Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Senator David Weeks (Clerk)]: County? I don't know.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: Actually, we,

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: you know,

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: have a new draft. No.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: They got I just bring up the

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Just the

[Senator David Weeks (Clerk)]: county in your

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I love Is there more motion?

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: It's yeah. Good. Thank you. Welcome, everybody.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: We're Hi, everybody. It's landlocked.

[Senator David Weeks (Clerk)]: It was built to

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: the Welcome, everybody. We're online. We're welcome back to the Center of Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs. Today is Wednesday, February 11, which is hard to believe. And today is a day that we pivot to economic development, and we have a a rich line of witnesses to discuss our investments in the resources that we provide our businesses. So what our objective is in met enlargement during this bill is to be both reviewing the resources we offer our businesses in all stages of development from start up, really first stage right through to mature companies. And we want to be clarifying what those resources are. And today, we're actually looking at resources that are established, that are effective, and that need more investment from us to be more effective. So we are going to I think, Rick, we have have do we we've walked through s thirty three twenty seven.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: When the committee voted it out.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. We voted it out as and so we we are gonna go through section by section. As you know, we won't do that. But today, we're going to start with section well, today, we're gonna start with section three, and we're going to be Linda Rossi is not available. She'll be coming to speak with us next week. But we're going to begin with Nicole Pilrin, who runs the Vermont Law and Graduate School's office small well, the Vermont Small Business Law Center. So, Nicole, we welcome you to the table. Come and join us. We're on page three of f three twenty seven. Sorry.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: Thought it was second after mister Kesha Ram answered Princeton Bagels. Oh, it is. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good first. Happy that

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Ziggle like bagel.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. So, yes. Anyway, we're gonna we today, we're going to to hear how you're doing, what you're doing, how we can further help you on your mission of helping Vermont businesses and And your what I'm not

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: sure if I'm able to, Chiara, if have the presentation, you're able to put it up. I don't have those in my handy and I don't want I'm to slow anything sorry, guys. Okay,

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I think it's really important.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: So, why don't you What? She'll pull it up. Why don't you make sure she's not? Sure. I'm Nicole Koloran. I'm the director of the Vermont Small Business Law Center at Vermont Law and Graduate. And what I'm here to talk about today is what we're gonna help hopefully request some money from the state, which is a nice thing to have an option to do. But what I wanna do is just give an update to the Economic Development Committee because you haven't seen me in a year.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So, yeah. No way. It's been a year. It's been a year. Boy, is it? Been a year. It has been

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: a year. What I have in my presentation, I should be able to sit over there enough to be able to, oh my gosh this is

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: yeah so sorry I heard that I

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: got it here we're good Thomas

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: can you give Kiara a notion of how we make it full screen yeah I was looking for that this is

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: if you click on this right here, Kiara, then you should see full screen mode. Oh, interesting. And then full screen mode. Thank you.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: Thank you very much. Mhmm.

[Senator David Weeks (Clerk)]: It'll

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: work. Right. Right. Tell her It to stay at is I apologize for the awkwardness, guys. What makes you in 2026 about the technological failure? So, this is what we do. We do individual educational consults. We prepaid attorney referrals. We have a network that I'll speak about. And we do public educational events that did a number of people work in one spot. Next slide please. This is an update on our numbers. We have 2024 and 2025 here. You can see we've had a growth in intakes, 20%. We have done almost half as many educational consultations. I'll explain the businesses match to be flat there. We've seen an increase in the number of educational presentations, slight drop in the number of attendees, not sure what that's about. That's what the numbers show. We expect that the numbers you see in that middle column there, that middle line, business match, will not increase unless we have additional funding. We are currently flat, unable to serve additional people without the ability to pay for attorney's fees and for administrative staff to

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: be able to process those. And what makes a company eligible to receive your services? They have to

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: have less than 20 full time employees. Right. So if we qualify them, they'd be for profits and non profits.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: We have quite a robust attorney network. We have a couple of different arms here. We've got the general practice network that the Remote Bar Association handles. That's really gonna handle most any transactional need, even the patient advice for most small businesses. We have, now thanks to the State Small Business Credit Initiative, we have a capital transaction network that we've been developing. Also a small network of employee ownership, to the extent we can find people who do that work. We have recruited a national pro bono law firm, McDermott, Wilch, Chittenden, that provides additional capacity pro bono. They take the complicated cases that we really can't find an account support. And then we have a really good pool of people in the Vermont Lawyer, the Lawyer Ecognito Program, the ELGS and VBA run. People, VBA, Vermont Bar Association, I apologize, let me spell out the patterns. This is a program that specifically takes people who want to build a solo practice, requires them to be in an area of need, either an area of practice or a geographic area of need. We help them build their solo practice for eighteen months. This builds our small firm capacity to just help our people in our communities. These are our partners that we work with in 2025, either to do work together, do presentations together. We have a wide variety of people that we're working with, one of the best partners that we've added in the last year at least we've had. Is And incredible, that Vermont Manufacturing Extension. Right. So that has been a great partnership for us to be able to access that part of the economy that's just not had the support it was before. Oh, that's interesting. The Maccats have had They have not had much access to Reuters. They are struggling to find people who have expertise in the specialized training issues, the specialty supply chain issues. We're contemplating seeing if we can help with maybe like a contract clinic for them because they kind of set specialized needs for their members, for small manufacturers. Could we go to the next one? Sorry, next one.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: Sorry.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: There we go. This is the topics that we covered in our twenty twenty five presentations. We did, I think, 70 of them. The one on the left is what we do twice a month, legal basics for startups. We cover everything that they basically need to need. Anti formation, liability contracts, intellectual property, how to hire and work with the lawyer, that's kind of tricky. You can see we've done some other specialized topics on the right there, including targeting particular industries, such as the medical aid and dying industry, and the mental health practice industry. They've coached us and asked for us to do something for a group of their businesses so we can get their

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: feet under them. And what's a made business? Medical aid and dental. Oh, MedClean. Okay. And wow, This is terrific. And just as a reminder with under 20 employees, this means companies that are really just startups. I mean, what we're gonna hear from is micro business over here. Mhmm. So from micro business on to companies that employ over 20, you are able to really help them, you know, identify what legal structure they want to form under, like, whole nine yards. It's it I'm sorry.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: No, go ahead. That's your fault.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: It goes way beyond entity formation, of course, but it's less than 20 full time employees, which really takes us from ideation to these are mid sized companies that have their feet under them that are dealing with mid stage growth issues. They're dealing with regulatory issues. They're needing to find different supply chains for their products. Need to I've got one person recently who were expecting more people to be targeted by a non compliance lawsuits. Yeah. Saying your website, I can't use it, I'm disabled, and they've got

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: a lawsuit now. This is

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: a major manufacturer in the state. So those are But it's still a small business. They have less than 24 time employees. Right.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So in that, before I go to the In that instance where you have

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: a lawsuit, you then refer them to What I tried to do was to get the pro bono offer to take them, but they did not have capacity to help with their practice or handle those sorts of claims. They all have to talk back. They often do. So they'll take pro bono full service for those cases sometimes. And if not, we found somebody who's willing to provide them with legal advice. We don't provide, we don't pay for attorney's fees. Don't pay for representation in a lawsuit, but we will pay for the legal advice for them.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And you do up to ten hours.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: Up to ten hours for each business. Right. David?

[Senator David Weeks (Clerk)]: If you can, if you can characterize. I like the fact that you're offering training. Okay. That's different from legal advice. Okay. So how would you split the bucket between training and legal advice? Like It fiftyfifty or

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: is about fiftyfifty for our program, for for our budget. We spend about half of it, on the educational program. We benefit enormously from having free labor. We have students, six to eight of them every semester, who come in and help us with these educational consults. Consults. They help us with the public presentations. We have a great workforce. We also have several very part time faculty that help us with the consultations. That's about half of our costs, and the other half goes partially to the Vermont Bar Association for their overhead so they can help us with the program and the attorney's fees. We do have a couple I wanted to mention that are on contract. We have people who can take referral just within a week, hopefully. If they have capacity, they can always turn it down, but we ask them if they have a lease review, if there's a threat of litigation, if they need to answer a complaint or something like that. We can get them to an attorney who's on contract usually within a week or two. So we would like to build up that capacity as well because that can make a difference for a small business to have legal counsel when they need it, to be able to do what they need when they need it, right? Right. Terrific. Next slide, please. You've got it already, great. So these, I'm not gonna go through these in detail, obviously, but these are opportunities for additional education, for small business owners. This is the trends that we have seen in the last year. The trends were a little bit different than the previous year. Again, I'm not gonna go through these. I can speak to any of these if you want to. I would be happy to come and speak to any of you if you want on any of these particular topics as well. Yeah. Which

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I'm just curious as we look at at business in what areas do you see growing in particular? Are more companies interested in employee ownership when they get are we hitting more land use and neighbor disputes? Where

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: do

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: you see the growth, the particular growth in need of further education? I would say we're seeing a

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: lot of professional services, people both multistate. We're we're seeing quite a few people with questions of, I have a practice in another state. How do I bring it to this state? Do I register in both states? How do I transition between those states? Do I maintain both? We have seen some targeted litigation mostly for IP infringement, claims of someone using an image without permission, or the ADA non compliance lawsuit that I was saying. Those seem to be those are not easy to tackle with legislation, but those are things that we're seeing that are troubling, because they really shut a small business down. They completely, they disabled the owner at the very least in maintenance, put a lot of anxiety into their We see commercial leases, I wanna come back to this because with the floods 2023, 2024, the biggest issue that I saw coming to me from small businesses was commercial leases that didn't have any protective terms, did not speak to the process after a flood, after a disaster. Verbal leases, my goodness, those make me nervous. But commercial leases do not have any base protections for either party. Oh. Unlike residential leases. Residential leases has the Residential Rental Agreement Act that provides at least the basics. But

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And you've have you, in those cases, been able to add elements to the contract to protect your that's

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: the hope. What we we educate them on what the appropriate clauses are gonna be, what they should look for, and then we send them to the attorney, somebody who at least has a little bit of experience working with those kinds of things, and they help them write those Great.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Any other questions on Indians? The people who might be the adverse parties in cases that you get involved in, do you find that many of them sometimes install businesses as well?

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: They are, and we have not had opportunity to have to navigate this sort of conflict situation like that with both sides coming to us for representation, but they are. They are a small business themselves. What we have done is been able to support both sides of a transaction. For example, we'll support both sides of the employee ownership, a coauthorship, or of a sale, or a family transaction. That's, it's coming from congressional money, and it's, we pay both sides of it, they represent the individuals instead of the business. When you say

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: they're both sides involved, is it both involved with the same lawyer, or is it split? Yes,

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: it's split.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: The protection, yeah. Correct, I'm sorry

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: to interrupt. Yeah, it is split between two lawyers, so there'd be two lawyers that we could cover the cost of that transaction. Great.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That's going back. Go backwards. Go forward. Okay, it's unresponsive. I

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: just wanted to help, because we're continuing to do this work. You did a lot of responsive work in 2023 and 2024 for everybody who was hit by the flood, but small businesses in particular, and we're continuing to see some people who are recovering, particularly in buyouts. They're really struggling to get through it. They're still working on closing. So I just wanted to point that out. That's a pocket of work that we do, that we would love to be able to do, especially if we continue to be hit every summer with some sort

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: of flooding. Have you taken those up to the areas that have been impacted the most severely in the last two years? Like, have you sort of taken the show on

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: the road up to the Northeast Kingdom and stuff? We have. We found a lot of need for that sort of direct in person contact immediately after the 2023 and twenty twenty four floods. We tried a few more floodplains after that. Did not have a lot of people showing up for whatever reason. They just did not come to us. End of the same places we went to. So what we're doing now is we're working through the long term recovery networks and trying to identify through them the individual families and businesses that are still working through legal issues. The Vermont Bar Association is kind enough to have small pocket money they can use to pay for attorneys fees five hours at a time. If it were a business, we can offer an additional pen. I just wanted to point out we're doing that work to do that work. Seems to be unfortunate, indeed, getting lawyers. Well, great. Gonna provide if we could. Funding status, and I'll go, actually I wanna switch back and forth between these two because I got news last night. Currently 100% federally funded. We are on a fiscal year twenty three congressionally directed spending grant that's administered by SBA that expires June 30. We are also have a small contract through Small Business Development Center for the State Small Business Credit Initiative. You can see there. And thanks to M and T Bank, they're supporting our flood response work. We got a little bit from them. And then Bridal World Development Credit Corp wanted us to help with they wanted us to help some of their particular clients, and they gave us $800 to just put into the fund and say, we'll help with attorneys. So that's what we need to do.

[Senator David Weeks (Clerk)]: So a 100% of your funding comes from the tenants?

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: Right, except if you see a little bit of evidence of the bank. Right,

[Senator David Weeks (Clerk)]: they set the bar at 20 employees? Is that their?

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: That was our choice to do 20 FTE. Could probably go up to 50 FTE,

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: I believe, set up the mission of a small business under SBA. But we have some I

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: mean, the numbers drop off, as you know, after Yeah. And then the biggest need is 20 and under.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Yeah. And how much money are we talking about?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That goes to her needs.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: Yeah, let's go to the next one if we could. So we just learned last night that our request that we submitted two years ago has been approved for $555,000 in commerce. So this would be a congressionally, that would be a congressionally directed spending grant, probably administered through SBA. To be spent at what period? To be spent, well, get to decide that. Okay, that's about a year of our budget. That is gonna support us for about a year. We could potentially make it go a little further. The other things that I'm noting here, the ones below are our attempts to raise capital that we did not succeed on. We approached a bunch of different foundations and tried some different approaches. We are on the Regional Project Priority Project List Board, Green Mountain Economic Development Corporation. We are having some conversations with Kafka Foundation to develop a national toolkit to be able to take this model and be able to export it to other states using the same pieces, Small Business Development Center, the Manufacturing Extension Centers, the law school that has an economic development clinic of some sort, we are having promising conversations to be able to build that up, expand it.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That's great that people are looking to us

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: to model that. Yeah, that's wonderful. This doesn't exist anywhere in the country. I've been to a number of different conferences. I've talked to SBA. I've talked to different people at the federal and state level. We're looking at different support mechanisms. This doesn't exist. And it's been so incredibly helpful for Vermonters. I just I wanna take it everywhere

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: in the country. Right. Just exciting. So while we're on this, so when we were developing our bill, they had their funding was ending in the in June. So we have put a placeholder in for money for the law center. And so I just want we did you know, this is new news. Very exciting news. Yeah. And so I've asked Nicole to address what additionally from state investment would help and why. So

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: I'll ask why. Yeah.

[Senator David Weeks (Clerk)]: If the feds have fully funded what you need for a year, why should the state wait a chat?

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: Totally fair question. That's the question. Part of it has to do with the fact that where we're at, we are not able to serve anymore people. So that 165 number that you saw for two years, that is the capacity of our attorney referral network. We have that little bit of relief from the pro bono firm. We're trying to find more opportunities like that, but currently, that's our capacity. That serves a fair number of people. It doesn't serve anywhere near the level need that we're seeing, And that's part of the answer.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Madam Chair?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yes, Thomas?

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Do you have any measure of unmet demand? Do you have any These are the people returning away that if we have more resources we need to serve?

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: We have currently the backlog of people that we're trying to place that we are, that we don't have the ability to place until we have additional funding. We have the requests that are coming in that we're starting to have to turn away, but again, we just learned the news last night, so we have to review things here and see where things go. What we have is the three fifty people that are requesting help, and the 165 people that can get to help, and the roughly 200 plus that were asking for a child's request. You're able to One sixty five. One sixty five for referrals. That's what the attorney method would be paid for. Beyond that, if I'm going to be able to provide any additional help, if I can place attorney, if I can place people with legal help for a quick response, if I can get them to somebody for a capital transaction, the more demand that we see, the less we're able to place people because we're maxed out in our attorney network. So I'm not trying to dodge the answer to the question. You have a good question. We have this bit we've got from Congress that carries for a year. We don't have anything for base funding beyond that, so we will continue to look for base funding. What we're hoping to do is to have a national toolkit that we can then expand into other states with public funding to keep it going. That is the current plan.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So developing the national the would be a piece of what? This What keeps us funding like pay for it. Correct. That's that's what we'd be looking for.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: Because we can't keep looking at congressionally credit funding for it. So those are one time things. And we can't keep coming to the state for one time either. If this becomes enough of a foundational support for businesses in the state, I would love to see this become part the state's budget. But right now, we have to come to you for one time requests. Right. 800,000 would get us most of the way through two years. So the way that you're addressing on the 300,000 Yes. I didn't go through that part. I apologize. No, it's okay. So this would change. We this facilitates educational pro programming. It allows us to continue the service that we have. It allows us to expand and recover more people. It also allows us the the what I'm trying to point out is that we support every aspect of the ecosystem. We can support the general assembly with testimony to the specific issues that you're working with. We can support the specific businesses as well as support even the organizations that have the legal questions that they need help on. Right? Like, for professionals of color. Like, we We answer legal questions all aspects of And the we do so through only information. If they need access to an attorney, can get them there. So I don't think that answers your question sufficiently and I apologize.

[Senator David Weeks (Clerk)]: No, my hesitation is that we get the Feds, whatever it was, half 1,000,000. Yeah. State stocks on top of that. Yeah. Next year comes around, you're used to having, you know, quite a healthy budget. Yeah. And then you're asking for that amount of money if the feds don't come back through. Yeah. Got it. And I just wanted to see what the feds offer was already satisfying your operational requirements. And he said it does. It does. And I'm listening to why the state should add on top

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: of it. Understood. My argument would be the state should add on top of it

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: if it wants service to continue and to serve more people. Well, to begin to help have some skin in the game, which we don't at the moment. Yeah. The law school has skin in the game, but not the state. And the law school isn't funding you other than providing your time. Your time is paid for by the grant. That's correct. But the law school's providing space. That's correct.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: The law school provides the space, they provide the most important benefit is the business office and accounting. They provide an essential service for us to be able to do this work. And I also teach and I participate in all of those activities at the

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: law service department. But this, so I think what I hear you saying is that state money would help you expand who you're able to serve at the moment. That's correct.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: In simple terms. In simple terms, what I would like to do is to recruit additional attorney. I have one attorney I'd like to put on a contract right now who has experience in international trade issues and in all of the issues that Vermont Manufacturing Extension Center members need help with that I can't help with right now. I'm finding little pockets of these specialized needs that if I can identify an attorney, I can get that to those businesses and target the company. Right. There's some

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: advice you're not able to give at

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: the moment

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: because you don't have the expertise. It's too specialized. It's something that Vermont just doesn't have to do. And again, can rely on pro law firm if they're

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: able to take the cases. Got it, okay. Is that beginning to get to your answer?

[Senator David Weeks (Clerk)]: We're getting there.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah, it's

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: a challenging one. Walked in here not knowing how to answer that question to be honest with you because Yeah, just was such a million

[Senator David Weeks (Clerk)]: that day. You guys seem to have an understanding of what this bar at 20 employees, what that really means. I don't really understand that that's like some magic line that you can oscillate above or below, but where the, below that is where the help is really necessary. I don't get it. Why can't a business, whether it's 15 employees or 30 employees, cover its own legal obligations or seeking legal advice?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Why can't most of the companies that come to you pay for

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: their own advice? That is a befuddling question. We have been trying to figure it out. Mostly we're seeing a lot of trust concerns. We're seeing a lot of people who go to a lawyer and are told they can pay $2,500 to start an LLC that they can do for free. And there's a breach of trust there. So we see overcharging by attorneys sometimes. We see people who do not understand that they can go to an attorney and get basic services that they don't need a specialized person. So there's a hesitation to reach out. There's the biggest problem that we see is the problem that we're trying to fill which is the educational gap. When do I actually need to talk to an attorney? Have no That's the most often question.

[Senator David Weeks (Clerk)]: I get that. Yeah. It's, again, it's training versus services. Right. Okay. And the training supports the services.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: Yeah. Go ahead.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Anything further? No. Thank you. Yeah.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: No. It's these are the questions we need to

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: be asking because, as you know, our our finances are constrained this year. They aren't not to say nothing, but they are constrained. And our appropriations committee is gonna be giving us an amount to use to allocate. We are awaiting that, but we are wanting to entertain what we consider some of the most important resources that one of the few things we can offer businesses, that we have not that many tools in our toolkit, but one of them is supporting the resources that already exist if we can help bolster their effectiveness. I think that is what we're looking at all with these you know, with these three areas. Great. Anything else, Russ? No. I just appreciate your time and thank you for the questions and We may have more, so I stay

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: on understand that we will be doing more of a full presentation later into March with some of the organizations on the bill that that's being contemplated. So if I have opportunity, I have students working right now on gathering a number of, just a number of statements that we can offer for businesses.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Before you leave us, if you give us one or two illustrations of companies that have used you and the productive outcome that has Yes.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: I have two in mind. One is called Treeline Terrains. This is a really cool company that makes three-dimensional topographic maps out of wood. They started out of Middlebury College. This is, I think, four or five years ago. We saw them right at the very beginning. They were wondering what an LLC was. They didn't know why they needed an operating agreement. They knew that they were making this cool product and they were making money off of it. We took them all the way from the beginning. We saw them when they switched to a new woodworking space twice. We had to help them review a commercial lease a couple of different times. And then we ended up helping them through State Small Business Credit Initiative when they closed on some of the business. So beginning to end, this was college students who took this really cool product, went all the way to the, from beginning to end, had the attorney support that they needed, and then eventually had the support for closing. So we can come in

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: with all parts of that. And it's now,

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: well, successful sale. Yeah. Right. So the other one that I wanna talk about, and I have permission to speak for both of these, from these businesses, is Fable Farm down in Weyer, Michigan. They have been, it was an interesting conversation. Since the 70s they got some bad advice from somebody about potential tax consequences to having multiple farms working in a cooperative status but not

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: organized Or is this as a a And they can't that one.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: Yeah. There's four different farms. They came to us and said, We might have gotten some bad advice. Could you help us understand what the law actually says and could you help us form an agricultural cooperative? So Fable Farm is in the process of forming an co op right now. And that was thanks to, again, State Small Business Credit Initiative. They were helping at that point to transition into a co op's structure, become an attorney from that capital expansion and employee ownership. So they are now consolidating. They're in terms of clients, which is great. They are in tax compliance, which is wonderful as well.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: They also have six fifty issues as I recall. I did talk to them about that. Got it. Well, it's, yeah, they're an amazing crowd.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: Any others? Two examples I can think of, Wendy McKenzie with, Everlasting Herb Farm, This is an example of where you have this really cool product and you think, Gee, there must be something that I can do for intellectual property protection, but when you have a recipe, you can't protect the recipe. So what she had was a recipe for a cool product and she came to a sedative education about trademark. We got her to an attorney to explore it, could not protect it through trademark. And that pivoted her to taking another tactic, being able to approach things differently. She eventually expanded the product, but that was the turning point for her to be able to say, okay, I'm gonna trademark, I'm not gonna protect it that way. I'm gonna build my brand another way. I'm not gonna protect this recipe. I'm gonna build it

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: a different way. She came to

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: us a couple more times to see how she could protect her IT in other ways. This is, again, this is a business who started in co ops. It's now grown to multi safe group service that was interesting to you. So, I've got a ton of them in every conversation you have with someone in an educational consultation, especially with the students there, because they just make the whole thing amazing. It's, I didn't know what I didn't know. And I'm really glad that you're helping me see what I need to know and that I have an understanding of those things so I can navigate it on my own. It's not just about getting to an attorney. It is because they're ridiculously expensive to work with. Attorneys need to be paid, but they need to probably reduce their fees. It is about providing the information that the businesses just don't have. Right. Blank spots on their mouth.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That they And not easy to find on your own out there.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: No. And if you don't wanna pay an arm and a leg for it, or you get the information that's reliable. So it sounds like some of

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: it is bad. Any other questions before we turn to our micro business? Great. Nicole, thank you so much. And thank much for having launched this. I just think this this is is I mean, you know, I'm married to a lawyer, so I I have a lawyer son. So, I mean, I always think lawyers are helpful in most cases. And and it's just such a key missing piece for our small businesses in particular to go to David, to go to your question about why 20. I think in particular, small business larger businesses can begin to afford attorneys, but they also need to be directed in the right way.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: Yeah. That seems to be the pivotal point is about that point, the revenue is sufficient to be

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: able to sustain the economy despite the costs. Yeah. Great, thank you so much. So Liz and Rosie, we welcome you up

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: We're the together. Yeah, we're gonna do it together. Okay. Hi everybody, thank you Chair Clarkson and senators for your service and for your service with the committee. Great. Thank you for inviting us to testify. So I'm gonna share my screen, I think. Yeah. You just have to ask a question and I'll I'll allow you.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay. So just to set it up, then micro business has long been supported by this committee. Micro business is where we start many of our flawless businesses, it is really a seed a seed to entrepreneurship in Vermont in in in large measure and is really I

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: don't think I need any audio or video. Right? Because it's coming through. Nope. Yeah. Everything Okay. Perfect. Right.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay. Perfect. Welcome. Yes. Thanks very much. Yes. Yourselves and take it away.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: So my name is Liz Sharp. I know I've, testified here in the past. I'm the director of community economic development and food security at Capstone Community Action, in Barrie, and this is my colleague. I'm Rutland Gray, and I am coach counselors at Capstone, and also was a twenty year micro business owner in Delano County. Gray. So, we thought we'd start out this testimony first with me giving, an overview of the financial capabilities programs that the five community action agencies around the state offer. I'm going to go into a little bit of detail about a few of them, and then I'm gonna have Rosie focus on the micro business piece, which is what you're here to, learn more about. But it's also important for you to understand how the other two programs that I'm gonna be talking about intersect, and support the micro business program. So let's see. Okay.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: I can't

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And we also have it in front of us.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: Okay, there we go. So we have, as you know, we are statewide and so we serve every county and town in Vermont. These are our executive directors at Capstone. Our most recent executive director is Alison Collberrera. She's been with us, officially since July, but was interim, so you may meet her in calls because she's at the State House a lot. Okay, thanks. So just a brief overview of our request. We're asking for lots of money, but in the grand scheme of a big state budget, I believe that this is an investment that's really worthwhile for our low and moderate income Vermonters, of which we have a lot of them. And so we are looking to support these three programs, the micro business development program. We're asking for an increase of $500,000 in base funding. We're currently just shy of 500,000 in base funding that supports not quite a full time equivalent finance I'm sorry, business coach at each one of the community action agencies. We also have our VITA program where we are requesting an overall increase in 150,000 from the base funding, which is $400,000 last year. And we did get a one time, a $148,000 last year as a one time to help us, which was super, helpful to help, grow our program. Right. And then finally, financial coaching, we are requesting, and this is this is important because financial coaching is so much part of micro business and Rosie will speak to that. We are requesting right now we get $170,000 for the five state caps, which is 34,000 per agency, which really is a very small amount. It doesn't provide any kind of full time equivalent employee. And so some of us are better than other agencies at raising funds to support that. So at Capstone, we do have full time financial coach equivalent. Again, that's Rosie and her colleague, Mary, who share the job. So they are half sort of half time micro business, half time financial coaching, and they're constantly inter intersecting with those those knowledge bases. Oops.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But the other four cap agencies.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: So CCOEO does. Both CCOEO and Capstone, we sort of take the lead. Then that is historically because we have I would almost thank Northfield Savings Bank who gave us a foundational brand for three years and really helped us build that program. That was like ten years ago or eleven years ago. And so ever since then, we've been able to leverage money to say, look, we built this program, we have this great service. The other community action agencies weren't as fortunate and have had to sort of piecemeal programs together and sort of provide part time supports. And again, you'll probably remember as well our matched savings program, which was the IDA, individual development account savings, which was very robust in its time, did support micro businesses, but we lost federal funding for that as well as state funding. And so that really just that 170,000 that you see is left over from that. So you'll see here in this little Venn diagram that these three programs really do intersect. So, I'll give an example, from the VITA program. So part of my job also is to be an advanced level income tax preparer or voluntary income tax assistance program. So I support the program by, you know, looking at people's taxes and approving them, things like that. So I had a gentleman, last year who came with this beautiful binder, very neat, organized, all of his receipts and but he really he had just started a business as a metal collector. So he would go and drive around, pick up metal, and sell it to Bulldogs. And he actually made quite a bit of money. Mean, know, brought in, $75,000 in his first year. But he hadn't really collected the information that he really needed to do his taxes. And so I realized then and there that he really needed Rosie. He'd never seen a micro business coach before. He admitted to me, I have no idea what I'm doing. I just my mom told me to keep all my receipts. Right? And so, so I I I did an extension for his taxes and I sent this over to Rosie, and Rosie got them all straightened out and and, you know, so that he, for his first year of taxes, knew what he needed to do moving forward. She still supports him, and his partner, both with financial counseling and business counseling, and that sort of, you know, intersections. Is just, it's there all the time. It's a very natural, you know, just process that we have within our agencies when we recognize that someone may need further support. And I'll also add that we refer to Nicole a lot as well, Rosie will talk about that as well. So really with micro business, especially because what we're serving are basically five or fewer employees including the owner. And I would say the vast majority are sole proprietor. So they have maybe one or two part time employees, but we're really talking about one person running the business, a sole proprietor without employees. And so we know that, you know, your personal money management and personal finances are directly correlated to how you run your business. Right? Because it's all sort of one in the same. The money you take in is the money you're using to live on. Right? And so oftentimes, and Rosie will speak to this, they'll need a foundation before they can start. Okay. So just quickly about our VITA tax program. In order to be eligible, you need to it's families or individuals, doesn't matter your family size, 69,000 or less to file. And that changes every year. It goes up by a couple thousand dollars every year. So this is

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: for individuals and or businesses? Yes.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: So, yep. And so and businesses meaning people who do schedule seats. So we can't do like, you know, really high level businesses. Like, we're not doing business taxes for, you know, a business. Yeah. Corporations. Right. And and so last year, we helped put back to the community over $5,000,000 in tax refunds and that included over $2,000,000 in tax credits like the earned income tax credit, child tax credit, and pension tax credits. And we do that at at no cost to the client. And so we run full time VITA programs. Those are what that means is during the year so my colleague Laura, who runs our program at Capstone, throughout the summer, she is filing the homestead declarations that people forgot. She is responding to people who get letters from the IRS saying, what does this mean? Or I didn't get my refund. And so she's helping that person navigate. And she's also working with the tax advocate in Vermont, and she has IRS contacts that she can reach out to. So we're really providing a service that isn't just now, which is we're in the throes of it right now, through April, but also throughout the whole year. And so currently, the treasurer's office supports us with, 400,000 in their, base budget, and we are requesting, an additional $150,000, to support this program so that we can provide it year round. Oops. Jeez. I'm not learning well.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So, I

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: thought I usually do the technical thing.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: For tax alone, you're looking at another. Yeah.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: Out of the base. So, you know, I'm not I I think it's in the base budget right now.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I tried to So we'll go through

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: that after you finish your Okay. So here's just a little example and you can see down here we did as a state four thirty one small business schedule C tax returns out of those 5,100, returns. And what you don't see here is like, because for some reason we can't track it on our software, but what you don't see here are a lot of the folks who do like the homestead declarations and the property tax adjustments. You don't see that as a correct, like how much money we're giving back to the community. We're not able to calculate that. But folks are accessing their child tax credits, additional child tax credits and earned income tax credits through us. We rely on volunteers. I mean, have so many we would not be able to do this without the volunteers, but we also need the paid staff to oversee, train and do all of the stuff throughout the year,

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: that our, taxpayers need. Well, and very important to look at that $5,300 in tax returns to families who have very low wages. Yes, exactly. So that's crucial. Yes. Getting the word out is super important

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: because you know, a lot of folks what we don't do is do tax return advances. Right? So like a place with like a Right. We don't try to say their names. Right? A place that prepares taxes, some places, will, you know, give a tax advance. We don't do that, but but the risk being not new is that some of these families may actually be getting those. Like, someone else may have claimed for them. Right? And or taken the children, and then they find out that, like, oh, you know, this child was already claimed by someone else. That, it does happen. Don't they? And it, really, those are many stories that we see are like people coming in saying, you know, they rejected because my kid is being rejected. And then you find out that someone else went to get off So, the well, lot of it, we work with single moms, single parents, grandparents who may be claiming children. So for our financial coaching, and this is, I'm gonna have Rosie take over from here. We are requesting an additional 500,000 in order to really make this a full time position. So Rosie, I'll let you take over from here and talk about your work as a financial coach. Yeah. And the work, great work that the state is doing. Yeah, absolutely.

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: So, I was privileged, I'll just give you a little bit of a backstory. In 2002, did not need to start a business. I had it totally by accident. I was fortunate that I had that brand in my account. So the money piece was very important for me to be

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: able to track and whatnot.

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: It And ties directly into, obviously, our micro business, because understanding our money is the foundation when you when you want to start small business. You've gotta know what's coming in and what's going out. Our financial coaching program is, I feel like it's very robust. We help so many people with navigating, not only just their spending thing for them, their credit, especially if they are a small business owner and they're looking to take that business loan out, they need to know that their credit looks well. So they do really tie ball in it together. We we work directly with our housing program. So, as people who are either in a home, maybe in a homeless position, or they are transitioning from housing to housing, we work directly with them to, again, make sure that what their credit score looks like is satisfied so that they can get into housing. And educate. So this morning, I normally would be teaching a micro business class this morning.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank you for coming.

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: From nine to eleven, yes, but I'm here speaking to you wonderful people. And we have a very robust class that we, a series of classes that we teach throughout the majority of the year,

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: from September to May. Are they prerequisites for your additional work?

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: They're not necessarily prerequisites, but all of our financial, sorry, all of our micro business people who come through, we highly recommend, highly recommend that you come to these. They get about a year's worth of education, by coming to twelve hours plus. Right.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: So we keep improving that. Yeah.

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: Also, I just wanna say that a year ago, two years ago, we received funding from the Department of Financial Regulation, that was CEOEL Capstone in order to do our financial coaching. And at that point too, we had a focus on financial fraud education and that we have applied for another grant for that. I I don't know if we're gonna get it because we've gotten it before. But but that's also a piece that we address with folks who have been victims of financial fraud or who are at risk of being a a victim of financial fraud. Oops. Here we go.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: Just press and roll the button. About fifteen minutes.

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: Okay. Yep. And here's just some data. Right. And then, Rosie, why don't go into the micro business? Yeah, so we, obviously, we helped a group of over the years with our micro business program. Even last year alone, throughout all of the community actions, we held 77 bonuses. When we say small businesses, these are really the smallest of the businesses. Some of them have started LLCs, and I'll touch up with Nicole. A lot of people think that they've gotta pay that 3 to $500 to get registered. I sit down with them. We do that together. If they have questions, I send them over

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: to Nicole. So when

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: you say 77 businesses, that's just you. That's not all five. No.

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: So we yeah. So that's all five started. Right? So we worked with 600 Vermonters, but only seven seven of them actually started a business. Yeah. And the 35 of them had some sort of business expansion, and we have about 544,000 access capital, and then another equivalent of 52 full time jobs were created, which doesn't sound like it's a lot, but keep in mind, a lot of people who are starting small businesses, this is like a supplemental to their existing W2 job that they have. Right? Like, times are tough for a lot of people, so they what what else can I do to you know, and a lot of people think, I'm gonna start a small business? And I'll also just add here, you were asking about the, you know, what is this magic number between 20? I think part of it is data, but also it is it it's to show that, you know, in Vermont, are 15,000 businesses that have under 20 employees, which is a significant amount of a significant amount of businesses.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I think it's like 80 or 90% of our Yeah. Right. A lot fewer.

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: Small world. I think Vermont actually has more small businesses than than most states. In fact, it says here Vermont ranks I I learned this, from the census, that Vermont ranks number five in the country for the greatest per capita rate of sole proprietors. So someone who's just, you know, had like Rosie who had her own business was just herself running a sports therapy business, no employees, there's 10 of those for every 100 people, which is a lot. And so I think Florida has like 11 or 12, and so we are number five in the country that has, you know, sole proprietor. And, you know, why is that? You know, part of it may be that there's you know, we're we're go getters, and there's not a huge amount of industry here. Right? And we live here because we like the state, and, you know, we like

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Maybe because they actually need money.

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: And they need money. And

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: they need to create another business.

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: Right. And most of our

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And also be Right. Because we're also a state of entrepreneurs. I mean Exactly. Farmers every farmer was an entrepreneur. Exactly. Product.

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: Oops. I'm get that. Yeah. So we have

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: a tradition, I would say, of entrepreneurship. And we sadly have a tradition of yeah.

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: Needing more to survive. Yeah, so partnerships that we have.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Oh, yes.

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: So some of our resources and our partnerships that we have, like DTLAW, one of the classes that I teach, we always talk about the need and when you need to seek out, and I always refer people to Nicole. We do work quite closely with other state agencies, HigherAbility, ICANN, Bay Bar, they consistently seek out community action as the go to. We are the resource they're looking for because they know that they feel that we are the expert in this field. And I just, I,

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: it didn't From the ground up starting. Ground up So just remind everybody, hireAbility is the partnership with UI and Voc Rehab.

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: Yeah, for disabled. And for disabled. Exactly, for disabled Vermonters, low income Vermonters, and they have to have that qualifier in order to get into their program.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right, and the other two that you mentioned. Referrals to you?

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: So ICANN is a program for people who, again, are disabled. Usually they have to go through hireability in order to access ICANN, and these are people who are on typically SSDI who want to either establish employment or start a small business. They then refer them to Capstone as the foundation for this is who you need to work with to set your money and how this business is gonna get off the ground. And it's tied to SNAP. Right. Three squares. But read that, short of a long time, I think there's a good text of it. Yeah, so this particular client was referred to me from ICANN. SSDI had gone through hireability and was looking at self employment. She writes, I'm writing into expressing sincere gratitude for the silver heart I received from Rosie Gray, and the financial coaching services offered to Capstone. Had the privilege of attending a micro business class, instructed by Rosie, so that's where we initially met, where she also provided individual financial coaching. As someone who has recently struggled with finances following a traumatic brain injury, I found the prospect of restructuring the business side of my business to be terrifying. My work with Rosie has brought me to a place of structure and confidence. Rosie helped me reevaluate my financial struggles and gain confidence in handling my own administrative tasks. She demonstrated unwearied belief in my ability to succeed. The coaching has provided me with the essential tools and accountability that were missing in my life, allowing me to be a member

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: of my affairs successfully. Rosie is

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: a professional who brings positive, productive energy to every session, offering creativity and inspiring solutions. Just as a unique ability to see the best in people, and deeply kind of supporting those facing the challenges. My success today is due to her support, her program, and her willingness to educate me. So what I will say is that when this person was referred to me, they did not, as in the agency that we're referring, did not look at this person's personal finances. Once we started going down that road, we were able to deem that this is

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: not a good time for you

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: to start a small business, right? So that's the hard stuff that we also work with people is that while it sounds like it's a good idea right now to start for some people, it's like, you have this much funds coming in, and not gonna So they're gonna

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: compromise all the other things you wanna do.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: And so

[Rosie Gray (Coach/Counselor, Capstone Community Action)]: when we do our class on cash flow, the first piece of that is we do their personal finances first. Because you have to see, like, that's the foundation. You have to have to see, will this small business support my, the business and my personal life? And then you use that as a strategy. Is it time for me to give up that W-two job? Right? And then we talk about social security and did you work your ten years and credits and all that good stuff. So it's bigger than just micro business. Like they all just go hand in hand together. And this last slide is just an example of that it takes years, right? Like this isn't a one and done. Oftentimes folks work with our coaches for years. And this just little story here shows how this person received a $50,000 community loan fund, 10,000 from hire ability, and went from, you know, doing one or two little sales at a, you know, at a concession stand and now is a regular with four part time employees, you know, a year and a half later. And, you know, they attest that, you know, they they really, give credit to their business coach for helping them understand all the steps it takes to get from, I like to cook and I want to sell my food to, I'm actually at the at the stand doing it and I have four part time employees. And do I need to play meals fast?

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: Right. Do need to pick a state of Vermont meals fast? Right. So Right. And so this is a really crucial and again, you know, we are asking to support this micro business program, you know, by also including the financial counseling component in it. Because I think the model that Capstone has as well as NECA up in the Northeast Kingdom is to really combine that, have that financial counseling as a foundational base for the micro business coaches. Because you could be a business owner and come in and think, oh, I know how to coach. But if you really don't understand the people that we're serving, which are the low and moderate income Vermonters and the benefits systems and all the things that come with this package of this person, we really need to have that financial coaching component. And you know, it really is, you know, we're paying our staff a living wage, but you know, most of our staff are not making more than $5,556,000 dollars a year. So this money really is going to employ and educate the staff so that they can provide a service to many Vermonters who benefit from it.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Many, any questions? Want to get struck by a couple of really significant increases that you're requesting for Financial this coaching going from 170,000 to 670,000.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: Microbusiness is $4.93 to $9.90.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Right. $4.93 to $9.93. That's a huge They

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: are big increases. We we start big. I mean, we we, you know, we we we ask for what we think we can do, knowing that we know that this is a year of austerity. And I think that if you were to say to me, Liz, what is your dream? Like, what would you like the most of? I really believe that what we as a whole network, and I've talked with all of my counterparts, we would really benefit from the financial coaching piece to support the micro business because that really is so much of of what we do and and to have our model of training. So every agency has a accredited financial counselor through what's called the AFCPE to really get those people trained up in that, in personal finance so that they can better support our micro business program so that we really are a bundle of financial capability.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So at the moment in the governor's budget, there is allocate to the Department of Children and Families to distribute to this program, 594,000.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: The micro business? I've heard to that's

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: what it's specific.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: Yeah. I saw in your bill that 594,000, and that was a little unclear to me what that money is because historically, we've gotten this the $1.70 that just sort of gives this hanging chad of money.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So that may be your total budget. That might be if you

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: add that, but no, because the $4.93 is, what we get for micro business and we've gotten that for the last Right, couple of

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: so I believe, so we will clarify that. Okay. But whatever is in the governor's budget for micro business, you would want us to be considering the difference between your ass of $9.93 and whatever is in the governor's budget. Yes. So I believe I'm pretty sure it's $5.94. We can double check.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: We And have what we'd really like to do is is use that money for, again, the finance I and I and I wanna be clear about this because, you know, the the micro business coaches, I don't know that at this very moment we're gonna double the capacity of the micro business, but rather have that support of the financial coaching to support the the micro business so that the programs are continue to be whole. Because right now they're not whole at all of the agencies. And it's primarily because we don't have the money for financial financial co pay.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Are there the number of micro businesses to be able to support? Is there any evidence, for example, that you have a customer base that this would demand to such huge increase?

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: Well, I mean, I would say that there are that number

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I voted 60,000 sole entrepreneurs and we serve 600 or you know,

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: so I believe there is. I think one of our, issues as well, for example, in NEFA, their territory is so wide, right? It's a big territory, but there's few people, right? And so getting to those folks when you have an office only in Saint John's area, for example, you're not necessarily reaching the other areas of the state like you could be. So do I believe that there are? There is a group, and their aging population, they have a greater age of 60 and above, in the metro area. And I will tell you that since last March, we started doing online intakes for people who want test services with us, whether it's classes or one on ones, and I have had a 154 people who have been made. One person in the last year. That's a lot of people to work with for one micro business coach. Wow. Yeah. It's not I mean, you can't really and I know that CDOEO has a wait list. I know CDOEO definitely could use an additional in Chittenden County because their their base is they they definitely have a huge number of people that are are on a wait list. Yes. So even if we had one so right now we have five coaches. If we had one extra one, that would be certainly very helpful, especially if that person could be because I know Rosie does a lot of online stuff, like, so she's working, you know, online with hosts. And and so having someone, a sixth person, think would be interesting. Okay. We're just going big. Okay. Before we turn

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: to wait. Wait. Rick's got just an update just to remind us because we've heard from joint fiscal on

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: this. Okay.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I just wanted to remind us what is real. Thank you.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: So, Rich Sable, office of Windsor Council. I'm not a JFO. I'm not a bunch of person, but I do see the governor's recommended budget that $493,339 was, I don't wanna use more year marks, seems to be allocated more specifically for the micro business development program through the Office of Economic Opportunity. Right.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank you. Yeah. And what we did was we added another 100 Okay. Thousand to Correct.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: Alright. And not including this 170 because I did see the 170 in that budget as well.

[Rick Sabel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The $1.73 300? Equal development accounts. Is that Yes.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: For for financial services.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: For financial yeah. $17,300. It says ID is still on that.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yes. Yes. Okay. So the $4.93, let's say, is the base that is included Yes. In the base budget. Yeah, Amy, Amy have a phone? If it's okay to talk, Madam Chair. Introduce yourself.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: Yeah, Amy Schollenberger. I represent VCAP, the Vermont Community Assistance Partnership, actually partnership, sorry. Just wanted to know for Senator Brock, this is not a new request. The CAP agencies have been asking for this increase for a while. Also, just to note, it's important to note that each CAP agency needs to add capacity, is, I think, what Liz was just clarifying.

[Amy Schollenberger (Advocate for Vermont Community Action Partnership)]: So whatever you decide to support, it needs to be enough for all CAPs to add capacity in this program. Right.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: We have to think in multiples of five. It's like, oh, is this Right. I know. Yeah. Right. So I think the the amount we have in here was had a a $100,000 increase to the governor's budget. And we will discuss. Yeah. Now that we're clear on they're saying that we'll have for the individual programs. Because you have micro business here. You rolled out micro business and

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: In the finance. Yes. It's a the financial coaching is a sort of a you know, it's like we used the bedfellows for financial coaching. Right? Because it really is. I mean, hits housing, it hits businesses, you know, it hits Just there's a lot of things around financial coaching where you could say, where do we get this moving?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you for And please reach out if you have any other questions.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: It's such an important resource for our particularly low and moderate income providers. So many great businesses have come out of this. Just quickly, things like well, we'll always talk about Switchback, but there are other wonderful service industries, service businesses, and businesses in our community we all rely on.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: Yes. So we all rely on.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Exactly. Yeah. That have come out of this.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: Great. Thank you so much. Thank you.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And more to all, Wee Wee, why don't you come and join us for our last twenty five minutes?

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: Morning. For the record, my name is Wee Wee Wee Wee, sheher pronouns. I'm SOHO Executive Director of the Ram Horseshes Color Network. Thank you so much for having me here today. You're welcome. It's great. And I do have, I've joined the Zoom in order to share my screen. Today, I'm really here to make a request from the debate we added.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I will I just will preface this by saying we have not included Wei Wei in our initial draft because we had assumed and incorrectly that Wei Wei's was at least in the base budget was included in the base budget, the governor's budget. And what I found out shortly after that meeting was, no. It's not. And so we're gonna hear from Wee Wee then why

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: and what what she needs. Yeah. Absolutely. So just to clarify that point, VTPOC is under a grant, a competitive grant with Big Vermont. They have the growth relocation program. That program is to support relocation of folks from outside of Vermont to Vermont, finding jobs, finding communities to live in. So BTP OC has been part of that with the last two years, and we were able to get another ten year grant from them for the amount of $60,000 So that is where the $60,000 comes from. And I have an email from Commissioner Pelham if that's of interest to state that it is a competitive grant, not a base funding operation. What are asking for today is with consideration to all

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: of

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: the financial concerns to be included in the bill for $75,000 for FY37 as a base appropriation. I'm going to share my screen. I wanted to just share because that did come up.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: I wanted to share this because we did present this last year to the as well as to House of Commerce, that there are a lot, about 30,000 Vermont firms or businesses, and about 93 of them are actually under 20 employees. So that's why the small business component of what we have all been talking about is really important. So I just wanted to bring that up to set that foundation. In terms of what VTPOC is doing, so over the last, to set the ground a little bit, and we do have my written testimony in front of you as well, we received back in 2023, dollars 250,000 appropriation in a contract through DE. That was spread over two peers, so effectively $125,000

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: a year.

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: With that work, we were able to, if you actually put my testimony in front view, because this goes into some more detail, We connect, so this is our outreach capacity across the state and also outside of the state. So we have a broad reach, and this is from October '5, so these numbers have actually decreased since then. Our reach is broad. It is to the BIPOC community as well as beyond. We have white employers employers of all stripes within our network. So we share information across the state and the different issues, including what is coming out of the state. We did a lot of work, for example, with the Secretary of State's office in terms of getting people out to vote. But also work with the Treasurer's office to make sure that folks know about the new, gosh, what is that called? I'm part of it. The savings plan. Oh, Vermont saves. Vermont saves. Absolutely. Wow. Well yay, that was great. Yeah, so we're part

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: of it.

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: Great, terrific. So these are some of the things that we do, including working with, for example, BDCC. They have that wide employment pathfinder program. We work with organizations.

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: Think we're designed on some of the acronyms, that's Rattleboro. Rattleboro Developer Thank Credit

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: you for asking me on that.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: No, no, it took me all.

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: Yeah. And so our presence, in terms of our social and in person presence has extended pretty broadly to all counties with, I'm so sorry to say, not yet Grand Isle, but we are working on that. And our numbers are growing effectively in a warrant to access to Caledonia Counties. We were able to supplement a USDA grant in the last year that ended this past year to support outreach in that area. So ACCD funding supported that as well as with the USDA contract or grant. And that was in partnership with Discover St. Johnsbury. So in terms of another piece of what we do is networking events for both professionals and the workforce for businesses and professionals. You can see that our events have actually grown over the last few years. We started off in 2024 with 24 networking events. We expanded that to 36. Right now we have 52 scheduled for this fiscal year. Our fiscal year runs from October to September. So we have 52 scheduled, but we still have our final quarter to actually schedule events. These are focused on making sure that professionals are connecting to employers, businesses are connecting to each other. Some of the things that we've heard, especially in the Northeast Kingdom, is in having these connections, they're better able to support each other and to, for example, metering company gets connected to a construction company, hopefully we'll be able to build out of this space, things of that nature. As well as outreach, so we've increased our outreach capacity as a result of state funding. What does that mean? It means partnering with other organizations, being present at conferences to make sure that people know about our services, as well as speaking about the importance of expanding workforce, attracting workforce, from out of state. I want that important. We've had to reduce our education events a little bit. So one of the educational workshops that we have been producing is with Nicole Florin around legal issues for specifically. So a lot of those workshop topics that she listed there were including BT POC workshops. And what, federal funding means you've had to restrict your number of education programs? Well, it's because we increased our business technical assistance. Okay.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So it's it's not because you've lost support from the feds? Because my guess is there might if there was, I know you have a money. Yeah, no,

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: there was no federal money for that. So this contract was fairly bad. But we increased our business technical assistance clinics last year because we wanted to be physically present in the various communities, especially since we are primarily based in Chittenden County, we wanted to have a presence in other parts of the state to make sure that we were supporting businesses where they're at. And that's

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: what you've been working to grow. Yes, exactly.

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: Another piece of what we do is supporting business owners, employers, and also professionals. We produce educational videos. These are on demand videos on financial literacy topics, on legal topics. We share those as well, as well as other topics that come up as requests through our business technical assistance direct service meetings. We also have built 89 or more ongoing and insistent partnerships with nonprofits, state agencies and departments and businesses. So these are relationships where we are building more. An example is, I've been meeting with Hireability. Something that they're doing is looking at building out their mid and advanced career supports for professionals to find new jobs. That's actually something that was mentioned to Senator Weeks. We are also experiencing a higher demand for support as people are hitting that mid advanced career stage, but there are no other supports. So we are taking that in house. And so that is something to be aware of as we continue because there aren't as many opportunities for support there.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And some of these return shifts, people returning to the workforce after COVID or are these?

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: They've been working. Have been working. I mean, our clients, that's what I can say. And I have a few other statements around that, just some federal job cuts as well.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Oh yeah, lot of

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: are just running. Yeah, all of us. People who are just looking to figure out what is their next step as well. For example, we had Doctor. Bruce. Yeah, absolutely. One client who is in education and had planned on staying within the school systems, but ultimately we supported to look at other opportunities that were available in the state and ended up at a non profit end. I believe that they successfully got the position and also had a $12,000 bank loan, which is nice for them as well as a tax base. These are some of the partnerships that we've had just from 2025 alone. This is not all inclusive, but we've worked with, for example, the school as well as CBOEO and the various community action programs. Where I really wanna focus our conversation today is also around our business and workforce development support. You'll see in this graph the number of people that we've supported critical cases across the May 23 to about January 26 period. You'll note that the flood recovery timeline, there was a lot more clients during that time. So we served up until February, April, a total of 72 clients through the flood recovery in addition to some

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: of the other clients that we had. So there's a lot of clients. And if we could just pause there, especially for those of us who were on this committee for that time period, you already existing was really important for when that event happened. Right? Like, people were need knew to reach out to you. You had to ramp up, but you were there. And that's really important to remember because this will happen. Yeah, exactly.

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: And we're consistently still taking on new business clients. So I would say on average about 10 clients per month. But you'll also see the trend in the workforce that I was mentioning. So, we are seeing an upward trend in terms of workforce requests and that's what I'm talking about, terms of mid career, advanced and career individuals seeking support from us because they don't have anywhere else at all. So we are making connections with employers across the state because we have developed these relationships. We're also bringing action with them to programs like the Capstone programs to CDOEO, to other organizations where they can also receive support because it is really hard. I think something that Nicole was talking about and in terms of why do people look for legal support from small business law center, it's because they don't know where to go. We are a user of their services because it is so hard to find a lawyer who can offer that support. When we're thinking about nonprofits across the state, there are 6,000 nonprofits supporting our community. And it's very hard as an individual to go online and say, this is the right program that's gonna serve us. We as an organization, we are doing that work community, on behalf of professionals and businesses and employers to say, Hey, you live in this area, you have this concern that you have, let me connect you to the right individuals, these trusted individuals that will take you by the hand to make sure that you're successful. Like the voice here,

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I suppose, like the whole,

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: the SCDC. So we have become that trusted source of information, not just for the BIPOC community, but also for all employer, or many employers across the city. They'll come to us, what should we do in terms of workforce recruitment and retention? These are things that we are starting to see. We are receiving questions around, how do I purchase this business? How do I succeed as a business owner? To make this happen, I turned them to Nicole at that point so that they can get their free, ten free hours of legal consult. So, this is what we have been doing. Again, we're seeing on average 10 business owners per month, on average, 10 to 12 workforce clients as well. And something I would like to note is that, I did the calculations, and on average, it costs the state about $101.24 for each business client that we serve and we offer five to ten hours of free service. And I'd like to share a story of a business owner named Mayes Vargas. I've gotten permission to share the story. Mayes came to us because he's an artist and business owner. And he initially wanted to figure out a way to fund his studio album that he wanted to put out. And as we were talking, we ended up working on what we called the Latin Connection Festival. This was a festival that I connected Mais to, this idea of bringing together Latin music, artists, vendors together in a space to celebrate Latino culture, especially in the city of Burlington, because he said he's on a a WhatsApp group that has, like, 3,000 individuals, something like that. It's a lurk room. I'm I'm not the exact person. But it's a very large number, and I was very surprised. I know our ACA group is like a 100 people and stuff. We gotta get all that. There was, it was a large number and ultimately I connected him to the city of Burlington and to the ACA and they partnered together to build the Latin Connection Festival on an existing program at the city of Burlington called the Twilight Black Party. So this was held last September, September 20. It had the largest audience of the Twilight Black Party programming. Serious. Serious, thank you. It brought together eight Latino music groups from Vermont from the Burlington area, as well as vendors and artists. So, think there were four or five food vendors, as well as a number of Latino artists who marketed there. In total, he raised $12,000 to support that event, of which VTPOC was directly involved in 7,000 of that funding. So that's just one example of the work that we're doing and we're doing it at the cost of say of about $100 support that. Client. Yeah, per client.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And give us a notion of your total budget is what? You're asking us for 75

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: a Yeah, our total budget on an annual basis is about $650,000 In the past, so what I had mentioned, 125,000 came from the state as a contract to support this work. We understand that it's a tight financial year for the state this year. So where we really start to look is, what do we really need to offer? So the $75,000 we're asking for would really be covering a lot of that direct business and professional workforce assistance, making sure that people have their needs met, businesses, employers, professionals. We will have to reduce some of the other activities that we've been doing. For example, some of our we might have to reduce our educational workshops. We might have to also reduce some of our partnership opportunities because a lot of those activities, they're not we're not able to get funded otherwise. The state has been really helpful so that we can continue the partnerships. One of them being Lunch With Lenders that we partner with CEO Yowon. This is where we get start up businesses to come into a space that feels comfortable to them in the past years in Winooski High School or somewhere in Wooski. And we invite financial institutions. So traditional lenders, credit unions, VIDA, Vermont Community Loan Fund, and we all come together and learn about what the different lending options are based on what the individual business needs. So this has been really successful, attracting 75 small business owners almost every single year. This year, had to be remote, so it was a little bit more limited. But we still successfully finished that this past Saturday, actually. So those are some of the partnerships that we might not have the capacity to actually support with this reduced mask, but where we think it's really peripheral is that of grant assistance, making sure that people get access to existing resources that we're not trying

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: to grow up to. Great. Perfect. Any additional questions for one?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Terrific. What do you, the the I think given that number of us in this committee don't live in Chittenden County. I know three of you were there. What in particular do you see as some of the barriers to our really helping our BioBloc community in surrounding areas to really to better access the resources that do exist statewide for all business startups? And and I assume you're obviously you're forecasting your outreach is loaded in large measures. But I think that we we appreciate the sort of understanding that landscape a little bit more fully because there are some barriers that maybe none of us are aware.

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: Absolutely. I think outreach is a huge part of that. I think of access in six different ways. Availability of a resource, awareness of a resource, affordability of a resource, physical accessibility of a resource, whether the resource accommodates the individual, and acceptability of the resource by the individual, so that that person trusts it. Where we are stuck in Vermont in terms of accessibility is awareness. People are not aware of the resources that are available. That's why we do a lot with the state to make sure that people know about weekly saves, about a high voter age, about hire ability as an example, because these are not resources that people think to look to immediately when they come up with a problem. Know, folks don't think about VSAT as a place to to support their educational needs. So these are the things that we are doing to make sure it gets out there. And to your point, whether it's in Chittenden County, to be honest, or beyond, it is accessibility of information, and people are not necessarily turning to the front porch warm ups or going downtown to look on the bulletin boards. There are communication channels that we have access to and that we are placing ourselves in so that these individuals can find out about it. A lot of it has to do with physically being present. Our Northeast Kim Gum business meetups have been really successful. They've attracted thirty, thirty five business partners every single time we go there. There is a desire to be physically present and to learn about these resources in person. So those are the types of things we're doing. What I find a lot of organizations do is they sit back and they say, Okay, well, I got the information out there because I put it on social media and I put it on a newsletter. The newsletters are not getting to the individuals. So we are physically going to these spaces to make sure that people are getting the information that they need, especially within rural areas, people have that deep desire to feel connected to

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: each other. I think that there's the individual meeting one on one or, you know, just even educational, but all these outreach pieces in person really enable one to build trust in a way that just an online or social media outreach just doesn't cut the mustard. Absolutely. Trust is a huge part of it and that's that acceptance. But you mentioned that early Building trust in a community that may not trust everything that's offered to them.

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: Exactly. And that's where we are well positioned. Do, to a certain extent, hold people's hands through different processes because it's hard to trust. When you're the only person in the room and you haven't been in that space before, it doesn't matter who you are, it is hard to know are the moves that I need to make in order to be successful here. So we try to break down those barriers for our

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: folks. Right. For our clients. Anything

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: else?

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, this just reminds me that it would be it would also be great to hear from Meg Smith and is it Nikki Kent? Cole Kent at They're Red they started a venture capital firm at Vermont, Meg

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: Smith of The women's fund.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Support women business owners with women lenders. And they don't do it from a sort of deficit place similarly to VTPOC. They have a great slide deck that is essentially highlighting that millennial women are now going to be the inheritors of a lot of generational wealth. And a lot of decisions are gonna be made about where women and people of color invest and spend money. And unless we're on the front edge of that, we just actually stand to lose out. I mean, is our demographic investment challenge. This is resource challenge. This is like a very worthwhile $75,000. I think you deserve more.

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: I think it's very noble to sort of

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: limit the ask, but I hope people we haven't looked at demographic sites just this session to look at how, you know, 10% of our school population are kids of color versus 3% of our senior population. Like, unless we are speaking to their needs and creating community, we very much stand to lose talented people to other states. So this is just really critical work, and

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: it would be good to hear from from Meg and and Nikki

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: just to underscore that this isn't because no money here or talent here or or drive It's because it's just gonna go elsewhere. Exactly.

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: Just on that last point, in our survey in 2024, we had six eighty five respondents. And I would say, think 50 or 60% of them had higher ed degrees, bachelor's or higher professional degrees. So we have a wealth of talent in the community, and we're finding them here because they do wanna be here. That's what was stated.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: We don't wanna lose them if they are here either.

[Weiwei Wang (Executive Director, Vermont Professionals of Color Network)]: Exactly, exactly. We want to retain them. Well, thank you. Thank you so much.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: This was a terrific start. Just ask a

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: question also. Sorry. And that is, are, we've heard a number of things today about either specialized groups or groups in certain economic category in which there are individuals using rifles to hit that particular target for economic development, for personal development, or retention for attraction, and so on, does that suggest also that the state as a whole is failing to do some of the things that it should be doing to cast as wide a debt as possible?

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: I think the state is doing the best that it can't. There's so much that the state is doing, and that's where I do think that nonprofits like us and the others who have spoken today, that's where we're here to support that.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Well, one of the questions, the basic questions that I hear is common denominator is people don't know where to go to get something. Yeah. And the question is, shouldn't we have, on a statewide basis, a big book that has everything in it just Well, before you

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: go to get I've

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: got phone books. Well,

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: beyond the book, what I'm

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: saying is that we have all kinds of people and groups and segments who say, I need these things. Well, they're the same things that other people, that other segments need. The question is, do we have a book, a method, something so that everything isn't individual that you've got to figure out, well, you want economic development, you want to know how to

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: get somebody to help you

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: with your taxes, nobody knows where to go. So that takes us to sections seven and eight in our bill, which identifies the state you know, what resources you need at one stage into that.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, and and we'll never and we'll never do what everyone will ever about uniform meet. Right? Like, I I helped our US senators, you know, son with an Indian wedding in Vermont because there's nowhere to go online to say, like, how do you put together an Indian wedding in Vermont? I mean, that these are very specific needs that you need

[Nicole Killoran (Director, Vermont Small Business Law Center, Vermont Law and Graduate School)]: We were trying

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: make you use an advanced form.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, no. This is

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I wish. You know?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But Oh, illegal half form.

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: And I have no read the

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Indian community in that way. It's like I

[Liz Sharp (Director of Community Economic Development & Food Security, Capstone Community Action)]: think on that note,

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: we're gonna go offline, take our lunch, and be back at quarter of eleven. Randy, I think that that is exactly why we're

[Senator David Weeks (Clerk)]: ask