Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: Wants he wants to stay

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: We are live.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: He wants to stay on Harry Potter.

[Sen. Virginia "Ginny" Lyons]: I mean, September.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: Okay. So we're live back to FY '27 budget. We are now going to have Jim Booth burn from GFO, go through a new construct of infamous spread.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: You wanna start with the base or with the ones do you wanna see how much fun you left when they're all done, or do wanna wait for that to be the bigger reveal?

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: That's the bigger reveal at the end. So nervous

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Alright. Hand this out. You wanna preface this anymore or just jump right in?

[Sen. Richard Westman]: Yeah. This was

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: my my efforts to get to a balanced budget. There lost a little bit of money there. It's there's things that we need to add. Either you disagree with things I did, so threw them walking out, circling in, taking out. We have questions. So it's not a final budget by any means, but this needs to be taken. Trying to get us to a balanced budget that we could vote on, straw vote on to market. So we'll go through it, then we can have it. So we'll go we'll have Emily go through all of it, but because we've got lot stuff we've talked about, we've the changes, any notes. If we don't, we can ask questions. Then we'll if anybody has any base additions or comments, we'll do that, and then we'll go to one time to do the same thing. Does that make any sense? Yep. And then we'll share on the screen so people can see.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: For the record, Emily Burns and the office. So this is that we're calling it the chair's proposal of changes to bring about its balance. In blue in the senate column are, the proposed changes. And then in green, even though it says senate notes, they're really the chair's notes for now until we finalize everything. But to jump to the first blue change, the mediator position, and then additional position of the ethics commission. They removed that additional funding. I don't know if that aligns with the conversation here.

[Sen. Richard Westman]: The next

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: three lines on sixteen, seventeen, and 18, the House had proposed eliminating vacancy savings at the state's attorneys, victim's advocacy, sheriffs. This updates that so that only 50% of the vacancy savings of each of those entities will be bought back. I will note on the victim's advocate when we were looking at the numbers again, the House gave more than their budgeted vacancy savings back. So this corrects it and then only takes 50% of that just for the interim. Line 22, dollars 100,000 at the Center for Crime Victim Services is not added in this construct. On line 24, the administrative services manager position at the agency of agriculture Is that added? And then I know this one, I just had a conversation about changing, but initially the construct was to maintain the fee, but in the next version, we'll put the fee back in. So,

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: yeah, you should add point two three to that gynecologist.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I'll have that back in. And then on line 26, the House had proposed adding 450,000 to Vermont Access Network. This would reduce it by $500,000 or $350,000 from on access. Leave those are these things these are small change on line 35, but that's the update related to fully funding the program, the loan repayment program. Go to the next page, line 63. This would remove the additional funding and effectively would allow fish and wildlife to charge the access fee. We do know that this is an active conversation across the hall. I have no intel on where they're going to land, but they are connected. What you say

[Sen. Virginia "Ginny" Lyons]: across the whole, you mean it?

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I mean, literally in Senate Finance while they're doing

[Sen. Richard Westman]: this thing.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: Not across and down. Okay.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That is up for is still a discussion. On line 70, there's a very small it's like $36,000 change based on if we're gonna update the seat sections in the technical letter based on the technical letter, we can reserve slightly less money. Budget saves will take some reserves. That's updated, and that won't flow until the C section is done. And on the bottom, they're not highlighted yet, but I think there was still some question about why 75 and 76, those bills, you know, where they're at. We've left funding in this construct, but I'm not sure where those at. But, Rob, the other big assumption that this makes is that, again, your colleagues across the hall have the same this assumes the same position as

[Sen. Richard Westman]: the

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: house for changes related to miscellaneous tax bills, so that will have to be updated if there are any changes to the proposal front of house. Incentive findings. That leaves $28,100,000 of base funding available for one time investments. Little bit more than the house. So I do ask them to come. That's a good question.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: Yes.

[Sen. Virginia "Ginny" Lyons]: Actually, clears right. So on line 32, this would be VAs. This is that's not with parent child centers that are

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: are. Is there I

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: did some on the one side.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Right. And I believe we're all this does not include the changes that Senator Lyons proposed. But the next version would add those in, if that's what

[Sen. Virginia "Ginny" Lyons]: you want. And visits roughly at the same rates.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Her team is more net neutral.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: Although she it's a net neutral total, but her base of preparation is lower. It looks like on here, like, 730,000. So we those of you that care, like, the commissioner probably does, the bottom line, the nine line nine and four, we're spending less than days. We have 28,000,000 to go to die. We got her at the 30 House at twenty seven. So we're kind of. I don't bring up standard correction. I mean, second. Commissioner discretion is good to see. Okay. Any other questions about this? Base sheet? Okay. Yes.

[Sen. Richard Westman]: I have one question. Yes. Would we revisit if the whatever happens across the hall here, we have to revisit the the $50,000 to the the the the they're do

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: Yeah. I guess if they don't have the authority to charge a fee, it's taken away. It would be hard to be done. If they're urgent, so then they would be sure that it could be drained. So we we We hold

[Sen. Richard Westman]: that open for Yeah.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: So we are already changing it from the house currently. So it's already available for Updated. Data in conference or if there's any floor changes which would probably would want to deploy that if we need to.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Right. If the miscellaneous tax bill is done in committee before you finish the budget on Tuesday, If you have time to Right. Adjust it.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: There's that as well. Yep. Probably via conference. Commission conference committee. Okay. What time?

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It's got turned. Oh. So keep it. K.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: It's confusing.

[Sen. Richard Westman]: That's

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: That's the same situation.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Starting on line four, one change. This assumes that you take all of the 9,550,000 from the tech mod fund, but then start a contingency list and fund 50% or whatever you decide to put on a contingency list of the Tech Mod Fund interest comes out of the fund if there are extra general funds available at the close of FY twenty six. I will flag, we don't know, it's April 16, we don't know how income tax receipts of how the general fund is really performing for later next week in all likelihood. So while proposal puts it on the contingency list, we don't act I can't confirm or deny whether or there's actually any project money on said contingency list, but just The next change in this proposal is on line 20. That's what one of the additional funding for the legally. Online 24, reduce the VORAC grants by $300,000 to an additional 200,000 on top of what's already in the base budget. I the yellow highlight on Room 27 for the rental arrears program, that's just highlighted we're unsure about what's happening with 772, whether or not that will move. That's just a reminder that that would be anything on the bill. Line 30, dollars 2,000,000 for the Rural Industrial Development Program. Or that question mark should go away. There was appropriation made to the rural industrial development program several years ago. For $5,000,000 this would add $2,000,000 to that program. On line 31, I know this isn't highlighted, but I want to point it out because you'll see it below in the house version of the bill. There was a transfer of $1,350,000 to the Community and Disaster Relief Fund to help with Northeast Kingdom towns that didn't receive an email funding. Per conversations with the administration, the changes to rather than transfer it to that special fund is to do a one time appropriation to the agency of transportation from the general fund. So that changes that just moves that as net zero change. Line 32, dollars 300,000 for non emergency medical transports. I understand it's $400,000 on the T bill. This country documents at 300,000. Line 35, there was $800,000 to the Department of Health for the recovery centers. This was proposed to move that to opioid funds and fund it at $400,000 That's everything on the side of the sheet.

[Sen. Richard Westman]: There's a couple of questions. 40 seven. Mhmm. Well, this in last year, this is something new or

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Uh-huh. Respond? I don't believe it's new.

[Sen. Richard Westman]: So it had it in there in the past?

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I believe it's been in the past. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman]: Okay. And then on line 16, parent child centrist, this was in phase. Right? Correct. Why why is it in a long time outpatient? There was reason for that. The

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: governor proposed to reduce the base budget. The house wanted to fund the program but didn't want to put it in base because just financial uncertainties down the road. So, decided to fund the program one additional year with one time fund. Next page. Line 41, Conservation District. This would eliminate the house to increase $300,000 by conservation districts. Line 43, this would not provide additional funding for the working lands program. Line 47, Advance Vermont. This would remove the appropriation for additional appropriation provided by the House for Advance Vermont. The line 49 would remove the additional funding for Vermont Municipal Technical Assistance at the PCRD. Line 51, this would transfer the 2,320,000 for the Freedom and Unity Grants to the Higher Ed Trust Fund for the constructs we talked about earlier today. Line 54, this will go fund the study for the group g changes. That's it in terms of changes to the one time appropriations.

[Sen. Richard Westman]: VAN, the VAN solution regional. Someone tell me about that more. Yeah. I know it's associated with networks.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: It's well, they're now kind of combining the community access network as community radio stations are trying to work together and even that hopefully in the future, it's really defined efforts to have separate boards and everything in the communities that they serve. We did do 90,000 last year, you know, to additional work community radios and their emergency management and kind of as being a communication resource during emergencies. We've got continuous that support for these for all volunteers. No salaries in here. Think there's only one of the radio stations that has any staff that helps them to get some.

[Sen. Richard Westman]: We're gonna go back. Yeah.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: We can go sit. You can you can do it now, or we can do it when we're now.

[Sen. Richard Westman]: Oh, we can do it then. Can I flag one thing? If and I think this goes back to the patient. If there is a little extra money, we're done. I would love to restore the $100,000 to the. So it's reduced here from

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: 450. 26. So

[Sen. Richard Westman]: if if it turns out we have a 100.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: But all depends on what found, what they have. Yep. But just just. So let's finish the. Sure.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And so with the bills, changes to the bills with one time appropriations, Line 60, age 67 does not fund the new position at the joint fiscal office for two years and just started a new program to accountability work. That takes out the funding that's in the data broker well, for date of birth birth, birth, all information, I can't remember what's up.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: It's for study how you somehow clean your data from coming out.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Line 63 eliminates the additional funding for marketing the Vermont prescription drug discount program. Line 66 eliminates the additional funding for the Ready Response Program. Slide 70 eliminates the funding for the Energy Navigator Program report. Study Line two seventy two S two twenty three eliminates per diems for that study. Line 74, an act related to cannabis removes the funding that go to the cannabis business development fund and land access opportunity board. It

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: says remove 2,680,000.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Oh, it was a total of 2,680,000. Why did it The two things that were funded. The cannabis Okay.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: Oh, in the bill.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: In the bill. Yeah. This is marked so I didn't forget.

[Sen. Richard Westman]: Now

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: that it's zero, not gonna forget what it

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: Yes. Yes.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Actually, it's the miscellaneous agricultural subjects. This one, we also realized sort of a double count because it has a fee change listed here and also in the base sheets. We don't need it twice, so it's zero. Take care of the base budget. And then the last one, an act relating to revenue for education and housing development. That might actually supposed to be 4,350,000,000. Nope. That's not supposed to be 1.35. There should be a blue highlight on line 77. That number was significantly higher.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: For those for the bills, you remember the sheet that we had yesterday? We have a sheet that goes through all the bills Emily created. It's very helpful. It breaks down each bill, just the sheet. So if you wanna know, like, some of these bills that don't have any funding left in, you can see what percent. Are there still any more?

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Oh, and then, yes, there's two more when it comes to the transfers. I'm 184 reducing the transfer to the communications and information technology fund by half $1,000,000. And then moving again, on line 85, this is what I spoke to earlier about the funding for the Northeast Kingdom. That comes out of the transfers and shows up as a one time transfer. And then on line 86, the Farm Security Fund's million dollars go to the contingency list.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: You see that leaves 1,650,000 remaining on the bond. So to your point about the ban Yeah. That could be used for that. Yep. Okay. Senator Westman, did you have something?

[Sen. Richard Westman]: Just say the previous Yeah. I wanted to make sure that there's no need to go out with which I that everybody

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: Yes. You're you would be being consistent if you Yes. I Okay. Did you have something to say?

[Sen. Richard Westman]: Yeah. On the if I didn't hear you in On '47, we've zeroed out advanced Vermont, and then we funded them with one kind of funds in the past. I think it was one fifty last year. And, originally, I think a couple days ago, I spoke about the 200 not being enough to keep the doors open since then. I've had conversations with that, and it would not be easy to keep the doors open, but it would make it at least possible for them to see contributing funds from outside of the organization. So I would ask you to do that. Do you wanna say talk about the if you're ready to do that now? Yeah. Somehow, the LCI funding have left out of every Not everybody knows what LCI. Lake Champlain International Derby, which brings in a pretty good, amount of money. The tourism industry and the book of meals receives, and it's a it's a big event and a great organization. We funded them in the past. It's only $30,000. We've spent that forever, but it allows the the LCI to function. And it got left out of the little confusion, I think, with the fish and wildlife budgets last year. I think it's appeared in the appropriations bill last year, and there was an assumption that it's gonna be funded by fish. You're gonna ask about the walleye. I was gonna ask, is is this interchangeable with the walleye? Is that over that with the walleye? They don't overlap with the walleye. That is in the budget in the midtown wildlife budget.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: It fish wildlife or the capital? No.

[Sen. Richard Westman]: It's in fish wildlife this year. Oh, great. Yeah. Oh,

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: yeah. And

[Sen. Richard Westman]: if you wanna know a little bit about the association, I can give you a brief Actually, I'd rather just support the LCA. Sound a little fishy. I figured you'd fight. So yeah. That's it.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, we don't have to make decisions on all these, give people time to look it over, look at what was cut if they want it. But not have a cut, they want something else. We do have that money on the bond with it.

[Sen. Richard Westman]: Yes. So much to refresh my memory on line 64. I know it's not positioned. How do they come up with a $308,000? What does this game say? I don't even. It was.

[Sen. Virginia "Ginny" Lyons]: So they told about it's a pilot project for dam has an emergency action plan, should it signal, that lives with the owner of the dam. But if something, too, like high hazard dams where there's probable loss of life should the dam fail, That would require the coordination of multiple retention of multiple municipalities downstream. And so there's an emergency operations plan that municipalities are supposed to have in case of a dam. And to be fair, they're not coordinated. A lot of these municipalities don't have emergency operations. And so this bill to create a pilot, with two dams across, somewhere in about one big one, one sort of medium sized one, that would be an exercise to figure out how do you create a like, coordinated emergency operations plans for in the case of dam failure. And that could serve as a template that could be used across other dams throughout the sea.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: I think template's better than a pilot. It's creating these templates that other structures could produce. I assume it's being done by the distance staff at ANR Dam Safety Division.

[Sen. Virginia "Ginny" Lyons]: Yes. And it's actually most of the burden falls on emergency managers.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Thank you. Yes, sir.

[Sen. Virginia "Ginny" Lyons]: And it's this is money that was in the house.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: The house did have that.

[Sen. Virginia "Ginny" Lyons]: Yeah. The house okay. That's what I thought. And then, you know, the testimony basically no one is supposed to do it. We're just we're treating some.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: Okay. So no other comments or questions at this moment? Okay.

[Sen. Virginia "Ginny" Lyons]: Perfect. So just noting that the firm security fund is moving to a contingency list. Wondering about contingency list.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: Yes.

[Sen. Virginia "Ginny" Lyons]: And if there I will there are things on here that I was like, oh, dang. Yeah. Oh, shocks. That's rubber. But should there be a contingency list? How would we how would we think about contingency list right now?

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: We we have to start up a contingency list that would include right now, I have just the protective mod fund. We talked about buying after that back. Okay. And the pro tem was talking about this construct. So that's at the top of the contingency list. And then farm I think right now, it's only those things. The tech fund and then farm security fund. We could add other things to it. We could also get in the past with that language of just saying some big chunk of money, like $30,000,000 per property, like, early for next year. So we could do stuff like that, but we if there are things in here that we would really like to see in there, we could talk about things on the.

[Sen. Richard Westman]: Things that aren't in here? You

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: could ask we could talk about that too. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman]: I would. Think it's a problem with you given the place we are in the company, what I said, is that human services takes longer this year, we be a good place to be.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: And it's just that takes longer service. There's formula. Right?

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: There is formula that moves that based on the actuarial value of Medicaid claims tail. Right. The short answer or whatever the general.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: We could use that for other like, even if there was not a match, we could use it for other things, and then it's. Well, we could just I mean, we have some money still set aside that we've been disciplined and not that we put aside for federal impacts last year. We can't we could have it in to be less than any other money other things to go to that in case of a doctor. Okay. So plan is people think about it. We will talk and look the end, but then also tomorrow goes to finalize the things. We have a straw vote on what we have. That's something in front of us, like these spreadsheets that we straw vote on so that JFO can finalize the clean copy of bill that we vote on previously. There's also several things. When we went through the web report, some of the language was ready to be skipped because Central Asia was here, but if she's still not here, we might just have to say lots of trust for the team, etcetera.

[Emily Burns (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: that's it. Like, is that are we just gonna Okay. Really on the community's position. So the whole, you know, for the whole IHS budget, which is the largest in private, We skipped all over

[Sen. Richard Westman]: the at senator Lyons with trust.

[Sen. Virginia "Ginny" Lyons]: I'm I missed half of that, but I I hope the word trust was in there.

[Sen. Jane Kitchel (Chair, Senate Appropriations)]: So, yeah, we got when there's a couple other outstanding things that we said that we were gonna talk about later that we need to talk about. So but, hopefully, we're not here late Friday, so we're thinking we could do that pretty quickly. We'll be here until we finish. Yeah. If that's all, then we can