Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Okay. We are live. Good afternoon and welcome to the final meeting of this week of the Senate Government Operations Committee. And today is Friday, January 9, and we are going to listen to Jim Duggan from the Treasurer's Office and he's going to talk about some retirement systems and then we're going to quickly, I hope it's not as detailed as the report that I got right at lunch with Act 57 about the relief that we reported some of the municipalities. I'll just remind the committee, Tuesday, we are gonna do a joint meeting with the House Government Operations Committee. We do have some training in the morning, But that's not a submission matter, but we do have training in the morning. But we'll adjourn to remove eleven at 01:00 and interview the two candidate for the adjourn adjourned adjutant general. So first up today is Tim Nugent, as I mentioned, and we have more than an hour. Please don't feel that you have to fill every single section of that. If you go forty minutes, that's fine too. It doesn't really matter. But I think for certainly the benefit of our new senator, it would be a good idea to have at least working knowledge of our retirement systems. And so I'll let well, I'll let him introduce himself.

[Senator John Morley III (Clerk)]: Senator John Morley III Orleans. Great to meet you, senator.

[Speaker 0]: I think you've been in before, so you might know everybody else in the community.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Okay. We know too.

[Speaker 0]: Well, then welcome in, and let's begin.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Thank you very much. Tim Dougian. I'm the director of the Vermont Retirement Systems in the state treasurer's office. Today, I have put together a presentation calling it retirement one zero one. I know this committee is not necessarily needing a one zero one class, but sometimes it's good just to level set. And what I'd like to do today is kinda cover a few overview points, show you some recent stats from the systems that we administered, and then do a bit of really brief history on some funding matters and sort of where we've been, where we're going Okay. If that works for everybody. So I will aspire to share my screen. Sure.

[Speaker 0]: We got this by email, by the way. These people wanna use their laptops.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: And look what kind Emory did for me.

[Speaker 0]: Well, there you go. I know. He's an outstanding my

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: life here. I'm standing in this field like a.

[Speaker 0]: Let me

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: get a bite.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Doesn't it take a second? Oh, there we are. That's not too glorious.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Does that work for everyone?

[Speaker 0]: Mhmm. Yep. Okay.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Right. I get this. I apologize for this. Okay. So I will one day have to learn how to just move a page. What I wanted to start with is an overview of the retirement systems and really why we have them. I really like this slide because it it kinda grounds us in the purpose of a retirement system. These these systems don't exist for their own sake. They're really valuable tools to recruit and retain public servants like myself, teachers, municipal employees throughout the state. And what they do is they our our defined benefit systems, they provide a modest but consistent reliable retirement income for the rest of someone's life and for the life of their beneficiary if they so elect. But one thing that folks, you know, a lot of times we're in this building talking about funding and the costs associated with the engine systems. And one thing I think is really important to remember is that these are economic drivers for the state of Vermont. This an an outfit called NERS, the National Institute on Return and Security, puts together a state by state fact sheet about how taxpayer investment in the retirement system trickles out into the economy. And so from the 2025 edition, they do it every other year. From the 2025 edition, they found that for every dollar of taxpayer investments in the retirement systems, four and a half comes out in economic activity in the state.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: That's a great leverage.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: That's great leverage. And and the chart on the right, I like to put up because, you know, about 75% of our members remain in state. Yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: That is key. Right. And

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: we have a and they're spread out across the state. Of course, there's a concentration in Washington County because of the state offices. But as if you look throughout the counties, you know, 3% consistently throughout the rest of the state. So it's a broad based economic driver throughout the state, and I think that's just a really important idea to keep in mind as we talk about our management systems. Yes.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: And just to ask while we're on that slide. I'm It's a bunch of cronks down here. But do you have in addition to the percent of the population, do you you have any notion of how many are you are retained? And and, you know, some are gonna move, obviously, after they retire. But do we have data on their retention? Yes. 75.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: That's what it is.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: No. What what You you there, but you haven't I'm sorry. I was just focused on the couch part. I was focused on the couch. Okay. I have a percent of population, and I was sort of hoping percent retained, but you have general general for 75%.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Probels. Yes. And and then the the the percent the percent population is in that county. How many of the population that county

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Are here and have stayed.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Are visitors or visitors or viewers. So I think that's, you know, that's why we have these plans. That's the value they provide both to the members in the plan and the state at large. And so I always like to ground with that slide. It's a great slide. So oftentimes we really focus on the three pension systems, and really most of the time on the state teaching system because those are the ones that the state funds. But I wanted to just highlight all the systems that we do administer in the retirement division. We have our three defined benefit systems. They're your traditional pension systems for state employees, for teachers, and for municipal employees. Maybe I'll break here because I I understand there was a question yesterday about why our state system has some towns and sheriff's offices in them. I think that might have been your question, Sandra Vyhovsky. And part of the answer is I don't know. It's one of those things that's always been. So Randolph, Danville, and Bethel are are towns that are in the state system. My working assumption, because the state system was in existence prior to the municipal system and has statutes specifically contemplating political subdivisions, is that they were early adopters, maybe, into the pension system and have always remained in. So we have those three towns, and then we have sheriff's offices that are also in the state system. And funnily enough, the statutes contemplate that the sheriff's offices are in the state system. But I wanna say about twenty years ago, there was an opinion by the AG's office that looked at the municipal statutes and said, well, they actually could count they they could actually join the municipal system as well because they're whatever the definition is for the entities that are allowed to be in the municipal system. So what we have is some shares elected to be in the municipal system and some elected to be in the state system. So that's why we have it's the state system, but we do have a handful of additional reporting entities in that system. Then we have a teacher system, pretty obvious, as well as the community system. We also administer a couple of retiree health insurance plans. So we have the one for the state and the teacher system. We'll talk about this a little bit more later. I also just wanted to note that we we also administer some defined contribution plans. There's a DC plan for the state for exempt employees. There's DC plan for municipalities for those that choose to join. There are a couple of deferred compensation plans, so, you know, that's where you can you know, for myself, I can just put some of my money away in a tax for four fifty seven account, and for the teachers, there's four zero three plan. And then we have a small health reimbursement plan for municipal employees that was funded on a couple occasions back in the good old days when we were overfunded as a system, and we were just looking for a way to utilize those resources in a positive way to benefit our members. So while we think mostly about pension plans, there are a number of plans that that we administer. For those last ones, we rely heavily on some outside questions to help the record. Did you have a question?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: That a I just I'm just interested that the municipal that the MERS what the the MERS wasn't that you don't manage their health insurance. Was there a reason for that? Well, they don't

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: have a retiree health insurance.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Oh, they don't. No. I didn't.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: That's why I didn't.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I just assumed they had both.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: And that's why that health reimbursement account was

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: It helped. Yeah.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Funded back in, I wanna say, like, so '6 wait. Somewhere around then. Right before the The Great Recession. I surely would enjoy it if you go over to do it. Well, Yeah. Right. I wanted to quickly just talk about, you know, what is a pension? I think everyone probably knows, but it doesn't hurt to just refresh that, basically, a pension is an amount certain that you're gonna get for the balance of your life, and it's determined by a number of factors. Most importantly is what group what system and group are you? And each system and group have their own rules and terms. But broadly speaking, what you're gonna have is you're gonna look at the member's average final compensation over the last three years or two, depends on the group, what were you making at your highest point, And then how many years of service did you have? And then we have a multiplier, and so you do one times two times three, and you get your number. And then we can make all sorts of adjustments to it based on whether or not you wanna have your beneficiary continue to receive the full pension, part of your pension. That's what's 75, 25, fifty, fifty, things like that. Yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: A pension is what we don't

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: have. Yes. Great answer. The benefit systems oh, and those couple more points on those. Those are those amounts, in order to protect them from inflation, they're increased by a COLA every year. COLAs are different, again, based on group and system, and it's guaranteed for life benefits at the life beneficiary if that's what the member allows. For our benefit systems, we usually call those OPEB. I'm sure you're familiar with that term.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: We are.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: The those systems provide subsidized health insurance. And so what happens is for the teachers, our office procures a insurance policy for the state employees. DHR does it. And it's a it's a traditional insurance policy, and then the the benefit is a subsidy on the amount, and that can range from 40 to 80%. It's all based on and how many years you've served.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: That's another thing you don't have. Sorry. But that's every time I go through this, I think.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: And just a little bit more on how these systems are administered. The three systems, three defined benefit systems, are governed by independent boards, and they're administered by our team in the retirement division, 18 people strong. And with, you know, help from we have vendors. We have other folks who interface in within the office and within the city. One thing I always think is important to point out is that we are lean and and not lean. We are we have about one staff member for every 2,860 people who are in our system, and that is more than double the median ratio. We have our one of our associations in NASRDA, the National Association of State Retirement Administrators. We have them take a look at it. It's hard to compare exactly systems because everyone's set up differently. We're a bit odd in that we're not a stand alone agency like most Sure. Like, what many are across the country. So, you know, things are a little different, but that kind of ratio to me is important because it shows that we're really we're really lean for what we're doing. I think we accomplished a lot for what for the resources we have. What we don't do is investments. We pick hand was the investments. That's a four person team. And as I'm sure you recall recently, I think it was in '21 act seven five, they became the independent commission as well.

[Speaker 0]: Right. We did that. Senator Boyce?

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Thank you, mister chair.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So yesterday, the treasurer had presented us, think it was like what, sections 18 through 22 had discussed about the investments piece now officially going to be picked?

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: That's eight through 20. So that's the OPEB. So the Okay. The investment sorry. The pension investments and assets, about $7,000,000. That's always been in the feed setting.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Okay.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: The overhead approaching about 400,000,000 right now that we just started prefunding, that has remained with the treasurer as the sole fiduciary. And the proposal for this year is that we move that into to align with our with our pension investments.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: We won awards. This past year, we received awards for administration of different plans. The council, which is the the associations that we belong to, they

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: look at

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: a series of metrics to determine whether or not you are adhering to best practices and we are. And so I wanted to point that out.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: That's great. Oh. Future. Own them hard.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Things are going well. So the next few slides, I don't wanna belabor these, but I thought they'd just be a nice resource for you folks because, again, so often we're talking about funding, but I wanted to just have, like, sort of your quick quick stats, who's who's covered in these systems. So this is the state system. Quickly who is covered in them, how they're funded, and how they're governed. Then the chart on the right shows population numbers. Know, I think what's really interesting here to see is what an average benefit is. The average monthly benefit is just over $2,000 in the state system. So, again, it's not it's it's a real it's a very meaningful and reliable source of income, and it's not, well, exceeding rich on you know, it's it's a it's I think it's a really helpful kind of grounding number to let just to let folks get a picture of what what our system's all about. And then at the bottom, just wanted to give a quick financial picture. You know, you've got our assets. You've got our our liability, and then the bottom number is our funded ratio. That's the one that we're always very keenly aware of as as the summer ends and we get into our evaluation season. The next page is also the state system, but it's the it's open. It's the retiree health benefit. So, again, some quick stats. And as you see, not funded that point at at this time. But we're at the very start of our funding journey, and the work that the legislature did in act one fourteen, I just think is incredible. If you look at how it's progressing, the amount that we are gonna save taxpayers over the long haul. Right. It's really stunning. So kudos to all of you on that, and we are keeping a close eye on it. And it's why we're proposing in some of the proposals we have to you know, we we view them as evolutions of the work that this body has done over the past decade or so. I keeping the chairs note in mind that a short presentation would not be unwelcome. I'm not gonna go over the other stats. You should have them, and you can review them at your leisure. I'll just note about the municipal system that that's a little different insofar as the municipals fund that. Municipal municipals. The municipalities fund that and not the state. So little different on that.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Just they're the ones that

[Speaker 0]: are funded the highest too.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: I mean, far as percent. Interestingly, though, they they are funded the highest. I think in some ways, that's that's probably a factor because they're a younger system. They were the last one created better. Their cash flows are much more positive because when you start a new system, got all actives putting in. Don't have Oh, no. And there's some of that at play there. But has

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: they been going? How long how many years have they been going with them? Seventy four.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah. No. In pension terms. Okay. I think the teachers are 47. Oh. And can't see the. Yeah.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Guess it's it's like Yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: But their average monthly benefit is is Much less.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah. I think probably

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: My guess is their pay is substantially less too. I think that's probably pay us on the whole modest.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: And. So really just some stats for you to take a look at. And then at some of those supplemental retirement plans, I didn't put all of them here, just the big ones. The, you know, Empower record keeps them for us, and we have I just wanted to just be able to see the number of people in the defined contribution plans and then the deferred compensation plans, and we have over $1,100,000,000 in assets in those plans that's in individuals' accounts. So not pooled like the pension and benefits funds are, but individual accounts. So those are the plans that we administer with some stats. Hope that's helpful. I wanted to turn you know, because I think the big issue always is funding when we come over and talk here, so I wanted to start with just the the real basics. It's not rocket surgery. The the pension fund is a big fund. We put we have three sources that go into it. We have employer contributions, employee contributions, and then we have investment earnings. The goal is to leverage those investment earnings as much as possible to save money for taxpayers. And on the outflows, we have your benefit payments, and we have expenses. That's the expenses of me and my team running the system, our vendors, our IT, all of that stuff. Over the life of the plan, it operates on a really simple formula. Contributions plus investments equal benefits and expenses. What we're just doing as we're doing all this actuarial valuation work, we're trying to figure out how much we need to put in in contributions so that we can make this formula work to the best to the best balance of the state and and.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: That's a good image. Yeah.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: It is a good It's a very helpful image.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: It was at a I went to a funding conference this summer, and I saw it.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Yeah. Oh, that's like that was like the first time I think I've ever seen that.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It helped. It I mean, I've been doing it for a number of years, and it helped me. That's

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: why Yeah. I was like, oh. Because then

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: the the levers at the bottom in particular, like, couldn't turn

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: off benefits. You couldn't turn off expenses a little bit.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Which in act one fourteen, you turned up the contributions.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Right.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: You know? So yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: No. It's it's great. Those are all.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: So a a little history, we could go deeper into it another time if you'd like to, but one of the things we're talking about this year is funding policy task force. Think was in yesterday talking about that. Mhmm. Kind of to to ground on it, in 2008, we started our thirty year plan, closed plan to pay down the unfunded liability. And as you see from this chart, the you know, really got hit hard in the great financial crisis, and then it's been a steady reduction in the funding percentage through 2020. The reason for that is because, you know, getting back to contributions, we weren't putting sufficient contribution. I mean, we can't go from zero to six. I mean, folks know better than anybody. You can't just come up with a huge pile of money right away, say you had to ease into it. So at the start of a thirty year period, it was really designed to be backloaded. And over time, you've taken efforts to move that up. Initially, the unfunded liability payments were set to increase by 5% a year, really backloading. I think about ten years ago, you changed that to three, so you're kinda flattening that curve. And then in act one fourteen, you did the plus payments, you know, the additional $15,000,000 for each system you're putting in on top of the ADEX, and that's all had the effect of flattening that curve. And, hopefully, as we've been experiencing, seeing the 8x, the amount we're asking every year level wise and not be such starting to increase. That low formula there in 2020, that followed an experience study that we performed where we realized that we were we were expecting to earn 7.5% on our investments. And we realized that that was just not not happening, not the right amount, and so we reduced it to 7%, and that's where you see that dip going right in there in 2020.

[Speaker 0]: I'm not too sure. Senate's right. Senate Vyhovsky. What

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: is the average over the last three years? Because my understanding is we've had a couple really good years that have been well over 7%.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: I don't know that I have a three year average. I think these might have five one five year average, but I think it's around 10. Alright.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah. That sounds about right.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah. It might be a little things have been working, but I'd like to do this slide before talking about you know? So what happened? We did that big experience study couple of years in this building with the pension task force that that everyone remembers, and that resulted in act one fourteen. And that's where we we kinda hit all those all those vows. There is a significant one time contributions that went in, the plus payments that are now going in every year. We increased member contributions, actually, those are still increasing. I think next year will be the last one where they'll be fully phased in. Made changes to the COLA and some other system benefits. So that was the money coming out, Valve. And then probably most significantly, we decided to to refund our benefits, immediately reducing our long term liabilities by 1.7. And as we studied last year, over the life, if we if we keep on our commitments through 2038, 2048, respectively, that's $6,000,000,000 in savings that that's gonna generate. So really important work and

[Speaker 0]: pay off. So let's see how it's going.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Remind me, I know I've worked on 01/14, but that feels like approximately six lifetimes ago. That $6,000,000 in saving, that stuff

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: can go anywhere, or is

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: that just freed up for general fund use?

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: That what that is is that it's money that you don't need to come up with because of investment earnings for the putting more money to of last year and today. And so that's all gonna earn money over the long haul, and that money that it's earning, that's that investment type that that's coming in. That is adding to the funds so contributions don't have to be as much.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So that is that savings is earmarked so that contributions don't need to be as much. Will that drive contributions down from what they are now?

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Well, our trajectory over the life of the through 2038 on the pensions is that they're gonna be about flat, slightly increasing. Okay. So it is having that effect because every year we realize some of like, the that extra $15,000,000, every year, we'll realize the gains on it when we reset the next year's amount that we're asking. Mhmm. So we're we're realizing this. It's not like a a, you know, money that's gonna appear as there's an expense item that we no longer have. Right. It's gone. Where that would happen is in 2038, where that unfunded liability is fully paid off, Then there's a massive amount of spend of money available to use for other things. But we'd like to talk about that.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Then I won't ask my next question. I'll let you talk about it.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Well, feel free. I I I'm I'll get to it. It's one

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: part We're gonna get to it. I'll I'll wait for you to get to it, and I'll see if I still have a question. Sure.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: This chart kind of expands out the view five more years after the bad times. And if you look at where we've rebounded since 2020, it's really a great story. You know, up to 73% on the state system, up from I think we're at 51% on the teacher system, to 63%. So Great. Really strong strong progress.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I think it's the thing John's the happiest about

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: that he's learned in the committee is where where we are with pensions now. Sauce or kitchen today.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Because we were in the house together, and John was on appropriations, and it was a

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: very different Oh, god. Yeah. That's all. You know?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Well, one thing that

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: I I like to emphasize with this graph is this downward slope on the percentages as we were ramping up our contributions. And what's really important is that you had to go through that period Mhmm. To get to that lower trajectory that we're now on. And it's why I think you'll hear treasurer check. You'll hear me anytime I I get an opportunity to say it that, you know, these years now, just like the back end of your mortgage, are the critical time to make sure we stay on track of these payments because this is the time after, you know

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: paying your

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: paying your interest Yeah. The whole time, finally getting down home. Okay. You're finally seeing some benefit. That's why I should say, well, it's hard to think that you have to kind of give away fifteen years of declining funding percentages, but that was as as contributions were getting up to where they need to be. And then I just wanted to come back to the municipal system funding quickly. They're the you know, have the highest funding ratio at the time, they're actually not quite paying the full adequately recommended amount. And so their funding percentages have been declining over the past few years, but this past year because of the strong investment returns being the first uptick in recent years. What we and this body have done to address that, I don't think it was the last session, think it was one before, we worked with all of the municipalities, the unions, and put together a package, a four year package of increases where each each side, the employees and the employers, would increase their contribution rates by 25 basis points a year. So over the course of the four year package, each side goes up a whole percent, 2% total, and so it's making steady progress. That four year package was on the tail end of another four year package and another so this is a process that we've been doing, I think, with some great success, And I think everyone understands the need to do it. All of the municipalities, legislature, everyone's been really strong partners in making sure this gets turned around. So it's not getting to that 100% by 2038 like the other systems are currently on trajectory to do. But it as as treasurer always say, the thing that he's gonna look at is what's the trajectory of the system. Is it going down? Is it going up? And before we made the changes, this line going out was pretty flat. Mhmm. So now it's it's ticked up. That's good. We keep an eye on it. If things are looking, like they're gonna be a challenge, we're gonna go back out to all the stakeholder groups sooner and, get talking. So what are we taking away from this year's pension valuations after 2025? It's a strong year of planned investments since no other way to look at it. $603,000,000 came into pension systems, not from taxpayers, but from our investments. And and one of the ways that we make sure our yearly asks are reasonable and not not kind of wild ups and downs is we smooth in our gains and losses over a rolling five year period. So that's why we've now had a number of gains. We worked through a really bad year a few years ago, you probably remember, and we now have over a 165,000,000 in deferred investment gains. And so those funding percentages that I told you about, the the 6373%, they pretend like that 165,000,000 there. And that's gonna be kind of a tailwind at our back as we go into future years. We just don't recognize deserve or something. Yeah. So

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: But but if something went bad

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: It would get even worse.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. But moving it. It would

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: get You know, It's like we have that reserve. Use We have. Mhmm.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Mhmm. So, yeah, the annual increases in the ADEX on the pension side have stabilized. Gonna be a different story on the OPEB side. Let's talk about that. And a real important note we got to, I think last year, made this year, all our plans are cash flow positive net of investments. What that means is what's coming in from the employer and employee contributions is enough to cover our benefit payments. That's great. That six zero three is all going to do the work of meeting what we need to make for the current year and putting some way on top of it. So it's a really strong place to be, and that's that's kinda what I was talking about when I said we had to do that work to get up to the contribution levels. We're gonna have to stay high because, ultimately, you wanna put in less than the full amount of the benefits and rely on those investments, but you gotta get funded first. So that's the work we're doing right now. And the ratings agencies are are noticing, and it's helping us as Trigger paycheck is going out and doing bonds.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Right. Well and I just yeah. Sorry about that. Can we we have gone down. Our rating has gone down in the last couple of years, now it when do we get reevaluated?

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: I'm gonna defer that because I know my own limitations to to your paycheck and the financial team. I think every time we issue, we get it looked at. I don't think there's any change when we just when we just issued some debt few months ago.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Right. Because we went down from triple a debt.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: That was a long time ago, though.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: That was Oh, that's what our memories are off. But

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: but have we reclaimed? We're not back up at triple a.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: We're not back up at triple a, but we're we're we've been stable or or positive, I think, for a while. Yes.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I appreciate that, but we're not back to where we were. Right.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Probably due to the fact that Chris Rube has an excellent deck. I saw him present to house appropriations yesterday, and he will even get into some of that. He actually his grounding slide is more financial in nature, and it shows graph from the SEAC reports that that's our capital debt advisory commission. And it shows where Vermont is in total debt, net tax taxpayer supported debt compared to other states. And because of our pension and OPEB obligations, we're on the higher levels. So it's probably because that that overall amount is pretty high, but all of our practices, I think, are recognized as being very strong. Consensus budgeting, our funding policies, and what have you. And this is just a illustration of that stabilization. You know, if you combine the two, we're up for the pension system, a x, about 3%, a little over 3% if you have so it's two two and change in one and three and change in the other. So huge amounts of money, no doubt, but, you know, it's not the steep steep increases that we saw in the So that's great. That's pension system funding. Now a quick note on the OPEB system. You One thing that's always fascinating to me is, and some folks here may remember, that we were actually negative. We had a negative balance for our teacher system not very long ago. The benefits were funded. They were initially funded out of the corpus of the pension trust, which made it challenging to earn a return. And when they were pulled out, we used an air fund loan to fund it. Finally paid that back around 2019. And but as you see, once once you committed to prefunding, it's been a steep increase in funding level and substantial assets. So just this year, for example, you know, it's not nearly as much as what is in the pension system, but we earned $36,300,000. So, again, we don't need to ask taxpayers for it to fund these benefits. Is there anything else? Oh.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Thank you, dog. Very attuned.

[Speaker 0]: Well, I watched her live. So

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: at least So

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: I was hoping to just take a minute to talk about some work we've done recently. I think treasurer Bichak talked a little bit about it yesterday with our retired teachers' health care plan. As I mentioned before, we don't we don't have a contract for the state health care plan. The DHR does that. Our responsibility is the teacher's health care plan. And this summer was And

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: this is what took you sort of hijacked a bunch of you in terms

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: of your time. This is the 50% versus 16%. You got it. That's it. And so so

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: And those figures.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: I appreciate you remembering that. That's it's it's a lot of work that went into it. And what is really rewarding on our end is to see you you know, after we made the change, we saw our prior vendor full. Right? Vermont Blue Advantage no longer providing service to anyone in the state.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: We were I was right with you.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah. We I'm you know, when we got the 50% increase, we had to figure out what we were gonna do. We had a 10% cap negotiated in our contract, but we had a reality. You know, we only had six months till January 1 was coming, and we had 7,000 members that we needed to make sure we had a sound insurance plan for. So we did the incredible amount of work, and I I just can't sing the praises of our team enough because while these are really substantial cost savings, the thing that I just don't want anyone to forget is that, you know, you're retired. When you're anyone changing health insurance, it is not fun. It's nerve racking. You're hoping that things are gonna work as well as they did before. And, you know, I'm gonna knock on wood. Things are looking good. We're just we just went live on January 1. It's the start of the year. We're work we've been working through any issues. You know, we went with the vendor HealthSpring that has been providing insurance for the state colleges, retirees. So, you know, we did all our due diligence to talk to them, figure out how the plan was going for them. And I think we're in a in a really good place. And to the point of savings, you know, when you look at just premium savings, a rough cut shows about, you know, $11,000,000 in savings on premiums this year with about 3.2 of that adhering to the benefit of members, their share, and the state, you know, that subsidy we talked about, it's about $7,800,000. But then when you think about what we put into the ADEC, that annual contribution, that's gonna save $20,000,000 this this session. So it's $20,000,000 we're not asking for that if we had just moved forward with that 50% increase, we would have been

[Speaker 0]: Senator Clarkson.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So, yeah, that story impressed me when Mike talked about it yesterday. The question I have for you is and it's puzzled me, because you chose a vendor that

[Speaker 0]: I

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: don't know how to ask this question. Are retirement plans, not subject to the community rating requirement for all our other health care insurance programs. Because you chose an insurance company I've never heard of, and it's not part of it's not one of the two that we have approved because they are willing to comply with community rating, which is why we don't have as many insurance companies functioning in Vermont as some people would like. So that's the question, are retirement plans exempt?

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: I think the Medicare Advantage Plans are because they're CMS regulated, not for blood regulated.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So they're not regulated by us?

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Correct, except for very, I think there's some pieces like in the pocket. There's some, I think smaller pieces where there would be a state touch, but by and large, they're regulated by CMS.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Okay. Very tightly. How interesting. So I had just assumed all of our health care insurance was regulated by us and therefore subject to community rating.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah, I don't believe EBA was our product.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Look at John. John clearly knows better. Only about

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Just the individual market. It's only about 50%. About 50% is from the feds that you can't accomplish that

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: you can't Well, we have TRICARE and Medicare and But you can't. Right. Medicaid,

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: you can't up to a certain point, but not at all. And TRICARE.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yes, thank you, Ai.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: While not as, you know, the numbers aren't as stark, we do have, we still have the HIVE providing insurance for our non Medicare eligible retirees. So those who are not, you know, retired, but they're not at 65. And our board did some work to align the benefits specifically with certain drug costs, to align the benefits that are offered with the active teacher plans, which reduced our premium rate increase by 2%, and it reduced our ATAC ATAC by about 500,000 on its own. So at both levels, I think the the message that I wanted to give is that, you know, our board and our office is is is very serious about trying to manage the cost that we can have. It's health care in Vermont. There are limits, as you know. But, you know, this year, we've done a lot to try and make sure that the plans we're offering are both sound, you know, strong benefits, strong service, and are affordable as any plaintiffs can be in this case. One thing that I guess I wanted to look back a little bit on the history, it's rare that we can say that cost of the typical Medicare eligible comprehensive plan in 2026 is cheaper than it was in 2020 So this chart, as we were looking for alternatives this year, when you look at that blue bar, 2026, we looked at, well, what if we just returned to our traditional Medicare and the premium is that top blue line, would be a a increase. If we had stayed with our incumbent BBA, we would have been at that yellow line, but you can see by the the black line that extends throughout where we were in 2021 is higher than where we are today. That is a remarkable story in. Guarantee if the service was there, you can hear about it. You know, our members aren't shy about communicating with us, and I think we have free to use that. Takes those communications, takes feedback, and tries to deliver the best product that we can. Is there anything else?

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: The transition to health screen, did that happen January 1 Yes. 2026? Okay. So we may still hear.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Oh, yeah. And we are. Okay. No doubt. I mean, anytime you're gonna I I I was I wasn't in my current role. I was general counsel when we did the transition to VBA. And anytime you're gonna transition that many individuals, there's gonna be provider confusion, you know, billing challenges. It it it's gonna happen. We we have multiple times a week meetings with our vendors, our consultant. We have a whole team. We all get together. We have a leadership one. We have a broader one. Making sure that we're troubleshooting any of these issues. They're gonna have And ask to you if you hear anything, please let us know.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: To tag on Tanya's question, we will hear. I mean, teachers, if retired teachers in our neck of the woods have questions, I assume they would call maybe the MEA first. I don't know

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: who's call for. I know a guy who they might talk to.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So Colin's over there, but so Colin, would they they would tend to call you first before they call us. Yeah. I I would I mean, I think, yeah, Mark Hage. So Paul Robinson, Ramon and Ian, Mark Hage is our director of member benefits who works super closely with him and his his team to troubleshoot issues that come up, whether they first call Mark or they first call folks in the retirement division.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I do want to thank your team. I had a lot of questions about this transition when it was announced, and your team was really, really helpful in walking me through it, so thank you That's for all of great.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: So just some high points on our OPEB prefunding. You already

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: had a lot of it.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: I got a lot of it. It was a good year. Yeah. Right. We we had 11.8% returns on our OPEB plans. Wow. You know, fundamentally, it's health care, and that's where you saw our ADEX stabilizing on the pension side. You're not gonna see that on the OPEB side. And you turn to the next page. That's the that's where it shows up. The increase on the state system is about 12%. The increase in the future system is about 25%. I can tell you a little bit about why that is. The state, so we expect our subject our actuaries tell us to expect near term increases of 9%, which is wild, but that's what that's what we should expect. From investors? No. From increases in premiums annually. Oh, it increases in premiums. Sorry. That's one of our assumptions, and they had to they had to up that from, like, 8% to 9% this year. And when you up an assumption like that, it results in more money than go in. Just saying, you gotta expect more of these costs to come in. So, Dusty?

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I guess I'm a little curious. I understand why it would go up the cost of health care is rising, but to go up to 9%, yeah, we're seeing the average cost of health care rising by, what was it, 18% or 23%, sort of depending on what system you're looking at. I'm curious why 9%, that feels awfully low.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: 9% is a, it is, so they have a range, and I think their range is from like 9 to 11 ish. So we're on the lower end of their range, but this is specific care, most of it is Medicare eligible care, which is gonna be different because you've got the Medicare despairing all of it. And there are different there are different assumptions that I I can't speak to the to the details of those assumptions really with I could get the actuaries to kind of give me some detail on it, but I we rely on them to basically tell us what it's what they use for their national business. It's what all the plans are using. And this year, the state plan came in at about 9%, which is why you're seeing only about a 12% increase there, because the cost there was just that trend assumption increase. That's why it increased so much. On the teacher side, it was that trend assumption increase, plus the fact that we ended up with a 16% increase on the Medicare side and a 20% increase on the non Medicare side. So not only did we get paid on the assumption change, but we also got paid on the actual premium experience here. So that's why it's much more on the teacher side.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. No. And I and I would expect that. I I guess where my concern lies is that the actual increases get bigger and bigger and bigger each year. 9% feels really low.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: It's interesting because one thing is they set a near term rate of 9%, but then they trended over, I think, a twelve year period down to four. The assumption, which is actually pretty interesting, is that you can't forever grow health care at 9%. Otherwise, there will be nothing but health care in the economy. Right?

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: That's the direction we're headed. I feel like

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: it's yeah. The giant amoeba that ate the rest of

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: the economy. If only there were some sort of universal solution to this. Exactly. Only. And

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: for those of us who went through the shopping proposal, it just it gets more irritating. He's really frustrated. Yeah.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I just I when I see what I see year after year is

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: that the health care cost increases get bigger and bigger and bigger,

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: and so that 9% makes me nervous. But I I appreciate that you are not an actuary and did not do that now.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah. They're looking nationwide and actually are I the one thing I can say about their assumptions is that they are mostly national assumptions that they're utilizing. They're not specifically Vermont.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: So That makes me more nervous knowing that Vermont has the most expensive health care premiums in the country.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: So it makes me even more nervous that that number may be way too

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: low. It may be low, and I think that's for, you know, for our attention system experience studies. We do those every three years. This trend assumption, we revisit every year.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Okay.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: And the one thing I think I would say is that if it's we've been in the old days, health care, that assumption used to only change from the actuaries couple of time every couple of years. Now they're even doing, like, midyear changes in their assumptions. So we wouldn't want to we've been steadily increasing in each of the past, I think, three years. What I don't think we wanna do is a very fast increase to get to get to a a more realistic. I think we wanna continue our basing it in and seeing what's happening so that we could not like, this is a big increase. If we had jumped more, it would have been it's it's that balance that I think we're trying to accomplish.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Are there any actuaries or any is there a way in the coming years, actuarial review of this this vocab increase or the to bring someone in who can look at Vermont a little bit more specifically?

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: You know, they had done it a few years ago. We can get them They found I remember treasurer Pierce had them do it because I think she was concerned about she was seeing nationally. And Sure. Yep. As I recall, it wasn't markedly different. I think maybe Vermont was a little

[Speaker 0]: lower at the time. I

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: think it was lower at the time. Let me go back. I I supposed to put it there regularly. I'm gonna ask her about that.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. I'd be really curious because I I know now Vermont is trending quite a ways out as much higher than than the rest of the country's health care costs. So it would I'd be interest I just wanna make sure that we don't find ourselves in a position five, seven, ten years from now where we suddenly have to have a huge increase because we haven't kept up with the real costs. Let me talk to

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: the actuaries, and I'll I'll I'll just kinda bounce this idea around them with them and and see what I can find out. Awesome. Thank you. That's that's great. Yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So now to the asks. Now to the asks.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: So there are two two main ones. I know there's a position request and whatnot. I know treasurer peach covered that, but I wanted to talk more about the policy asks at this point. The one is the task force to look at our fund policy, that closed thirty year funding policy that we that we were talking about earlier. What we'd like to do is to put together a task force of, you know So that's to to look at whether or there's a better way to fully fund our pension systems, but mitigate some risk that we're gonna see as we approach twenty thirty eight. That risk comes in a couple ways. Right now, if we have a few good years with our current plan, that would tell the tell the funding policy to reduce the amount we need to put in. So we'd be putting in less. And then if the bad years happen as we approach 2038, we've been putting in less, and then we only have a small amount of time to amortize those losses, maybe four or five years. That would be a a a terrible place to be, and I've been putting together a deck. I have some graphs on it about what it could look like. We had our actuary forms of risk assessments so that we could our boards could kinda understand this issue better. So at that point, you know, if you're gonna have a spike in the ADEC that's gonna be, you know, even even approaching, like, two x year over year, that's gonna become untenable. And we want to avoid that. And there are ways to do it. There are some best practices emerging that other systems are implementing, things called layered amortization. Say that one again. Layered amortization, where you just kinda you close off your legacy buy bid, and then each year, you fund that new plus or minus over a set period, so you have a bunch of layers that kind of hopefully will be offsetting each other. There are policies like that, but the one important thing is that, you know, this I think our funding policy has served our state really well. Everyone understands it, has bought into it. And so I think where treasurer Bichak was coming from was that we would like to make sure that we maintain that buy in so that everyone understands what we're doing, that everyone bought into it, and that it's something that can serve us well through the 2013. It would primarily focus on the pensions because that's you know, at the time that we should do it, we're about ten years out. It's a good time to do it. Right? We haven't gotten to that really volatile point yet, and it's a good time for us to start thinking about it. So that's the first that's the first half this year.

[Speaker 0]: Yes. I'm sorry. I don't think

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: And have you seen this in a bill yet? Is this coming in a bill? We heard the treasurer's bill.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: That's in that bill.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: That is in. So and we're again, we're not hearing about that till it comes from the house.

[Speaker 0]: It's coming over from the house. Okay.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: He's over he was just over there. He's right now. Then the second, we talked a little bit about transferring the investment authority from the creditor to VPIC. The sole fiduciary model that we have is sort of not best practice at this point. It's not it's not best practice to have a single person administer large sums of money. It made a ton of sense when we had negligible or negative assets, and we managed them through a trust investment account. Pretty simplistic now as we're trying to really grow these funds, and we have a body, EPIC, that's an expert in investing them. I think it makes a lot of sense to do it. I think we didn't do it before we created VPIC because there were some concerns about whether you could commingle different types of, you know, health care assets and pension assets. We've been working through those issues with some lawyers, and I think everyone's comfortable that that it's a good structure. So that's why we're proposing that this year. Okay. Tim,

[Speaker 0]: thank you very much. We appreciate it. You were spot on time wise.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Oh, good. There's some links on the next page and my contact information if you have any further questions.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: And you have the best time of day.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: Thank you.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So the question we have to ask you is, do you sing or do you play in it? Wait. What Or you just didn't appreciate it? What is the Music. It is Music? Oh, is it I don't know. I think it's hieroglyphics. I think it's just diamond shape. So from here, it looks like it looks like music. But that is the question to ask.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: No. It's it's not music.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Maybe it says it about my eyesight.

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: I have played the drums in the past. Oh. So

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: You still got an answer? You would not

[Tim Duggan (Director, Vermont Retirement Systems, VT State Treasurer’s Office)]: want me to do so today.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So it's so funny. From here without my glasses and without coming up to look at it. Okay. Tucker, doesn't that look like she's my rag lover today. Yeah.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Talk to her in some neutral.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah. This is a little worrisome if I'm your rag. Tim, good to see you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. That was great. Time. And, Collam, you must Are we speaking of We're still a great work. We appreciate the work. Good for a

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: five minute break.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Good to see you, Collam.

[Speaker 0]: Let's take a five minute break. We'll be back exactly thirty.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Oh my god. From here, that time looked like beautiful music. I know.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I was I was really I was like, I'm not your back. You're new.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I'm like, I'm glad you brought this.