 but we can go through the way we will, which we are pretty much decided on. I think I got it straight for the caucus today, that we were going to pretty much follow the recommendations of the task force with which is basically all waiting, we're keeping the waiting numbers. I think I can explain the varying the 32 of the differences. We are going to do with Ed's recommendation for the ELL students of weight plus an individual payment per student. And what else did I miss in there? Well, I think you threw the draft, even though Jim's not here, there are changes from the last time, some of the ones that we discussed and then a few other things that have come up. I met with the secretary of education last week and they made a few suggestions, so pretty minor, but I'm happy to talk to you. Well, this is going down as, GR draft three, draft four copies here. There is copy, it's 4.3. Yes, thank you. That is, I don't want to work on it. Anybody want to? They do. Okay. Now did he happen to highlight the changes? I don't think that they're highlighted from, yes, the first change is not until page six. So, come away. I know it's not quite 40 pages yet, but it's on the quarter. Let's get in there. All right, first change is on page six. So, do you want me to walk you through the whole bill again or just the changes? Because that's just going to be the changes. Okay, so starting on page six, this is, if you recall, we talked about the changes for moving from, right now, we do eligibility for nutrition benefits through the SNAP program. We're going to have a one year where we're doing free and reduced lunch, and then we're going to move to the universal income form. So section four makes the change moving from the SNAP benefits to the free and reduced lunch for the first year. And then section four A moves from the free and reduced lunch to the income structure to the universal income declaration form. So that's why it's sort of the same section drafted twice. And those all seem to be drafting or stylistic. Right, so this was just to clarify, because you'll recall it wasn't quite clear when we would be making that shift. Okay, and this would also include all students who are not English language. So current law, the reason why that's drafted that way, section four current law, students who are ELL students are actually included as students who live in poverty. So this is the current law makes that option includes them. So this would keep that the way it is for the first year before the new leads go into effect. So essentially for the, and then it would move to, if you look at four A, that language is struck. And it goes to the universal income form because that's when the new pop, so the new aid and the child of a Saudi prince, near that day free and reduced lunch the second year. And it's just, do we have any of those? There's a question that I said, we're already working a bit about the form, just what happens when people don't fill it out? One, or two, what happens when people fill it out with inaccurate information? And is there any thought about what the rate of non-compliance will be, which I suspect to be quite high, especially. So I think that's true for the current methods as well. So I don't think that there's gonna be too much of a change of charts, I can't decide whether it's poggy glasses or better. I don't think there's gonna be too much of a change in terms of non-compliance or inaccurate information from what we currently have. But the agency of education is tasked in the bill of creating the new form and has a little working group that would do so. So that working group could work to address that and how school districts, the form is supposed to be fully accessible. It would be, everybody would be required to do it. I mean, I can tell you just my own personal example, I never fill out the free and reduced lunch form because I know my family wouldn't qualify. But if my school district told me you should fill this out, I would fill it out. I think, no, I'm not the average, but I think that there would be, school districts would be really working to get it filled out because it would be additional tax capacity. I'm thinking particularly though of taxpayers like you, whose families wouldn't qualify, how much of a privacy ejection there's going to be to collect information that they would argue that you don't need. Well, I think that this form is allowed by the federal government and it's based on the brackets. It's not based on specific income. So I wouldn't have to say exactly how much my family makes, but just sort of like check it in a bracket. And it would be covered by all of the same kind of confidentiality requirements. I'm just anticipating that, there are going to be privacy objections that if the purpose of this is to deal with free and reduced lunch, and clearly I don't want free, my kids don't want free, but they just want, why are you making equal this format is going to be an argument that you will hear. And second, there will be concerns about confidentiality. Yeah, and I think that later on in the bill, we also make recommended that we have that new fund that's come back with recommendation. So I think if there are issues, there are a couple of mechanisms in the bill that would allow that to be addressed or at least. I'm just anticipating objections. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. I'm not sure that it's going to be any worse than it is now. It's just going to be different. I mean, this is the thing the teacher is going to safety pin to the kids jacket to make sure that you have that. Why is that pin to your jacket? Because my teacher doesn't think I'll give it to you. She will come to get the form if you don't bring it in. That's right. The truth. Yes, actually they have a quite an active program in Winiske where you don't come to school. They do come preaching. Oh, sorry. Section five is the section about the universal income declaration form. Now we start in the 23-24 school year. And it would be set at 185% of poverty, which is currently what we use for both free and reduced lunch and snacks. So it's not a change in the poverty level. It's just a change in how we collect the information. And then there's created on a report October 1st of this year the agency of education has that working group. And it would be a statewide to determine whether people is from an economically defined private background. So those are the first changes. And those were the ones that we talked about last, a part of what we talked about last committee member. Okay, so this is really, it's more of a technical, it's that substantive. No, it's just clarifying it. Because I think when we read it last time, you all had some questions about it. And it was good because I've read it so many times. I understood it, but you didn't. And that showed me that we needed to clarify it. So hopefully this clarifies it. Page 10 is the next change. And this is also a clarifying change to align that the small school enrollment with the population density enrollment, just clarifying that the agency would have to to provide both, because there's a threshold, not all small schools get the small school, but it's only small schools in low population density areas. So that would be aligning that. And then on page 11, it's the same kind of aligning with those two measures. And then the next change is page 17, there's just an insertion of a word. And this is in the ELL section of the things that the agency is required to do. The secretary asked if we could insert professional development resources. So it was clear that the agency wouldn't be required to actually do the professional development. School districts could do the professional development. Just write a check. So the agency can provide resources, guidance, you know, curriculum, et cetera. But that's local school districts or some other organization could do the actual professional development for teachers and support personnel. So that was minor, but important to AOE. And motion sit. Yeah. So we have struck the strike that was before, that was the small schools grants, the current small schools grants getting rid of them, which pretty much everybody loves. Okay. So page 26, this came up, the task force mentioned, talked about this briefly and it came up with a superintendents meeting that I was at. We currently require school districts to put on their budget ballots, language about the increase or decrease on a per equalized people basis for their budget. And voters see it, if you all just voted on your school budget, you probably saw it on your ballot. Nobody looks at it. I didn't look at it. Well, it's one of the methods we have tried putting things on the ballot to make people think about whether or not they're going to vote. Right. So the problem is this, during the transition, because we're changing the pupil weights, equalized pupils are gonna change pretty drastically in some districts and they're gonna change all in all districts. So through no change at all of the school budget, the per pupil spending on an equalized pupil basis will change in a school district. And so it will be super confusing to voters because things are gonna be going up and down. I had some cases in this year and I've got 6,000 students and I don't know where anybody moved into town. Right. So it's gonna be super confusing. So we had talked about this briefly. So this just suspends that during the transition, just like we suspend other things that are gonna kind of be out of whack during the transition. And later on in the bill, there's a requirement that this Education and Fund Advisory Committee make a recommendation for when to bring that back in and what it would say or if to bring that back in or if there's another way to do it. So when I get to that, I'll explain that too. So then the next change is on page 28. It's one of those small work changes that makes a big difference. This is the audit requirements. And there was the long list of things to include in the audit. So measurements, the quality standards, test scores, the total scores, the youth risk behavior surveys, graduation rates, et cetera. The secretary asked that we, that he thought that that was a really, really long list and might be very, very difficult to get all of those things into an audit. We already have the requirement that AOP, the Education and Fund Advisory Committee and that auditor would determine what the sort of standards are for the audit and the scope of the audit. So we changed this from a shall include to a may include so that not all of those measures would have to be in there. So that's that. You know, I would, I think ideally like them all in there but he was very concerned that that would be difficult. So that was their request. And then on page 29, this is the language about the auditor hosting a webpage requested to make sure there's trans transparency. So it would have this act, whatever it is that passes the statement of work that is agreed upon. Any reports to the general assembly about its work and then all of the metrics that are used which what's the list that they ended up deciding to use. That was that on page 31. This is changes to the powers and duties of the Education Fund Advisory Committee. Okay, this we did go over last time. Yeah, so one of the here, there are a couple of things that so changes we added a section actually this is not one that we went over. There are some things we went over and some things we didn't. So the powers and duties updating the waiting factors changes are addition to elimination of the categorical aid changes to income levels for the property tax credit under that. So that was the thing that you and Senator McDonald were talking about like the income threshold for property tax credit. She keeps up the way it is. Right. I gotta go film my gas tank. So if we took out the stuff that was this, as you said, the sort of purely math math, the means to adjust the revenue sources for education fund, including whether to transition to an income education income tax. That was the way to put that in there. And there's a little bit more of that later and the means for improving equity, transparency and efficiency, whether and when to reinstate the excess spending threshold and whether and when to reinstate that language that we just talked about on the school budget. So that, and then further down in paragraph three in the initial report, since we've talked about the income tax thing and come to no conclusions and we're running out of time. Senator Pierson and I talked about putting it in here so that this tax fund could make recommendations on some of the things that we were sort of getting stuck on. How do you deal with the renters credit? How do you administer such a new thing and ways to transition? And this would be done in conjunction with this committee, the JFO and the Department of Taxes. And so just making recommendations on sort of how could it make work and then, but no recommendations on definitely doing it, but just how it might go. Let's just say you should make myself a discussion. There you go, Mountain Chair. Trying to help out to move things along. Down below, I'm bottom of page 39. It just moved, originally I had each minute meetings per year for this new committee and that seems like excessive. So I changed it to four, but also makes it cheaper. So that makes the change on top of page 33, changes the appropriation from 5,000 to 2,500. And the joint fiscal and AOE have to come into enter into an MOU. And this just adds language about updating the weights and recalibration and recalculating the same language that is involved for that committee. On page 34, the agency of education staffing requests or staffing six positions, the secretary wanted them a little bit rearranged. So there would be one position for ELL, because he said there's already a position. And so he thought two for ELL would be sufficient. Then two that would work on the universal income declaration form and provide guidance to school districts on its use. And then the three positions for finance and data. So it's still six positions. He did adamantly support the six positions. He thought that they were necessary to be able to do all the work that's required. And then I think the final change is just in the effective dates, adding the effective dates for various things that were just added and renumbering. So those are the changes since the last time we saw it. Question, chair. Yes. When you're going to finish 31, there are references to the new educational property tax system. And is that referring to the weighting system that we're talking about here? Which one? On page 30. Big recommendations on the implementation of an education income tax system to replace the homestead education property tax system. So this would be recommended with how or whether to, it would first be whether, right? Make recommendations on implementation. I suppose it's possible to implement. Yeah, I mean, that was the intent was it would be possible implementation. And listing some of the things that were sort of sticking point, like how do we deal with renters? How do we implement it? That kind of thing. So it's not referring to something that was previously in the building system. Right. The weighting, which is being folded into the current. Exactly. So this would be, you know, we have that other bill that we don't have time to get to. This would sort of plant the seeds for trying to answer some of the questions to decide whether or not we want to go with it or not. So wait a minute, where's the new system in here? Correct. Right. If there's no tweaking you want to do to it, that's what we found out. The intent was mostly just to get some more information and see if it's even feasible. And it's not the beginning nor the information. That works. Yeah, maybe that will save me. Does this work? We've got the joining also about getting it out. Yeah, so Julia is here, at least I say your name. There's Julia. OK, so Julia, can you just run it? So this is our area of responsibility. OK. Sure, Julia Richter, Joint Fiscal Office. So on the committee page, there should be the fiscal note posted under my name. And this is a fiscal note that is corresponding to the draft of the bill that Senator Hardy just walked the committee through. Do you want me to pull it up on my screen, or do you want me to just walk through the document? I think we've all got a paper copy. Or Senator Pearson, it's posted, and you've got it. Yeah, yeah, I've got it on my computer, so no need to do it for me. So just talk to us. This is the brave new world. OK, well. Someday you'll actually get to sit in here. I look forward to it. I'm over in the Pink Lady every day, so feel free. If you'd like to come over and meet me in person. But I'll start out with a fiscal note. So overall, in fiscal year 23, JFO estimates this bill would result in a $602,500 fiscal impact to the general fund and would have an unclear fiscal impact to the Education Fund in future years. So starting out with the general fund fiscal impact, this stems from the two appropriations that are spelled out in the bill. So the 2,500, which is for the per diem and reimbursement of expenses for the members of the Education Fund Advisory Committee, and then the 600,000 for the full time positions for AOE. So I guess before I move into the potential fiscal impacts to the Education Fund, I will pause there and see if there's any questions about those numbers. I'm not seeing any. I think those are pretty straightforward. Yep. OK, then moving on, I guess there's sort of two buckets to talk about. So the first would be regarding the ELL categorical grants. So if we assume that the ELL categorical grants were to result in full increased spending, in FY24, we estimate this would result in approximately $1.75 million impact to the Education Fund. And this stems from the categorical aid of 25,000 provided to districts with 1 to 5 ELL students and 50,000 to districts with 6 to 25 ELL students. So as I know the committee is well aware, absent any other changes in policy, an increase in spending would result in the base homestead yield and or the base non-homestead tax rate would need to be adjusted to account for any increase in spending. But that is an assumption. So that's I do want to flag that. Before moving on to the other potential fiscal issues, are there any questions about that portion? I am not seeing it. You're on a roll. OK, then moving on, I'm on page two now. In this third section, the other potential fiscal issues. And so with the adjustment of the pupil weights, tax capacity will be shifted for most school districts and towns. So that means that assuming education spending remains constant, some town's tax rates would increase while other town's tax rates would decrease. And so in other words, assuming this education spending remains constant, towns that would have fewer equalized pupils with the new weights than they had with the prior weights would have higher tax rates, while towns that would have more equalized pupils with the new weights than they had with the prior weights would have lower tax rates. So this is likely to have an effect on the education fund, including the property and income yields, the base non-homestead tax rate. But this effect is unclear as education spending is determined at the local level, which leads me into the second related major bullet point here, that total education spending is determined by local votes and may increase. Districts with increased tax capacity, which is what I just spoke about, may increase education spending, while districts with decreased equalized pupils and thus decreased tax capacity may not choose to decrease spending significantly. But I do, of course, want to reiterate that while the changes in weights and changes in ELL funding may change local decisions and local funding choices, the actual change in total education spending is determined at the local level, which is why it's unclear what effect this would have on the education fund. So I guess from my end, in terms of going through the fiscal note, that's what I've prepared, but I'm happy to answer any questions the committee may have. Thanks, committee. I'm not saying that. OK, thank you. A lot of unknowns in this one. I'm clear. I'm clear. We knew that going in. I think we should have a pool in which we select the percentage of increase in overall education spending we expect a result from passage of the bill. I think we've had so much pressure on schools to keep their spending down that if they can lose taxing capacity without going up on couldn't be surprising. Some schools will be well, but some of the others, it's going to be just going to be a hard one. OK, any further questions or discussion? Every year when we go home for town meeting, we've known what the yield was going to be or the tax rate was going to be. Do we know that yet? Not unless it's in one of the bills, the house and all right. We never it's usually in miscellaneous tax. So it is never set in stone. Until the last that and that's usually one of the last. The house, if it's way off from the December, and I think this year, you raised your question. Yeah, I think this year the house. Did put a bill out to indicate. No, that was last year that the December first letter because it was based on all of our $150 million deficit in the Ed fund. They set one out early on to message. We do that letter. That's what towns are facing it on. Usually put out a number that we leave. A number that would not be higher than to the end of session. Sometimes it came out a little bit lower. We've always been able to take a chart too. If you vote this, you know, that this is what you can depend on it may be better. There were no charts this year. No. Okay. Julia, can you help us? Sure. So I think that Senator McDonald's, your referencing charts that were put out in previous years, my understanding is that those were not put out this year because there is the large surplus on the bottom line of the education fund. So it's unclear what will happen with the yields and with the tax rates because there there is this, this surplus. I will say that ways and means has been taking testimony. They started pre-town meeting. They, they took more testimony today about how school budgets have come in in accordance with what was originally anticipated. They're, they're a bit higher than was forecasted in the December one letter, but we're still working to, to make sense of those numbers. And, and ways and means is, is, is discussing it. Does that answer your question? It doesn't. It leads me to the next question, which was, is during the town meeting, I'm asking you to put it in a question. Jay, bring us back and estimate on how many per monitors paid their school taxes based on their income as a percentage of the, of the population. Which is occasionally that 80% and then drifted downward. Back up downwards to find out what it was today. Have we. Excited. This is two weeks later. Do we have a, do we have a number? Yeah. I actually did share that number with. Sorry. Senator Cummings and I, I did send it to you. I don't, I don't know if it was missing your inbox. I'm sure it's lost somewhere in my email. No, it's okay. I'm happy to forward it to you again. I did respond that day. Now we're fine. Okay. So in fiscal 20, fiscal year 2023, we estimate that approximately 67% of Vermont households will receive a property tax credit. 57% in fiscal. In fiscal year 23. So the, the year that we're talking about moving into. This year I don't have that number in front of me. I can, I can send it that to you later. Okay. It's definitely slipping down. So we think that it's higher than 67%. But we find out later. Yeah. Cause what it was before was more around 70%. Yeah. I know it's, it's around 70%. The exact percentage. I just, I don't have, but I will, I, I will forward that to the committee. 72 sticks in my mind. It's in that ballpark, but it is significantly lower than the 80. We originally. Yeah. So that's what, one of the things we recommend. We asked them to recommend the level. The income level. So, so that the education fund advisory committee thing. That was one of the things that's added up to their duties is to recommend changes to the level. You're not going to meet my recommendation in the next three or four weeks. No, no, no. No, no. So we could change it now. If there's going to be a recommendation to deal with that, it's going to be done. Do you have a recommendation? Okay. But you just don't recommend that you can do numbers. You got to set the income level and set levels. I would suggest that might be something we. Put on the miscellaneous. No, no, no. So we could change it now. If there's any recommendation. To deal with that. It's going to be done. You have a recommendation. So we could move this into the next row. And. The next thing that's going to be done. We could move it to the next row. If there's any recommendation on the miscellaneous tax bill, because this bill is coming out of here. Well, you're. Getting that other. Number for this year. Could you. Share with us. What. How we would have to appropriate money to restore. 80% of Vermont's working families. To pay. Their school taxes based on their house. income. I think what he's asking is the joint fiscal and I think this will be cooperative can give us an income level right now it's at 90 and it is up to a hundred and it ramps down. There's two different it's it's at 90,000 and then as it moves up then the level of homestead value decreases. Which decreases? Yes. Slow. What would the number the 90,000 have to be for 80% of Vermont families who live in homes to pay their school taxes based on their incomes. Okay sure we can look into that and I'll get back to you. Okay committee we've got a heavy agenda tomorrow. I've got did everybody get the timeline? Okay he's going to be in I've got waiting and family hygiene products on firm phone on Thursday. I could get them out sooner I like to because they're going to approach and I don't think so and if my next thing was and what are we going to do about the income base but you put that in there and if that works for you and Senator Pearson because I'm trying to get some stuff but joint fiscal is in no position right now to free up the right people to to do it so to the waiting with this in it and we still got to 12 and there's always miscellaneous tax but I think this outside committee and we may actually have to do some money for a consultant depending on what they find out but my attitude is this gives the house something to look at if they if they want to and I would hope it doesn't and our work on it but it's a little marker it won't it's just looking for breathing space yeah that was the intent trying to give you some reading space all of us I would prefer not to go to 10 o'clock I don't know what is 88 is but that's that regulating law small cannabis cultivation farming I would assume we will both that out tomorrow that was saying yeah we know it can't be agriculture but if you do a thousand by thousand lot or foot growth it doesn't attract when you're coming use because it's not agriculture by a federal standards and it carried over the agricultural tax exemption for if you're brought in twine to tie up your cannabis by any attractor are we actually starting at 130 yeah okay I tried moving it back on Fridays and no one shows up to 130 anyway so I gave up energy savings accounts that's how we're going to extend those that pilot program just to get off the ground yes then we are going to go up or down on rocking all right and I'm not Rachel Smoltzard called and asked to testify on biochar and the timeline is there I thought we were actually might get someone from the board of the PUC IS 437 the house would like out we're going to go back over it that's that little something for everybody bill I did get an email from Peter Tucker from the realtor who said they'd like to testify and I said fine but I don't know what and then the construction worksite I don't know if we're ready to vote that or not but FX has said me on some of you emails apparently EC fiber is not involved in the lawsuit they've been dropped so he wants to come in and explain to us what actually happens is who is in the insurance process because we're trying to make sure and I'm not sure that there's a problem we're trying to solve a problem that may not exist unless we want to find a way that no has to go to court when you're dealing with insurance companies I don't know that but we will find out what the deep the actual details of the present he's told us years ago they don't put fiber on a pulse that's what you see fire does yes I know that we're going to hear what who had insurance when they had insurance before we start telling people they have to have insurance it sounds like they may already have to have insurance and we may be trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist I think it sounds like it's not that the points are not going to have their losses covered it's just that it takes a while which for them it is very difficult which appropriations to be told this is going to make a request of how to tie it that way so yeah some of them will be able to set up a whole family page it's paid a substantial portion good but it has paid it off did you have to do a go fund me page or to get justice it is it is senator Pearson ma'am chair I do you need us anymore I have a redistricting issue that I would get to if you're through with us or or or not do we want to me I've got I usually give bills an hour or day to lay over in case somebody says what do you mean you're voting it so I've got everything tomorrow I'd like to vote out as much as we can tomorrow the other one is the time share one I think we're going to vote out we'll hear from Rebecca Samoroff from the tax department and I'm hoping that one's ready to go to I'm trying for a 10 o'clock on Friday night so are you leaving us or that's up to you that's up to you madam chair if you're done with me I would leave I I can be very done I think we are so done with you all right okay I think we are done we can end live stream and right