 You're now live. We are now live and I'll take down the message. Okay, so we are, this is Senate Finance. This is February 16th. And last week, as we were working our way through the waiting bill, which now has a very long number as a committee bill. We got to the section on the waiting oversight committee, oversight committee, waiting tax rate oversight committee. And it switched several, and we also had some ongoing evaluations in there. And I wanted to give the affected parties a chance to speak up and tell us. So we have the auditor. And I know the tax commissioner will be here with us. I see his name. Just to give us any feedback they have on, we've changed some of this dynamic. We've switched some responsibilities around, at least the proposal does, and I wanted to give them a chance to respond. So auditor Hoffer, welcome. Thank you. Nice building. Good afternoon. You like that? Yeah. Thank you for inviting me. I had not looked at this bill. I wasn't aware of this was coming, but I've had a little bit of time and I can offer a few comments. And as I'm sure Senator Brock will appreciate, a GAGA audit in the first instance requires criteria. If you're gonna do a performance audit, you have to measure performance against something that's fairly concrete. It's not like miles of pavement for a AOT, but it's gotta be something you can get your hands around. There's a great deal of subjectivity and ambiguity in this language, and that's not surprising giving the subject matter. So that presents a bit of a problem for us. And furthermore, looking down the road for when you would like this done, I think, unless I misread it, that the complete transition will not be complete until 28. So if that's true, then you're only gonna get one year in that new regime before you ask for a review by us or someone else. So that's something to keep in mind. Second, it's always helpful to the extent it's possible to establish a baseline. And in this case, if you don't have clear objectives yet and the committee hasn't been created, arguably they could do this at your request. The legislature with aid from all the parties that you know are knowledgeable. I would encourage you to think about establishing those objectives to the extent you can now and measure them as best you can now so that you'll have a baseline so that whomever does this down the road, you can show what the progress was. Otherwise, you miss that opportunity, which I think is really valuable. So those are the main takeaways for me. This would be a tough job for my office without, at least right now, without knowing more about the objectives. And many of them are really quite subjective. You use terms like sufficiency. Okay, well, that's clearly in the eyes of the beholder, equitable resources. I'm not sure how to define those things. We could give it a shot, but it seems like the committee that you're creating, which is probably a very good thing, will be comprised, I believe, hopefully, with people who know a lot more about this stuff than we do. That doesn't mean we can't learn, that's what we do. There's a learning curve for audits, but they might be better able to do this. And if, again, even whether they had objective metrics now to measure against later or not, if they did some work on your behalf, we could do what is arguably a better role for us, which is measure the accuracy and completeness of their work. That's one of the things that we're pretty good at. Having said that, I have no principled objection, except that without better criteria, it would be very tough. Okay. I mean, I'm gonna be gone in 2029 anyway, so it's my successor, so not up to me. Ha-ha. Okay. Committee, Senator Brock. I agree with Auditor Hoffer, and what we did in the task force in adding this requirement is it became very clear that we had a whole bunch of things that this waiting study was supposed to achieve, part of it being based upon the work that UVM did to assess how we measure student performance and student outcomes, and that the items that are contained in the waiting study are designed to improve those things. The task force certainly did not have time though to go into creating the actual criteria and the detail level necessary to do the measurement. The purpose of this provision was to, one, recognize that if we're going to make these kinds of major changes, they ought to actually achieve something that's worthwhile, one, and two, we should have a mechanism to determine whether it did or did not. The third thing was who's gonna make that determination? And frankly, we didn't trust anybody but the auditor's office to be able to do that objectively and independently. So those were the things that we sought to achieve in the overall language from the results of the waiting study. Now comes the work though of defining it better so that as the auditor has described that the measurement can in fact be taking place. I think also that we ought to be thinking about interim measures of one kind or another and this committee that's being formed is probably, yes, the right entity to do it but I don't think we can do this kind of major change and then wait till 2031 or 32 to determine whether or not it made sense. So we need to get a middle ground that provides some objective analysis of whether this is working well beforehand as well as provide a mechanism to do performance auditing to test whether it works and that may have to be done in phases rather than in one huge report at the end. Okay. So we may need to do, and some of these criteria might, they really are more in the realm of the Department of Education or working with the superintendents and principals but they're education based but they do need to be measurable. And we've also talked about standardized tests may not be the best measure either especially for some of the things like the poverty weight. So something to think about. Any other questions for the auditor? So we need to have measurable criteria. All right, Senator Hardy. Thank you. So what you're suggesting is this other entity that is created in the bill that the Education Tax Advisory or Education Fund Advisory Committee, that's really meant to be really financially focused not educational outcomes focused as much. So I do think that the Agency of Education would be more of an appropriate body to come up with some of the measurements rather than this new committee. But I'm wondering if we can just create sort of a mechanism in the bill for more defining that because I'm not sure that we have the time to go through and complete all the mechanisms. And I agree with Senator Brock that we wouldn't want to wait until 2032 to do anything with us. So that's what I would hope that we would do is have something in the bill. So if you have a suggestion, Doug or Mr. Hoffer, that would be helpful. Doug is fine, thank you. No, that's all sensible. It's possible if you just flagged this section and proceed as you will in committee and with the full Senate and allow the thing to go over if that's what happens, you could use some of this time if the agency is willing to work with other experts, UVM folks and others to try to get some of this done before the end of the session. If you can do at least some of that, that would help us get a better sense of whether what they've done will allow us to do what you're asking us to do or whether it would need further tweaking. But I'm open to suggestion. I just wanted to let you guys know that and as Senator Brock knows and agrees at present, it's a little soft, that's all. And by the way, one other thing I've learned from us doing, I think three jobs in the education space during my tenure, anything that is related to the schools directly, not the agency itself is very, very difficult to collect good information in a timely manner. It's a big, unwieldy system and the agency will be the first to tell you when you ask them for information that you think is commonplace has said, that's not our job, you have to go to the schools. Once you do that, this timing becomes an issue, but also which schools? How do you decide on a sample? Or in your case, do you really wanna know statewide in which case it's a very big job? So just to keep that in mind going forward. Yes, I think we found that before in that the schools, do we have a common accounting system? Because we didn't and we couldn't tell what the average cost of anything was when we were trying to evaluate money things. And this is educational progress and that's going to be more difficult, so. To talk a little bit about ancient history, I remember during the time that I served as state auditor, which is what 15 plus years ago, I was happy to learn that there was a common chart of accounts that was used throughout the education system. The only problem was they used it differently and what was in one account was not necessarily the same thing that was in another. I hope it's improved over the years then. I don't think we've gotten a common calendar yet. Senator Harky. They're sort of in the process of implementing a common chart of accounts. It's been rather bumpy because they're the least. So you all have probably heard from your school districts about how much they hate it, but it's sort of still in the works. But AOE does collect a lot of data, a lot of data from school districts about student performance and financial stuff. So I do think that there is data available on a school district and that the original people waiting study used data from that the AOE had collected. So I think it exists. It's just a matter of defining it. So we really should be talking to them. Yeah, I already got a note for next week. And if I say it out loud, Faith will make sure we do to get somebody from AOE in to help us at least have something in here. This does have to go through the other body. But if it's gonna go this year, it's gotta come out of here. So if we have a placeholder of some kind in there that will allow them to maybe flesh it out a little more, provided they agree with what we've done on everything else, which is not overly likely, but we need to flag that as something that needs attention even if we do kick it off onto a committee or onto the department of ed to bring us back a proposal, us or the ed, probably the ed committee next year and see where that goes. Maybe they can use what, so didn't this bill, we told them to hire three or four more people? Maybe that's what they can use them for. Okay, any other questions? Thank you, Doug, for taking time to be with us today. You're very welcome. Thank you. Let me know how I can help. Okay, well, we will be back in touch. Okay. All right, Catherine, I see there you are. Okay, so just looking at the Ed Fund Advisory Committee and some of the tasks we've set, I know Joint Fiscal Works to get with the tax department to get that letter out. Do you see red flags, issues? I don't, I think a lot of this is sort of, some of this is basically current law. The collaboration with the Agency of Education is trying to formalize I think what's been informal. I have two, I guess, areas of concern. One is just talking about the letters. I just noticed it, I think it's due January, the recommendation is January 15th, and which is later than December one. So for schools that are putting together their budgets, that might be tight timing. That's just a, that's not a JFO thing. It's more, it's the committee that's setting it, but it's just something for you all to think a little bit about. And I'm not sure why the January 15th date was chosen, but school boards are often closing their budgets around that time. So you might want to- Because there's all kinds of posting. They have to post the budget X number of weeks before an election and it has to be finalized. Okay. Right, so that's just one thing to- I'm just gonna let Catherine finish and then we'll have questions. And then the other piece that I am, pondering, is this collaboration with the agents of education and the recalibrating the weights? It's, I don't know how specific it should be, but it's pretty vague in terms of how often they should be recalibrated. And if there's a need to use certain, to use the model that was used before. So that's just a point of further discussion and consideration as you all work through this. I'm just not, I guess I'm not quite sure exactly what this will be. And maybe we go to the committee and the committee agrees to it and we come up with a recommendation. But I don't think doing the weights, I think doing the weights every year is probably a bigger lift. Recalibrating is not what I think was anticipated. So it's sort of figuring out what that process should be. We don't have a problem working with the agency of education. And we do that now as well. So that part should be fine. Okay. So basically, all right, Senator Hardy, I know you had your hand up. Can you share what the thought was on January 15th? Well, I think Catherine, the December 1st letter is still December 1st. If you look in section 16, that's the December 1st letter. So that doesn't change. The other stuff is just reporting to the legislature. And I think there's language in here that is, and I have to look, but there's language in here about how the weights would be set a year in advance. So that's helpful. Can I just talk about the January 15th date just for a second? Just so on section 15, just, no, that's not it. Yes. No, is it 15? Where is the, where it talks about the categorical aid in the, oh, it's a, no, it's page, it's section 14 in C. And just, maybe I should go back and read it. I'm just not quite clear because it has the weights and categorical aid as necessary. So I just want to make sure school boards have the information. You're right, the December 1 letter is still there. I don't know if this would change anything for the school board's budgets and I would just want to think about that. I just noticed that when I got on here, so I haven't, I just haven't thought about that. I wanted to- Yeah, and there was the year. Well, there was the intent was, and maybe it didn't make it into this draft because I was trying to remember a lot of details when I worked with Jim on this draft, but the intent was that we would set the weights, the weights would, if the legislature was going to mess with the weights or change the weights, it would be done a year in advance. So it wouldn't be during the session, we would make a change to the weights or the categorical aid amounts and then do it for the next school year. It would be in advance. And so if that needs to be clarified, I'm, Catherine, I think any of this language that needs to be clarified, we can certainly do that with the dates, but it wasn't the intention that we would wait till January 15th to get them all this information. Yeah, I didn't think it was. So you're right. So we, I just, we need to go back and just make sure that what you're talking about the intention, doing it a year ahead of time is a good idea if you're making changes to the weights. And then just on the complete recalibration of the, recalibration of the weights, which I think is not an annual event, this is very broad. So I guess one thing I would like to think about a little bit is how much more direction do you want to provide or not provide on how often that would happen and if there's anything specific that you would use for it. Yeah, Professor Colby suggested that the weights need to be, and she made a distinction between recalculation and recalibration. And it was, it's subtle, but actually a big difference. And that the recalibration I think has to happen at least every five years and recalculation could happen more frequently if something major changes and that the model that you would share with AOE would be able to do the recalculation, the recalibration may take a little bit more effort and we certainly could define that more but my recollection is that she thought at least every five years and one of the, they were just recalculated in a fall. We, the task force asked her to recalculate them but they haven't been recalibrated since the study was done. So, and Senator Brock, I don't know if you remember this whole conversation about recalculation versus recalibration, but it was subtle but important. I'm thinking of something, January 15th. We're giving this committee the power to calibrate or calculate, whichever it is, rates. Any change is going to have to be legislative. And that means if we don't get it, well, it's plus January 15th of the first year we may have time to get a bill drafted provided it's not as controversial as this one. But I think we need to look, we've got school boards and budgets and their timing but if we're talking about something that's going to need legislation, we're going to have to have it lined up with our bill drafting and recommendations would have to come to us. I mean, if it's the second year of a biennium that have to come to us easily in November. So somebody could get a bill drafted for consideration. So that might be something to think through while we're working on this. Senator Hardy. Yeah, I think it would be helpful if Catherine, you could just look through all those dates and sort of map them out with your staff and with the AOE staff and see if it all makes sense in terms of and taking into consideration potential legislation and school district budgeting and all that stuff. The intention was not to create Havoc. It was to try to actually decrease the Havoc. Yes, I can do that. And I will look for that one year. That would be helpful. I will look for the language on the one year ahead of time as well. And I, speaking to the recalculation and recalibration on section 17, I'm just, the recalibration is a bigger deal. It's a more, it's really, I think running through what Professor Colby did on her model. And so that's the part that I would welcome further discussion on that because I think that is a bigger, that's substantially more work, I think than a recalculation. And so some of that we just need to, and it's gonna be a question for you all, how much do you wanna, and it may be that we even come back with recommendations to the committee and they, we set up a time, but it's helpful to know if you're gonna be doing this every four years. And I had heard five years also. So that's why I was throwing that out there. So I'd like to just ponder that a little bit more and think about options for it. And we'd have, if it is going to be the same kind of process we went through now, I'm assuming that we aren't gonna have the expertise. So we will have to have a budget like the year before to hire the expertise we need to do the job correctly. Because there's nothing we're gonna do that's gonna monkey with school funding that's going to be non-controversial. Just doesn't work that way. So, okay, so we've gotta do some thinking on the timeline. I will, we will pull together a timeline on just thinking through all of that as Senator Hardy requested and lay out what, we'll see if what issues arise or where, so you all can also see it more clearly. Because this, having this thought out beforehand will increase the probability that it gets done in something less than 25 or 30 years. So, and once we get a smooth system, hopefully it could just be one of those things that goes, gets adjusted and goes into the miscellaneous tax bill, but it's gonna take us a while to get there. Okay, other questions for Catherine? Catherine, do you have other questions for us? No, thank you for your time. Okay, thank you. All right, Commissioner Bolio is with us. And Commissioner, again, this makes changes, gives the, what are we calling the committee, Ed Fund Advisory Committee. They're gonna be putting out that December 1st letter. Just your thoughts, are you gonna miss doing that letter if we take it away from you? That's a learning question, Madam Chair. Craig Bolio, Tax Commissioner. Thank you for the opportunity to weigh in on this. I had prepared just a few high level remarks as well, but it really, I think the earnest discussion that you folks will have is this afternoon with Secretary French. So if it's all right with you, Madam Chair, I might just offer a couple of, what I'm calling observations at this point. And then also speak specifically about the Education Fund Advisory Committee. So a couple of things that I've observed and forgive me because I suspect many of the committee members have already been thinking about these kind of dynamics as well with this whole discussion. But one of the things that we've been thinking about is that with the reweighting efforts, it's likely to be expected that overall spending in the system will go up right in the tax capacity model because you'll have districts who gain capacity and our hope is that they would use it to support their students, but you'll also have districts that lose capacity that won't be able to, likely won't be able to cut costs, commensurate to even that out. So that's one observation and sort of another one that we haven't quantified yet. But as interesting as that, there's a correlation with the towns that are going to lose capacity. A lot of that because of the difference in poverty weights also happen to be districts with high property values. And so our expectation is also that property, the cost for property tax credits will likely go up. Again, we haven't quantified that yet, but just sort of an interesting observation that my analysts had noted and seems to track. And certainly for those folks who are under the 47,000 of household income where their income rate is statutorily set would definitely see property tax credit costs go up for that. So, because of those two things, one of the things that we've definitely flagged for further consideration is the suspension of the excess spending threshold. I know previously the discussions have been that we want to suspend it to ensure that it's not underweighted towns who are getting hit by it. I'm guessing the current thinking now is that you don't want to have towns that have big swings and equalized peoples due to the reweighting become subject to the cap to the excess spending threshold just because of the reweighting. So I don't have a solution for that problem. It's a difficult problem to solve, but just noting that, especially with the other cost pressures that we might see. Specifically on the Education Fund Advisory Committee, I struggle a little bit to see the value that we'd get from moving the December one letter to it. You know, the work is really already collaborative between JFO, Agency of Education and my department. And the bill doesn't call for a change in how the calculation is made, right? So the statute is very prescriptive. And really from my team's perspective, it's a really fairly technical math exercise. And my read of the bill was not that any of the public members of the committee would be taking on any of the actual work for that calculation. So to me, it feels like the calculation process would be the same, but then would have to go through this committee. So I didn't quite see what the value is for moving the December one letter to that committee. I'd also note, I suspect maybe there's larger discussions again that you might have with Secretary French and just heard with Catherine as well about recommendations for reweighting. And so I'm not an expert to weigh in on that area. And maybe there's some value to be derived there, but I didn't immediately see value for the December one letter. I'm also not dying on that hill at this point, but those are my preliminary thoughts. And education and JFO are doing this letter now. Nothing in this bill changes what goes into that letter or the calculation. So your question is, why are we moving it to a committee which does it say how often they meet Senator Hardy? Or I think I'm charged with, oh, sorry, I didn't mean to. No, that's okay. You're charged with calling it. I don't think it says specifically how often it meets. Okay, okay. But I'm assuming that that would take a budget of some form. So why, yeah, why, I guess it begs the question, why are we calling a committee into session if this is meant to be so cut and dried that it's not partisan, no one can play with it. It just is. So I think that's on our questions from the commissioner. All right, any other questions for commissioner Bolio? I'm not hearing any. Anything else you want us to think about? Not on this topic, no. Oh, okay. Not on this topic, all right. Okay, well, we have got some time here. So I'm seeing Jim Demeray's name is up. I don't know if he is available to pop up, but we might, there he is. We might take a look at these sections of the bill and just kind of walk through what it says. Can you do that for us, put it up? Oh, I can, I was thinking a minute though because I didn't, I wasn't expecting. No, you are not there and this is, this is just off the cuff. It's fine, let me just, give me a minute. This committee has got a long break and I'm not predisposed to give them another long one. We have a lot of work to get to. Okay, give me one second and I can get this up for you. Okay, if I can show the screen, so I can, good. Progress. Okay, we're on the wrong screen. Now we're on the right screen. No, we had a screen and now we've got your five auto save screen. There it goes. Okay, we've got something. All right, good. Yeah, hold on, let me get this centered. Systems are giving me trouble today, there we go. Okay, all right. You got to make it smaller again. This one, we're only getting half a sentence. Yep, how is that? Hasn't changed. Hasn't changed? No, it was a good size and then it got big again. That's too big for you, okay. Yeah, it's too big. How is that? It's the same. We only see as far as not even the forward finance. Okay, so something's happening, I'm not sure what because it's, on my screen, just fine. Let me stuff the sheriff in it and redo it. Just see if that fixes it. Because it got in, it was fine for about a second and then it's flipped back to big. Okay, so education, here it is again. Success. Oh, success, yeah. But it fell down. I thought you were gonna say, okay, hold on, here we go. Show that. Success. Come up yet. There it is. Yes, I can read it. So most of the committee can read it. All right. Okay, so for the record, Jim Damer of this console, we are looking at your draft 2.12 of your committee bill on people waiting. I think you're actually gonna take a look at the sections on the new committee. So let me find that. You just have to roll it down. Okay, here we go. Okay, all right. So this slide was actually came over from, what? Came over from, I think Abby Shepard worked on this maybe with you, I'm not sure. So this slide was just dropped in here. It's a change to the tax title, Title 32. So it's adding a section of law. So this is a section of law, not section of law. So this is meant to be permanent. And so it reads that there's created the Education Fund Advisory Committee to monitor for much education financing system, conduct analysis, recalculate, and recalibrate the people's weights and categorical A amount that's necessary and make annual recommendations reporting its finances or assembly. And then membership are the Commissioner of Taxes, the Secretary of Education, and five members of the public. So two with expertise in financing, appointed by the Speaker, two with the same expertise appointed by the Communities, and one by the Governor. So those five people wouldn't need to be compensated for their time. And there's no set number of meetings here in this section. So unclear what the appropriation would be exactly. Then CS powers and duties. So Emily, before January 15th, the Commission make recommendations to the General Assembly regarding the, again, same words, recalculation and recalibration of the people's weights and categorical aid amounts that's necessary, property dollar equivalent yield, income dollar equivalent yield, the not most of property tax rate and the amount of the stabilization reserve. Assistance is from various folks. So we've got from a Taxes A to Z education, JFO, that's a console in Office of Budget Operations. The Commissioner of Taxes to call on the first meeting and the Committee will select the Chair at that meeting. I'm sure it will be a quorum. Compensation is pursuant to 10, 10 of this tiles, I think this is 50 bucks a day for DM plus reimbursement. And that's it for that section. And then you were talking about this section, section 15, which is that under the previous section, the first report of this committee will be only for January 15th of next year, coming to you among other committees. And in that report, it should recommend the upcoming fiscal year yield, now hosted education property tax rate and the amount of the stabilization reserve as if it was maintained at 5%. And then you were talking about section 16, which is the recommendation sort of changes that I guess the process is different from the December 1st there. So we're not just annually, not later than December 1, the Ed Fund Advisory Committee after consultation with JFO, so Calculate and Recommended Property Dollar Equivalent Yield, et cetera. And I should assume that annually on before December 1, the Ed Fund Advisory, oh, sorry, they assume to relate to the next subsection. So that's going to change to A and then C is changing to say annually on before December 1, the Education Fund Advisory Committee, again, with the assistance of JFO should prepare and publish the Ed Fund Outlook. And the rest of this, which is the same as it was in statute before. And those are the three sections I believe you were talking about. Yeah. And I guess what in this section isn't being done now, what are we adding, if anything? Well, the committee's new, obviously, so that's the new thing. I mean, we're forming a committee, but I'm struggling with, and I guess it's for Senator Hardy or Senator Brock. We're setting up and we're paying a committee, which means this will go automatically to a probes. What value added are we getting in exchange for setting up and paying this committee? What's the problem with the present system that we're trying to address? Are you asking me? Well, either one of you, I mean, this was a, I'm just trying to figure out, I understand we may need a group or somebody to watch the weights and let us know if the weights are getting out of balance. But this is taking a lot of responsibility that's presently being done by the tax, the education and joint fiscal, and we're putting up a committee to meet annually to do what I think is essentially the same thing. And I'm just wondering what was the thought behind that? I think there are a couple of things. One is that a lot of the work of over sort of ongoing oversight of the school finance system, which should be done in collaboration with these three isn't well organized and doesn't happen as frequently as it should. And so this would create a mechanism for the oversight, the recalculation of weights and categorical aid grants. So not just the weights, but also other mechanisms of funding in our system. And that there was a sense that there was, wasn't sort of ongoing expertise that was providing this sort of focused oversight. And that was one of the reasons that the weights went so long without being looked at. And the AOE does not have the capacity to do that. There was a statutory requirement that the agency of education recommend changes in the weights. And you'll see in this bill that that statutory requirement is removed and they were never able to do it. They didn't have the capacity or the data or expertise to do it. And that's why we ended up hiring a consultant. So this was really to have the built-in capacity and expertise that would be ongoing. And part of the reason that the December one letter was moved to this in this draft is to have it all sort of centralized in one place where AOE joint fiscal and the tax department are all working together more formally. Cause right now it's fairly informal except for the December one letter. Okay, but we have what? At least five members of the public. There was a sense that having sort of outside expertise from the education community and potentially from the education finance expertise would be helpful. And this originally was a tax commission proposal. That's where this came from the tax commission and the task force looked at the tax commission's proposals and thought that this made sense given the fact that there was- Okay, so can I assume that was Deb Brighton section of the tax proposal? I believe so, but it was also, I believe part of previous tax commission proposals as well. Okay, we'll take a look at that. I just wanna make sure. So what we're hoping to do is get expertise by paying them $100 a day because we don't have it in-house. Committee, any other questions about this section? Comments? Madam Chair. Yes, Senator McDonald. I apologize, I was listening and I don't know the role that the December 1st letter plays along with the other discussions, but I would caution us to keep the December one letter to say what the tax rate would be under the existing law. And not, and the purpose of that letter is to know what it would be if we don't change the law. The December one letter was put in there to keep administrations from using ed money that might be in excess or whatever to craft the budget before we ever showed up in the legislature. So I wouldn't mix that in with a study committee that operated during the months of the year before the legislature showed up. So thank you. Okay, so what was the problem? Perhaps Senator McDonald, you could refresh our memory. What was the problem that was happening before that caused us to put in that December 1st? 60 established the statewide property tax rate at $1.10, I believe. Yeah. And at $1.10, the school, the administration, the secretary of education and others could, they could, they monitored the school boards and what the raises were being, the increases were being made. And they had a pretty good idea of how much a $1.10 would provide. And for the first two years with, I think it was Governor Dean, Governor Dean's people recognized that that $1.10 was gonna raise much more money than the school districts were gonna spend. And the budget when we showed up cut the appropriation from the, that went to the Ed fund to pay for state aid, it just cut it to the bone and it stayed $1.10. And in the first two years, we were using statewide property tax monies to fund the general fund budget, which was contrary to the promises made by those of us that voted for Act 60 to begin with. And when Governor Douglas was elected, he pursued the same practice. We showed up and the appropriation was, it was supposed to go to the Ed fund was diminished because it was extra. And with under your leadership in finance, we crafted that letter, which said based on what the schools appear to be about to spend, it doesn't take $1.10 to fund the schools and we reduced that $1.10. I don't know what it was the first year or so, maybe to $1.7 and then eventually cut into the 90 cents and 80 cents and the general fund transfer continued to be applied. And the ratio between the amount of money to pay for the schools raised from local taxes, property and income and the amount raised from the general fund remained fairly stable. But in the first several years of Act 60, that was the problem that was being solved that the Ed fund was shorted the general fund transfer and the property tax was picking it up. And after that, the letter really only required a sentence or two. This is what the tax rate would be unless you changed the law and that prevented governors from crafting a budget that I'm assumed that used up all that money. So I'm repeating myself and I will stop, thank you. Okay, so this was keeping everybody honest and only setting the tax rate at the level necessary to raise the anticipated amount of revenue. This is after school, finance officers, superintendents, let the department of Ed know what they were going to be proposing, right, in their budgets. Yep, they scouted the budgets and they had a pretty good estimate and I believe that for most of the years following that change, we were able to lower the tax rate and keep the share of state funding and local taxpayers' funding constant. And the paragraphs began to be two or three or four paragraphs where governors began to say what we ought to do, but we were not preempted when we arrived to be sworn in in January and that was very helpful. The money hadn't already been spent somewhere else at least in proposal, all right. Well said. Okay, committee thoughts on this. Madam Chair. Yes, Senator Bray. Thank you. I just wanted to check in a couple of questions. One was I thought I heard you say that we're hiring an expertise at $100 a day and we only see a little bit of a text here. So I don't know if that is elsewhere or if I misspoke. No, it says they would be given a per diem. And I think our standard per diem is, well for the courts, it's 50 bucks. I think we're somewhere under two, around a hundred. Yeah, I think there is a standard per diem which is very low. Right, I know it's still 50. The courts, well when I was on jury duty two years ago it was $50 a day and if you've got a parking ticket that was your look out. I think we might still be at the same level. I think we are. Right, and so to the extent that we can hire expertise for that, for a per diem, I don't know how that would work out like who will get, but I'll leave that one alone. The other one I just wondered about was when we create another working group or whatever we call it, a committee, I always wonder to what degree are the people who are being signed up for the committee agree that this will be a useful construct for them in which to do work as opposed to us thinking it would be a good way to do something. But the people who are being recruited don't necessarily find it a particularly useful way of getting something done. So I don't know how to assess that other than to hear from the operating areas to say, yeah, this would be helpful to us. Sometimes they'll say, yes, this would be good because you'll organize are coming together and the rules of the road will be straight for all of us, et cetera. Other times it's a kind of a make work situation and it's not all that helpful. So I don't know how to distinguish here but I wanted to raise the question. And I think we would all agree, especially going through this year when we've lost our in-house expert on the property tax that it would be good to have some expertise, not, you know, the question is, but to me, there's learning our taxing system also doesn't happen overnight. And so continuity would also be an issue. And I guess the question is, for me, is the highest and best use of the expertise having them do what is designed to be the very straightforward, get out your calculator and add up the numbers and divide? Or would it be better to use that expertise on a less regular basis but to assess the weighting structure which is where we started out? So thoughts there, no thoughts. Okay, we're taking that down. Well, we can go on and just flag that. We are set to have a break. So why don't we, let's see. We got a half hour break, Faith. I think we do. I lost my agenda again. 15 minutes. 15 minutes. Okay, you've got a 15 minute break and then we're gonna come back. And that one we're going to, we're going back to the retirement income tax exemptions in the feminine hygiene products bill. So I will see.