Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: No, no problem. We're pretty used to that.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: All right, we are live. Good afternoon. This is Senate Institutions and today's Tuesday, 02/17/2026. Sorry for starting off a little late. We have three items today on our agenda. The first one is Vermont Humanities. Second one is State of Vermont IT funding and we'll have Adam Gresham, the Commissioner of Department of Finance and Management in here. And then the third item at 3PM is going to be data management and sharing policies and we'll have the Secretary of State. So, now we have Christopher Coffman Illstrip who is the Executive Director of the Vermont Humanities and thank you very much for being with us. We'll go around and introduce ourselves. I'm Wendy Harrison, I represent the Windham District.

[Senator Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: And Robert Plunkett, Bennington District. Joe Major Windsor. Senator Russ Ingalls, Essex District. John Benson, the Orange District. Nice to meet you all.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Thanks very much. I saw you were handing out artifacts from the 200, so I brought you all some two fiftieth stickers in case you don't have them.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Oh, nice.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Nice. Please feel free to pass them I'm a member of the two hundred and fiftieth commission that the governor appointed, what seems like nine million years ago now. Yeah. It's finally here in 2026, which is pretty exciting. So thank you for having me. It's been quite a year for Vermont Humanities and the other state affiliates of the federal cultural agencies. Thank you for rescheduling my testimony. I was supposed to be here last week, but I was very sick. And now I guess Ken is very sick.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So be careful. But you weren't here, so you didn't cause it.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: I didn't catch it from him, and I didn't give it to him. Yes. So just as by way of a brief introduction, when we talk about the creative sector here in Vermont, we mean all the businesses, for profit and nonprofit and individuals, whose work is rooted in creativity. So that's studios, makerspaces, media businesses, writers, photographers, and, of course, humanists, like the cultural organizers. We tend to work a lot with the libraries, with public libraries, and with historical societies and museums. Our sector is very large. It's very diverse, and we've had a pretty strong economic punch. In 2023, the creative sector overall contributed 10,000 jobs. My organization is 10 of those, and about $1,200,000,000 to the Vermont economy. Our message last week was, of course, to share how our work is essential to the state of Vermont. And but I'm coming in actually at thunder Harrison's advice to talk about a specific thing that we do, which is Vermont Reads. And with that in mind, I have actually given you another collector's item. So the very last copies of Vermont Reads 2025, The White Pirate and The Sire of Windham. Lily Brooks felt that it grew up in New York County. She doesn't live there now, but she will be back in Vermont for us here at April, and I hope you can visit with her then. You're probably aware that Vermont Humanities is the sister agency to the Vermont Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts is the sister agency to the National Endowment for the Humanities. All 56 states and jurisdictions around the country have both a state arts agency like the Arts Council and a State Humanities Council. And as you probably also know, in April 2025, we had a little problem with the federal administration, that terminated all funding for State Humanities Councils across the nation after, over fifty years of really consistency work for arts and humanities work, in the states. The claim was that our nonpartisan relationship to the federal government was no longer in alignment with the administration's priorities, and they eliminated virtually all NEH National Endowment for the Humanities grants, and fired 60% of the staff at NEH at that time. Bottom line for us is that 630,000 of lawfully appropriated funding vanished overnight, and it has not come back. That means we went from 13 full time staff people to 10, and we had to cancel several programs. Fortunately, Vermont Reads is not one of them. You can find a lot of information about this in the New York Times if you want. It's intense. It can also be very boring. Or we can go out to coffee and talk about it. But I'd really love to talk about some of the more positive things that we've been doing over the last year, you did ask me to come and talk about Vermont Reads. So this is the twenty fourth. We're about to announce the twenty fifth Vermont Reads book. It's an annual program to encourage all Vermonters to read and take action together to build community around the themes of one book that we choose and cheer. Early books in the program back in the early two thousands included collections of poetry by Robert Frost and Billy Collins. To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic group read book. That was a book for one of our years, and our very first year was through the senator from Bennington County witnessed by Vermont writer Karen Hess, who lives in your neck of the woods. That was about the history of the Klan in Vermont, which is very interesting. Program has really grown very considerably in the last few years. In fact, the top three most popular Vermont Reads books are in the last four years of the program, including Gather by Oxbow principal Ken Catup, which was by far our biggest and most successful book. A 138 community projects happened around the state related to Gather. Can actually it's amazing to think that he could also be a principal, travel to 21 author events, for us, plus innumerable other ones that he didn't run for us because he would tell him he needed his boundaries, during the course of the year. This current book, The Light of Pirate, again, by Windham County native, Willie Brooks Dalton, is now number two with 109 projects. Sadly, because of Doge, we have run out of books, and that is why this is now an collector's item, and I had to beg for them. We gave away 4,850 books over the last six months of the program since it started on July 1. Normally, we would be continuing to accept new projects all the way through June 30, but we can't do that this year. We are out and we have to spend our money on the next book. We can't order more. We are very excited to announce our next book in two weeks time. It's actually the first time we will have commissioned a new work by a Vermont writer to lead off this program. Yeah. And not only is it published locally in Vermont, but it will actually be distributed internationally. And it's getting a lot of buzz around the country. So Alright.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Are you able to share that? Or

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: It is not even published or announced yet. Okay. It is

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So then don't tell us because

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: we're

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: on

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: the I will bring you the newsletter in two weeks time that announces it. That's exciting. And then you will have it. But it comes out on June 20. The most important thing about Vermont Reads book is not getting people to read the book though. That's that's a side benefit to get people reading. What we really wanna do is is help people take action around the themes of the book. So El Vielle Mascaro and Mos Coste Journey was our 2022 book. It increased volunteerism across the state and supported immigrant communities. March by representative John Lewis inspired youth leadership initiatives in schools all over Vermont when we did that book in 2019 right before the pandemic. And the light pirate, is a book about climate resilience, and it's encouraging environmental and flood resilience projects all over Vermont. And that, of course, was intentional when we chose it. We knew that we had been experiencing severe flooding all over the state, for year after year after year, and we wanted a book that would get people talking about what they could do in their community to prepare for and develop adaptations around flooding issues. As I said, the late pirates is the second most popular book, after gather, 4,850 copies. Currently, there's been 55 speakers bureau talks related to the book, including talks about 1,800 and frosted up, which historians here might remember as 1816, the year that there was snow every month of the year. We have a talk now about settlement patterns on rivers in Vermont. That's been very popular, and we have another talk about the nineteen thirty eight hurricane that was so devastating in the early part of the twentieth century. Hosts have scheduled 28 facilitated discussions on the book so far with an with expected attendance of around 500 people. And discussions did happen in correctional facilities, and I know you have a particular interest in that. They've been reading the book in both Newport and Springfield. We would really like to be doing more work in corrections that has been, especially after the pandemic, very, very difficult. I know we have limited time today, but if you'd like to get together and talk about that or have me back to talk about the kind of work that we can do in corrections, I would be delighted.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Well, we have time.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: I mean,

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: we Yeah. Have time until

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Well, great. So correctional facilities really shut down to all outside programming in March 2020. And it's been it was challenging before that to do correctional programming from outside cultural nonprofits or outside nonprofits of any sort for lots of different, very, very good reasons and also occasionally bureaucratic reasons that we struggled with. And frequently, you would work and work and work for months and months on getting something into a facility, and he would show up on the day of all prepared to go, and something will have happened, they won't let you in. After the pandemic, that just got exponentially harder. And corrections, I'm not super prepared to talk about this in detail today, but but corrections has really resisted having outside programming back in because it it does disrupt their flow to a certain extent. Despite the fact that it's proven that programs like this actually do a lot helping and with preventing recidivism. We've in the for forty years now, we've been doing work in corrections. We've done a lot of poetry workshops over the years. What we decided to start with going back into the facilities after the pandemic was just Vermont Reads, because it's a very simple thing to hand somebody a paperback book and read it and then talk about it and then talk about how it connects to your life. So we've been working in Newport and Springfield. We would like to be all over. We would like to be in all the facilities. We would like to be able to expand back out into other kinds of programming. We'd like to be doing writing workshops. We'd like to be doing Shakespeare in prisons again. We can't do that right now. That's been very hard for them to manage. Another challenge for us there has been that they tend to want to run things through the community high school program, which is an awesome program and I have not in any way denigrating it. But it does exclude every inmate who already has a diploma. So you can only actually include the inmates who are not yet holding high school degree. And that precludes access to an awful lot of people. So that's a bit of a challenge. The other thing that I wanted to mention, and I've heard this from State Department of Libraries over and over again, is that getting new books into the prison libraries is a priority and should be easy, but it's not, in part because there's no budget for getting new books into the prison libraries. The state department of libraries has taken care of that in the past. They don't have the resources for it now. The prison the corrections department has not picked up that line item, And so getting books into the libraries has been really difficult. So it's great when we can bring these books in and we can put a copy in the library and give copies to the group of inmates that signed up. But it would be even better if there was some small budget line that existed. It doesn't have to be much that could actually support getting new books into the libraries on a regular basis.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yep. Do you mind a question?

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Yeah. Go ahead.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So I have heard that there's, an issue where the, DOC needs to get the books directly from the publisher. Is that still the case?

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: That that has been true in the past, and it would be nice if that could change, if they could accept books from charitable organizations like ours or from the State Department of Libraries. I think one of the things that they have cited there is that there are safety issues, and that's why they want them to come directly from the publisher so that they haven't been altered in any way before they come into the prison library. But it seems like that should be a solvable problem.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That's what I'm thinking. There's gotta be another way to verify that a book is physically safe. And at least in my community, we have lots and lots of used books that are sold. I mean, we have three Mhmm. Bookstores in my community and Yeah.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: And there's so many used books that mostly they don't get sold.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right. They get pulled Thrown away. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Every public library in Vermont that has a a used book sale, and they'll tell you they have to clear it out because there are too many donations.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So then when you when the humanities foundation provides books, do they go you you don't take the books yourself into

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: We do.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Oh, you do? So you have that authority? Yeah. That ability?

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: We have a staff person, Morgan Irons, who's worked for us for many decades on corrections work, and she is able to bring 15 copies of The Light Pirate in and have them inspected and get them to the inmates.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Can she only bring these books, or can she bring other books?

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: She has not tried to bring other books yet because they're not accepting other books into the libraries, but we'd be happy to test it out.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Well, I don't want I don't want her to get in trouble. I don't want her to be a mule for us. Uh-huh. But but it's just interesting. So, you had Gather, I was just really taken with Gather. If any of you haven't read it, it's a really, really good book and it's about a young boy growing up in really tough circumstances doing what he needs to do and I just, the language is just so raw and perfect in my opinion. Yeah. I would think that a lot of folks who are incarcerated could could see themselves in or someone they know in it.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: I think if we could have, we would have given a copy to every ignorant.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So, maybe if we can amazing. Yeah. So maybe we can find, donations or something to

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Yeah.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: To is do you do you accept donations?

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Well, of course, we do. Yeah. About especially now, lacking federal support about before this happened with Doge, about 40% of our budget was federal, and about 17% of our budget was our state appropriation. So just a little over half was federal and state government support. The other half is raised privately. And then since Doge, of course, we've had to really step up the private fundraising, and we've been quite successful at that on kind of an emergency basis. Right. But I will say that that is unlikely to last, right? That's not sustainable over the long term. And the reason why we have the National Endowment of the Inventories and the National Endowment of the Arts is so that everybody contributes. So, yeah, so absolutely. And the reason why we were able to give out so many copies of Gather, we actually gave out about 10,000 copies of Gather, is because the wonderful folks at Phoenix Books gave us a grant to purchase twice as many books as we normally get. And I think we probably could have given out even a bunch of them.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: It's I would have. It still would. Is it still available from the publisher?

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Absolutely. You can get it at any bookstore.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right. I'm just thinking if we go to the publisher, it would be less expensive.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and this is a thing that we're set up for. Right? If we have enough resources, we have direct relationships with a publisher. We can buy them for 40%. If you go to Phoenix Books and buy a copy of Gathered, it's gonna cost you $20. But if we buy it, it's gonna cost 8.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay, so let's work together.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Yeah.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Alright. Are there other questions?

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: I just wanna get Yeah, and then I can move on and tell you a little bit more about the Light Pirate, how that's working out. But happy to answer more questions about directions if you want. So, you know, there's a lot of different ways you can learn about Light Pirate. I'd encourage you to like, download, subscribe to our podcast. There's two episodes about The Light Pirate. We interviewed both experts around climate change, climate resilience in Vermont, and we also went as far afield as Puerto Rico to interview people who've been dealing with the aftermath of hurricane Maria on the electric grid. A big piece of this book, is about what happens to a community after a hurricane comes through, and destroys the electrical grid. And so the the lead character's dad is actually a lineman on trying to keep the power as the water rises and rises. And so that's been a really interesting thing for us in terms of getting out there and talking to people that maybe might not have picked up a novel like this in the past. And we actually got Green Mountain Power sponsor that's been They've the first never been sponsored for us before. Lily is coming to Vermont in early April. I know you all are gonna be in the thick of it. But if you can take a break and run up to to Burlington, she'll be presenting at the Fletcher Free Library on April 11, which is a Saturday. Hopefully, they are not working on Saturdays. But she's also going to teen mob in Woodstock, which is more important to us. That's the only teen literary festival in the state of Vermont. About 200 kids typically come each year, about 20 high schools participate. We have a relationship with the two month mom organizers where we provide 200 books for the kids to read in advance, to ask the author questions to get signed. It can be a life changing experience for a young person who is really just kind of coming to grips with being both a reader and a writer. And reading is not a very popular activity among teenagers these days, so it's really great to see them have solidarity with each other.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And what's the date of that?

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: So teen LitMob is actually Friday April 10 in Woodstock, because it's during a school day, it's a field trip. And then she'll be the next day at Fletcher pre library for an all ages event. So I wanted to tell you just a couple of little stories about what The Late Pirate has done so far. So the first one is from the Smoky House Center in Danby, and I'm just gonna read what they sent us. So this is Danielle Zimmerman. She said, Vermont Reed's created a powerful shared experience for our community center. The Smokehouse Center advances ecologically sound farming and forestry and provides work and learning that includes local youth. Copies of the Light Pirate were distributed to staff, including summer apprentices, and the center hosted a three day nature writing workshop in October led by author Kai Thomas. Reading the same book together opened up meaningful conversations among staff and students, encouraging everyone to reflect deeply, listen generously, and engage with different perspectives. That's, you know, sort of an example of what can happen frequently with Vermont Reads is that they will take the book and then figure out a project that applies specifically to what they're doing. I've mentioned this, the Vermont Department of Libraries a couple of times. Joy Berlin just wanted to staff people there. You might know her. She wrote to us about a national conference that was interested in learning about Vermont Reads for librarians. Here's a little bit of what she told us. The last few years, our department has been collaborating on a project called the Northeast Summit for Climate Adaptation for Libraries. This comprises a webinar series on a range of topics related to libraries responding to climate events. If anybody around here has been to Johnson and seen what happened to the Johnson Public Library, you know that libraries can get really hammered flood and storm events. Libraries responding to climate events, preparedness, community engagement, and education that places libraries as key community organizations around local climate action. The most recent session, Climate Resilience Through Arts Programming, was held in January, and its theme was how arts programming can build resiliency against climate change. One of the projects highlighted was the repair cafe in Brown at the Brownell Library in Essex, hosted as part of the programming related to the light pirate. So they took the light pirate, read the book, saw a lot of the way that the characters were repurposing and fixing things that they could no longer get because of the storms. And they actually held what they called their own repair cafe where they encouraged community members from Essex to come to the library with things that were broken, and they taught them how to blessing. Which, you know, this is something we all used to do. Right? Yeah. We you didn't throw it away. You fixed it. Now it's a consumer society. You're just throwing everything away all the time. So that was that was pretty cool. They had, I don't know, several dozen people show up with broken stuff. Yeah. And they had a bunch of like handy people telling them how to fix them. Joy continued, I heard about this program at Brownell while we were brainstorming. I immediately wanted to share this because Vermont is delighted by the creativity of integrating the book into a program that taught people how to keep things out of landfills and fend for themselves when things break, whether that's machines or the entire infrastructure that's in the book. The summit group loved hosting something about climate action that was creative, proactive, and full of positive energy, it was a good compliment to previous sessions on flood cleanup and adapting to heat emergencies even in northern regions. They go on and tell more about what that was like to present that project to librarians all around the country. And then it was looks like as though they knew that that I was coming here, the Rutland Herald wrote an article about Vermont Reads and the Life Pirate that came out just last week, and I included it in your folder, so you have the whole But it was really neat to see what they did at Otter Valley Union High School in Lowland County with this book. Educator and Foot Footfills Program, Nicole, Vasher, and Hanlin. So the events were part of a larger initiative to incorporate Vermont Reads into our curriculum. Last year, we did Vermont Reads, and I had taught it as a cross curricular teacher. We utilized social studies, English, and everything together. We're We working to try and find something that would connect our students, our teachers, and our community, which is critical, right, that it needs to be not just in the school, but the full community. The whole theme of their Vermont Reads project and all the different things they did was how do we help our community not just survive, but thrive. One of the speakers told guests that the answer to the question of why Vermont towns are vulnerable to flooding is in large part due to the state's topography. He said, you add that topography to severe rain events and it's a recipe for rivers to overflow their banks. There are two stories that he told, one about changing settlement patterns of Vermont from the early years through the nineteenth century, and the other is about deforestation. The state is beginning to undertake statewide flood mitigation planning that's going to be a long and arduous process, and some towns are starting to grapple with it at the local level too. So it's our hope that a Vermont Reads project can grab people for participating in bigger conversations about. I love seeing your work here about the fire and about the river, of course, because this river right here is a perfect example of a nineteenth century settlement pattern that no longer works.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right. Especially with the hardening of the river.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Yeah. That's what

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I would say. Yeah. I mean, the pattern can work if you're ready to manage the water, right? Right. They used to be able to manage it because upstream there were There were floodplains. Right, right.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: That now no longer exist. Right. And as a person who lives at 185 State Street, I am right in it. You know. My house has been in the river three times.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Oh my gosh. My gosh. You should have a a vent at your house.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Yeah. That might have had some some reasons. First, you know, I'm the boss. I get to have the final say out on which book. But it's been really great to see how many people have picked this up. And I'll be honest, we thought we were gonna put have to push hard on Lily Bee from Windham County that people would avoid this book because it takes place in Florida. But nobody has done that.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That's interesting.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Nobody has done that. We haven't had to really push that Lily is from here. People have just wanted to read it because they see the connections between what's happening in Florida and what's happening here. So this is my sort of conclusion, and then I'm to answer questions and and get out of your hair for the next thing. I said at the beginning, 630,000 just vanished overnight. We're in the middle of a lawsuit as are many federal affiliated organizations. That's probably gonna take years, if ever, to resolve itself, Even though we did win a federal injunction pretty quickly, stating that Doge was in the wrong that our funding was illegally and unconstitutionally canceled. That did not give us back the funding though. It just prevented them from spending it on something else. So it's a very critical year. It's the first year that we've ever budgeted to have no federal funding after fifty one years, regardless of whether it was Republican or Democrats in the White House managing the National Endowment for the Humanities. It's always been consistent support. Our colleagues in the field who also receive annual state appropriations have been effective as well. The Vermont City, New York is dramatic, grant canceled by the National Endowment for the Arts. The Vermont Historical Society, which routinely gets over a $100,000 a year from the Institute for Museum and Library Studies, is not expected to get any further funding from IMLS moving forward. And although the Vermont Arts Council did not see a direct cut to their federal funding, they are batch filling on all of the individual arts organizations that did see federal funding that now no longer exists with them. We know that you cannot fix this problem for us or for anyone else. So I just wanna be super clear about that. This is a much bigger problem than what the Vermont legislature can can fix. But I think it's important that you know that this happened and that it really has a downstream effect on real communities in Vermont. Right? The fact that we were out of books, we can't do more. We booked every speakers bureau program we could for 2026 already. We had to close the program down in February to new bookings. And there's and we lost three staff people and, you know, twenty years of institutional memory because of this. So it's important that we that we say that out loud. You know you can't replace the funding. But we collectively, the Vermont Symphony, the Vermont Circle Society, Vermont Arts Council, we are going to the appropriations committees today. And we are asking them if they would take just a symbolic step in our direction and increase our base appropriations by 10%. And this year, by no means does that even come close to covering the losses that people have experienced, But it would be a nice gesture to say we care about the cultural and creative sector in Vermont. We can see that this is happening to you, and we support you in trying to figure out the way through. For us, it's a really modest increase. 10% increase is just about $32,000. Our annual appropriation in largest citrus only just over $300,000. So it's a pretty small increase that would push us up to about $3.60.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And you lost?

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: We lost 600 at 30. 30. Right.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That's a lot.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Which is a lot. Yeah. You know? And and we are figuring it out. It's not easy. We've had to cancel a lot of things. We've had to jury rig a lot of things. But we have a plan to get ourselves through 2028. And then hopefully, we'll see what happens. To be honest, congress just passed a new budget that included the NEH. We have heard nothing from the actual NEH about whether they'll give us that money, but the president signed the bill that appropriates new money for NEH. And for the state councils, We'll let you know as soon as that money becomes real. But I've been telling people, I'm not gonna believe in it until it's in my bank account and I've spent it.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That is wise.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Right? Just not. Yes. Because I don't think it's trustworthy. And I've talked to the the congressional delegation about this fairly frequently. I'm going there in a couple of weeks to update them and they know what the situation is, but I don't trust them. So that's that's our ask, and I felt like I shouldn't come in here with no ask, even though you asked me to talk about Vermont Reads. So if you can see your way clear to taking the symbolic gesture towards adding a little bit to each of the four affected cultural organizations would be really helpful. And thank you for your time.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Thank you for your work and thank you for your persistence and thank you for your attitude. Really appreciate it. Does anybody want to have questions or comments? I'm glad you're going to appropriations.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Somehow you all landed on the same day. I don't know how that happened, but I go straight from here to senate approves.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Oh, good.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: So house approves immediately.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Meant to be.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Meant to be. I don't think I've ever been in senate committees before crossover. Good. Thank you.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Well, then it's about time. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Yeah. And I'll continue, talking with you offline.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Yeah. It would be great to talk more about the corrections, and and I can get you information that's not just anecdotal. Perfect. Can I can tell you what would actually be helpful? Perfect.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Thank you. Alright. Thank you so much.

[Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup (Executive Director, Vermont Humanities)]: Alright. Thank you We for having

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: will, be adjourned. Okay. Please. Thank you.