Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Yeah. And I think

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: we are live. Are live. The mini and the stickers.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: We'll get

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: our people on Saturday.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Thank you. We are going on You're gonna hear the first ticker. Veggie. Thanks. Another favorite. So this is the first that Bill has gotten. We're gonna walk through them rather quickly and then we will be able to decide which ones we wanna take up and which ones we will have time to take up because I think it's fair to say any education tax financing bill is going to start the other body. It's a revenue bill. Health insurance is ours. I don't think we have gotten any bills on that yet. I don't even know if there are any bills out there. But if we can find a solution, I think we could probably get permission from Gulick to do it in the last day of session. But we are gonna have to look at that. Tomorrow we have a national expert that's we did one of these He's going to talk to us about the fiscal impact of recent federal decisions, and since he's here, we're gonna get him in. We had to join a meeting the other day but the other big crisis, plus Washington is still playing with extensions, but once they get their act together very quickly, we're gonna have problems with that too. So and that obviously feeds into the education funding issue. So now let's go to s two twenty five. It's Sandy Brock. This is your bill. Do you wanna say a couple words about what it is?

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: 225, that's the one we were discussing on the

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It's Betty.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Sunset. Or if you don't get sunset there. This is is a is a very simple bill. It's the latest to dealing with the sunset we have on district's new life. This is something that or it's really the growth incentive that we're talking about in this particular bill. And this is something that, you know, we've kind of come back to us over and over and over again. We spend an inordinate amount of time sunsetting it every three years and going back over the same thing. And it's it seems that, I think, many that look. This is something that's really part of our our landscape, and it's it we we spend a lot of time dealing with sunsetting things like this over and over and over again. And I think that we largely have enough experience with this that it's just simply no longer necessary.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Doctor John's like, this went through economic development. Right? Mhmm. Last year two years ago when I was down there, and I've got another one for another thing where we keep putting sunsets on it, and the question is Great.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Yeah. There's some things that we sunset because we wanna go back and we wanna look at it again because there's a degree of uncertainty or what have you, but, boy, we don't have a lot of time. And to keep doing things over and over and over and over again, mean, there's just a place at this stage for that particular legislation was probably not necessarily So

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I assume that didn't make it all the way through the process the last Think

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: of the money we'll save.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. So Rick.

[Rick (Legislative Counsel)]: Hi. Rick's saying, well, I'm always the consent calendar. Good to be back. It's been a fine. Thanks for having me back.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Get here a lot.

[Rick (Legislative Counsel)]: This is a complicated bill.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Let me put you something. I know

[Rick (Legislative Counsel)]: you gotta do with these education bills. That's nothing compared to anything. So s two twenty five is literally one page, and there's not many bills that I can get on one page, and that's even including all the lead in language, which I'm gonna talk I actually talk about here in a second because the actual bill is very simple. It repeals session law from ten years ago in 2016 that initially set the sunset, which I believe was 01/01/2021. That was the initial sunset. So it was given kind of a four or five year initial window. So and that's that's the bill. But I do wanna give a little bit of history if I can, madam chair, because I I wasn't here in 2016. So I was gonna be curious, you know, why what happened? Because veggie is not that young. It's been around for a little bit. So I went back to the act that actually created this initial sunset. So this is Act one fifty seven in 2016. It's a 143 page economic development bill that David Halt did, and

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: I don't know how he did this, probably

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: wanna leave by I

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: remember Hinder Miller came up with a veggie name.

[Rick (Legislative Counsel)]: So I the the bill includes a lot things not relevant here, but it does show how the original veggie was repealed. There was it was overhauled in 2016. I don't know much about that original veggie program. Obviously, there were concerns the way it was being run or how it was being the the bottle that that is now set forth. So that veggie was repealed, and this new veggie that we currently have today was set in statute, set to repeal 01/01/2021. I also noticed in this act, were some workforces, a couple of reviews. This one, h 13, Pepsi, which oversees Veggie, you know, was set to review certain policy questions about Veggie. And then the next law was a technical working group. The Joint Fiscal Committee was also going to look at how Veggie should be maybe And we have today where the bill would literally kill off the sunset, so you would not have to come back every few years. There are some advantages to having a sunset. You actually are forced to come and look at it and say, is this program working? But, of course, you all have got rid of that before because when you see a program working, you decide you don't no longer need a sunset, and you just let it live in statute. So, again, a pretty simple bill. Have it answer questions about

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: And we will have the folks from Veggie come in and talk to us. The worst part of doing sunsets on bills is that you because you're forced to look at it, you then change it even when it doesn't need change. And sometimes when you do that, you don't necessarily make it better.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: But this doesn't change its permanence in any way. It can always be repeal or change.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: It just review it. Can review it. Conversation every year.

[Rick (Legislative Counsel)]: So, senator Chittenden, a good point. Actually, this this repeal does not kill Veggie. It kills the application approval. So the statute would remain on the books. They just wouldn't be able to actually offer any accept or review the applications to be so the current Veggie award would continue until they oh, no longer yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. And again, think the argument, like many arguments, like tips, is you either believe that these economic incentives create jobs, expansions, businesses that would not otherwise, but for that incentive, be created. And those are views that people tend to hold in violent, you know, is it really necessary for the government to do anything to help economic development. We will have folks from economic, you know, come in and talk to us. We won't have anybody else that wants to come in and talk to us before we make that decision, but

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: didn't know. Was, I was, I was,

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: was,

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Vermont Economic Growth Incentives Program.

[Rick (Legislative Counsel)]: The next. It's the employment growth. Yeah.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: So, on the website it says employment growth. That's what I was trying. Was was like, like, Oh, it's okay. It's not the website.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Been wrong. It's you. Okay,

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: so that was the typo.

[Rick (Legislative Counsel)]: So my

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I am not recognizing

[Rick (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, yeah, my eventual recommendation to committee was no matter what you do, if you wanna move this, we need to amend it to change the app name to employment group. Now I do wanna give an excuse because it's the Vermont Economic Progress Council.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: That was what

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: that was.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Veggie. It is confusing, and that's why I was like to

[Rick (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. But it's my mistake, and that's something that would be corrected other than that. But, yes, that is called Well,

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: I just want you to know that I thought the website was wrong, not the draft.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: So I had a lot

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: of ideas that you heard about.

[Rick (Legislative Counsel)]: And the editors missed it, which that, you know, gives me a little bit of credit to have the guarantee.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: They also

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That's part of the problem when we mess with things. Sure. That's We tend to rename them or do an offshoot with a very similar name and it gets confusing. And we write themselves, but the average person is very confusing. But this is just our walkthrough.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: I didn't

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: mention little built. We're just doing away with the sunset.

[Rick (Legislative Counsel)]: And I should mention it's set to sunset 01/01/2027. I should also mention that. So that would be if you don't act, this session, you could do it next year retroactively, but that gets complicated. I wouldn't suggest that.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: So, okay. So we do need to do something. We either need to do away with it altogether or let it die next January. What's there will play out, we need to put another sunset on it, or we need to say, you know, enough is enough. If we want to look at it, we can look at it and do away with the sunset. Those are the three options and we will hear from anyone that wants to talk to us about it. Anyone that's interested in talking in the public, the lobbying, I'm going need Steve Charlotte and make sure she has your contact information. Okay. Any questions? Okay. So committee, that is our last today. Unless would you like to tackle the appeal of the reports? No, we could. I don't know. Has anyone gone through

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: I haven't seen

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: No one looked at the reports.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Wait. Did you did you give it to us then?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: There should be on the website. But if you wanna Oh, can I have a copy? Yeah. Yeah. A copy. So you.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Does twenty twenty two use our

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: discussion while we're on live?

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Your second is

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We're gonna go with education. Oh, sorry. Awesome. Thoughts at it today. I'm still looking for perhaps payers to come talk to us. We are see, they're getting the Rebecca has names she's gonna get me from other states who have done these joint service districts. Mhmm. And we are trying to get the gentleman, Rob, campaign for Vermont to come in who recommended them and see what numbers they had. I'm looking for numbers. So we will be trying to look at that. I think the question is how much will they save and how quickly and how do we do we just say please do this or do we say thou shalt do this or something in the middle? I don't know how that worked, and I don't know Her proposal was mandatory. The US was mandatory. Okay. Online. There's a factual amount. Okay. Then that would be something to look at. And maybe within that area, could we look at schools and numbers? Or but how do we move this forward given that everybody says the big cost drivers none of us are at all? Unless you wanna cut teachers' salaries, and that's not an easy thing to do. And I've got something I don't wanna do. Some of us might, but I don't think it would make it through. So how

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: My math tells me what JFO's math online. Okay. If we did take 75,000,000 from the general fund and transfer it to the education fund, that takes the average tax bill from 12% to 9%.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That's this year. Yes. Next year everybody is telling us we will not have 75,000,000.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Okay, right. This year.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We may not have it this year. We just found out we lost a whole lot of federal money for prevention programs. No help buying Narcan anymore.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: We got the T Fund.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: No. We we keep there hasn't been any good news in a long time.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Kicking it down the road is just it represents a danger in terms of the amount of money we have in case of a real emergency. Yeah. Mean This is something we can't keep kicking that. We've never dealt with it.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We do need to deal with it. We picked it down after forty nine at forty six. We it needs to be dealt with, and the question is how do we do it? The other thing that's playing into this is we have a fixed pretty much a fixed cause for your employers, your teachers at least. You go to the Very high degree of change. So I think we will go against the health insurance. We'll try and get to if people will talk to us. Some of the schools have gotten out of BNI and see if you maybe I

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: think the public schools have to be in BNI.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I think they do. Yes. That was the

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: That's the way it's statute.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That's the way the bill came out. That was the last time we were had a vetoed budget, and we sat here until June 28, I believe. Everything in the state shuts down July 1, but there is no budget. There's no particular resolution. It is in the constitution. Everything stops. State's police, state parks, all gone. So there's a big sledgehammer at the end to come to an agreement by the June. Most of us don't wanna be here till the June. So we need to start thinking through how we and it's not our jurisdiction to talk about the glowing picture of a beautiful education at the end, but we can talk about affordable education. But we've gotta come up with some hard numbers. You know, if we can get to x class size, because I don't think we've ever gotten to a hard number as to what the class size needs to be to be financially supportable. Yep. There you go. Its class sizes are, but I don't did you see any hard numbers?

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: I don't remember hard numbers.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: And class size, what, how many classics? What kind of classics? What? Eliminating all the language classes and you can. You can do it.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: So I think we're talking broadly about Act 73 in the next stages, which is absolutely relevant conversation, and I think we need to keep having extra more testimony. But if I could anchor this in the allowable growth spending cap presentations and comments that we just heard, I would just say three things that are on my mind. Since this bill contemplates for FY '28, not FY '27, I think this needs to be part of the continued discussion. I do see, that when revenues or enrollments decline at universities or in companies, budgets are cut. Budgets are Yeah. We have had an increase in spending with a decrease in student population. And what I'm hearing what senator Brock has said, and what I'm hearing from taxpayers is they're looking for a backstop that they're not seeing in the current system. And so I I see this as sensible policy that's never been employed to actually see the merit of giving these districts a limit for what they can spend. Now that they get more kids, my understanding of this is they will be able to spend more. So that's great. I want more kids. That's absolutely what I want. But if they're the enrollment declines, this will be pressure on them to right size their programs, which is I I think what needs to happen. It could be painful. It it will be painful. It it will further motivate the conversation around x 73 and consolidation. The last thing I wanna say on why I think this has merit, and we should continue discussing it, it is a lot less of a hammer on local control than what act 73 contemplates. What act 73 with the foundation formula, it's taking it all away. They're gonna get this much money set by a tax rate in this building, and they're gonna get that no more, no less with some exceptions. But this is happening for the next couple of years, the overall percentage increase, not even having them cut and still allowing them some a lot of variability, flexibility within the current system. So I see this as not nearly as invasive a local control as what Act 73 contemplates to do. So I think it's a conversation worth merit. Think you need to dig into more of the numbers, but that's just personally where I am. I'm not ready to dismiss allowable spending growth caps based on the testimony that I have.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I don't know that I'm dismissing it. I think it's got a long way to go. I think if we are committed to looking at what is happening with and with the health insurance, I think we need to talk about where should those benefits be negotiated. Do we want to throw it back to the local schools or do we want, given the performance of the statewide commission, I'm not sure I want them negotiating salaries too, but that's all part of it. I know that the proposer of this bill would like to get it out and get it on its way through the other body.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Somewhere in this process, and I don't want to, you know, throw a wrench in it, in any ways to raise anything, I can't afford the leg. I'd like to get the auditor's office either in or at least inquired about as to whether or not the use of the data in individual school districts is so disparate in terms of what's put in what bucket that we have a lot of media less information. This is the thing I think I raised in the meeting we had the other day, is I remember in 2005, for example, they were all using the same chart of accounts. They're all using pretty different numbers in it for different things, and it was meaningless. I know I've heard that since, that the same thing is continuing to happen. I haven't got any current information, but that again concerns me. Are we looking at apples and oranges or are we looking at every fruit in the basket?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It helps all of us know that we can have the auditor in or the finance people also, you know, for the Department of Ed to see what their it sounds like with the waiting numbers last year, there was an issue with data and how it was recorded and how it was reported, and they did catch it. And it sounds like I don't know if they solved all the problem, but at least they found out there was a problem. Thank

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: you. Senator Chittenden, you weren't here last week when we got this bill introduced. One of the things that the legislative council attorney preface the conversation with was that there are potential constitutional concerns with the bill. So that is one thing you should know, maybe talk with John about. He's the drafting tree. So, that is of a concern and then, it when you impose a hard cap like that, whether you, I know it's it's slowed a little bit, but when you impose a hard cap like that, the districts can't they can't reduce certain costs and, you know, like health care and and salaries and things. Those are and that's like, almost 80% of their costs. And then there are other things, you know, debt service and other things that are out of their control. So the costs they can control are often the the classroom impact and the things that impact kids directly. So I think a major fear of that bill is that it would end up essentially punishing kids because that's the things that those are the people who would feel the the cause. It also doesn't address the cost factors of actual education, you know, budgets. And we already have a spending cap in, in our formula, that if districts go above it, are taxed double for going above it. And districts take it very seriously. And I think right now, I think we heard last week that there are 85 districts that look like they might be going that direction and things are still not final. So chances are their fault be any or maybe one or two. So I I think, you know, a lot of the testimony we heard today about the concerns with this these sort of arbitrary spending caps is that they're punitive but not effective. Your dad's really having

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: I think

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: it could could be. Do we have a different constitutional?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I don't know. I think there are

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: a few other people who have a lot more experience more current experience with education. Like, who I I can try to

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: get you someone. I mean, this is a constitution. We'll have both of I but he's one that we usually use as a constitutional professor, and we will have him come in and talk about it. I'm sure there's a risk. I'm not a discount. But it's not the first time you taken a risk. There

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: will be pain if this goes into effect. There's pain now. But my point is managers still have managerial rights and that you're absolutely right. The cuts will probably be in personnel. We have one of the lowest or highest, however you want to do it, SNAP student ratio. So that likely will apply some of those pressures for a declining student population. I don't think anybody wants to hear this, but that is ultimately what I think is going to happen with act 73 if it goes forward to right size their school system to provide services that move on or support. This, I think, is doing it in a less painful, less punitive way if we were to employ this policy and have it in effect. And I do think it would come in staff cuts, but it would still be those school boards that would make those decisions based on them seeing it full year out. I'd be more concerned if we're pushing it for FY '27, but I see with FY '28, this is a worthy conversation. And then if we're all lucky enough to come back here next January, maybe we'll repeal it again based on what the actual impacts would translate to be. But it seems like something's not even worth further considering. I'm just not

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: ready to dismiss it. Okay.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Well, I don't think we're missing anything. Can I say something real quick? Yes.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Thank you, chair. But we're gonna use a business analogy. I think if a company goes to making big cuts, let's say, they have first looked at their CEO to see if their CEO is doing his or her job and if he or she is capable of doing his or her job or their job. And I think they also would look to see what systems change needs to happen. I probably haven't had time to look at our report. I hope at some point you do. I know it's daunting because it's a lot of pages, but there are a lot of visuals in there, so it reads fairly quickly. We have some systemic issues that need to be fixed, and we struggle to talk about them honestly and openly. But I am really loath to make any kind of big financial decision in a time of great uncertainty, we keep seeing in health and welfare. And when we have

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: a

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: CEO who I would say is not up to task, and when we have structures that are highly problematic.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: What is a, I'm talking about a superintendent, are we talking, what's your CEO My

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: CEO is secretary of education and just the

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: capacity of the AOE generally. The AOE has been gutted systemically over the last two decades. When did we get 46?

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: I'm just gonna say, don't think you can point the finger at somebody who's been here for a year and a half, two years, for the years of

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: That's I don't think that's what I just did. Double meat.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. You've done that.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I have the CEOs capable of envisioning and managing the change that we are trying to envision, and I'm saying I don't believe so.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: First, we have to give the CEO a task, and we need to decide. I feel better about this cap because it is not a hard it's there's flexibility in there. And the high spending schools generally have more flexibility than the low spending schools. I think the goal is to say to taxpayers, we hear you. It is sledgehammer, but sometimes it takes a sledgehammer to make people talk about painful decisions.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: See, it works a five pound mallet.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That's Both. We need to be honest. We are going to look at the constitutional issues. We'll make sure we're not stepping. I mean, we could get sued if schools have the time and money to sue us. We also have a constitutional risk of being sued over inequality of educational opportunity because those low spending towns are not giving kids the classes that they need. We do not have a statewide high school graduation requirement. So if I can't afford advanced math, it's just not in my graduation requirement. I have that ability. I think the CEO can give us a really good graduation that is her field of expertise. I think we need to let the agency know what we want them to do. They do work for the governor, and he has told them what he wants them to do. At some point, we all have to agree, the administration and the legislature, what we want to have happen, and that's the challenging part right now because there are no simple answers. Yeah.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Yeah. I was just gonna say to your point earlier about beehive, I remember I think we were upstairs, Ways and Means. We got an update on it a few years ago about Beehive and how it was going and things like that. Elizabeth James, I think it was, alluded to it how Yeah. You know, cost to her as an employee was quite low.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yes.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: And The premium. Yeah. Right. And all while, you know, with the ACA It

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: is very good.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Right now, in looking at I think when we went over it, every time it was in negotiation, bargaining, it went to arbitration, and each time it settles with Yes.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: With the offer.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Right. Yeah. And I

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: think that's something maybe we could look at, and I don't know if it's Martine that brought it up about school boards being able to negotiate that in the past, which I remember.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And the argument when we did it, and again, this one of those forced negotiations, was that the individual school boards, they said, well, the NEA would come in and they got professional arbitrators and for the police podunk

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: That's right.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: You know, hired the local attorney that had never done it, and they were just outclassed, and they lost every time, and it was expensive.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: The SBA wanted the statewide like nobody else.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And so we put it up to there, and it has not played out the way people thought it would. So we will take a look at what the proposals were from the school boards. They gave us a proposal, and we will look at that. There may be something we can do to curb some that growth since that will not be popular, but it may be possible. But think about it and see where we can go.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: I'm just wondering, as we start talking about education, the workers that we're talking about is the basic issue of reduced costs. We have to limit cost, that the city gives limit cost. And one potential way to doing it, I'm sure that I'll throw this out, haven't really thought it through, it would not be popular, is to limit staffing Certainly, that's Yeah. And if limit staffing, one of the things that that does is it forces districts to work together to come up with solutions that increase class sizes, and it may be in places that are different than those that exist right now.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: One of the nice things about the cooperative education services is that you could potentially share staff across a larger geographic It is a broader way

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: to promote new ideas as well as new competition while at the same time lowering costs as opposed to putting dollar caps on things on individual services.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: The districting commission is one I've been trying to get on. It's a joint hearing, and I'll try and get that on next week if we could work out the scheduling. If not, he'll do it and go through.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: So your point is under wrong, I don't disagree, I just I don't see that as feasible in our current state. In the future world or whatever the world is, I could see staffing ratios and we have rationally sized districts, but comparing an allowable spending growth cap per pupil to staffing levels, I see that as a lot less invasive on each of those districts that know their school, know their kids and other priorities. They'll just have within that all of the money to focus on how they see because they know if one person can sort of do two roles better than the state does in saying that you can only have two roles right now. So I'm not against what you're saying, I just don't see it as feasible in our current state as compared to allowable spending growth.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Feasibility is sometimes a product of force.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: But that's more force than an allowable spending growth cap, and that's one of my big concerns about 73, it's a ton of force, so too much force.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: We're in a situation now because we've got to solve this problem, at least to the extent it's solvable within a finite amount of time, and probably if we don't have to dig into a rainy day to an extent that's dangerous, we're gonna have to. I think we're gonna have to

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: use it. We are gonna have to do something here. Depending on if Washington makes a move in the next week or so, we could be looking at up to 45,000 for monitors without health insurance. If any significant number of younger, healthier people opt out of buying health insurance, That's going to have major impact.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Senator Beck, the obvious answer is for schools, that you can simply hire people 67. That way they will get Medicare and won't need healthcare.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: So I senator Caledonia, I just wanna be real quick. By the way, that was a joke.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: We are. I couldn't I'm sorry. You

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: would be experienced teachers.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: I just wanna be really clear on what problem we're trying to solve here. S two twenty as we received it is to solve a problem in FY twenty eight and '29. For sure. Are we trying to solve that problem, or are we trying to solve FY '27 and that problem?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I don't think we're trying this bill looks to next year and the year before beyond. I think it's pretty much a given, unless there is some major disruption in the budgeting, we aren't anticipating now, we will have somewhere around $70,000,000 to buy down this year's tax rate. To 9%. The nine yeah. Which is still going to be very painful and unaffordable to people whose incomes are not going up 90% or their buying power, because oil may be down, but I've heard it's going back up, but food is not down, and housing costs are not down, and homeowners insurance is not down. So it's and it's looked at as a short term saying we understand the problem, but for the next two years, we are not going to have $70,000,000 to buy down the tax rate. And you can say, okay, you go through the budget, you're gonna pay it. You know, I mean, put your hands on the stove and I'm not burning the stove down, you're gonna get burnt. We can do that and maybe that will drive folks to make difficult decisions. It might also cause folks to lose their homes or not be able to pay their rent and not be able to find other rentable properties, which is the real danger that we will it will make it more difficult for people to buy homes because those property taxes are figured into the percentage of your income, your mortgage, is going to cost you.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: What I would say to your comment there, Senator Beck, I'm just answering my local papers questionnaire on this is that I support the buy down if it's coupled with something like a spending cap because I see them as entwined. I'm going feel more comfortable that better fiscal policy if we buy the rate down this year, knowing that next year there is an allowable spending cap proportional to how many pupils in a district so that we start to rein in these increasing costs that our taxpayers say they can't afford. Because then we will not have, well, there won't be allowed in that area, 6% or 7% increase in spending across the board next year. So I feel more comfortable with buying on this chart. Are you saying

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: that buy down with no spending constraints in FY '27 beyond those already have been paused?

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: I don't see logistically how an FY twenty seven spending had to go into play, because what would that do right now? It would do what we did to them with the Act 181 correction. They would have to go back and redo their budgets, they'd have to delay their budget votes. If that's what you people are advocating for, I just think it's gonna be a harder pill to swallow, we're gonna try to get them. And we needed to have that conversation last week because we need to pass it up in the next

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: I think what's gonna be really hard for people to swallow is in 2014, tax rates went up 14%. We're gonna attach the poll, and we say, we listen to you. It's only nine this year. I think that's going be a really hard message for homeowners to square up.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: You said to 14 you mean to the

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: 2024? 2024 they went 14 we've been here for two years and we go back to them and say it's only going be nine this year.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: So what you just said is you're advocating for FY '27 to apply in a spending cap which would make all the budgets that are higher than that have to be redone in the next few weeks.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: I don't see how I don't see how else you get below 9%. I mean I think that's all in slack.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Well, we're gonna buy them down this year. That's what we have. Yeah. And they have to get COVID out.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Are one up that we are not shooting ourselves in the pit. They've

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: That's a hard sell. And you could get support out there with half of both chambers to have forced all of our school districts to redo their budgets on short order and rewarn whatever they're currently planning for town meeting day because that those they're submitting their ballot language in the next week.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It's all been printed. I I couldn't do that. I beat up on the tax commissioner and the education commissioner when the governor proposed doing that ten years ago with Rebecca Holcomb and Samson. I did it for whatever act that was because that was the mess with the weights. And when it left here, your budgets they didn't want schools to hit the spending cap because they suddenly got more money because their weights had gone up or gone down. And the way the house wrote it, we had it phased in up or down when it left here. The way the house wrote it, they wanted Wernuske basically, but the schools that have been carrying the burden for English as a second language for well over a decade to get their money right away. They didn't want them to have to wait, I think it was five years or six years, so it was stepped up, but the way it got written was your budget was capped at 10%, and if you went over that increase, you had to come in and the state board you have to be creative would rule on it. Well, the superintendent said, oh, and your tax rate was capped this year, so you could spend up to 10% more and your tax rate wouldn't go up. And every superintendent in the state said, woah, this is free money. And everyone, not everyone, but a large number of them spent 9.9% thinking that their budget was capped at a 3% increase. We said it was capped at 3%, but if you went over 10 you had to do this. That was our fault. I never saw that, I assumed it got sent because the bill originated gov ops. They didn't catch it. It's you know, the last week of the session, we concur, and then it hit the fan.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Mhmm. I

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: don't wanna go through that again, but that was our mistake. And and we would have banked you can't cap revenue at 4% and let them spend 10% and not go bankrupt very quickly. So we had to do that, but to do it in this point would be very disruptive to schools.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Should have been. Do it. It should There

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: was a That looks good.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We're giving this notice. We are telling the taxpayers that you're not gonna get any worse than you've gotten the last few years, but, yes, it is going to go up. But if we're going to do that, they're alright. We have to tell them what's going to happen. Now in two years, we should have a second homes tax and we should be able to go to the system where x amount of your property value is exempt from taxation. It's not like the present system where everybody's paying for their own and everyone else's rebate and grades go up. So we should be able to bring some relief there.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Well, I guess the one thing that I'm concerned about is do we have enough headroom in the event of worst case scenario? And I haven't really heard that in the administration.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: No, I don't see anything.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: So we give somebody a break and buy down the rate this year, how much money do we have left to deal with this worst case scenario that may develop in May 9 from now and next time?

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: We've got the rural health grants. Those are gonna solve all our problems. No.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: And the contingency fund that we fund every year. So, I mean, there's some.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: They just don't keep these out.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: We're just

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Emma, can I just because what we're saying here matters? I know taxpayers are hurting. I know affordability is an issue. I also know Vermont just love their schools. I've heard it all summer long. They do. Ad nauseam, with tears, and you name it. Yeah. So I we need to tread carefully. I hear what you say, Senator Beck, about the tax revolt, but I mean, we don't have polling in the state of Vermont, so we don't know that year. Was it the Affordable Heat Act? Was it a tax revolt? Because the following year, almost all school budgets passed. So, we tell these stories, we create these narratives. I think sometimes we just need to be careful what we're saying. Because our communities rely on our schools for everything from childcare to food to dental appointments to you name it.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: I just say a lot of the spending growth gap wouldn't quote schools. It's it's just saying can't allow spending to grow at a rate But that

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I but I don't know about your district. Our our our taxes are going up and we're cutting lots of positions. So where is that spending increase? Where's that money coming from? Positions. Lots of positions.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: I was looking at the NEA's graph or database. We're the number one teacher to staff ratio.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Like, it's very close.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: We have a really we have the most rural state in the country, guys. So How do you educate kids who live on the end of

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: a dirt road? We have some Or

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: the constitution. We can't just forget about them. We No.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: But We are the most rural, but it wasn't until last year that I found out that statistic was based on the number of towns you have with less than a thousand people. We have a whole lot of towns with less than a thousand people. I'm not sure if that's the right number, but they're a lot closer together in many instances than they are in Wyoming or Texas where it's 50 miles. They're flat and they're laid out in hectares, but there's large distances. There are schools, and we talked about them, that are sparse by necessity. They are up there, they're on a dirt road, you can't get in or out, we knew that when we did 46. There are towns. I'm living in a district where within 10 or 15 miles of relatively flat paved road, I've got three, four and five elementary schools. And one, two, three, four high schools. Those and everybody is very attached to their school. Mhmm. Is that the best way to deliver education?

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: And then the question also is the number of kids in those schools and the number of adults in those classrooms. Not just teachers, but the various paraeducators and all the other army of people that we hired over the years.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Some of the behaviors require multiple adults.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And I think we need, as part of our vision,

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: we

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: need to be able to say, we will come up with, maybe we play with the second home tax. Somehow, well, we've got to come up with some school construction because we'll have to add a partition or something to get all of those schools in one school or maybe four schools into two schools. And

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: are we okay with putting kids on a bus for an hour? That's going to be the big question.

[Rick (Legislative Counsel)]: I grew

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: up riding the bus for

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: a And I agree, Christopher. I think an hour. We're in a bus for a long long time.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: And I end up here.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: That's what that's what decisions we have made. I don't disagree with you.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That's it.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: I'm just saying.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: I just say the rural urban. I think if you look at what staffing ratios between rural schools and less rural schools and urban schools in Vermont, you will not find much difference. And that's one

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: of the things I'm not sure the Department of Education can tell us. Oh, I think they can. Okay. We need to write a we want from them.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: I think that that's available.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: But part of the other thing we're gonna have to do, because those schools are the building where you can have town meeting. They are the building where you can have anything. They are the only big building in town other than maybe the church or the library. And most of those don't we had churches that didn't have restrooms. Right?

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: And I think I think we gotta think about that even differently nowadays. We have time meeting at Milton, and we have a Zoom option. And there's more people on Zoom than people sitting in our auditorium at the high school. And we, you know, changing the times of

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: To help schools, I mean, art Roxbury has got an after school program, I think they have a health clinic, they have a childcare in their old school building, but they're not sure they can afford the S-thousands that Montpelier had to agree to pay $3,000 a year in maintenance or something till it got transferred. If we could say we will help you somehow with that transformation, that building could still be the center of the community. Got an aging population, you could put a senior center in there and you can do senior yoga and oil painting classes. You can have a health It's

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: the comprehensive plan that we're

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: all hoping to have that we don't want. Yeah. That's but we don't have time to doodle around, and I'm willing for this committee to work on something like that.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: If I could say one thing to say about this point is that, and I feel like I'm getting on my soapbox, but it's not. It's just this is important to hear at least I think a lot of us feel. I do think we need elementary schools all throughout the state. I don't wanna close elementary schools. As much as there's a Zoom option, those are important community hubs where they do more than that. It's the middle schools and high schools that I think we need to be a lot more rational and intentional on.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Yeah, and to come back to the exact point, when Elizabeth Jennings said 80% of your budget is staffing, buildings isn't the issue. The

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: cost of that building is not the issue. I get what I get.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: It's a human centered profession.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Mean Correct. So closing schools is not the issue, and it's not what I would look at. The buildings is not the issue.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: If you have four kids in kindergarten class, and I've had several schools with four kids in a kindergarten class, you're paying a teacher $68,000 a year, I assume, plus health insurance and other benefits to pay for kids, to teach for kids.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Yeah, right sizing your staff.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: You've got to right size because that's four kids down, four kids in first rate, maybe five kids in kindergarten. And you get to the point where you don't have enough kids in the school to draw in enough education money to pay for itself.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: But I think to that point, I think you want to talk about the educational opportunities for those four students or 10, however many kids are in that class, are they getting served just as well as another school? That I think,

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: I have

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: a one and a three year old. I want those two boys that have the best education that's out there. And is that an advice that's four kids or school that has four kids on a grade or what number?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: There's all kinds of national statistics. Think 10. It's 10 to twelve, ten to 13 in kindergarten. I mean, kids is private tutoring. That's my house. I mean, I could have had a tutor in my house to teach my four kids.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: To to

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: your point, staffing is somewhat impacted by buildings in that you can have a more efficient and your fluid use of them across if, for example, Montpelier had one high school instead of three, they're gonna achieve some staffing. Yeah. So buildings is a fact, but it's not the fact.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: It

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: can. But it's it should be the drive in that

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Hold on.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: No. It's not

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: a big stop.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It's the we have been the highest per pupil cost in the country. We have the highest the lowest, I forget, depending if you we have more adults than for students, by far, than any other state in the country. We used to say, oh, but we have the best education. Well, we are getting the best. It it Chittenden County, I think, is fine. You've got bigger classes. You've got kids. Washington County's sustaining it because we're relatively wealthy. You get up into the kingdom or into the hills down in the South anywhere, and they can't sustain it. And so you're getting kindergarten, first, second, and third grade all put together. So you got 20 kids with a teacher and two parents if you don't have any mental health issues. In this building, we have, since I've been in here, consistently underfunded the mental health system, our community service. So to get to the last night of the session, you need to balance your budget level funding. We need to beef up those services. We need to make sure that they can that's a new expense for the school. We didn't pass it to them.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Mhmm.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It just arrived at their door when the school opened because it's a new societal thing. My kids got out of school in the nineties. I've asked them. There weren't the behavioral, there weren't half their friends weren't depressed, suicidal. That's new. Yeah. And we haven't we just left it. Well, when COVID showed up, it made it worse.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Well, and then, you know, at some point, the the argument of COVID, some of these kids weren't even in school, so you can't make the argument about those kids, COVID slowed them down. They were the dysfunction. But at

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: some point, they're they're gonna

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: come out of it. We all went through COVID, gonna come out of it and things like that. And I know we had a presentation not to go back to being upstairs in ways it means, we had a presentation from I think JFO about FTEs and how that lined up with federal funding. And when the federal funding dropped off, the FTEs stayed there.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. It

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: destabilized for sure because there was an infusion of money and then it went away and Yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah. Where the state was the problem. Religious in making sure that we didn't spend that one time money on ongoing expenses.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Correct.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And we still have felt some pain the last few years as we have had to transition all of it, but the schools didn't. That was part of the, they hired, a lot of them hired mental health professionals

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: and

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: that's really hard to wean yourself off of because no, teachers should not be dealing with kids having violent or huddling in corners depressed and crying. That's not what they're trained for. That's not what they do. And we need to acknowledge that and see if we can't find a way.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Look at those mystic days in the house.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: It's just when I talked about it last Yeah.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Are we We are live, but

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: we are going off because it's

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: time

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: to

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: go home.