 Well, it's 9.15, that's our schedule time to start. What I'd like to do this morning on paid leave is hear from mostly the administration and joint fiscal on issues they have with the House past bill that assuming we were to go with the act direction, what kind of cleanup they might like to see in any of the sections. Not really interested in hearing their overall objections and theory to the bill or its breadth or lack of breadth, but just corrections they might want to see or difficulties they may have in their roles and improvements that they'd like to see in the bill. So, Cameron, can we start with you? Yes, sir. And I assume you can speak on behalf of the department. Yes, sir. Welcome back to this committee room. Not only this year, but for the past years. Yes, sir. It's always a pleasure to be over here. For the record, Cameron Wood, I'm the unemployment insurance division director with the Vermont Department of Labor. Mr. Chair, just so you know, I did have a conversation with Damien on Monday. We spoke, myself, Jess, Vintner, and Damien for about an hour, a little over an hour, and just talked about some of the technical issues that I saw with the bill that may need to be fleshed out. I'm happy to walk through those with you. Do you have any work on any wording at all? I don't know if it's, for me, particular wording. I don't necessarily have a problem with how it's specifically phrased. They're more of just highlights that I think you, the committee, need to be aware of, and I'm happy to walk through them. But it's mainly with some information sharing questions that came up. I don't think there was anything from a grammatical or drafting standpoint that I had an issue with. Can you start off, perhaps, by describing a 64,000-viewed Department of Labor's role in this bill as passed? Yes, sir. So you stated just a minute ago, so I'm not going to go into the administration's position. I think the committee is fully aware of that. As it's drafted in this bill, the department would work with the departments of tax and the Department of Financial Regulation to issue an RFI and then issue an RFP seeking proposals from an insurance carrier to provide the benefits that are listed in the sub-chapter. That was one of the concerns I had with Damien was to make sure that the language is drafted such that do we need some of this language in here if the insurance carrier is going to presumably be the one doing the work. And he said he had drafted it in such a way that like the benefits, administering the benefits, it's not directed at a specific agency. It's just this shall be done. So if it's done by an insurance carrier, that language is fine. I don't have a problem with it. So we would work with those two departments, do an RFI, do an RFP. From our perspective, presumably find an insurance carrier who would be able to carry out the provisions of this bill. I think that's what everybody's hope is because we do have concerns if it were to default back to labor. Presuming that it's done by a third party, the only thing that the department has to do in this bill is we would hear the appeals coming from that third party. So an individual who was aggrieved by a decision, maybe they would deny benefits, or if an employer had an issue with a decision made, I guess it would be the second level of appeal would come to the department to one of our administrative law judges. Yes, sir. It would then go to the language in the bill is drafted such that it would follow these sections within unemployment insurance. So it would come to us. What about contribution rates? The employer had the employee had an issue with the contribution rate. Who would take the issue? I will defer the Department of Taxes on that because the Department of Taxes collects the contribution. My understanding is it's supposed to be treated in the same way other withholdings are collected. So I presume, presumption on my part, that there's an appeal process there for that. So for us labor, it is just managing those appeals. And as I mentioned last week, I think one of our positions is we do feel that is something that could be carried out by a third party. Mr. Chair, I believe you asked, well, who would be the ultimate decision maker? I think you could still have that being the Supreme Court or a court of jurisdiction in the state. That's not to say I think the final decision should lie with them. But in looking at the I believe it was in the RFI that was submitted when this was put out by the administration, the third party insurance carrier's ability to effectively administer appeals was pretty successful in the eyes of the administration, both on their timeliness and in their record of accuracy. So I have issued here on the Department of Labor's appropriation budget. I don't know if this was presented to us on April 25, but it looks like this. Yes, sir. OK. Is this is just this is in the first full year, $5 million. That's just a process appeals. Yes, sir. So not just a process appeals. As you'll see, we tried to break it out as best we could. We'd have $100,000 in there for marketing. Our biggest concern as we ramp up the program is making sure individuals understand if it's being administered by a third party, where they need to go to apply for benefits and how the process would then work. Our concern is just making sure the public would understand how the process actually works. We have $5,400 in there for fiscal charges. I ran this by a fiscal director. This would be roughly 5% of one of his staff's time just to manage the program that's administered by us. We had equipment supplies and rent there, postage. That was one thing I flagged for us internally to reflect on, I'll be honest. That is a best guess estimate at this time for the postage because we're just not sure how many appeals we would receive. We spend in the unemployment insurance program, we spend roughly $300,000 in postage every year. Granted, we're doing a lot more mailing. So we just tried to look at it from a third of that. And then mainly it's going to be the staff. We asked for four administrative law judges, one person to oversee them, and then one FTE for legal staff time. That is mainly for, again, we're somewhat unsure of how many appeals we will get. So we... How many do you like claims to get for years to go to the legal church? I believe on the claim side, we hear I think it's between 2,700 and 3,000 appeals a year. I believe we have three ALJs for unemployment insurance program. The workforce is about $300,000 or $325,000. I'm not sure off the top of my head. So is it fair to say it looks like we get about 1% of jobs in result in... The UI claim, I think you're right about that. Okay, how many do you like claims to get? The last numbers I looked at the other week, we had about 16,000 open benefit years. So 16,000 people had an active benefit year currently established. So within the past year, we had 16,000 people apply. I would want to double check. Like I said, I think it's between 2,700 and 3,000. So it could be on the lower end, but I believe that's what the number I got. The last time I looked at that was when this was in appropriation. So this was a month, month and a half ago. And so I can verify those numbers for you and get back to you. Our concern with this, like I said, was just it's a little bit of we don't know. And then the administrator would be a supervisor and... So do you know if this was passed in the house of budget? I do not, the FY 2020 was in the house budget, but not the 2021. Okay. The 217,000 was in. So you said something about that some of the appeal process can be part of the RFP as well. Take away some of the money for some of this money. Yes, sir. I think it's the administration's position that if this were to go out to a third party, we feel that this level of appeal is something that can be handled by the insurance carrier. We don't feel that it's something the department has to get involved in at that level. In, you know, we were speaking to the administration last week. They gave us some numbers from, I believe it was probably RFI that came in that showed how that carrier handled appeals and it showed their accuracy rate and their timeliness rate. And if I'm being totally honest, I think there would be better than the department could provide. And the other thing we discussed was this is how in normal insurance realm, individuals appeal. Ultimately, I think it goes to department financial regulation to make a final decision if they appeal from a decision of an insurance carrier. But, you know, we just feel like it doesn't have to be with us. We feel that's something that if it's gonna go to an insurance carrier, they would be equipped to manage that. Certainly they feel that all other insurance products is social insurance programs. So I don't know exactly how it works in a health insurance situation where you appeal on those, an in-house appeal, I don't know if you have the right to go to get to the one court system or appeal at the condition of the end of the break. But I don't think for this size of benefit and the fact that they're the ones who are processing the claims and attempt to agree with you, I think to the fullest extent possible, which would then be insurance. What other roles do you have here besides helping with the RFP and possibly do the sales process? If, again, on the presumption that it goes to a third party, that would be our role. The a concern we have, which I mentioned last week, you're aware of Mr. Chair, is that if we do not find a third party, there is a much larger role for the department we would then be administering the program. And much of the information we've provided from a fiscal standpoint does not reflect that. So our role would drastically change if that were the case. But under what's currently here, if presuming we get a third party in, that would be our role. Would be RFP working with our peer agencies to issue that, and then just handling the appeals process. And I believe some reporting, but that. Okay, so let's talk about this last issue. What if we don't get a third party administrator? I assume there are some parts of the bill that we have problems with. That's how it transitions to the department. Our biggest concern is the timing and not having fully fleshed out what that staffing model would look like. I mean, when we came into the house, we presented it was eight to 12 million dollars a year for personnel depending on how you wanted the program structured. And so I think if we, I'm not sure a lot of that hasn't fleshed out. I don't think I have a lot of substantive issues with what's here. I think there's just some minor details that would need to be worked out if it does revert back to the department. For example, one thing I've mentioned to the house committee was there's an expectation in here that we make decisions within five days. It gives us ultimately, I think it's up to 20. I'd want to verify that with the committee in the language, but for us to make decisions in five days that drastically raises our need for staffing. And so those are the types of policy decisions that I prefer to, and Jess has referred to, of trying to flesh out if it were to be a department program. So those are the main concerns I have. I mean, again, there's some technical things in here I'm happy to go into with you, whether it goes with the third party or stays with us. But I think as a general matter. The fact that you're truly technical when I've asked you to try and do a, maybe you've done this or anything. Yes, sir. Go through and have him as he can explain to us if there's any changes, we can incorporate them so that they make sense to us. And I did, that was the conversation we had on Monday. So I think if he's able to come in here and kind of walk you through some of those things, that would be beneficial. Do you have a good one second? Yeah, yeah, no. Last year we talked a lot about administration when it was going to be done in-house and the direction this committee went was trying to get the financial eligibility and health eligibility DOL and the payment of benefits being done. Was that, in your mind, one logical way of doing it? Or was there some fatal flaws that you saw in that division of labor? Quite a government, not a program. If I'm being totally honest with the committee. You should always be totally honest with the committee. Absolutely agree. Right, okay. I have concerns about having a program of this magnitude being administered by two separate departments. Does that mean it can, I think last by any and when we were discussing this, I think where we got to a dual program was when we discussed UI eligibility, trying to use the UI program. There are some concerns with that. So then we kind of split it up into Department of Labor and Tax. That's one of the things I raised with Damian on Monday when we discussed, was if there's a presumption that in, if there were a state run program, Department of Tax collects the contributions and then there's this fund that there are three departments pulling money out of and it's just the financial management of how that works. Tax is collecting the contributions but in the bill, Department of Labor would have to collect the overpayments and I just see a lot of problems with that structure. So if I'm being totally honest, yes, ma'am. I personally have concerns with that. I think it would be much smoother administration if it was done by one department. And I'm not saying that would be Department of Labor or Tax. I'm just saying I think that if it were to be a state run program, that would be my recommendation. We've seen and I've mentioned this to Damian another concern that I have that I think the committee needs to be aware of as you move forward. I was mentioning this to Mr. Farnham and I've been talking about this over the past few days. The definitions, I mentioned this to Damian on Monday. The Department of Labor's definition of employment and wages is different than the Department of Tax is definition of employment and wages. And so last week we had talked about monetary eligibility and where would that be decided. Those are concerns that we have. But that would, if we want to move our party that would be much stronger. There is still- We've got to direct that with definition of wages we want them to use. If they're, yes sir, if they're collecting the contribution as well, you know, if it's entirely with them. Yes sir, I think you would define what you want to use as employment and wages and I don't necessarily see a problem with it there. I think it does potentially raise a problem if either a third party's administering if a tax is collecting the contributions and labor is making an eligibility determination. As you bring in different agencies with different conditions that becomes more problematic. Other than confusion or differences between two departments doing two different things and having two different definitions, putting that aside for the moment. If we wanted to make eligibility for this program exactly the same as it is for eligibility for UI, is there a complication there? I understand it would be nice if we can do that within your evolving computer system. But even if we can't, it does seem to be some advantage to me where perhaps it's so close to what the UI definition of eligibility is why we have to play with that at all. If it did come in-house, I would hope we'd get to the point where somebody could come into your place and at least on the monetary levels be treated exactly as any other requirement for UI benefits. Right. A few things on that. One, I'll flag it for the committee is the eligibility piece. I think it needs to be addressed in the bill regardless of whether you go with UI eligibility or not. I don't want to speak for the tax department, but I think both of us would struggle making a determination based on an eligibility that's described. We don't use monthly wage information. So when it says you have to work for six months, we can't make that determination of labor because we don't know what months. Do you share it with the safety agent? Yes, sir. To answer your question, try to take it to two parts. One, do I see issues with using UI as an eligibility determination? Presuming you fleshed out all the definitional issues, one thing I raised for Damien was our capacity to share that information with a third party and whether or not we would be allowed. I spoke to our general counsel, Dirk Anderson, this morning. We think that we can. We don't think there's a problem there, but we would feel that in order for us to share UI information with a third party to determine whether someone's eligible or not, we would need a consent signed by the individual to do so. That could be part of an application process, so I'm not trying to say that that's a huge hurdle. So do I think it's an option and possible? Yes, sir. I would wanna make sure the details were buttoned up to do so. The second point I wanted to make was on the IT side, and again, I don't think there's a massive hurdle if you went down that road, but I think we could, I would wanna have a conversation with ADS to see how we could try to fit that in if you moved down that road. So I don't wanna say there's not a problem there, but I don't know. And I would be thinking, it's probably glitches in this, but I would be thinking if we can't get a third party, there would be something as simple to qualify for this program. You have to meet A, the financial eligible as far as what you choose. That's where I'm thinking about it, just in that simple. Not rewrite the whole thing. Right, that simple aspect of it. Again, if we had someone's consent, I think we could tell a third party, yes, this person's eligible, no, this person's not eligible. But again, with the definitions, what I would, I don't know if the committee would wanna go down that road. Mr. Chair, I know you are aware we do not have information on all Vermonters. There are large sections of employment in the state that are exempt from UI, and I don't know if you'd want them covered or not, but we would not have that information. So you said you're helping with the RFI and we'll help with the RFP. What generally, what's the stage of that process at this moment? Um, my understanding, I will probably need to defer to others in the administration. I'm not sure that we've gone down very far of a road of drafting an RFI or an RFP. What are we talking about? If we were to issue an RFI or an RFP, have we got any work to do? Not on this specific film, just been there for the Department of Labor, for the governors that's been coming up but not for this. So all the RFI's you know, it was programed in? I believe so, yes. And so the next step is to work on RFP. Yes, and I would defer to Mr. Chairman. I think he'll be here tomorrow. Okay. Mr. Chair, I would ask this may be something we need to clarify with Damien. The way I would, you may want to add something in the language maybe that says an RFI that's been issued by the department prior to this going into effect with a suffice for that section. I mean, the way I, I think you could, I think you could read this language to say that we wouldn't be able to use that RFI. We'd have to issue another RFI. It's a different, it's slightly different. Have you heard anything? Doesn't sound like you're all that familiar with the RFI maybe just knows more that it seems like there's front end back end stuff on this that it seems like it would be in everybody's interest if the third party can do it all. But has there been any pushback on not doing either the initial eligibility who are not doing the appeals process? Not that I'm aware of. It's not that I'm aware. I haven't been privy to all of the information I was given in the RFIs, but Commissioner Feecheck would be able to answer. Senator Clarkson, sorry. No, no, just to go back to the default. I'm elected to spend a lot of time on the default until it's an issue. Given the robust response to the RFI so far, Governor, I don't anticipate our having a problem with the RFI. I think we had talked last time about pushing back that date a bit in case there was, and so I'd entertain that. But I think to invest much more in identifying and laying out a default thing at the moment is the biggest part of our time. I totally agree with the date. And what I don't want in this is to be coming back and say what you put in law is an impossibility. Right, I agree with that. We don't want any barriers that are put out at the last minute. But a realistic date that is realistic in case this is what we're facing is important, and that would be, I have this, and I can't, it's a random, I have this October 1st, 2020 here, and I don't, I can't remember what that's for. So a realistic date would be something that I'd be entertained putting in this bill. As I mentioned last time we were here, and Senator, I appreciate the comment that is one of the concerns that I have is as we spoke last week, if we aren't able to get a viable RFP response, having some default back to the department and the time frames in which they're there because as we spoke last week, if we were to build a program from scratch, my personal recommendation would be three years out at a minimum of being able to- To build it and go on long, go live. Yes, ma'am. So, but I think to have a program designed, is that the October 1st, 2020, if we get known, if we do not have successful RFP, RFIs and RFPs? I believe in Damien, I may defer to you. Does the program go into effect October of 2020? That's when benefits go online. April 1, 2020 is when contributions are supposed to begin being collected. And that's the same regardless of whether there's a third-party insurance carrier or the department and the state are standing up the program on their own. And so we're talking about, I said I don't want to spend a long time designing people's position to push out and make a realistic date by which, if there were no successful RFI responses, RFP responses, what is a realistic date for the department to design a system and have it ready to go? Sure. Are you looking for input from me on that or? I think camera-wise. So what I can say is that in the states that don't have a TDI program pre-existing, the timeline is typically 18 months to two years for collections to start, and then two and a half years to three years for benefits to start. But design, and no longer. Yeah, so that would, so that includes doing all the rule adoptions, doing the internal administrative design, setting up a collection system, and then also, I think if we were moving to the state operating the program, there would need to be statutory changes and this would give time for those to occur probably next session. So two years to design and build three years to be online. Right, because you need to build up reserves and so forth, but you have two years to get to the point where you're able to collect contributions and have things going. I think what we've seen with other states that are building it from scratch, like with Washington State, for example, they're getting their collection system online first and then finalizing the other pieces as time goes on. So they're not necessarily having everything online at that date when collections start, but they're staggering things. So they focus on making sure that they've got a tax collection system that works right off the bat and then getting the other pieces in place and finishing up a program design around benefits, appeals, and eligibility determinations, and so forth. Have the RFI, do we have public? Yes, those are all public. I'll send Kayla the links. They're all on the Ways and Means website. So what we asked the camera to do is, I don't know if they have done this already or have mostly done it, is to get with you on technical changes he saw necessary in the House of Past Bill and then you could put them in yellow and explain them to us and we'll decide whether they're necessary or not and we'll probably do that with the other witnesses today just for your edification or knowledge. Just going through the administration and JFO witnesses right now to see where they have issues with the language of 107 has passed the House and whether they would like to see any, is there a need for changes, not necessarily on the merits of the program or the direction of the program, but if we were to pass the basic concept of 107, where would they see improvements, like to see improvements that affect their departments? So with that I'd like to ask Doug if you would come on. Sorry, can I just have one more issue that you raised that you would like to true up the definitions? We have a whole definition section as you pointed out. And it sounds like one enduring thing we need to fix is true up the definitions between tax and DOL. And can't we do that here with this definition section? Yes ma'am, one that I flagged. Wages and employer and employee. And this is one that I think will just be an ongoing flag and this is what I mentioned to Damien on Monday was it just depends on how the bill shapes itself coming out of the committee. We need to make sure whatever definitions we're using will reflect what the program is expected to look like. I do have some concerns with some of the definitions that are there now. Well let's face it, we're not, we're not. So, again it is mainly dependent upon who is administering the collections and how that interfaces with the eligibility. So for example, the definition of employer in this bill is different than the definition of employer for UI. The definition of wages is different than the definition for UI. So if you're using these definitions and trying to use UI as an eligibility, you're gonna have different people paying into the program than who may be eligible for the program. And how do we determine who's eligible for the program based on a different set of wages and use. That's what I'm trying to flag for the committee. So we're gonna have to decide if we want to balance your original economy that you don't want to spend too much time designing the default position back to the state government. Right, so those definitions only need to be trued up if we end up in the default position. They don't, even then, need to necessarily trued up. It's just gonna make their job harder if we don't do it. Got it. All right, best. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Mr. Chair. We're saying, Bill, let's start out where we're going. How do you do this, that you guys just because I want to do the role of the Department of Taxes? So for the record, Doug Farnum, Policy Director and Economist for the Department of Taxes. The role of the Department of Taxes in H107 as it passed the House is to either participate in an RFP process that finds a third party agent to collect the contributions that would fund the special fund for paid family leave or failing that to take over collection of those contributions under the wage withholding definition used for income tax used by the IRS for those income tax purposes. So I think the element of, so beyond collection, that element that is kind of read into the language, it's not explicit in the language, but it would be a necessity is that tax would be the one with the data of who's been contributing and how much and in order to determine eligibility based on the six month and wage requirements. So we believe that we are by default be responsible for that verification that someone has contributed an appropriate amount or the third party insurance agent that the tax kind of contracts with to perform that service would be responsible for it. So you're a third party administrator. They may be able to do all that. Yes. It also may be to get a third party administrator and the decisions made that you do that part of their work in terms of financial eligibility. They may say, well, do this process except we won't do the financial eligibility that would fall on you. Is that clear in the statute or could it fall on the bottom or later? Under the current language, it actually one issue is that it's not explicit who it falls on. So it's not specifically called out who determines that initial eligibility and it could create some confusion between the department of labor and tax about whose job is this actually to do this. And it's something we'd have to work out possibly. There is a provision for a memorandum of understanding. So the departments could work it out in there but it's not good for long-term stability to have that significant of a decision kind of agreed upon in an internal document like a memorandum. So I think that that is, in this version of the bill, if the tax department were to take it over and we estimated about five FTEs to collect the contributions and that would include handling the appeals. We see a lower appeals volume on contributions like wage withholding. We see a much higher appeal rate and burden on the benefit side but tax is not involved in that. So on a resource level, there's a definite and explainable disparity between the amount of resources tax would need to handle the contribution appeals and what labor or an insurance agent would need to expend to handle the benefit appeals. And we see that in our rental rebate program, our property tax adjustment claim program appeals are much more frequent and much more onerous in those areas where someone has something to gain. The contribution is a flat rate and it likely wouldn't have a high amount of appeal overhead and that's kind of baked into the current structure. Okay, but, sorry, I guess as opposed to appeals which might be carved out even if you're in a third party ministry, I think the collection of contributions and the payment of benefits is at the core of what a third party administrator would do who could see them saying, I want to do certain parts of the program but I don't want to break the check for benefits. Right. Yeah, that would be very unlikely that an RFP response that had the third party agent doing parts of it but not all of it would be acceptable to the department because we currently do not have the information to determine if someone has worked for six months or if they've earned the appropriate amount of wages. So all of that would need to be generated through the collection process or so states that have these programs do it two different ways. About half of them collect all of the information upfront. So every piece of data that you would need for every employee in the state comes in on either a monthly or quarterly basis and then it's available for when a determination needs to be made. About half the states do it that way. Before you go on. Yeah, sorry. Is there any information that sounds like labor doesn't collect the information of all the people who are reached here? But is there any piece of information that you get presently that comes close to providing information on the same people that we can add on to the form and get information for this program? Presently, not really. We do an annual wage reconciliation and that's all we do at the Department for Tax Purposes is an annual reconciliation of wages for every employee. What about the claims assessment? Is that not a quarterly one? Because the claims assessment, the healthcare claims, that's based on an FTE count, not necessarily a head count. So you could have two, three-quarter time employees that are 1.5 FTE and so it's not necessarily by the actual body. And you don't get names in that context at all? No. You would get names in this context, right? We would in this context. We would either need to collect the names up front or- Well, actually, you get it in terms of people filing a claim, you know, as long as the employer collects the information based upon the number of employees they have, not FTEs, but employees, and you don't need the name information at that point. You got a fund and that people try to fund it. In about half the states just have require an employer's certification that that employee has worked there for six months and has met the minimum qualifications. The main difference there is that that places a bit more burden on the business at the time of claim and it makes some of the timelines for a benefit determination extremely difficult to meet because then you'd involve yet another party in the successful evaluation of a claim. I hear that, but how in that context does you know that the employer is paying in the right amount of contributions? In that context, we would likely still need to collect or the third party would need to collect kind of employee by employee gross amounts. And as long as those gross amounts matched up with what the employer certified that at the time of a claim, it would be difficult to get around collecting the detail on the employee level, but that's one reason we're still looking at what other states are doing and trying to determine if there's a reason they really collect all this detail up front and some of them don't. Let's go back to Senator Clarkson's point again. We can get really down a rabbit hole in trying to construct an issues program possible here if the RFP fails. So we'll just have to make that decision pretty soon because I guess what we don't want to see happen is the RFP failing and then we stop with a five year wait or so. Yeah, right, exactly. Well, it'll be, we know it would be three years. Anyway, I mean, that Washington isn't able to do it any faster and they have more resources. Yeah, they're doing a really complete health and whistles program. Health and whistles suit. Okay, anything else? Do you need to have a conversation? With Damien, similar to the one Cameron had in terms of technicalities and... Yes, there are a couple technical changes I could recommend that I can speak with Damien about that shouldn't change the policy outcomes that are all in the nature of just making some of these elements a bit clearer. But the difficulty there is that those technical changes all hinge on tax being the default for collection. So if, but I would assume that you could just discard any changes I suggest if that were to change. Right, I mean, if there are things that make sense to put in this bill, even though we're all hopeful that there won't be a default to state government to do collections and it would help move that process along in case it does fall upon you, we could certainly entertain those suggestions. Okay, unless you have something else to add, I think I would hope you can connect with Damien sometime before tomorrow morning when we're taking this bill up again. Right, the only thing I would add kind of echoing Mr. Woods comments about definitions, but from the other angle, if the definitions were to be aligned with the unemployment insurance definitions, but then tax were to be the default party responsible for collection. Our current resource estimate is based on being able to cross train some of our internal staff and leverage our understanding of what income tax wage withholding. We have no experience with unemployment definitions we have. So we think our resource estimate would be low if the definitions were changed to unemployment insurance definitions and tax were to be the one administering it. And I think that in my opinion, it wouldn't be possible to align the wage withholding definitions with the unemployment insurance definitions. It's just not something we have the liberty to do in Vermont, I believe, because they're just two bigger structures that exist federally and we don't really have control over those things. So it's an unfortunate, unfortunate reality. And I'm not certain how much our resource need would go up above the five. I don't think the use of either definition would affect the third party costs. So the ironic part there is that if it were changed to UI and tax were still the default responsible, it would make us more likely to accept an RFP response because the odds that it would be more efficient than our ability to do it internally would go up. Any other questions? Lucky dog. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Joyce. How you doing over there, Joe? Just fine. I'm just spitting. I thought we'd get a slice of my spitting. So in addition to the standard question, I know we've identified a couple of issues already, we may, we might wanna start with the question of cash flow. How does that sound to you? Sounds very good, thank you. For the record, I'm Joyce Manchester with the Joint Postal Office. Oh, did you bring the ice cream to me? Oh, sorry. Many of your copies may be available in Westerns. There's lots of copies, sure. So let me hand this around. I'm going to be talking, oh, sorry. So, Kayla, you have your own now. I wanna start with page one. Okay, so it's page one at the time. Okay, so let me first say that the bill, according to my reading, states very clearly that the Department of Taxes shall collect contributions. Yes. So I am assuming that the Department of Taxes will collect contributions and pass them onto the special fund and payments to the insurance company, if an insurance company is found, will be made from the special fund. That's the way the bill is set up now, I believe. That's a big difference, whether that was understandable. So I was reading section 574, is it off the bill? 573, 574, and then the second setting up the special fund itself. Okay. So. So what I'm assuming is that, yes? Further, just, was that your understanding as well, Doug? So my understanding is that it's our responsibility and that we are able to contract for it. Yes. So the third party could collect it. There is the option for contracting with the third party insurance carrier to do the collection or to administer that. So that is an option. That was put in, actually, in the House because of concerns that tax had about whether they could get that employment data. Right, so it's on page 10 for those. Yeah, so that was added in because the insurance carrier, if they were doing the collections, might be able to structure it in such a way that they got the employment data they needed to do an eligibility determination. And now one more question. What about the quarterly collection? Would that still be in place if the insurance carrier were collecting? Still set up as a quarterly collection. Collection, okay, all right, fine. Okay, good. Okay, so we in JFO have some concerns about the cash flow because, as you recall, the contribution rate starts at 0.1% of wages up to the social 30 maximum. That starts on April 1st, 2020, goes for six months at that rate. And then on October 1st, the payments, I'm sorry, the benefit payments can be made so people can start drawing benefit payments and the contribution rate goes up to 0.55%, okay? Now, in my old spreadsheet by fiscal year, I was just sort of ignoring the timing of how those payments would come in. And I was assuming that I was looking at a fiscal year. I knew the rate and the wage base and so forth. And I was just moving to the fiscal years. So in my new world of thinking about the actual months of how things come in, I am realizing that a quarterly payment for April through April, May, June, three months would actually come in on July 25th, according to the way that quarterly payments come into the state. So that means that we're almost at the end of the month following the end of the quarter, right? So this means that once we get to October and we have to make those monthly premium payments, which are quite large, six million plus, we have to make those monthly, presumably, to the insurance carrier, there would be October, well, let's see, there's an advance premium payment, we think, depending on the contract, but it's likely that there would be an advance premium payment made in September, let's say. So we've got September, October, November, December, and maybe also January, if the premium payment is made first of the month. And there would be no big contribution received, that higher contribution rate applied to the wage base, that big lump would not be received until January 25th. So why, if you have a very limited payment, why did the house go with this two gear approach? So it was trying to keep the rate down as long as possible and thinking that for the first six months, we were only paying rather minimal administrative costs. So we're setting up the Department of Labor and Department of Taxes to be able to run the program. So they weren't planning to have cash in the bank to pay the person once it got there. We were thinking we could borrow in anticipation of receipts, da-da-da, yeah. So it was- That's still a possibility, no one's distributed that, right? Oh, we can borrow. The question is how much are we borrowing and is it a problem for the State Treasurer's Office to borrow as much as we might need to? Right, so over the weekend I spent some quality time with my monthly spreadsheets and on Monday we met with the Treasurer's Office. And the bottom line is that under the current timing of the bill as passed by the House, there would be a month, there would be months in which we have to borrow $26 million, which is a sizable sum for the Treasurer's Office. They maintain a balance reserve against which many different needs can borrow. Their problem is that if that balance drops below, let's say 100 million, they have to pay a higher rate to borrow. So they would prefer not to drop below and that means they would like to keep the borrowing at a moderate level. So at the present time, they're looking at a balance of something like $117 million, I believe. And so a $26 million draw would drop them below that threshold and they'd have to pay the higher rate. So they, and also it might affect the CAFR, the Statement of Financial, whatever. But it's CAFR. The Statement of Water Report. Exactly, thank you. He has a little experience of it. So that would not be a good thing for the state to have it. So could we dispense with two tiers? If we went with 0.55, could we do 0.55 starting somewhere in the summer and for these minimal administrative costs borrowing and anticipating payments? And I mean, it seems to me a problem like this, why send a signal to the business community paying one rate in the middle of the year and then the middle of the year, again, we're changing the rate. It's just going to break confusion. All right, so way back when I had modeled starting at 0.55 from the beginning and the problem there is that then you accumulate many millions in the fund. So it's just a matter of how you want to arrange things. What I've shown here on the first page is the way that the bill is currently set up. So I'm showing you, we can go through these numbers if you wish or you can just have them in your back pocket if you wish. But under this scenario, there is a $26 million deficit in some months, which gradually gets paid off over time. I'm thinking that 10 to 12 years out we would have paid down that monthly debt that then drops and then comes back again and then drops and comes back again. If you're interested, I can also hand out a second page which looks very much like this page except that I've moved the 0.55% contribution rate to start in July. So I've just moved it up by three months and then the rate with the highest borrowing is about $10 million. And that would be much more tolerable for the state treasurer's office. So that would be it. That gets rid of the 0.1 altogether. So the 0.1 would start in April and you may not want to do the two tier again but the 0.1 according to my little exercise starts in April for three months and then jumps to 0.55 in July. And your new suggestion would have 0.55 starting in July. July, right now it starts in October. So if you did that and got rid of the 0.1, welcome, welcome, welcome. So I hadn't tried that yet but I haven't actually run it through the monthly numbers but I'm suspecting that we would have a lot of millions of dollars sitting in the special fund. And I'm not changing the 0.55 to April. I'm just suggesting getting rid of the 0.1 altogether. Oh, oh, oh, oh, I see. So we would... Sounds like it would be manageable. Probably. But for the treasurer's liking. Not sure I can... So... Could you run the numbers with 0.55 starting on... Sure. April first. April 25th and also on July 25th. Okay. And then nothing else. Okay. Okay, so if I look... Should I hand out my second spreadsheet? So the first quarterly payment is about 3.6 million. Three going that way. Okay, okay, this is page two of... So are we starting with page two? Just to see what that looks like. So page two pushes up the contribution rate to 0.55% in July of 2020 and it should say page two at the top. Okay, so the little box, the smallest box at the top left is still the fiscal year benefit payments, contributions received and so forth. And then we should move to the right where it says part B, monthly cash flow for the Treasurer's Office and that shows you the monthly total cost, total revenue, cash positioned by month and assets and liabilities at the end of the month. So you can see the first revenue from payroll contributions occurs now in August of 2020. That's FY21 quarter one, pink line. So that's the 3.56 million. So that's 0.1% on the wage base for the first quarter of the program starts in April. But it's not received until August. Okay, so if we took that away, we'd have some negative asset liabilities line 12 for the first six months, but they wouldn't be terribly big. So Joyce, why, if that's collected in April, so it'll be showing up in August, I guess I'm not understanding. Right, so it's specified in the bill that the wage contributions are collected quarterly. Right, I got that. So, April. April, May, June, and then the employers have to pay the tax department the quarterly payment. And currently. So the payment doesn't start in April. I thought the payment was started in April. Well, it would be withdrawn from my paycheck and the employers would have to come up with the funds if the employers are paying, right? So they could start withdrawing. At the end of that quarter. No, no, they could start April 1st. The contributions are in effect starting April 1st, but they are not due at the tax department. They are not paid, remitted to the tax department. So after the court is started. You know, like the pillar has the house just to be clear. They don't ask for contributions to be paid until January 20th, until January 25th, right? That's the first contribution to receive the cash from the employer, is that correct? On April 1st. April 1st. Starting that quarter. And then pay it on a quarterly basis. April. April 1st. April 1, 2020. It got pumped out three months. Is that the 1%? Point, point. The 0.1%. Okay. So I don't know that we would need to go through it now, but I would like to see that contribution, the April-May-June contribution that's paid in July, being 5.5%. Right, 0.5. 0.5. Yes. Yes, I can do that. See how that results. Absolutely, yes. Okay, so just to orient you a little bit. So this is the exercise that says, what if we increase the 0.55 in July of 2020? And so you can see that that payment is about $20 million. I'm on the bottom left of the page. You can see the $20 million collected in, or we've been to the tax department in November. So that shows that the maximum borrowing, in this case would be about 10.86 million. You can see that at the bottom, line 12 under October. So before that first big payment comes in, you get the maximum borrowing. This is a picture of the bottom. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So I'm happy to run those other two scenarios and it won't take long. Okay, what was the second problem you thought we needed to look at? Well, there was the issue of, do you want to rely on the provotable wage as being a real key part of this bill? So what is the difference between two and a half times of a provotable wage and the average with the wage today? Right, so. So I would pass out this document previously to the committee. I'm sorry, I don't have it, but can you make a copy, please? I don't have it electronically. Can you make a copy of this page? It's the average weekly wage. You passed it before, right? I thought I did, I'm sorry. I don't have it by email. We might have it not forwarded. You might, I haven't dated March 25th, but I don't know if that's when I put it together or when I presented it in committee. So can we talk? Okay, so right now the provotable wage is 1334 per hour. And remember that the provotable wage is determined by the joint fiscal office based on statute and it represents a cost for a person living in a shared household, two adults in a shared household to pay their share of what we say is basic needs for that household, okay? So it's 1334 per hour. That changes every two years. And one issue is that it changes with methodology because we're constantly trying to come up with a better way of measuring the basic needs budget payment. So there is a question about whether you want to use this sort of construct that could change quite, not because of economic reasons, but because of methodological reasons, every two years. Or would you prefer to use a figure that is determined statewide, the average weekly wage is something that's reported by the Federal Department of Labor for Vermont. It looks at all wages in Vermont, changes annually based on the economy and who's working and so forth. But it's a much more reliable, steady growing measure. So, okay, so the Vermont living wage, livable wage is 1334 currently. 2.5 times that is 69,368. You can see that across the top there of the page. The Vermont living wage, I'm sorry, I want to go to the average weekly wage. So if you go to the middle of the page, there's a block there that shows that 60% of the Vermont average weekly wage is 1409. 55% is 1291. So, okay, where you'd like to be, but we could get pretty close to that same average hourly wage, right? So you can see, let's see. So if we chose 55% of the Vermont average weekly wage, we would be at 67,153 on an annual basis. So that's pretty close. Well, personally- 2.5 times. I much prefer the average weekly wage. There's reasons I don't like the livable wage to begin with, but we do use the weekly wage for a workers' column. Yes. And I think, camera, what's the maximum amount that you can get in UI right now? The maximum benefit amount in UI is 498. As a percentage. That must be 50%, maybe. The average weekly wage, is that just a number of statutes or is there a multiplier there? There's a formula. This actually goes up on the increase in the average weekly wage. Yeah, it was tied to it with an original amount and then we're nowhere on an annual indexing. Yeah. So if it started around 50% of the average weekly wage and we're then indexed to the change in the average weekly wage, it would still be at about 50% of the average weekly wage. So that sounds a little bit- Yeah, there were a bunch of statutory changes in there that was focused on it. Oh, is that okay? Yeah, it's out of the frozen stage at this point, right, camera? Jamie, what did it just index to? How is the current statute from it? Yeah. So when we went to schedule three, Mr. Chair, you brought this up last year. When we went to schedule three, I think it indexed to- Yeah, it was in the freeze. Every 7% of the state's Department of Labor has the total of 21 grants over here. Yeah, I'm pulling it off the camera. So does, and I know work has come, it's tied to the average weekly wage. You're saying the average weekly wage in Vermont is determined by the feds and not by the state? So it gets reported to the State Department of Labor. It's wage data that are collected by the feds or maybe through the stage of events and back to the state, not sure. So we know 57% is a key number in unemployed law. You're correct, that is the current multiplier. That's what it indexed to after we had scheduled. I think that would come out almost identical to what the House passed in two and a half times. We can talk about the number a little bit later, but do people generally agree that an average weekly wage in Vermont is more appropriate than the livable wage just a feature of politics and statute? Well, and it's also not the livable wage that's for one person, you know, the sense of it. Yeah, just remind me of what else's index uses the average weekly wage, UI and what else? And workers' comp, both of them. Yeah. UI and workers' comp. I know that UI does. I know that one is comp. Yeah, you have workers' comp as 66%. That's the maximum. Thanks, so I'll double check that. Yeah, you get two-thirds of your wage. You get two-thirds of your regular wage. But I think the maximum is also two-thirds of the average weekly wage. No, it's not, it's 150% of the average weekly wage actual is what workers' comp is, yep. The other thing that I can flag on this page is that Vermont's maximum weekly benefit is quite a bit more generous than in other states. So if you look at, let's see, the Vermont livable wage 2.5 times, you get a maximum benefit of 1,334 under current, under H107 as passed by the House. And I've shown you at the bottom there some maximum weekly benefits in other states. So New York is at 984, Washington State is at 1,000, Massachusetts is at 850. So we are quite a bit above those other states. I think part of the reason for moving that high was to be closer to the governor's proposal. Their maximum benefit is 60% of the Social Security tax tax, which is 1,533. So that's a really high maximum benefit. So you could drop that maximum benefit. Say what the governor's was, yeah. 1,533, if it's in the middle. It's right here in the middle, okay. Okay, 60% of Social Security tax. It's it, yeah. And why did they, given that we've been talking about all these other names, why did they choose to go into Social Security instead? So they went into the Social Security tax tax because it's a number that's out there that people are familiar with. And you'll recall that the wage base now in H107, that's passed by the House, is also up to the Social Security tax matters. So that measure is already in the bill. Is this the governor's proposal by having the high and maximum? Does this mean that everybody has a benefit? Like there's no contributions over a certain level where it's not being rewarded with a higher benefit? That's right. So your wages are taxed up to the Social Security tax max if you earn that much. And your benefit would be calculated against your wages up to that amount as well. Do you know the choices that other states, I think we have probably, Charlie, we have so much to think about. Are there other states that dug for the taxable wage base? Really variable. Yeah, it's on that big chart. Has anybody gone higher than 132? Lester, Lester holds up 150. Yeah, so the taxable wage base in California, it's 118,371. New Jersey, it's only 34,400. In Rhode Island, it's the first 69,300. In New York, there is no taxable wage base, but they limit, but they have a different system because they use private insurance carriers. So there is a cap on what you can charge for disability benefits, but otherwise it's determined by your carrier's premiums. The, let's see, Washington State and Washington D.C. and Massachusetts. I don't see a taxable wage max for them, but let me just double check. No cap for Massachusetts that I'm aware of. Sorry, I'm checking footnotes here. And no cap for Washington or Washington D.C. that I'm aware of. So they may be without a cap and then Vermont is at 132. So if the state's with a cap that we know of, we have the highest cap on the wage base. So is there a way of structuring this where by we can increase, I'm not gonna be very articulate, let's say increase the taxable wage base and at the same time for those people who are affected by that increase in the taxable wage base, they would get slightly more benefits and be rewarded for their contribution like the governor tried to do. So you're saying you'd like to, well. Well, I assume I put another one. I assume that the house pass version has at 132,000 and with their benefit levels, there are some people in the group that are claiming benefits that will get the same maximum benefit as they make 132, 150 or whatever and somebody makes 100 and they're still getting the both maxed out. I believe it's 117,000 was the salary at which you get the maximum benefit but you are paying taxes up to 100 and I think this year's taxable maximum for social security is 138,900. So you'll be paying taxes above the level at which your benefits max out. Do you get the sense that in terms of the workforce that if we raised the contribution rate and raised the maximum benefit for people who had higher contributions that we would be able to lower the rate of contribution for everybody else? So one thing to realize is that the amount of wages above 138,000 or above 150,000 gets pretty thin. That's what we asked. So raising it by a lot would make a small difference but not a big difference. Raising it by a little bit is not gonna make a difference. That was my question. Yeah. Okay, so we have to stew on where we wanna go with the maximum benefit level and possibly the contribution. Wage base. The taxable wage base. So we have taxable wage base to land on. We have maximum benefit and once our third thing makes a difference. Well, I think we've already decided that we wanna change it to. Average weekly wage. Yeah. That's where we're gonna have to determine the percentage. It's probably gonna be somewhere between 55% to 60% I guess of the average weekly wage. And comparable. Yeah, and I can update this chart because this average weekly wage was released, I believe, in April of 2018. So if I look again at the website, I may get an update. Yeah, it's a whole year later. Can you price out 57% for the UI, is that? 66%. That's what this comes from. So workers comp is 66% of the employee's average weekly wage but not higher than his or her max or minimum. So if you were going to set a cap tied to an employee who's earning the average weekly wage, you could say 66% of the state average weekly wage or you could do the UI, which is 57% and then you'd have the same cap benefit. 66%. So I just have to see what the numbers are, 57%. Sure, I guess my concern on the max benefit is that is still a low, that's household income, right, I'm talking about. That's at Kirsten's income, that's individual energy. Whatever. One of the issues that has come up on the House of Passing version is the fact that, as in yesterday's news, 60,000 people maybe have worked that so sporadic that they might still have to contribute to the program with not being the qualified. Where was that from? 60,000. Is that what you understand in the case of that? I don't know where that number came from. Yeah, I'd like to find, because we knew it was a percent. Okay, we're raising a second one. So we actually did some investigation into this. Using labor's wage record information, we looked at calendar year 2018 and we found it was 101,000, 104,000 social security numbers that made less than what the qualification is in the current bill, which I think is minimum wage, happy year's worth of minimum wage. So we found 101, 104,000 social security numbers that made less than that. We then tried to look at it and see, because the other qualifying criteria was that you work in six months. And as we said, we don't have monthly data, but we tried to limit that to people who had wages in at least two quarters. And we came up with I think it was 69,000, 69,000 social security numbers that had wages in two quarters that did not meet the monetary threshold that's currently in the bill. So those people could be overlapping, right? I think it'd be the same for people. No, sir, these would be individual social security numbers. Different than 101,000? Oh, I'm sorry, yes, sir. Those two would be overlapping, yes. The 69,000 would be a subset of the 104,000, yes, sir. It's also true that the 12-month period is a rolling 12-month period in the bill, I believe. I believe so. So this is a bigger number than you would get if you continued for a month. We had to look at the stamp shop in time. Right, absolutely, fine. You are correct. But this is too large a number, I think. Okay, I don't get it. So the question I have is, do we have any idea? I mean, it sounds both in quantity, but I think in quality, more negative than it should, because these people, the contributions that they would pay in would be minimal. I mean, we might find a way to try and help these people, but I think they're a minimum wage worker who's making $11 an hour and makes less than $11,000, even under the house-pass version where it's all on the employee to be paying something like that for $50 a year. 100% would be $100 less than $50 a year. And that assumes that the employees pay a full freight. So I don't know if you can get us any better numbers on that, I guess I've got a picture snapshot of what they're doing there. But can you give me a wage base without those people in it? Without those people in it? See how big a difference it is. So Doug Farnett's tax, we could, so our wage base is different than labor's, but we could back all the W-2s for social security numbers under the 10,000 out of our wage data, but we don't have the timing aspect. So it's, we could back one dimension out of this, but we could back the other dimension out. Well, let's do, okay, could you try if we could do the one dimension? I don't think many people are gonna fail because of the second dimension. I'll refer you to the sub-sector. Sub-sector. Spread out a little bit over the years, it makes it easier, we might be able to change that qualification too. So just if you can get that number, it'd be interesting to see. Joyce, did you have other issues in 107 that you feel the clarification changing and improvement or want to flag for us? I think we've covered the two big ones. Okay. So I would like to know, do we have, on all the variables on benefits, are they all costed out? Let's assume we didn't want to do siblings or grandparents or something like that. No. So we don't have them costed out per category that we include? No. So I rely on the Institute for Women's Policy Research, FAs, down in DC, to do all the nitty-gritty modeling of how much would benefits be if these were the parameters? And as far as I can tell, he does not have an easy way to say you would save X percent in benefits if you reduce, you know, siblings or reduce grandparents or whatever. I think what he thinks about is, are you looking at the nuclear family or are you expanding to? To the extent. Yeah. I don't think so. So what is the nuclear family? I don't even know that he has an exact number for that. He plugs it into his model and out pops something. Parents, children, grandparents. I mean, there are a lot of variables in the bills from other states and what the house has sent us. If we're interested in trying to get the rate down a little bit, it's hard for us to know. We can put a menu list. It'd be nice to get an estimate of whether it's worthwhile. I mean, if you get, I don't even know if the house has what they have left. Do they have siblings in there? I believe siblings is out. Is out? Yes, siblings is now out. Yes, siblings came out. Grandparents were in there. Grandparents and grandchildren are in there. Siblings came out. I would have to. Parents, children, grandparents came out. All right, foster children. So family member, child, stepchild or a ward who lives with the employee, a foster child, a spouse, domestic partner, civil union partner, a parent or a parent-in-law, a grandchild, a grandparent or someone for whom the employee stands in Locoparentus or who stood in Locoparentus for the employee. So basically someone standing in place of a parent. It's this bill, the way it reads right now, for a single event such as a birth, is it correct that all of those people could benefit from this at the same time, the way it technically reads at this point? So, right, so for leave for a birth, you could have, so. The two parents? Yeah, so the two parents. They're parents and in-laws. And all of their grandparents? No, so the two parents and the, I think, the grandparents. Yeah, so I think we're saying the same thing, but it's the two parents and the grandparents of the child, so the parents of the two parents. So the parents of the two parents? Yes, yeah, so, right. So you've got, then, potentially two parents. They're all qualified and they could all make leave at the same time for the birth of one. Potentially, we don't have the last year's H-196 from last biennium as it came out of the house, had the grandchild grandparent piece in there, and it limited grandparents on the birth of a grandchild to taking the leave, only if the birth parents were not taking leave. So, in other words, the grandparent is going to be standing in place of the parent. But that is not in the bill this year? That is not in the bill this year. It seems to me that there needs to be some practical limits, otherwise, you could have, what, 12, 16 people? For me, and finally that, I think it's important that we not, that we keep the cost down as best we can and we focus on the main need, not a need that could be duplicative. Maybe we can have some extenuating circumstances. I like, for instance, I like the local parent, is that I think that's a way to deal with an extended, an extended extenuating circumstance where the real person needs to be. He's in a capable of. He's the person to... Right, and that's from an existing law. That's just a clarification of Vermont's law. It's already provided under federal law, yeah. So that was just added in because there were a lot of questions that came up in the House committee about, well, who's a parent? And so because of the law, the federal law, I can't recite from memory, unfortunately, but the Enloco-Parentis language that we took is taken directly from the federal regulations for the FMLI. And that, given our opioid crisis and being parents of jail and all sorts of things, you definitely need to. Yeah, so the goal with the Enloco-Parentis language was not to create new law, but just to clarify the existing law by using the language that folks would refer to in the FMLI anyway. Just, there's been some discussion, I don't know if you can put it that way, but I certainly heard it. I don't think many states or any state has done this, but is there a, can we price out the savings if we did a one-week waiting period on other than birth? Yes, so I have been in contact with the modeler about imposing a one-week waiting period. Sorry, what do you mean by that? I'm not applying it in church, but since it's a period of time where you have to wait a week and be on your own for a week before you qualify for benefits. And what is that? What's the thinking behind it? It's to save money and administration of really short-term claims. We have it in workers' comp, too, in terms of an injury. You have to be out of work at least three days before you make the claim, but you can get more retro actively when you're out for a short period of time. You can't qualify, so I don't know if any, I know that states have looked into it. I don't want to see anything about it, so they'll help me in terms of savings. Right, so I have information from the modeler that actually came from modeling for the state of Connecticut to are considering a paid family leave program, and they have a little bit different structure in that they are looking at 12 weeks for all three kinds of leave, so parental, sick, and family care. But they, the modeling shows that if you impose a one-week waiting period before benefits begin, let's see, the costs go down by 26% for family care, so he explained that as saying that some people would be taking a day or two or three days to take care of someone who needs chemotherapy, for example, for a day and then has to recover for a day. So if you remove all of those short-term periods of leave, you save quite a bit on the family care side. So we have sick leave already provided in those circumstances, that's just for the employees? So sick leave does cover a leave to care for a family member for a short period of time. Five days, I'm sure. It's, yeah, if you're working full-time, you should be getting five days of sick leave minimum per year. Yeah, it pays your wages at 100%. And that's from the employer. I should just note, there is a one-week waiting period in Washington State, Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts. And Washington State specifically says it's one week for medical leaves, no waiting period for bonding, so. Yeah. That's sort of difficult, you only have five days, you have to take a week before you take a day. That seems silly. No, no, so this is the earned sick time while we did a few years back. Right, right, going home, we get five days at 100%. Yeah, and you take that any time for sick leave. There's no waiting period on that, that's ludicrous. No, there is no waiting period on that. The waiting period is on the, is on the, you just see, on any extended event, medical leave, but that's, yeah. There's no waiting period on sick leave. So 26% for medical leave. Okay, and that's the cost of benefits, the value of benefits. And down 11% for own health. So it might be a little different for Vermont because we're not Connecticut and we have a slightly different setup, but that gives you an idea. Damian, can you explain, so I was asked this question this morning, what constitutes, the terms in our law, serious illness, right? For all medical leave, right? Uh-huh. And I know part of that definition requires hospitalization. If you're not hospitalized, to take serious illness leave, what is required? So a serious illness is defined as an accident, disease, or physical or mental condition that poses an imminent danger of death, requires inpatient care in a hospital, or requires continuing in-home care under the direction of a physician. So any one of those three things can trigger this. So the way that's been interpreted at the federal level, and I have a handout, I think I prepared a handout for House Ways and Means on this last year. The federal level too? Yeah, the wording is slightly different under FMLA, but they essentially amount to the same thing. So for example, chemotherapy, the idea is that you can take intermittent leave for chemotherapy because if you fail to get chemotherapy, that would pose a serious risk of imminent death. And again, the inpatient care in a hospital has been extended to include, for example, inpatient care at a treatment facility, if you're recovering from substance abuse disorder. So there are a number of interpretations around this. I will see if I can find that handout that I prepared. Sure, so that requires the treating physician to certify that someone needs to be at home with the patient. So if you're taking the leave to care for a family member, I think this is where people are most concerned about this, is if you're taking the leave to care for a family member who's at home, you do need the doctor to say that it's necessary for you to be at home with that family member. This is different than say, if you're recovering from surgery and taking leave for yourself to recover from surgery and the doctor says you need to be at home for two weeks recovering from major back surgery or something like that before you can go back to work or start treatment and so forth, and they'll tell you you're not allowed to go back to work for three weeks or whatever it is. So in that latter case, does that person get covered under this paid leave law for their own serious illness? Yes, so they're required, they have in-home care under the direction of a physician there, so they may have a visiting nurse coming periodically, they may have a physical therapist coming periodically, but they're required by the physician to stay at home. Okay, I got that, so now move to a grant, you want to take care of a grandparent who's at home. That grandparent needs a doctor's note, but the doctor's note has to say that you're specifically moved to be with that person. You need the physician to certify that they need in-home care because of a medical condition, an accident disease or physical or mental condition that requires you to be there. So this is a little bit different than, for example, if your parent may need some help with bathing and laundry and other tasks, which is a common occurrence for many folks who I don't think that would qualify. I do think, for example, if your grandparent was recovering from a broken hip or something like that, that that could qualify, but just simply aging and needing additional help at home is not going to qualify you for this. And so what I'll do just is try to pull together additional information on this for you for tomorrow just to give you that clarity about how this would work. One other thing I'm interested in knowing if we can get it, do we have any estimates on all the categories that the house has covered, grandparents, yada, yada, yada, as to what the average length of the leave is? I doubt it, but I will ask. We have those from other states, I think. No, you're not broken out by the type of family members. No, you're broken out by the type of leave. Yes, all together, family leave, but not persons who, right. I'm most interested in knowing for the medical leave, for the employee, personal care, how much they're taking in leave time. Oh, sure, we have those. Yeah, yeah, I've had those up, particularly. Is it on that page? So, okay, you see, you do have the employee taking time off. It's on the, yeah, I can get that. Okay, all right, now is a good time for a break. It's like 10 minutes and we'll see if we can plow through workforce development, hopefully we might be able to vote. Yeah, well, I think there's a lot of line workers. David, he's coming back with a redraft of this, but I'm going to hand this out, so we'll probably be dealing with draft number 6.1. The rehab, does this include the line workers? You know, actually, he's going to have another version of the two minutes. Yeah, yeah. So, no, this, I don't think this is the first passing out yet. No, we're on a start, so. This is five, one, one. Yeah, we're going to have six more on the side. Okay, we're ready. Just a few lighters, change is coming. Okay. So, change is coming. And that was a nice chair last night and we worked up versions of this on the face of all of the new, no to date. And I'd like to, if you don't mind, I'll start from the beginning, but we've got the beginning six sections, so we'll do it in rapid fire. I think you're all in agreement that David will join us for any change. What we did in section one is we bought into the house's idea of sending the money, or prioritizing the money for those who receive credentials or work for small business, but instead of their goal, where the exact numbers, we said that they should increase over the next two years, both of their percentages about small business funding and funding have real results of credentials of value by 10% in each of the two years. We originally had said 5% over five years. I said our clocks didn't want to go quicker and for a shorter time, so that's what's in here right now. Section two, we got rid of the increased subsidy for small business and we just left the program as is and 50% awards were for small and large businesses. We added, remember that Matt Heroin said he could provide a comparison on how the wages have fared in the providing program versus all other wages in the state, but that's on page eight at the bottom. The weatherization program, TOL, we talked about not giving them 350,000 to do apprenticeship programs and weatherization and I tell them to get that money and I've had brief conversations of Ray in his weatherization field, so we'll see how that triggers out. I don't mind the concept of giving money for weatherization training, but I do mind the fact that they're gonna get a windfall this year that we should take the money out of the gear money we have in this building, so I'm gonna pick it out of the new revenue they're getting for the purpose of weatherization. That's the 4.5, remember, the million. No, whatever, I don't think they get 4.5. But it's substantial amount. Right, sure you hope, I guess. And remember, we're still way behind on our goal. And that section also combines weatherization with other key priority areas in terms of getting credentialing in health care, construction, manufacturing, job care. So on one page 10, now we've talked about all of these. Not 10. All of these before. So we mean through all of the weatherization in that construction? Well on section one is the one that deals with the weatherization industry and it talks about what the department wanted. This is house pass language in terms of A, B, and C. That's the how you manage the money that they hopefully will get. Right, in another place. So section four of page 11 is just a technical word change. Non-degree to advanced, that's the house language. In terms of section five, post-secondary attainment goal. We took pretty much the house language, but instead of a mandate that they get to 70%, we set it as a goal on lines 12 through 15, on page 12 by the year 2025. Then we get to adult career, I think this is an important part of the bill. They had, the house had a study committee with eight meetings and upwards of 15 people on the committee. We have changed it to a charging the Department of Labor to come up with a game plan and even start implementing it to the extent they can and reporting back to us. The next version you'll see. Page 17. Well, we had, we just said the charges on page, oh it's in there already, okay? Yeah, we put it in. So we put in the stakeholders, Senator Clarkson wanted to list them by name. I thought there was going to be more than this. There are quite a few. There will be in the next version. Okay, that's what I'm talking about. So, but just like we wanted last year to have the, some take charge of the rental housing inspection program. Didn't have a leader. Well, hot potato. Yeah, we're gonna be talking about that today in one sentence, right? Yes, we are. So, we charged the Department of Labor to pull this together and meet with these stakeholders and report back without having to go through a major study on military base thing. Well, we took out the relocation support. There's money in here for relocation support, but this is something that they do as a core function anyhow. I don't understand why this section seven, which we struck had at the top in reader assist military base recruitment. That seems to be, maybe that's modified both section seven and eight. So, in section seven and eight, we took section eight is that, what they label as a pilot program, the whole four-drug thing, we wanted to go less restrictive. And so, we just told them to do it. They didn't want any money. They had the 25,000. We took the 25,000 out. Didn't you want in here? OBR. OBR. I have not had a chance to look and see if she responded. I emailed the lawyer last night and let me just see if she responded. So this just tells them to tell the Department of Labor to work with the National Guard and the Agency of Commerce to on marketing and outreach for recruitment events with the military and on-site military bases highlights service members separating from the military service. It's not much different what the House did other than it's not restricted to a pilot whenever they have an opportunity to do this, they should take advantage of it. We can, as a general proposition, I just want to say, I'm getting the sense that all these changes are this point of acceptable to the Department. Yes, there are a couple of little tweaks with the way that you referenced, Yohua and those you'll see in the next version about any substance that we're in line with. Good. Workforce training for nurses, this deals with OBR and we work with the lobbyists for the nurses association. This is a right area where we have a lot of need and so targets a specific section that will report on nursing credential. And David will go over some of these changes. Section 10, we took out the study language on new Americans and inserted most of what this Pro-10 had been looking for in terms of his work in this area and it's much more in a directive rather than a study and come up with a plan for the things that are obvious that we can do it. Now we can go over that section. Section 11 is, the department said they didn't need this, they can do this without language and are doing it as needed. Registry of employers has pushed back from the corrections department on this to have a list out there of employers who want to work with, what do you call them? The alums, the alums of the corrections department. So that section is struck. But we do have. So I ask questions about these dates and I'm looking forward to seeing some answers somewhere. Yeah, we do have to do the dates. So I'm sorry, I'm moving very fast but section 12 is the one we struck. 12A is workforce training within the corrections. I want to recall about trying to get parole officers and correction officers to be used best practices to help people transitioning out of corrections into the workforce. Judiciary committee looked at this section and proposed language which I don't think is much different than what the house passed but I put it in the judiciary language. Here some of the dates you'll see on page 28 and 29 are raw. Well, actually the date on line 17 of page 28 had read October 10th in the judiciary version. I said, where did that come from? Yeah, it's just a bizarre date. So they moved it to October 1st and the department thinks it's fine for the report to come in a year earlier as opposed to 2020 so it will be changing. To 20. That ain't no objection to 2019. So I guess, yeah, and maybe we just call it an update because they're only gonna start their work so late. So my question is why are they waiting till October to start this work? That is the big question because I definitely want that report December of 19th. Okay, so I think we should strike the date all together at subsection A. That's one of the suggestions I had. Okay, get rid of that and then say, get going. They'll start when they need to start. You get the report then. And if the report is due here, that is a huge. I think the date, if I may just tell you where I think that came from. Just say who you are. Sure, Sarah, vaccine department of labor. They're in the house version of the bill. They wanted us to report to the summer, what is it, the justice oversight in the fall. And I think this is a holdover from the notion that there should be a fall check-in. And I don't think there's any opposition to not having a date in there at all. Okay, so I'm gonna, yeah. And the report being. Just say, Department of Corrections, blah, blah, blah. Shall work together. Yeah. Yeah, great, great. We were totally puzzled. Okay, so on section 13, this is new. I'm suggesting we add the new worker relocation program in S162 to the bill as passed the Senate by 28 to two vote. This is the exact same language. I'm not, when I first thought of this, I wasn't so sure that they were gonna get to 162. It looks like they are, but I'm hearing that they're changing substantially. So I think we should leave this end at this point. At one point they were saying something that we didn't mean to cross over and we had that glitch, but now they're at least not saying that. So I'm uncertain about that. So I think that's all we should say. So, you know, it's fine to have it until the last minute. We're gonna have it in a number of places as long as it makes all the lines. Okay, then the last, well, the last section of the appropriation, if we can have some discussion. But I've also added, you recall, we had Chris Winters in here and we asked, could have been in finance, that could be, this is the small business portal. We inquired how it was going. The answer was, it's not going well and we have no money to do anything more. So last year they invested the equivalent of over $100,000 of resources from ADS to get this going and they've made some preliminary steps, but they need more money to keep it going. I was prepared to give them, if I could get it through Waze and Me, finance and appropriation to $500,000 by raising a $5 fee on all corporate biologues which are very low right now, haven't been raised in a while and also on the primary beneficiaries of order. And yesterday, Secretary Shirling, granted by the governor I guess or whatever, they said that there's enough work still to be done in the next year that if they pest the repeat button on ADS, they would come back with design, scope, cost projections for what they need in the next year and they would be very open to looking at those fees to keep this program going. They have an initial, they did a report, I don't know if anybody's read it, but they did a report of what they did last year and they're estimating that to do this portal right, $2 to $9 million. They're also saying that they think it will be much closer to the low end and it could be less than over seven years. As we go through this, I would like to get this out today but I think we should keep talking to them about is whether they could use more resources this year and also we might want to change this language to say we want to see a deliverable this year. Because they say as they go forward, there are several links that they can get up and running while they're pushing the final product which is going to be a very large product where you can go to one site and get everything. Everybody has a conference. Rack of land, I want to get rack of land on that portal site, get anything. I think this is something the house will like because they were very much on board. Oh, I think everybody's been on board with this for a long time. This is one of our activities. I know it's about to die and nobody was telling us. Yeah, right. Well, Chris didn't tell us when he was here. He was asked. Yeah. Okay, the appropriation section, David, why don't you have a seat? No, just, Cheryl, it's just- That was a big one. I'm sorry. That was a big one. I'm sorry. You are here. No, no, so you're just looking to see whether or not they need more funding to- No, this says now is that the agency of digital services will lend the secretary of state a full-time employee for the year to continue to develop this portal. One stop. Okay. So that's like they're giving up some money in their department. But there's no more money being appropriated to the project. Or a fine attract. Need to be. Unless you- There may be, I'm sorry. One of the things that I haven't heard back from Chris Winters yet is this was Mike Shirling's idea. And he said he had an email out to Chris Winters and Jim Condos about it, but not received an answer. I haven't heard since yesterday anything from them, whether they think, maybe they think, maybe they're not on board with Shirling's approach. But we could potentially change that in conference. I think we'll have allies in the house with the final product of this one. Okay, so the appropriations, you will recall that. I can see it here in the cross-out language. The house had, if you look at page- Bottom of 35. Bottom of 35, they had a total of 1.725 billion appropriated. And that was appropriated in the budget that this house sent over. They had, as best as I can tell, only $500,000 to ACCD. And they had no money at all for our new worker program, which we had a million and a half. Most of their money was broken out as 225 from their core functions in the marketing and 225 in relocation assistance. What this bill does is it gives them, David, correct me if I'm wrong, I think they had, so they have, for ACCD on page 36, it looks like the house passed a million to ACCD. I think it was $454,000. And now we have 1.725, which I'm not sure. Oh, I'm sorry. What was the total that the house, what was the total that the house budgeted? It was, I think it was 1.595, right? Right, how does that figure out the whole total? At this point, this monster is a little bit out of control. But looking at the house passed version, it was, I guess it's the one we should be looking at. No, they're, I don't know. But it looks like it's a lot of the page 35, I think it's a pause here to get this started. Section 14 did say that 450,000 was appropriate to the agency as a commerce and community development. That's right. So what's correct in your, the 500, I think, is a vestige from a previous draft of this bill. The house passed was 450,000 to commerce and community development. And it was the breakdown you see here in A&B. It was 225 for economic development, marketing for the core plan, and then 225 for relocation assistance. So that was to the agency of commerce. The remainder of their bill was appropriations of 1.145 million to the Department of Labor. Okay, so you keep this straight as to where we're going. They had appropriate 450,000 to ACCD. Yes. We're appropriating 1725, 1.5 of which keeps our individual grants intact. 225 goes to support services for ACCD. Our bill had 2 million bill to ACCD, 1.5 for individuals of 500,000. You agree with that shift or not? That's what it does, okay? And you'll see the 1.5 on the top of the page. So we moved to the Department of Labor. They had gotten 1.145,000 for the various things you see. 275,000 to implement relocation support. 350,000 for weatherization, which we've talked about before, which we're getting rid of on page, online heat of page 37. $50,000 to robotics, not necessarily against that, but I will fully understands that as a small amount of one particular location. And then 470,000 to provide general relocation support for grants, et cetera. So essentially what is being suggested here is that the 470,000 being cut down to 275 for general support of what they're, I think, of what they're doing pretty much as a proposal already. Right, to support the relocation systems work and for the wet fund. That's what this says, right? So the language, do you want me to weigh in? Yes, sorry. So Sarah says, can you weigh in? Yes, please. Sure, so the language that I understood from a conversation with Allison and from the email with you is with 275 with new money. We would direct it to the wet fund activities and to, we gave you a pointed to a clause for some of the other workforce activities, including support and relocating, but not new relocation work. And then for the adult CTE piece, we'll use other existing money in the next gen fund and tweak those numbers so that that isn't new money, that's just money used to serve the next, no, yeah. Right, that's the next step. Yes, that's the next step. Okay, so 275 is for the general implementation of all the work, relocation support system and the wet fund administration and all of that, yeah. I think David got it right. How do you do? Does that work, Sarah? That looks, oh, 140, I think it's supposed to be I, one I. Oh, actually, 141 and now put I, that's fine. That looks great. Nice work. And then the three, thank you David for doing this. You're really incredible. Sorry, I was supposed to send that to you, let's set it, I ran out of gas. That looks good. You're burning it on both ends. Overall, burning how? Too many ends. So I think this works well between new money and current existing money in next-gen. Because this is a heavy lift for the Department of Labor to be doing both, we're giving them a lot of big tasks. This does, the house is really dry. Right. We're talking so much fast. Yeah, that's fresh water. I have not. Do people want David to go through some of the changes? Again, we have one type, we have one change update in this draft. This, we have a truck, otherwise it works. Well, we just, It's just a rule we ask. We did further changing on that date with corrections, David. I don't know if you were in the room or not, but we set back the date all together at the beginning. And then change the second date with the work on page. So let's just give them a page on that. So in section 12A, start the word immediately. So no October date. Right, so just start with the Department of Corrections. And then the report would be. The work we do on 2019. I did skip over the Cali pipeline thing. If they came to me and said they don't want to be in the bill anymore, and we did put them in one place to acknowledge their work and set up all the relationships. The striking sections is on page three. You mentioned them at roughly page 13 and section six concerning the CTE and the, just essentially the importance of work. Right. Yes, I'm clear. I have a few channels, I think. It just says, offer five. So it's my intent to have some further discussion. Questions to put this out about 15 minutes. If people want to take a break, they can take a break, I'll be in the questions while I have to go through the legislative rounds. Right. And I just want to clarify with OPR that they, on this on base recruitment effort, Sarah. OPR has this licensing that we worked on two years last year or the year before we are honoring the military licensing and every recruitment thing. Right? Jess, do you remember that reciprocity? Yes, the reciprocity language. I just didn't know if OPR wanted to be included in this if it was appropriate. And I had email form last night, but I haven't heard back from her, so I thought I'd just call her. Sure. And see if she... They're doing the housing bill in House General all morning, the contractor registration. So that's why she hasn't gotten back. Okay. Is it worth calling out or can they just be involved? So we need to bother. Which one is this? We can do it without you calling out. Okay, then let's not bother, at this point. And we can always do it in conference committee. Because guess what, there probably won't be a conference. The only other thing that we never really talked about was a tweak to the rules for, or the statute around the state board and allowing non-members to serve on committees. Did they ask for that? Was that included somewhere? So in one of the drafts that I sent you some language on, I had a little piece, but you never talked about it in committee. We haven't. That's true. And so I don't know the protocol for it. I don't think it will be... Is that something you could do just for board members? No, we already changed it. Why? Is it necessary to have a statute for a change of... Because of the mistake, I think the legislature made at one point with the board is they took all of the bylaws and just plopped them into statute. So every time they want to change the bylaws about committees and stuff like that, we have to do both. And so a week and go another year, it is not the most critical thing. Or if you want to look at some... If you had a brief paragraph that you guys... Yeah. We can put it through 162.2 also. We can see if they want to put it into 162.2. Is that working on 162.2 also at the moment? They're not about to vote that out. Okay, so why would we do that? Is that Apple or what? Sure. Okay, let's do it there. Just given, I think, our chair is wanting to move this ASAP. Are we still on the record? Yeah, yeah. Are we on the record? We can go off the record. Oh no, I was just wondering. Sorry. Am I happy to do it wherever it's most appropriate? If it's most appropriate here, if you guys have language about that ready to go, we could certainly consider it. I'm hesitant to push the chair. I think the chair is in a kind of a landing mode. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too. As the co-pilot, this is my sense of my pilot, is that we're getting the wheels are down. Yeah. And we're coming in. We've got the runway cited. Is that fair? Yes. Yes. Having sat in a co-pilot seat away from run to New York City, I feel like you know what you're doing. It was, okay, so I need to talk to you. It does not mirror the federal line, sadly. Some of the appointments of members mirrors it, but the activity of the committees, how the chair appoints committees, that's part of it. Okay. They want just members to be on a committee seat. Yeah, but, you know, that's been three years. I chatted with Tristan a little bit. So, like, if you're here, can we talk about the way in which you're on the committees, because they don't know much about it? Yeah, I haven't actually read that federal law now. That's okay. I feel like you're going to talk about that. Yeah, I feel like a lot of people are going to talk about it. You know, it's totally fine. I just want to make, again, that's going to come back. Yeah, so they have, this part is mirrors. I've got to pull that line. Number of representation, so mirrors, federal law. Trish. Other homes would be fine for the robots. Which sounds like important. Starts with meetings, and forums, and reimbursement. That's the conflict of interest, I think, is very similar to state-of-the-art. It was in the house, but it was disbarred. So I read this as the chair of the constitution that the commissioner may assign one or more members to work groups to carry out the board. I don't know what I'm trying to do. I'm just trying to do, just have everything. For discrete purposes and duration. So to us, even though that doesn't say that you can only assign members to the one time by pointing out that non-members are for discrete purposes and duration, for me that means like, you can help and assign to a subcommittee on her pathways, Jay Rancy, instead of Damley. She, we could do, we could do Heather and Shay, because she has, well, I don't know, with an optimum policy, I mean, pick her for me. And I am, but you know what, we have only talking about this, but like you said, it's New York's rules. I just don't want it to be left out, no. Again. I feel like we're going to, you know, come back so it's, you know, take it with us, sort of, we don't work, we don't work, we don't work, we don't work. And what do you think we're going to get away with? That's okay. Yeah, that's okay. Let's get set up for the fifth part. Yeah, I stop, and that's, I'll just, you know, let me just have that puzzle. I'll try to figure it out. If it's not, we're going to have to come. And the rule in being, if I, you know, restricts the company, I would say, I guess it's a plus throughout the bill. I have to check it all out. I may not be able to use the terms, and one of the things that you're doing by the session is, you know, you have a lot of money on the spot. Yeah, yeah, okay. That's good. That's good. Yeah. I mean, it's not, it's not, it's not. We're actually language major. Well. It seems like a pretty big change. I know it's just an owning culture, but to go from, like, old, it seems like you need to play second, being good, and in the sense that he's a brother, he's a brother, there's organizations predicated on that trend, and I'll let you leave. There's, and there's different parts in the statute where it's post-secondary and adult, so post-secondary is, there's how a person's buy money, post-secondary, adult CTA is how much they should be doing their first to it, and in a couple of cases, I don't know, they're just, you know, I say, mainly the type of thing. That is a good point. They are. They're making money. So, I don't think there is a standard way to do it. We've never been very consistent. Each of our rounds is like, we should not say career is technical anymore, or we should only say career, yeah, career is technical. Yeah, okay. So, career and technical are just very technical and there is senior, senior, senior, senior, senior. So, whatever way, I mean, we know what we mean. So, whatever we do, and we try to do it, we try to do it, we try to do it, and there's probably, I know there are other players who say, who's going to do it. That's right now. That's right. So, my team is experiencing it. We have minutes before we're going to get out of his schedule, we're going to get prepared. No, I'm doing it at a technical meeting. So, we'll start to walk into the session. One, what day is it? What day is it? I'm just saying you have that If the ownership of the stakeholders decided that actually the stakeholders were preventable, it's okay. And it's important for it to have the DOL beginning straight away into a meeting. That's right. We could plan that challenge today, but we can see if you've got a little way to solve that, because I think it's open as to what we've got to open to stakeholders. I don't think DOL is good enough. Can you guys take that out? Yes. Okay. Let's try this out. Show design and facilitate. I mean, facilitate. And facilitate. That was in online. I think just so. We're going to, we'd like to see page 17. There's legitimate concerns of direction. Adult career education, maybe in life or fortunately in the state colleges and DOL. So for the time being, we're going to take out the work on line four and begin implementation. Okay. And that, because the ownership, what is going to become clear hopefully with the work that's going to go on is who's going to own it, what entity is going to own it. So this presumes in a way, even though we didn't intend it that way. This presumes that DOL is going to own it all then, which it may not. At the end of this conversation. At the end of this conversation. So I think what we want to do is we have to be a little less prescriptive on ownership. Did we busy added groups? Yep. What are the other added groups? So you added, we added Commerce and Community Development. ACCD. Yep. Oh, it's here in two. I'm going to keep the same one. On 17, page 17, graph 5.1. Yes. Sorry. Hold on. She said that there were. I told from David that. I actually don't know if it's in 5.1 or I think it is. 5.1. Yep. That's the one. We have 11 stakeholders. Stakeholders. Yep. Good. So it is. There you go. Page 22. Can I quickly just add some as a small point. Sure. Okay. So in terms of technology, in the directive here to DOL to design. Page. I'm on the same place, same subsection. Page 17-ish. Right. 17. What are they designing? And here we have a post-secondary career and technical education coordinated plan. But then language I received subsequently said an integrated system for post-secondary career and technological education. What do you prefer? Do you want a coordinated plan or a design of an integrated system? Sorry, those are. Sure. A coordinated plan for an integrated system? Done. Sorry, David. David, sorry. Yeah, on the top of 17 where we're talking about their charge. How about an uncoordinated plan for an integrated system? I don't think that all I see is a coordinated plan. And you're talking about a system that we want it to be more of a system. So the language after you and Sarah met and proposed what's in 6.1 for funding on the back end of the $70,000 that they can use in part for this work, rather than calling for a coordinated plan that suggests an integrated system. Okay. So that's all I'm asking is to make sure that there's consistency between the money and the charge. And I want to know what you want to get back. So that's consistency. If we can do both, we'll do both. Are these $60,000 on our mindsets? It is $60,000. They are just working. It is $60,000 in the bill. Well, it's actually $70,000. You said when we spoke, you said also look at section 10 for the new American work. Absolutely. Right. It's $60,000 plus $10,000 for the new Americans. And it's not new money. No, no, no. So you have $70,000 involved. That's in the next gen money. So it's not our money. So that's fine. Exactly. Yep. Correct. Yep. Okay. This is 6.1. Sorry. So are you clear now, David? Clear as mud. No. Don't say that. I am. You're going to have a coordinated plan for an integrated system. Okay. Accorded plan for an integrated system. Okay. Good. And we're going to get rid of and begin implementation. Accorded plan for an integrated system. And we're going to go on to 70 in a pro in the next gen money. The one concern on the money front is the second time. Outside this bill at the moment is still that money that was, that you and I didn't have a chance to chat about last night, that is being discussed vaguely, very vaguely in a pro. Which I'd like to clarify because in some ways that belongs here, not in a pro. We don't want them doing it. I know you're trying to talk in code, but I haven't got the courage yet. It's this language here. It's this language here that I'm concerned about that has been identified that is in a pro on stuff that's related to this bill and would just blow out of the water our budgeting. Yeah, that's what someone came in and talked about. Okay, I didn't hear you say that. Okay, so we're looking for our, does anybody want to speak up from the audience of major glitches that may be in this bill? I think we've been evolving around for quite some time. You have approached us already. We do have the blessing of Department of Labor, which I appreciate. We just need our clerk, I mean our assistant, and our fifth member here. And what? And we could vote it. And at some point we could get a copy that has everything in it. Which is still the number of moving changes that we've discussed here. Because I think in this one here is only the day change. There are some day changers. Where does the 70,000 appear? The last page said 37, 37. There's, there's, there are day changes. There's some language. We're going to say 7.1. Okay. Yeah, well do we have a vote sheet? We're going to be doing on the graph. 7.1. Where do you say the 70,000 is 1.1? Okay, it's 37. And that's not our money in the next chapter. C70,000. Thank you, dolly. There you go, my dear. Clerk, Madam Clerk. Aside from those two changes, are there any other changes that we've made to this graph? Relative. As I've been sitting here. Yes. No. Okay. There is something I picked up. Which is 6.1 is on page 15. There's language where it says a pointed body with a question mark in two places. We can't have that. That will all disappear. That was, those were questions raised during committee on who should be on the board a while back. So what, we're going to do a draft 7.1. We've got to take out those parenthetic phrases. But isn't it all crossed out language page 15? Oh, that's crossed out. It's all crossed out. I'm sorry. Okay. Yes. And the dates are, are they to change in this version or are we still waiting for that change? This is our corrections. I have those. I have noted in subsection A that you will not have a date. And then subsection B, it will be December 1st of this year, not next year. Correct. So that's the only real change. No. And then the language in, in the day, adult ed. Oh, right. And there's, and, and, and did we get all the stakeholders? We're all set with the stakeholders. Yeah. And there's still some work I have to do with Stephanie on the budget part just to pre-align the $70,000. But that was, that's in the payer part. That's an appropriation. And. Thank you. So if we, if we have an amendment on each 533, do I have a motion to amend age 533 as represented in draft 6.1 with the two date changes and the coordinated plan change? That will be draft 7.1. Correct. Right. So I would move, we adopt draft 7.1 of age 533. Well, first we have to amend the bill. Yeah, that's the, my motion to amend it. That we amend age 533 with draft 7.1 of, that our amendment is draft 7.1. Actually, we're, we're asking, it's just one motion. Right. No, we have to make two motions. We have to amend it first and then we have to go on the amended bill. Are we, I think we're proposing to the house that we amend their bill. Right. In 7.1. And that's the end of it. Oh, is that the only one? Okay, fine. Okay. We can do that. So I would move that we amend age 533 with set of economic developments draft 7.1. Thank you. Any further discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. So back to left for a vote, I understand. Yes, she did. Okay. Thank you. Not sure that's kosher, but we'll move. We're voting on a amendment that we don't have in our hands anyway, so. That's kosher. That's kosher. And I think, I think people record their votes afterwards. So there might be, there might be a process where they can record their vote before next year. Thank you all very much. I understand. I understand. I don't know. Ask the governor. Ask the governor. Ask the governor. Thank you.