 On the record, we are. All right, great. Welcome. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome back to some mostly familiar faces. This morning, we are here to, number one, to get a walkthrough of the S23 as it passed the Senate in the days after we adjourned last May. And if you can take us through that, we also have, if you remember, in the House version of the bill, we had a number of studies that were very important to us. That's why we put them in the bill. And I think we'll hear what happened to them in a minute. But one of them was a study that was proposed by JFO to take a look at the impact of wages on some of the Medicaid spending that we do. And that was at the end of our discussion, pretty much at the end of our discussion last year. We had a long and lengthy and inclusive conversation about what that impact might be. So we asked for a study that JFO went ahead and did of their own volition this year. So Joyce is here to present the findings that were just released on that. And then we'll open up the floor to our conversation on the differences between the bills and make a decision on what's in front of us is that we have the same decision we had to make with paid family leave, which was to either concur with further amendment or to not concur and request the Committee of Conference. So that's what this morning will be. So for the record, Damien Leonard, Legislative Council. So I think maybe the easiest, especially for context of what passed the House versus what passed the Senate, is just to look at the side by side. I prepared of the two bills, because that breaks it down very quickly. And we can get to the key points in each bill. And if you do have questions about the specific language, I've got that open in another window. I'm happy to just pop over there. So as you'll remember, when the House passed the minimum wage bill last year, after getting it from the Senate the first time, the House changed the formula for the wage increase to two and a quarter times the CPI or 5% whichever is less. So it would have been at least a 5% increase year over year until the minimum wage reached $15. And then after that, it would have been the CPI or 5% whichever was more. I'm sorry, whichever was less. Very important. So the House proposal would have been a cap of 5.5% for the until it reached $15, and then a cap of 5% after there, but generally the CPI, which runs about 2%, 2.2, 2.3%. So the House proposal also established tip pooling requirements that mirrored the federal regulations. On tip pooling, and then provided what we called an off-ramp where until the minimum wage reached $15, if the state sales and use tax revenues decreased by 2% or more relative to the previous year and the state revenue forecast had been reduced by 2% or more. So in other words, the economy was turning down. The minimum wage increase would have been held to just the CPI instead of two and a quarter times the CPI. So this side. And when we talk about the economy turning down at that point, we're roughly seeing revenue forecasts that haven't been turned down since the recession. Is that right? I mean, just in terms of your little bit out of my area of knowledge here, but generally a 2% decrease in the revenue forecast, that means you get the revenue forecast. And then a few months later, our economists come back and say, we're decreasing that forecast. That signals that the economy is slowing significantly. So that's not a year over year. That's why we came out with a forecast in, I forget the timing for the forecasts, but July. And then we come back in December and say, we have to decrease that. And now we have to account for that budget adjustment. And then that was coupled with the sales and use tax decrease because there are other factors such as fluctuations in corporate or income tax that can lead to a decrease in the revenue forecast that might not actually reflect a slowing in the economy. So the sales and use tax decrease was kind of coupled with that. So if these two factors are tripped, it likely reflects that the economy is slowing and that the pressure from the wage increase might be significant. And that's the key thing that it's and, it's not or. It's and, yes. So it has to be both factors. If one or the other is triggered, there could be other factors that cause those to trigger. The Senate came back with a different proposal, one that does not go to $15. The Senate's proposal would have increased the minimum wage to $1150 on January 1st and then the $1220 year from now. And then after that, it would have increased by the CPI or 5% whichever is less, which I should notice the increase we're currently under. So that's our current annual increase for changes in inflation. And that's what raised us from 1078 last year to 1096 this year on the minimum wage. So that's the key piece of the Senate bill. And their numbers reflect, their numbers would have reflected when they passed the bill and they said $1150 on 1,120. That would have been roughly $0.68 or $0.70. Was it $0.10? $0.74 increase followed by a $0.70 increase. Oh, $0.72 increase actually. I'm mixing up my numbers a little bit. But yeah, it would have been a $0.72 increase followed by a $0.77 increase. So roughly $0.70 a year. But now the minimum wage has now moved up to 1096. OK, thank you. Yeah, we're at 1096. I believe that, Ron, did you post the minimum wage update? So if you see on the documents on the web page there, there is a January 2020 minimum wage update. It reflects what happened last year on the minimum wage nationwide, including changes in Vermont's wage and other state's wages. So you can see where Vermont stacks up relative to other states, what legislation passed in other states, and just get a sense that it's data from NCSL and reviews of US Department of Labor data and legislation from around the country. So it's information for you to kind of get a broader picture of where Vermont sits relative to the country and what happened in the past year as far as CPI increases in other states and so forth. So the Senate took out a language that clarified the definition of student that defined TIP because they'd taken out the TIP pooling requirements. The definition of student clarification, if you'll remember, there's been discussion about how the current definition is ambiguous and the interpretation by the Department of Labor. There's some businesses that were not aware of that interpretation and have had questions about what the law is. So it also took out all of the language related to the Child Care Financial Assistance Program, which were increases that actually mirrored something that your neighbors on the House Human Services Committee had done to take care of child care financial assistance. So those changes that were in there are not necessary in the bill. There is still a slope at a certain point. As people's wages increase, they actually have a net loss because of the loss of benefits. But that slope has been mitigated somewhat by the changes that were made last year. I'm not the expert to talk about that. That would be deaf-rightened. But we put that in the bills and suspenders. That was for those who were in a classic legislative sense of, if not there, then here. And that language largely mirrored and said, based on changes in that bill, this is what we're intended for. So the next section five in the House and section two in the Senate bill was the report on increases in Medicaid reimbursement rates that are needed to enable payment of the minimum wage to employees of certain Medicaid participating providers. And I think Joyce is going to be talking to you about the work that Jay foe did on that. So the next was a study committee to examine the possibility of creating a separate minimum wage for employers that provide benefits to their employees, so a wage that would increase more slowly. And to look at that, that's only been done in a couple of smaller jurisdictions like Seattle. At this point, most states have not followed that course, but it's something that folks were interested in last year. But that was dropped out of the Senate bill. Section seven, which would have required Ledge Council and JFO to submit a report regarding potential alternatives to the CPI for indexing the minimum wage to inflation after 2024 was also taken out. Section eight in the House bill became section three. That was the study committee to examine the effects of altering or eliminating the basic wage rate for tipped employees and of eliminating the subminimum wage rate for secondary school students during the school year. So for those of you who may have forgotten, the way Vermont's rules for secondary school students work during the school year, they're subject to federal minimum wage. During the summer, they're subject to the state minimum wage, which is part of the issue creating confusion for some business owners. And employees. Yes. I should just say creating confusion generally. The finally, section nine in the House bill became section four. From the Senate bill, it would have created a working group to examine wage and hour laws for agricultural workers, basically to get a lay of the land so that the legislature could get an idea of what, if any, changes need to occur there. Section 10 would have required legislative council to prepare draft legislation to modernize the wage and hour statutes. That section is not necessary. That legislation, I believe, is being introduced today. And then sit at this summer on your coffee break. That's right, on my coffee break. Yeah, I worked on that this summer with Dirk Anderson from the Department of Labor. So there's a draft bill to address most of those issues now, including references to a wage board that hasn't had any members since, well, since I was learning to walk. So what was the factoid? The last person who served on the wage board died four years ago or something like that? Yeah, in 1981 or 83, something like that. So for reference, I was atop a back down. So true definition of a factoid. My legal career was just a gleam in my eye. You were negotiating with your parents even then, right? The Senate doesn't see fit to study that, or live out there. They left that out, but the House went ahead and asked for that bill last year. So that's being introduced. So my understanding is in the negotiations at the end of the year, anything that they didn't have a chance to discuss in the Senate, just got pulled out. So that was my understanding, is that because of the time crunch when things went back and forth, they were just taking out things like that that had been added in the House. So it wasn't that it wasn't important to them. It's just they didn't have time to address it. Yeah, that was my recollection of the discussion and was just pull things out that we haven't had testimony on. So all right, no, that's fair. And it's the one on a situation like that where hypothesizing that if this bill had passed in May, it had passed both houses in May, we'd come to a conclusion and it was vetoed and we didn't override the veto so the bills died. Would we have been able to bring back things like these studies that we were interested in in separate legislation or is there a rule about how we consider, can we consider language that had already been defeated on the floor? Are you aware of that from a, I mean is that or is that a parliamentary thing that we're precluded? I am aware of that rule, particularly with regard to amendments on the floor. I would defer to the House clerk though to explain how it applies to bills. My understanding is if there is some substantial difference between the bills, you can still consider the bill. But again, I would really need to let Bill McGill sit here and explain the nuances of that because it's just not something that I worry about within my practice. Whenever there's a question, I just say, let's ask Bill. I just ask that because we invested a lot of time and effort in these studies and the ones that were, I think the most important one overall was for many people in the houses and Medicaid study, but some of these other studies were important to us and I just was curious to know whether if we had lost them in the course of business, would we have been able to reconsider them this year? Yeah, and I just don't know to what extent you would have been able to. I know certainly at this point, the House could send back a proposal adding it back in some or all of those proposals. So right now, at what the Senate has, what we're considering, what we need to make the decision on is a Senate proposal, which is Section 1. It's the numbers and the future CPI. Section 2 for them is what is left in their bill. Section 2 is the Medicaid report. Section 3 is the study of the tipped minimum wage in the secondary school, secondary student minimum wage. And then Section 4 is a working group to examine the wage and hour laws for agricultural workers. So those are the four pieces there that they left in. One thing that has to change no matter what is the effective dates, because everything is a year past now. So we've missed their first wage increase, where more than six months past their effective dates. We need to update that at the very least if the House decided to send this bill back or to send it to a conference committee. And then those are must changes. Yeah, if this bill is going to move forward, those things have to change. OK, all right. Any further questions for Damian right now? All right, thank you for the walkthrough and the reminder. And then we will be ready to choice things with the modernization stuff. Oh, there's a problem. Hand-spanning. What's that? The word handicap isn't there yet. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. And if it is, it will be 9% if we don't invite the last name. Good morning. I'm going to set up my machine. So good morning. For the record, I'm Joyce Manchester from the Dreyfus Club office. In fact, the speaker of the House was the person who asked for this study over the summer. And I did communicate with her multiple times to make sure that I was answering the questions that needed to be answered. So you will see that this issue brief starts off with a cost estimate. And the reason is that many people felt that by getting a better sense of minimum wage, I'm sorry, of low wage wages paid to health care workers, we would then be able to get a better estimate of the cost to the state of raising the minimum wage. You will find out as I go through this report that we did not get a representative sample. We got a lot of data. We got data on 6,631 jobs. So that's a lot of data. But we could not identify for sure that we had a representative sample of all the different types of providers. So there are nursing homes, there are residential care facilities, assisted living, designated agencies, hospitals, some schools hired for these workers. So there are many different kinds of workers. We sent out a request for data from as many providers as we could. The folks who we answered, or who were badgered and eventually answered, were not necessarily a representative sample. And in fact, they may not be the folks who are struggling, the providers who are struggling the most to survive, because those who are struggling the most didn't have the time or the resources to put together the data that we did. So we did our best. And we went out on site visits, da-da-da-da-da. So just in that, if you have the numbers off the top of your head of how many folks you tried to contact and then how many folks you did and you told because how many folks you were getting data from, but how many folks you tried to contact. Yes. So we started by getting a list of all of the providers who get reimbursed through Medicaid from HS. So that list, believe it or not, is something like 8,000 providers in the state. But many of them have very small reimbursers, like $100 or $500. So we tried to focus on the top 200 providers. We hired a contractor at JFO who worked for us for three months, part time, in order to go after those top providers. We also worked closely with some of the trade groups. So the trade groups for the hospitals, for the nursing homes and engineering facilities, for the Visiting Nurses Association. We worked for the DA's trade group. And so we were able to get additional data through them. We had to get MOUs that would say we won't release any individual provider data because that would not be good. So anyway, all of that took time. Eventually, I have a synopsis, actually. Let's see. Let's see. OK, so we had 81 providers who gave us, this is JFO's effort. OK, JFO's effort gave us about 81 providers that sent in data for their individual workers with wages at $15 an hour or less. We were only asking up to $15 an hour or less. And then through the trade groups, we got another 120 or so. We ended up with 231 providers, I believe, who gave us data. OK, so after all that, we decided that we did not have a representative sample or sufficient just numbers of data to come up with a total for state reimbursement. OK, so the question is, how much will it cost the state if the legislature decides to reimburse providers who have health care workers? Oh, no, I don't want to know. We have to reset that to 20 months. I should, I should. OK, I'll just poke the button. OK, what was I just saying? You didn't have enough. Right, not enough data. So what we did instead was to really go after some of the assumptions that we had used in what we call the proportional budget approach to estimating the cost to the state. So we're looking at providers who have Medicaid reimbursement in the health care industry. We looked at the percentage of their Medicaid reimbursement that went to wages. And usually it's very high, it's like 90%, plus or minus 5%, very, very high. Then we looked at the proportion of those wages that go to low wage workers, so workers who are $15 now or less. And we used the data that we received from some of the trade groups to really refine those percentages to get a much better picture of what those percentages would be. And it's that method that we used to look at an illustrative cost estimate for how much it would cost the state. Actually, this is the state's share, because of course, the feds reimburse something like 54% of Medicaid expenses. But the numbers on the screen are the state's share of reimbursing providers for these health care workers who are low wage. Now, I offer two estimates here, and I offer two illustrative paths. So the thinking was that, yes, the Senate passed $1,150 and $1,120, but that was for $1,220 and $1,221. So going forward, we've just had an $0.18 increase in the minimum wage for one year. So going forward, you would expect a somewhat higher bump up in the minimum wage. So we decided, with consultation with the speaker, to go with a path that looks at $1,170 in January, 2021, and either $1,240 or $1,255 in January, 2022. So this is moving forward a little bit higher than what the Senate passed. And again, these are illustrative. If there is a decision on the path, I would certainly redo the numbers. There's also a decision to be made about whether the legislature wants to try to reimburse for compression. So let's suppose that the minimum wage goes up to $1,240. The question is, do you reimburse providers to get everybody up to $1,240 and stop there? Or do you recognize that many workers who were earning $1,245 and were quite far above starting workers would no longer be quite far above starting workers so they would likely expect an increase in their wage as well? So that's called compression. And we looked at compression costs such that you're giving people above $1,240 in this example a proportional increase that decreases until it gets to 0 at 15. So we thought that the end point for compression would be about $50 an hour. Say that again, I'm sorry. I say that again for that last piece. So we're looking at proportional increase in wages above $1,240, the new minimum wage, that would start here and then shrink to 0 at $15 an hour. That's far missed. Yeah, thank you for joining us. OK, so there are two estimates here. One is including compression. The other is not including compression. And it turns out that if you don't include compression, the estimate is about 40% of the with compression costs. And I figured out a wonderful geometric way to figure that out. But anyway, OK, I was very excited to know that. OK. So here are the estimates. So for the $1,240, for example, including compression is $1.3 million in FY 21, $3.8 million in FY 22. Not including compression, $0.5 million in FY 21 and $1.5 million in FY 22. And I had previously looked at the Vermont Department of Labor occupational and employment survey, where they offer numbers of workers at different wage levels. So you can see the 10th percentile, the 25th percentile, the 50th percentile, the 75th, that idea. And I had done a very rough estimate at Bard Hill, who is at Dale, to try to estimate how many of the workers that we could see at each wage level would be paid through Medicaid. So I had done that last spring. I came out to a number that's not very far off from these estimates, which just made me feel good when I actually did the comparison. And things turned out pretty good. Okay. Any questions about? I have a question about the compression side of things. I would just like any information you can direct me to in terms of the actual versus expected mobility of the workers. In other words, if I'm dissatisfied at this bump in a wage and I'm locked into a particular industry, where are those workers gonna go if they're dissatisfied? Like what evidence do we have that if they're unhappy with that wage, that they'll actually either leave the industry or go to another state, particularly if they're like making 12, 40 an hour? How mobile are the workers to actually force the employer to address the increase in mobility? Okay, so I can answer that partially at least. We talked to several directors of various facilities and they are saying that in fact, they are struggling so much to find workers that they sometimes can't pay anything close to the minimum wage. They won't have to pay a higher wage. So the competition for labor is extremely tough out there. They are also worried that they are competing with easier jobs from a physical sense and maybe from a emotional sense too, in that McDonald's is also struggling for workers, struggling to find workers. And so the wages are going up in places where labor is tight. Anyway, if the wages at the residential care facility are exactly the same as the McDonald's down the street and McDonald's is work at the counter and serve people and so forth and residential care facility is struggling with the daily needs of folks who are really having a tough time with their health, turning them over in bed, helping them walk, you know, all those physical tasks and can be very worrying. They are quite concerned about finding workers. So, yeah. But beyond their concerns, you've got actual data. Yeah, well, what kind of data would you like? You wanna know the number of people who leave the state? Dude, can we track this sort of cross-accuracy? Everybody's struggling for employment. It doesn't seem like there's as much mobility as they might be concerned about. No, there may be more mobility, more people leaving the state, leaving fewer people here. But we have the data for that? We know that there are many vacancies at these providers that have not had them. Not vacancies. Are they leaving those positions and we're tracking where they're going with those positions? I cannot track. I don't believe anybody tracks, I don't believe them. And follow up on the compression question just from a different facet. So, I asked this last year and I got a tough answer or a non-answer because that's not the way you guys work. But the question is, when we raised the minimum wage this past time to 1050 from 873, this compression idea existed then too. Did, have we seen or heard the concerns play out and statistically, and I think you answered, and Tom Kovett answered last year, no, you can't accept through the anecdotal part of what you just explained, right? That there's pressures. The pressures on availability is creating wage increases rather than. I can also add that we did look at what other states have done to reimburse providers and no, no state reimburses for compression. A couple of states in New York and California have tried to reimburse X post. So, after the fact, New York and California asked providers to submit wage records showing that their, their wage bill increased because of the minimum wage. And if they could provide that documentation, then the state would reimburse them for those additional costs. That happened after the wage bill went into effect, right? And they, they could show the records. But, but no other state that we are aware of has done anything about compression. Done anything meaning? Reimbursed providers for the cost of the wage. Because it couldn't be proved or because they didn't, they didn't offer it? They didn't try as far as I know. They didn't address it. But some states addressed it afterwards. Only up to the new minimum wage. So, from the old to the new minimum wage. Not above the minimum wage. Yeah, I'm just, you know, compression is one of those words that we're expected to know exactly what it means and how it's going to affect the industries that are most affected by this. But it sounds even harder to get a handle on because, again, because the workforce and the workforce realities are changing. Have changed in the last three or four years where the labor shortages have really tightened? Absolutely, yes. Yes, there are fewer people in the 25 to 45 age group, right? And those are the people who tend to be the nurses' aides. Well, maybe less so in Vermont because we don't have enough of those people. So it falls to the 45 to 15 people. But. And one last question before we go on. Just to be clear too, the flaws in our data collection systems, the Department of Labor in particular, is that they can identify job types, but they're not identifying actual jobs. I mean, they're, or. What do you mean? Well, they collect data on actual jobs because they're surveying the employers, right? And the employer says, yes, I have a nurse's aide who gets paid this much per hour, right? So that's an actual job. But what we don't know is how many of those hours are reimbursed through Medicaid. So you can imagine that if a nurse's aide is working on the floor of a residential care facility, they have a mixed group of patients, right? Some of whom are Medicaid, some of whom are not. And so assigning what proportion of the hourly wage is reimbursed by Medicaid for that worker is impossible. We couldn't find a way to do it. So that's another problem with our data collection through the providers. We can see the low wage workers, we don't know exactly how much of that person's wages would have been reimbursed through Medicaid. Sorry, we're only seeing the final paycheck, we're not seeing what went into that paycheck. That's right. And the other problem is that many, many, many of these Medicaid workers, well, of these workers who are reimbursed through Medicaid, at least in part, many of them hold multiple jobs. We saw that most strongly with the visiting nurse association and the heiress direct care workers, these are folks who go to people's homes to help them bathe or eat or do daily tasks. But many, many of those people work eight hours a week for one client and eight hours a week for another client and 12 hours a week for another client. So that's three jobs, but one person, right? So it's hard to match the job to the person. I saw, sorry, I'm gonna pass actually, because that's not a specific Medicaid question, so go ahead. Okay, so feel free to ask questions as we go through, there's a lot of information here. So we'll see how far we get. Okay, so right up front I wanted to present some of the lessons that we learned and some of the caveats, some of the things you should be aware of. So first off, the cost increase per provider varies very much across geography, that's across different parts of Vermont, the size of the employer and the type of the provider. So for example, we saw and I can't present this data because we don't have many, many providers in one particular area. But if you look at all the providers of let's say residential care facilities in the Burlington area, they are in general paying higher wages than all the providers outside the Burlington area, okay? And that's because the job market in Burlington is tighter and they have to pay more in order to get their workers. The size of the provider, in many cases, but not all cases, the nationwide providers who have locations in Vermont tend to pay a bit more than the individual home care, well, it's not a home care, it's an old house that's been transformed into a residential care facility, okay? So in general, the bigger corporations are able to pay a bit more than the individual provider and the type of provider. So for example, the legislature passed a bill was it last year or two years ago saying that healthcare providers at the DAs, the designated agencies who provide a lot of mental health services had to pay $14 an hour because they were having such problems hiring workers. And it's interesting, the AHS had no evidence. They couldn't tell us for sure that all the workers at those DAs were being paid $14 an hour. But sure enough, we got actual wages data from many DAs and we could see that interns are paid less, people who are just barely starting out get paid $13.50, but everybody else is at $14 an hour or more. So that wage increase has taken effect there. So again, it varies a lot by type of provider. And we'll see pictures of the distribution of wages in just a few minutes. Okay, now I do wanna be sure that you understand that we're talking here about what's the impact on the state budget coming from Medicaid workers whose wages would be increased. But there are other kinds of employees whose wages do affect the state budget and those are not included here. So for example, in healthcare world, there are food service workers who are hired on contract. There are janitorial services hired on contract and we did not collect those wages in this study because we were looking at the healthcare workers themselves, not the other types of folks who work at those providers. Secondly, there are school employees who are paid by Medicaid and we did not include those workers in this study. And finally, the childcare workers whose higher wages will affect the cost of the CCFAP program, the Child Care Financial Assistance Program. So this is one big piece of the workers whose wages will affect the state budget but it's not the whole piece. Okay, okay, now we come to a sticky issue which is that the reimbursement mechanisms that are used in Vermont and in most other states do not target low wage workers. They generally apply statewide to a type of provider. So maybe there's a daily reimbursement rate that would increase by 5.2% or 7.8% but that would go to all providers in the state of a particular kind and would raise all of their reimbursement rates by that amount. Whether they're located in Chittenden or whether they're located in Windsor County, right? Everybody would get the same raise. So we know that there are geographical differences in the proportion of low wage workers at different kinds of facilities and the statewide reimbursement mechanisms are not going to address that variation. So it's just something to be very much aware of. So you said in Chittenden County or in Burlington the wages are higher than somewhere over there. Yes. So how will those two rates be impacted? They'll each get the same rate? So right now they all get the same daily rate or they all get the same hourly rate or whatever and that hourly rate or daily rate will go up by the same percentage for everyone in the state even though it's going to be a bigger, much bigger increase for the small provider who does residential care in Windsor County than the bigger provider who does residential care. So that's a problem with statewide reimbursement rates, right? You have one rate that applies to everybody. It's tough to get around unless you do this look back and you ask providers to submit their wage records to show how much they actually paid. But that mechanism also has problems. For example, how long do you continue that reimbursement because if the minimum wage goes up and indeed it goes up by inflation every year, right? So the minimum wage is going up every year. Do you continue to do this exposed reimbursement mechanism forever? It also takes a lot of administrative efforts to make it happen. So there are problems. There's no simple solution here. We're at the end of the trial. So back to the designated agencies. Now they have a built-in wage differential, for instance, according to the level of degree you may have on-call services, crisis workers. So how does that impact the wage compression? I've been wondering how that, because you've got workers that are on-call making $20 an hour, $18 an hour. And it doesn't seem to impact the balance of wage compression when you're starting someone at $14 an hour. Sure. So I cannot answer precisely how all that comes into compression because in many cases, it's in the eye of the worker, right? Is the worker seeing that the entry-level person now gets $14 an hour and he or she gets $18 an hour and is not getting a raise, right? I don't know. We had to make a decision that's right. So we had to make a decision as to where to stop the compression estimate. And for many of these workers who are paid $11 or $12 over $12.50 an hour, it seemed to us that maybe $15 was about the right amount. We were also looking at the CBO study that was released this summer on the minimum wage, what would happen if the federal minimum wage went up. And there they used half the difference between the old minimum wage and the new minimum wage as the amount of compression that you want to look at. So we were a little bit more generous than that. But yeah. Thank you. So D, oh, is it up there? Oh, there it is. We already talked about D, New York and California, have provided ex-post payments to specific providers who apply for funds. OK. Oh yes, and I did not mention. It is true that the payments required administration have no clear end date, but also they may be against Medicaid regulations. And that case has not yet been brought to a court. But it could be that the federal Medicaid folks may not allow this kind of ex-post streamers. So that's another problem with that approach. There is another approach which would be set up a special fund. And allow providers to apply to this special fund for money so that they can pay the additional costs that are incurred because of the increase in the minimum wage. This is something that the state of Vermont did before my time, but with child care providers. So when child care providers were under a lot of pressure, there was a special fund set up so that they could apply for wage reimbursement. Any questions about all that? Yeah. I'm going to talk about the working mobility piece. If the wages are higher in Chittenden County, we don't have data, for instance, to know how many people in the surrounding area are commuting in to get those higher wages and may choose at a certain point to not migrate in. Absolutely. If the wages go up in the surrounding counties, right? Yes. We don't know that number. We don't know that number. It's also true that housing costs, I mean, it's probably in the back of your head, housing costs in Chittenden County are higher than other places. And that's part of the reason why we just have to be higher in Chittenden County. So in theory, in theory, it could make it easier for some of the surrounding counties after workers again. Yes, until in the economics world, we call it arbitrage. Arbitrage works, right? Which makes the wages in Chittenden County go up a little bit more to be competitive with the higher wages outside of Chittenden County, right? So the market, to some extent, takes care of those differentials. OK, we did have interesting conversations. Director of a residential care facility, the director of an SQHC, Federally Qualified Health Care Center. And I just wanted to raise some of those concerns with you. Some were related to the minimum wage increase directly. So the thinking was that raising the minimum wage could help a bit with hiring and retention. But the minimum wage increase also applies to supermarkets, fast food places, and other types of menial jobs. So there's still going to be competition from those other kinds of employers, right? The minimum wage for health care workers is not going to solve a problem for health care workers. The providers do worry that the workers could potentially lose some state benefits, such as health insurance subsidies or child care subsidies. That's the minimum wage rises. And it's true that you all, the legislature, addressed the child care subsidies to some extent last year with the legislation that was passed. So that will help a bit. Vermont Connect is the health insurance subsidy system. And that's based on your income, right? So as your income goes up, you get less of a subsidy. Providers need a career ladder for low-age workers. These directors felt that if there were a career ladder so that just starting out employees could see where they would go in the future to rise up in the wage distribution, that that would help a lot. That at the moment, the providers are so busy just trying to hire and retain those workers that they haven't been able to focus on the career advancement. And finally, additional increases in the minimum wage put further pressure on struggling providers and the financial stability of the system. So there are lots of issues that were raised by these directors, some of which will come up in the next section. But they're saying, yes, we recognize that people need higher wages, but it's putting that much more pressure on our ability to survive as a business enterprise. And the larger issues related to Medicaid reimbursement are critical also. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It just that I understand the concern that's in little IV there, but that is like the biggest bug in this whole conversation, which is if you can't find workers to work for you at the lower minimum wage or are using that as a base, doesn't that put pressure on? Absolutely. And they recognize that. Absolutely. Yeah. That's a terrible paradox to be in. Absolutely. Yeah. There's definitely a tension out there. Randy? Oh, I'm sorry. I was just messing with my fingers. Sorry. OK. It's a doll. I thought it was a doll. Oh, you're not the first. Well, if you go last. There's no money in there. So can you bet that I am? Really? Who's been taking that? It was our first week. I guess she's first. Who's been taking that $1 chart? That was the best. That's not for average assets. So yeah, please, a little beating. Larger issues related to Medicaid reimbursement are critical as well. Yes. OK. So financial sustainability of some Medicaid services is already at risk. Facilities serving Medicaid enrollees face multiple pressures in hiring, retention, non-wage costs, additional regulations, and so forth. So for example, there is a regulation that may be coming that requires more night staffing without increased reimbursement. So this was seen as another pressure on residential care facilities in particular. Increasing costs for fuel, food, and transportation are not reimbursed. So again, the reimbursement rate is set at a level regardless of what's happening to food costs, fuel costs, transportation costs, and so forth. Providers with a high proportion of Medicaid clients or no deficiencies reported over some number of years currently receive no supplemental payments. So the thought was, well, if we're trying to do our very best at running a facility and we've not had any problems over years of inspections and certification and so forth, or if we have been trying to do our level best and we have a very high proportion of these Medicaid patients who pay less than full pay private patients, might there be a way to offer them some supplemental payments? So that was an idea that was thrown out. And finally, no funding for capital improvements currently exists. So we visited a residential care facility that had a stairway between the first floor and the second floor, and no other way to get up to the second floor. So it would cost some money to put in one of these elevator things that runs up the railing. Yes. But the facility doesn't have the money to do that. It might be possible for the state to have some special fund for capital improvements. So those are just ideas that were thrown out. Number two there under B says that the providers do not want a more complicated reimbursement process. So right now, they are reimbursed by the hour, by the day, and that kind of works. They don't really have the time to get involved in much more intricate submissions for reimbursement, although they recognize that maybe that has to happen. They don't want to see that happen. The point was made that reimbursement for choices for care, which is the Medicaid long term care, and the cost of providing care has very little relationship between the two. So the reimbursement rate is set by the legislature. The actual costs are over here doing something else, and the providers would love to see a closer match between those two. And finally, there is going to be a change in the federal Medicare payment model, which is going to just provide more uncertainty for the providers how much money is coming in in the next six months. They can't really forecast because of this change in the way that Medicare is going to pay it. So that was just another anxiety-producing item. These are more meta-issues to raising the minimum wage at all is not going to change the complicated reimbursement process. Absolutely. Very true. OK, now going back to the cost estimates. So I've already talked a bit about how we updated our approach. We did learn from our data collection effort. We also learned from the recent CBO study to try to refine that approach. And we think our numbers are more a bit closer to the truth than they were before, still estimates. I did mention that our data collection efforts have revealed less than full-time jobs and work hours often split between Medicaid and non-Medicaid patients. So that just complicates the picture of the wage collection. And I did explain the compression and how we shrink down to zero at $15 per hour. OK, now a little bit more on the data collection efforts. And here's my first chart, which I will try to explain. So again, we collected data on health care workers who earn $15 per hour or less. I should mention some of these workers do work over time. And generally speaking, they get time and a half for overtime. So here we're looking at the base wage, the hourly wage. And again, $15 an hour at 35 hours a week is roughly $27,000 or $27,000 or $28,000. I just want to make sure that when we think about the jobs that fit into that category, basically when you start talking about full-time or overtime, they've at least made, we can assume that they're making $27,000-ish before they start to follow up. If they work full-time, many of these works will not. Right. So again, that's, again, $15 an hour and lower. I mean, again, the cap is $27,000 for 35 hours a week. OK. Yes. OK. So I have some boxes on my chart here. First, I've mentioned that we collected data on 6,631 jobs. We estimate about 7,200 people work in health care for no more than $15 an hour and have at least some of their wages paid to the Medicaid. So if you think that many of the 6,631 jobs, should I say many, some proportion of those jobs are jobs held by one person. One person could have two or three or four jobs. So don't think that we have most of the people in health care represented in our data. We don't. OK. So this is called a cumulative distribution chart. So it says that, what, 4% of jobs, 4% of the jobs for which we collect the data, have hourly wage of $11 an hour or less. So that's the little dot way down at the bottom left. That says 4% of jobs pay $11 an hour or less. And then you move up the chart and I have an arrow that points to 32% of reported jobs have an hourly wage of $11.75 or less. And then you move further along the line and you see that 45% of reported jobs have an hourly wage of $12.50 or less. And when you get up to $15 an hour, that's 100% of the jobs that we collect. So I'm going to show you these charts for different types of providers. And you'll see which providers have a higher percentage at lower wages. And they would face the biggest cost if the minimum wage would increase. But this represents what? But one takeaway from this is about half of the jobs in this study group are already paying what the Senate bill is proposing two years after. Correct. So it's not a huge shift for the few. If half of the jobs are already paying this. First off, remember, I'm collecting data on jobs only up to $15 an hour. So there are more jobs above this that I didn't look at. But these jobs, you are right. OK. Absolutely. OK, now all these bullets apply to all of the charts. And I just want to be sure that people are starting off all together here. So these are health care workers in Vermont with hourly wages no more than $15 per hour who are paid in whole or apart by Medicaid. For some workers, we know their entire wage comes through Medicaid. For some workers, we have no idea what portion comes through Medicaid. I've already said that these data are not a representative sample of low-wage health care workers paid for Medicaid. I've already said that many of these people hold multiple part-time jobs or work for multiple patients. So you're going to see in a minute that more than 4,000 of these jobs are paid via ARIS, which is the private payroll provider that provides payroll services for workers who serve patients at home. So they are often direct care workers. They're doing the showers, the meal prep, the laundry, all of those things that have to be done at home. The client bills AHS directly. So the client is the provider, the employer. So if I'm a shut-in, did I still use that term? I don't know. If I am on Medicaid living at home but receiving Medicaid services, I could hire one person to do certain kinds of services. For me, I would build AHS directly. I would hire somebody else to do different kinds of service. For me, I would build AHS directly. OK. And some workers receive overtime, not reflected here. So in fact, you can think that these costs might be a little bit higher if we were able to include overtime. And again, I've talked about the workers for whom we don't have data. And I've talked about the occupational employment survey. So now let's look at some particular types of providers. So here are some, I call them ARIS workers. They are workers who get payroll services through ARIS. They're providing this at-home service for Medicaid patients. 38% of reported jobs are at or below 11.75 per hour. So that's a higher proportion than of all the jobs we saw. And 49% are at 12.50 or below. These are the hourly jobs paid through ARIS. There are also jobs that are paid on a daily basis through ARIS. And these tend to be respite workers who might stay overnight and are paid on a daily, nightly basis rather than on an hourly basis. These folks do end up with lower hourly wages. So 68% of reported jobs are at or below 11.75 per hour. And 93% are below 12.50 per hour. So on an hourly basis, they are paid less. Then we move to the visiting nurse associations. So they provide home health and hospice services. 24% of their jobs are below 12.50. So you can see a much bigger bump towards the right hand end, the higher wage end. 10% of their jobs are at or below 11.75 per hour. Jobs at adult day services offer community-based, non-residential supports. 46% of the reported jobs pay 12.50 per hour or less. So that's about what we are finding for the overall jobs. 29% for 11.75 or less. And here you have the chart for the designated agencies. And you can see there are some interns and some who knows who they are, maybe high school students or something that are just working a few hours per week. There are a very few people who get paid less than $13 an hour. And then a few at $13.50. And most people are at $14 an hour or above. And finally, we got a few hospitals to report. And sometimes I was surprised. I thought probably those jobs would pay more. But we're seeing 10% of the reported jobs at 11.75 or less, and 24% at 12.50 or less. Is that the end? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Now we have appendix. OK. I think we should stop here and make sure that all the questions are answered. Representative Tran. So it's my recollection from last year that I think BNA and nursing homes get a small annual increase in Medicaid reimbursement currently. Is that what you found as well? Or is that support? I didn't find that. I was looking at a snapshot of data. Let's see. There are also some unions out there, and there are some calling for bargaining agreements that say that folks get $0.25 above the minimum wage. But we also found out that in one contract in particular, that increase doesn't happen until July 1st. So for example, the minimum wage was $10.78. So lowest paid workers were at, what does that mean, $11.03 per hour? In fact, we saw some of those people. And maybe the heiress daily jobs. There are a lot of people there under $11.25 per hour. But as of July 1st, those lowest paid workers will bump up to $0.25 above $10.76, which is, what, $11.21. So they will bump up according to the contract. So, yeah. OK. Anything further for Joyce right this minute? All right. Joyce, do you have, at your fingertips, and if you don't have them, then I want to take a break anyway, but now, of, so the houses version of this, of S23, I've been calling it conceptual, because it's based on two and a half times the CPI. And so there's not a set number. Do you have leftover, but we're still viewing your numbers for the most part from 2019 numbers. So do you have, at your fingertips, the charts that would compare or that would illustrate what the presumed minimum wage increases would be under those certain, you had a document, and I haven't quite got there on my iPad yet, because it's crazy. But that idea of, or the chart that has the increases proposed with the certain CPIs from last year, from us, it would be like last April. I'm just trying to find out what the equivalents are in terms of the pace of arrays compared to what the Senate version is with actual numbers. So you may be thinking of the House Appropriations version, which said 2.25 times inflation. Is that what we passed? I believe that's what we passed. I believe that's what we passed. Right, so in 2020, I mean, again, we're trying to find, we're looking at it, the speaker gave you numbers, the pro tem didn't, so the speaker gave you numbers to just do this study with, but what would, so what would the numbers have been in 2021 and 2020, 2021, I guess, to be equivalent numbers? And then what an increase in a, what the 2.5% increase would be, what would the numbers be in inflation basis for 21 and 22? Okay, so let's see. First, I should say that the inflation projections have changed since last spring, so these numbers are going to be using the old inflation projections. The way that they've changed is that the actual inflation for this year is lower than was expected, and future inflation, according to the consensus forecast for Vermont, it's a little bit higher than it was back then. Okay, but I'm using last spring's projections. Okay, so let's see. 2.25 times CPI, starting from 1078, moved up to $11.29 in 2020. And then 11.87 in 2021. And then 12.49 in 2022. So that's about 12.50. And 11.70 versus 11.87, that's not terribly far off. Did you want inflation-adjusted numbers? No? No, okay, okay. Yeah, so that's with 2.25 times CPI up to 2022. We end up at about 12.50, which is close to this ballpark. And so, and then can we, if we had passed this last year, we'd be at 11.39 this year. We'd be 11. No, if this had passed last year, I'm sorry, if the Senate version had passed last year, we would have just gone up to 11.50. And then next year, it would have gone up to 12.20. And so adding the inflation to the 12.20, that sounds like it would come out across in the 12.50-ish range. So the range that the Speaker gave you did this homework already, did they extrapolate it right? No, I'm just, and Chip just found that chart too. So with the one that had both the 2.0 and the 2.5 CPI range that we come to. Any further questions for Joyce right now? All right, seeing none, I'd like to take a 10-minute break. And we'll be back at 10.25. And you had Joyce and Damien. Are you good to hang out till we're done-ish? The walkthrough of the Senate bill, the Senate version, we heard details behind what the JFO was able to do with the Medicaid study and how an impact of raising the minimum wage, what it would do, which are very similar, or they echoed pretty much what we heard last year in a more complete way. And basically the question before us is that should we concur with the bill, which again we can't do because the dates of our implementation dates, the implementation dates within the bill have already passed. So we'd have to change those at the very least. We can concur with further amendment or we can go to conference on this. So I open the floor now to conversation on the bill. Chip. So one of the important pieces to look at for me was Joyce's analysis, or going back to the analysis of the bill that we passed out of this committee last year and to see the increments that are relatively similar to get to put a two-year bill into place. So agreed. We have to change some effective dates. And I think we need to maybe look more closely at the increments of the wage over the next two years. And so I think those are important pieces to me that we would need to move forward on in this bill, or at the Senate version, I should say. I'm kind of disappointed in the kind of building there is that they left out so much that we thought we needed to look at it in order to understand the issue so much more thoroughly. I kind of wish they hadn't passed this, you know, if they didn't have enough time to do the job and maybe they shouldn't have done the job. And so I think we're looking at the Senate version as something really incomplete. And it's really hard. I mean, we can compare the numbers in the two, but otherwise it's really hard to compare the two bills. And that creates a big problem for me. And, John, you have a bill that addresses some of this. All of the compensation study that we had in our bill, we just now have this placeholder for us to look at. So I worked with David and he was taking literally out of the bill we had worked on. Yes, so that part would be, we can address it. Yes, John? I was attended, some of us attended this study of women working wages in Vermont. It's changed the story. And it's really relevant to me as we're talking about this, because it's no surprise, but it does break the county down by each county. But statewide women earn 84% of what men earn overall. And that in tip wages, 81% of the people who are working at tip wages are women. And I'm quoting now, women are disproportionate share for monitors who make less than $11 an hour. And the median age of women burning under $11 an hour, 38 years old, and 28% that earn college credits or have a college degree. So when I look at this thing of people lower minimum wage, it really is a bigger issue for women, which is, I think, important. And to me, it's like I think none of us thought what the Senate came up with is not what we worked with. But I think it's absolutely essential that we begin to catch up. So I think this two-year step, we should try to move something forward. We can look at the more comprehensive stuff. And what's interesting when I look at Joyce's stuff that in this universe, 45% of these provides are already paying what we're talking about. So I don't see it as a huge paradigm shift because the marketplace has shifted. And the legislatures are behind the marketplace that was more dramatically behind. And women are being impacted more severely than men. So I'm in favor, as we did with the other bill, to move this to a committee of conference, get a pay raise for Vermongers. And this is not the end of it. It's the beginning of a step. And this topic is in our committee. So it's up to us to just continue working on this because the gap is still created enormous. I'll send you around the link to this change in story study. It's like a 50-page study. It's pretty great. No, I think we forget over the course of working on a bill, some of these statistics that brought the bill forward. And given this legislative process, which where we end up with something that we feel is can be considered insufficient compared to what we've learned, also points to the fact that our job is never done. I mean, this work is never done. It's never a stopping point for it. But we do forget those percentages where this is not solely, but it is strongly a women's economic equity bill, as is Pay Family Lee, considering that traditionally, culturally, the amount of care that falls on as opposed to that. But nevertheless, this affects, we focus on so many different things, but I think this bill is, you know, the statistics have shown that this bill is primarily strongly women's economic development. And we forget that sometimes. And is it enough? It's clearly not. But the two-year option, I think the Senate's theory behind the two-year option is the possibility of, rather than, it's a possibility of getting it signed. You know, that there's a stronger possibility in the minds of the, this would say that there's a stronger possibility in the minds of the General Assembly that this would become law through the process that the governor might sign this bill. We have no indication whether it would or not, but, you know, the Senate chose to go to two years because of that. And the reason I asked the question about where these, the rates that were even proposed by the speaker for this study, for the purposes of that study, where they fall on what we agreed to as the house position. And they come closer. They can be manipulated to be relatively close or better in conference. But I don't have any idea, you know, where they would, where the Senate would fall on that. But I think they all come close to what's been passed. Lisa, Marianne, any comments? I want to write. So then, committee, what's our pleasure on this? I'll move that this be sent to a committee of conference. So it's not concur with Senate? Not concur with Senate, I'm sorry, yes. Not concur with Senate amendments, further amendments, and refer this to a committee of conference primarily to adjust increments as needed and effective dates, which is necessary. I'll second. All right, so, Ron, do we have a sheet? Yes, sir. I'll put that stuff on there. Yeah, work. Stop looking fabulous for this committee. Oh, stop. There was a bomb deal here. Stop. Gold remains. I'm so in love with it, sir. You have to go to Florence. You have to go to Florence. You have to go to Florence. Not for money. You can go to Florence, too. Oh, it's. I'm surprised we did get some tickets. I decided to see over, I don't know what to say. I'll try to hear it. Sure. It's okay, it's fine. Yeah, it's okay. It's fine, it's fine, because I saw you in the area, but I had been taken up at that. Pretty another door. Oh, yeah. So I started running at the far end of the mansion. Okay. That explains the place. That, too. Yeah. Are you ready? Ready. So I was gonna try and move and represent because I can do it. Could you read the exact wording of the motion, please? Sure, Mary, do you want me to state it? All right. Chip made a motion to not concur with the Senate proposal of amendment and to request a committee of conference be named. And before we start voting, you raised a question I think is pretty important is it'd be nice to have an answer to if this is defeated and. Tell me the, I can't hear you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Let me speak up, John. I'm referring to the chair's question about it. You know, if we, if this bill is defeated, what about some of the provisions we had in there for studies, can we bring those requests back and we'd really love to know the answer to that. And we can ask the clerk that before we go into the negotiation, if this goes to conference. We can ask the question of that. I'll ask the question of that before we go on the floor today of the clerk and just to get it, just to get it clear. I do appreciate knowing that because I think, you know, we, there's stuff we need to know. I agree. Right, no, I think to come back to this with the thought that we can do the studies that we wanted to do on compensation or otherwise and then be told that we have to wait till next year. Right. Yeah. Agreed. Any further questions? I have a question. Sure. Why are we pushing this through so quickly? We have insufficient information as far as current information it seems. So I don't understand. This is, why are we not discussing this? Why are we taking a vote to send it to conference? I don't, I don't, I don't understand. I would posit that we spent a lot of time on this bill last year. We understand the notions of what not only, I mean, what we passed as a committee has become only relevant to what remained from what we passed in the committee to what we passed out. So our work on this while we're the originating committee, our work finished on this bill last year. We voted on as a house to pass a version of the bill that was substantially different than the bill that passed through this committee. So our work and our goals, which were actually very closely aligned to the original Senate bill with the exception of all these additional committees, really. You know, I think that with the walk through and based on the short conversation that we've had, it seems that there's a sufficient understanding of what's in the bill, what the differences are and what is next on the agenda. And so it's, to me, it's unfinished business from last year and it will be up for conference. And if it passes here, if it passes on before today, and then we will all have a chance to vote on it one more time before it goes to the Senate. So I don't view it as pushing it through, I just view it as unfinished business and move forward taking care of it. And just so I understand the technical side of things, we can't actually concur with the Senate because of the technical changes that are required. In other words, it has to go to conference committee for technical changes to happen. Yeah, the technical changes could be, we could remove the amendment right now. There are essentially two choices. We can concur with further amendment or we can go to conference. And to concur with further amendment would just be to make the technical changes in the dates and the amounts. No, once it's open to be amended, then all members have rights to make amendments to the bill. The question is whether or not that's the direction we want to head in, in this committee, to refer back to the speaker and to request the committee a conference or whether we concur with further amendment. To concur with further amendment, there are times, I mean, these date changes are big. We can't turn back the clock. So the implementation dates of 1119, if there are any in the bill, obviously void that. We can't pass a bill that has these post-dates in them in. If it were only the dates, then they might be considered. I mean, there's a, Damien, a question to you is what reaches a level of purely technical changes that can be dealt with by saying these are technical changes and they're not substantive changes versus actually changing the minimum wage to increase on an inflation base, to me, as a substantive change. I think in this case, both the dates and the wages would be substantive changes to the bill just because the fact that changing the date of a wage increase has. The technical change would be correcting wording, correcting cross-references. So sometimes at the end of the prior session, you pass a section 384 and you've got multiple bills that added that section and now you have to remember sections. But the dates at this point are a substantive change. So you either need to, if the bill moves forward, you need to address those through a proposal of further amendment. So you do get, there's one more. So it's come from the Senate to the House, gone back to the Senate and it's now back in the House. So the House can either send it back to the Senate with one further proposal of amendment at this point or you have to vote not to concur and send it to conference. But those are kind of the two options that the bill's gonna move forward. It has to go one of those paths and in either case, substantive amendments have to be made. So those are kind of the two options. And you said yesterday that the amendment could be a strike all amendment. Yes, so whether in both cases, you could end up with a strike all amendment. The conference committee and really the amendments here are limited to the subject matter of the bill. The subject matter of the bill is always in the judgment of the chamber though. So, but generally if it was related to what was in the underlying bill, you'd be there where you get into problems is when you start having the argument of does an unemployment bill because that's employment related, can you throw on minimum wage pieces to that because that's also employment related, although they're very different areas of employment law. But here as long as it's wage related, it's in the substance of the bill. But you just have to, if you're going to move the bill forward, choose which path. Both paths require a substantive amendments. It's just a different process getting there. If the Senate didn't, if you voted to send it back with a further proposal of amendment, the Senate's only option is to concur or to request a conference. So, that has one additional option at this point. And the conference right now, if we were to go into conference right now, we're saying through this committee that we do not accept the Senate proposal on its face. We're not accepting the Senate's proposal and that when we go into conference, the role of the conference is to start the conversation with supporting that the House's version of the bill. And the Senate is going to say, so we're going to say, well, we like our version of the bill better because of X, Y, and Z. And the Senate is going to say, well, we like our version because it says A, B, and C. And then the negotiations, the final negotiations begin. But it gives us the opportunity to start with, I mean, if we were to concur with further amendment, we would basically be accepting the Senate version of the bill and then adding things on to it that we have no idea whether or not the Senate would accept it. Right, so, typically the way a conference committee works is both sides start with their chamber's last position and then you either we write exceed or reseed. And so, and I can never remember which chamber's proposal it is that you have exceed to and which one you would reseed to. But don't worry, I have a cheat sheet that helps me make sure I draft that correctly. Is that a gardening phrase? But yeah, so what you'll do is you'll, parties will then say, okay, we're going to use the, in this case we'll say hypothetically, we're going to use the house's proposal as our basis. And then you can either take it as a package or you can say with further proposal amendment as follows. And then you could say, we've agreed to take out this study and this study and to change these dates. And I mean, you can, from there, the possibilities are endless as long as you stay within the subject matter. But typically what the conference committee will do is agree to start from one point and then make further changes. So maybe they say, you know, we like, in this case, you'd probably say, we either like the Senate's wage increase model or the house's wage increase model and then you'd make further changes because the dates have all changed and the amounts may need to change because the wages increased since this was last before the body. And then you might say, well, what about the studies, the difference in the studies? Do we want to keep just the ones the Senate had or do we want to add some of the ones that the house had that the Senate took out? Same thing there. And so whichever basis you've chosen, those would be your further proposals amendment there. But it really becomes a give and take and the parties typically start from where they ended up and then move from there to some place, presumably in the middle. But in the conference versus the further proposal amendment, the range of actions, in one is limited to conferees and the range of action in the other scenarios open to the floor. Yeah, so, okay, I have my clarification, that's all I need. Yeah, I think just to be clear for everyone else, if you do go to conference committee, when the conference report comes out, it's an up or down vote. It's not amendable. So you can vote up or down the, if you send an amendment out of this committee, there's a chance to amend it on the floor, but then the next step would be a conference report after that and that would be up or down. Is that what it's all about? And that's part of why the process parts and really the fact that the Senate will only be able to send it to conference committee or go up or down is what I think conference committee, us voting for conference committee now is the way to go because I think whatever changes we make, whatever amendments we make, the Senate won't accept them. And so then getting to, it cuts out that work that I think will be redundant anyway. And so it, to me, it speeds it along. But if you don't think that the Senate's gonna accept changes anyway, then why even go to conference committee? Because in the past, the conference committees in situations like this where the bills are so different that the conference committee has been able to be successful. And so it's the, in that setting, in that process, that there has been myriad of times where there's been success, where there hasn't been another process. And so in looking at history and the process is why I think we should be, why I will be voting yes today. And going to conference is no guarantee of success. No. There have been many conference reports that have failed. And that remains a real possibility just because it's part of the process. But yet, on the other hand, a lot of good bills have been produced out of conference committees where both chambers get together and there are agreements and compromises made that further a bill rather than let the unit die. Yeah, and it's just, to me, it's just part of the parliamentary process. It's one of the choices that we have and that's the motion that's on the front right now. My concern is that you, whoever is in the conference, is not going to get any new information from any of concerned parties who would be interested in whether the minimum wage goes up in a fast rate or a slow rate. I think there's a lot more, a lot more investigating to be done about this because this is really going to affect every single volunteer, whether it affects them in a good way or a bad way. So, up to Mariana's point, the case here is concerning to me as well. Anybody else like the way in before the color roll? Thank you, committee, I appreciate it. Committee may clerk may commence the color roll. Representative DeLonge? Yes. Representative Gonzalez? Yes. Representative DeLonge? Yes. Representative DeLonge? No. Representative Trevittoriano? Yes. Representative Howard votes yes. Representative Colacchi? Yes. Representative Sack? No. Representative violence here. Representative Hando? No. Representative Stevens? Yes. Well, I didn't hear you. Yes. Seven, three, four. All right, thank you, committee, I appreciate it. We'll deal with this somewhere on the floor this afternoon. And we are saying... We're back here. No, we're not going to be back here after this meeting. So, Ron, what do we have for tomorrow morning? Tomorrow morning, we have... The photographer and the reporter. Is Tucker the only one that's coming in after the floor? Unless we're going to deal with budget adjustment. Right, so, committee, as much as I like to be... I always start every session trying to be proactive about what we're scheduling, and we end up having a large portion of stuff that's reactive to what we receive when we're just sitting here. So, I received a memo from Tucker Anderson, who is in his role as an attorney for government operations, where every year we ask for reports. There's a long list of reports that have been requested, and over the last four or five years, like Council actually statute has changed to say, if there's a report that was required to say, you report back to this and this and this committee every year with these facts, with a 10 to 20 page report, whatever it takes. After a few years, they ask whether or not we still would like to see those reports. And if they do, then either the reports are no longer commissioned, or we just don't receive them. And so, the memo we received from Tucker this week, there is one study that he'll talk about that talks about the use of emergency vouchers. Sometimes we receive these reports, they're discussed, sometimes they just show up and they're in the files. But they are, but we have one that he will talk about, and we have to vote on whether or not we want this committee now and in the future, or for the next block of time to continue to receive that particular report. We also received a memo from appropriations that is gonna ask us to look at their budget adjustment for certain things that come through certain issue areas that come through our committee. And so, we're trying to, we're perhaps gonna set that up. We're not gonna work tomorrow afternoon after lunch. Tomorrow is a short date. As, I like to work on Friday afternoons until three if we have work to do, but if we don't have work to do as a committee, I have a, we have a chair's training tomorrow after lunch. So, we will have whatever we do at least with Tucker, perhaps with somebody from appropriations or wherever to explain what the changes are. At least we can review up on the screen what the changes are, they've been highlighted. And then Tuesday, and we have to get a memo or a note back to appropriations by the end of business on Tuesday. By their request. And then we have some Elkar, some rules, issues that have to be dealt with next week. And Betsy and Rask will come in and explain what they are and what we have to do in order to just, so those are just requests. They're not always small. These seem to be pretty small this year, but they're issues that we'll have to take up. So those are, so we're gonna get a taste of that tomorrow morning with Tucker after the floor. So other than that, I think we can be done for the day. Thank you.