 We are live and Senator Brae has joined us. This is a joint meeting of Senate Finance and Senate Appropriations and we're here. Tom Covet did the revenue report yesterday for the e-board and normally we would have had him into both committees for a half hour or so an hour in the afternoon but we thought because this year has been so extraordinary that it might be better if we had a longer period of time I know my committee was very interested in do we know are there winners and losers in this whole COVID change in the economy what do we know at this point what don't we know so Tom I will turn it over to you thank you Anne I don't know if everyone was in on the emergency board meeting I don't want to be redundant I know some of you have heard this two or three times already okay I see some heads shaking if you were at the emergency board meeting raise your hand so not too many yeah just a few okay great I'll I'll I'll it'll be redundant for some but I'll sort of go through general things but I do want to leave time for Q&A and so although we have a lot of time it looks like so I don't think there'll be a problem but I'll I'll I'll just give sort of a quick review and background there are still two things that are driving the the state economy and state revenues and those two things are the epidemiological path of the pandemic and the extraordinary federal fiscal and monetary responses to that to the pandemic and and both of them are unprecedented and and enormous in size so the effects on the economy can be a kind of whip sawing effect where you have enormous declines early on that were pandemic related and then enormous jumps and spikes in various areas that are related to a federal response the likes of which we've never seen before both in terms of speed and magnitude so when we did the the forecast in August which is the last official forecast that I just were based on we had a couple of months of actual tax data but it was quite muddled it because of a bunch of moratory that existed for some of the consumption taxes deferrals that were being allowed and then an filing deadline extension that that moved things in July and then a post office that was still delivering in August mail that was postmarked before July 15 so there there were just a combination of things that that made things quite unclear it was clear that there were steep declines in places it was clear that there was some offset that was occurring but very little of that offset was showing up in tax revenues and a lot of it when you traced it through initially was tax exempt so all the PPP money for example the pay tech paycheck protection program money was was tax free but the expenditures that were made with it whether it's for payroll or for other business expenses I gave rise to taxable events that that occurred downstream from it and and there there is a little cartoon senator sears on page eight fits you know it's a joke but it's it's the way the economy works and it's a picture of a mother who's you know who's who's homeschooling her child and and the child says mom I need I know you're working but I need help with math how soon will your stimulus money trickle down to buy me a new lego set and it's it's not spending it's that you know money comes in the first thing that happened you know and lots of different kinds of money comes in but you know the unrestricted money that was sandwiched $1,200 per person for a taxpayer with additional money for children I you know that that lands the first thing it did was it shot the savings rate way up so there's also a chart on that you'll see in the presentation on page 18 but it the savings rate spiked to over 30 percent and it's almost never higher than 15 percent it's back down to about 15 percent as of november but that's higher than it's been at any time in the last 40 years and the 33 percent that it hit is higher than it's ever been at any time so this money poured in and sort of like as if the whole water table of the state rose the springs that were you know flowing a little bit started gushing and springs that nobody knew were there started popping up and some of that economic flow of money ends up being taxable and gives rise to revenues that we started seeing in the first six months of fiscal 21 that were consistently above target and also were were quite widespread so we take these apart and try to look if there are single events that are driving things very often if there's a big jump in revenues we go back and we'll find a a processing issue or something you know some big event that's kind of a one-time event or something like that that explains it this was not uh explicable by any any of those sorts of things it was very broad-based it was showing up in in personal income in corporate in sales and use in motor vehicle purchase and use in property transfer tax it was consistent by month more or less i mean some of the taxes come in quarterly so you got a little quarterly bumps but it was across the board and and when we looked at the granular data in January early January from tax was very broad-based so there is still a lot of uncertainty but that that information shows the power of deficit spending at the at the level that it's at i mean it's it it's really staggering if if you look just at what was what vermont got and vermont got a disproportionate share per capita basis of the of the pandemic relief money from from the federal government among the highest per capita of any state but if you look at that in in aggregate it's about 20 percent of the total state economy so total state output in in over the last 12 months and there is probably more on the way so we did this forecast with a December control run from Moody's that we use as a baseline which we modified but we modified it in December before we knew the the results of the george elections and before the latest 920 billion dollar rescue and relief measure was was enacted we we thought that was likely but not for sure and then before there was consideration of what's now proposed at about 1.9 trillion still who knows what might happen to that but the the likelihood there will be further deficit spending both pandemic and related and other is is much higher than it was before so i think you know that represents upside to what's happened the the money's dropping in in a lot of different places in a lot of different ways and with really uncertain timing so sometimes there's money that you know first it's appropriated then you say well what's actually been dispersed and then even what's dispersed may or may not have actually have represented a whole lot of action on the ground yet but it's it's all it's all now a big part of what's happening in the economy and what's happening to revenues and it's the reason for the the radical upgrade in revenues that we've seen and and i believe there's there's still upside the the risks have to do with the pandemic the course of the pandemic and with potential refunding in the filing season so there are still some outstanding refunding issues that that depending on how things play out and it's complex there could be and could be more refunding than we're expecting although we've upped that a lot so i believe it's a a conservative number even though it's a very high one but all of this is still quite uncertain and we'll be monitoring all these things monthly i don't know if you know we'll need to do an interim forecast update i think we should have done one after the first quarter because you know the guidance would have been very different we're doing this for private sector clients on a monthly basis and and it was clear you know even even before the first six months ended that things were much much better and certainly there could have been some adjustment we're not really set up in state government to you know to do that frequently but it it it may be that you know that will change we'll be looking at that month to month just in terms of the pandemic and the epidemiology i the the good news obviously has to do with availability and rollout of vaccines that that are that are highly effective and the rollout hasn't yet been what what i think anybody would have hoped but it's it's moving and their plans for it to accelerate and i you know that's that's the light at the end of the tunnel and it's just that there's a lot of darkness between where we are now and the end of the tunnel that has to do with uh current viral spread which is higher than it's ever been and projected to get even higher both at the national level and at the state level and mutations that are creating viral strains that could be more transmissible it appears to date that the vaccines effective against the ones that are known but that's still a bit of an open question and then the question is can herd immunity be reached before other mutations that may not be dealt with by the current set of vaccines create added problems or delays in putting putting the pandemic behind us i think some of the more conservative estimates by the department of financial regulation and the people that they're working with in in tracking the the path of the pandemic and and the vaccinations that are occurring in state and the like show something in late fall of this year as being kind of an outside point that they think there might you know we might be at herd immunity and and some of this would start looking like it's in the rearview mirror but that's an open question so you know stay tuned to all that the the roller coaster ride's not over and um there there could still be a lot that that changes with all that there are a few charts and maps and things in the first part of the handout they have to do pandemic one of them is a is a map of the united states that shows you know total cases a percent of population and in so many of these maps vermont has been a standout i you'll you'll you know almost any metric you use in terms of the health outcomes and and the like vermont is is at the top or close to the top in the nation there was a time in early november that i had was contemplating some travel to the southwest and i was checking you know travel restrictions and quarantining in new mexico and they had this website you know with a map of the country of people coming from these states had to quarantine and people coming from states that they had painted red on the map had to quarantine and painted green didn't have to quarantine and the map was entirely red except for vermont and hawaii and it it's it's sort of made you proud to be coming from a place that had dealt with the healthcare side of it in a really competent way and also a society that was responsive to that such that you know there really was a reaction to the guidance and directives that came out so we saw a drop in mobility in the early part of the pandemic in vermont that was way lower than any of the surrounding states and almost any other place and that really kept rates low early on there big economic dividends from that and and we've seen that at the national level with nations that have controlled the the pandemic and then had virtually no business impact you know taiwan will show growth year to year and in output in 2020 no disruption to manufacturing very little disruption to any business and virtually nothing in the way of deaths and caseload and the same the same in vermont we can't separate ourselves from the region or the rest of the country there's a tremendous amount of commerce that goes back and forth and we see that also in the mobility data but still the fact that vermont was relatively good caused a lot of people to come to the state and work remotely from the state we haven't seen tax revenues from that group of people yet because that you know that that they won't file until the april filing season or whenever they choose to file that that won't be due and and nobody's paying estimated taxes from that group but there's some upside from that and also there's certainly anecdotal evidence that there's been some permanent in migration that's been associated with vermont being a relatively safe place to be and but for widespread broadband access it would have been even more there would be more benefit i know i'm a broken record on this for those of you that are in economic development committees and the rest but but broadband the importance of broadband has really been underscored by the pandemic and the the remote workers and the capacity to work remotely i think will be a much more longer lasting aspect of the pan even after the pandemic's gone i think there'll be a lot more remote working that happens and that is is potentially a great benefit to vermont so you know they're they're silver linings and as you said and there there are definitely winners and losers and that's a way we can make the state more of a winner so there's there's a lot in the report we can touch on the bottom line with revenues is um is a revenue table on page 19 and uh that just sort of shows what the change in revenue expectations were from august and then below it a pre-pandemic comparison with where we are now relative to the pre-pandemic january 2020 uh forecast uh doesn't seem like just a year ago that this happened but uh you know this time last year very few people were talking about a pandemic being you know would occupy our our lives but um so relative to august things are way up uh because of the impacts of the the federal deficit spending and uh general fund is about 160 million dollars up in fiscal 21 155 and 22 that recedes in 23 and 24 but is is not uh uh zero so there are some lasting impacts from that much deficit spending that occur the education fund also benefits uh is is up considerably because of the the uh too large consumption taxes that are there the sales and use tax and the portion of the motor vehicle purchase and use tax that go to to the ed fund so that's also substantially up and the transportation fund even though it's up 16.4 million in 2021 and 9.4 in 2022 it's still a little bit below the uh pre-pandemic forecast about 13 million as is the general fund in fiscal 21 it's still 23 million below the year ago forecast um but it it does end up being higher in 22 and 23 and if there's another big tranche of federal deficit spending either for pandemic or for uh uh other purposes uh that could raise uh tax revenues going going out even further so that's kind of the that's kind of the takeaway from it um there's a whole lot of more granular information we can talk about if there are areas I think we'll turn it turn it over to q and a and see if what areas of interest you all have that you'd like to uh ask questions about questions at this point um oh me yeah okay I can't hear you very well um I just want to I got a quarter inch clearance here that makes all the difference on my mind oh well it's nice seeing all the um members of finance committee I see um some um colleagues haven't seen in a long time since hazard pay even um one of the things I'd like to just reiterate uh from a budget perspective and that is the comment you made um um to relative to the general fund pre-pandemic and I think with this um when people look at it without looking at underneath it I just for those of us who are working in the budget and keep reminding people that there's a difference between our base spending obligations and an infusion of one time money that's not available so I just want to go back because you had made a comment if we look at the general fund even though it's up it's still 27.4 million less than what was projected um pre-pandemic in January 2020 and really it looks like in when we get through all this slug of federal money for those of us who are going to be on the budget committee in fiscal 2023 we're kind of back to where that spending and that revenue uh challenge uh you know presents itself again so for those of us who are making those financial decisions I just want to stress that but if you would speak to the ed fund and what the impact that meet needs means um can certainly uh finance and that uh letter that went out with what would be the proposed tax or property tax rate increase was um of great concern and will be dramatically influenced by these revised forecasts so could you speak to obviously the the sales tax is a big big driver of how how that ed fund is turned around yeah I'll I'll let uh Steve uh Steve Klein uh uh talk about how that filters through uh to the um uh ed fund and the tax rate uh Steve are you on or Stephanie Steve yeah I see names Stephanie at least they're they're they're on their call anyway what while we're waiting from them I'll just uh reinforce what you said uh Jane the the you know we're getting there they're going to be two areas of kind of one time things that are happening so one time deficit spending that is pumping up the economy and generating elevated tax liabilities and and therefore tax revenue is one part of it and that's what's showing up in these revenue forecasts the other thing will be the opportunity with monies that flow through to the states or the state's control in any way shape or form I I for spending that could be both pandemic related but also impact economic development and other issues that that the state would like to address so there could be a once in a lifetime opportunity to have you know potentially large chunks of money and and a lot of the money that came in first would have these crazy controls around them of you had to spend it really quickly and you know and and right away so there wasn't the thoughtfulness that normally would have gone into an expenditure of that magnitude I mean if we had a 10 10 million dollar program that somebody cooked up and said they wanted to spend 10 million dollars of state money we we'd analyze it to death and do options and figure out all these you know sorts of things here like 200 million dollars get spent with an afternoon of commentary and you know a couple phone calls and so it it's certainly you know there there will be more money coming both with this 920 billion dollar recently approved act and and probably more and so all of those I think are you know have this sort of one-time consideration Steve are you on yet or or somebody of Graham do you want to address the I see Graham and I see Stephanie I can I can't address the the specific question about the education fund but I've been told that Catherine can and she's in Senate education right now and so she can follow up with Senator Kitchell or she makes it back here in time no I I don't need it I've got to see here's Steve can we restate the question on the on the education fund I'm sorry that yes to talk to the committee about what these revised forecasts mean relative to that jet a December letter that went out in terms of the 9 cent property tax increase and what the revision well mean relative to mitigate that original proposed increase so I let me just do that quickly and so the answer is the education fund dollars are pretty traumatic it basically eliminated the 58 million shortfall so that is gone then and that's of the FY 21 money then 22 because of the money that was in it also allowed 18 million to carry forward into 22 so the 22 money allowed the 9 cent tax increase to drop to about 2.6 cents but the that's and with 18 million the bottom line so you as a legislature choose you take the extra one-time money and make that tax rate zero that increase or not that'll be within the realm of area you can choose so basically you're looking at no unfunded carry forward problem 18 million on the bottom line and a 9 cent tax increase dropping to the 2.5 2.6 cents with the option that you're going to have an option of whether or not to eliminate it totally thank you that's what I thought was important for people to have presented in terms of the interrelationship between this and the and that letter sorry I'm unable to okay I've got Sandra Sears but this was in all probability one-time money no no it's actually this the upgrade and Tom can speak to this but if you look in his out years it may not be quite as high in the next 17 years but most of that is ongoing and Tom you want to do you look at your 20 stats yeah no it recedes you know in in the out years but it's still non-trivial I mean for the education fund compared to pre-pandemic it ends up being about 18 19 million dollars more per year longer term but it's the big swing is between the August forecast and the and the current one and that's very substantial for two fiscal years and it gets cut in about half after that and so just to note you about the 23 on that's why you're going to have to decide what to do with the 18 million because you'll have to take into account what's happening with grand list growth what's happening with revenues in 23 and where do you want to put yourself in that out year and that's why it's up to you to figure out how you want to dress Steve can you speak to in FY 22 that assumes the normal cost change as well the FY 22 number includes all expenses are currently attributable to the fund including the 36 37 million dollar change to the pension obligation that's all covered I've got Senator Sears and then Senator Starr and Senator Bray my question time has to do with I've got a couple of questions none of them is the chart on page 12 of the unemployment and I would note that Bennington and Rutland counties and it looks like the kingdom are all the worst unemployment in terms of unemployment but Bennington and Rutland are very similar to their New York counterparts I'm this leads me to the question that I had being a member of joint fiscal committee and that's where do we target money to those that need it the most rather than just some kind of a formula that doesn't seem to take into account the actual losses of that business or that individual I have a feeling that some people did very well during the pandemic grocery store owners for one but others you know were horrifically hit like the hospitality engine second part of my question is on the property transfer tax increase looks like certain towns you know and particularly in my district and the Wyndham County district were the ones who had the highest increases and I'm curious if what impacts those will have down the road on those communities those are three I guess three part question yeah so yeah the unemployment rates have fluctuated a lot both statewide and by county if you look at the chart preceding that on page 11 it shows by state unemployment rates in pre-pandemic in February of 20 and then in April and then again in November which is the is the latest observation at the state level so right now Vermont has the lowest unemployment rate in the nation and it and it was pretty close to the lowest in February before but it spiked all the way above 16 percent almost 17 percent in between but the way unemployment is measured for you know sort of doesn't contemplate something like a pandemic being the cause of unemployment so if somebody staying home you know because they have to take care of a child or teach a child or care for someone who's ill or or is concerned not going to work or not looking for work because of health concerns related to the pandemic they end up showing up as not being in the labor force and therefore not being unemployed and so you know it's it's a metric that is that doesn't have the same meaning it's still better to have a low unemployment rate than a high unemployment rate and this speaks you know well in general of the state but it's the variations right now are really difficult to sort of base regional policy on that said there are parts of the state that are perennial laggards in terms of economic growth and economic development and to the extent you can focus development programs that help those parts of the state they're going to be better off and that does sort of tie in to your question about property transfer tax revenues and the impact in certain towns so there there there has been a fairly substantial surge in in property purchases property sales transactions but the number of transactions and this is now the data on page 22 which is a table that's sort of showing the top towns in terms of growth is based on a 12-month period ending in December 2020 so calendar 2020 versus calendar 2019 so this includes the pandemic period in the 2020 data and everything beyond the pandemic so initially property transfer activity dropped sharply during the pandemic because they couldn't get people out to do house inspections and and lawyers almost always do closing stuff in person and that was hard to do and so there weren't a lot of transactions right away but then they just went through the roof so we've we've seen about a 33% increase in the value of property transfer tax revenues the value of the properties that are sold but actually fewer transactions so about half a percent fewer transactions which means the transactions that took place were higher value transactions and sometimes that would be skewed by you know a big non-residential project that might be in the mix because this is every kind of property here but given the towns that we're looking at for the most part that's not true this is heavily residential which is true with building markets and other aspects of real estate that residential has been where all the the action is so the the towns that have benefited heavily I mean you see the population towns with big populations generally have more you know property transfer tax activity so it's not a surprise that Burlington is at at the top of the list but what is a surprise is that so many other low population towns have growth in property transfer tax revenues that are comparable to Burlington and if you you know numbers two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven you know all the way down that list are you know towns that are in or near resorts and are places of recreational amenities and that's been where a lot of the out-of-state interest in home purchases has been and you know if you get down to number 17 which is Barnard you see the cumulative percentage of the growth that's represented by those towns so the top 17 towns represent 50% of all the growth in property transfer tax revenue over that period and the top 43 is 75% of all the growth so if you've got decent broadband access you can attract remote workers just about anywhere and you know obviously these these places that have a lot of high-end properties already this wasn't you know there's also been a big surge in new construction starts with single family starts but they've been depressed for a long time and that takes longer so the places that the high-end properties existed in were in those resort towns that's where people wanted to go first and how many of those will be permanent still an open question but that you know that's one aspect to economic development to consider and to consider with respect to different parts of the state. Next and then Senator Bray. Yes I was wondering Tom if you or Steve last year if I remember right we left an increase in place that the communities actually voted and passed within their towns of a school tax increase and I'm wondering if that has been looked at because all the years that I served on our local boards up north here I always kept the increase within a penny or two and if there was a good year where money got left over for whatever reason I carried it forward but still left the school tax increase at a very low and modest rate and you know we just we did have a lot of problems with school budgets prior to that but after using that method to keep the school tax increases very low we never we never lost the school budget and we built you know new buildings and bought new buses and you know we we did very well and so I'm wondering what would happen if we left the school tax increase at the rate that the town raised their spending and moved this money forward to offset increases into the future to keep those those increases very very modest. Yeah I was gonna say that's exactly what you'd all have to decide on and I think that's going to be the work of senate finance and and other committees to think about what what you do with the 18 million dollar share plus do you carry it forward like you talked about you use some of it to keep the rate low that's all in the level of the discussion you're gonna have to have in the next few months. Well that makes sense to me is to keep the increases low carry the money forward to help the next year and educate our children like they should be educated. The other thing that's floating around out there is the schools are getting millions of dollars through the federal SR to program and we don't know what they're going to do with it so it's not just our millions that are floating around they've got millions floating around. Yeah put me on the list Madam Chair. I've got Senator Bray. I just asked you to put on the list. Okay now Mark then I've got you and then I've got Senator Hardy so where's Senator Bray there he is. Did you put me on the list Dan? I did you're next. Oh I'm next now. I saw your hand earlier. Oh good um so Tom I have to think no next as in after. I'm afraid. Thank you Madam Chair thank you Mr. Cavett um so I wanted to follow up on earlier on you were talking about risks related to exposure to refunds and I know we had a brief conversation in finance about PPP dollars arriving not being treated as income and then on top of that also being treated as a deductible. I think that came out of the December HR 133 legislation and so we didn't land anywhere on it just noticing that it seemed peculiar to both have it not be taxable and then treat it as a deduction so I don't know the size of the exposure on just the PPP dollars and I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and what other sorts of refunds are out there and to what degree like PPP apparently the state of Vermont could depart from federal recommendations and and not give the deduction so uh can you fill us in on that stuff a little bit? Yeah um there there are actually a whole bunch of tax law changes that could impact uh uh both company balance sheets and tax liabilities and it's it's difficult to sort of play those out and in a large scale. We have lists of the PPP recipients at um I at the high end you have the name of the above $150,000 you have the name of the recipient and then you have a range of uh value for the award. Below $150,000 you don't have the name of the recipient you just have the town that they're in and the NAICS code that they're supposedly in to the extent that's accurately designated uh and then you have the exact dollar amount of the award so it's not like we can just line up tax filings of those entities with tax department data and say what if we lost 100% of that and what if we you know lost 50% of that but what we did was we did go through um I uh a fairly large number of entities to look at aggregate tax filings you know one by one and in aggregate it does not represent a great deal of money to the state so uh about half of the half of the PPP recipients uh file as corporations about half are pastors that end up in personal income so um it it doesn't look like that is as big an issue as uh as we as we initially thought although we have put uh added money into refunding in part because of that and in part because of concerns that uh uh tax year 2019 which you know effective fiscal year 2020 revenue was really strong and estimated taxes are often set based on prior year uh performance and so we felt there could be uh uh too much in the way of estimated tax paid and there might be refunding from that we also felt that there would be both corporations and individuals that might have a sudden decline in profitability and yet still have paid forward uh for a while and be refunding so we ramped up refunding based on that but we're seeing even higher levels of both estimated and paid taxes and uh again that you know there's a lot of information you don't get until the filing season starts uh so you know there's no crystal ball into that but from what we know now uh we think we've got a comfortable amount of of uh refunding in there and there will still be a lot of revenue based on the fact that you know it's it's it's not just the initial receipt of the money which was tax-free for PPP it was not tax-free if you're getting unemployment insurance uh you know that's that's taxable income um and if you look at the withholding tax you know the largest withholding taxpayer right now is the Vermont Department of Labor and that's not a situation that normally occurs it's usually you know one of the big employers uh uh in the state and um so it's uh the PPP money is not taxed when it comes in but when it's spent if you use it for payroll for example which is bare amount of supposed to be used for payroll then the money is taxable to the recipients of the pay that gets payroll or if the company then uh you know would have kept those people on anyway it's just getting a free ride with the money and they spend it on anything else then what they're spending it on often gives rise to a taxable event as well so it's you know I can't say for sure oh yeah we've got plenty of refund money in there I'll still be you know we'll be on pins and needles in April um and March but um uh it's it's it's one of the issues that we consider thank you Donald um Madam Chair um one of one of the I had a couple I feel that we are racing ahead of um the information that it's going to be made available and I had a couple underlying questions and an observation um observation first was it was when money began to be the 1.2 billion began to be spent by us um it was a remarkably um uh collegial and march forward and the various members of the appropriations committee based on their their skills and abilities managed to give good presentations and the money went out um that was last year um this there was plenty of loot to go around for everyone this year all the people that participated in that have been saying to themselves when it comes to appropriations what what I have done differently if I know today what I didn't know last year so this round is going to be much more um educated less cordial and um and I would say sort of a from the get go kind of a less sharing opportunity it's going to be um it's going to be tougher um the what I hope to learn from Tom today was in this time of growing disparity between the well to do and those that are working to catch up um how has how our citizens been affected by it and what would he recommend that we look at to see that that disparity does not increase as a result of what we did last September and um as what we're we were going to do this year it seems we're already sort of trying to divide up and figure out where the money's going to go and finally um Tom's what Tom has been careful to say uh we don't know for sure we won't know until um the data is not in yet and I was wondering if uh as money committees we would have a recommendation on or an understanding of when those questions would be answered so that um it isn't divided up and it isn't spent before we get those answers and that has something to do with how we might or might not schedule this legislative session between now and when we adjourn so I would like to know that the the growing gap between the the haves and the have nots and whether or not this or spending to date has made that a wider gap than what we might do about it when we find out what the money actually is yeah so we have we have the state spending which was uh 1.25 billion out of about five billion uh total of you know to the extent that we can track by state the flows um but the um so that's a part of it's the 1.25 billion the state had some uh uh control and say over uh within the federal regulations that controlled that and I I fully agree that it would be great to look back and say you know what what things really made sense and worked and what things could have been better and how we make them better I wish that had been done at the federal government level too because essentially what they've done with this next round is just the same old stuff they did the first time is let's just do it again you know and there was a minor change of ppp get at least there where there was some uh revenue loss requirement that was associated with it but it was you know it's 25 loss in one quarter uh in 2020 versus 2019 that doesn't necessarily mean you lost income or profit you could have had a situation where you had a bad quarter and then things took off and that was true with a lot of companies actually I you could also have had a quarter that you lost 25 percent in in sales revenue and you brought your expenses down by at least 25 percent and you had no loss in profit and then you carried on fine the rest of the year it's it's still a pretty low bar to clear in terms of targeting the money to the entities that need it most and there are a lot of entities that were the hardest hit that didn't for whom it did not make sense to even apply to ppp because they didn't expect to have any employees or very few for an extended period of time and they've been proven right you know it's been a longer it wasn't just a three-month event so you know at a at a much larger at a 30 000 foot level there you know there's healthcare planning that's gone on around federal government response to a pandemic that's that's pretty extensive their their playbooks that have been developed around quarantining and you know communication and all the rest there's no comparable economic playbook at the federal level that says all right if that's going to happen in terms of the best approach to healthcare what do you do in terms of the economics what's the best thing to do and you know do you use some old unemployment insurance system that's a state level thing with ancient computers and systems and then try to funnel billions and trillions of dollars through this or do you just send out checks to everybody because you can't figure out who really needs them and who doesn't you know you could have a much smarter approach to things in all of these fields and that hasn't been done at a federal level yet you know even with the checks that are sent out you have more money for the businesses and the people who are most affected if you target the the relief and not everybody needs another six hundred dollars not everybody needed twelve hundred dollars there's a non-profit time affiliated with that that they're getting checks from people now from six hundred dollars because they say hey I just got six hundred I don't need it here you know that's why the savings rate goes up that's why you know bitcoin purchases and bold purchases and day traders are trading I pray this is money where it's not needed and so you know people don't do with it well all right that creates stimulus but it's not targeted it wastes money because you know there's more spent than needs to be spent and if you just want a stimulus spending above and beyond the basic need then that should be targeted things that give you great return on investment that would be something like a national program to roll out broadband in rural areas like they did electricity you know after the repression things like that that have a payback not just send out checks to everybody so you know from an economic perspective you know that if you send out checks and you're going to do it indiscriminately at least you know if it's not pandemic related in terms of the loss and unemployment is clearly pandemic related that's going to people that have lost their jobs so you know that's fine that's definitely targeted but even with the other checks that go out if you made that progressive if you had a lower cut off or or more with families with children that are low income or you know situations like that you could have balanced some of the inequality that's occurring with with this I think that on balance this has increased inequality the way the money's gone out rather than reduced it and it's not an easy thing just to turn that around but those are some of the ways that it could have been done at the state level it's even harder to do so there are things you know that that can help level that we can be thoughtful about that to the extent we have discretionary money you know so spending on things that provide the quality of opportunity like job retraining there'll be some jobs that are not coming back and I so so money for job retraining that's not rushed and hurry up and spend it in this semester because it's so good after December 31st you know is not the way to do something like that but if there could be that kind of spending it helps both the educational institutions that are providing the training and it improves the the output and productivity and opportunity for Vermont workers who have lost jobs so anyway there there's a lot of there'll be a lot of policy options joint fiscal and others can hopefully lay out and provide that that can aim things in in that direction can i make a comment um senator yes jane um just for the other um committee members we asked tom uh to speak uh i had joined fiscal to lay this out because there was a lot of concern around particularly the grants for businesses and the first rounds that went out if you looked at where those grants went it wasn't strategic at all and we knew that and this gets back to the comment center sears was making earlier and we were it was it was a difficult process we we really wanted to target um we felt that um the um the need to do that and and tom provided i thought some very good uh testimony so i would say if there's an area to look back is uh the way in which those particularly how some of those business grants um were um administered and what we were doing was once again simplicity on the state level i guess which is sort of the same as maybe what happened on the federal level but i just wanted to reference back some of what uh tom is saying today with our efforts at joint fiscal to approve spending uh for business grants but do it in a way that we were providing the greatest relief um to where it was needed where the impact had been um experienced the most and that was a that was a very difficult and sometimes a bit uh rancorous discussion um about how how best to do it and um and in the governor's budget adjustment there's 10 million proposed from this general fund one-time availability to go to business grants so i think we need to take the experience that we've had last year and uh take a hard look at you know how that money could best is it targeted and is it in the best way and so i think we've got some work ahead that ties into what senator mcdonald is asking and that is um what did we learn and how can we apply it to make better decisions but i for those on joint fiscal um we found uh tom's testimony and about the need of how to use the money um very helpful unfortunately it didn't end up quite as with target as we hope but madam chair we tried senator kitchell and the appropriations of joint fiscal did they're damnedest on our behalf when we weren't here and i'm not questioning or diminishing i think they were heroes they sometimes said no and they did the best they could but we're not here we are now here and we'd like to know from their advisor tom um how to give us it to give us a new playbook that we can all consider and then as we go forward um and we seem to be close to tempted to divide the money up right now and say you know where it should go i hope we would i hope tom can tell us give us a list of things that if we were trying to keep our this disparity between the well-to-do and the other the rest what are the things we can do that would bring that that make that gap less wide and what are things that we should avoid that will make the gap more wide in this environment that that would be one of the more helpful things thank you yeah i think there were some there were there a lot of time constraints around the you know the last spending package and i i can certainly understand that it seemed like there still was time to make some adjustments but i can understand why people resisted that and i don't know what all the time constraints might be both on monies that may be flowing from already approved federal programs this latest Relief and Rescue Act and then a subsequent package which might be even larger so you know we will have gotten about five billion from the initial 2020 tranche of things we'll get probably about another two billion from the uh rescue and relief money we can see about a billion and a half and then through ppp stuff and things like that there'll be more now you know some of that's we there's some states saying some of there's not and then with a with a further uh tranche of if it if it is something like 1.9 trillion that could be another three billion or so to the state if if there's money that's less restricted both in terms of time use uh application there's going to be a lot of opportunity for really remarkable once in a lifetime investments in in the state and if there's not if they're tying everybody's hands and has to be done a certain way whatever then it's going to be much harder to do so we'll we'll certainly join fiscal you know is at your disposal to to look at all that stuff and we'll be happy to do that it for now and then to westman yeah i was going to westman has okay so tom um first i have a comment your property transfer tax revenue if you had a column that said um number of sales in volume it would help me better understand within those communities how fast those increases it because when i look at stow um the average price has driven everyone that's local out of town and um that but my the um second question is or comment is rooms and meals and high unemployment towns um i think have a correlation because i think where you have high unemployment you have a lot of people um a lot of people paying rooms and meals are off dramatically but underneath that and this is where my question lies because air bmb and bar vrbo and all of those um online rental groups are up can we separate out in the property transfer tax where those are coming from because i think for the traditional hotels and motels um it really looks dire to me given the fact that you would have vrbo and air bmb up so much yeah so you mean not property transfer tax but in the meals and rooms in the rooms and meals tax because that rooms and meals even all down dramatically and it's all in certain communities within that too if if what there is left in rooms and meals is coming from those short term or or online rentals it says that our traditional ends and um and those are in a worse spot and it helps me think about the question that senator sears asked earlier who's doing the worst and who are the people that were most in a position to lose room is there some way to drill down there yeah yeah um so in terms of reporting data on meals and rooms and and just back on the property transfer tax stuff i'll be happy to share with you that entire file because they're interesting things in that and it goes back to to 2018 so 2018 19 and 20 data on number of transactions and the value of all transactions and um so so that might also have some more interesting stuff you'd want to look at in reporting meals and room tax revenues or even commenting on it it's you know unlike e-commerce in the sales and use tax where we can say to the extent we've categorized things well enough and that's not perfect we can add all those up and say e-commerce represents this amount and we could even that could be reported monthly uh uh even and and we look at breakouts you know um in the case of meals and rooms there are so few firms that comprise the online short-term rental market that you would run into probably i mean we can check with with the tax department and see but i think you'd run into confidentiality issues about publishing data on that now some of these companies like you know airbnb will actually uh send out press releases occasionally and say how much uh you know business they have in a state or how much you know they're paying in taxes whatever but um generally speaking if they're just a small number of taxpayers that are involved and it you know they're confidentiality issues that that come up and i think that would that that would probably be an issue uh if there's anything you know very detailed statistically that was presented but you know it is clear from a lot of reporting not just in Vermont i just would back up so they're considered the taxpayer you know for example i have an airbnb um when i rent it i sent the rent rental rate they don't they um we um um they charge the amount and then they take the sales tax off the top and they relay the sales tax to the state so that's considered them paying the sales tax and not meals and rooms not acting as my agent yeah the rooms tax is paid by airbnb so they're sort of like a marketplace you know so the same way like online marketplace type uh you know entities pay uh so yes the the tax payment comes from the uh uh you know from from from the marketplace like you know vrbo and expedia so it's vrbo home away um airbnb so the tax department couldn't in one bucket say um this is from them and here are the more traditional places i you know i i i want to explore that with Craig Bolio and just see what kind of a report we could issue that would give you the information you need without uh uh running into confidentiality issues um you know i it it's it's so wide the reporting on the success of airbnb type businesses in rural locations during the pandemic has been widespread so it's not just a you know a vermont thing and so i think you know your deduction is correct and obvious just from that information uh whether we could generate you know i i i'll talk i'll bring this up with tax and see if there's some kind of a report we could generate that would give you information that would show kind of you know the percent decline in everything you know that might be the way to do it would be to not report on that part of it but just you know have everybody else uh and then do some percent change kind of stats and you could compare that with the other percent change data and and you know understand better what's happening to the traditional uh hotels motels and places of accommodation because when i look in communities like um stowe and like the community i live in and when i look down through that the manchesters the mad river valleys i'm not so worried about people in short-term rentals i think those places are going to be okay but i think the main streets in those communities will be devastated and um and i we really need some way to drill down to find out the information about those what what the main street looks like in those communities yeah well i'd be happy to to to work with you and tax to try to figure out a way to to get you information that would be relevant to that and and uh you're certainly your sensibility about that is correct so it's just question of what numbers you know apply to that um you know certainly you know when you're talking about assistance you can then look at you know things like profitability and sales and certainly in the you know in the room side of things when in the meals room tax in general and there's a you know there's a chart on total meals and rooms tax revenues on page 23 and and this is like uh uh seasonally adjusted monthly data if you don't normally see the tax revenues reported this way but this is the way we analyze them uh is is just like government statistics we have uh programs that that uh calculate seasonality and then adjust for it and then we express it in annual rates but you'll see you know this cliff that occurs uh you know with the pandemic and uh and then just how you know so it's about a 40 drop we're looking at levels of revenue that that we got 15 years ago for all meals and rooms and uh and it's also been pretty much dead in the water since that drop it hasn't you know there's no no we're not talking about a v shape recovery or u shape recovery this is an l it's gone down and it's just stayed down and so it's um it's distressing and and if you take out meals that's the best part of it because meals has dealt better with it than than the rooms obviously and then if you look at the part of the rooms that's not the short term online market you know that's the part that's really been harding and alcohol is also way down so the bars are down but the rooms part of it that's not uh uh you know short term again we say short term online rental but one of the other characteristics during the pandemic is they've been longer term rentals so people have wanted to use Airbnb tight places as uh you know remote working locations and sort of like instantly having a second home so you know that's another feature of what's happening um yeah so um Senator Bray okay and then thank you ah well it's all right I had Senator Hardy I I didn't see Senator Westman so I thought you were seating so yeah I've got Senator Hardy then Senator Kitchell then Senator Bray thank you Senator Cummings um I first want to just make a comment about something you said Tom about how the federal government had a plan for the healthcare response to the pandemic and that that was so much better than their economic plan to the response to the pandemic and if that is the case that is even more pathetic because their healthcare response to the pandemic was horrific um so yeah the execution yeah the execution of the plan was horrific but there was a plan there's working groups in in the federal government that were disbanded before the pandemic whose job it was to do pandemic planning and you know all over the world you know there are pandemic plans so it was very poorly executed and you know all that but at least there was a plan there was nothing equivalent in the economic role but go ahead I'm sorry right yeah no I mean that there may have been a plan for the healthcare response but they threw it out the window immediately and ignored it um so that just is an indicative of how bad just across the board everything was and the other comment I wanted to make and then I do have a question is that you know in terms of our ability the state's ability um as state the state legislature to target the federal money that we got of the 6.5 billion dollars or was it five billion total we only had 25 of it in our sort of coffers to to direct and so much of that had to go to the immediate pandemic response that we had less at our disposal to sort of target to economic recovery and hopefully moving forward we can focus more on economic recovery as we move out of the pandemic although it seems like this recent round that was allocated the end of December by the feds is less flexible we we may have fewer options in terms of how we're allowed to spend it so I guess it just sort of depends on the next the sort of Biden plan moving forward as to how much how much flexibility will have but those were my comments but my question goes back to something I think you said in response to senator star regarding the education fund and you made a comment about the teacher pension situation and how the estimates took into consideration the teacher pension payments and I'm wondering if that is true for the sort of long-term pension payment payments are just this year and how your report interacts potentially with the recent proposal the treasurer made regarding the pension program and maybe that's a question for her but it seems to me that we didn't get enough good news that we're just taking care of that problem is is that correct yeah I think it might have been Steve that mentioned something about pensions okay I can talk about that separately but go ahead Steve yeah so I would just say yeah so the normal cost is already covered in the ed fund for this year and normal cost should not go up that stunningly in the next few years so that's but you raised the right point one thing that the pension problem is a is in part due to the whole pandemic where we the returns last year were terrible and they're in the 4% range when the assumption was seven there's nothing to help with that and so in the sense when you one of the things that we are looking for in the new relief would be rather the ability to use some of the money for the state expenses and maybe that could be helpful there but the pension plan is remains a very major issue for us to face in the years ahead and it while it may not be as much of an issue for the ed fund in the short term for the general fund it's pretty overwhelming and the second area is it doesn't do anything for the OPEP requirements which really are a big part of both so you're correct on that okay great I just want to I don't know Tom you wanted to add anything on that at all I mean all I'd add is that the the pension problem the first place goes back to much more mortal sins than the recent you know issues that we have venial sins but the you know the absence of of a forecasting process that looked at ranges did alternative simulations and then did true ups on a on a timely regular basis so that if some assumption that you made was being missed that you could have a course correction early on identify the problem and and do a reset it that didn't happen and it just kept just kept these pie in the sky assumptions about what was going to occur and then push the problem off into the future and now it's you know yours to deal with but that that is a problem you know a process problem that you know it hopefully doesn't get repeated but you know again you you have to have scenarios that don't always assume that you know things are going to be like they were before and that you make adjustments if there's something that's this off with it early on so it doesn't just you know accumulate as a as an issue absolutely thank you okay I had Senator Kitchell Senator Brian now Senator Brock yeah I think it well we need to be clear as in we are assuming the new a deck of the 38 million which was a fairly substantial increase as a result of a whole lot of factors and that's an ongoing cost but and normal per normal so the general fund is still covering all that underfunding and that that is separate and apart from just paying the annual a deck amount but the question I have Tom and it goes back to the targeting of businesses and this new new bill that just got passed half of it is not coming through the state at all in the form of block grants or whatever to be appropriated or whatever a lot of its business relief have you had a chance to look at how you see what's in that bill relative to the experience that we've just had with just putting money out some people we heard anecdotes that some businesses are doing so well they were prepaying their rent and their you know accountants were saying there was just a lot of money that went to places it didn't need to go do you see that the bill that has just been passed and what it's doing for businesses is going to replicate that because we've heard some businesses are being left out can you give us a sense of of what you see is in that bill relative to our business community I haven't spent a lot of time with the bill you know we've been full tilt doing you analyzing revenues and looking at all this granular tax data and you know lead up to this so that's been that's been 15 hours a day for a while but the the you know the broad some of the big spending initiatives you know basically repeat PPP but have a you know a fairly tame hurdle at least there's a hurdle that there was really no meaningful hurdle before so a little bit of a hurdle but again sending out $600 to everybody is not is not targeting you know so those two big things so those two big parts of it are not well targeted maybe Steve or somebody from joint fiscal would like to comment on any other aspect of it if they've looked at it more closely I think we'll be waiting more for the next if there's an extra inch or whatever is in the next try I think it's something is likely but who knows what size it'll be that that maybe is both more flexible for states and and if there is additional money more targeted but again they're talking about another $1400 and just send it out to everybody and that's that's not optimal is from an economic perspective that's not optimal Steve do you have anything to say about the details of the other bill or Graham or well I mean not I mean not too much I think we're really a long way from that seeing that bill become a reality um there's a lot a lot of the one that's passed though the one that passed yeah so I would just hold off till that till we know more because because Joyce Manchester did do a breakout I think of the $920 billion measure a rescue and relief act so any anything else in that that that you see relevant to well I think that you know that we've discussed that bill before there's going to be that bill is very uh has a lot of uh obligations I mean and one in which you're already the committee is already dealing with is the vendor assistance where it's a lot of money in a short time uh yeah I don't know that there's anything I'd have to add right now right and then senator Brock thanks madam chair I wanted to double back to what senator mcdonnell was talking about a little bit I mean the consciousness that we have about uh we're all in this together but really actually not everyone is coming out of this together the same way and how can we minimize the disparities and maybe even equalize things a little bit through targeted help with we so I'm wondering about uh investment that will be more than a cash injection for the near term and how suitable they do or do not seem to you and one of the things that we're working on in natural resources and energy is to improve our weatherization program because there's plenty of data that shows investments there save people money you know for the lifetime of that home and uh that particularly for lower income for monitors they already suffer you know a higher energy burden where they may be spending up to 20 percent of their money just buying energy products of one sort or another and so is that uh too slow the kind of investment to make to be considered as part of a recovery program and for these kinds of dollars uh does that seem like a stretch or does that seem like no actually that's a decent idea because when you make that kind of investment you hire people you train them they do the installation and then the beneficiaries have benefits for years and decades to come so I'm just wondering about that kind of thing especially within target on low income weatherization you know I think at any place you can uh spend on something that you think makes sense anyway to do but can be brought under the umbrella of uh the requirements of of any of these tranches of federal money to come out can be really really impactful so there's some things like broadband that have been you know people wanted to do and then clearly can sort of be connected to it the problem is usually timing you know how much you can do in a short period of time and and and that's very limiting so um I'm not conversant with the exact legal requirements of the latest uh uh bill uh and uh you know maybe Steve or people at ledge council and other place can help craft things that would try to look at you know the exact language of the bill and what you can bring in under it and what you can't um I think it's I think it's a great idea to try to do the things that make sense anyway that you know will have good returns if you can use uh you know this kind of money for that it frees up money that otherwise we're raising taxes to have to pay for and and that's uh you know that's a huge benefit uh to the state because you get the benefit of the investment and then you save money that you might have spent anyway uh for that okay thank you senator brock uh tom I wonder if we could go back to the commentary that you had about uh warning signals uh that our pension fund was perhaps going off the rails uh I wonder if you can elaborate a little bit about what were some of the warning signs along the way uh and how uh reaction by the legislature could have changed the the trajectory and secondly uh if you have any commentary about your view of the adequacy of the annual rates of return that we are even now projecting yeah I think that's really what it goes down to is what do you assume the rate of return is going to be and you know just looking at past information isn't you know isn't the way to do that so you have to run alternative scenarios first of all you have to have one that says if everything goes like we think probably it will here's kind of the path we expect and so this is reasonable and then you probably want to be a little bit conservative on that and say all right the one we're going to actually use is a little bit below even the one that we think is most likely because if we have an error it's better to have a little bit more than than to be under but when it starts to become clear to you that you know okay we missed that year or we're in a pandemic and guess what you know interest rates are now zero and uh we're in a different world then you know if you've run scenarios that had you know different ranges you would you know you you would recognize okay something's different and you act quickly the the the magnitude of the problem now goes back to earlier misses where the the assumptions were just either they're willfully Pollyanna-ish and I was involved in them and I'm you know I participate in in capital debt affordability advisory committee now but I was not involved in any of the earlier pension fund analysis or work but you know that's essentially what a forecasting the purpose of forecasting is and why you would run alternative scenarios and and then frequently check in and say are we right you know is it on the same path and what could go wrong and you know maybe there's a range so uh yeah that that's all to follow up on that time uh and senator brock's question we raised that question about we have a five-year period and I raised the question isn't that too long a period of time um to not make um to recalibrate and check out assumptions um I realize a year may be too too little you know because of things needing to smooth out but um you know we were talking about three or something but five years if you're underfunding and your assumptions aren't panning out you are accruing a lot of obligation liability until you come in and um true up and frankly right now all of that all of those all that unfunded liability with that truing up is falling to the general fund yeah and and so the the education fund which now the ADEC has been readjusted to 38 and I never could understand why it went down from six to into the seven million to the six million and went in back in 13 it was 11 million and so um it it just I um I guess I'm asking you or to expand a bit on your comment to senator brock about should we uh with greater frequency be sort of recalibrating or um and and it's five years really by the time it trues up we've built up a tremendous amount of liability yeah no I I think you should do a check in on that at least not once a year twice a year and you know the pandemic shows how quickly an environment can change you know you're going along one way all of a sudden something happens and there's a radical change in interest rates and interest rate expectations and uh so you know you have to do check-ins more frequently doesn't mean everything has to get revoted and redone but there's a check-in and an opportunity if there's something significant that there can be an adjustment made and that that should be uh uh much more frequent Michael and you're muted I can hear I didn't I didn't know I was recognized sorry maybe I'm coming into this conversation late but is it mostly the interest rate assumptions that's driving the debt because I remember it seems I can still see the picture of jeb spaulding and the NEA and I think the vsea and the cedar creek room announcing this great uh compromise where everybody was giving something to fix the pension funds maybe 10 or 12 maybe longer ago years and since that time when it was supposedly being being a significant course correction what has been the single largest factor that's made seems like the problem worse than it was even before the fix of a dozen years ago I was I was in party to that fix nor have I been involved in the process since then it's only been a year that due to legislative action that I was asked to be a non-voting member of CDAC so I can't really address that yeah I would just say it's really the latest change is a mixture about half of the interest rate and half is demographic adjustments people are living longer health care costs have changed there are a lot of factors that have gone into the demographics and that might be worthwhile to bring in Beth Pierce for the actuaries to talk about those two components um any other questions at this point there was one other thing and that was asked that I didn't respond to was potentially some of the longer-term impacts on the education fund from property tax appreciation we don't do the uh you know the education forecast is done in two different uh places and times so the property tax part of it's done in the in the fall you know prior to the the tax rate letter being issued and then the parts of it that came from the former general fund and transportation fund are done regularly as part of this forecast so the the the property tax part of it um you know moves much more slowly because it's an entire grand list it's huge so you don't get you know gigantic swings quickly and their delays in the way that gets processed but we're going into a period where it's going to be a lot more price appreciation uh and and price growth in real estate in general that would have happened without the pandemic and the pandemic's going to accelerate that somewhat it's not going to be something immediate but we're going to be seeing more grand list growth uh both through appreciation a little bit of new construction but we're in an unusual situation where we're going to be getting quite a bit of residential construction relative to prior expectations but less non-residential and you and that's unusual usually those two things move uh together and they're going to be going in opposite directions so there will be some grand list impacts but they're they're quite a ways down the road um and and so far that's not you know that's not part of the planning that's been done there's a little bit of adjustment done uh back in october that's something else that we'll be looking into more questions discussion anything information you'd like as follow-up serdo mcdonald um when um when would we likely have firm enough numbers to make um decisions on spending piece of the additional government um payments i i think i think that's you know more a function of of you know when uh additional monies are coming in and steve maybe you can speak to the flows from already approved but not dispersed funds um in terms of timing i mean the six hundred dollar checks have already gone out but i don't know about any anything more discretionary what the timing is on all that well it's all on the map so the money comes this month and we're we're gonna already be doing it so we'd hold this 90 days away uh it's it's and some a lot of the money is coming like the broadband is going to be kept at the administration is going to run that through companies uh there it's it's really quite a uh you know one of the really differences in this new bill from the the crf bill the last one was there we got a big tranche of money 1.25 billion within 30 days of the passage of the act here every section is its own world and the administration of each section is different and we will be getting the education money a good chunk of that right up front where the language says we send some of that out to schools but there's no time in that so it's it's uh we're going to require a lot of staff and a lot of legislators looking in their own areas and their own sort of focus and trying to identify what's going on in that particular line of funding it's it's just not as clean and um every every section has its own some of the money comes through existing lines like transportation um there's not a whole new appropriation rental assistance is through a separate appropriation a lot of the hs money is through existing lines so it's very it's a lot a collection of a lot of different components because because of all the things that steve just said my question was when will we know the answers to all those things so we can make decisions so we're we're starting to make decisions now in transportation for example in the budget adjustment i think is 1.6 million out of that block grant of 50.4 million which i we were told this morning a notice had been received that goes through the same cfda account and therefore flows directly to the department to the agency to be appropriated so i think the challenge is there's so many multiple avenues that the portion that comes through the state is going to take but in transportation some of that money in fact the award came in i think today and i think that for the housing the 200 million there's a date for that to be available to the state as well steve do you remember the date on that it'll be the 26th is the first 55 percent will come in right right steve is there money in the new bill the federal bill um for broadband there that i heard there really wasn't yeah there well the $50 there is a $50 a month payment for broadband but that's going to be administered as i and i heard this this morning that's going to come in through the company so you know they're going to offer that working through companies to come and offer it to their clients which i really haven't seen that myself so that's something there there's also in that bill some language that says $300 million for rural broadband and i don't know anything about that i don't know where that goes but it's something we need afford to figure out and and everything is administered by different agencies of the of the federal government and coming in in different timescales and i would say we need a like that's an example we need to find that out and people i think but i'm trying to schedule next week to come in and talk to us about those lifeline programs that the companies put out that the state and deadlines and all the rest of it because we don't know how many people are hooked up at this point yeah okay i've got senator ballot and then senator sears thank you senator comings can you hear me okay okay so steve just looking at the documents that legislators can refer to on uh the website for joint fiscal office i know that there's a good breakdown uh that ncsl put together section by section on this most recent recent bill and there's also um another document um that basically gives a division by division summary of the appropriations provisions is there any other document that senators and you know that we can look to to get a breakdown much to and question like what's in it for broadband what's in it for these particular targeted areas that each of us are keeping a watchful eye on anything else there on joint fiscal we can look at you know uh we're nothing else in joint fiscal's website we are we need to like today there was testimony on a hs uh sir clark testified in and house uh and sent it uh health and welfare and health care committees and she gave us a power point which talked about some of the money coming into her but even in that power point there were big you know 100 million dollars is coming from administration we don't know the remand chair so unfortunately this is you know when when the bill came passed in december 27th it's it's we're in a real time we'll keep putting things up there but um i think it's something we're trying to figure out in the staff level and also um legislators have to just and the administration has to have that how do we sort of get that information in these categories in the useful ways you make decisions um a lot of it is going to be passed through i think in the a hs and i transportation where the department is getting the money it's going to come right through and the gisting line and then the department the um committees are going to have to consider you know what do they do with the flexibility that they have and so that's the that's the easier stuff it's um but it's it's not an easy situation we will we will redouble our efforts to try to find out what's out there in the way of changing stuff and whenever you post something else you guys are great about letting us know i just will reiterate that so many senators are just hungry for information on on how they can actualize this information in their committees of jurisdiction so maybe we should adopt the practice which we did on the off session or just every time we post something new just send a notice to all legislators that this just went up okay good point okay right i had yeah i think my mine's actually a follow-up to senator ballant and senator surrock and tom's comment about keeping track of what's going on i'm frankly overwhelmed trying to deal with this through a zoom method um we all have our areas where we concentrate to some extent but we have this misinformation a lot of misinformation too uh and trying to pin down that misinformation that many of our constituents get it's all very difficult so the more we can get information even if we all don't get to read it and um tom's idea of of you know re-looking at things in an interim period is a good one i i'm afraid we're in a situation where we're going by a calendar of when the legislature meets this may not be the best time for the legislature to be meeting it may be better you know two or three months from now when we have better information particularly what you said about the school steve that somebody said schools are going to get this the schools are going to get that we don't know when they're getting it will they get it directly from the feds will they you know it be passed through through do e how's this all gonna work and then we're making decisions and they're making decisions at town meeting on mark second completely without information about what the federal helps them thinking god you know i would just respond that there's really almost no good time because the the renters the rent subsidy money if you don't spend it by september 30 that goes to other states and so uh when we have a couple other revisions like that where they have just said to us you need to get it out there or you lose it and uh there's some of that in the education language too so but i think you're totally right and this is something senator mcdonald made the point the other day the numbers are changing all the time you know the regular the rules are going to change all the time like they did last time uh and we may get more money in a new bill so i i think it's just the nature of the pandemic that we're we're living in a you know the money's coming in this strange way the the needs are changing um it's going to be that feeling of just constantly trying to keep up and um yeah i just don't know that you can really wait or you we have a potential to lose a lot of dollars um because of the way i did the bill that's helpful steve to know that um can't wait but maybe we it's awful it's really bad yeah well and doing it by zoom is makes it all the more different yeah and we may have to do like we did before and that is try to set up an alternative structure so we can make which we use joint fiscal committee we did we worked almost continuously um because of the need to make decisions quickly but didn't couldn't make a minute you know within the official session a senator i know from uh mariland sent a picture of his chamber from up above and they've all got plexiglass they sit in plexiglass chairs surrounded by plexiglass so they can meet in person chamber i think i'd take this yeah so i'm not sure there's any good solution to this problem i i can't see a committee room with plexiglass gauges without i hated and sent a picture of the committee rooms but the but the chamber is very elegant you know but the plexiglass is around every chair i don't know how they get in maybe from above they jumped in uh senator yeah i just you know to speak to what senator shears was saying i know a number of senators have talked to me about do we need to structure it similarly to last session in that we work hard until some point in may we take a break and then we have to convene i don't think we have clarity on that yet but certainly i welcome the input from everyone on this call i i want your best thinking about how this can work um i'm i'm really looking to the wisdom of all of you certainly i'm engaged with the speaker on this same question which is what is the right schedule for us to keep uh in order to spend this money the best way for vermonters so i think the big unknown is what will be subsequent legislation from washington that you know that absolutely uh because it seems like uh there's going to be if uh at least the way they're describing it money coming to um cities and states um to help with uh the covid so um i i hate i but this is we shouldn't keep tom with our lamentations about what we might be having to do over the the summer um so um i don't know i i just an announcement for appropriations after we finish this joint session we have to um we have one item of business this afternoon so just want to alert people um and so i i'm not sure whether we have more questions of tom or logistically whether finance is going to be meeting again um after after we finish this what i'm checking um now we have committee discussion on state finances but i think given the schedule we've been keeping and it's now 318 that um we just won't meet today unless the committee really feels like they need to to talk um it takes a while even having been up to our eyeballs and joint fiscal in all of this for months it still takes a while to process everything we've heard today and uh senator star bobby yeah bobby amuted that i'm trying to make you all happy you wouldn't have to listen to me but anyways um i'm wondering do we have people that like tom that come along and suggest um things to us and revenue coming and and uh and does a good job at that do we have anyone that doubled checks because we have client that also comes along and then we have tom backing and backing him do we have anybody in state government that checks on our our finances as in regards to are we getting the best deal possible on our investment so we're recouping the best interest rates uh in things like that because you know this downgrading from seven and a half to seven and how our interest rates haven't done well to uh keep up with the teachers retirement uh you know i don't know a lot about finances but a little bit and the last few years have been not that bad in making money on investments and i i mean here we hear stories constantly about you know our our port or we aren't doing that well with our investments and and i i'm wondering if we have anybody looking after the people that are doing this to make sure it's being done properly and in our best interest i know something but i have a feeling steve knows it well i would say the treasurer's office is really charged with a lot of this and they you know i would say basically they do a pretty good job but i think you need to bring them in to talk about this question we did get some uh we did get some testimony yesterday from the new person at uh joint fiscal talking about um and maybe you can talk to this point uh tom that um because of the sort of mix of investments that you have to have for retirement for pension funds um it's hard to equate the return you would get simply with equities with what you would have with this portfolio of investments but um that's been a topic of discussion certainly in committee about what is what is a reasonable return assumption um and and then um how how does the performance of our funds stack against that and how are our funds performing compared to other other pension funds around the country yeah that's worth that's worth looking at and you know you've always got a risk and reward that are related so you know generally speaking of pretty low tolerance for risk with something like a pension fund so you're not going to expect the highest returns but uh worth comparing worth looking into and making sure that you're uh competitive i think most of that is outsourced um by the treasurer but best to have her and her staff come in and talk about that um more expert people than i have already spoken on this so i'll pass just that you know and talking with a treasurer about returns my study impression is that she's very risk averse and and you know so i think sometimes our returns are more modest than the impression we get from reading general financial news you know whatever the returns are it's just good to have you know simulations that allow and and tracking that allows you to make adjustments if you're wrong even if you know even if you're starting low so you're not as far off it's just good to make adjustments quickly and maybe maybe now they've got that going i don't really know but certainly in the past that wasn't the case that that isn't anything tom that you look at right no i don't i don't look at that is now that i'm participating in cdc i can ask more questions and get information but i'm not voting on it and i'm not advising on it i'm just sort of some additional eyes and ears for the legislature on what's happening there as is steve kline and catherine benham also sit in on those uh those meetings well final questions under syracan does this does the legislature have any votes on cdc none and that you know that may be something you want to look at um having because right now you know it's one thing to be on a committee but if you're not voting you know it's not like you have you can you know you can just ask questions and stuff like well it seems like a huge amount of policy is dictated by their recommendations and it seems that the lady should have more power there well we've seen certainly seen the recommendations in terms of bonding be reduced significantly as a result of the recommendations which we've not altered from so okay well if we're finished i'm going to ask appropriations to stay on okay and we'll have finance um and faith i see you're back on uh you and i can talk i guess tomorrow at noon is if we're set or you can give me a call thank you