Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: I'll ask everybody in the room before we go live. A shorter, clean-cut attorney isn't always here all the time. Talk on data privacy.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: It's great

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: to hear. Clean-cut hair, about five foot five tall, glasses. Hold

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: on. We might be live.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: We are now live.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: We are now? Yes.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: Okay.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Great.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. So this is Senate Committee on Institutions. Today is Thursday, January 22. And we are here. We have two items or two folks helping us with the governor's proposed 2026 budget and more specifically looking at the capital budget. And we'll start first with Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer administration. And then we will hear from Scott Moore unless they want to switch. I'm happy

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: to lead off that character.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yes. Please.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Because that's the

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Trying to save Scott and the all the tricky stuff. I'm disappointed that flowers were so lovely. I thought that was gonna hurt my. They

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: They're senators, major jobs. Yes.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: It's not gonna be flowers in my birthday. Which is today? No. It was Two days. Two days. Oh, I don't know if you'll be the ultimate assignment. All right, well, so for the record, Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer of the Agency of Administration, good to be back with the committee and appreciate your time. Shall I launch for anything else here? Is

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: that Yes, and I just wanna refer you to this document, which is what Nick has.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yeah. I'm sorry. Yes. I don't

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: have no. No. No. No.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: You're here. It's your space. It's not mine.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: It's a budget adjustment. So I'd like you to talk about that Yes. A little bit because we haven't had that title on it

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: as far as- So I will start from the very beginning, Madam Chair, and I, as always, will probably on the side of over explaining, and so please rush me along if things are repetitive to the committee members, but I always, it gets better to on that side than the opposite. I agree. So yes, as the chair pointed out, I will be walking through this report, which I understand is also posted online for anybody not in room. This is the Governor's Capital Budget Adjustment Proposal for the biennial capital bill that covers fiscal years 2026 and 2027. So the committee members will, of course, remember that last year we presented the biannual capital bill proposal, which was a bill spanning the fiscal years, totaling, ultimately the bill has passed, totaled about $127,000,000 in capital spending, which I will touch on in a second when I walk through the governor's letter. This, just to situate it in context, this is the mid point adjustment to that bill, which we do every year or every other year with the capital bill, right? Come back and take a look at, do we have any new revenue, any bonding capacity, are there some projects that it makes sense to divert funding? They finish, there's possible amounts for reallocation, it's a true up based on expectations that have shifted since the time of passage. And so, I guess I'll start, I encourage members to open up, which most have, to the Governor's letter. I think the Governor's letter to the legislature touches on a couple of points I'd like to start with, which is, as I said, biennial bill last year totaled $127,000,000 About 87% of that, almost 90%, was bond funded, right? So this committee authorizes capital expenditures that are supported by general obligation backed bonds, generally that have a twenty year life span. That is traditionally how the capital bill has been funded. But there was also 13% of the bill last year that was funded by appropriations from the cash fund for essential investments, or cash fund for capital projects and essential investments, it's got kind of a long title, so I'm just head sports, say, cash fund. The key difference there, that's a pay as you go mechanism, you're not bonding, you're not borrowing to support capital projects, so there are no interest payments on those capital projects, so it's ultimately cheaper funding over the life of a bond. So last year, 127,000,000 total, about 87% bond back, about 13% cash funding. Now this year, the proposal, when you take all the reallocations and all the funding sources and mix it all together, there's about $33,500,000 of action, which is actually pretty significant for an adjustment year, for those that haven't been around for decades, they typically are between 10 and maybe 15,000,000. On the bond funded side of things, there's really a limited pool of additional capacity in an adjustment year, So the fact that we have $33,500,000 this year is primarily driven by the tax fund, and that that's an annual mechanism as a statutory transfer, I've been in here ad nauseam describing in prior years, that grows over time and is tied basically to overall general fund growth. So this year, of that 33,500,000.0, just 30% of that is funded by bond backed appropriations, and 70% is cash funded. So that's a real flip flop from eighty seven-thirteen to thirty-seventy, right? And the point that the Governor makes in the letter is just that this is consistent with some of the messaging you've heard from the administration over the last couple of years that really the future of capital spending and capital projects is not going to be solely bond back anymore, As our debt recommendations have stayed level or gone down, and the costs of everything have gone up, we really, really need to be looking towards a future where a significant portion of our capital spending is backed by cash fund, which we believe in, continue to believe is a sort of cornerstone of fiscal discipline. Excited to be in front of you presenting this budget that really leverages that. I'll pause there if there are any questions you have.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Just a comment, and you've heard this before. There is a reason and purpose to bonding because we're not one family. We're a government and we have different customers throughout the years. And many of the items that we pay for in this committee are gonna last forty years, fifty years and so the folks who are gonna be there in forty years, fifty years should help pay for it. So that's the reason for the bonding. I do agree that a capital fund, a capital or a cash portion makes sense and the way that it's been described by the administration is that that would be for things like engineering where you don't necessarily know that the project's going to happen. And so those soft costs and typically at the initial stage of a project.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: I appreciate the comment, certainly Madam Chair, and actually the opportunity for a point of clarification. Yes, agreed, and you'll note that this is not a solely cash funded proposal, There will always, in short, continue to be really valid arguments for bonding. I think that's known as the generational equity argument. You've heard me respond before that as a somewhat younger member of future generations, right, I think there are plenty of intergenerational costs that will be transferred onto our younger members of society that they will be picking up, and so anything we can do to lighten that in any way shape or form is of course not going be said. Yes, I think philosophically there is totally reasons to bond. Just what I have said

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: before, and I'll say it again, is that there are other ways to manage that other than capital funding.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Of course. Agree, manager. And so then just on the nature of cash fund appropriations, just to clarify, I think in the very first year of its inception, which was 2022, when it was kind of being conceived of as a concept, think that was put forward as an option that well, maybe this could be directed to fund some of those architecture and engineering costs as upfront costs are describing. Since 2023, the year after that, the message we've been trying to deliver pretty clearly is that we really believe there should just be parity between cash fund uses and calling it funded uses, right? And in fact, the final statutory language that got set up for the cash fund, is 32 BSA 1,001 B, for anybody that's interested. I think attempts were made by this body to really make clarity between if you can fund different capital, put bond funds, you can fund it with cash. It may be the case that some of the projects we find happen to be more upfront, but the idea is it would be nice to give

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: them a good financial kind of venture.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: I really appreciate those comments. Any other questions on sort of that? Okay. So then I think what we'll do, the committee will humor me, is flip to the second to last sheet in the booklet. So the very last sheet is a report that we owe annually based on 32 BSA one, seven zero one A. It's a report of outstanding bond appropriations that are three years or older in their unspent balances and plans to spend them. And so be happy to kind of circle back to that and get members in our deep orientation there. I expect as the session goes on, you'll want to dive into those items in more detail. Those are sort of the focus of the house, Your House counterparts have the Repay Committee or the Subcommittee that kind of looks specifically for that reallocation, so they spent a lot of time with this report, but we're certainly happy to come in and talk about any piece of it. And I think it's helpful context when you see old appropriations for similar projects that are in the capital bills. But what I really want to focus on is the second to last page, which is the final page of what we call the capital bill spreadsheet. So the first three pages of that spreadsheet give all of the proposed appropriations. This final page is really what I would call described as the sources. So just to make sure everything's oriented, it should be approved, it looks like this. It says page four in the upper left hand quadrant, at these two big highlighted blocks of. So, as I mentioned a couple minutes ago, typically on the bond funded side of things, in a capital adjustment year, there are really only two possible sources of additional capacity beyond what was already included in the bill as passed the prior year. A quick refresher, the bill has passed the prior year, it's primarily based on recommendations of the Capital Debt Affordability Advisory Committee or CDAC, they set sort of the annual amount we can prudently borrow, historically the governor and the legislature have both stuck to that recommendations. And then there was some bond premium and some reallocations last year, so the total is a little bit higher than the 100,000,000 that they authorized, but that's what made up last year. So this year, and in any capital adjustment year, it's typically limited to any reallocations from prior year appropriations, and I'll talk more about those in a second, that's projects that have come to completion and have not left over, or there have been shifts and priorities, or there's a number of reasons folks could propose reallocating. And then the second fund source is bond premium, I've spoken to the committee about before, but just a quick high level refresher, when we go out to issue our bonds, occasionally investors will pay a premium on Vermont bonds. We've actually recently really had some success in that space with the folks have been eager to buy Vermont bonds, maybe because as compared to some larger states, there aren't that many of them, partly our fiscal discipline I like to think, a pretty safe investment. So when we go out to sell bonds, we get more money than we need for par value, that additional premium is available to fund the capital projects for which we were issuing the bonds, and so it displaces the already authorized bonding authority that was authorized in prior capital bills for those projects, but now they're just funded from premium, and so that frees up that capacity to fund new projects, which is why it gets sort of reprogrammed into a capital adjustment cycle. So I'll pause there, because that's a little bit of moving pieces, but.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Can you point out where it is on the

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Yeah, so the reallocation section is sort of the top block. Well, specifically to answer your question, Abjer, which is it's under section 17, there's a line, the second line down says bond premium, and so the amount is given in column H at $6,858,000.000156, but I guess I should zoom out just for a second to orient folks to the spreadsheet. Columns B through F give the totals in the act, and Act 33 has passed, that's the capital bill last year, so everything in B through F in that light blue section, that's just a reference to last year, what's already in law. Columns G through M give what the governor's recommending to change. Any changes are highlighted in yellow, so anything that's not highlighted in yellow, those are just duplications of what's already passed in the bill, right? So as we go through, I will really only be touching on items that are in yellow with a couple small exceptions. So for instance, column H on this page gives the, so the FY '26 reallocations, that's what was in last year's bill, those are unchanged, but we are proposing one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, eight new reallocations in FY '27, that's the block that starts with 43,190 and ends with 31,327. So those reallocations total about 3,300,000.0, those are all projects that for various reasons, are either the balance is no longer needed or have been reprioritized. I should say, just for the community's awareness about reallocations, one of the drivers of reallocating has to do with the statute around capital appropriations. Capital appropriations do carry forward year to year, so you don't have to study the diversity there. But if they are not fully expended in two years, then they wind up into the court, which was the last page that I mentioned a couple minutes ago. And so the intention there, one for instance, is that the legislature can start looking at them, asking questions, why is this money not going out the door, project status updates. And then after five years, actually, statute says capital appropriations can't carry forward after five years. So that's sort of a drop dead spending of already deadline after that. They turn into a pumpkin, so to speak. So some of these appropriations, the first couple are ones that are pushing, that were past that deadline, and so we're reallocating. There's pretty small balances in some cases, but I'm not going to go through each line now, just in the interest of time, but I would recommend if community members have specific questions, they bring in the committees of the departments and chair staffs to talk about those items, which are mostly in ATS.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah. So let me just add something. So this section under unlike all of the other sections that we have, this is funding into the capital bill, not going out of capital bills. It's would you can kinda call it revenue. It's not

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: exactly revenue.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yeah. I use

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: the word sources.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right, right, but this is income, not outgoing. I think that's important. And then just notice the women's correctional facility is one of the items. I guess it's not, there's no line, but it's in the middle of that and it's 680.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: I guess the 97,000.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Oh, the 97,000. Okay. So that's one of the, so that was a particular allocation in a particular year that has come due. So, is the plan to put that back into the women's correction or do we need to do that?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: So specifically talking about the women's correctional facility manager, which I'll address kind of as we go through the DOC section, there is an outstanding balance as of yesterday, which includes that $93,000 of about 15 and a half million that has been appropriated towards that project. I think it's four different appropriations including that one. So you're correct. That one is coming up on its expiration, and so we were proposing to reallocate that funding just based on the time frame, but it's 97,000 of a 15 and a half million dollar pot of money that's sitting out there. I'll speak in some more detail about the correctional facility maybe when we get to that section of the appropriations.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Good. I just wanted to, are you planning to go back on the last page?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: I am, yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay, I just have something I wanted to talk about.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Sure, yeah. But I appreciate that question. So I'll pause in case there's any other questions on reallocations, specifically, the bonded appropriation reallocations in column H, totaling 3,300,000.0. Okay, so that 3.3 combined with the 6.85 that I highlighted, which is two numbers down in that same column, which is the bond premium, that combines for about $10,000,000 of new funding for the capital bill to the chair's point, this is sources into the bill. So that's the bond side, that's the 30 percent, that was 70% of the 33,500,000.0 total represented in this bill is all in the red section, right? And so anything in this spreadsheet in red is a cash bond item versus anything in black is a bonded item. So if committee members will examine column K, that is, again, J is just a replication of the cash fund items that were already passed in the bill last year, column J should be substantially the same as column B, but column K is the new cash fund resources this year in FY27, which make up the remaining 70% of the bill. So those are starting at the top of the numbers in column K, 17,000,000 is the full statutory transfer for the cash fund, which is 4% of the last completed fiscal year's general fund appropriation total less the current estimate for general fund debt service in the fiscal year, so when you perform that calculation, you get 17,000,000. On top of that, PY two fund interest, that's sort of financial speak for two prior fiscal years ago, and that's in reference to FY '27, so two prior fiscal years from FY '27 is FY '25, which is the fiscal year that ended on 06/30/2025. That is the last completed fiscal year as of the time we prepared this bill. So in other words, that's the year for which the books are closed. We know exactly how much interest the funds took in. We can accurately bank that in terms of available amount of capital spending. We'll be in in process as we speak. The fund is probably occurring interest again, but we wouldn't look at that until next fiscal year. So that's how it works. So the 17,000,000 adds to the almost 1,000,000, the 965,000, and that's kind of main statutory inputs to the cash fund, and then the remainder of that column, 119,000 through the 1,500,000.0 at the bottom, those total I think 6 point something in cash fund reallocations, so those are similar to bonded reallocations in that they are projects that for one reason or another we were proposing to take the balance of what was already appropriated and redirect it towards new projects or similar projects. But what I would highlight here, and I highlighted it to your house counterparts the other day, is one difference here has to do with the enabling statute for cash fund appropriations as opposed to bonded dollar appropriations. I mentioned bonded appropriations after two years, we have to report on them, after five years they turn into a pumpkin. For cash fund, the way it was, as of this time last year, statute originally said after two years, they turn into a pumpkin. There's no reporting, there's no, like, you have the spending authority for two years and then it goes away. I was in here, committee members will remember flagging this and saying, this is problematic because often it takes longer than two years to admit and to get the funds out the door. We're concerned we'll be unwittingly in this position where we have projects moving forward but no way to fund them. So we had brought a proposal for parity between the two sources that cash fund would be treated the same as the bond. Bonds have two years start report and then after five years they would go away. Ultimately this body decided to extend the pumpkin date for cash rent appropriations by one year to June 6, which would be to, sorry, let me back up, by one year, so it would be three years from the legislative session in which they were authorized. What that means is for the first tranche of cash fund appropriations that were made, which was in the session of 2023, so FY24 cash fund appropriations, those will disappear or turn into a pumpkin on June sixteenth of this year of 2026. So a number of these items, in fact all of them except for the last one, are FY24 cash fund appropriations that if nothing else happens and they weren't spent, they would just disappear on June 16 year. So part of our process this year, one of the reasons there's kind of a robust list of cash bond appropriations is we really dived in with what's primarily BGS here who had them and asked, hey, do you think we will get these funds spent or encumbered by that deadline? And if the answer was yes, great, we left those alone. If not, we should reallocate them because we I don't think anybody in this room wants to be in a situation where we have money just tied up that's not not doing anything. Right? Because this the earliest this body, for instance, would be able to reappropriate, it would be next spring twenty twenty seven. So that's driving some of this number. And again, specific items I won't go through today unless they're high level questions, but I would certainly be happy to come back and talk about any of them.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So just to clarify, they don't go nowhere, they go to fund balance or something like fund balance?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Yes, Madam Chair, so the appropriation spending authority and the fund balance are two separate things, these are all in the they would be they wouldn't like

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I just don't want the public to think that they disappear.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Yeah, no, it's not like

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I mean, the authority disappears to use it.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Right, until it would be reauthorized, which would be a calendar year from now. So in the meantime, it would be sitting in the fund balance, yeah, perhaps earning interest, right, which in some ways is great, but it wouldn't be being spent on the projects that it was intended for.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yes.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: Cash. Somebody that likes it before Russ can take that money and use it elsewhere.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Is that a question, senator? Yes, Yes, so I think what we have seen last couple, over the last couple of years is that we've had, I think, a healthy exchange between the administration and this body around cash fund transfer and should it be a fixed amount that we commit to every year, which has been our position, or should there be flexibility, should it be, okay, here's a suggested amount, but it can be anything up to that, right? And so we have consistently, every governor's proposed capital budget, has recommended the full amount be transferred, and I'll spare the committee my waxing poetic again about why we think that's important. But what has happened in the final bill as it's passed the legislature is often it's not, in every case it has not been fully funded, some

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: I amount or has guess my point is not so much the funding part of it, but it's sitting there as cash and if somebody wants that cash before we can get our hands on it, they can spend it elsewhere within the budget before reaching back to us.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Yeah, so I think, senator, just to unpack a couple of things that you said, in terms of if we can get there first, I mean, ultimately, any spending authority out of any fund, cash fund or bond fund or whatever, has to come out of this body, the whole legislature as a a joint pass proposal. In terms of the mechanics of committees, right, and which committee of jurisdiction makes appropriations versus capital bill, that's been another topic of conversation over the last couple of years. Our continued belief, and I think this was the vision since the cash fund was proposed jointly by then Treasurer Pierce and Governor Phil Scott was that this is really capital funding, and so it should primarily deliberation should happen in this committee.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: And as for the new senator, the bond is pretty much stuck to where it has to stay. That's where it has to be, and that's why it's applied for. But if there's cash sitting in there, it still is able to be used elsewhere and moved around, and sometimes we don't get all the cash that we've asked for, it goes to other parts of

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: the vote. Understood and appreciated, Senator. Yeah, would say that's a choice that this body gets to make and has made over the last couple years. We continue to advocate that really since these are primarily capital projects, this committee should be the one deciding how it's spent, and I would encourage the community to continue to engage in those deliberations. I wouldn't say zooming out, we are continually pleased that the cash fund exists, that it's funded at all, want to not lose the forest or the trees, that's really great. It's been growing, and at least that statutory maximum transfer has been growing, it has the potential to keep growing and be a portion, madam chair, of capital funding in a really meaningful way. Mhmm. But I appreciate the confidence in that. Any other questions on this page?

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: Can you show me, and

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: I apologize, I was reading a note, you'd said that there was reclamation or some reclaims on the on the cash fund portion about $6,000,000. Where is that Yes,

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: so Senator, that is in column K, if you drop down and skip the 17,000,000 and the $9.65 and go down to the, it starts with a 119,114.6. Okay. Then Almost. Almost again. All the way down to Okay.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: Thank you very much.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Was gonna No. No. That's I appreciate the clarification.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And it's the same as these yellow highlight?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: They're conceptually the same in that they're reallocations, yeah, so they're available. So if you add the 17, the $9.65, and then all of those reallocations, you get about $23,000,000 in new cash funding available for this bill. That's the 70% of this bill as compared to the 10,000,000, which is the 30% bonded. Add those together and you get about 35 and a half million, which is not obvious from this spreadsheet, but that's the delta between the total capital projects in column f, which is the bill that's passed last year, and the total in column m, which is this year's proposal. If you subtract those two, you get about 33.9. If there are no other questions on the funding side of things, I

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: if it works for you, ma'am, should I turn over to

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: the appropriations side? How about we

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: just go to the back page?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: The back page, sure. I just wanted Oh, that's the one we got here. Yeah,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I just wanted folks to know. So these are the program, or projects rather, that have expired basically. So these are the,

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: is a list of the bond funded capital appropriations that are two years or older, so they haven't expired in the sense that they haven't turned into a pumpkin, but they have triggered the statutory requirement, 32 BSA seven zero one A, that we report on them to the general assembly what the current remaining balance is, that's the last gray column to the right, I've then added, because some of these we are proposing some reallocations, that's in the yellow block of bonded reallocations we just walked through, so I've added a column there just to tie those two things out, and then the next column is remaining after reallocations, so current balance less what we are proposing to reallocate, and then for those remaining after reallocation amounts, what the statute calls for is an anticipated timeline for expenditures, so we have given sort of seasons and years, as it's hard to pinpoint, you know, Thursday, 01/07/2028, but like these are sort of best estimates in time based on the project schedules. And then the final column gives some high level notes on what funds are obligated for and any projects they may be related to. And as the committee has more specific questions, again, departments of jurisdiction can really speak out of these.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Good, and well, wanna make sure that we know the amounts that have been collected for various items and so particularly the women's facility and thank you for having that information now so the 15,500,000.0 but does that, so there's three areas where I see it, the women's core facility or correction facility that's on about the sixth line where it's 97890. Now that's a proposed reallocation, but then there's also funding in the remaining after reallocation.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Yes.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So it gets really complicated. So these numbers aren't going to and I don't expect that they would be all that is. I don't expect that they would be the only inputs to the 15,500,000. There's other inputs.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Specifically what's missing from this report, chair, just because it's not called for a statute, are any appropriations that are younger than two years level. Right? So in the case of the women's correctional facility, the bulk of the $15,000,000 was a $13,000,000 appropriation that I believe was made in FY 2024. So it was not triggered by this reporting requirement, so that's not showing on this sheet. And that will be the case with some other appropriations. So yes, to that project, there are three on this sheet for the women's correction facility, and only the 90 set, the one with the balance of 97,000, that's the only one they're proposing to reallocate, and that's again just based on that, that's the one that's old enough that it's starting to get close to that. That's one off this sheet. That's the one that's on that sheet, right, center? So, yes, this is a, there, there's a lot. Yeah. So,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So the 979,000, that's two lines.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Yep.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Down. What's happening to that?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: So that's a younger appropriation, Medicare. So that's, that will not turn into a pumpkin next year. We have elected to leave, except for that 97,000, whatever 15,500,000.0 minus 97,000 is, we've left those appropriations in place because the hope is very much that the women's correctional facility will be moving forward, and we want to make sure that we have funding to advance the project when the conditions are right and then we have a

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: second we can move forward.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: So that's all still available.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So that column, when you say remaining after reallocation, it's remaining after reallocation, but it does, they will all expire in a year, right? Not necessarily. Unless we do something about it. Unless we reallocate it?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: No, not necessarily. Sure. The the these would based on the status I mean, are all different ages, but the,

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: yeah,

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: it's not the case that these will all automatically expire. What's the range? Well, these would be appropriations that are either two years old or older, and then presumably less than five years old. So the ones that are four years old, those might expire, those would expire next year if we don't do anything. But the ones that are, say, two or three years, those have another three years to be extended.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay, so So does

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: this chart combine both cash and bonded or is

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: it just bonded? Just bonded, Sandra. So there's no reporting requirement for cash. Alright.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: So the two

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: year is no longer there with cash?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: There never was a two year reporting requirement there was just after two years from one place disappearing.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: So the one thing that is missing in the chart is what year it's at.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: It is not, yes, it is not obvious from this. It is It's

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: third year, fourth year, or this is the year.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: To the trained eye senator, which I would not expect folks to be without instruction, the DEBT ID, that's the third column over, that's

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: our

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: financial accounting system code for each appropriation. Those DEF IDs actually do contain the year that the appropriation was made. It's part of the coding, but it's unfortunately somewhat complex to decode. I am happy to walk the committee through it if that's useful, but it's not impossible to decipher which Yeah.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: You're there from. Right. I just think from Yeah. The brand new witness, so just asking a question. But if you're sitting here and the committee needs to deal with reallocation, If we don't know that it's coming right up this year or two years from now, it makes it harder to know what's the priority.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: No, I appreciate the question, Senator. And so just for some additional context, typically, this is a high level report. Typically what happens with respect to reallocations is that, well, first your house counterparts take a very detailed look at all outstanding capital appropriations, and they often will meet specifically with departments outside of the testimonies in some cases to review all of their outstanding appropriations, get real detail on what's the status of this project and what's not. So there will be what I'm, I guess, trying to say is there will be more information coming to you than just this report to make those reallocation decisions based on, and usually in those conversations, more detail provided by the year and some of what you're talking about. Good observation.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So then just one other thing on this page. So when we talked before, I had asked to get a list of everything that was at least $5,000,000 It could be that the women's correctional facility and maybe the BGS major maintenance would be the only items in that category. But so when you're figuring that out, if there's a better threshold, let me know.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Well, think it would depend, Madam Chair, on what you're looking for. Well,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I mean, what the committee is interested in. I'm interested in how we are accumulating funding for big projects because that's how we know where we're at in those projects.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: So, what I might suggest, I'm certainly happy to be part of this collaboration, prior years, so what Scott has done to help inform How to Live Your House counterparts is he actually has access to this same information, including the items that aren't in this list because they're not triggered by the reporting requirement and produces a list. I mean, it's basically a printout from our financial system, and that would have all of the prior capital appropriations, and that would be a pretty easy task to just filter by insert the threshold that the committee would like to see, and that what I would suspect is that the bulk, depending on where you set the threshold, the bulk of the larger appropriations out there would tend to be younger ones, right, because we haven't had as much time to get the dollars out the door, but that angle of analysis is certainly easy to produce. Madam Chair, must definitely toast, if

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: I may. Sure. For the record, Scott Moore joins fiscal office. Every Thursday morning at 08:30, the House has a reallocation committee that needs to go over this exact list. In fact, we met this morning to determine which of these numbers have aged, which of these numbers are things we wanna ask questions on. Sometimes there's no movement at all. And like we have 15,000,000 for the women's prison, what's going on? Oh, well we know what that's about. We know we're gonna save up on that if you will. The House, Senator Benson should give an idea, this vast page, how to do all the work and hopefully to give you more money in the Senate to then have to do more spending on the different capital bill expenditures. So we do meet every Thursday morning. In fact, this morning we met and I had a task of all the different people we sent letters to. Here's

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: who's

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: going get the letter out. You have $71,000 that's that first line. What's going on with it? Are you gonna use it? Cannot use it. This spreadsheet that Nick has does have some things in there. Like, he anticipated spending it by fall or whatever. But this gives the directors a chance to come in. I don't want to say justified, but explaining what's going on to do with the money and making sure that it is stuff heading out the door or it's going be turned back over for something else. Typically each agency will provide an email or report or something to address what we said to them and we can say, yes, this particular agency has 70,000,000. They have a grant that's going to the door tomorrow for 50,000,000 because this is a document, if you will, every day. We spend money so that the numbers change. That process is something that we're actively pursuing on the House side.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right, and that's very helpful that the House does that. One other thing, just if you can, don't think it's in the ten year plan.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Yeah, so the way the statute is written about the ten year plan, Madam Chair, that's been a biennial exercise. We update that when we present the biennial capital proposal. So last year there was an iteration, I think we had some discussion about it, some points of feedback from you all, so we'd anticipate writing that again next year with the next biennial.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: I

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: would like us to look at it this year, a refresher. It's certainly available in

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: the prior year. Yeah. And I will just say on the ten year plan, because this is somewhat a repeat of information I gave last year, we of course, we find it to be a helpful exercise and something we go through. It's challenging in the capital space to forecast with much accuracy beyond the next couple of years. I mean, I would say frankly, it's even challenging to forecast like six months from now. Look at the difference in the bill as it emerges from the legislature, from the administration. Some of that reflects differences in priorities, but some of it just reflects new information from a delay, right? So ten years in particular at the end of that, I think I wouldn't I always just caution folks not to take too much stock. It's a helpful exercise for us to, for all of us, I think, to assess what's known on the radar at this point in time that it's really as much.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Sure, sure. But it is helpful and it's good to know. Of

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: course, yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Thank you. Any other questions or comments?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Just to please the committee, would walk through the appropriations themselves, that's really what we needed. I'm sensitive to time, but

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: this We is are here for this.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Okay, well that makes sense.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. Yeah. Is so is there anything you have in particular?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: And I will try to move expediently here for everybody's sick. Some of this

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: Well, I

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Just because I I were pleased. I I I think it exists to the the chair's decision for it, and I just wanna know. And I can

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: go back on and choose it.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: And I just wanna know that I can follow-up anytime, Senator. I I appreciate that. The women's prison situation, it was

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: we had

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: a special because we gotta figure out where we're gonna put it to new with that. We wanna spend the money. Yeah. And I think we all share that goal. Yeah. And I'll I'll say a couple more words when we get to that second part that project specifically. But so I would invite committee members to look at the first page of the spreadsheet. So three or four back from where we just were. It has page one in the upper left hand quadrant. And I'm gonna walk through sort of two columns of amounts, H and K, so that both the new bonded proposals and the new cash fund. So in the top section, which is all BGS appropriations, we're not recommending any changes to the bonded side of things. But there are some new cash fund items, starting with 1,200,000.0, almost 1,300,000.0 increase for major maintenance. And I guess I'll lump that together with the next one down too, which is 225,000 for physical security enhancements. Both of these are what you might call annual capital appropriations. These are typically in the capital bill every year. These are a little different from specific project appropriations, like for instance, the women's correctional facility is just for one project. These are more categories of use that are buckets of funding for a whole variety of smaller projects that if you broke them down, would just blow up this whole bunch of smaller things that need doing, but better capital improvements on our buildings, which are the U. Colleagues will speak at length to the extent of our portfolio and how it's aging, and we always have to keep on top of major maintenance, and physical security is something we take very seriously. So both of these pots are really, both of these additions are really to right size the amount of funding available as compared to the project lists of things we're tracking. So there's always a long list of major maintenance projects. Similarly, there's always a long list of security projects. And so these additions we feel like bring us closer back up to where we need to be in terms of staying on top of that list. The next one down 3,600,000.0 for a Sub Bloomer building in Rutland. We had appropriated funding in the prior, in the bill last year for this project, primarily focusing on sewer system upgrades. What was also known when we were scoping this project was that we were gonna need to do some work on the skylight and the rubber membrane roof. There have since then been some active leaks, this is a big pressing priority. So, 3,600,000.0 to finish that component number project. Yeah, on the prior Sunday. And I'm just gonna keep going, please, Senator, stop me with any questions. The 900,000 below that for the multimodal garage, this is a garage attached to a facility in Rutland that houses a number of different things. There's some parking spaces, there's also the transit center that lives there. There was a prior capital bill appropriation of 600,000 for sort of critical life safety upgrades. Veteran committee members will remember that parking garages in Vermont are not a great combination, right, from salt and studded snow tires, there's just a lot of maintenance and a lot of wear that happens. So we had appropriated some money last year for certain critical life safety issues, this would be more like ten year fixes and some reshoring of concrete and replacing mortar and BGS folks can speak at one length about entirely of the cement room, but. Then the final item here, a similar theme, there's a parking garage located at 32 Cherry Street in Burlington. This is a project we've been funding for some time. There's been a lot of appropriations made towards this. The 3,000,000 we're proposing to add here would be based on the most recent, the executed contract, have a guaranteed maximum price for the project. Would in effect finish the project we're doing.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: Test out the building that we sold.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: I don't believe The one that

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: we have the authority to sell. So there's

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: 108 Cherry Street,

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: which This is the other one. Confused. Okay. I wanna make sure I'm not confusing him because I am.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Yeah. And I don't believe that that sale of that transaction is finalized.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: Okay.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: It's been a while.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: But we have the authority to sell that building, 108. I think that was not there. Thank you.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: So the total in cash fund increase for BGS is about 9. Moving on to the agency of human services, which is primarily the Department of Corrections and Capital Development. There is the top line, this is where folks will recall, I said there's about 10,000,000 in new bonding capacity. The bulk of it, about 8.4, we have added here to this line for statewide improvements in HVAC in correctional facilities. So there was $1,000,000 in FY27, that's in column C, we have upped that to a little over 9,400,000.0, And then on top of that added another 1.5 in cash funds, for a total of about $9,400,000 in new money across both funding sources. This has been an ongoing push, know it's a shared priority of both this legislature and the administration. This is a project that desperately needs to be done for all of our correctional facilities and we've been working through them one at a time. It's slow work, it's, you know, working in correctional facilities generally is difficult. There's a lot of factors that make it more complex than your typical project. They're very hard facilities. You have to work around the incarcerated population. But so this is something we've been plugging away at, trying to move as quickly as we can. This funding would help finish up Southern State Correctional Facility, which is where the work is happening currently, and then based on our current estimates, fully fund the work at Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport. And then I think after that, there's just St. Johnsbury and St. Albans that would be left on the list. So I would anticipate we'll be back here next year to have discussions about those. Any questions on that? Okay. Correctional facility safety and security upgrades. This is a 225,000 increase in cash. This is a similar line to the BGS safety and security, except this is specifically for work in correctional facilities. Safety and security can include things like cameras and fencing, but also suicide prevention efforts and prison rate elimination act compliance. There are a lot of, there's a lot that goes into running a safe and humane correctional facility and often it takes the form of capital investments. So this is kind of a flexible pool of funding that they dip into to fund those types of upgrades. And again, this is us trying to right size the appropriation based on the amount of projects we know.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah. With

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: the volatility of construction and materials and we just because this number may lose, particularly with the corrections, is it going to change? And so we just allocate more energy. At some point, we will we will run out of money. Yes, senator. And so this is another one that's kind of an annual appropriation. Okay. Appropriate, you know, by the end of the year. Yeah, I think what you're unfortunately, what you're describing is capital bill exercise in a nutshell. Right? That all of these costs are continually going up, and that's part of why we have this adjustment process to look and say, oh, this project that we thought was gonna cost this much is now gonna cost this much, and kind of constantly readjust the steering wheel of it to make sure we're doing the work that needs to be done. And there's a lot, unfortunately, that doesn't get funded because then costs go up, right? You've got difficult decisions. So I would say generally, and I probably should have at the outset, as we go through with the governor and prioritize of all the requests, as we inevitably get more requests than we have funding for, Life safety is always a top priority. Following through on prior commitments, so projects that are started and underway, if there are instances where the legislature or the administration both have made promises to certain communities or stakeholders, so honoring those promises. So by the time you go through all those sort of top priority things, there's often a list of, well, this would be a really great investment if we had endless money, right? But we're trying to focus on these topics. So, continuing down the 2,700,000.0 for statewide door controls, that's building on some other appropriations that were actually, there have been door control appropriations, couple of capital bills. Most recently in the last year, there are folks who look up a couple items. There was one for Marble Valley and one for St. Johnsbury. This would be potentially finishing work at Marble Valley and then moving on to another facility, which is why kept the language statewide because we didn't want to lock into this one specific project since we know this is going to be ongoing work throughout the facilities. But this is replacing typically relay based, sort of legacy relay based door control systems with more modern digital equivalents and DOC I think can speak pretty eloquently on the advantages of that and often some real programmatic updates and I think in some cases even health of their staffing challenges because systems can be operated with fewer people. So these are both from a safety perspective and an efficient operations perspective in important industries. Newport, at the Northern State Correctional Facility, there's been prior appropriations for a number of years, not the last Capitol bill, but before that, for a boiler replacement project. They for many years had a chunk wood boiler system that was manually loaded by incarcerated individuals for a variety of reasons that was both aging and the system wasn't working very well, so this is moving to an auger fed wood chip system, and this $2,000,000 would help finish that project. And lastly on this slide, in this section, there's 772,000 for DCF and youth stabilization facilities. Some of that is a re appropriation of some funds for that purpose, which were reallocated. There was $372,000 in a prior appropriation, and that will show up on that final sheet that we walked through, on top of which we are adding 400,000 for anticipated permit costs for this project. This is a project that has been in the works for a long time. There are some real needs in this space. We have a more secure, long term youth facility. We, in the fall, issued an RFP for a design build contract for this, where a developer owns and builds and designs, constructs a site, and then the state would lease it back from the developer for a period of time, typically with an option to buy at some point, but that, those design build projects don't show up as capital, we're not just building it and owning it as a state, all of the costs associated with those agreements typically fall in the operating budget, which is why the committee wouldn't see those here, but these permit costs which are prior to that development agreement taking effect, those are showing up here. And I wish I could say more specifically, just maybe anticipating some questions about that project, We, like I mentioned, issued an RFP evaluated responses and are still in contract negotiations on that, so there's really a limit to the specifics of what I can talk about at this point just based on contract negotiations. But this is for anticipated product costs for that.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: Yes. Hey, Katie, I'm not gonna ask you to confirm or whatever, and if I'm just gonna ask you a question about where I thought that project was going and I don't think it has been allowed. Was this project originally slated for Virgins and then Virgins did not approve the project?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: That's right, senator. This was we were contemplating a site in Virgins. Ultimately, the local planning and zoning commission didn't grant the change of use permit that would be required. Okay, thank you. Okay, if there are no other questions on that section, I'll take the next one, those are the two biggest ones, So fairly quickly here. Bottom of the first page, there's just one small adjustment in Commerce and Community Development. We're adding $20,000 for statewide historic roadside historic site markers. Those are those lovely little green flags folks will see driving around the state. This is based on just they also have a queue and they send them off to a foundry to be cast and they're not gonna do that they need a bit more with this funds, their anticipated pipeline there. Moving on to page two. There are no changes being proposed for the building community grants section. The Vermont Veterans Home, where there's just one proposed change. We are adding $500,000 in cash funding for a sewage system overhaul. I am happy to provide, if the community would like, some very illuminating pictures of the current sewage blockages at the vet's home. They experienced actually a similar problem that our professional facilities sometimes experience of materials being flushed down the toilet that really weren't designed to be flushed, they have these big cast iron pipes that are corroding, and so everything is getting stuck and causing backups. And cast iron, as folks I'm sure know, is expensive to deal with and to replace, so we've been assessing some different options there, but this would be a significant undertaking. So $500,000 is our best estimate at this point. We will be continuing to define that as as time goes forward. This is kind of a late breaking thing, but obviously sewage backing up is an urgent

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: thing to address. Pretty clear.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Especially for our veterans, right? Yeah. Jumping down to section nine, the Agency of Natural Resources. I can go into great detail on this first item. I think I'll just abbreviate for the sake of time and say that basically, due to federal action which eliminated federal fiscal year twenty five year marks, which typically come off the top of the amount of this is state match for a federal program, this 1 state dollar draws down 4 federal dollars. There was more federal funding available this year than we had anticipated, necessitating more state match to fully draw it down. But these 2.4, almost $2,500,000, again, that's 20% state match for a larger federal funding. And these are for a variety of projects across the state to support municipal infrastructure and housing and community development generally. So, something that has been in the capital zone for us.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: So, that's gonna leverage better than $10,000,000 That would be our expectation.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And we're not leaving anything on the table, right?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: No, I don't believe that these people say we aren't presenters.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And so this is drinking water?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: This is drinking water, yeah, not to be confused with DWSRF, is a clean water state revolving fund, is down below in the clean water section, similar story, and that's $1,500,000 similar story there actually in terms of adjustments, but yeah, those are two state revolving funds that leverage.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: So jumping back up Waterway Dam, Penn stock. So where does the federal match money show up? In terms of? So as Bennington said that we spend the two the 2,000,000 additional, we leverage 10 in federal funds. Where does the 10 show up?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: In terms of, like, a budget document, senator? I I believe it's in the would be in the DEC operating budget under their federal funds anticipated level, and if this capital funding serves as a match. But that's a good question to confirm when DEC is in here. That's a good question. That would be my assumption. So then the 150 for Waterbury Dam, that's been a project that's ongoing, that is a big project, also leveraging significant federal funding, I understand. Basically what happened here was due to the drought, there was a phase of the project that they weren't able to complete. They needed a certain amount of water flow, I guess, to be able to complete the space that we didn't have enough water. So that had to be pushed into the wintertime. I think it's ongoing probably as we speak, but then there were associated costs with moving into wintertime construction, which kind of blew the project budget a little bit. I mean, the only way they could stay on project budget would be to eliminate some remote monitoring equipment for the dam, which given our recent experience with the heavy duty floods, we are not thinking is a good idea, so this is funding to backfill that cost overrun and sort of restore that monitoring equipment.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And we'll have those people in to talk. Yeah,

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: I have the lucky job of giving just enough information to be happy to come in and clarify everything that I botched, but the parks park infrastructure rehabilitation and improvement, three acre rule compliance, this is also an appropriation that's often in the capital build. This is kind of a bucket for the miscellaneous parks projects and more and recently three acre rule compliance, which I think the chair has expressed an interest in. So I I encourage some testimony from FBR on that. This is not specifically aimed at aimed at three year approval compliance, so that would be an eligible use, just Parks has a long list of projects, and it's just similar to major maintenance or VGS, where you're sort of right sizing. And then the last line in this section, 200,000 for the development of dam maintenance and safety plans for the Department of Fish and Wildlife. So Fish and Wildlife own about 70 dams in their part, which is the bulk of ANR's portfolio actually on a dam count basis. They're not the most significant ones, the Waterbury Dam and Wrightsville, those are all owned typically by DEC. There are a lot of smaller ones owned by Department of Fish and Wildlife. Some of them do present significant hazards in the event of precipitation events, so this would be funding maintenance and safety plans for about half of them, about 20 to 40 of the 70 that they own. It would really help us get our heads around, does this dam, should it be decommissioned completely and removed, does it need structural reinforcements, help that long term planning. I'll just note for the committee's long term awareness, dam safety and maintenance is likely to be an ongoing topic of conversation, especially after the passage of the Flood Safety Act a couple of years ago. There's some increased requirements in there and a lot of work that needs to be done. Like potentially, over $100,000,000 in aggregate of work that we need to take. So something for the committee to be thinking about on the long term. Speaking of planning, Madam Chair, that was something Clean we're water, I won't go through every line item only because what happens here, committee members will remember, is in FY27 there's a placeholder of $10,000,000 That's because annually the Clean Water Board, which is a statutorily created entity, meet and have a public meeting process, a public input process, they develop budgetary recommendations for how, not just this funding, but the Clean Water Fund, some other funds will be spent. So we have just adopted their recommendations exactly, which has been the practice, I believe, both the administration and the legislators for the last time I've been this.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah. Oh, yes.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: There's one in the building that they were getting less this year, but from my historical remembrance, which isn't accurate all the time, it seems to be about the same as they've always got.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: So in aggregate, Senator, it's completely accurate that they are getting $10,000,000 total, which is what they've gotten every I since I've been think maybe what you were hearing about was if you look at the municipal pollution control grants line, there's a little bit less funding. That has typically been about 4,000,000 a year, and that's now dropped a bit, and I think part of the discussion by the board there, they dropped that line a little bit in order to pump the clean water state revolving fund money

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: a bit. Appears like they're actually getting the same if not more.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Anywhere, I I mean In total, I think, yeah, that's, so there's some shifting year to year, and part of it was tied up again in that federal funding change I described with drinking water, but I think, it's not, significant. Okay, thank you. Sure.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah, and we'll have them in here too because I'm curious about the clean water SRF, we didn't have that in FY twenty six.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Yeah, so, and they can speak at length about this. We didn't have it in FY twenty six because we had some outstanding cliff irrigation balances that served as that match So in that this is sort of playing back to, I don't know if this is in fact fully funding the required match or we still have some outstanding amounts, but you can see that. Okay, great. So now I'm on the, well it's the second to last page of the spreadsheet, but for our purposes today, it's the last page, we already did the last page. Just a couple more items to highlight here, starting in section 13, the Department of Public Safety. We have $500,000 for a USAR facility, that stands for Urban Search and Rescue. These are critical teams that respond in times of emergency and have been, I understand, pretty integral in our flood response. This has been a priority of the commissioner and department for some time. We are hoping to repurpose an existing state facility. We're not completely settled exactly on which one yet. We've got a short list that we're working through, so this money would help fund kind of the assessment and design and then the initial steps on refurbishment to meet that. So

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: it won't be the entire project?

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: I do think that's the uncertainty at this time. In the judiciary section, we have a couple items, $500,000 for the Essex County Courthouse Connector Project. Members will remember there was 3,600,000.0 in last year's bill for that project. This is essentially a cost overrun related to the fact that the water pressure supplied by the municipal water system, which these buildings are on, has tested inadequate to meet fire suppression code. Just not a high enough pressure and I understand they've tested several times and it's consistent. The water actually comes across the river pipe from New Hampshire, so the supply is on the New Hampshire side. Taking everything together, the judiciary determined that the best way to be able to meet code and continue with the project is to have a standalone pump and well system that services just this facility. So, this $500,000 was their estimate of that cost. I would encourage the committee to hear from them because I think they were still in the process of refining that estimate as we speak, and they had some ongoing architecture and engineering assessments. The 1,600,000.0 additional funding for the White River Junction Courthouse renovation, that's been a significant project in recent years, which we have invested a lot of money. This is basically to guarantee that if there's another, God forbid, hundred year flooding event, all of that money we just spent on fixing up the courthouse doesn't wash away down the river. If the bank collapses. So this would stabilize the bank immediately behind the courthouse. Newport Courthouse Replacement, so this is a project that has also been in capital bills for a while, not last year based on the sort of current status there. I guess the short summary here is that there's been a lot of movement and I'd say alignment, I think, in recent months and over the past year in Newport, municipal leadership and the economic development corporation. There's a cohort of folks that are coming together around a shared vision in Newport and they're perhaps pursuing a TIFF District, and so there's a plan being developed up there. We're feeling cautiously optimistic that there will maybe a real opportunity to move this project, which has been on the docket for some time forward, but we're adding some additional funding there to make sure we're poised to do that. And then the very last item is $566,000 for the Vermont Historical Society. As folks know, they house a number of our historical treasures in a vault, a climate controlled vault, and this, the unit that services that vault is called a Munters Climate Control Unit. Theirs is at the end of its, past it's the end of its serviceable life, they're having trouble getting parts. The concern, of course, is that if that failed, we would lose a lot of really important historical stuff that we ought to lose. So this would fund the cost of replacement and installation of that unit. So that is the end of the numbers. Are three very quick policy items I can highlight here, or I can be on my way, unless I have other questions. The policy items can be found, so we've drafted, as we've had in years past, an entire bill for the Office of Legislative Council, we'll of course be taking a look in here and working on your version, but this is a starting point, we hope, that reflects the spreadsheet. On page six of eight of the draft fill, begin the policy items. There are just three of them. Two of them relate to BEC, that's sections eight and nine, and again, they can talk in more detail, but at a high level, have to do with expanding eligibility for the Fairview Modern State Revolving Fund program, we just talked about, some of the numbers around that. The high level goal here is just to make the universe of eligible projects larger and more aligned with the state's housing goals to help support housing. So I would say these are primarily technical in nature, but I think the Department of Environmental Conservation could speak at more length about those. And then the very last point is adding authority for the Division of Historic Preservation with the approval of Secretary Administration, the way it already is, to not just accept grants, gifts, donations, and loans, but actually to solicit for them, so effectively to be able to fundraise for historic projects, they would have to specify like a specific campaign for a specific project to which donors would be giving money. This could be used for any type of project, but of course, of note to this committee is in prior years, we've had a lot of conversation about the Battle Bennington Monument, which we're gonna need to pull all levers we can to try to come up with money to to help out there. So this this is designed to help that and other projects. And that's the end of the material that I was hoping to cover, and I'm happy to take any follow-up questions. Out of your room.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right, very good. Well, you very much. Yep. You covered everything really well.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: That's the goal. Appreciate you for today's time and of course always happy to come back.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: Thank you, sir.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: We know how to get. Don't really know where you are. You must be

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: I know I find you.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah. Alright. Thank you.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: See you soon.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. You're welcome. Do does it do y'all want, like,

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: I mean,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I'm fine,

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: so keep going.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: Madam Chair, I won't be that long. Don't think.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. Everybody gets to that? Okay. Yep. Please.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: Again, afternoon. Scott Moore, district office. What I wanted to do with you guys is go over a little bit, especially for Senator Benson's application, the next step processes, if you will. As Nick mentioned in his testimony, the House is going through reallocations. We're looking at all the different money that could be out there, hopefully to claw some back and have more money in the capital bill. So one thing I didn't wanna go over was this spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is the spreadsheet that we will be using in the house. This is basically the booklet that Nick just presented. Couple of key differences. He has the cache in red. Red numbers usually mean something to me, so I made them blank. Then secondly, across the top, do still have the same columns, B, C, D, E, F, G, so on. On the far right, you'll see this red section starting with columns N going through columns T. Essentially, everything Nick got in his binder is this blue section, BCDF, and the gray section. That is Nick's binder. That's everything that he presented. If I tag you correctly, I put all the numbers in. The blue is last year's, has passed, the gray is what the government is recommending with the highlights that Nick had. Should be exactly the same. We get into the red. This is what the house is going to be working on. Currently, this red side matches the gray in terms of numbers. Nothing's been changed.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: They haven't moved numbers.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: They haven't done anything. They've had a couple hours this morning with BGS to talk about section two, but they haven't made any decisions about changing their numbers. Eventually they're going to change numbers. So then what happens, I will give them, this is a version draft one, version one, and then we will update this five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times here. Once the house passes it, it comes to you guys, then we're gonna have another section on the far right hand side, which I will put in green. Typically the house I think about is red for the red carpet and the center is green for the green carpet in the center of the chambers. So I have another swath of columns on the right hand side that will be green. That's where we're going to make our changes the same way the house did. But at that point in time the house will change it will be set in stone if you will because they've already passed it out of the house. So that said this is the same as Nick did and I'm going to go through all the different changes they had. I tried to make sure I kept the columns the same way. I did draw darker black border around the cache and try to differentiate that a little bit. So we're looking at column GH and I, that is the bonding. The G is last year FY '26 bonding, H is FY '27, I is the total. And then we get into the three columns for cash. At the top of my head right here we see cash fund section 19. And to the Benson just for your clarification when we look at the actual language that cash lives in Section 19 but sometimes it's easier to see the totality of the project with all of their bonding and all of their cash. So that's why it's here. I want to make sure we realize that that is a separate section of the language in the building. And then in columns M is the total of all the cash and all the bonding for FY '26 and FY twenty seven. So you can see there's lots of different moving parts. None of them complicated, just intricate, I like to say. And then the red is the same exact idea. At the end of the day, the very last line, line 200 on the back page, it should be zero. All the money that we have for all the sources that they lobbied and cashed should be spent for this bill. So that's why we look at the total capital projects as a total expenditure and the total capital funding is both cash and bonded. So do my job right, that'll be zero. So along the way when the house makes change, they might decide for whatever reason, major maintenance for BTS, they don't need $3,000,000,000 only gonna get me 50,000. Right? So that adds $3,000,000 to the bottom line. At some point in time, they will then take that 3,000,000 and move it to different other categories. Now, would hope they wouldn't do that major thing because that's how we've worked it. Then we need the Senate to do the same thing. The different agents will have different priorities. As Senator alluded to earlier, last year the House was given the transfer from the General Fund in cash. The House didn't accept the full transfer instead use that cash somewhere else. So they might make that change. So the gov rec numbers you see here for the $70,000,000 transfer that might change. Just as a good example of how things might change on the spreadsheet. So this is a living document. Every time we make a change in the house and if we have an update, I'm happy to bring you guys a coffee so you can see. And then we'll get down to it when it comes time for us to look at the bill. We're gonna add another swath of columns. I think I'll have to find them on the spreadsheet somewhere without making it font size three. Right? So other than that, Nick did a great job going through all the different things that did change. So I could do the same thing, but it's really repetitive because he talked about it all. So that's my five minute spiel. Really wanted to go over was just noticing this is how the next step process of what we'll do. And my goal, quite frankly, is on the back where I had these different reallocations, Nick had eight reallocations for bonding, another eight cash. Hopefully the reallocation committee will add another four or five or six different lines to add more money available for capital project expense. But we'll see. So we're reaching out to agencies that just started drafting emails today. Once I leave here, we'll go back and send those emails and hoping to get some responses and they'll let us know, Oh yes, we had a million dollars from 2022 and we're not gonna use, either have it back to do some rounds. Questions on this at all? Nope. I really want you just to see it as your first time through. Present your angles and the rest. Some angles assume this way more than, you know, the companies, you know, and Senator Harrison, of course. Senator Ingalls, how old were you trying to spend?

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: Just a couple of years, but I was here before that. Three or three. I was here before with with fibromyalgia Yeah. Benning.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yeah. So

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And it got more complicated with the With cash.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: Is We're the ones that started it. Then we senator Bennington and I are the ones that went and started the cash fund under the direction of the administration. So I for me, I very much am very familiar with it.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: Are there any mechanical questions about how the spreadsheet works? I'm looking at you, Sunny Benson, mostly just because

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: No. I think I've got a pretty good understanding of how it's set up.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: One thing I would point out is when the capital bill was first proposed, if you will, at the start of the biennium two year bill, there was $100,000,000 in bonding. So we had $100,000,000 to use. At the end of last session, we had $125,000,000 Some of that came from interest in the cash fund, bond premium, cash fund transfer, so forth and so on. At the end of this year, we're all set, we got 150 some odd million dollars. So added another $2,324,000,000 in sources for us to use. And outside of the uses, of course, administration. But we can see it went from 100,000,000 to 150,000,000 in the course of the biennium, which is my understanding is why it kind of went to a two year build because these projects take time. You know, as construction, you ensure you're aware, making sure the buildings get built. You can't spend it all within, you know, a month.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Start finishing two years is fast paced. Right. Exactly. Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And we're just appropriating the funds. Right. They aren't start really even starting.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: Some of these things

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Some are

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: just going.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yeah. They're definitely they'll use it tomorrow. And some of these things, they might be the other year before they get all the design plans and structure documents and all that kind of stuff done.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Kind of quick, Devin, is there any boring presentation? No. It's so boring. It's good.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Very helpful.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: And I'm happy to update you whenever they make changes so you can see. In the meantime, you'll do the same process you go through and Cam is a new committee assistant. Look at what the house does and you can copy along with the witnesses and, you know, sheriff and Wendy

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah. My

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: apologies, madam chair That's okay. As to, you know, what's happening. Sometimes if you have an agency that's coming, like, from the veterans from far away, it's nice that they can do testimony in both committees at same time.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Exactly. Right. We have a list of folks to speak with, but now we can coordinate with the house as much as possible. And you'll be in both.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: I'll do

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: both. Really helpful too.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yeah. Well, it's good because you know every time you hear something that helps you too. This is my third time through and making sure I understand how law works and everything. It's good for me to hear that.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Thank you.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: All right, are we good?

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: I'm good.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay, and then just tomorrow we are, we'll hear from members of the SEED Act and we'll start at one so that we can get out because it's going to be. Oh, you're not going

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: to be here.

[Nick Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration]: Right.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Oh, you told me that. Yes. So I wonder if we should. I'm sorry. What?

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: I don't think Senator Joe, well, maybe he's Senator Joe Major told me he won't be in, I don't know if he's not gonna be in the afternoon there or

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Well, both of you are gone, we might wanna postpone the CDAC. So I was planning on doing

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: CDAC in

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: multiple days, but still, especially with you being the new teacher. You know, I think we should postpone CDAC. You guys okay if we don't have a meeting tomorrow?

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: Whatever you want to do, sure. Okay.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: We'll just have study hall. Okay. And those of you who want to stay here, we can do study hall because we have a lot to learn.

[Scott Moore, Joint Fiscal Office]: You work on your expenses.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Was, yeah, I was thinking. Yeah. Yeah. That's okay. That sounds good. So, we are adjourned and then we will hear when we are actually up one. There's a delay, so it's

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: a