Meetings
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[Randy Brock (Member)]: That's community.
[Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We are live.
[Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Take a look.
[Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We are live. We are supporting the Girl Scouts. And we have one bill left. I still don't know how many bills we're getting next week. The pro tem's office said they will get us a list. My agenda is I'm doing first come first serve and everybody gets ten minutes to walk through the bill, and then we'll decide which ones we can rubber stamp and which ones we can that we need to spend more time on. Because it was a pretty mixed bag. I think there's at least one in which out of health and welfare in which there's a fee in the underlying bill. I want I think I mentioned to you yesterday that we would be getting the bio marker build because it influences the cost of health insurance or it impacts it. Apparently, under rule 31, it has to require revenue, not just be in our jurisdiction. So what health and welfare did this morning is to ask DFR to do an actuarial assessment. It's another one of those good bills. The cost per biomarker has come down significantly. It's up very, very high, it's up to $1,000 It's gone, the first time the woman that had had them done years ago was 2,500 per marker. We've heard 46 to 150 in that range, depending on what they are, but what we haven't had time to do is you just don't have one biomarker check, you know, you gotta check five and six and seven, and if they can target the issue, then you save the person and you also save the cost of having to go through a lot of trial and error like chemo and finding out that didn't work. So if you With things like Alzheimer's to be able to take measures to slow it down. Yes. They do have effective, I think three, one was just Was bill or what? This is a bill that we don't have, we aren't getting, but we did take, it's going through to get an estimate of the impact on the cost. This also would be one that the state would be responsible for the full cost. We're moving the process forward, but the bill's not coming here when it hits the door. I believe Senator Gulick is presenting it or mine. You are, madam chair. I am. Okay. Yes. I am presenting it.
[Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: I know you want to go really quick. If we're talking about bills to anticipate, there are two bills coming out of our morning committee that I
[Ann Cummings (Chair)]: One came today, I think.
[Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: It's anticipated that there will be a, not full rich, but a discussion about fees, especially around what it called the tobacco license to sell tobacco. Right now it's at a thousand, but there's a lot of pushback on that. I think it's to find something more reasonable. I'm open to like $2.50, 300, and then on pot, there's a vent licenses that they also said a Brock can speak to this as the
[Randy Brock (Member)]: vice chair that they're looking
[Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: for us to take a little more time and testimony. We got it out of committee for a crossover.
[Ann Cummings (Chair)]: They want us to have more time. We
[Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: have next week. So now that's what we're talking about.
[Randy Brock (Member)]: We've done a half.
[Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Five minutes. Twelve. We're gonna hit
[Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: the bottom back next week. Canvas.
[Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It was so difficult to see a tobacco bill come up. We haven't done a tobacco bill in few years. I'm still looking for some new syntax.
[Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: I'm already ready to lower it from a thousand to something much more reasonable, and I think the administration would pull it out here, like, $2.50 to 300.
[Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. So we will we will take that up. I don't know what else. As soon as the program's office, hopefully they'll get it down to us and we can schedule it, you're gonna see. We've got a few bills in here that have come to us from other committees and we'll start talking about those on Tuesday and No, just, if we're gonna do a bill I just wanted to get to it because do we have another bill to do today? We have three twelve, which is the refundable machinery and equipment and investment tax credit. Do we have a JFO person here? We have nothing. You're not too dramatic. No.
[Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: No. In the interest of time, what I'll say if you oh, I'm sorry. Did you repeat that? You you could go. No. Go ahead. Sorry. I was just gonna say I really wanna hear from Vida. I'm not against this, but I I wanna know more from them, so this is a continued conversation.
[Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We have a ton of yeah. Take two or three days now, at least two, we have tried to get Vepsie yeah, Vepsie over
[Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: the
[Ann Cummings (Chair)]: year, and they haven't been able to come, so we haven't, the proposal is that it would go to a $500,000 tax credit maximum per job, but we haven't had time to hear from that.
[Randy Brock (Member)]: Yeah, just, so yeah, where we're at, amendment is up to five, so it's a very narrow tax credit, manufacturer's tax credit, currently set against corporate income tax liability, proposing to instead to set it against job creation, they could get $25,000 of tax credit for every job they created, which would be over the course of ten years above and beyond their invention schedule, which would be potentially 120 jobs if they use the whole thing.
[Ann Cummings (Chair)]: This is over the phone, they have a veggie plan.
[Randy Brock (Member)]: Above and beyond their veggie schedule. They have to create beyond that to get rid And so that's basically the bill, just leveraging it against employment growth instead of corporate and tax liability. It it you know, it is it does impact the corporate income tax receipts. I would I would point out though, in the last seven years, our corporate income tax receipts have grown from $98,000,000 to $249,000,000. It's a 155% increase, so we've done pretty well there. With all that being said, we have not had a chance to, at that CN, we have not had chance. I mean, mostly just can they administer this thing? I think they can, but, I think we need to have that in. So I think there are plenty of places to, put this in if it's something we wanna do after crossover. And so I think for now, we should probably just wait until after. The
[Ann Cummings (Chair)]: different is this the one that's just the one company, or is this multiple companies?
[Randy Brock (Member)]: It's just one company qualified for this credit.
[Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And we did this because because what they were trying to get from their parent company in Switzerland was a whole rebuild lot machination of the yeah. Next generation. Mhmm. But when you automize, you lose jobs. And our
[Randy Brock (Member)]: Well, that's what's great about this company. It's not an automation. It's it's literally hand manufactured because they they deal with cellulose, which is wood product. Yeah, but they were
[Ann Cummings (Chair)]: losing like a couple of jobs and another company needed to see a buy in because the first thing Jake said is, well, we don't have refundable tax credits in corporate tax. And I said, well, we've got this one and it was done specifically to save a 100 and some good jobs in an economically challenged section of this state.
[Randy Brock (Member)]: This was one minute, but that's why I it. That's why I tell you.
[Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We've done this, you know, you write the definition to only one company. We've done it more than once for Ethan out because those companies that would be the kind of thing that would really impact your school. Mhmm. People stopped. They closed, and everyone had to move out to find more.
[Randy Brock (Member)]: Yeah, I wish they had set the credit against something other than corporate income tax liability. They didn't know we were going Understood how it's going to unfold.
[Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And it's now based on sales in the state. Yeah. And they don't sell a lot here. We're making out very well, but we I think last I heard, it was a $25,000,000 estimate for what was figured in the revenue forecast. Oh. Down. Down. Okay. Yeah. It's not decimal dust. When we first had that presentation of the beginning the year, they thought it was going to be minor, some impact, but apparently, it's turned out to be a little more than decimal dust. So there will be fixes coming to us, I assume, next week from what it means. They did the rewrite of the corporate code.
[Randy Brock (Member)]: So like they're doing an update between the e board meetings?
[Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. Okay. Right. Well, they're rewriting the codes. They're decoupling us from the feds so that we don't end up passing through the federal tax cuts. So that's where we are. Thank you. You have made today much easier.