it, so it was actually very Yeah.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Nobody else.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Yeah. There was down the road. It was nice, I would say it's nice, but I don't think there's gonna be that much complaining because it's too holidays

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah, for a too for month.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: And the Corrections Bargaining Unit and Vermont Troopers Association actually already have that holiday set, They bargained it last time, so this is catching up.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Then we have some changes to benefits for our non medical vision benefits. That increases to $200 annually, and then several changes for them to benefit, which makes it a much more competitive benefit. There's not going to be a deal. For dental services, the maximum lifetime for orthodontia has increased to $37.5 and the maximum amount for individuals for dental services for the clean and urine has increased to $2,000 and then one more thing on annual leave. There's a, people raise the cap on annual leave, so people, what, five to twenty hours per annual leave. If you're an employee that doesn't a lot of your leave, it's kind of a use it or lose it in some instances, you have a little bit more time to use it. That's it.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Do you know what the total dollar number is in that?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Yeah.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: have what we submitted in the governor's budget, which is similar to that. It's Go a little over ahead.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Sorry. It's 23,900,000.0 in general fund, 3,000,000 in transportation fund, and then other funds, let's see. Other funds are able to see for breeding rates. 27,000,000 from special funds, state funds, federal funds, federal funds, other sources.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: So just in a large sense, it's $60,000,000 in. Half of that, less than half of that is general fund, 3,000,000 of that is T fund. Judiciary, 2,500,000.0 legislature. I think it's higher than what we submitted. We submitted about 750,000. And then there's roughly, call it, 25 to 30,000,000 special ones,

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: which are typically the VAN

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: and R, public service department,

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So, it's about 16, I think, total. And do you wanna say, give us some kind of description of what you do for the exempt pays as separate from the effective funding, how that works?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Yep. That's in Pay Act. Typically, what's been done over the past many years is the legislature provides the office authority for the Secretary of Administration or these are exempt employees that either aren't in a pay plan, or whose salaries are not in statute. Increased by the same across the board increase, or what people think of as a cost of living increase, as our collective bargaining agreements, plus 1.9%, which is the average value of a step. So employees also get steps to move through the pay chart. Every employee does get a step every year. If you get a step, it's typically more than 1.9% of your salary, but as I said, you don't get it every year. As you move further, as you have more tenure, your raise on the steps becomes less and less. So the first several years is every year, and then it goes to every two years, and then every three years for the last few years. So that 1.9% value of this one in a year for the average annual adjustment ends up being what's the across the board increase plus that, and that's how we determine how the statutory salaries should be increased.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's in the pay language, that you shall do it that

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Yeah, that's in the PAYAC language. So that's, that's been historically how we have done it. Then what, and then what the secretary administration does for the executive branch is, every May, sends out a letter and makes a determination based on what she's authorized to do, makes a determination on what treatment is going to be provided. So, the last two years, even though that the legislature authorized, I think it was four, I can't, I had a chart that I provided. In 2020, this year it's 3.5%, so I think the year before it was 4.5%. But I think that both they and the governor and secretary definitely felt that those were big increases already, so that's, that is what the exempt employees received, rather than that plus the 1.9%. Rather than, so, and then the governor also did that as well. So, his team and the secretaries weren't gonna get the full amount that's able, if it's allowed in the PAY Act, then he didn't take that as well.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And that's something that secretary of nation, the governor, commissioner of finance takes that money and then has to figure out how to spread it, the needs that you have.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Right. And they could provide who's got money for a department that might be in more need. Like the Department of Human Resources, I think, your family does.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It's internal service funds. Is there anything else you wanna say, commissioner Gresham, about the process? I saw that you sent us the letter you sent out.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: So as I was thinking about what to say, you know, this, I think, opportunistically coincides with the TAE Act memo we send out to agencies and departments, generally the last few days of March, April. So this letter that you have on your Yeah. Yeah. On the committee page is what I circulated to departments and agencies that pretty much describes pretty clearly the process we use for distributing the executive branch general fund pay act. And we asked departments and agencies to submit back to us their request for pay act by the end of actually this week, I think, April 17. So by April 17, departments and agencies will send us a memo saying, here's what we need by DEPA ID for pay added. We in finance and management do our own analysis of what we believe they will need, and we reach out to them. They often come in to speak with us, and we come to an agreement. But it's their requests and our analysis on top of their requests to figure out what's the need. And I'd like to just emphasize that this for the pay act amounts that you see, they're treated differently. It's just important to know that in that there's a pay act amount in the budget for the executive branch. There's a pay act amount for the legislative branch, and there's a pay act amount for the judicial branch. The judicial branch and the legislative branch, they just get their PAD. It goes right into their operating budget. For the executive branch, we go through this process whereby we dole it out based on need. So I'm not contacting, for example, the joint fiscal or the legislative to ask them what they need for pay act. They simply get pay act on, you know, on July 1, and it goes right into their operating budget. Same is true with the judiciary. Within the executive branch of departments over which the governor administers, we look at what the need is. And when we look at what the need is, we look at a couple of things. Well, there are a number of inputs, but a couple are very important. You know? And the first input is, what are their vacancies? And what did they budget for vacancies? So if they budgeted roughly a 3% vacancy rate, and we look back over the past seven, eight months, and we see that they're running a 6% vacancy rate, that means that they will have greater vacancies than is in their budget, and they'll have less need for payroll, Right? So a department like that would have a lower need, meaning no need, and it just does happen. There are some departments that say, we don't need it. We're good. So that's the first thing. We look at how their payroll is running relative to what they thought it would be. The second thing we look at is we look at what their carry forwards from the prior year. And oftentimes, when we receive memos from departments on asking to renew their spending authority for a leftover unobligated funding for the prior fiscal year, in other words, carry forward, we oftentimes will ask departments to put aside x amount of their carry forward to use for pay act, thereby saving the state that amount of money that we have to give out for pay. We try to be very analytical, very strategic with the use of pay act. And there have been this concept, the first year I was here, maybe the second year I was here when money was tight, we actually weren't able to meet all of the pay act, so we prorated.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Do you ever do that? That's unusual. Has it ever been the reverse where you've met all the needs and still have pay act money and give it Yes. Back to the general

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Or we carry it forward and we use it for the following years. One good example of that is, I remember that corrections received know, there was a substantial increase in pay. They were running very high vacancies. So the legislature, the executive branch, we all got together and tried to figure out how we're going to lower the vacancy rate there and get more correction officers saying, well, one answer to that, or one that we took was we've created higher salaries and shift differentials and a whole host of things that John and Beth would be better knowledgeable of. But there's a cost to that. And so we were fortunate in that we had PAD leftovers from the year before that we could bring bear to meet that. There are also sometimes mid year R and BRs that come up, or unexpected payroll expenses that are hard to predict. So we use extra pay add for that. We don't often have a

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: lot of pay ad money left over, but sometimes it's just put to good use.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: I'm sure. But it's just important to note that we're careful with that, and you guys want us to be careful with that. I mean, you want us to use our payroll dollars wisely. So we look at what vacancies are relative to budget, and we look at what prior carryforward we have that we can use, and that generally is used as an offset to just build them. So and, again, we're doing that to be sure.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, I have a general concern. I'll let you talk about it. I'll let you if you have questions. I

[Anne Watson (Member)]: do. But my questions are more related to the conversation that we had last week related to the particularly the governor's pay, the structure. And I don't know if now is the right time to be asking.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: I mean, I'm Yeah. I do have

[Anne Watson (Member)]: some question about what how some aspects of what you were just describing. So for either the elected officers, etcetera, there's a base and you're authorized to pay them up to 150% of that base.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: For commissioners and secretaries.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Oh, okay. So that does not apply to the governor's motion?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: No. The governor's salary and the other elected officials, and typically members of boards and commissions like the pre map of their board, their and judges, their salaries are actually set in statute. This is this is

[Anne Watson (Member)]: This is what it is.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: And if they say, hey. Don't pay me that full size. We can do that. But we couldn't pay them anymore.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Oh, okay. That was gonna be my that was my question because we had talked about, you know, is it a floor? Is it a ceiling? And so it's a a for for it's a ceiling. Right. And so the 150 a 150% doesn't apply to that. No. Okay. That's good to know. And then wondering so, you know, we've we've got a number of positions sort of called out in the pay act, but we're not necessarily seeing, you know, positions, let's say, the judiciary, called out in the same way. And I guess my my question is my my concern, and it's and I've said this before, and I'll say it again, this is not not commentary on our current governor. You know, whatever we're talking about is for the future. It could be for the far future. Like, I I'm just worried about the structure of it. And so what I because there was such a gap between the governor's pay and the next, you know, folks on that list, and I was wondering if there well, I can have this conversation offline as well. I'm wondering about if there's comparables in the judiciary or not. What I mean by comparables is like, is anybody being paid to that degree?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Judge's salaries are listed in paper.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Oh, are, okay. Are in there as well.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: They're, you know, Okay. I'll dig into that. I do understand. Yeah. The general salaries are there too. That's, you're actually, and like the state's attorneys and the county sheriffs, their salaries are all set in statute. When you look at state's attorneys, you see it's somewhat, it's a little bit more stratified based ified based on Chittenden County. Yep. The attorney makes more than say, so based on kind of the scope of their work. Yeah. And then you see that also with the elected officials in the executive branch as well. The governor makes more, the attorney general, and then the other three make left. And then you've got some of those folks don't make as much as the secretary of an agency might.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Mhmm. The Court said to Justice Almighty.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Okay.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah, so overall, my looking at it is similar to Senator Watson's, is that the way the formula is created, even though I learned from regression, it doesn't automatically apply, where you do like this. You negotiated 3% rates with the Unis, not everybody gets 3% plus the 1.9% But over time, as you're applying the same percentage to higher wages, the gap is getting larger between the average classified employee and the average exempt employee. Particularly if you don't think some exempts are exempt, but they're not that high paid. So I wondered if there's any concern from HR or from the administration because we're just compounding how much the highest pay positions get paid because we're doing 3% on a higher number or whatever the percentage is. And is there anything, when I brought this up somebody said well the classification system might help to fix this, that's why I wanted to learn about that. I don't know if you understand what I'm saying, is a concern. The

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: reclassification system could help, but it really doesn't impact the pay charts themselves. The pay charts are a bargain. So when you bargain a 3% increase, that's the same thing that you're talking about, that compression or the highest people get a bigger, know, a pay grade 32, let's say they're making $70 an hour, is going to get a higher percentage increase, or they get the same percentage, but it's more money than the person that's making $4,000,000 an hour.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So it happens within the class of Right. 20 Right. Yep.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: But I would go further than that, I'd say, just mathematically. If you take a lower number Yeah. And you add 5% to it every year, eventually you're gonna catch up with a higher number if you're only adding 3% to that. So eventually Right.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So you're getting wage compression. But are we only adding 3% when you can add 5%? So if you negotiated 5%, I mean I learned that you weren't, I thought it was just kinda automatic. We negotiated 5% swaps after getting 5% plus 1.9 for the step value, you know they don't have steps. And that's what seems like you're going to get a widening gap. Then the data that I looked at, there is a gap that's changed over the last ten years. It wasn't as great as I thought it was going to be because data integration isn't always applying that universally across all of the dispositions. But I'm still wondering if there's just kind of a inherent issue with the formula that you're always just gonna apply the same percentage instead of the same dollar, for example.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Right. Well, that's enough.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: If all exams got the ABI plus what the average step about it is every year, then you're right. There would be no compression, but that hasn't been the case. Right. So there has been compression.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, it's that's not shown in the data that I that I looked at. Like, there From the highest to the medium that there isn't, that's widening. Because you're just doing a percentage on a larger number. Even if you do 5% on the classified and 3% on the exempt, I don't know if that makes us a difference between $40 an hour and

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: $120

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: And the piece of the exempt salary also is, so there are salaries that are listed in the PAY Act, and there are also a lot of salaries that aren't in PAY Act. The titles being private secretary and principal assistant, those are kind of the official statutory titles, but those are like an executive staff assistant or somebody that's doing an executive director. So there's other, there's other rules and titles that are exemptive police that don't, that are not at that executive pay, are, that are more in line with what various pay grades across the classified pay spectrum. Attorneys are also, they're on a pay plan, but they're also exempt employees, so those that, that, the authorization there is the ability to work within their pay plan and provide them with salary increases as well. So there's not, it's, while what you're seeing was listed, and that's, you know, the legislature kind of putting limits on the highest paid employees, there are still employees that were, that we need to have treatment across the pay spectrum.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: It's not the treatment of just the highest That paid

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: gives you the flexibility? Yeah. Then something I didn't understand is that the numbers that are in the pay act, those are the base goes up by the percentage plus the 1.5, even though they might not get paid that. In the Pay Act, like a commissioner or secretary, just by formula, the base will be increased even if they don't have any paid that balance. Is that right? Is that correct?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: We accounted for that amount in the dollars that we're

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: When you just look at the number. Right. For When whatever

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Jared crunched the numbers, he based in that's what he based the full dollar amount on. That's what he based the And request

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: so for the commissioner, this is the, for the commissioner or secretary, the numbers? Well,

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: actually, I don't know if Doug is still on, but I think that paid out 100% is we typically do see that as the floor for a future. Is that

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And so that's just by formula moving up beside whatever the

[Doug Klein, Compensation Manager, Department of Human Resources]: Yes, yes, so the base salary goes up by the across the board increase plus the 1.9. Whether the people go up by that amount is up to the secretary and the governor.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And then so there so there could be positions being paid less than is in pay salary?

[Doug Klein, Compensation Manager, Department of Human Resources]: You know, we have we have to pay the minimum.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So if they if that increase base,

[Doug Klein, Compensation Manager, Department of Human Resources]: if someone's below that, we have to bring them up.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So those are going up the full negotiated percentage plus the one forty 9? Correct. Now that's the that's where you're not getting the wage compression because it's just a compounding of a bigger number. And as we go further out, you'll have an exponential between those two things. Because one number, the two numbers will be slowly getting further apart. That's, but I think that's a concern for the legislature and having to write this language. Do we want that to continue indefinitely? Can we agree that there's a problem if we do? Or do we wait for reclassification? Or do we just do something different? That's it. Yeah. So that's my general concern, which I don't know if you have anything to say about that. I understand the other positions, the administration cannot pay them or they can just say, don't want to get them paid that much. Either the electives or the commissioners. Do they have to notice to not take it? There's a question about who can say no to their pay.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: I think that if I ask for a pay cut, the secretary would let me have one.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: Okay. Okay. So to answer your question, the secretary of administration sends out a memo late I believe late in the prior fiscal year saying, for exempt employees, you may anticipate getting the ABI, and we are not passing on the additional 1.9 percentage.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The base will go up, so if they're above the base, then they may not get it, but the base will go up. The ABI is. In my experience, I think

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: it's been, like, one year. It wasn't a year

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. There was a year

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: We had a tight year when no one

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: got anything. Right. And those We

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: just didn't have the money for it. I think it was a year back in May, before I got here, they actually So when people say

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: that they're getting up pays, they might not be getting it because they might be higher than the base already, so. But the base is always gonna go up, the percentage plus the unemployment. Right.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: And we have had times where we actually put people up because that base went up. Think, rare instances like they were, if the secretary said people are going to get 3%, but the base went up 3% plus 1.9%, we'd have to bring that person up.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right. Okay. And then if there's a new if somebody leaves so if there's a commissioner that's getting more than the base, and they leave and a new person comes in, do they get what the old commissioner got? Or do go to the base or just defend one person that's hiring to that?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: The secretary has us do an analysis for each position, and we try have our salaries for our secretaries and commissioners and deputies kind of in alignment with each other, so there's a salary comparison that's done to figure out what the best place is for them to slot in there.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So is it true that that's not done for the classified employees? What I heard, I just want to Like, if you're, whatever, you have a classification and you've been there for twenty years and you get to the end of the pay chart, you retire to hire a new person, that new person goes back to step one of that classification.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Unless they're hired in jury.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Unless they're hired in jury. But that doesn't happen for a commissioner or secretary. They don't like to just go back. There isn't like a Not sure. That kind of commissioner or secretary involvement.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Yeah. It's really it's kind of based, it's more based at the executive level. It's really based on the job. You know, it's like, hey, you can be, hey, come in, can be the secretary, and maybe if you stick around two more years, you can make 50% more than that for a two year appointment that's not very attractive probably. Yeah,

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: that makes sense to you. Well that was my, the formula thing about the face thing that I just had noticed that you wondered about. Did you have other questions on how to think it?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: That's the same formula that's used for all the exams across state companies, legislators as well.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right, so my question is do we want to continue to do that? That or not the answer.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Think I have a follow-up question. Sorry, can you say it one more time in terms of who that applies to? Who that formula applies to?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: The formula applies to anybody that is not a part of a classified system. So, it's either the people who are covered by the collective bargaining agreements, plus the people where we extend the slash of bargaining agreements to, so the secretary, so the people in human resources, they, her statute can't be members of the pay scales and those, and also for managerial employees. They also, pretty much, they are on the same pay charts. Anybody else that's not on those pay charts, so is attorneys. Attorneys, commissioners, deputy commissioners, principal assistants, facilities, superintendents, executive directors, judges.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: In the case of either the governor or the judicial branch, well, I have more questions on the judicial branch, I suppose, but the governors, that that formula is upsetting the ceiling as opposed to the floor. Is that accurate?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: For the ones who are upset in statutes, yeah, that is that is the ceiling.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The elected.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Of the elected. What's that? Judges, people on boards, and many judges.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Judges. And that's how we arrive at that? Yep. That's how that improves the Okay. Right so does that also would apply to the judicial branch?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Yes. Okay. The judicial branch is more, you know, most of their exempt employees, their salaries are mostly with I the think they're all exempt in judiciary. They're no classified employees in judiciary, but they're still employees that are covered by selective bargaining and conviction, even though they're not a classified service. Okay. That makes a few sense.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And do you know when this started? If that'd be

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: I'm gonna years ago? Send that to Doug the question. I don't know if you can answer that. Do we know when? A

[Doug Klein, Compensation Manager, Department of Human Resources]: long time ago. I don't know.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: If we were to ask you to look into that, would that be

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: don't know where we could, I'm not sure where we we have in the senior workforce report, you had salary increases back until like 2000, I think, is in the workforce report. And so it's been around a while. That would be before his time.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But I wonder if, wondering if COVID will not let it started, the way, is that the best way to do a scale today? Yeah. Like, with that, could that be something we add here, reclassification?

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: I mean, we could look at that. That is not included in the point $5.07 $5,000,000 But, you know, last, when we, a few years ago, when the corrections bargained a new pay chart, the first year it was a new pay chart bargain, and then the second year, they bargained a dollar an hour increase, rather than a percentage Yeah. And that was kind of a more equitable, in my opinion, solution because everybody got the dollar rather than the lower paid people got

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: 40¢.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Yeah. 40¢, and the higher paid people got 80¢. That's not, I mean, that's something that's subject to bargaining. We tell them that that's the only way we'll do it.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah, I was glad that the union did that, and you agreed on it. Anybody else have any other questions at this time? So we might think of something that will pass by here, but we might not, and we'll Well,

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: we are here to help. Thank

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: you. I'm so here. So we we might ask you a question later today. It's probably not today. Yeah. Michelle's off. Okay. I'm gonna have to look at the of that.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Yeah. Kinda

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: let you know how that works. Thanks for. Alright. We can No problem. K. So now we're gonna switch to h four ten build out and what is the committed? It wasn't committed. Recommit it? No. It wasn't recommitted either. It's a send. It was sentient. It was appropriate. Was referred to. Yeah. We were referred to Dale H10, so any of child propellants what it is. Sure.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: So, good afternoon. Thanks for having me, for the record Michelle Child's Office of Legislative Council. And we're gonna go over just quickly H-four 10. There was a very small technical language amendment that judiciary made, but it doesn't affect anything subjectively. So I'll just talk to you a little bit in generality about what it does.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is there even a fiscal note for this? Like, there's so little fiscal note there? There is.

[Michelle Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Amy, did you say there is not? There is. Okay, I couldn't remember. It's all starting to blur together, I already touched base with Chris this morning. So, the bill is focused on collection of criminal justice data and for the purpose of being able to inform policymakers about what it's kind of a sticky side of how things are looking as to bail, as to sentencing, when people are frustrated, things like that to inform your decision making here. What the bill does is it creates a new chapter within Title 13, your criminal justice title, for kind of parking all of these different studies and data, and data that's collected. And there's a new definition of recidivism that's adopted in the proposal. There is currently a definition of recidivism in title 28 in your corrections title, but that was adopted many years ago, and the testimony was consistently from the crime research group as well as the Department of Corrections that that definition is not really of any value to them and has not been used. And so, section one of the bill creates a new definition of recusivism. And I realize you guys are the money for today. Don't know how deep you want me to talk about

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: just the needs talk of policy. Us about the money. Unless we got two people in judiciary.

[Michelle Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Alright, well the money's pretty easy. So what it does, in this particular one, is it requires the statistical analysis center, which is essentially, state has one for the selection of data, and ours in Vermont is the crime research group, who I'm sure you're probably pretty familiar.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We know that it's done.

[Michelle Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Right. Well, they're very helpful for us down the hall in judiciary with providing this sort of information. So, directs them to be doing three annual reports. And so, it would be ongoing, so the appropriations obviously is just for FY27 for that year, but the language in the bill does create an annual reporting requirement by April 1 of each year, and there's a few different categories for those reports. One is on bail rates, another one is on recidivism, third is on arrests and clearance rates, and then the fourth is looking at the top 20 crimes that are charged in Vermont, looking at various data around sentencing for those 20 crimes. Then the bill directs anybody who has data and sharing it with CRG to be able to produce the annual report. What's the CRG crime research? Crime research group. They are the statistical analysis center for Vermont. I know it gets confusing because I was referring, because they referred to it as SAC, and then when I used that term somewhere else, they were like, That's not SAC. Right. This is SAC. It's a little confusing.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is it a private group or is it party government? What is The crime The crime research group? Are they like a consulting firm? Are they like a

[Michelle Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: DPS contracts with them. I don't know, actually. So

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: They always contract them forever. There's nobody

[Michelle Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: else doing As long as I've been here, that's always the group that when y'all have questions and say, we need some sentencing data on x, y, z, and those are the folks involved, usually. And so, I don't know about the, maybe we can talk about the existing relationship between the and their budget, but I

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: don't, sorry.

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

[Michelle Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: There's also some provisions in here that as part of the annual reports, there's been collecting demographic data when that data is available and include that in the reports. At the end for the appropriation, in section four, it's for FY27, there's a certain amount of money appropriated from the general fund to DPS for contracted support related to the Vermont Statistical Analysis Center. Then you see the different provisions of 10,000 for the bail rate report, 10,000 for the annual recidivism report, 1,000 for the arrest and clearance rates, and 4,000 for the annual sentencing report, so $25,000 And my understanding from JFO is that while this money is not in the big bill, it is accounted for in all the various other money And bills that are moving

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: have they been doing this in the past?

[Michelle Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: These particular reports? No.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: These are new reports.

[Michelle Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: There is a provision in federal point of eight that has a variety of different reports that are to be done on every three years, but that's kind of being reconsidered, and part of that is they want to be getting these particular ones on an annual basis. Okay. Because these are kind of the reports that will be most helpful in terms of making some decisions down the hall.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah, we can see one. And so, how the money accounted for? Just like a public safety budget.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: No, it's accounted for sort of on the bottom line of the money available for you to appropriate. So set aside some money for this even though the bill the bill appropriate the four ten appropriates the money. I mean, we're accounting for that.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You're accounting for it in that's on the list. Sorry. Yes. Like, if we were to pass it with the money in there, it wouldn't affect our bottom line because you've kind of already put it.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: That's right.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You're kind of assuming.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: And if you look at our web report, it's identified as number of house bills that have money appropriated in the bill, but we're cut for it.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Because this passed the house after the house passed the budget?

[Anne Watson (Member)]: It all happened at the same time.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So did the house budget? That's right. Okay.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Well, it's

[Anne Watson (Member)]: not in for H nine fifty one.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But they sound

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Yeah. Have to put the dollars.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Kinda like with H nine you asked. Yes. Okay. Any other comments that you have,

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Lamoille? Any

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: questions on four ten? Okay. If not, I will entertain a motion to pass the bill favorably. So moved. Working tax day. Yes. Did you wait till today to do your taxes? No. Oh, yeah. These aren't the names like this one.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: I'm old, baby. I'm sorry.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It's okay. I don't Can you remember all our names? I can remember the date.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: I grab one of printed the items.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I grab one of I don't think the order matters. Michelle was angry. So either. Bringing that as a memoir.

[Adam Greshin, Commissioner of Finance & Management]: So you don't attach that in

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the annoying The chair is last. Yeah. That's I see you sent it to him also. I don't I don't think it matters less than this chair chair goes on. I need to go live. I had no problem.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: He doesn't get He would not

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I know, man. I'm funny. Yeah. No. No. Alright then. Thank you. I'll go first. Senator Lyons. Oh, good. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Alright. Senator Brennan, yes. I'm writing as I go. Yes. Senator Westman. Uh-huh. Well, I know. I don't know if that one I don't even know what we command. Senator Watson. Yes. Senator Baruth? Yes. Senator Norris? Yes. Oops. Senator Perchlik? Yes. Without explanation. Without explanation. Yeah. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. Good. Haven't done that in I

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: know. And I hope they can also refund 3,000.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You should I I

[Anne Watson (Member)]: It's coming out. Piece. It's almost de minimis.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. It's almost de minimis. Minimis.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Yeah.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You're presenting. No. But there's another bill that you're presenting from your name? I'm gonna do it today. But I get referred to appropriation. I'm asking on the notice count. So you're doing Thursday. I see. So you're you're reporting this for June, sir. Yes. We could do a pending notice pending entry on the action plan. All my papers. She just sent me the recidivism. I said, so I'm not gonna give these guys any ammunition. Okay? So the secretary of state is gonna be here at two can tell you to a preamble to the committee discussion. So Emily will be here, I think, at that time. And we have a new spreadsheet that basically has everything on it. Has what the governor wanted, it has everything the House did, it has the Senate bills that we took all the money out of so far. And was there anything else I think? There might be other things floating out there. There might be other ideas that committee members had. That's it. But right now, I think you'll see in the spreadsheet, it's like $39 over yeah. Over. So it's. To to cut the balance budget, we have to cut 30. Cut 30,000,000 or find 30,000,000. And so we'll look at we'll look at just so you can see kind of what we're dealing with. The gold's balanced by Friday. See if there's anything you know, start thinking about things that you think we don't wanna do. That's it that are in there. Things that are high priority and then anything that doesn't wanna come in. I'm wondering, you've not haven't seen the spreadsheet, but in the amendment that was proposed on Friday, there's a different source for the 2.32 that goes to free community grants. Yes. Rather than the general grant. So that would add 2.3. I would say it was 3.3. Yeah. Yeah. So I I We're down to 28. You already got it down to 28.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: This is So

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yes. Senator Westman. So that yeah. As you save the money to come on on that, as the governor's budget had had done both. Yeah. So we're we're just there's the T bill which has some appropriations from the general fund data that we're gonna have to, which I don't think those are on notice, so those are additional. The institutions is dealing with the capital bill, which has the cash funds, So there's we want to be that could change a little bit and that could affect the general fund. Some things will be in play a little bit.

[Beth Fastiggi, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Human Resources]: Right. Our committee will have tomorrow. I'm not gonna find a representative today because I can't talk.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah, I'm sure Philip, better to look. Yeah, and I will look through a little bit. I did get letters from all the committees for emails. I looked through them pretty quickly, and I think everything I saw in there was in a bill. It went nothing was new, although I think one of them, like the farm and the liability fund, I think it's called, or security fund, that wasn't from the bill class last year. Yeah. That was in a couple of the letters. But other than that, I think everything that people have asked for and things that we've seen around the last couple of months, all doesn't show. Unless there's any comments or questions about that front, we're gonna be on the break of the Secretary of State. Okay.