Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: You're live.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: Thank you very much. Welcome back, everyone, to the seventh house conference on, yes, '1 20 '7, which is the omnibus housing bill, and it is the twenty ninth still at twenty of six, and we are convened. Great, ma'am. And thank you. Thank you.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: And while we appreciate your patience while we took some roll call votes and dunked out a bunch of other things, we really, at this point, while we appreciate the movement you've made, we are very grateful, thank you, for all of our coming together and into agreement on so many things. We are sticking by our last list. And I I'm sorry to say, but we pre feel pretty strongly about the position we all landed on together. And that just to thank you for the sunset move. We appreciate that, but we are still strong on the PAPs and still strong on the ten years, not the eight years for Bet's sake.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: 75 to five.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: 75 being the lowest we can go. So I think that is where we are still. We're going to be consistent and hold our position.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: You also have age four seventy nine, just a reminder. Yes.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: Let me ask a clarifying question.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Yes.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: Just so I can make sure I'm documenting this for John and updating him. Moderate income on the but for I believe that was in your last proposal

[Pat (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: as well.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Did have That would not be the hill we would dive in in the last best offer, but it was in our last best offer.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: It was. But we we could move to accepting.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: That's the one Affordable. That's the one.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Sorry. Thank you, Kim, for a remark.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: I would say similarly, we're not gonna die. I like your words.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: We're not gonna die. Like your Right? You're kidding.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: So So it's about the cap and the $75.85 versus 70. Okay.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Is that

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: what we're down to?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: That is what we're that's pretty much what we're down to, I think. We've come into agreement on almost everything else. I

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: think that

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: we have each given and taken, and told me we were building homes.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: So to that end, I think it's time to ask a JFO to do some new work for us. Because the cap, in a sense, becomes more and more arbitrary if you have your little spreadsheet at 60%, and we're now talking about anywhere between 70%, 90%, 100%, you eat up $14,000,000 very, very quickly. So I don't know that you all have ever had the financial analysis. That sounds like it was just a ways and means piece.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: We We

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: share with partners. Okay.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: But none of us have been able to model

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: could, other inputs. That's what we want. I

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: think that helps to demonstrate that when you look at the cap and the increment together, we can't just look at them in isolation. We are talking about getting serious about developing in both rural and urban areas back to the purpose statement. And we really need to see what we're trying to accomplish here and how we do that with both a arbitrary cap and an increment that we need to make sure people can take advantage of. So I think that would better inform our both of our chambers to help. But I think until that time, the last best offer still stands Thank you. With the changes Okay.

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: Well, let me ask you this, because I think, I mean, the cap is something that we feel strongly about. And so if the cap isn't sufficient, do you have an idea of what you think is sufficient? Or is there a different way to approach it?

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: That would take some modeling, I think.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Is let me ask Jeff, is that is that possible for tomorrow?

[Pat (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So Pat, to join fiscal office, I think there's I have a couple of questions. So I think so what we have so far goes out to 20 or sorry, 31. We need to add up to 35.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: 35. Correct.

[Pat (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I need to be clear, you want to look at the Senate's position, Pierre? 75, 85.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Could use round numbers.

[Pat (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: 40,000,000 looks with that

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: amount. It help

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: to be 75, 100 just to have round numbers to Let's do what we've proposed. Just

[Pat (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: to be clear with the table, it is a sort of pro form a approach using some assumptions. There's a column in there that equates to education tax increment. That's really the only column that ends up changing when you change the percents because that feeds into the increment retained column. So, really, the exercise is just changing one column's worth of numbers, which is the education tax increment, which gets split out between what's retained for the debt financing and what is allocated to the education fund. It doesn't really matter too much.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Okay. But wouldn't it show you about how many projects you can get for 40,000,000 with a lifetime retention.

[Pat (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yeah, so that's in the column. Maybe it would be helpful to share the experience. Before

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: we do that, Charlie, do you have anything you particularly wanna add before we?

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: I was only thinking that we created this mechanism where the Vermont Economic Progress Council could approach through the governor to the Joint Fiscal Committee to get an increase of 5,000,000. So the concept is if we still live within the 40,000,000 cap, but increase that amount, is that something that could be plausible? And so it gives you the ability to increase the amount if the cap is not deemed sufficient.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: We had discussed the higher cap. Yeah. Which we had discussed in here together. And you came back with being willing to go beyond 40 plus five.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: I mean, I'd also We haven't really had a chance to return to the housing conversation about affordable and moderate income housing. We spend a lot of time talking about the complete lack of moderate income housing, particularly at the ownership level that exists in the state, and that being essentially one of the most renewable goods that we can create that helps stabilize people in the middle class and get them out of social service programs, off of income eligibility programs related to affordable housing. We feel like Ways and Means has been steering the conversation about affordable is more important of a policy goal than moderate income. And I wholeheartedly reject that.

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: That hasn't been our goal

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: at all. Okay. That's why we kept deleting moderate from everything, just so you know.

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: Actually, in our construct, when we originally came, we had middle income housing, and then that got changed.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: We kept deleting it from all of the proposals.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: From the exceptions because there was a weakening. From the exceptions. You didn't want to weaken. Okay.

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: So we definitely concur that there is a need for all housing, not just low and moderate income. And we feel there's enough construct within this bill to build it. It's a question of dollars cap.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: Yeah. We're asking you a question.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Yes. Mhmm.

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: As if that's not enough, what is?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: What is?

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: What is? And if we were to if we were to increase the 5,000,000, which is the responsibility of the governor and the

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: And VEPSI.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: And VEPSI and Joint fiscal committee. Joint fiscal committee. Is this something worth pursuing? With a five

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: year review also, reviewing the cap, sufficiency of the cap.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: I'll just say for my part, I know we have to talk privately, whatever the number figure is that we discuss, I would take affordable and moderate income housing out of that cap. That was part of our last best offer before we said no cap.

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: I think you need to ask what is the size of the cap, including all those projects, and actually go out with JFO and figure out how much money is then available.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Mhmm. That's what we asked for.

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: Right. But with this caveat, in order to determine, you have a specific target that is your thinking is acceptable in terms of how many units of housing CHIP will support? I think that's how you need to decide on it.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Okay. Well, that becomes purely a housing and natural resources conversation because we have areas where we have a lot more infrastructure than we have the density to take advantage of that infrastructure. So you can get a lot more units of housing for the same amount of infrastructure depending on other policy factors. True.

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: We have a number.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Okay. So that is an interesting concept because that actually goes back to the concept of TIFFs, because TIFFs function by number. They don't function by caps at the moment. We don't have a mind cap on We have a project on tests. That is an interesting proposal, and I wish Jessica was in her room. Maybe she isn't. Nope, she isn't.

[Pat (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I think it's No,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: I know. And we discussed that early on, my first meeting, I think we talked about So, because for me, I've always been puzzled why we've gone to a money Again, in looking at alignment with TIF and trying to build on the work of TIF and what exists in TIF already, why we aren't talking about numbers of projects and not

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: No, no, wanna reset that. Number of units of housing. So that is something that was never stated in what came over from the Senate.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Yeah, said housing targets.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: We used the housing targets.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: That's because you actually disregarded our housing targets. That was the number that we've all agreed to in our policies.

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: I don't believe that was an s one twenty seven when it came over.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: S127. I we that was in our first proposal to you. I think it was just in our proposal. You not remember that?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Yes. Yeah. No. We talked

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: about Thank you.

[Pat (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: You don't

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: need to excuriate me for that.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: I'm just you're are are you do you not remember? Because that's what

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: we do. We talked

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: about it. You're right. It was not. I don't believe it was in 01/27, but it was in our initial conversation. Talked about that.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: We replied by saying that we thought that was like the sky's the limit, that this is one infrastructure financing device. It is not going to build all the housing that we do. Exactly. Appreciate it. Okay. So the question that we would like to pursue with you is, is there a number?

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: A dollar figure?

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: A dollar figure that we could integrate with

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: a dollar figure that's acceptable. And or number of units.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: Yeah. Or but I think Same. Same.

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: Same. You get to that dollar number by figuring out the number of units you're trying to support.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: But I think that the question is and what we're talking about is working with that 5,000,000. Because that Additional 5. Additional 5,000,000. Because the interesting thing about that is that, we've all talked about how we don't know exactly where the education fund is going because of everything that's in play. And it puts the responsibility squarely on VEPSI, the governor, and

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: Fiscal Committee,

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: which we think is not a bad place to put it. And we wanna know if you would like to explore that or not. I would say the easiest would be a number of dollars, not a number of units because of the complexities of that.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: And we have a real economic conversation for a second about infrastructure and units of housing because we are talking about trying to help every community in the state, both rural and urban, it's in your purpose, meet their housing targets. That's not as we proposed. That's not a matter of this much infrastructure buys you only 1,000 units. Don't think Jeff Carr would have ever said that because when you excavate and put in pipes and hire the labor, you can put in the wastewater capacity, the infrastructure to support 1,000 units or support 7,500 units. You can go to a rural community and put in the infrastructure that would support three units or 30 units. So this is starting to no longer be a conversation about economic growth because infrastructure to support 7,500 units of housing a year is not a per unit cost. Can we do the economics on that?

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: It's an infrastructure.

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: So there there you go back to the number. If you're expecting chip to support 7,500 units

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: per infrastructure.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Can you Yeah. Not the units. Yeah.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: We're talking about the infrastructure. Right.

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: I understand that.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: And the infrastructure can support a range of numbers of units.

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: We know that.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: And every community It doesn't usually be different.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: What? Every community That's fascinating.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Is gonna be different. What? Every town or every community

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: So I gonna have a different need. We know that. We know that, but I don't think that complexity will assist us here. I think what will assist us here is for you to let us know it could be a substantial increase, but it's worth pursuing. Is it worth it for you?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: I believe two discussions ago, we put on the table $80,000,000 cap.

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: Never heard that. I didn't hear that. Never.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: We might have had two discussions ago in another room. That's an internal discussion. I would only discuss a number while exempting affordable and moderate.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: Yeah, know you would, but there's reasons why we think that we

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: need Well, you have a ways to and means conversation versus a lot of other people.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: But you are willing to go through to affordable. Mean, just the moderate. Affordable. Right. But moderate, weak.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: The problem that we run into is you take affordable with moderate, we think that it could really balloon and the cap would really be a cap. Right. And so it's not that we don't wanna see moderate income housing constructed and that there aren't other incentives in this bill. It's just that if we're gonna be serious about the cap, then the cap's gotta function. But we're raising with you the possibility of a larger number and we think that the vehicle for the larger number would be not just to increase it, but to put that responsibility where it should be in our mind, is the governor, Betsy, and the board. And just So we don't I don't know if you should pursue that. If we should pursue that.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: You're having someone else set a cap?

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: No. What

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: he's saying is that we keep the cap at 40. And then right now, have $5,000,000 that could be added on if we hit the cap. Increase that ability instead of that 5,000,000.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: So increase the flexibility of the cap going up by 10,000,000?

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: We haven't put a number up. A

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: number up.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: No. But we're open to a substantial number. But we would wanna know whether that's worth pursuing.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: And I'm trying not to I'm

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: not interested in overly complicating things, that's why trying to bridge a very clear gap.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: It makes much more sense with infrastructure to talk about the number of projects if you want this to work for rural and urban. So at the end of the day, I would if we can't find agreement, you don't have a purpose that you can truly stand behind, and you have 479.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: 470. Okay. I'm not talking about 479.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Okay. It's up a fraction.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: I know. So do you let us know?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: But

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: the ball's in

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: No. They have put the ball back in our court by asking us two questions, which is what's a cap that we could live for? And how much how much Additional. How much additional money would we need to add to the cap to make it flexible and work for you?

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Does that mean you're agreeing at $75.85?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: And so the the other piece is obviously $75.85. But the other question, I believe, is how and or how many units of housing are we envisioning? And I don't but you're not willing to move from a dollar cap to a project number cap.

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: I only say the number of units you're envisioning in any one year to then be able to look at is the cap sufficient to help fund the infrastructure. No.

[Pat (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I just think that might be I know you've heard numbers of 45,000, but I think that might be kinda hard to determine just based on,

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: you know, if you're rural versus It's just hard. You're right. It's hard to determine because well, it's not hard. It's just that some projects have very expensive infrastructure, and some projects have cheaper infrastructure. We can look at the range of infrastructure costs, and, you know, it's sort of 30,000 to 75,000 or 100. It depends. And when you divide the numbers out, you can't live with a number. It's just arithmetic.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: If we wanted to be serious about our targets in each community, we would say that funds like TIP would not allow the community to then depart downward in the density of the number of units that you would be able to to have in the project. So if TIF funded it at a certain number to reach housing targets and you were investing in expensive infrastructure, you wouldn't wanna invest in expensive infrastructure for very few units.

[Rep. Tom Stevens]: Yeah. Well, that's true anyway. Is is are you how would you like to do this? Do you've got to go to a dinner? What do you

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: wanna do? Well, I've dinner seems to be taken away from my responsibility Why don't we try one more gathering of the three of us, and then we'll be back, and then maybe we'll be done for the day. Let's-

[Charlie (unidentified legislator)]: you wanna meet with JFO and look at the numbers?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Yeah. Yeah. We would love to have you follow ups. Let's go down to Senate Economic Development.