 the House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development here to have a discussion on what our friends at Commerce, at the Agency of Commerce, Community Development have what they have to report to us on the grant program, how things are going, and what we have to look forward to. So with us is Deputy Secretary Ted Brady this morning, welcome. We're glad that you were you were able to join us and we have Commissioner Goldstein with us also. Good to see you, Joan. Good to see you. Welcome back, everybody. So if yeah, Charlie. So I don't know Ted or Joan or both, however you want to lead off and just probably give us an idea of how things are going with the grants and you know the positives and what where the negatives what do we have to do going forward and maybe we can get into some of the discussion on what the governor laid out last week on the new programs and go from there. Yeah, so I think that's probably makes sense then because Joan has not slept in, I don't know, three months that she should take it through where we are on the grant program and give you the general grant update and then maybe pass it back to me for an update on where we're going and what we've proposed with the governor and the agency have proposed together to try to tackle what we've learned the lessons we've learned. Sound good, Joan? That sounds great. So I know that. I just want to remind everyone in the committee to please mute so we don't get any feedback and we're able to hear Joan and Ted a lot easier. Thank you. Yeah, I don't know where to begin but I think if I could just say that the combination of ACCD and tax, we were able to process thousands of applications and about a little over 3,000 people have been paid already. The breakdown between tax and ACCD is that tax has a great system, might be tax, that they were able to do a significant amount of solicitation and application and processing all in very quickly. ACCDs was a very different situation. We set up a Salesforce application with a two-step review and approval process and so it's taking us a bit longer to process but even having said that, we had the help of Department of Finance and Regulation and VEDA and basically everybody in ACCD helping out to review and then subsequently to the management team for approval. I think and I'm hoping that the committee has the full-on legislative report and sorry that I didn't maybe could circulate that or unless you have that handy, you'll be able to see a bit about the distribution around the state, the distribution in terms of the sector distribution that ACCD had. As you know, tax did the sort of retail and lodging and hospitality properties and we did everybody else. The distribution is really much more skewed on the small business side. You'll see the majority of the funds went to those that are like four and under in terms of number of employees. We also had a fair amount as you know on the sole proprietorship. So the good news is that we were able to get this done. It's still ongoing although our numbers are significantly down like the velocity of incoming is down. Excuse me but obviously there were gaps right. So the gaps are you know sole props were generally excluded with the exception of the women owned and minority owned set aside. We also had a problem with new businesses that didn't have a period of March through September of last year to compare that same period this year so that was another gap and then there were people who fell just shy of the 50% loss but were still suffering significantly and those are the groups that we really want to try to address this go around. You may have noticed that we were able to tweak along the way. We did end up including the S and C Corps that have owner employees at issue W2s. We allowed that to happen so we had a lot more incoming on that side and we've just announced last week the supplemental application for those most you know what we'll say is travel and tourism and event related space who you know reach the maximum grant and to try to even out that distribution curve to those who have more employees than four let's just say and we expect with that supplemental application take up that we will expend all of the funds. So I don't know if you want me to go into more detail I could open it up to Q&A or just let me know. I almost have too much information like I want to know kind of what's on the I know that we heard from you throughout this process different constituents who were left out or there were issues I mean obviously you know there were hiccups I mean it's not like everything went straight through and we're working through those issues now. I don't know what's happened to our chair Jean. Did I say something? Sorry guys. Christie's trying to figure a way to get in I guess Springfield's lost their internet. Oh dear. I'm on the phone with Amy trying to figure it but Jean go ahead and thank you. So Joan thank you but you've referred to a legislative report and I can't find it and also where is that and what would be very helpful to the committee is data. What is the absolute I mean 3000 people got money from tax and ACCD I don't know who they are what they are. We need to know what it looks like now and what's happened in order to go forward. So how are we going to handle that with the committee? Okay let me let me just find the report I know we sent it last week and we could. Joan I just forwarded Amy the this week's report from 824 so. Okay this okay. But will you have a comprehensive will you have a comprehensive report to date everything to date? Yes so I'm sending to Amy the report that we sent last week and and I think if that's shared with the committee we could we can go through that it'll give you a good sense of it. Now because it is a rolling application obviously it's not going to be like as of right this moment but we have calculated that of the original 76 million that ACCD was appropriated that's combination of both acts. We have paid to date 33 million in total and so it leaves us with a significant balance. That balance will be utilized we have sent out supplemental applications and tax has a demand of about I think it's a it's about 40 million dollars worth of supplemental grants so we will be utilizing that residual balance to help fund to help fund that demand. I think what is very helpful is to really get a profile of what those businesses are what part of the sectors that what sectors of our economy are then so that we can fine-tune the next move to help them. We know hospitalities and deep trouble how do we deal with that we also know from like I'll ask the same question at DOL because literally we're going to have thousands of displaced low-skilled low you know low income employees who are out who we're also going to have to work with so we need we need it's not just raw numbers it's the profiles and also if there's some way of getting a real handle and maybe it's from DOL on who those sole props are and what got you know where are they and where are they in the economy. Okay so a couple of things on the sector breakdown there is um and I'm referring to the report right now if you want to go to page 11 of the report. Maybe we can bring it up. I haven't had a chance to post it yet I'm in the process. Okay is there a way for me to share a screen? Yes I can give you one sec. That would be great. Okay Joan I just made you co-host so now you can share. Okay let's uh share screen is green I believe. Yeah I think I'm gonna I sent you just the update and Joan is sharing the total. Yeah so there was a comprehensive report due on mid-August there'll be another one due in October I believe and and um um this was sent I think that was sent last week but here's the sector breakdown um thank you Joan that's perfect and this is you know this is actually this is a better look at oh sorry trying to I don't know how I get rid of the other screen bear with me okay so if you take a look I mean obviously it looks pretty well distributed amongst the sectors like when you look at healthcare social assistance manufacturing retail I mean it's a it's a pretty healthy distribution um you know obviously there's retail and restaurants you know food and accommodation services this one is it looks like it's it's broken up a bit food is separate listed separately and accommodations is down here and we also what we did is we looked at not only the sector distribution of the grant but what the average loss was so you don't notice that accommodations had indeed the highest loss but transportation was right up there with them and arts entertainment I mean there are no surprises really on this right hand side not sure if you're are you seeing that entire screen where we have that breakdown the job that was that percentage is in the column the sector percent okay there we go now I can see it sector employment percent of the state total yep yeah so um um yeah I mean I don't really know I mean we it was clear that the initial early applicants were the people who suffered the most the people who were closed at least one or two months um that that was absolutely clear from the applications that we processed let me just see what else and and representative Sullivan of Sullivan I didn't know there were other parts to your questions so I want to make sure I'm answering them we had data by sector oh data by was is if as we go forward with the sole props if we could get a picture of what that looks like and I'm hoping that maybe do well from their pua I hate who are so those their pua applications we can get some sense of what what is that what does that look like how does it break down well there are tens of thousands I know that we were able to get some information from Michael but we have not done a deeper dive on that so I couldn't really I couldn't tell you I mean we could go and get that we just know that uh at the get go there were many sole props that were interested and ended up being denied unless they were in the category of women owned or minority owned yeah uh so we know that there's demand there now um bdcc and two rivers were able to do a sole proprietorship stabilization program through the cdbg funds a small amount of money uh they ended up with I think only about 300 applicants which was interesting and um maybe it was because Burlington was not included in that first round but they will they are gearing up for a second round uh which is which is very very helpful to the sole prop out there uh this I thought was an interesting distribution to show the blue bar is the percent of grant recipients the orange is the percent of grant dollars and then the um the blue the horizontal line bar chart is the business size contribution to state employment and you could see that you know the largest percent really went to the smallest businesses and you know I think that's by virtue of the $50,000 cap you know it really those who are on the higher end in terms of you know numbers of employees really were the smaller percentages of the percent of grant dollars and percent of grant recipients and that is both accd and tax you know we we tried to aggregate where we could certain things were uh you know kind of loan because we were the only ones who were focusing on sole proprietors out of the accd and tax tax did not uh service the sole props um what else is interesting here yeah another another cut at it in terms of firm size applications and dollar value um it's sort of repetitive um and here's a county distribution again I don't think there were really any surprises there was another county distribution that was interesting in terms of the numbers of businesses served in each of the counties uh and the state employment share of that county so um Chittenden the employment shares 33.6% and 30.9% of the businesses served by the grants um were served from Chittenden County not really many again not really many surprises I mean look like LeMoyle was oversubscribed in a way which was interesting that seemed to be the only kind of surprise going backwards I don't know that by design uh these is a total sum of subscribed awards by county we're using subscribed because accd um was making we are making payment files once a week so there may be people that subscribed and we didn't get to or subscribed and weren't approved or approved but not awarded just yet so and this is the total number of grants madam chair go ahead Jim that's thank you um mr chairman Jonah I have a question I just sent a text uh that I got from a motel owner after the readjustment or read calibration of the increased uh grant money yeah and if you'll take a look at that um and what she says and I wonder if you know particularly with motels is there any room within your um oversight to increase the amount of money that would go to hotels and motels which have been substantially hurt far more than any other business but if you could take a look at that text yes what we're going to do and like last week we announced what we're calling the supplemental award and that is primarily for hospitality so indeed they will have it's for people who reach the maximum the 50 000 they will be able to apply for more um and we did it in specific sectors for that very reason it became clear that not every sector was suffering as great as the um travel and tourism related sectors okay well if you could just take a 30 seconds and go and look at the message that I of the copy that I from my constituent and just take a look at it and you sent it to me in an email or something I sent it to everyone um via the chat here oh okay Joan you'll probably want to stop screen sharing or maybe you can see it without it showing up okay um do you want me to address this right right now or do you want to go through the rest of the report um time is of the essence so why don't we just get through the report then we can start um okay thank you okay so questions after um this was a breakdown of the number of awards by the funding source so that you're able to see you know most of these were the 75 percent or greater loss um and then 50 percent and then we had these separate set of sides uh from h966 and then this is expressed by dollar amount rather than number of award and this was for tax department and that's also very similar story most were in the 75 percent or greater loss category so I mean that's kind of the report I don't know if um did I answer your questions um representative of Sullivan I know that you were mentioning the salt props so we'll need to find out who they are um the salt props that we served already are all embedded within these data points that we divided by sector um so it's across the board you know oh you did it's this this is exactly what I wanted to look at okay great thanks you're welcome what else should should I cover um chairman mark pot charlie I believe was next with a question um is every does anyone have any questions on what Joan just gave us before we ask her to take it off screen take it away um Amy I'm not sure how to do that on zoom how to unshare yeah how do I how am I doing that is that go back down to the share screen and uh I think you can just maybe not maybe it's on the upper oh okay I can stop for you can stop it right okay okay there we go okay all right we're all back charlie yeah thanks uh jones just a couple questions I know you and I confirm that the women and women owned businesses that fund was fully expended um and I don't know about the minority owned businesses can you give us an idea of how many applicants were for each of those programs if you know and uh were there a lot of people left on the sidelines or applicants that didn't get funding uh from that yeah so I um there are 48 applications uh women that we approved but ran out of money for so we are uh working to figure out a solution to that there were others that came in after the fact that we ended up denying in total from all of the applications that we've taken in we've got a little over a hundred denials a little bit over a hundred ineligible and they're dispersed in there so unfortunately I can't talk too much about the oversubscribed list other than the 48 that we know um I mean we we could get it it just it would take some work to go into each each and every application um and I believe we have some data just give me a minute to get those details on the numbers so far yes um as as you're going through that the the minority owned businesses is also fully subscribed or no minority owned is not fully subscribed um we have room there okay the way h966 was written is that as of september 1st if there's residual there we could we merge the pools so we will see next tuesday what what will happen there um so let's just say I think Joan while you're grabbing that uh I think it's worth noting we had to make some decisions about that set aside and how to deal with it and the five million dollar set aside was one of the trickier elements of our uh the system uh and we made the determination that we were going to use those set asides only for women and minority owned businesses with zero employees because otherwise those applicants could be funded to our normal application and so to date about 40 percent of our applications have been women owned businesses yeah five percent of our applications have been minority owned businesses and all of those aren't captured in the five million dollar set aside the only ones captured in the five million dollar set aside are those businesses with no employees yeah that's an important note um again as per legislation the set aside was meant for the zero to five but we thought the one to five would get funded from our normal pot anyway so in total the women business enterprises funded 622 of them and 388 of that number were sole props um on the minority owned we've got 154 minority owned and I don't have the breakdown yet on the sole prop I think that's a yeah I don't have that breakdown okay and then um as we're looking at I think you said with the supplemental grants that were made available last week you expect the any remaining balances and both the accd and tax department pots of money from 350 and h966 those would be fully expended by that you believe yes we just went over that this morning um there is significant interest in the supplemental as one could imagine from the hospitality uh industry and so we will um we will fully expend it I mean maybe there's going to be a million dollars left that you know but from what we could see so far from the applications that have come in through tax um yeah they would definitely spend down this residual and uh there was a question about who the people are just to be clear in the report we do hyperlink to the list of grant recipients on our site so each and every grant recipient is public information uh just the name of the entity and the dollar amount that they received and I did have a question I don't know if it's appropriate here mr chair or not but really about the duplication of benefits that is now on the accd site too is it is that all right should we hold that for later mr chair go ahead okay so I think it was added to the website maybe last week in terms of a calculator to look at a duplication of benefits as to what you would be potentially liable for in a grant if you had already received other funds from either ppp or maybe an idle grant or if your losses were not as great as the amount of the grant that you received so in looking at the language that's there it's possible that someone could receive a grant have received a grant that is greater than the loss that they actually incurred for the one month of the two months you know if they have a seasonally slow business in march and april maybe something like that so they could be liable to repay that money that's how I read it I was wondering if that's how you interpreted it or if that's how it's meant so it's meant as a warning because this is a crisis that hasn't ended yet so it's unlike other disasters where you have a loss and it's very discreet like you know precisely what that loss is and so for many people that's still unfolding however we feel that it's important for us to warn folks that there is a possibility of duplication of benefit if you are getting funding that ends up being more than what your loss is and that is the warning and yeah there there could be ramifications of being of having to pay it back you know and some businesses are concerned about it and as a result we've given an opportunity on the supplemental application particularly for them to indicate a lesser amount than the full 100 additional that they could be entitled to based on whatever their revenue figure is so we felt it was incumbent upon us to put sufficient warning there you know it's it's hard at any we we cannot tell right now if there's a duplication of benefit because again we don't know when this crisis will be over we don't know we can't foresee the future you know other states have done things like done projections but you'd have to then go back and see you know kind of a truing up you know we kept using December 30th as if everything's going to end on December 30th what if this continues into next year you know so it's it's a tricky it is tricky but we think that the calculator may help and the warnings may help folks to you know to be to be prudent about it and to save all all receipts and everything yeah my only concern is that some of the businesses may not have anticipated that when they applied for the grant that's if they received a grant that was equal to 10 percent of the revenues from 2019 it might actually exceed the loss that they experienced in April or March well we did have duplication of benefit warning on the first application we did not we just expanded on it recently because of the supplemental but we did have that there was an attestation and a warning on the first application i believe it was an rfaq you know there was a you know there's definitely mention of it because we felt like we had to um yeah it's i'm just wondering how many people read that you know it's a grant i understand i i totally get it i i think that determination was you know there was a lot of discussion about do we subtract out what they received and then we came to determination well how could we because we don't know if that's a good way to do that and it would that really be helpful to the businesses so a lot of considerations are we though well let's just warn folks that you know that if if there's a duplication of benefit you you may have to return some of it okay thank you mr chairman i have been double booked and it looks like i'm due over in the senate right now so i'm gonna leave you with jones if that's okay mr chairman that's that's fine ted thank you uh appreciate you joining us and i'm sure we'll talk soon thank you anything else charlie stefanie jonah i have a couple questions about clarification so um from the the women on businesses did i understand it correctly that if a if a woman on business had an employee it was not they did not receive a grant out of that out of that sole proprietor and they were sole proprietor they didn't receive the out of that pool or were they were is that right yes another in other words if you if you had a w2 employee whether it was yourself or somebody else you were going to be funded you know from our general pool from the general pool i see yeah and we did that just to reserve space for the sole prop since this was the only avenue for them to get funded when we started this whole journey okay um all right so that that's good clarification and then the um with this remaining money are you considering are you going to put all that money towards a supplemental grant are are you indeed going to look at businesses who have had a loss less than 50 percent in my community i have these like you know in brandon we've had years of row construction so people had like had significant losses for years i've had a few businesses that come to me and said you know Stephanie i received a 47 percent i had a 47 loss right so i if i was to look at my income they were to look at their income like three years ago it would have been a signal you know much larger loss but because they're they're already lost so much money because of uh row construction so are you going to look at that like less than 50 so yeah all we're able to do um the only lee way we were able to do without legislative was the design of the program we could not touch the less than 50 percent because it's in statute so we thought let's make sure we're helping those that we can within our purview and then if the legislature decides to change it that's what we're asking for is the people who are 30 to 50 loss okay that would be you know we need additional money for that and also new businesses were excluded right so we want to accommodate that um what am i missing silver friars and so props right yeah so whatever whoever was left out was all right let's let's serve serve them well you so i get my i guess i want to clarify is that so you're not going to use all the remaining money for the supplemental grants you're going to try to keep some funds so that you can serve these other community of businesses no no we're going to use we want to use all the funds for the supplemental and that so because we have the ability to do that like right here right now um the ask of the legislature is to change the statute to allow for those three but we're not going to hold up the money until that happens they want to use the the the remaining correct CRF funds that this is part of the governor's proposal okay so i guess i'm concerned about how if we're going to use all those funds up how we're going to help these other soul props the less than 50 and the new owners there's an additional ask so that's so we're going to have an additional ask right for additional crf money and change the statute to allow for those those situations okay thanks for clarification and one last question when we set this up and and pass the legislation i was convinced this money was going to fly out the door and i was i'm i'm frankly shocked that we have anything left over so i just wanted your comment on why why do you think this this money hasn't hasn't uh gone out as fast as anticipated or the fact that you still have remaining funds i have my own a few ideas just from it but i i'm sure just like everybody else in the room we have been working really hard on encouraging every single business we know yeah i think yeah well i think we had a cap i think if you look at the graphs really well you'll see that the distribution is really skewed towards small businesses and small businesses because this was based on revenue spent let you know we spent we expended less because it you know each each individual grant is for less the fact that we're going to be able to spend all of it down with the supplemental kind of tells us that maybe our cap was too small right the 50k might have been too small but we aired on the side of conservatism because we'd much rather be prudent and have some leftover money to then help whoever's not been helped right rather than being like okay have the cap start out at 100 so yeah you know i think there was a criticism from day one like somebody wrote to us and said what are you doing like 50k is so small but we had no way of knowing demand right that was one thing yeah the idea that this will be spent down is be is definitely reinforces the fact that the severely injured sectors are severely injured and we need to help them and that's hospitality travel and tourism related entertainment arts all of that and that's what's going to eat up the rest of the funds and that's rightly so right and the others might have been closed a month or two months but then came back to business i'm not minimizing the challenges i mean they're it's still hard and it might still be reduced but a lot of sectors went back and we were able to see that when they went back you know it was i don't want to say business as usual but right you know not quite the same scenario as operating within reduced capacity right so i was just looking at so if you look if we look at the numbers of businesses and the size of the businesses in the state i think what's happened is probably is correct like we do have this giant number of very small businesses and and so and perhaps for those very small businesses 10 percent of your gross and your gross is five hundred thousand dollars you know that that does perhaps a big help but i do understand that all the bigger businesses are it is tough yeah but i guess i was just wondering about the application was there was a was a was is there a feeling that you received the amount sort of the amount of applications you felt like you were going to receive or did you feel like there was other marketing that could have been done or should have been done or or how do we convince people that this was a good idea i mean i was still having conversations with people last week that they were saying i don't know if i if i qualify and i said well you can't you don't know if you're qualified unless you open the application right no sure i think i think some people are reluctant and we're still getting applications like there are there is still a trickle of applications coming in each and every day so some people didn't have a loss right away maybe march isn't typically their big month or april isn't their big month and then we saw an uptick at the end of july and maybe we'll see another uptick at the end of august right because the summer might have been slower than they then they thought i mean it's like anything else like i thought the sole prop stabilization program that was a lottery that that bdcc did i thought that was going to be thousands and 300 now some people just don't want to apply for grants like it's just too much trouble or i don't know i can't i don't want to speak for them i you know i what i do want to say though is even though it feels like it was less it was still enormous like it was 100 at one point they were like 700 applications in q i thought we'd never get through it right so it was yeah it was a lot and and yeah and there was work in valve people had to upload financials and you know there's some work involved and and and maybe and you needed to have your books in order correct yeah yeah well all right thanks okay uh the member formally known as representative ralph representative Watson thank you mr chair uh hey jone nice to see again can you all hear me okay all right sure um so actually um Stephanie just asked the question that i was was asking was you know when we left the session um it felt like there was a lot of unknowns you know what how is this gonna go and do we have enough money are we giving it to the right people and and sort of this pressure to get the door out really the money out the door really quickly and so i yes i was also surprised to see that um that we still have funds in the bank which i guess in some ways is a it's a good thing and i think that gives us opportunities to um adjust and um and so i i have a broader question of um it was really about what lessons we learned to to get this uh to get this money in the right places and it and it um and it sounds like you were saying you know we need to give more money to specific sectors and that that and i'm sorry so my question is we're are you suggesting that we are that we are increasing the cap for specific sectors or all across the board it's a specific ones um because of the limited constraints you know the the constraints that they still face in terms of limited occupancy and um yeah quote you know and really you have an idea of so are we going to use based on the chart that you shared with us earlier those sectors that were hardest hit um you know looked like retail had the highest percentage of need um which i guess i was i guess i'm not that surprised about but i thought the food in the service sector would be a little bit higher um so you're do you have that list of sectors that we would want to increase the cap on is that in any of the it's in the supplemental um it's not in the proposal to the legislature it's what we announced last week for um traveling tourism related so retail uh hospitality arts recreation sports you know that those are the nicks codes that um the supplemental will go to and tax pretty much as the lion's share of those because of the retail and restaurants and hospitality okay i will uh i'll find that and look at those okay yeah the last question i had was do you have an indic do you have any indication about whether the whether we're actually helping the the businesses that are receiving these funds um that this is actually helping them the only thing i can go is on the anecdotals i mean there are people who've come in and said that they were able to pay down like all these things that were accumulating and it gives them a level of hope to reopen and they're still very very nervous about their you know 50 capacity but that's all i can go on because we have not had a minute to do anything other than this so um i couldn't answer it i mean maybe the proof is next year if we still have a hospitality industry then we'll know that we've done good um you know it's going to be you know it's there's fall ahead of us and winter and you know yeah i i think we have to help them through through that through that time which is not going to be like last year so you still don't have a crystal ball is what you're saying yeah unfortunately yeah yeah i don't know you know it hard hard to say but you know it runs across the gamut like there are larger businesses who might have thought the 50k is not enough but they took it right because it's it's it's money that could pay a bill um and there are small businesses that got as little as a thousand dollars and were forever grateful so it's a combination it maybe it's an economic development grant but maybe it's really assistance it's just financial assistance thank you know jen thank you mr chairman um commissioner goldstein um if you'll take a look at that text that i sent you okay analogy there pardon me okay um that was from a constituent and the analogy that she provides um is that you know restaurants were eligible for the same amount of grant money that an in owner um was um subject to are available to however um um restaurants were able to open up and at reduced capacity um and take take out orders and for motel hotel and in owners they weren't so my direct question to you is that in the recalibration of uh grant monies have you given any thought to uh hotel motel and in owners um to boost the amount of money because they have been in the in and hotel owners that i've spoken to have just been decimated so i'm looking at the chat um i want to make sure i'm answering the right question so it sounds like they don't want the grant to be based on 10 percent is that i think that's what it looks like okay um so no i mean to answer you shortly no we have not thought about another methodology because we've gone so far with this one but yeah i i don't i i don't i don't know i mean i guess it basically i mean they're basically saying sorry i guess they're comparing themselves to another business and saying why is it fair that they're down more and so we did not base this on how much somebody is down but yeah uh yeah we could we could change methodology sure we could hear okay thank you thank you john thank you chair um i just want to go back over the women minority i think you said 45 percent of the women were funded or it sounded like the women which looks like they got like 2.5 million um you you ran out of money with them there's a lot more and then the minority was 1.898 and did you run out of money with them as well or was it much no no not yet we we still have more money in the minority owned and what did you say that percentage was for the minority um much smaller percent was a 45 for women and percent of what you funded i don't know whatever you i think Ted had said that 40 percent of all applicants were women owned women of all and then five percent were minority owned businesses that's what he said across all of the programs but the actual dollars amount are it sounds like they're more of two to one instead of by that larger percentage but anyway um but you still have now when you have money left over on the minority does that mean you're going to be able to use that for both groups or just another group or it sounds like as if september first we're able to use it for both groups okay so you could fund more of the women correct then from that okay the second question i have really has to do with you talk about the $50,000 cap but there are and i know i've talked to the chair about this there are some larger businesses in the hospitality industry for instance like the ski areas and maybe some others where the cap there was another cap of 20 million as far as their gross or something and that would be a detriment to people who actually gross more than 20 million i mean any of the scariest i mean lots of different kinds yeah i mean what and so they were sort of like locked out of this one piece is this yeah so what on the supplemental stuff are we going to do for them i mean because you know i've been around jpeak a lot this summer and they were like a ghost town they're a little better now but right they're all you know i hear sto is just loaded without a state people and um but yeah these aren't and even if they do have it it's not the same thing yeah we are talking about that i mean we don't have it in a full-on proposal yet but we are talking about the some of the hospitality properties that are over that 20 million and what to do about them we are having conversations we've not resolved anything just yet um but i think initially we use that as a revenue cap um to define small businesses because we felt within the confines of crf it was permissible to help small businesses and that not that everybody over 20 million is not small but we had to do some some guideline but we are we are talking about we're aware of the problems in some of the ski areas yeah or jay specifically yeah or some big hotels yeah yes okay thank you christy glad to see you get your internet back sorry all that bragging i did about earlier in the year about our local provider and it crashed when we were on the floor session i changed locations thinking it was my uh my home internet it wasn't i came down to my place of employment uh it came back on briefly but then it crashed again so but i'm back up so i'm here uh so excuse me this question has been asked already i missed out on the early conversations uh i apologize for that so john thank you for the efforts and and thank you mr chairman for the opportunity to speak certainly uh for what the accd and the tech doing now we're getting some we're getting some positive comments the negatives or the the fall through the crack loopholes um and and i thought these were covered but apparently they're not and that's the chamber of commerce organizations that rely on the events that were not allowed to take place and i know there was some discussion early on about uh projected income as an actual income and it's hard to do hard to do the projection income but nonetheless um we're are they eligible for any type of support and in my second question is um it has to do with a local farmer that uh uh acts as a distributor to local restaurants and event venues and of course with the event venue collapsing such as the weddings and other types of gigs um their their loss of revenue is is extreme and i'm a little confused about if if and where they these two groups would uh be eligible to apply for sure um thanks for the question uh they are both eligible for our grant program in fact we funded quite a few chambers of commerce um so i would urge them to apply um the same thing with the event venues so we had plenty of those applications so basically anybody who could not um file an application with tax came to accd um so i would urge them to apply if they applied and had some difficulty then we have that our help line if they just have their application number we could help them through it but you know the nonprofits the chambers included uh we took our cue from the um legislation that was written about the arts council in terms of calculation of revenue we didn't include all grants and um grants and donations we stuck to program service revenue which caused some difficulty i know and consternation amongst uh nonprofits and particularly chambers but we we did an awful lot of work to decipher the the revenue streams to determine you know yeah indeed they are suffering because of COVID related lack of events so um yeah we we took a lot of care and feeding and also critique but we are um we are processing them thank you and that's as i remember it but and maybe it's uh maybe it's an issue with a local chamber in their application process so i will follow up with that but the the second one is the the local crop grower farmer that raises crops that uh distribute their sales food to the venues that were canceled so he's not really hosting the events himself but he's a provider of the uh a lot of the food that goes into those events and uh and and uh he was struggling also to to find the actual where he actually fit in yeah i think that you know we got lots of applications from all kinds of sectors and even like agriculture has a program um dairy and non-dairy and um but but it's okay even if they apply to us we typically check with some of the other agencies to find out whether or not they sent in an application so even if they are confused about where to apply tell them to come to our site and it kind of takes them through the the sort of you know there's so many grant programs um that the state has now and i understand how that could be confusing but if they come in and and try to do one at least through us we could um we could take a look at it okay thanks right yeah we basically didn't turn anybody away saying no you belong to go to this program we basically were like we would process it and then what we'll do is share that information with other agencies so there is some duplication excellent i think some of the confusion may have been on my part because of the information they were kicking back to me that uh they didn't qualify but that may have been from a lack of understanding on their part but i i tried to get them the information and i did mention accd so thank you for that information and i'll reconnect with them before i go to charlie joan could you just get a little go a little deeper into the nonprofit sector and which our chambers are part of that too but how i think what what we had looked at um in the language we put in for the art council um really dealt with straight donations anything that is um tax deductible it would not be counted but um i've heard some um that i've been told that that like their dues is can't be counted um any of the fundraisers that they do year after year is not counted is is that how you are looking at that or uh no i think it was program service revenue but where we got we're we're got um kind of sidetracked was uh the the way certain organizations keep track or account for their revenue um so for example their membership dues may not have been impacted at all right and then in some cases if the nonprofit actually operates a gem it would be right so there had to be a little bit more analysis on the types of revenues um and we we caused the arts council going to be treated that way we thought all right well we ought to treat all nonprofits that way because it then it wouldn't seem fair so yeah that caused a great big stir not just from the applicants but even the reviewers because it took a lot more to delve into those applications and understand it okay just so everybody knows if they hear any pounding or anything going on in the background it's probably coming from me they're working on my putting a new roof on my house so um just bear with me i'll try to mute as much as i can uh charlie i said you were going to raise the roof mike so i didn't raise it though no right i'm just covering it again i had questions in a couple different uh areas not specific to grants and uh one is it i just want to talk to you about the restart from our business assistance program and then the second uh right the and then the second is really looking at long-term recovery a lot of the businesses that we're talking about the larger ones even 150 000 isn't going to do it it's really reopening for visitors to come and increasing the occupancy rates so other states have been successful in say the cape uh or new hampshire main and in changing the occupancy requirements where those facilities have been able to maintain um all the health standards and abide by those and increase their occupancy rates and so i've been talking to a local resort and they have also expressed great concern about losing the fall losing the fall season so i'm asking this question as to how can we look at adjusting that i know we're trying to base it on science where other states have been able to safely open are they using a different science so how how can we get to that yeah i am not sure if i could offer any encouraging words to kind of estimate what it would take to get to that i just could just state what we've done on our our record of containing containing the virus i mean i yeah we we differed quite a bit from many other neighboring states as we all know and uh we've been more strict let's say but we can't say that's had a negative outcome um and we understand that that's not positive for this entire group in this entire industry um you know i i think and you'll see that in the ask from the administration is to get another 50 million dollars for i think it's 50 might have changed but uh you know tens of millions to continue to help this industry stay in place um but yeah i yeah i can't say why we're not doing it the way messachusetts is doing many many places opened up quicker and many places had to retract so i yeah i i don't have an encouraging word about when that's going to happen fair enough um and the other is just on the restart from our business program you know the assistance to businesses and uh it was a two and a half million dollar allocation to put out an rfps for someone to step up and provide businesses with that kind of assistance and point to our different experts um do you know where that may be at this point yeah in fact i went on vacation last week i took a couple of days and uh right before i left i know that we were making decisions on it so i just don't know whether we've fully announced that yet but we had a fair amount of interest in it i think we were oversubscribed um and i think there's a way that we could divvy it up and make sure we have an entire state coverage uh for this important program you know we we put out an rfp probably the beginning of august or maybe it was just the tail end of july uh applications came in we were looking for good ideas on what people could do and we had a variety some focused on specific sectors others did more statewide on distribution of services some will hire expertise you know that there's a variety of good ideas i think that we will have it covered i just have not checked in to find out where are we in terms of notifying the um the the bidders and the um coming up with the actual announcement and developing the program thanks look forward to that this was the technical assistance right make sure we're talking about the same thing i know we called it we started and everything but a lot of things yeah okay thank you mr chair uh i saw mike i you're muted but i saw you say zach so got that um jon this actually goes back to mike's question about the nonprofit sector i did um did hear some comments from folks that this is just i don't know if you all had addressed this but um they when i talked to them about why they were ultimately denied why terrible donations were not accepted they understood that um but they were still frustrated that they went through the process and were denied and so what i had heard from them which might be helpful is that if it's clearly marked somewhere and maybe it is um that charitable you know charitable donations don't count as lost revenue just so they can avoid the whole process i was talking to somebody i knew pretty well and he was pretty upset uh knowing full well that i was part of um creating some of this the language around the bill um so i i think uh just if you haven't done it already just something that clearly says i'm pretty sure we describe it on the site but um just to be clear they're not going to be denied for including it we would just send it back to them to tell them to exclude it in their calculation so i don't know if that ended up happening but if not you know please let me know give me the application number and we'll look into it you guys were great with them and and the person did refill out the application and and i don't i have no idea what happened after that thanks yeah yeah we um just so that everyone's aware we we had a um we had a system where if you didn't do all the right stuff we were able to bounce back to the applicant to continue to upload and and make adjustments so that's unlike any of the grant program typically you apply and that's it so we did give people several opportunities and we understand that especially for small businesses it's hard for them to get all their p&l's in order and so there was a mechanism for that was um so the other yeah as you're saying this i'm reminded there was also a frustration that that their application was going to get kicked to the back of the line because they didn't have all their proper documentation in the first time do you know if um their spot in the line was reserved or if they didn't have everything they kind of got kicked to the end of the line at this point it looks like there's still money left so um yeah they so what would happen is um it they didn't get kicked to the end of the line what would happen is they come back in and their original date and time stamp puts them in order of being reviewed first so they'd come back in they'd have to be reviewed but they'd be first in line to be reviewed if they're above all the others right in terms of date stamp and then same thing with the approval queue that i would look at the approval queue i see some applications in there that would be from july i'm looking at them first and approving them before i approve the august ones okay cool thank you john you're welcome okay um just a couple questions john on again back to the women owned businesses the grants um i received an email over the weekend from um representative back in st johnsbury had a woman owned business um but she was uh actually a w2 um corporation um but would do they automatically get moved into the other grant program once we decided we were going to accept them um because it didn't sound like anybody either the business or or representative beck wasn't aware of that um so how how was that any yeah so yeah so people who had been either incomplete or denied or ineligible when we made the change to go to allow the w2 owner employee we contacted all those people that were in that category now if did this person fall through the cracks if they did then send me the application number and we'll look into it and make sure that that gets funded because it should have been yeah we thought once when we did that we didn't have to take it from the women owned sole prop we would just take it from the general probe which we had much more money right um and when we so if we have money left over um if the minority owned businesses don't use up their allowed a lot of money is it the thought after september first that we're going to look at the 48 applications that are now outstanding that said they would be funded and then apply that money to them yes now does it look like there's another there'll be enough money in there to take care of those 48 as of right now it does look like that um but we have about 70 applications in q so i don't i don't know okay but we've got 48 that that received a letter saying they were they were going to be fun correct and um by hook yeah yeah so so it looks like right now there's enough money there at least to take care of that group of people that we you know that we're told they were going to get money great okay because i've had some um conversations with other legislators um you know who have people that were kind of upset that yes we they were told they were going to get money and then three or four weeks later they've got another letter saying whoops um we're out of money so i'll let that so that's good um i'll let them know that that they're still in the queue and that they're if my when money becomes available they'll be getting it we did let folks know those 48 know that their applicator we called it on hold because we didn't want to deny and we didn't want to just say we said you know unfortunately ran out of money and you know faux pie it's our you know our error for doing that um but we do feel that we some way or another we're going to get funding to get those funded just because it is the right thing to do okay great any other questions for Joan just had a comment if i may sure is we we've all encountered constituents of course that have unique situations i didn't know it's possible to have a nonprofit corporation without employees until now uh and then also have things like llc's with no employees but that's how they run their in or their bed and breakfast and several other iterations of those types of things where um beforehand i would assume that some of those nonprofit corporations would have employees because they get you know they pay so i know that that's part of your proposal and looking at shoring up that stuff in the second but it was a surprise i think for all of us in the different situations we encountered in between the time the program was announced at now yeah yeah yeah i mean if you want nonprofits but no employees to get funded please be explicit that's my plea any other questions for Joan ted glad you could join us back again thank you did you want to just kind of go over the program i just saw that we just received the language from jess and i just as sent that off to david asking him to please draft so we'll be looking at that as soon as as soon as david can complete that but maybe i know um we are going to be joining approach at 130 and and probably um maybe going further in depth with what you're going to tell us but i think if you can just give us an overall um you know a high level view so that i just i'm afraid i don't want to get too deep into it until we get to a probe so we're not duplicating um you know we'll be sitting there already hearing all of this and and we have to wait for probes to catch up i i just soon that we all get catch up at the same time all right well let me start with can i share my screen would that be all right just uh i'll i'll share one document okay a me if you can make tentacle host so i'd like to run through just the generic overarching proposals that we have and we won't go into any detail because you'll get that this afternoon and then talk specifically about the 23 million dollars that we're asking for uh to expand the economic recovery grant program that we've just been spending uh time talking about still don't have so screening ability Amy so when you uh Amy stepped away may have stepped away from our computer so the big the big thing we'll talk about today is the 133 million dollar ask that the administration that we are asking for uh we have identified those areas where we made uh misjudgments on what resources we need we've realized there are some things that need to be changed but then we also have some things that were inadequately funded in earlier in the summer and we're coming back with a better idea of where we need additional money so that 133 million includes four major areas one is 23 million dollars to do uh economic recovery grants same program we've all run but we need to change the program a bit to cover some of these little one-offs we've been talking about that we didn't uh think about two is 50 million dollars for the hospitality sector we know we built this system with the assumption that our grant was meant to cover several months couple of months of fixed costs right well that was when we thought the COVID crisis might last several months not a year and so when we look at our travel policies and we look at the hospitality sector we have realized we need to do another round not a supplemental not just increase the grant for the larger ones we're talking another round so that every hospitality industry that can prove a loss has access to additional dollars we estimate that to be about a 50 million dollar not that we need to crack uh we're also recognizing that this crisis has drastically changed the way we all live and though we all like to think we'll go back to the way we lived before this I think many of us won't unless we're asked to and so we have a 50 million dollar proposal to get people to participate in the stimulus of our economy and this is through a direct payment to each household that is in the form of a credit at a business a Vermont business and what's really neat about this proposal we talked about this in the early summer we have what we're going to have within a couple of weeks a pilot fully underway that can demonstrate how this will work and it will be very tangible for you all to evaluate but it comes down to getting every now the equivalent of $150 to every household in Vermont that they would spend at a Vermont business it shows up in a really neat credit to a Vermont business has algorithms that make sure that the money gets spread around the state is geographically spread has algorithms to make sure that everyone doesn't go and buy darn tough socks at Charlie's store they might actually go to Lenny's and other stores as well so it has these algorithms that make sure that the stimulus is spread across multiple businesses and really neat it has algorithms in it that encourage people to try new things so that's a 50 million dollar ask and then when the time's right we need to launch a marketing program like nobody has seen before just like our consumer habits are changing and you and I are buying things online more often we're going out to eat less you know Southern New England the Mid-Atlantic their habits are going to change too and we're at a real disadvantage to losing market share because once people stop doing something it's like they've never done it and they can pick something new somebody that used to come skiing in Vermont every winter might go skiing in New Hampshire this year because the regulations might be different and if we don't do a marketing campaign we'll never get that consumer back and we'll lose market share in the ski industry and the hospitality industry and the leaf peeping industry and you keep going down the list Ted you can you can share your screen now Amy that you're all set up thank you thank you one moment while I do so so what we just ran through if you can see and I'll blow it up a little bit uh we just ran through this box that's a middle of the screen called crf one times 133 million so we're asking for 133 million for these four uh components I wanted to do that overview because the most important one for us is this business grant program this 23 million that leg legislative language that Jess delivered today to you does three critical things in the emergency recovery grant program number one it allows us to make grants to sole proprietors of any race and any gender we have a specific ask I think we're starting at five million dollars for sole proprietors so that's number one number two it allows us to help new businesses when you know when we all drafted this legislation together and we put in restrictions that required you to demonstrate loss from last year to this year well if you're a new business that started in march your revenue likely was lower in march of 19 than it was in march of 20 not because you had a bad 19 but because as a new business you simply don't have critical mass and revenue so we need to change the statute to allow us to come up with a different calculation for new businesses and give you an example you know we had a hotel here in my town of williston that opened its doors in early february um that hotel was unable to access any recovery dollars from this program I don't think that was our intent so we need to come up with a way to so they met the february 15th deadline that we put in the legislation but they couldn't prove that they had a loss because we're using march so that's a really important legislative change and then the third legislative change we need for this 23 million dollars is we currently have a 50 cap you know you have to demonstrate at least a 50 loss we took that from 75 down to 50 we think it's time to bring it down to 30 and we think that because we've now seen so many applications come in that there are a lot of businesses missing it by five ten percent and those businesses have as much of a loss or will have as much of a loss over the next six months so our calculation should be changed and we're going to propose to you that we change that as the legislation allows us look at it quarterly over three months and you need to demonstrate a 30 loss over three months those are the three big changes we talked a little about nonprofits we'd like to change the nonprofit definition or how how we can fund nonprofits and to representative to the representative's point earlier we we'd really like to you to help us be explicit in how we want to help nonprofits we've had to deny some really valuable nonprofits in the state that don't have program service revenue and so we're thinking asking you to codify how you'd like us to calculate a nonprofit for a grant eligibility so that's I I think that's the only thing I want to go over everything else we'll talk about this afternoon if that's okay mr chairman but you tell me take me on the wild ride and I'll go with you you might not want to join us I don't know I'm already on it that's true Jim thank you mr chairman um ten I just want to be clear are you suggesting you know this program that you just outlined that um it would have to happen legislatively and if that's the case you know these businesses don't have that kind of time yeah I am we we think um we think to cover those three things new businesses uh sole proprietors and uh the 30 percenters we need we do need a legislative change and we also need more money so we we're asking you for 23 million dollars and those legislative changes to help those businesses and we know we have the system stood up so from the time we get the money and the legislative change we're a matter of a week or two away from being able to stand the program up wow okay um yeah thanks Ted I asked while you were gone I asked Joan this question and it's about really long-term economic recovery as we look at even the 50 million dollars for the hospitality and lodging sector um for a lot of businesses is not going to be enough because their run rate is so high so it comes down to not losing the fall and not losing that business uh this fall not next fall even though we you're looking for the marketing money to make sure that people think about us in the future so wondering how if the administration is going to be making some moves to model what other states have done where you can open up to leisure travel in a safe way so that we don't lose that fall we don't lose that business because so much of it is uh important for local and regional economies so is can can you speak to that yeah every day we have a conversation about this with the doctors with public safety with the fr and the governor's office we're not there today I sure hope that our leisure policy travel can be more relaxed coming into the fall I don't see it I don't see us eliminating having some quarantine requirements given how effective they've been to date and also right now it's hard for me to look forward when I'm looking at school and wondering what school looks like and how the return to colleges goes but every day we're talking about it and we're pushing to we're we're pushing to make the most liberal policy we possibly can while keeping Vermonters safe so yes we know if we don't change the travel policy we're not going to be able to um we're not going to be able to substantially change the situation of these hospitality and this the hospitality industry they're directly tied you know that yeah and everything that goes with it I mean I just don't know how the cape and the resorts on the cape can make make a different policy and still have a low incidence of uh infection or other places how they can do that and Vermont somehow is operating under different guys and yes we have a very low infection rate and that's great but they're also able to achieve some kind of economic rebound um and we're we're not uh in that industry as much you know we've been monitoring the travel policies of the state surrounding us and though we seem more restrictive in many cases it's a similar policy expressed different ways as an example you know Governor Baker just two weeks ago told people from Rhode Island they couldn't come to Massachusetts period so you because Rhode Island spiked so they're they're different in how they're worded and different in how they manifest but in the end the goal is all these states have policies in place to try to restrict hot zones from coming into their states but we're we're we're constantly looking at ways to change it we're with you I understand what you're asking I don't have the answer today but it's not a static thing that we're saying this is how it's going to be for forever yeah I'm just hoping for a higher occupancy rate even from safe zones so let's get all the people from Boston well no I didn't say all the people but if we can get enough people to you know generate that kind of revenue and and frequent those businesses then would be a lot better economically yeah and safe I'm sure I'm sure you saw the vpr poll that showed that more than I think it was more than 80 percent of remoders express concern about people traveling to Vermont for leisure the way the question was asked in my mind led to a higher percentage answering yes but it's just demonstrates the balance we're trying to find but we're with you I don't need to say any more I hear you loud and clear and we are pushing to change it and liberalize it yeah I live in northern Massachusetts and western New York at this point or eastern New York and so I'd never before if people been so concerned about the license plates and where they're from and it's uh but there is that sure that concern out there but it's also a way to do it safely and thank you yeah you're right that that concern I think is throughout the state it's up here in the kingdom I hear it almost every day from my customers complaining about all the outside license plates that are that are up here and so you know it's it's some of that fear factor any other questions for Ted at this point okay Lynn I hate to hark back to the bad old days when I first moved here 47 years ago but there was a lot of people who didn't want outsiders or flatlanders coming in and if you got involved in your community like on the school board or you went to a select board meeting or something they told you to go back where you came from so this is not new but yeah I mean and I know I have run across people well we don't go to Stowe we will go to JP because Stowe has overrun with all kinds of people from out of state I don't know that there's a hotspot over there or not and it may not be fair but that is how people look at it and and there's a lot of out of state people who come here and have moved in for their month or three months or they're buying houses I mean they're planning on doing remote work and they're hanging out doing their work on the weeks and they all get out of state license plates but they're all living here on a more semi-permanent basis than they would have before so you know we have to be more cognizant I mean in these students we'll see how the students do that's a huge petri dish of how out of state people are going to be accommodated here lots lots to see and understand you know the college front has been interesting they're the only vermoners that are receiving you know a guaranteed test right so we know that these vermoners we're going to know real quickly and I got to say to date if I were a college student I'd be more concerned with getting COVID from a vermoner than giving COVID to a vermoner based on the testing so far I hope that stays still stays constant one bad you know group of tests to change that but so far we've been really lucky and I think that's because our catchment area is generally doing well to representative Kimball's point you know Boston and New York aren't what they were four months ago the problem is in the southeastern and west right now so most of our college students come from the local catchment area as well so I'm committed to continuing to try to evolve our travel policy and I know the governor is too the second he feels it's safe anything else okay um Ted I think we can you can take us off screen oh thank you sorry I hope uh oh that's okay that's good um with nothing else I think that we can wrap up now to give committee an hour for lunch before we go to sit down with the probes and we'll see you in the probes so Amy will be in touch um I think by next Tuesday David will have uh that drafted for us so that we can really start getting into the meat of this um with you guys and and start figuring out where we're going where we are on an accelerated path as kitty said this morning on the floor so I think it's going to be expected of us to get something out within a week and a half or so um to appropriations probably a little quicker than that maybe by the end of next week so as soon as I have that time frame I'll let everybody know but just want to give you Ted and Joan the heads up of we're going to need your time and I know you're gonna you're gonna get stretched thin again with having to go to on the senate side as well so we'll do our best to to work with you guys and get get this figured out so that we can help the rest of Vermonters that that need the assistance