Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Okay, we

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: are live and good afternoon everyone. Today is March 27. I'm pretty sure 2026. And

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: we have one item today which is Department of Corrections supervisory or fee There's a bill H635 which came over from the house and this is just to get a preliminary. We did have a walk through but we'd like to hear about what Department of Corrections, what your opinions are and recommendations. And so you haven't been to this committee before, I don't believe, but so I'm Wendy Harrison, I represent the Windham District.

[Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: And I'm Rob Plunkett from the Bendham

[Russ Ingalls (Member)]: District, Senator Russ Ingalls, Essex District. John Benson, the Orange District.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Great, nice to meet you all. Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections. Thanks for having me on a beautiful Friday. Thank you for being here. I think I did watch last minute of your walk through, and then Scott who joined this call, I think, did a great job of bringing it up, but I'll just do a walk through of the program itself. There's some data in here about the value of the collection, what the cost, our collections of the fees itself, and then some data around the we'll call it backlog of the debt. Okay. Sounds good. So as you know, the authority in 28 DSA Chapter three allows DOC to collect up to $30 per month per individual. We currently collect $15 per month. Our DOC policy number four twenty six establishes the process in which we will collect. It also carves out some exemptions to folks on reached out to social security disability individuals accepted by another state under the interstate compact. So if they commit a crime in Vermont but are a Massachusetts resident and we transfer their supervision to Massachusetts, we then do not collect a fee here. Individuals residing in a residential treatment or a correctional facility are also not charged. Individuals on parole for life may request an exemption if they're in kind of administrative status and their supervision. The process for billing is completed every month. It's added to an individual's count. Individuals are assessed, they're notified by the probation and parole officer at intake, where that person walks through that they'll be assessed, the frequency and the three options in which they can make payments. Currently, have an electronic payment portal, so folks can access that through our website and make a payment with a debit card or credit card or an e check. They can also mail a hard copy money order into the lockbox, which is an off-site PO box administered by TD Bank. And then we also run a tax set off program with the tax department, where we submit debt to the tax department to be collected through garnishment of tax returns. And the criteria for that is if folks are ninety days in arrears in payments and $45 or more. The only operational expenses we incur for this program and that are charged to the fund are for the three payment options that I just described. Tax offset is mostly in the mailing that we do. We mail out a notice to folks of our intention to collect. We attempt to notify folks via mail two separate times.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: So if it comes back as undeliverable, we'll look and see if we have an alternative address and then send them another notice. The

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: lockbox is a per item fee, so we're charged kind of a base service fee and then every individual payment we receive. The electronic payment portal, similar there. It's a fee based on the amount they pay and by transaction type. So it's 3% for credit or debit card, and then $1.5 for e check, and the department requires those CDs. This gives you our revenue snapshot in the last several fifteen years. Revenue, everything that is collected is deposited into the special fund, the supervision fee fund. We have spending authority in that fund up to $759,000 but we can only spend what we receive. I'm sorry.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Can you

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: say that again? Yeah. So okay. Yeah. The spending authority in that fund is 759,000. We only spend what we receive, what we collect.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: That is

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: And they give the school.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Do you mind questions as we go along?

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: No. Not at all.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Which is a question. Yeah.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Is that's a very specific number. It is. I I think in the past, we collected up to that amount, and so we needed to request that level of spending authority to be able to spend it down, but we have not collected up to that amount.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay, so it's just a coincidence.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: It's yeah. Okay. It's very specific for that reason. So, revenue is collected to cover the cost of the program, the operating cost specifically. At the close of the fiscal year, we use the balance of whatever is remaining after those operational costs to offset PNP operational cost, probation and control.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So the operational costs, are those the electronic payment?

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Correct. Yep.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: It's not the parole?

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: It's not. I'll talk about that in a couple of slides later. So this outlines for you what we assessed and the outstanding debt. So in that top, you'll see the annual assessments. So there were 40 in fiscal year twenty five, there were 40,084 individual assessments made, and the value of those assessments was 601,260. So we could have, we should have, I guess, received that amount of payments based on those assessments. Monthly, that averages out to 3,340 individuals assessed at a value of $50,000 per month. Just

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: one sec. So that's exactly what I was going to ask, is how many individuals? So where is that?

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: The average monthly is 3,340. That can fluctuate throughout the year as people leave or come under supervision.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So that's the individuals? The 3,340? Or 4,000?

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Yeah. Okay.

[Joseph "Joe" Major (Member)]: So, even if I read what you've Excuse me. Yes. Provided you only collected half of what you had projected. Correct. You should have collected.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Yes.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: The outstanding chart the below the chart below is outstanding debt, but we have it outlined here for you by site. The each site has an acronym. So the top one is Springfield, Saint Johnsbury, etcetera. Right. This shows for you the current debt. Debt that's in arrears, thirty one to sixty days, sixty one to ninety, ninety one to one twenty. And then you'll see the largest category, about a hundred and twenty days plus. There's a very large backlog going back several years. Do you ever there's

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: a word for that. When you take it off. Oh, Right after, yes.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: It's Yeah. Think only reason we write off debt currently is if someone passes away, we're usually notified by a family member. A lot of times that happens while someone's under supervision or if an estate receives the notice to collect during the tax office.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. So these could be what's the longest how how how far back does Absolutely, the outstanding

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: so we have been collecting since prior to me starting with the department in two thousand and four, but the program under this structure has been since 2008. Okay. So, a number of years. Twenty plus. At least twenty. Okay. So, our outstanding debt total is $3,500,000 currently.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And, what proportion of that is?

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Okay, that's a lot, obviously. Yeah, that's the total across all sites. Okay, yeah.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Alright, so if you get the totals the one hundred and twenty days, because that looks like it's the majority. Yes, it

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: is. Okay. The tax offset program is just to give some data about how many folks we submit through that. In fiscal twenty five, our initial pull of data from that criteria of ninety days or more and $45 or more was 10,182. You'll see in the next column we removed three zero three folks. That's because we couldn't either validate the data, the social security number was wrong, they didn't have a complete address, etcetera. And so then ultimately we submitted 9,875 individual accounts to the tax department to collect.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And do they collect it? Is it

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: a lien on their tax? If they submit for a tax return, then that tax return is either taken for us, but there is a number of other programs that I think come ahead of us online, like child support, for example, other taxes.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So, the tax retirement directly deducts this from any refund Correct. That the person so, that's just state. Yeah. You can still do anything with

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: the federal government. Yeah, we do not. Just do that. Yeah.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Okay. And then that's just another look at outstanding debt, and that shows the lowest value debt, the highest, and then the average debt for individuals being $345. Okay. So then we get into kind of the cash collected versus the staff cost. I think it's important to note here, these are base funded, general funded positions that do a 100 other things as part of their day, so I just want to be really clear that if this program goes away, the staff would remain in doing other things like, you know, residence checks and checking in with their folks rather than collection efforts. You'll see in midway between fiscal year 'nineteen and 'twenty, kind of where the costs outweighed what we were collecting, and we took a sharp dive downward during the pandemic for collection. Staff costs continued to rise, collections continue to go down.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So, staff costs, is that just the cost of getting this debt? Yeah, that's the

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: time that we estimated they spend on the collection efforts themselves, like reminding folks they have to pay, setting them up for the assessment, verifying addresses. This also includes business office staff, so doing account maintenance, adding, removing, transferring, all of those activities. Okay. Thank you. The next slide just gives you a breakdown of that. We estimated the folks assigned to this work in a business office spend about 18% of their time, and then this is the dollar value of that time. Probation officers, there's, I think, 96 included in this estimate, and they're spending about 5% of their time on this work. And then about 16, P and P admin staff spending about 8% of their time on this work. And then it shows the total expenses, revenue, and then the overall delta in that red, just showing the steady decline.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That's great. That answers a lot of the questions that I have. Great.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: In that far left column, I just noted here again the general fund versus supervision fee, just to clarify that.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Is there a fund balance in the supervisory fee fund? There is, I don't know

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: what today's. The way I'm thinking about your question is what's the balance, like how could we have collected so far this year?

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: No, just the fund balance. So, the total amount that's in the fund. Or maybe you zero it out each year. We have zero it out. Would be.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Correct, yeah. We zero it out at the end of each fiscal year and then start the collection process. That's Okay. Know there was some questions from your session last week. Certainly, go ahead. Any of those or any others that Sure.

[Russ Ingalls (Member)]: Don't exactly know how the tax offset works, so let me

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: try to walk through what

[Russ Ingalls (Member)]: I understand. Sure. More than ninety days, it's sent to tax department. Tax department essentially takes over collections entirely, and DOC does nothing more?

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Not entirely, so that's just one mechanism for collecting.

[Russ Ingalls (Member)]: So that's, I guess,

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: It's another added, yeah.

[Russ Ingalls (Member)]: And I assume that it stays as DOC's credit. So, the forgiveness in our bill would wipe out all of those as well,

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: whatever's It would wipe out the entire outstanding debt. Okay. And

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: does any

[Russ Ingalls (Member)]: sense of how much actually comes in through the tax offset?

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yes. And

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: I don't believe it's over that. Or

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: I just click lift.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Or maybe not, no I don't Yeah, think I can know that's important too. No, but I can definitely stop it. Thanks.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: And just, so you know,

[Russ Ingalls (Member)]: the reason I asked that, so I mentioned before about folks who had been paying, whether they should get something back, because the whole idea of forgiveness versus folks that had already paid has always felt a little weird for me. But if we didn't do a total forgiveness, would be a bit different, because it would be absolutely impossible to do any sort of refund. That just would not be feasible.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: I don't think it would. I don't it think it would be a large influx to the what's the uncollected funds? I can't recall what that's called, but, yeah, and it would take a big effort with finance and management to set up those. But

[Russ Ingalls (Member)]: if we limited the forgiveness, but then again, how much is the DOC's budget entirely?

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: About $230,000,000 That's up 3,500,000.0 Not

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: a big one.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Not gonna take it down. Which

[Joseph "Joe" Major (Member)]: brings me back to my question that I asked the other day, is the bill has about a year before it goes into effect, and it just seems odd to me that we're going to continue to operate for another year to lose another quarter million dollars on the program, and I foresee it's going to even be worse, because anybody who knows that at the end of the year this ends and they're going to be forgiven for any outstanding debts as well, there'll be some that will continue to pay, but there's not really there's an incentive not to pay because it's going to be forgiven at the end of the year, so I'm still confused as to I understand the amount of revenue out of this program is in the budget, in your budget, but if you're actually losing more than you're taking in, It just seems strange to me that we're just not ending this program sooner than later, instead of continuing to lose money for another year.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Yeah, I definitely hear you saying. I'll address the first part first, think as folks learn that the program is going to go away, if that's what ends up happening, would likely not pay. The policy in the statute as written does not really include some very strong accountability measures. What I mean by that is if someone doesn't pay, we can't return them to jail, we can't violate their probation, we can't extend their probation. Largely, it's not an honor system right now, other than that tax offset kind of hanging over folks. And so I think if the word gets out, there might be more folks may opt not to pay. As far as the revenue, this would be a revenue loss for us. It's counted in our budget and we depend on it, so if the program goes away, we don't have that revenue, so it would leave a budget gap. It can't be for the committee, but I think that might have been why they extended it out, to give us that time to either put a budget request in next year to fill the hole or address it in some other way. Think that answers for Yes, tonight, hi and

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: good afternoon, Scott. Just to clarify a little bit, Testimony I heard in house institutions was that fact. Delay the years, that way it's not gonna be hit for you for FY '27. That's why they made that decision. Thank you.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay, just to prepare for the budget. So, has the department taken a, do you have an official position on this?

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Yeah, because the budget deficit problem and that it wasn't submitted as a policy proposal this year, we can't support it officially. What do you

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: mean by it wasn't submitted as a policy proposal?

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Meaning we didn't put this bill forward, as part of our package.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Oh, so you didn't put it Correct.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Do you, just curious, do you ever support things that you haven't, officially no, if it's not part of the governor's recommended budget. Okay,

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: in terms of the financial plans.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Yes. Okay. Right. But we're still willing to give you anything you need. Okay, no, I appreciate that. You have been.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. So this so the chart that has the big yellow Yeah. Area. The yellow area is is what we're losing in terms of your cash dollars and then you have your

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Sometimes the growing divide between the collection and the cost of the effort. Right.

[Joseph "Joe" Major (Member)]: Yeah, the lot I show here in the red on

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Right.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And it's increasing. Yeah.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: And

[Joseph "Joe" Major (Member)]: as I say, I think it will increase significantly more in the upcoming year, people know there's no penalty for not paying.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Yep, I think you're right about that.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right. But even even without knowing that,

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: it's a huge It's still growing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Any

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: other questions? Any other questions? Is there anything else, Scott?

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Came here for two reasons. One was to, I mentioned to Deputy Commissioner that I could be here to help support the system bill. I apologize for being a little bit late but I'm here to talk about Capsule Bill when you're done. Oh, alright. Not to cut your time short. That's fine.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Okay, should I stay for Cal? You're welcome to.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Here we'll get our time. Thank you very much for being.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: If you think of any other questions, I'm happy to either come back or answer.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. I'm sure we will too.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Okay. Thank you. Okay.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: So You're off.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And so we should update the agenda?

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Yeah, we can. I'm hoping you can have a chance, any questions that were left over from my testimony on the fiscal note from this bill from last time you had a chance to trade them out. I think I've heard a couple of questions just walking in for this particular bill. But switching rules a little bit, putting on the capital bill hat. The community upstairs did just vote it out. Wow. Ten-one because one member wasn't there. But now it has to make its journey. It's gonna have to make a stop the ways and means only because in the bill and some of the policy language, is Department of Forest and Parks is gonna set up a lease program and because of that language in there, having a lease program set up would generate revenue for the state because anything that's generated revenue for the state goes through ways and means, we have to make that stop. But right now that policy part of the bill, which is posted on the House Corrections page and cannot get your topic, it just says they're gonna enter negotiations about this lease. There's nothing currently in place, so there's not gonna be anything too important in ways and means, but nonetheless, they'll have to stop there for a moment. Then the bill will have to stop in appropriations because of all the appropriations that have happened, And then we'll have to go to house floor, which we're hoping is Wednesday. And then when we hear some open by Thursday, Friday, you'll be able to get it. So don't hold your breath except I we would have it last Thursday. Right. But any point in time next week, if you want John and Ronnie come in and start talking through some things, I at least can talk through the spreadsheet that we've done. I have copies here if you guys wanna talk about that, the kind of changes that were made. And then we'll get a brand new set of spreadsheets over here. Now that we've downloaded those over here, you'll have your set of spreadsheets. So this right now is house spreadsheet, I haven't talked about. We can do it next week. We can do it right now. I'm not sure if it's Friday, just want to go home. That's fine by me.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah, we weren't anticipating this, Exactly. But

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Or we just take a look at it.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah, you can give us a copy. Let's just spend six minutes. Is there anything notable? So the lease, is that a lease for one? One lease or multiple lease?

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: It's one lease, I believe, I have to pull up the language monitor and I apologize, and I don't have it off top of my head.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Oh, that's okay.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Only because that is the section of the bill that is policy, I don't pay as much attention to it because I bill the numbers.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Well then tell us what the highlight of the numbers. Sure.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: So a couple things.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Please. We're good. And you came for sale?

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: I I did try. You get people in that one way. Perfect. So let me take one more patient real quick. So, Vincent, just to orient you again a little bit because it's your first time going through this. I know we talked about this when we first got this, but you'll notice on the left hand side, there is a row of the projects. These are all the things that were in the governor recommended bill. A couple of them have highlights now. And as we go through the next set of columns you see are in blue, that is the budget that we passed last year because this is a two year budget. Then we have columns that are in gray, this is what the governor had recommended and then we have these columns that are in red which the house had just done. So as we go through the very first set of columns in that gray, anything that's highlighted in yellow is something the House made a change on for something. One notable thing is on line nine, for instance, it said in the original bill, State House replacement of historic interior finishes, they struck the word historic. So it's a change in the original bill, it doesn't change any of the money, but that's why I highlighted it in this brighter yellow. As you scroll down a little bit, you will also see they added on line 12 Montpelier State House entryway upgrades, design documents, etcetera, etcetera. So that's something that the house added. That's why it's in this brighter yellow. And then if you go down into section three, you will see things that are in a tan color. That tan color is what the governor recommended, things that were different from the original bill. So try to differentiate things that the governor added versus things that the house added versus things that the governor added and the house changed, which is why you might see on line 28, it says statewide door controls and then department of corrections and put it in this purple color. Wanted to make sure people knew that was door controls for Department of Corrections and not like the state house. Big highlights, We did have added to the cash this year seventeen million dollars because of that if you remember the government can recommend up to 4%. That was the map I can show you is 17,000,000 plus there is some interest from last year's catch on hand as well as some reallocations. At the very end of the day, if you remember last year we started with $100,000,000 in bonding capacity total, that was it. At the end of the day, this bill between cash and bonding we'll end up having a total of 158, almost $159,000,000.159000000.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That's quite an increase.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Yeah. And that is in part because of the reallocations and it's in part because of the added cash this year, which we didn't have last year. So that's the big, big highlight. I'm happy to point out a couple of things. The one thing is last year the House had decided not to take the full 4% and instead of taking a smaller portion of that, therefore leaving more money for corporations to use. This year the House decided to keep all that money in the bill and not leave any on the table for the House of Corporations to spend further programs. I know Senator Ingalls had mentioned last year, he said, Scotty, my mother, they stole something almost like Right. Right.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Now, they just did the big bill in the house.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Correct. So

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So do they have an opportunity to take the money? Like, it's you know, kinda I mean, is it was it strategic to have the capital bill after?

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: No. It was just a matter of timing with the because they would have known another big bill, they didn't know the dollar amount of the capital they made. Okay.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Or if there was anything they would take from it.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Correct. Yeah. So they knew that they weren't going to have everything there. The capital bills were delayed because they spent a lot of time working on corrections and didn't start looking at the capital bill in-depth for markup until after tugged in late. So a little bit delayed there. And then honestly the house has been on the floor five or six hours a day past couple days. So it's been hard to find committee time to go through the last little bits and pieces. I did mention to them that you all were on the floor yourselves yesterday or before a round or something like that. It's been a week. So, I I don't know how long you are on the course today, so good to see you out here. So with that said, we can I can go line by line, we can talk about everything, but realistically, it'll be a little bit easier when we have a chance to have John here so you can talk through language as But the big thing is Major maintenance, they did add more money to? They changed a couple of things on the three acre stormwater compliance. Changed a couple of things on the HVAC systems on line 11. They did add 1,300,000.0 on line 12 in bond dollars right now due to the bonded columns that are done. So my apologies, I should have mentioned that. They had $1,300,000 for the sales upgrades. Went through the bonding section real quick. I'm just checking major things that we talked about. Down at the veterans home, the sewage system overhaul and other upgrades, 1,250,000 they put in there. On line 59, just so we know, guys have yellow on it. On the right column, column A, because we also added Anne Sprinkler system installation. The money didn't change, but that gives them more flexibility to be able to work on the renovation they're able to and quickly install sprinkler system installation to be able to move money back and forth a little bit. Then, I'll be bonding things I'm looking through real quick. One thing to talk about in Section 10, the clean water section. Senator Benson, again, just for your clarification, what happens typically in the two year bill, the Clean Water Board will make recommendations to how we should spend the money. And in the first year they give us line by line by line with it. The second year we just had a $10,000,000 placeholder. So then this bill does take that $10,000,000 and it reallocates it into individual sections. It doesn't change the overall dollar amount, but you will see when you go through the language that there's $10,000,000 stricken, cost out from that. Then these other items just added in, you'll see that individually. Lines 88 through 97. But it's still just the same $10,000,000 So those are the major bonding things, what kind of I apologize, 01/2026 Newport Courthouse replacement, adding $1,700,000 there. A lot of this is what the government recommended already.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah, the TAN was already recommended.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: TAN's already recommended. Okay. Yeah. And so in the red section columns, you know, H, I'm sorry, M through Q, QRS, basically that, anything there, they look tan because the House just incurred what the governor had done. So the Governor rec and the gray columns, if that's white in the red columns, it's because the House agreed with it, they're fine with it, not a problem. So you're not gonna see any tan on those red columns. The red columns, the yellow is just what the House decided that they didn't want to have what the governor recommended.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So say for example, New York Board 01/2026, there's a blank in column R. So does that mean the house did not agree and they took that money away?

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: I'm gonna just get there. Yeah, so what they did basically was they said, we're gonna take the half 1,000,000, I think it was. $7.50. And $7.50 from the cash and we're not gonna give that cash. But you'll notice the bond still is 1.72. They left the bond and they put the cash back.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: All right, so that would be something that we'd talk about.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Yep. Then we do look at comms Q through S on the cash side again. Here we had a little bit more activity happening with the cash in terms of what the house had done. They had about $23,000,000 total to work with between interest and reallocations and that transfer of money to the general fund. So in addition to what the gov rec had done, if you look at line 28, the house decided to take $2,000,000 away from the cash and only do 700,000, take $1,000,000 away from the new port, let's say, fractional boiler replacement while we get a million in cash. And then they took a lot of that money and put it into line 31, the life isolation of state correctional facilities, as well as they put 1,250,000.00 toward the women's correction facility replacement. And knowing that there's not, they haven't broken the ground or anything like that, but knowing that this project's gonna be in the multi millions of money, they wanted to take that extra money and be able to add it to the bank. So now the that the parties they had was make sure they have enough money for that project.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Right. And why did they Why

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: did they run short on the monies already? They don't know. I mean, it's we're putting monies in there. Anyway, so I will go on to that. Yes. They're fine. Had, actually, million percent felt that it could be, I don't wanna say, were earmarked, sometimes have political decisions that they wanted to bookmark and they wanted to make sure we have a bank continued and we don't forget about this project.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right. We've done it like every other year. Yeah.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: We've it, have a little bit extra to sock it away.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: But the WiFi, we will talk about that because we actually did provide funding I think three years ago for that.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: I'll have a double check, not sure. Yeah. When we get down to Line 60, the sewer system overhaul and all the upgrades, this one's a little bit interesting because the death rent has nothing in bonded and half 1,000,000 in cash. And what the community decided was put 1,250,000.00 in bonded. To get there, they took money from the cash fund, they zeroed that out, they found reallocation money from another project I'll point out to you here in a little bit, and then they also increased them. So the one hand, they're disagreeing with the governor in terms of how much money to spend in the cash, but that's because they're spending more money in bondage.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right, and they're going above the threshold in bondage. Do they have the treasurer come in?

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: The one from CDF?

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: For that, I don't remember. They're not above the overall 100,000,000 threshold.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: Well, the 122 is what I'm Total

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: bonded. That money is the 122 bonded is above the 100,000,000. But it's because we have extra money that was reallocated in the bond. They found it in the allocation analysis as well as the bond premium. So there was more money added. It's not about the overall threshold because there is other money in this bill because of those limitations. Right.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: But if they go out and bond for 122, that's gonna be more than what it was.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: But part of that they've already bonded for because they are reallocating much of it. Okay. So Yeah. I don't

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: wanna suggest that we have another

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: No. There's not another. We don't have record.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: But it is a little bit different.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Yeah. A little bit different. Okay. Otherwise, I'm looking quickly to the other cash things. Mostly it's agreeing with the governor rec.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And the reallocations. Yeah. Is that what you're

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: looking for? Right now I have a new blend on line 117, which is USAR facility. It is a search a and rescue facility. They added half $1,000,000 to the bed record that on it. So the housekeeping agreed with that. And a new core house replacement, they did take away that $750,000 in cash. Prohibitions are the same. Historical society is the same as the Gogurak. Then we get into the next, on the last page, center, nice and distant, to think about next time. Now we need to section 17, the reallocations. It's on the spreadsheet, but we're think about this a little bit different because this is not expenditures going out. It's money coming in because this is older money that was in other projects that they either hadn't used or BGS said, look, we're not going to get to this project today, so we'll need it next year, but for this year, take a million dollars for different priority, whatever happens to be. And they gave us a whole list of all these different things on here. But just so you're aware, this is now money coming in to be stacked, to Madam Chair's point about we're above the $100,000,000 originally. Part of that is because of all these reallocations here that they found in the bond section and the cash section. Reallocations of cash is true a little bit new because we haven't typically when we reallocate things, we go and look at all bonded dollars that are old, old money that's been sitting out there for three, four, five, six years. And we, there's statutory, there's a certain limit that we take the money back. Also, the House has a legal committee, they call it a subcommittee of the main committee. And that committee goes through and it goes and asks every agency, Look, you happen to have this million dollar project out there. Do you have any money left? Is there any money you're not gonna spend? What do you need? What do you not need? Let's take some of that back. You'll notice on lines 173, 174, 175, they did find some money for reallocation that's not what the government had done. The government had everything that's in tandem at 1 73, 01/1974, 1 75. There's some yellow ones. There's a half $1,000,000 for the veterans home for the elevator upgrades, which we're taking out the elevator upgrades and adding goods from their store. And then E911 had compliance grants from the past, I think 2019, 2020, had grants in place, they had leftover money, 63,000, and the state will enforce us at 3¢. But it's old money, statute poorly, it should be taken back, so they took it back, but that's not an effect on it as the 3¢ that they've had.

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

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: But I wanted to make sure you were aware of that. And you can see here it's under Henderson on line 177, about $9,000,000 in total voluntary reallocation. Okay. And then 13,000,000 actually in bond premium total. So between the 100,000,000 original bondings, general obligation bonding, plus the 13 plus the nine, that's reached the 122 of that total. Okay. The same thing going down below to the cash. There are some reallocations of cash from prior capital authorizations, and those will be 191 through 01/1998. These are all things that BGS primarily had said, we're not gonna use this cash right now. Launch ticket, use the credit priorities. So there's a number of bits of cash, 7,000,000 in changes of reallocated cash. And that's the quick and dirty. I'm happy to

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay, take there's no, yeah, thank you. This is really good. I'm glad you took the initiative to come in. We don't have some sort of code to say we're never going to need this fund. Say like the DCF stabilization facility. Typically

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: what happens is the agency administration goes through talks to different departments and they say, Where are we? What's going on? Can we take this money given the capital bill? So whether the agency has a priority and says, hey, really, really, really wanted that money. Yeah. I'm not sure what happens and whether they're gonna need it or not. Either that's kind of more negotiation on the administration side. Right. But once the administration has gone through and done this, they say, here's the money that we filed for you. And then we go through and do another round of scrapings and then rebook them and then see if there's anything more. And we have them all come in and they testify to that small committee to say, Yeah, here's the money you didn't realize you had, you could have it. Or, this is a program we're not gonna need to take it back or oh, we didn't realize the 3¢ was lying around, you can have it. That kind of stuff. Right. Yeah. For their future needs, I don't know.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And when we have them in, we'll have that conversation because there are some things that are not gonna happen and so that's an easy yes. There's other things

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: They might seem may to be

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: happen in five years. We need to make sure

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: we're We'll have a doctor have a therapist. And that's really what it comes down to your community's level of what they want for their priority. They decide that this probably has higher priority than that priority based upon what you hear for testing with the criminal agencies. That's up to your purview, Sergeant Benson, to be able to change everything. So realistically, the candidate will have on the spreadsheet as once the bill is filed out of the house. As you can tell on the spreadsheet, there's not a lot of real estate. So I'll probably do is I will most likely know hide the gov rec section and move the house over and then have a section for the senate so we can still see the original bill what the house had done and then what we want to do just so you have an idea. And since anything that the House agreed with will still be there, it's not gonna hurt to hide the government. But I want you to have this so you can see all stages of the spreadsheet.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: No, it's really helpful.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: And again

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah, go ahead.

[Joseph "Joe" Major (Member)]: Just a question, Scott. So if you do that, you're basically going to, eliminate the gray category. I was just, you know, big head in. When you slide it over, are you going to highlight the sections in the House's version that are from the Governor's recommendation. I can. I'm just thinking it'd be helpful to understand Sure. What the Governor's recommendations were because if it's sitting as just

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: not highlighted, you wouldn't necessarily know

[Joseph "Joe" Major (Member)]: if that came from the governor or where that number came from.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: If it helps the community understand, because there's a lot of moving parts, because it's two years, there's cash, there's moderate. Right. And looks like to have anything that is tan in the gray columns, put the tan stuff in the red columns. I'm happy to do that. It's just a matter of shading. And then I will purposefully leave one cell phone so Senator Plunkett can find it and tell me about it. It would be an Easter egg for you Senator Plunkett. Okay. That's right. If that Well,

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: yeah, I get what you're saying. I totally because it's really good

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: You want

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: to make

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: sure you know what the government changed from the original bill. Consider

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: getting rid of the blue section because I think all the blue section is in the governor's recommendation.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: It would

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: be So Yeah.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That might be an easier way to do it, but we don't have to decide right now.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Yeah. But

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So just consider that too.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Me do and say, hey, which version you like best? Really want this mostly because again, this isn't the law, this is just an explanation. And when John comes in the language, that'll be the law. It's helpful to understand. I want this to be as clear to you guys as it can be so that way it helps you inform your decision. That's what my goal is.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And you'll keep this version also. So, I mean, we might be switching between two things.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: I'm gonna have a whole brand new workbook that is the center workbook versus the house workbook, but this still lives with me. This is posted on the House pages and can I send you a copy of this?

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Well, it's not all finished yet. I mean, once it's approved by the House,

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: it'll Technically, it'll have a draft on it. Would actually have It'll be as passed by the house and not house corrections institution recommended as passed by. So it wouldn't technically be a couple of changes on here and it would go over say draft.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right. So I think it's important that we have that. Yeah.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: But I can do that for you? Yeah. And then I will get you a version that is like this with those couple of tactical studies that are changed. And then when we start mark up here, we'll get your versions, we can decide how best to show it. Because I want you to see the history of everything, but at the same time, and I can do that on my own benchy, but it'd be very tiny.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: No, it'd be teeny tiny.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Yeah, I'm already getting to the point where I have to pull out

[Joseph "Joe" Major (Member)]: my glasses. You'd have to hand out my glasses.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: That would get bigger.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Try to get bigger.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: We might be able to, but I'm not sure. Give

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: us a scroll. Good. So

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: All right. I want to give you a quick Friday afternoon surprise. Yeah.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Thank you very much.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: It's not, yeah, it does have to make a little bit of a journey. But as soon as the journey is done, I'll keep you informed us where we are. So I know the house had a couple weeks ago working on corrections bills, I had nothing to report to you. Every time I saw you guys, suddenly got nothing.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: But now you do.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Now we do. Okay. So excited.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And we look forward to seeing you

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: To be next here tomorrow. Okay. Well, thank you for letting me hijacked your Friday afternoon. It'll be a stretch. Thank you. So we'll You're always welcome. Okay. You what you have.

[Kristen Calvert, Deputy Commissioner of Corrections]: We're we are adjourned.

[Scott (House Corrections & Institutions staff)]: Thanks, guy.