Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yep.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We are live.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Live. Set in preparation. May 14. Going through bills. First bill we're gonna do is at 09:38. Vermont's almost in this response from Tom Lindsey. They might have the center of alliance committees. I'm sure she could tell us about it. We have a joint fiscal year to walk you through. Do you want to say anything before we get started?

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Well, it's a long bill and it's a comprehensive development of a continuum of care for those who are homeless looking at improvements to both types of shelters and types of services available to people in need and they are homeless. There is money in the budget already. There was money in the bill and I think probably that's if no one goes over and then when Katie goes in we will look at how the money is being suggested for the appropriation. Remember, this one was also, we looked at a similar, a different bill, but also related to homelessness last year. This is, I think, 2% of what was, you know, And does include the whole time long term program that people have a lot of concerns about?

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Fourth of record, the whole night for the Justice Conference. It's not here. Have one here. Amy, do you not have one? No. I got it now. I thought it'd be an extra one for you too. I have two documents posted online. One is the physical note and the other one is this sheet. I think the sheet's a little bit easier to go through. Okay. Ties to the because that's all the appropriations, and it ties to

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the fiscal note. But let

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: me first orient you to what this sheet is. So on the left side, you have the bill that's passed the House. The middle, have nine thirty eight, which is the Senate Health and Welfare Act's proposal. And on the right, you have the delta as passed by the House. Notice under that, you see, and also in the green you have base general fund, all time general fund, federal funds, GC, which is global commitment in total, for both of those. If you look at the bottom lines, you'll notice that there's no variation in each of those columns from the House or the Senate, and there's no variation from the governor's recommendation as well. So what the House did was they tried to live within the confines of how the governor proposed. He proposed $82,000,000 and he proposed them in these specific funds. 82? 82 point And 6 he put it in each of these buckets. So he had 56,700,000 of base GF, 21,200,000 of one time GF, 1.1 federal funds, 3.6 general fund, etcetera. And so what the house did said, well, we're gonna live within those, within the governor's budget in terms of the buckets, but they redistributed based on their priorities. And so what the Senate did was said, we agreed most of those with Southern Health and Welfare, we agreed with some of those priorities, we'll make some changes, and I was gonna point that out. I wanna remind you that also what you did in the budget construct is that you also appropriated the money in the budget by these buckets. So you appropriated 56.7 in base general fund, 21.1 in one time general fund, etcetera, etcetera, in the budget. So what this bill does is it specifies how those buckets are being funded. So the appropriation, just to reiterate, was in the budget, but this bill specified how each of those buckets are specifically allocated. That make sense? What I'll do now is I'll try to walk you through what each of these categories are. Again, we're gonna talk about the middle column of what is in the center of health and welfare. You have the HOP, which is Housing Opportunity Operation Grants. There's $38,200,000 in general fund, dollars $8.30 in federal funds, $2.00 2 in general legal dependent, 39.2. I'm not gonna walk through each of these, but there's money for shelter development. There's 23.4 total for emergency housing and hotels. I want to point out the difference here is in

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the house

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: 23.8 for housing. The Central Health and Welfare did was taking 500 out of that and putting that into the Community Resource Center at CBOEO. Which the House had funded in the budget with General Grant. The House, I wanna say they did not fund it at all. Actually, have a different sheet. It the community resource center that they shelter that The governor recommended cutting it. And the house took half of it back, I think. I can't remember what Half of it back? I have it in the distance folder, I don't remember. Because I thought that was part of supplies It is. That's right. That's right. Thank you.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: We put 50% of it in.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Thank you.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: And then realizing the significance of that shelter in this whole continuum, we took some money out of the hotel motel and gave more money into the CBOEO.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: What's the day shelter? Community Resource Center.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Was it a million dollars and we took out half of it and then this It

[Anne Watson (Member)]: was 500,000 or somewhere It was $4.72. Something like that. So it's Yeah. So real difference between That's it. And

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: ratios. I

[Anne Watson (Member)]: mean, so if we approve what we have here, then the money that's in the budget wouldn't be necessary. That's fine. I I

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: What what do you mean that's Would not. Okay. Then you could find another concept. Right.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Mhmm. Because this will all already be funded by money appropriated to propel the motels. So you have 500 more on the bottom line. You have confidence. 256. Is that the? Yeah.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Brady wants to say something? '2 thirty fourth.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, thank you.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Thank you for all the reminder. Remember, we're in the light. But that's what the

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: house had this year. The house had the senate cut with the house cut in half. So the senate bill is two thirty four, and there was about four seventy in the house version. Okay. And this would put it back to

[Anne Watson (Member)]: This puts it puts it back.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And

[Anne Watson (Member)]: the only difference here between the governor is that 500.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Mhmm. Not the governor's. The house.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Well, the governor too, because the community source the city

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: of. Oh, I'm sorry.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The governor is just about the total. Like, there's differences on how you're spending it, I assume, with the governors. Yeah. I had more for one time general fund, for example.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I have a different sheet that shows the House difference versus the governors, and your only difference between that is the 500. I can pull that up if you wanted to see it, but Otherwise, then there's money for eligibility staffing. What does that mean? Eligibility staffing.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Probably can't ask this question since you've a counselor. There

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: it is. Oh, think it's for personnel.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: People to use Determining for who's eligible for the Yeah.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: If I recall, the governors had more, and the house cut that.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is this a TCF? Yes. It'd be like

[Anne Watson (Member)]: It's actually AHS because all of the departments within AHS will play a role in eligibility. So there will be patient managers working with folks to determine what they are eligible for within the local community.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So the House actually cut that in half. The Governor had 2.2 for this and the House rationale was let's hire less staff at the state to put that money into the community, into the community organization.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is that what the HOP grants are, you mean by community grants?

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: The HOP grants actually went down. Where the money went up was That's what the HOP grants are, grants to the community providers. The HOP grants, the House put more money, to cut that money, they put more money instead into case management, shelters. I was just asking, what are the HOT grants? So HOT grants, and I can't speak specifically to that, but they are HOT scopes, emergency shelter services, transitional housing, coordinated entry assessment, housing navigation, homelessness prevention, rapid rehousing, financial assistance. Being done by community By the administration.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: DCF. DCF.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: DCF grants that out. They're not doing all of this. The hop grants go out to the

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I I don't have any answers to that. Unfortunately, I would or that might be a DCM option. Someone like to know

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the I'm getting nods from other people. Okay. I'm feeling good about it. Sorry.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So then we have the shelving development, which speaks for itself, emergency housing and hotels. Think you guys know what that is. Eligible staff, we talked about it. Case management, This is coordination of funding to increase staffing capacity on the ground to allow for regular and structured on-site staffing hours that people in hotels could predict and access that need. Any of the permanent and family supportive housing. And then you have rental assistance, 500,000 for municipal grants, and I believe that was not something that was in the governor's in the governor's recommendation. 1.5 is for emergency cold shelters, which the house increased this amount over the governor.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yes.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: The municipal grants, is that what are the strings or guidelines? What are the guardrails on?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You have to ask DCO

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: about that, I'm sorry.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Municipal grants? Yeah. So those were added in by the House, so we concurred, so it would go to communities, towns and cities that are providing services at their own cost, so this could allow for them to have reimbursement for the work that they have done or to continue working within them, continue.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So, their lines, do know if

[Anne Watson (Member)]: those are competitive grants? Like, if people apply or I'm assuming that they will be somewhat competitive, but they'll have to be justified, yeah. I'm wondering about, because you would be like the reimbursement for, say, like police costs or I could I'm thinking you probably could see that. Yeah. Public safety, infrastructure.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Were not captured such as natural disasters or whatever, just kind of for other things related to this bill. That's allocations that are in the bill. There's also a fiscal note that lays out pretty much the same detail, but I thought you might find this a little bit more helpful. If you'd like, I can also send to Hal the difference between the House and the Governor so you can see the difference there as well.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: I'll send them to her as well.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Otherwise I think that's good for now. Yeah. We can ask. Oh,

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I thought I was sharing the screen. Sorry.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I guess it wasn't. You talked about zooming in, but you just zoomed in at UP. You didn't have

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: to I literally this is exactly what I did. Hello.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Welcome.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Summary of the bill is only eight pages long. It's centered by section. Oh, good.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I promise not to read you every word.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: But I don't have the new one yet. Okay.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sharing. Yep. So, maybe just a high level overview is where you are. This creates a, as the name suggests, a continuum of services. There's a list of all the different levels of services provided in this continuum program. There's prevention and diversion services. There are shelter services, including low barrier shelters,

[Anne Watson (Member)]: I forget the high, what is the

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: right word,

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: and specialized shelter services. What was it? High barrier. High barrier. High barrier. So that is levels one through three. Level four is emergency housing at a hotel or motel, and then there's an overlay of permanent supportive housing services for individuals throughout the continuum. So that's sort of the big picture. There is language about the number of days an eligible household would be able to obtain housing in a hotel or motel. There's language about DCF responsibilities in the program, household responsibilities in the program. There's language that has an appeals process. There is a large rule making section, reporting section. There is language that recognizes that even though the bill takes effect 07/01/2026, that the whole continuum will not be rolled out on 07/01/2026. And there's language that sort of acknowledges that more aspects of the program will continue to come online throughout the entirety of fiscal year twenty six. I said rule making. Know what I say. Time limits for program participation. Yeah, time limits for program participation. I think that's probably the high level of what is in the bill.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Can I ask you about the municipal grades?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, let me find that.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Think it's under other emergency housing services?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep, you're right.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Page 18? Yep. Then the appropriation, just wanna make sure it's clear that the type of appropriations, 500,000 for grants to municipalities, And then the description of it, is it clear to the of recommendation? It's called municipal supports. And then it describes kind of the process there. It just seemed like there, often it's like, here's this program and then we have program, but this is like the department shall offer grants to municipalities, then there's an appropriation for grants to municipalities in general because they need to be more connected. I assume not.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I mean, before I could connect them further, I would cross reference the subsection. Right.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So you could say I can

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thirty three twenty two zero nine a. Yeah. I guess my question, and I don't know if Nolan will be able to answer this, is the appropriation for something broader than just what is in this subsection or

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: is

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: this it for that appropriation?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's the which one is that?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Business municipal supports. Sorry

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: The 500,000,

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the one time 500,000

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: on the grants?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So The 500,000? Mhmm. I mean, think the bill just says

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Municipal supports. I guess what I'm wondering, is it limited to this one subsection? Are there any other uses municipal uses for that 500,000?

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Yeah. I'm not sure either. Did

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: you say it was center of violence? Mhmm. That upset could be used for other grants for municipalities or specifically for the grants mentioned in 2209?

[Anne Watson (Member)]: I think specific here, but it does offer latitude. So if you look at it, they can use it for at the discretion of the municipality, including for shelter or national weather service or cold weather advisory. So I think it gives them a broad spectrum of how they can use it. Ultimately it could be public safety during an emergency situation.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But the $500,000 appropriation at the end of the bill just says for grants to municipalities. Yes. They could grant it to municipalities for whole of the deal.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: No. It has to be related to those. Yeah. Housing services.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So granted, there'll be some kind of grant criteria about what it's used for. Right.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But they could grant it for, mean, the appropriations says well, my point is the the appropriation is for grants from this topic. It doesn't reference. These people are not Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I understand. What my understanding is there we have to do a technical amendment. So if we wanna make a technical amendment anyway, I wouldn't suggest that if we weren't already having to do the other technical amendment that we cross reference that. Yeah. Yep. I can do that. Just to make sure. Mhmm. And the and the municipalities apply? Yes. Yes. Because I know we have a municipality in our district that is interested.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so then that patient. Would you like to look at that technical amendment?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah, unless there's any other questions or things that you need to go over.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: So I do have a question about language in the bill regarding consistency. Katie, you can help me with this, but I know it's language that indicates to offer to provide versus to provide. So it's an offering rather than a provision. And I know that is in different sections of the bill and it's something we probably should look at.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Human services made the change throughout the bill that instead of just providing the service it would offer to provide, and there was some conversation about an individual's household's agency and being able to choose to partake in a particular service. So that change was made throughout. Upstairs in human services this morning, they identified a place where was still just provide, if not offered to provide. So, I stuck that on the amendment. And if you don't like it, can remove it.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: I'm glad to put it on. It goes along with the agrees changes that we made for household responsibilities, having offered that same level of consistency. Okay. Makes sense.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. Yeah, can look at the amendment. Yeah. Since we already basically made the appropriation of all the money.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: K. Here's the amendment. So this first instance of amendment is what I was just describing. Inserting offer to before provide. And then more substantive amendment is what I think Nolan has described to already, which is updating the movement of that $500,000. Oh, that was

[Anne Watson (Member)]: in the bill. Yeah. I was looking at There was one spot

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. I remember. That was missed. Yep. So We're catching it here, and I'll include a third instance of amendment to have that cross cross referenced for the municipal grants.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay, and that second instance is just to account for the $500,000 that's being moved. Was

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: think

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: it may not

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: caught in two places. I'm looking at no one to ask if I'm describing this correctly. So we caught it, then we reduced it in one place in the bill, it had to be reduced in two places. So this is reducing it in the second place that had to appear.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah. If you missed it.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: That's for municipal grants? No, no. That's for the CRC.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, that line says 23.8 is appropriated, of which x is appropriate, we did the others, but we forgot to take the 500 out of that as well. It's a it's a technical correction.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You put an offer to provide another, so you need to put it in this place. That's

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: what the first instance of amendment is. One of the health and welfare amendments was to add offer to before provide when they were talking about different services being offered. And I think human services makes that change when

[Anne Watson (Member)]: I told them about it, then they found

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a place where it didn't happen, and they flagged it this morning. So to the extent you want to include it, I have put it here. If you do not want to include it, I can easily take it

[Anne Watson (Member)]: out. Okay. You're on a conference.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. If you could just add that third instance to make the press reference. Yes. Is that a statewide thing, or where is that located?

[Anne Watson (Member)]: The Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's CEO, yeah.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: That's CEO, yeah. We have different OEOs across the state. So there's one here, and there's one in your county, It's Office of Economic Opportunities. It's linked in with the HOP program so that they provide funding for shelter and other services through a lot of places. That's just the Chittenden County one, yeah.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, you're gonna be paying $30,000,000 out

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: of this, but in transportation, should

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: we have a little structure to get them off?

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Or it should be going well. The goal here is to reduce the need for this significant investment that's here. So over time, as people find shelter and more permanent living places, see a reduction in the need.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The emergency album used to be like nine million years, and you're slowly getting pregnant with the accident? Yes.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Okay. The total difference between the governors by JMS is.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: No. I mean, the the the difference between the total dollar is zero. The difference between

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Zero difference zero. It's zero, but, yeah,

[Anne Watson (Member)]: 500 that we celebrated. And actually the recommendation for where the 500 comes from was collaboratively agreed. We agreed with the agency of human services.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We don't know how much this is different from the governor. We just have the difference we have.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Well, it's 82,000,000. This is Correct. Yeah.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It's the same total dollars. And it's the same about 21,000,000 one time general.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: There's really not a lot of interest.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: No. 2,000,000. Right. No.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Just kind of funding each one these things. I'm assuming that's true to know on that. Every out of the thing on this list is in the governor's budget, just different amount except for the resource center room.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I mean, I can pull it up if you want. I can put it on screen if you wanna see it.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Why don't we see it while we're waiting for our event? Right. Yes. Permission to increase the elimination of the lumen. Turn off you'll be able to.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: I tried earlier.

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

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Oh, man. It's like We need a little power plug in fence. Center blocks. Trying we need a little solar plug in.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Maybe turn on this one. Wait till wait till you'll see how much this does.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Why it's so great? Oh. Oh. You look right by your desk, though. Good to see

[Anne Watson (Member)]: you there. You could

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: plug it in by by Bill's desk.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: I think that's not paper towels. I I

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: think think that they're meant to be gaslit. It'll take a little while to warm up.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, will. And then that would start to

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Get the drip. I need to plug

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: it in with it. Yeah.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: That'll just help with the the voltage or the, you know, the supply. Material open that. Go to the the top.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: You guys need more. Oh,

[Anne Watson (Member)]: they're More bulbs. Yeah. At the top of that shelf. Alright.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Here we go.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So, again, to the CVOEO, I just called off the housing and the line, and can't pull it, I blew up anymore. Can't see the column. So you can see that the house decreased the HOP grants by 1.9, increased, sorry, by 2.1, my apologies. Increased shelter, I'm sorry, decreased shelter, oh, they moved things around to one time base. They increased the base, lowered the one time, but still a 1.6 reduction of the governor. That's for shelter development, sorry. Mercy housing is up 2.3 for governor. Staffing is down by 1.1, So again, that was, they cut it in half. Put equivalent space management. They cut the permit and supportive housing and put more money into rental assistance, put more money into municipal grants, and sort of shifted money around and based on one time to the emergency cold shelters. Those are the big differences. I'll send this to Elle.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: And I will say that work that the house did on chipped in your hands was by looking at numbers by people and needs. So we did spend a lot of time changing what they just

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I was just handing a note about another slight anything we could add to our amendment for

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I've added it. Question, Yeah. Do you want to add

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Oh, okay. Yes.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, got it.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So you describe What's

[Anne Watson (Member)]: happening? Okay.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: What's happening? Would

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you like to look at it? Yes. Okay. Obviously, unedited.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We'll look at it, and we'll entertain a motion.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, it seems already oops today. Okay.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: First

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: instance of amendment is the same. Second instance of amendment is the same. The third instance of amendment inserts after the word municipalities the phrase pursuant to 33 VSA 2209A. So, that would read 500,000 for grants to municipalities pursuant to 33 BSA 2209A. And then subsection B of the expenditure section, there is a sentence that says unspent funds are carried forward for the same purpose in which they're originally appropriated in this section. This section doesn't actually do the appropriation, it just outlines the expenditures. So, to make sure it's actually accurate, the proposal from DFO is to strike in this section. So then we're just saying for the purpose for which they were originally appropriated, period, and not saying that they're being appropriated in this section.

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: Is there

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: not any appropriated in this section? So it'll just say that we're originally appropriating, period. Okay. Any questions about nine thirty eight? Do we have the main the motion to

[Anne Watson (Member)]: I'll move that we amend nine thirty eight as it's Do

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: you want to move to amend and pass face

[Anne Watson (Member)]: And then after we've amended, I move that we pass it favorably.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Do we have to have our assistant clerk do this? Yeah.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Why do we do? Former clerk.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Former clerk or assistant clerk? Your chief former clerk. Junior. Chief former clerk. The chief former clerk.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Ginny.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Do you need a fill? No, I know

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: that means nothing good for my friend, Janice.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Jerky, that means that you don't get the house. What? Handing it. Thank you.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Handing at it.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: That's the end of my. Okay. Thank you. I sent her the lines. Oh, yes. Senator Norris.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Oh, yes. Senator Watson. Yes.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: Senator Westman. Yes. Senator Perchlik.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Senator Brandon.

[Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: Yes.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I hope.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Well, you

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: have to

[Anne Watson (Member)]: go going down there.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: Yes. That's. My explanation is that it's happier than our current.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yep.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I concur. What

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: happened. Turns in. Okay.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, pending any drastic edit.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: That's end of So I'll have it back. The l will

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: be shortly, I guess.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Thank you. Yes. That concludes our discussion with the h nine thirty. Since your good work, senator. Yes, ma'am. We're gonna turn our attention to page nine five five, the information bell. The report oh, we

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: can report this. Do want to report? Our our our assistant chief forgot to write it

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: down during the report. Is

[Anne Watson (Member)]: there anyone who would like to report this with me?

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: I want

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: you to leave the room for a minute. Senator will come.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Okay.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So who won the between election council and Jeff Vogt wants to go first? It probably makes sense for us to go first. Okay. Let's see. Oh, I

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: can go first. Just thinking sequentially. For the key question, I'm gonna talk about the senate license and source code for H955, the patient bill.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So that's is that a finance submission? Is that the document that you need to work

[Anne Watson (Member)]: in front?

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: I I do that where I could show you a side by side summary. Side by side summary.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's your comparison. I see a document that says h nine five five comparison section thirty three sixty four. Is that what you're talking about?

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: Hold on. Sorry. Under the senate reparations page for the day, see my name and page nine fifty five comparison section thirty two sixty four. So let me share. And those are just the finance sections. Those are the sections relating to property valuation, mutual assessment districts, and the tax modification. Sorry. Didn't think

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: of the finance. All the sections in the.

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: All of these are in their jurisdiction, and then some of what John has to share on the people in their section. So that large enough for everyone?

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

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: So, I'll try to speed through it for you, to get much of your time. So section 30 of the bill deals with the creation of regional assessment districts. This is something that would start January start 01/01/2031. The short version is the idea is that municipalities would be placed in regional assessment districts grouped together with neighboring municipalities so that they can work together to jointly mass re appraise every six years on a schedule as determined by property management review. So it wouldn't be every municipality doing it at the same time every six years. There would be a rotating schedule where approximately one sixth of municipalities that are remnants going to do mastery the principles. Because it'll be six remnants? Yeah. There could be 12, but I mean, it's not necessarily gonna be six of them, but they'll be split off the staggered Yeah. So they're not doing the same time. Okay. The change in senate finance from the house version was to correct a subsection reference that relates to RAD appeals. Property valuation appeals are handled at first by Boards of Civil Authority. This section changes that, and after 2031, there'll be something called RAD appeal boards, which are made up of representatives from the municipalities in the RAD, and they would take over the functions and three person panels to hear valuation appeals from the Regional Assessment District. The first level of appeal after grievances, which are more of an informal thing, the first level would be to the right appeals court. We had the correct reference incentive findings where the language read in

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: a way in which it could

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: be interpreted that a taxpayer would skip the Ratatouille's tour and go straight to the Department of Taxes or Court. That was not the intent, and so that's been corrected.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: I know you said this at the beginning, but one more time, RAD?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Regency assessment. Regency assessment. Yep. RADS 177.

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: Agreed. So any questions about about that? Section 31, it's an forming change, changing some current provisions in law that are being replaced on the RAD system. Section 32 is also performing change that clarifies for purposes of the equalization study municipalities within a RAD will be treated as a single entity, and that is related to the gender and masculine presence at the same time. Section 33, it moves the statute of PVR evaluations of public capabilities to a new section because it currently lives in the appeals chapter where the VCA statutes are. It's being moved to a more appropriate place because that section's being appeals and replaced by the Regional Assessment District Appeals Boards. Section 34 has two repeals. The first one is a it repeals the the parts of act 73 related to RADS and the transition of RADS because those are just being replaced here and being flushed out more. And then subsection b repeal is for the chapter on property evaluation that I was talking about. Those are affected at different times. Replacing the act 73 parts is July year, but the replace replacing the appeals chapter for for civil authority does take place, so will all of the RADS take effect in June 31. Section 35 are some changes to compensation of municipalities for property valuation under current law. Both mastery appraisals and grand list maintenance are paid for through an eight fifty per parcel fee that's paid out annually to miss families for that work. The language here retains the $8.50 fee, but keeps it so that it's just for grand list maintenance, And for mastery appraisals, those would be compensated for in the year in which a mastery appraisal's occurring. The department on taxes for its budget would pay for either two thirds of the estimated cost or $66 per program municipality in the year versus different classrooms, so extra money for municipality students' work. Municipalities individually will be doing it or just the the RAD for all municipalities in the RAD? The the municipalities will be working together. They're still in charge of things. So even though this is set up so that they will work with neighbors, they'll still be individually active as one. Each

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: municipality and a radical contract, it would be an appraisal firm, for example?

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: It would it would be like municipalities a, b, and

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: c

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: together contracts with a firm. This language does not require that all living spouses in the RAD work together. At first, it's actually voluntary for the first six years, then after that, they'll have to raise one other municipality, but it's pretty soft as far as the state imposing any bank. So does that answer your question? Yeah. In section 36, the house merchant had a position for the Department of Taxes to handle ratatille ratatille. That was removed while it was still in the house because the tax department said it did not need that position to be created at this point because this is for after 2031. So we had a deleted section there when we came to the Senate, and Senate Finance added a section there involving tax sales, so it's not anything to do with the. But under current law, some changes were made recently in the last few sessions for tax sales and when we just finally started tax sales. And one of those things was to add a $1,500 of delinquency minimum before a tax sale

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: can be

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: initiated. So Senate Finance has added a provision allowing tax sales to proceed even if the amount owed is less than $1,500 No, ma'am. If there's no dwellings capable of habitation on your own basis and the intent was and that there was not homestead declaration filed in case that someone is sleeping in and sees home dwelling but still using it as their homestead. There was a there was a drafting mistake that I'd like to flag. In the language, it says or there. I should have put can. Oh. So if you would like if you if you end up having an amendment and you want to make a correction there, I would advise that it was not their intent to make it ore. As it's written with ore, that means the $1,500 minimum could be worked around anytime it's on a homestead, basically. It just was not their intent. Their intent was that it had to be either no dwelling there or seasonal dwelling, and it wasn't declared as homestead. But this makes it so that, basically, the $1,500 would only apply to homesteads, which is not what they wanted. They didn't want it

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: to be that broad. Okay. I think some other technical change. Yes.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes.

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: So I have I have language to plop into that if you do.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. Sarah Lyons.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: So but this is an individual could still appeal through the Board of Civil Authority.

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: For the tax sale?

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Yeah,

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: the tax sale process Doesn't change the appeal process. It doesn't, no. For the this this goes to whether the municipality can even initiate the process in the first place. And so in this case so senator Cummings had she she knew of towns, her district, you know about this, that have some vacant, very small vacant parcels where they're delinquent on taxes, but in order to reach $1,500, it would take me to get into this. And so those municipalities want to be able to proceed, but they can't because of this.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And can you remind me of, it could be vacant, but still be a homestead?

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: It could have a, you could have a dwelling that would not be fit for your own habitation unless a big homestead.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But if it's fit for habitation, like it has water and electricity, but there's nobody's living in, it's you know, maybe my level run down. I don't know if it's

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: If it if it has a dwelling or building at all, then there the intent was

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: There's actually it's like a homestead. To get a homestead declaration, you could ask you could you're the owner of the property, and you declared it as a homestead even if somebody's living in it, or somebody has to live in it?

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: Someone has to live in it. The the thing about this is that if you are living in a building, even if it doesn't look like what people might think of us as well, you can still declare it your own study. Right. That's what's moving on. Moving on. Sections 37 through 52 are conforming changes relating to the movement of property valuation appeals chapter to the grad subchapter of change in finance. Section 53 is forcing transition provisions around moving to the RAD system. In subsection A there, there were some moratoriums on PDR ordering new mastery appraisals. They were going to be prevented from doing that after 01/01/2028, and nullifies reappraisal orders lacking a contract, like if these folks are already under contract, then they can't be they they should not start new reappraisal after 2031. Mhmm. So all those moratoriums department came into senate finance and said, for this transition, we think it would go more smoothly municipalities that can be allowed to do that, and as the last transition, PVR will handle those situations. They did not wanna see any municipalities not going on. Municipants that need a master of price not do that just because of the transition of the system. So that was their request to incentive finance agreed. So the difference between the house version and senate version, so those moratoriums were removed in this version. But the subsection B that's there remains to require the Tax Department to extend annual Popular's reports on the right of transition starting 2028.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay.

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: Section four has to do with establishing the Regional Assessment District boundaries in the first place. This bill doesn't actually do that. It requires a report from the Department of Taxes to recommend Regional Assessment district boundaries that align with school districts and have a minimum number of parcels to create economy scale for the appraisals. So that report back is due 12/15/2029 with the assumption that during the legislative session in 2030, the general assembly put the wraths in the statute establishing their values. Section 55 was something added on the House side that was a standalone thing. It created a process to allow municipality reimbursed for a paid education property tax since cases where abatement was specifically because of Lister error. The tax department testified and Senate that they were concerned that by having the state reimburse municipalities for abatement of education tax without the state having any say in In some municipalities, there could be some abuse where instead of going through the appeals process, someone just goes to the board with abatement and gets an abatement, which just has a lot less structure and organization to it, and it's completely deferential, and that it would undermine the appeals process. Senate Finance agreed with that, and we're going to Section 56 is similar. There was a section added on the house side that claims a statute as a requirement that PDR issue guidance relating to evaluation of manufactured home parks and limited equity cooperatives. Department came in to finance and testify that they are already working on this guidance and would prefer that it not be added in statute as something that the PBR directors required to do, and, again, make sure that they were already doing this, and it doesn't need to be involved. Senate fines agreed, and they were moved to. And so that's everything with property evaluation and RADS. Starting in section 57, you have tax classifications. So very quick version of how tax classifications works is that at this point, it's been flushed out over the session from last year, about 73, where a lot of our dean belts now. The tax department did a report over last summer with recommendations on how to set this up, and a lot of what's in here now is from that report, and there's a lot of feedback from the tax department to be able to administer it. The way it's set up is the assessing officials will start to mark for each parcel how many dwell on the parcel, and they'll put that on the grant list. That's the only added responsibility for assessing officials or municipalities. The rest of it is handled from the Department of Taxes where they'll start requiring something called a dwelling use attestation for some property owners. And in a dwelling use attestation, the property owner would mark for its dwelling units how those are used. And with those two pieces of information put together, the department will be able to, with the homestead declarations as well, will be able to determine whether a parcel is being used to the homestead, that's not homestead nonresidential, or homestead residential or non homestead residential. And then there's also a lot of provisions relating to mixed use properties, which is the really where it gets the trickiest. So that's that's the system that's envisioned here.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It doesn't go into effect right here. The

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: July. Yeah. So so the grand list information change takes will start taking place effectively in 2028, which is still two years before it's needed to actually implement this. The idea there is if assessing officials need help and guidance, that they'll have that run rate period to get this information on the ground. But yeah, the entire system is July. And there's, of course, all the same contingencies that were from Act 73 for this. So it doesn't take place unless those had reform contingencies take Okay. So the classification system itself, I just gave you the summary of that. The changes that Senate Finance made were more on the technical side. One is they added provision ensuring dwelling units that are part of a licensed lodging establishment are not subject to the highest non homestead residential rate. The definitions themselves were intended to make sure that you never have a hotel be considered a short term rental, that they had a provision to make extra sure of that. They removed a subsection on tax classification appeals. That was one area where, at all, we worked with the tax department, the house, and the senate, still needed work done. Partly that's because a lot of this is abstract at this point, and the department's still figuring out administrative details. So basically, removed the subsection in incentive finance that having to do with the tax classification appeals, so this language doesn't have that anymore, but then the incentive finance added new section having the tax department report back on how they suggest handling appeals of the tax classifications. And finally, in the classification section, incentive finance added a provision to the definition of long term rental, explaining the factors that commissioners may consider when determining whether a bona fide and tenant relationship exists.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So if a parcel is

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: being used as a long term rental, that means it is it will be classified as non homestead, nonresidential as opposed to non homestead residential, the higher rate. So so it uses the definition for long term rental. That definition is that the dwelling unit on the parcel is rented out for periods of at least thirty days at a time. It's rented out cumulatively for at least six months in a year, and that there's a bona fide landlord tenant relationship. So what's an advice to do is add a little bit clarity about what landlord tenant relationship means or how the apartment should apply that. 50 Right. Eight A is the tax classification appeals that I just mentioned, so the department will submit a proposed legislative language regarding tax classification appeals on or before 12/13/2027. Section 59 is where the requirement for dwelling use and attestation statute would be, creates the filing requirement. Not all property owners ought to do this, Only those that have a dwelling unit did not file a homestead declaration, so a commercial property that has no dwelling unit would have no need to file. And anyone that's already on the homestead operation would have no need to file. It would be typically the apartment owners, potentially second homeowners, although if you know that you are going to be given the non homestead residential rate, the higher rate, then you don't have to file this under this language, and it will just automatically be given to the property if it has a dwelling unit definition of filing.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: What are the PUA?

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: Dwelling unit attestation. Okay.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: Section

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: 60 requires Department of Tax to collect information from property owners in calendar year 2029 to transition to implement the system. Basically, they'll be trying to gather that information, Berkeley was at that time. Section sixteen-one repeals several sections of Act 73 that relate to property tax classifications because they're being replaced here, and some of the deadlines have been extended, as I think you're aware, some of the deadlines for the educational reform extended that on the form of this year. Section 62 deals with the intent to create tax rate multipliers. At this point, can find the specific differences in tax rates between these classifications has not been put in the statute, so there's a section with the intent that as tax classifications is worked on, the General Assembly will continue to think about what it wants to do with tax rate multipliers. Section 63 is more substantive, though, if the tax classification sections if new tax rate multipliers are not set by 07/01/2030, so that's your deadline for deciding how you want to pass these things differently. Section 64 is the final section 30, and it adds conforming language to the definition of homestead to prevent ambiguities between homestead classification and the new classification system. The idea is that nothing will change with homesteads. They will be done as they are with the new classification system, and that nothing in the changes for classifications is going to inadvertently affect homesteads, how those work. And I don't know if I skipped any sign of finance changes. Was supposed to do that.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So that's that's my heart set. Okay. Thank you. Any questions for mister Keith? Okay. We have under the council. Lamoille? Yeah.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's the name James, Office of Legislative Counsel. I'm responsible for the first one through 29. Most of them are education policy. There is a large appropriations section. I walked through this in another committee this morning, and it took me over an hour. And that was at a very high level. Where would you like me to focus?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: What are the oh, I see first. What are the highlights in your

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, boy. You're done. It is a true potpourri of option. There is lots of so I would say the first third of what I am responsible for is the state putting every supervisory union into a mandatory cooperative education service area, which is currently known as BOTSIS, and this bill changes that to a CSOP. CSOP. CSOP. CSOP.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I don't know CSOP.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, I mean, I'm not. Okay. So, there are some policy changes in there, there are some appropriations associated with those stages, start out with grants, Some money for them to hire executive directors. The next large chunk of the sections I'm responsible for require our one current BOCES, soon to be seesaw if this bill becomes law, to hire facilitators, to group every school district into the state, in the state, to work on study committees to explore the advisability of forming new, unified school districts. There are recreations associated with that work, and then there are a number of miscellaneous education policy sections with report backs to you all, rule making provisions for the state board and the agency, etcetera.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And each CSO is defined by municipality?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: By a super, so CSO membership is at the supervisory union level.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay, Can those be changed by

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, so what the Senate has done is added, because you're putting that membership in statute, only you could change that membership, so, the work of your colleagues in finance and education added a statute to chapter 10 in title 16, which is our, here, why don't I

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And when you have yellow highlights in here, are those finance changes? Are those changes from some other or or highlighted for others?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Let me see. What draft are you looking at? Are you looking at the side by side? Mhmm.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Okay. The limits on our

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you want me to share my screen?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Are you all Just in case we might Okay. If it's easy.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The yellow represents changes from the house version. The finance committee pretty much wholesale adopted the work of the education committee.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: For these sections, because this wasn't right there.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: For the first one through 29A, there's more than 29 secondtions, so sections one through 29A.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So that's most of the pages, it's just grading them.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: CCs. That's the first third of what

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I am responsible for Right.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Up through section 12.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: Mister chair? Yes. I'm wondering, and this don't

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: you don't need to

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: go into great detail, but there was contingency in I 73 that said we needed a new map in order to bring the foundation formula online. I am wondering on the CISA mandatory CISA map, is that does that satisfy that contingency?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I would say no. The do you want me to go any further than just a no?

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: A bit of explanation would be great. Okay.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Act 73 actually did not require a map. It required new school districts to be operational.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Right.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Seesaws are not school districts, and the language in Act 73 was very specific to the new school districts envisioned by this act. And so, there was nothing in Act 73 about new seesaws. So, I would say no, the new seesaws would not satisfy that contingency, but the amendment that you have in front of you changes that contingency.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And and you're getting traction.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I hope so.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. We

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: haven't hit on that section yet. Do you want to talk about seesaws any more than I already have? Oh, I'm sorry. To answer your question, Chair, yes, the Senate has added a brand new statute to Title 10 that outlines the process by which a supervisory union could request to the general assembly

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Page 11.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The process, generally speaking, is supervisory union that wants to move takes a vote at the board, supervisory union board level. If that vote is in the positive, then the applicable seesaw boards would take a vote. Then SU that wants to move would send the results of those votes along with any of the public information related to the record around those votes, so the minutes, the warnings, the notices, etcetera, to the Secretary of Education. Then the Secretary of Education would send all of that information to the General Assembly, very similar to a charter change in the Secretary of State's office. And then the membership adjustment proposal would become effective upon affirmative enactment of the proposal by the General Assembly.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. And does it change the other districts that I've, the SUs, the SBs?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Would only change a supervisory union's membership in a CSOB.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Understood. Not this house in the bill

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that addresses this. School districts? School districts are just two five.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. That's that's section 13, which is the study committee process.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So that starts on page 14. And again, high level overview. Your one functioning BOCES right now, maybe soon to be CSA, would hire seven facilitators, and then one extra to be the lead facilitator and oversee those facilitators. Those seven facilitators are then deployed to the field. They have certain criteria that's built in that I'm happy to go over, or we can let it speak for itself, that the facilitators would use to group current school districts into study committees using our current law, Chapter 11, Union School District Formation. There's also an entire section of grouping of school districts to provide the facilitator with guidance. So there's technically two maps associated with this amendment or this bill. Seesaw maps and school district grouping maps. The study

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But those grouping maps won't be created without the facilitators to read them?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. The groupings are put into section 14 themselves. So section 14 is literally just a list that says group one and then names a bunch of school attendees. Group two and then names a bunch of school districts. And it's just guidance for the facilitator. The facilitator groups everyone together. School districts are required to participate in good faith in the study committee process. They have a number of things they are required to consider. They issue a final report. If their final report says that it is a good idea to form a unified union, a new school district, then the next step would be school districts that are members of that study committee would review the report. They can't weigh in on it. They can provide feedback, but the report and the final recommendation is the ownership of the study committee. Then it goes to the Secretary of Education for review, and then the Secretary transmits a recommendation to the state board. The state board has to make some findings, and then it ultimately goes to the voters. The electorate of each of the school districts participating in the study committee that wants to form a new unified school district. And that's all current law. That process I just laid out is current law.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is that what Act four states?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Nope. It's chapter 11, which is your union school district formation chapter that has been around since the sixties when union school districts, but we you all this was my first bill in the legislature in 2022, was rewriting that entire chapter. So, it's painfully detailed. So, there's a lot of detail in there for them to follow.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section 13, I just basically outlined all of section 13, the study committee process. There is no requirement for any specific outcome. And

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: it looks like the groups were just slightly changed between house and sun.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I would say more than slightly changed enough that I can't walk. I can't would it would be difficult to to do I the in

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: just noticed some difference, so I don't know how many

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, I think there are some pretty big differences. The House kept supervisor union boundaries intact, so they tried to work within supervisor unions, and I believe some of the, I have not gone through with a fine tooth comb, but I believe some of the Senate groupings do break up supervisory unions.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You have such 21 and the Senate has AP.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Correct. But all school districts in the state other than our interstate school districts are reflected in both versions.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. You're

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: gonna get some subsection 14a was added by the Senate. This is an interim report on the how the study committees are going, what are their final recommendations, and do you all need to make any adjustments to CSOM membership or supervisory union boundaries based on the work of these study committees? Section 15 is a final report back to you all on the study committees, along with some information on how various topics impact decision making that may or may not form future legislative efforts. A key piece to point out, this is the one on page 23, section fifteen, seven, division one, senate finance did add this language regarding a determination and identification of any school district that is a bad faith participant in the study committee process because that will be tied into school construction funding. The

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: facilitators hired by who?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The Vermont Learning Collaborative, which is our one current OCS.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: Oh, on June. No.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Think in Windsor. Yeah. Oh, nice. Southbound.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: A bad faith participant would be someone who would process in

[Anne Watson (Member)]: for clearly not. Yes.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think there's no definition of bad faith participant here. That is not a exact legal term. And the way this is drafted right now is it does leave the determination of that

[Anne Watson (Member)]: legal term. It's up to the discretion

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: of the legal authority there.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You. Good.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section 16 was another final report back to you all on Supervisory Union boundary adjustments, Seesaw boundary adjustments based on the final, after final votes have been taken, were there any school districts actually formed? Section 17 is the big appropriations section, although it's no new appropriations.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: Total 1.5?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't remember what it's for, but all of the appropriations in this section are coming out of the education transformation appropriations that you all made in Act 73 last year, and then amended the budget this year to provide some further guardrails on how that money should be used.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Let me hear from Jeff, we can go.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: All of the appropriations in this section. So we've got money to go to the study committees for whatever services they need to do their work. We've got money going to the Vermont Learning Collaborative to hire those facilitators. And we've got money going to the agency of education. Actually, the agency of education already has all of this money from act 73. But the agency would then be required to grant $50,000 to each new Seesoft to go towards their first executive director. All of this money has been made in an allowable use of the Act 73 Education Transformation Appropriation as amended by section C103 of the budget. And then here we come to the contingencies. So section 18 is an amendment to section 70 of act 73, which is the effective date section. And then the easiest way to phrase this is, these are the foundation formula contingencies. So you can see this language related to new school districts contemplated by this act becoming operational has been struck.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: instead, we have four conditions now, four contingencies that need to be met by the foundation formula to take advantage of. The first is that school districts have had an opportunity to study the advisability of forming a new school district. And if there's a vote, the voting results have been certified. First contingency. Second contingency is right out of Act 73. The expert tasked with developing a cost factor foundation formula and is provided to the general assembly the report required pursuant to section 45 a. So this is the JHO contractor report AIR, air. This was already a contingency in act 73, and we're keeping it here. Third contingency is new. On and before 12/15/2029, JFO has provided you all with an analysis using fiscal year twenty seven data that compares the total funds necessary to fund the education system under our current funding formula versus the foundation formula as established in Act 33. And then the fourth contingency is that you all have enacted legislation. So it's more than you all. It's legislation that has become law that addresses the following topics. Suitable geographic measures for determining sparsity within the foundation formula, whether it costs more to educate a secondary student than an elementary student, and if so, what's an appropriate way to capture that differential? How to account for the provision of CTE within the foundation formula? How to account for regional differences in operating costs, including those driven by regional differences in cost of living and legacy collective bargaining agreements within the foundation formula. And how to fund special education services, school construction, renovation, and repayment of school debt, transportation, and universal precut.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: Can you go back up? What is the exact wording? We have to have passed legislation that addresses all of those?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Correct. Legislation has been enacted. So I would say that that means it's become law. What

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: if we look so let's say if you scroll down just a bit, let's say that we so let's say universal prekindergarten, not at all saying that we would decide this. But let's say we decided that we studied it and we didn't wanna do that. That alone could prevent the foundation from coming into the news, or we didn't enact.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's it just the the way this is drafted is it just says legislation has been enacted that addresses So pre k.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: Well and and I guess I'm wondering how technical we're gonna get if the legislature passed something that said, we've studied all these things, and we don't think any of them need to be changed, and then it enumerates all of them, that would be enacting something that addresses them.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Potentially, I have a little bit of a disadvantage because I work for you all and not the judicial branch. Right? So it would ultimately be if there's a legal battle over this.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: My opinion doesn't matter.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: It's But I mean, addresses is a it it could be legislation that names it, but doesn't change it.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think that is a I think that is accurate.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: Okay. Great. Wondering how suppose it's a question for the house. What was their intention in terms of are they meaning that all of these because it's a it's a laundry list of problems that many of them, like universe pre k, have been around for a long time. If the foundation formula can't go into operation unless those are all solved in statute, then essentially, you're just saying the foundation. Where do you see and university?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. I see a breakdown. Yeah.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: So, anyway, thank you. I I think that's good enough. We could determine how

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: to fund it by not funding it. Or or discuss funding it and then say we're Then we're not gonna do

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: And I suppose the other way to answer it is you've not withstand any of this.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I mean, is literally what we're doing with this language is what we have struck the language that you packed last year, right? So Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yes. Okay. Continuing on.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Continuing on. I'm gonna jump back over to the side by side. Oops. Oh, I will actually go back to The house passed some language that I believe the house passed version is on your website. The language is in the side by side that requires the Department of Texas to come up with an interactive education funding calculator that would be posted on the website. Senate Finance removed that section. Again, in the interest of time, happy to dive deeper, but sections 19 through 21 are about pre kindergarten education. Sections nineteen and twenty are findings and intent. Would you like to go over those? Okay. Section 21 is a report back to you all regarding pre k funding. Do you wanna go over any of that? There is an appropriation there.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So the appropriation for the study?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: For a JFO study, yes.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Alright. I think we already passed something like that in the oh, no. That's

[Anne Watson (Member)]: That's the event.

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

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So yeah. So you ask this language asks for JFO to contract with a contractor to account for the provision of pre k within Vermont's education finance system, and then there is an appropriation of $75,000 to JFO to do that.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: There is an appropriation vote, so why do we need it in then?

[Anne Watson (Member)]: There's 1,500,000 that is in your construct in the budget, and the 75 kind of I was

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: 600. I see. Yeah.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: So you have to stay with the And you're gonna see the

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: other Sorry.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Just to so I'm clear. So this is over the amount that we budgeted for?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: No. It's hard. It's definitely not. Pardon.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, you have the budget, Julia Richter, JFO. You have the 1,500,000 for education transformation inclusion constructs. H Right? $9.55 has three new general fund uses. One is the 75,000 appropriation. One is the 500,000 appropriation that's in John's section for the limited service positions. And one is a million transfer to the school construction aid special fund. In conversations, there was miscommunication about if that 75,000 was or was not part of that 1,500,000 at transformation box. It needs to fit within that 1,500,000. So in order to fix it, the amendment would be to rather than transfer a whole million to this construction a special fund, it would be 900,000, and this would cover that difference. Cover the 75,000 here, and then the 25,000 that you spoke about yesterday, the

[Anne Watson (Member)]: miscellaneous. The goals I hate. Yes. Great.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Back to the side by side. Section 21A is an amendment to the pre k statute to require school districts to start collecting data on how many hours of pre k they're actually funding. Section 22, you can see there's no difference between the House and the Senate, is an amendment to your pupil waiting statute, which requires school districts that pay tuition to collect pupil weighting data from their tuition students. We're not getting that data. We're not getting as much of that data as we could right now. So now we're requiring school districts when they're approving those tuition requests to also collect some information related to the waiting categories, which are necessary to figure out how much money each school district should get. Section 23 is some intent language around special education and funding safeguards related to the foundation formula. The general theme of those, the language in that section is that no education finance changes you all make should ever be construed in a way that would jeopardize our federal special education funding and our ability to meet federal maintenance of effort requirements, which is generally speaking, a requirement the state, both at the state and then at the local level, is spending the same amount on special education year over year. Section 24, the house passed language amending statute that prohibits any school that receives tuition students, whether that's an independent school or a public school, from requiring fees for tuition on top of what they're getting from the school district. The Senate struck that language and replaced it with legislative intent language that states it is the intent of the general assembly that under the foundation formula, no receiving school may charge individual and family's tuition in excess of the amount of tuition paid by a school district. So instead of codifying that requirement in statute, the Senate has replaced it with intent language. Section 24A in the House with intent language that clarified the effective date of section 24. The senate struck that it was no longer applicable. Section 25 is an amendment to section seven zero seven in title 16, which governs study committees budgets, study committees to form unified unions or to form union school districts. They it's a whole statute on how they allocate that money amongst themselves, etcetera. And current law says, if you're gonna spend over $50,000, you have to go to the voters and get approval for that. And there was some concern that it may cost more than $50,000 to hold the election depending on when those elections would be held, right, if they're special elections. So what the house did and the senate has concurred in at this point is raise that threshold for voter approval to $500,000 Sections 26, 27, 27A, they are all rule making requirements. So, 26 requires the State Board of Education to update education quality standards to put into rule the criteria to determine if a school is small or sparse by necessity, which is important to determine if that school or school district will qualify for a grant under the foundation formula. Section 27 is asking the agency of education to update the district quality standards to come up with inter district budgeting guidance. The Senate has added language to clarify that that inter district budgeting guidance needs to be for the foundation formula. The Senate has also pushed the rule making date out from 03/31/2027 to 12/31/2028. And then the Senate has done this in a couple of different places. Anywhere you see children will be afforded educational opportunities that are substantially equal in quality, the Senate has changed that in various different places to say that they will be afforded opportunities and excellent education. Section 27A is amending a piece of rulemaking directive from Act 183, which was the yield bill in '24, that required the agency of education to come up with to amend the district quality standards for reserve fund guidance. That guidance has not been issued yet. So section 27A, which is the same about the house and the senate, provides additional directive to what needs to be in those rules. Section 27B is a report back to you all with a whole bunch of information on school transportation. Section 27C is requiring the agency of education to make a form for school districts to use to collect that pupil waiting data that we supposed to

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: do this year?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Back when I

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: was on that, Jay? Yes.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So act 127 did require the agency of education to come up with the universal income declaration form. I'll leave it there. Yes, you

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: are correct. That's fine. Okay. Moving on.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There's not any comments or meant to be any sort of comment on whether or not that has been met.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I won't fully agree.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I am your nonpartisan neutral legislative staff. Okay. Section 27D, length of school day, another piece of rulemaking where we ask the State Board of Education to update a specific rule series that contains information on how long a school day is. This is especially important when we're talking about the kindergarten education. And this is asking them to update those rules. I'm gonna

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Anything in here about the universal challenge issue?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. That is that is that is still being worked on from from accidently trained. I'm gonna throw to John, if that's okay, for sections twenty eight and twenty nine.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So sections twenty eight and twenty nine are linked to get sorry. John Gray, our legislative counsel. Section twenty eight and twenty nine are linked. You'll recall from act 73 that one of the provisions replaced our existing Vermont's existing small and sparsity weights with the support grants. So section 28 is repealing the act 73 support grants to replace it with essentially the same thing, but for a few tweaks. So that's why you see a repeal and a replace. The difference, these are the same dollar figures that you saw in Act 73. They've carried over here. That's what you see in the House side. That's what you see in the Senate side. Update that the Senate Finance has proposed here is that you may recall that the small school determination is a two pronged request. There's a determination whether or not it meets small by necessity under certain standards. But the other piece is a numerical check. In Act 73 and in that house version, that objective numerical check on small school sizes, whether it has fewer than 100 pupils in the school. Well, that's agnostic as to the grade coverage that the school provides. So the update that's proposed here is to use average grade size as a measure of what a small school is instead of total pupil count for the school. And so that's what this does. It just says enrollment. It restricts it to K through 12, and then it counts your enrollment across all the grades you have and divides it by the number of grades that you offer to produce your average grade size, and then it converts to the aliability condition. So pre kindergarten would be kicked out of this. It would not be part of the determination. Kindergarten would.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah, but kindergarten would be. Exactly. So you could have thirteenth grade. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Okay.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The house passed my computer's gonna die at any minute. So section 29 a is passed by the house. You need an update to the master definition statute in title 16 defining certain terms. The senate hold that, but put in their own section 29 a, which was language that actually came to the senate from the house in the miscellaneous ed bill. Senate education pulled this language from the miscellaneous ed bill and plunked it into nine fifty five. It essentially acts on decree created classified minimums.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: The tax

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: 29 a?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. 29 a. I'm on page 31. Put this side by side. The statute went into effect last year, so the classified minimums are in effect. But the rules that are meant to supplement the statutes have not been drafted yet. And so there was some confusion in the field as to how class size minimums would be enforced. So what the Senate has done and said, essentially said, for both public schools and independent schools, non compliance class size minimums cannot be held against you until the foundation formula takes effect.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: And where

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: are the class citizens?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: They live in the education quality standards statute in section one sixty five. And then section 29 b, also added by the senate, nothing similar in the house. The section eight twenty eight is the statute that tells school districts who they are allowed to pay tuition to. It is what was amended in Act 73 to add the criteria for what it means to be an approved independent school eligible to receive public tuition. Things like being in the certain supervisory unions, forget everything, but one of the components that was added in Act 73 was a requirement that independent schools comply with class size minimums. What I drafted last year was that independent schools have to follow all of Subdivision 9 in order to be eligible for public tuition. Subdivision 9 contains not just the classified minimum standards themselves, the numbers, how many average students, what's the minimum for grades one through two, four in groups, whatever, But it also contains the enforcement mechanisms for public schools. We've asked the State Board of Education to come up with a separate enforcement process for independent schools. So rather than try and sweep in the public school process and confuse folks, this amendment just says that as far as class size minimums go, independent schools only have to follow subdivision A and subdivision I. Subdivisions B and C relate to the enforcement mechanisms for

[Anne Watson (Member)]: public And that is it.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Welcome.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: No references to the No.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I could have. I was waiting for someone to ask me the trigger question, but it didn't happen.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. This constrictor one, do we always talk about more in this?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We got more in this.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I thought those were your two sections just from the side of them.

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: I wish.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Did not say that.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Read it in here. Thank you. So

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: still doing great, and Here we go. Very similar presentation side by side. I'm gonna try to do this fairly quickly. Section 65, there's no difference in the house position. Typically, I wouldn't talk about an intent section. It's actually helpful to hear just a little bit. I don't have to show you the language, but just to explain what the section does. The findings intent section speaks to a kind of short and long term vision for how state aid for school construction will occur Under the program that was effective this summer that was enacted in 1973, the model for providing aid is in the form of a debt service subsidy. So essentially, towns will still go out to bond as they currently do to pursue school construction, and then the state would provide a debt service subsidy to cover a portion of the cost that they have. The intent language in both the SBAP by House and Senate Finance report on H nine five five expresses an intent to supplement this debt service subsidy, which in any event, we don't know the revenue source for, with state bonding support. So sort of similar to the old concept when it was set in exactly the way it would occur, but you may recall that pre moratorium, the capital bills set out state aid. So this would say that aid could be provided both in the form of a debt service subsidy and also in the form of state bonding support. That's what that section is trying to signal is coming up are changes to the kind of construction aid that are being offered under the program. Almost all of my sections relate to school construction, although there are a few things at the end that I'll talk about as well. Section 66, you see a bunch of highlighting on the senate side. The senate side is the right side, as passed by House on the left. This is a section that's The goal of this is to staff the school construction division of AOE so that we can get the school construction program up and running. The House side identified positions but did not appropriate any funds for those purposes. That's what you're really seeing, the change here on the incentive side. And you see that in subsection b, some of 500 k. So that's part of

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: that 1.5 that we

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: were talking about earlier. 500,000 appropriated in FY twenty seven for these positions to try to fully extend. One time money. One time money. And then section that helps TF, subsection C, which says that AOE is meant to come back next year as part of its annual budget request. It needs to request sufficient funding to fully staff the division. So this is using the positions that were identified in an earlier report, the section nine report from AOE. Potentially, may need more positions than those people we staff. So come back for the FY twenty eight budget, say if you need any more positions and how much permanent funding you need for those purposes. Section 66 A, this section that's unique to the Senate Finance Provision and this is the other component of that 1.5. This is where you would have the amendment. I can pull that up after I finish the walkthrough unless you'd like me

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: to pull it

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: up now. But it's just moving it from

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: 1,000,000 to 900,000.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Exactly right. Right. Okay. So this is dedicating a million to the Facilities Master Plan grant program. This is to provide supervisor units with funding for those grants for the development of educational facilities master plans as part of the study committee process. So you may know that that program, which is meant to support SU level visions for school facilities across a broader region, that could be extended to any kind of district business saying it's a million or it'll be 900 k after the amendment, assuming that you do that, should be dedicated to SUs that are going through the study permitting process. So it's narrower in scope than just the outright program. Most of my sections, as you'll see in the blue highlight, most of the school construction sections go effective July 1. Section 67 is an update to the rule making from AOE on school construction. It kicks it out basically a year from the house version to buy some more time. It might have been hard to meet that timeline that the house had. And then it introduces a bit more specificity than the House had offered on what the rule making is meant to do. It's supposed to address priority points, bonus incentives, which are ways that you can provide different levels of aid and prioritize particular projects under the program. Build out those in rule making, and what do they need to do? They need to reward school districts for certain kinds of things. Consolidating, much as contemplated under section 13, permitting access for public school students to certain types of programs that could be special ed, CT, the like. And then lastly, a a new provision that the health didn't really have. It's not just an enhancement in terms of specificity. Remediating or eliminating health and safety issues. So popping out of the date and being a bit more specific as to what that whole thing needs to do. Section 68, this is a report from the advisory board that is helping to catalyze the state of the construction program. This is essentially a report that says, Go out and identify opportunities for school construction regional high schools across the state. We come back with that this December for the legislative to consider. On the house side, you can see the line on the left was just to identify opportunities for construction. We didn't say a number. And you can also see that under three, it asked the advisory board to analyze the compatibility of each of those school construction projects. The Senate Finance Committee felt this might be too heavy of a lift for the advisory board as the way I described it. So it's been restricted to pre defined feasible opportunities for construction or renovation, and then added a bit more of that aligning language for excellent educational opportunities, including CTE, shared special ed, improved comprehensive curricular offerings. The other big workload change that they made is, in addition to striking the compatibility piece, the House requested a full signing study for each of those identified opportunities. That could be quite extensive in the part of technical expertise, so instead asking for a preliminary signing. What you would get out of the Senate proposal, those in finance proposals, report this December from the advisory board, three to five, a piece of opportunities for regional high schools, and a preliminary signing study for each of these, and that it wouldn't take a position on each who should explore all of them together or in that particular configuration, leave that to the legislature to decide.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I'm gonna ask you to go with one level up. Sure.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm gonna 68 A says if there's no money, there's not gonna be money. Okay. Which makes sense?

[Anne Watson (Member)]: That's right, though.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm gonna skip 69 through 71, but there are similar statements of policy and intent and some technical updates to the responsibilities of AOE and the advisory board. No change between the House and Senate. 72 is your core school construction name section that sets up the application process. The changes that you're gonna see between the two, you see the highlighting here, DQS, district quality standards, are a self assessment The Senate Finance has proposed requiring actual demonstration of proficiency in school district quality standards rather than just self assessment as an eligibility condition. And then there's a piece added as an eligibility condition to accessing. This would be part of your application for staying. If you're an older school, you're gonna need to do PCB testing. You're gonna see highlighted some existing law language. That's because the House side has struck some language related to authorizing a bond before receiving approval. I'm just gonna say high level, the house was trying to solve a sequencing problem. Finance solved it in a different way that allows you to preserve the existing approval of funds prior to application approval itself. That's the same thing here. It's a sequencing solution. It's just making sure the districts don't bond in advance of receiving their state aid package. Now that you're contemplating aid in the form of state bonding support, the district should not go out and bond until it knows what the state aid would be because it should shrink what it needs to do locally. There's also change to the scope of aid. The house aid had been 50 to 45 so 50 to 95% aid possible, and the change that you see from Senate Finance, it drops down to base amount to be 30%. So that would be 30% to 75% aid possible under the program. I know I'm going really quick. Subdivision c is trying to address the uniqueness of the state bonding support proposal, and this is as long as it says, the treasurer consultation with who recommends those biennial recommended good old geo bonding that the state should do without impacting its credit rating. They need to come back and recommend what the state should do in annual bonding support and also in that debt service subsidy aid. Senate Finance proposal is pretty obvious as it asks for that on an annual basis.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Aren't they already doing that? How does this get them to

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So what is It's unclear in the House language here whether or not that would be an annual recommendation that might be logical for it to be the case. If you're pointing out the CDEC already biennially provided provides a recommendation on total bonding support, that is true. But what this is asking for is a bit more specific. It's saying the premise of the idea that you could leverage more state bonding support is essentially that the state has taken a conservative position on how much bonding you can do, and it's asking CDEC to say, could more be offered without hurting the state's credit rating? Could additional state bonding capacity be offered

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: to support annually instead of Biden.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think that's a fair point. You could say, why isn't this just biannually? In any event, if you're offering a, you're gonna need to know long term a fairly stable number anyway because if you said it's 100,000,000 this year and you dropped it down to 50,000,000 the next year, you might not have the A with the Fidel sort of entitled to. So that's the thing there. Section 73 is repealing a provision of the state of the first full construction section that prohibits aid for going to projects resulting from significant deferred maintenance. That might include aid to every project, so that's your view. Sixteen seventy four, legacy debt aid. So this is a pretty big piece I do wanna flag. The house proposal had a 100% aid for all school construction as of 12/31/2025, any bonded indemnus for school construction existing as of that time. And it set out what the annual a amount package would be in the worst year, a maximum total annual amount of 61,000,000. That would go effective July 1 this summer. There is no

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The projects had to be constructed or renovated as of December 31. How did the money have been spent by that date,

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: or what had to happen?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So on the house side, it's the cost of any debt incurred, meaning they've actually taken out They the could have not started. Exactly. There was no revenue source, so it wasn't going to happen, but that's the house side said. Okay. The section 74 piece made the most obvious fix to that, which is instead of being effective just July 1, it makes it contingently effective with the foundation formula 07/01/2030. Then it made some updates, and this something that Beth referenced earlier with the bad payment participants when there had been a question. Instead of just all district or eligible receiving the school construction debt as of that date, there is a kick out. So the default option is that you are in for legacy debt A unless that facilitator report identifies the district as a bad payment participant. That's the whole reason it's included in the section 15 report. There was debate here as to, you

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: know, the I don't know

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: how in detail you guys want, but there had been an approach that might have been focused on whether you were a good faith participant that would require a more significant determination for every applicant. And if you think of it, it makes them the false state that no one is getting legacy death aid until you're determined to be a good faith participant in that report. This is a more restrictive task in section 15, just determine if someone's a bad faith participant, the presumption would be that you aren't. And so that's the eligibility condition. There is another update which the chair was noting. School districts eligible to receive Legacy Debt A pursuant to the section only if the district is not identified as a category as being tested. Then a change to what is captured. So one is bumping down from 100% paid to 75% paid, and if you think about what Central Finance is doing, they're tying that to the same cap on total paid offered under the program, right? That was 30 to 75%. So same legacy debt to new program debt at the max end, it's but also changed the actual condition itself. It's the death sentence cost of any debt that is approved by the voters of the district related to school construction and for which instruction has begun as of 12/31/2025. Yes. Senator Baruth, Ari,

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: the bad faith participant, if I'm remembering right, that subject was not a definition

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's correct.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: In the bill. Seems like that leaves a lot

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: of authority in that The Chattenden statement? It certainly does.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: Might be something for the conference committee, assuming we have one to take that.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I I think it it's something you could work on the way that I think about it, but it would just be my thoughts, much as as Ben said earlier, you could leave her thoughts, that's the offer. You know, bad faith is different than not being a happy participant. Right? Right. It's like obstructing, and that that's the kind of idea that it's but you could do more to build out what it means to be a bad faith.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: Well, and that's I'm having flashbacks to act 46. So we we had, you know, we had a period where people were voluntarily studying. And in at least one case that I remember, we had somebody who announced, a superintendent who announced to their district that this was not gonna happen, but they had to go through this basically bullshit exercise. Yes. And that was all very public. It seemed to me that would be a bad

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, I mean, I I take your point and I think that it is a it it does extend a lot of discretion to the facilitator in that determination. It's interesting you bring up that hypothetical. Again, this is just my thoughts, but part of the thinking when we were discussing building out the idea for a bad big participant was that someone could approach the study committee process. There's been a proposal and they say, This actually doesn't make sense for us. But then they attend the study committee meetings. Yeah. They've said that it doesn't make sense. That's a good thing. That's fair right. That's a good thing for them. They stop making it makes sense. Yeah. But, yeah, I think you could agree. That's a lot of discretion extended to the facilitator, there's nothing other than the terms bad thing. That's just okay. Yep.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And how did they come up with the 45,000,000? Yeah.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So this was just multiplying the 61,000,000 by 75% at the top end. I think it is a good question whether, because the 61,000,000 was measuring the maximum annual impact for all the debt service payments. It really was just me multiplying that by 75%. I don't know.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We don't know where the set of 61 here.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We can find out it's through I think we can talk

[Anne Watson (Member)]: She knows? She's

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: dead. She's be shaky. That's in our drug that's in our disco. They're trying to understand what she said. Yeah. We'll wait for that later.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. The 61,000,000 originated from Michael Cohen with the Vermont Bond Bank, identifying all of the existing debt as of 12/31/2025. So that is a that's a hard figure, a relatively hard figure. The 45.75 was just me multiplying by 27.5. The question I would have is, is the maximum annual impact in a year, is that the same every year such that the maximum annual impact could be just multiplied by 75%? If it turned out that they're on some kind of different schedule, perhaps multiplied by point seven five, it could be slightly different. Moving on. Section 75 through 76 are non substantive changes, so I'm not going talk about those, and they're the same between the house and the house. Anyway, section 77, this is a substantive piece I'll just flag. It's the same between both past and past House and the Senate Finance Report. This is, you'll recall that supplemental district spending, which is the local spending that districts can do once the foundation formula rolls out, if it does, has a cap on how much you can do. That's a 5% cap I'm sure you guys have heard about. This is a substantive amendment to that cap to say that capital debt expenditures, your annual debt expense costs, will not be counted toward 5%. If you think about that, you may have ongoing annual deficit cost that may extend into when the foundation possible of selling. That also helps to tee up the next sections, are really hard to walk through, I'm just gonna describe high level what they do without As high

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: as possible.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: 77A talks about the language that is provided to school districts when they authorize bonding. When they authorize bonding, they just authorize a cap. They don't issue the bond, right? This is language that updates the language that goes out to voters when they examine this to try to say, know that you're gonna have an ongoing annual cost. It's gonna be covered through your supplemental strict spending tax rate, and when you authorize it through your supplemental strict spending, you're only gonna authorize it one time. You're not gonna authorize it handily, unlike most supplemental strict spending. That's what 77 a does. It is also essentially what 78 does. It tries to give voters information upon authorizing supplemental district spending two different ballots. One for that one time authorization for ongoing school construction costs, and one for normal everyday supplemental district spending. Both of these sections together are trying to give voters clear information. They're taking on a long ongoing obligation.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We're out of school construction section 79 repealed and replaces the ballot line up with what you just saw. Sections 80 through 83 updated the transitions of Act 73. There is no substantive change. It just unwinds the years with the new timeline with the foundation formula. So FY '29, that's FY '31. Section 84 is much the same. It's a delay in a tax report on an alternative homestead exemption structure that was due at the end of this year. With the delayed timeline, it's now bumped out to 2028. Section 85 is a change to the Advisory Committee and the new piece that we'll see, and I think one of the members of this committee was considering language around this, that one of the directives to the Ed Fund Advisory Committee would be to annually recommend the appropriations required to fully fund the educational opportunity payments under the foundation form of the current and upcoming fiscal years. This would really be multiplication tasking. So you would get to see, did the general assembly appropriate enough funds for the current year, and will there be appropriate insufficient funds for the upcoming? Is it. I think we've talked about the effect of days corral, and it would be a nightmare to try to walk through that.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Don't want nightmares or shark night at all. That's it for me. Okay. Thank you, John. Julie's ready. Can we come up? Yes, please.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Hello. So you're here today at hello. Fiscal note is posted on the committee page under my name. Do you want me to also share it on the screen?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: If it's easy to do so. We have some screen challenge senators. Not yet. You can look at it. I'm looking at the person on the other

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: side. So I'll I'll be presenting the fiscal note, and it is a team effort. There are more than one day folks who have worked on this. I think you've already talked about a lot of the things that the fiscal note touches on. Big picture, the overall fiscal impact of the bill is unclear, and that's because many of the impacts depend on outstanding policy decisions at the state and the local level. There are some known fiscal impacts for fiscal year 2027, so we can talk through those first and then either go through the fiscal note section by section or touch on a few of the pieces you may be more interested in. So I'm gonna just go straight to the table summarizing the known fiscal impacts for 2020 FY '27. This is on page two. So the first piece, this was spoken about by Beth. This is those costs that are funded through existing appropriations. So you'll recall section c one zero three of the budget took appropriations of the AOE in Act 73, pulled back some of those funds and held down for the uses to be amended in 08/1955. And so of that, approximately 1,400,000 that exists within C103, that's sort of the box for this bill to play with of the existing appropriations. Section four, the CESA grant program. So this is the funding to issue those grants to CESAs. It's being funded by two existing appropriations. One is a previously appropriated 60,000 from the Ed Fund to ALE in FY '25. This was for when you pass the VOCES bill when you set aside monies. That's the remaining funds that are still not appropriation, and then an additional 30,000 from that section C103 funds. Section 17 has three different uses. So it's got a study committee reimbursement grants. This is reimbursing Union School District study committees for incurred expenses. This would be 210,000. There are 18 study committees or recommended study committees, but it's up. That could be more study committees. So this is a little bit broader. There's also the facilitator funding, so running to hire ED facilitators for the study committees, and the current BOCES that exist, may return, may retain up to 32,000 for administrative costs for a total of 4 and 41,000, also from the session C1 free money. Lastly, the CSAT executive director grants, this is for assisting with the hiring of those executive directors, 300,000 also from C103. So in sum, that's total cost funded through existing appropriations of 1,042,000.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: The executive directors, is there any sense of what their pay scale would be?

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So this this funding would not be for paying their salaries.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: Understood. I was just wondering in committee if there have been

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I don't know. Perhaps Beth knows. Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel. I don't know. I think the thought was it was $50,000 per new CSAT towards hiring a new executive director.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: But that would be partial.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Because there would be part time employees, right?

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I don't know. I think they would, are likely to be full time employees, but I really don't know. I think the, when I think towards their salary, it's to represent that I don't think we know what the salary would be.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And would it be, is the anticipation that it would all be state funding or that funding for the salaries would be supplemented by other sources?

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Seesaw's themselves, the enabling language in chapter 10 of title 16 that is the enabling language for BOCES right now that we're changing to seesaw with this bill, requires each individual, basically, thoughts are funded through a combination of member district dues and service fees. Eventually, I believe the goal with CFA's would be that they're almost completely self funded based on their service fees, but they're not going to have that start. So there is language that allows them to charge member fees. There is nothing in chapter 10 right now or in H95 that contemplates additional state

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Beyond this.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Beyond the fees, the services, this,

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: correct? Okay.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Moving on.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Okay. So those are the costs funded through existing appropriations, and then we spoke about these other two, these other three, rather. So there are two new appropriations in H nine fifty five. There's the 75,000 to JFO for the pre k financing report, one time from the general fund in FY27, and then another one time appropriation from the general fund is one to AOE in FY27 for the four limited service classified decisions, so that

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: would be $500,000 graded.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And then lastly, of you to know, FY27 impacts the section 66A as the $1,000,000 transfer from the general fund to the school construction needs special fund for awarding grants through the Facilities Master Plan grant program. This is what we were talking about a while ago. Recall you have the 1,500,000 that was set aside in the budget. And of course, this adds up to 1,575,000, which was an oversight. So, believe the proposed amendment would be to reduce this appropriate, this transfer from 1,000,000 to 900,000. And that way

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: it would all fit for that. Okay. Do we need to know anything else? Do you have a group table of the unknown?

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I would say the remaining

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's what the rest of them

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: pages. Or actually, the remaining nine pages of the fiscal note are going sort of section by section with potential fiscal impacts of each section. I don't think we need to walk through all of these unless that's helpful. I I could

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We went through the sections already.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: You went through the sections. There's a couple of pieces that I would just draw your attention to.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: K.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And related to a couple of the questions that you raised. And I'm scrolling so avert your eyes if that's uncomfortable. We're gonna first go to section 35. This is within the regional assessment districts, so this is what Kirby was talking about. Of course, we don't know the overall impact of estimating those or establishing the regional assessment districts. There's a chance if the frequency of reappraisals increases, additional costs may occur. If they're more efficient, then there could be savings. I wanted to draw your attention to section 35, which would establish the state would pay, provide a payment for the full reappraisals. The annual fiscal impact of this would depend on the full cost of the reappraisals and the timing of reappraisals. So as Kirby mentioned, there's going to be, I believe, six RAS. And so they're not all going to be reassessing at the same time. The fund of the of this cost is unclear. We know that in 2027, there's 340, 280 parcels in the state that would have been eligible for a payment. So that's the total number of parcels in the state. If all of them were to receive the maximum amount amount of funding for reappraisal costs, it would be 22 and a half million. And we know they won't all be reappraisal. It'll be probably a sixth of that.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It is. It's like six of that pretty close to what we're spending now per year on reappraisal. Like, didn't we take out of the pilot fund $3,800,000 or something? That's for those reappraisal cost.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Dollars would need a follow-up about the pilot fund. I don't know if Ginny knows.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: But that's just the planting wall that's already Yeah.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It was Yeah. Used to be general fund, but it wasn't November, like 3 point something. So that's close to the sixth.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So this is, and this is not striking the current, all of the current funding of reappraisals in the state.

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: That's

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: that's due to, plus this, this is an interest, but

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: that that money would cover something else, because isn't that covering reappraisal?

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So right now, the state is not covering the full reappraisal of a municipality. It's paying municipalities for the upkeep of the grant list.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay, that's all right. And they need that, it's referenced in reappraisal because they need to update the grant list for reappraisal. Okay. And

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: this is still multiple years out, but this will actually come into effect, which is why it's not known for 05/27. And then I wanted to briefly of course, we can talk about any of this, but it seems like you've talked through all of it. With respect to school construction, just flagging the cash fund, general fund transfers under cash fund being calculated at 4% or less of the last year's general fund appropriation, plus the amount necessary to fund the general obligation debt service. So an increase to the general obligation debt service due to increased funding for things such as school construction would reduce the amount available transfer to a cash fund. But this bill is not increasing the general obligation or school construction. It's just sort of opening that

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It's good that it's a CDAC recommended, and then we've got to involve them. Okay.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And then the last thing I wanted to touch on was just following up on section 74. This was about the Legacy Debt Aid program. I think that John answered all of your questions. The 61,000,000 came from the Vermont Bond Bank. This is the total maximum incurred debt service that may apply in a single year. So annual maximum debt service. I will say that this amount is 100% is currently covered at the state level. It's just within a school district's budget. And because school district's budgets are funded 100% through the statewide education fund, This is not incurring a new expense. It's shifting how that expense is paid for. Right? And as the state is transitioning into a new education funding formula, foundation formula, where a school district may not be able to build that debt into their budget in the same way it can build it into their education spending, this is shifting. So we can't really compare how this would impact future state with a future funding formula compared to today, with our today's state. Our today funding formula other than these costs exist now and are being preferred by the state now. This section 74 does not identify which fund would be paying the legacy debt being currently in syndication.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah. And then I just wanted to let you know the final two pages are the effective dates by section.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So thanks. You're welcome. And is there any questions for instructor about this COVID? Sean, do you wanna talk about your Yep. Maybe there.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: So how's that shift going?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: general fund's only 1.5 down. Exactly. Which we had in the budget.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Something in the future.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: In the future, there will be

[Anne Watson (Member)]: I I know.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, it all happens. Yes. Mister chair, I'm just wondering when you're thinking of voting right now right now. Before the race starts. I see. So, I We would need to look at this amendment, and we can have reded our date of motion. Okay.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, here's the section 66 A in the underlying. This is that meeting that we talked about transferred from the general fund to the school construction aid special fund, and here is the proposed amendment. You guys respectfully report something and recommend that this be amended by striking out 1,000,000,000 and inserting in lieu there of $900,000

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: Was there another thing? There's another version if you wanna add. I have the thing. What was your I forgot what it was then. It was changing an orchard and because Oh, yeah. I mean,

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: so Yeah. We wanna do that.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That sounds okay. I'll let Kirby.

[Kirby (Office of Legislative Counsel – Tax)]: Yeah. It's on the I think it's on the committee webpage.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I

[Anne Watson (Member)]: know.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So it'd be $9.09

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: 9,000,000 to $900,000, so then it

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: would be that and and or that we talked about.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do we

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, I should pull it up before you do anything, but I'm not seeing it yet, but maybe we'll oh, there Is that missing?

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is your question, Senator Watson?

[Anne Watson (Member)]: We need to specifically name the $2,521,000 that is supposed to be going to H931. No. You

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: don't think we need to do that? We were going to do that.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This is just talking about the transfer amount.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Like we need anywhere to talk about that.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So you're reducing it so that you

[Anne Watson (Member)]: have plenty available for the 21 that's in $9.30.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay, so it's just there. Yeah.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: So just there. So just there.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, we just have to remember not to spam. No.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So here's the full amendment for the

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the two instances of amendment. Now we've made it. They have some default conditions, not automatic conditions. Okay. So I'll entertain a motion to move the move move the bill favorably with this amendment. So moved. So moved. Well, we could go back to our regular clerk.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Yeah. The real.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Real. Real. Captain Clark's return to stability.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: That's that's

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: I order.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: See if everybody's name. I said all the donors are now. Just the last time.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: This is a high history.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: What are you

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: talking about? 14. 14. 514.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: Yep.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: Oh, it's definitely.

[Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. Senator Baruth. Yeah. Senator Brennan. No. Senator Lyons. Yes. Senator Norris. No. Senator Watson.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. Senator Westman. No. Senator Perchlik. Yes.

[Anne Watson (Member)]: It happens.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Not all the time.

[Philip Baruth (Member)]: What's going on? What was that?

[Anne Watson (Member)]: I'm not a teacher do it.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: But it is a Oh, no. So I got that. Okay.