 Well, as I always say, we're not in the record, we're we just started. I'll say it anyhow. When I was, we were told that the bill was 11, nothing on on the workforce capacity bill. I said, that's been the same case for 30 years. I've only been in for a few years. Okay, so good morning, everybody. We're going to start. We have representative Jerome here. Karen to Karen's here. And David falls. I think. So this is our first look at this bill. Okay. For George. Why don't you tell us what you want to tell us about the bill. Sure. So do you want to walk through it? I mean, you. I had a lot of talk. Tell us about the need of the idea. Sure. So. H64 and accolades supporting creative sector businesses. And it's to provide grants and other incentives to support creative sector businesses. That have been impacted by COVID-19. So I, you know, I guess. Give you a snapshot. When I'm looking at my own small town, I was a brand of that. The town of 4,000 people has opera house. It has our gallery. Our gallery has town hall venue. Not profit for profit. Performing arts spaces and multiple. Artists studios and our. Independent. Artists. Great. Great. Great. Great. So it is like a snap. I think it's a snapshot of. Small Vermont. And it's a. It's a working class town. It's, it's. It would identify itself. So. A good snapshot of what this is. And I think this is repeated. And I know this is repeated over and over again. But state. It makes up for cultural fabric. And I think that's a. Remember. And it is. The economic impact. Of the arts. Is due to the economic impact. Of the arts. And I think it's a very. Very good. Good. So the economic impact. Of the arts. In rural. And urban areas throughout the state. It tracks. And it brings. All that. Great. A reference. 9% of our jobs throughout the state. And. But the pandemic has profoundly impacted. of these creative businesses, including museums and theaters and galleries and studios and performing arts venues, as well as cultural organizations, as well as artists and architects and chargers and practice and dancers and designers on a list of all of the applications. And this bill would help any enterprise organization or individual products and services are rooted in the artistic and creative context. So during COVID, 8,000 jobs in the creative sector were lost and in the Brookings Institute study, estimated that $216 million in sales was lost between April and July of 2020. It's a significant amount of money. And then in March of 2020, the arts organization were the first to close and are still some of the great to last to reopen and many, many are still struggling because people are hesitant to come back and they're adults of confidence in coming back to the numbers that we saw. Right. So 8,000 jobs, is there any number of some company that can come back to 7,000 in COVID? I don't know, but because Karen Middlemann certainly made the address that. Karen, you have- We could. So anyway, so now, so looking at this hesitancy of coming back, we need to help these businesses now when they're returning to manage the high cost of COVID, COVID state supplies to reboot their programs, to re-engage audiences, and they need to get back on the same just good sound footing again to post COVID-19. So the bill proposes to provide 17 and a half million dollars in financial assistance to the creative sector businesses and cultural organizations. And I'll just run down the program. The first one is a $10 million, oh, first of all, let me just talk about this. The, what we propose in this bill is to fund, the funds at 17 and a half million dollars will be used, will be used, taking the remaining funds from the Economic Recovery Grant Program, which ABCD administers, and then some grant those 17 and a half million dollars should run Arts Council to administer these grants. My understanding is now there's 25 and a half million dollars left in that fund that were not dispersed of the unused, the bridge grants did not get out in the manner that they have helped it with. So the first program is a $10 million in Creative Economy grants. These are allocated to theaters, community art centers, galleries, museums, dance studios and creative kind of businesses and not profits, so for profit and not profit for operating support and recovery. It is estimated that they could grant about 250 to 300 grants in a size of about $5,000 to $250,000. And they're gonna face this granting process. So Vermont Arts Council had a very successful grant administering about five million dollars of grants during the first round of COVID fund, the CRF funds. Now, then they're also basing their plan to provide this money on a program from the State of Colorado in their Economic Development Office. And- So you said that this first $10 million, you think that there were 200, 300 grants go out? Yes. Yeah, and the Arts Council believes that they could, in a range from small $5,000 grants to $250,000 grants for small organizations, $5,000, a larger organization. We know those longer, larger organizations. So $250,000. So another program would be $2 million to use for transitional costs for safe public programming. So this would be things like tons of ticketing, online sales platforms, and COVID-related health and safety protocols. And they would be, they could provide about 300 grants. And just as a point of interest, the Paramount Theater told us that they spend about, are now spending about $1,000 per event to, in this, in public safety. That's what they're spending now? Yeah. They're spending $4,000. $1,000. $1,000 per event. Per event, in order to cover all the public safety protocols. Which theater was at the front? Paramount Theater College. Yeah, we've had some interesting testimony from Eric Ouellette, who was the executive director at the Paramount Theater College. And then in this section, the last bit of money, it'd be $4 million to use for facility adaptations. So these are slightly more expensive things like air purification systems, expanded outdoor seating, HVAC assessments, and upgrades. And in this area, they could provide about 80 grants that would range from $20,000 to $100,000. So in the next section of this bill is $500,000 for statewide promotion and marketing of the promoter creative sector. And this is to market. So we would provide, if current people come back, they're more confidence to attending large gatherings and conferences. And that about $25,000 to $30,000 to $30,000 each. And then the next one would be $26,000 to sustain and build a Vermont creative network and a creative action plan. Legislator provides for this plan in 2016. So they want to hire a coordinator and cell leaders and continue to work with that on the substituted plan and roadmap for economic development of the arts. And that's it. So who's going to start? No, Vermont Arts Council. They have a very interesting document. Yeah, Vermont, they have a substituted plan that is worth looking at. The last piece is, not almost the last piece, the $750,000 to, and that's $150,000 is to revitalize downtown and village centers with vacant storefronts, which you know there's been quite a few to come up during the pandemic. And that would be to, for artists of the rent of the storefront and also to perhaps provide additional housing. Also if that's within it. But a good example of that is in Middlebury during COVID and during their road construction, there were quite a few empty storefronts in downtown Middlebury. Just a stone's throw away from the college and they had a great interesting cooperative program called Bundle, where it was a series of art exhibits, classes, performances. And the town estimated that there was additional direct impact of $250,000 in sales from building that temporarily building that storefront. And that program is called Bundle. Bundle. What's part of this is envisioned as an housing? So in that $250,000, there is an idea that if in a building there was a vacant, livable space, it was, you know, safe, you know, safe, livable space that it could be rented to an artist and sort of cooperate with the, in that, you know, I guess people sort of envisioning in a downtown where there was an empty storefront and maybe a livable space upstairs and an artist could occupy the spaces. And this is viewed as the grant to both the landlord to help finance the transition. Yep. The transformation of these spaces, right? Right. This is, well, it doesn't say that. Yeah, it is to the, provide rental income to building owners, enabling artists and creative businesses to thrive and spark energy and redevelopment and post COVID. That sounds right. So then the very last piece of this is $10,000 to fund farmer's night. Yes, this is very exciting. And through, and actually I have a, my personal story about this is that I was farmer's night, I knew it was coming up and we have this new offer company and Brandon and I thought how wonderful to make it two of the performers to come to this state house. Yeah. And I had no idea that people, unless they were funded through a community council or perhaps from the state house, they had no reimbursement, there was no reimbursement versus travel expenses to come to the state house and perform. I had just assumed that there was and I was embarrassed to say that my God, that I asked people to come and spend a day of their time to perform for us without any reimbursement. So there's a small allocation of $10,000 added on to this, to this built for that purpose. This is where our plea to the house of appropriations committee, this is where it ended up. Isn't that a good spot for it? It didn't end up in the budget, which is sort of where we were hoping it was going to end up. So is it just this small part of bill obviously, but do you view this as a mandate? They can't do this already. It just says it's authorized. It doesn't say that they have to respect it on this. I wonder if the language says, sorry, it's not, it's not, you're right. They shall spend. It shouldn't be. And are they not able to do this as a way to sort of correct. Yeah. So my understanding now is that I just pull up the, Oh, there's no money. You know, Right, I tell you there's no money, but there's no money here either. This is just of their existing budget. They can authorize it, they can use it. Oh no, that must be in the budget where we've given them $10,000 because it's new money. It's $10,000 new money. It's not money she has already. So we'll clarify that with the parks committee and Janet, but I believe this has to be no money. I mean, it's intended to be new money and it's intended to be in addition to whatever budget it is. That's just the opposite. I know. The resources available within the. Yeah, that's not what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be 10,000 new money. So we got to clarify that. Okay. Right, so yeah, well, there are a number of things in Farmers Night where there are funded, you know, Army bands, the VSO, but there are also a number of performances that just do it on their own. We get us there. They're at Charm Lutheran. That's quite sad. I know. That's sad. And yeah, so we felt that there was a need to help out with spending in a series. Okay. Any questions? And Karen's role in this year, thanks to Director of the Mart Arts Council, she's certainly able to give a lot more detail about the needs. Not necessarily. So Stephanie and I can all transparent to you, you've seen our version of this bill, which was exactly the same as Stephanie's. And we incorporated it into our economic development because we don't tend to like to call out specific sectors. So we included in the hardest hit sectors, but I'm just curious, on the marketing, you don't mention in coordination with the current marketing efforts of the state. You don't mention coordinating this with tourism and marketing. I think that is the intention. But it's not said. Okay. So that's the intention. I just want to clarify. Karen, do you want to address that also? Yes, absolutely. Thank you for the record. Karen Middleman, Executive Director of the Mart Arts Council. Can we just wait for the view as a witness? Oh, sure. Sorry. So thank you very much for your testimony. The obvious questions here is we, in this committee, we sort of have all these things not necessarily covered, but potentially covered in other parts of the money. So for the $10 million is carved out, we have $20 million meat allowance, which the arts council could apply for. And they justified it. They could theoretically get $10 million. For the $2 million and $4 million, we have CIG grants, which may be applicable to those kinds of things. And we didn't carve anything out for the arts or any other thing, but we did highlight priority sectors like the arts, like restaurants, lodging, child care, et cetera. And then promotion, I guess, where we have a provision for some of the monies. Not exactly on point for travel tourism. So did you get any, was there any discussion about, I looked back up and said, I was kind of struck when we did the first rounds of grants actually some members of the business community started speaking up loudly and said, well, they got that treatment. We didn't, you know, why did they get it? And we didn't get it. And so there's a big chunk here of what the amount we were able to find for business recovery grants going to the arts. Did you get any sort of discussion of why we're segregating out the arts above the art versus lodging? Well, I think we're just looking at this sector and then how much they, they lost, they, this particular section lost. And I totally understand, I totally, I'm sympathetic with the tourism and lodging sector for their losses. And I don't think it's, I don't think this is exclusive. It's exclusive and there probably is some overlap with this too, within that. But yeah, I didn't see that. When I think about like exclusions and get weren't able to participate, I think about equity and about small businesses that maybe had a tough time accessing grants. And we talked a lot about that. And this in this bill has recognized equity as part of their part of the model in providing the grants is looking at that equity and small, very small businesses. And in the commerce committee, we spoke a lot about these small businesses that needed help because they were going back early, early public days, didn't have their folks in order, were small, were so pride or didn't know how to ask, access programs had largely cash-based businesses. There was a lot we found out about the small businesses that weren't able to access. And the people, we had, and I think we know that the organizations that did access the funds were the ones that had their folks in order who had dedicated staff say like, okay, I'm going over to the next brand, I'll get the next one, I'm able to apply. And they understood it. And this sector is a small, a lot of these are very small businesses. And I think, and this is what I know that the commerce council can do, it's sort of, it is, it's a lot of hand-holding and really work to do with people. And that's what we did before, right? Carved out a certain amount of money. Yeah, we did. Carved out a certain amount of money. Yeah, we did. $500. But the need is much greater than $5 million. So you view this, I don't know if it's different for each person, I hear it, but do you view this as mostly for thinking or to compensate people for losses that they suffered from? It's losses that they suffered in order to get them passed. I think my understanding of this sector is that people have, they shrunk down, they shrunk down the skeleton crews. They laid out as many people as they can just to kind of keep their businesses going or their nonprofits going. And so the grant to be looking at back at 2019, and suffer what they've suffered through COVID and caring to give those details much better than I, and then help them sort of jumpstart themselves now. Is it too late? I'm not sure. Is everybody too long to do this? I'm not sure either. Is this, we're hoping that this will jumpstart enough people so they can continue on, that their nonprofits aren't going to shutter forever, that their business is not going to shut forever. Is it your understanding, the last column, which is your understanding that the grant could be issued for an arts program that shut it down and they don't have to reopen with that money? They don't have to reopen. They can justify that they lost money during that two year period. Are we going to give money to a group like that that doesn't have any attention or reopen? Right? Well, I don't have a vision here, they have to be in business now. Is there? Karen had a, I don't know if Karen said it to you, but I received it on a one page or on what's there. I think she's saying, I think the grant of the plan and how to distribute these grants, it would be something in my hope that people, that when you've got a grant, this is going to be going on. But they want me to, I can't imagine that. We would give grants to people. I was wondering, because we have this debate in all areas, you know, how much of this is trying to keep business afloat, go forward or how much is to, we can't cover everybody's loss for the last few years. No, I know, you're right, you're absolutely right. You're on the cover portion. Even if the Maxwell grant is $250,000, we know that these larger organizations have lost far more than that. Is the maximum grant for $2,050? $250. Okay, that's, Oh, that's $10 million. That's what's envisioned in the plan, it's not the bill, is it? No, it's not. No, you don't, they don't have criteria or an asset, but it is, for me, this is certainly what we did with Vita and the Kaplan Investment Program. This is in part, I would want it to be for businesses that are operational now, because we don't want to be giving money to businesses that are closed. And in my view, it's an economic development opportunity. So we don't want to, that is probably from the commerce perspective, this is economic development. Oh yeah, and that's why I was in your committee, and it isn't ours, it is. It's an economic dimension for our state, the creative sector. But I view this division is very similar to what we did in economic development. Clark is helping compensate people for losses, but also it's forward thinking in terms of how to apply this going forward for HVAC systems for improvements to their performance spaces or to their museums or to whatever, so that they can be, you know, code compliant and prepared for the next pandemic. Right. And for the ongoing concerns, they want to bring people back because we know particularly the creative sector is there's a wariness about returning. There's a wariness about sitting in close proximity with each other. And so some of this is to improve their spaces so people will feel more comfortable doing that. I mean, I think when we've had this conversation about other businesses, I've said the same thing and I think no one more than the arts will reinvent themselves after a pandemic and you know, not necessarily the system the same for, have less bricks and mortar, have more installations, have more experiential art. So I imagine Carol will speak to this, but I just don't want us to hamstring everything into fixed costs, bricks and mortar because there are lots of exciting creative things happening where they're creating tours around the state of different, you know, installations or outdoor experiences or more individualized experiences that you create for yourself that we should get the arts flexibility as well to reinvent what an artistic and cultural experience is post pandemic. Sure, and certainly, we also think about some of our larger historic venues like the Paramount Theatre in downtown Raleigh, the Flint Theatre. And these are old historic buildings that need to be upgraded so that it's safe. So yeah, you're right. It has to be, you know, many more outdoor concerts, but there also are these historic buildings that need to, people need to feel confident in going into. And I think, you know, I am telling this, the old town hall, the town hall is there. I was gonna say, your town hall is a quiet space. It's, you know, it's built prior to the Civil War. So there, you have to try to bring it up to current codes. Yeah, I think it's just a post pandemic. There's really new exciting art installations being created where you, you know, you're experiencing things differently and like Barbarossa in Essex. I'm just trying to sort of like, yeah. So, you know, I just want to make sure we're not leaving out new ways of experiencing art. That's a really good point. I sort of want to re-look at our capital grants program as to whether that flexibility is built in there. It's not just bricks and boards because I think it does say the capital improvements and there's other ways to do capital improvements that are not bricks and boards or maybe it's not capital improvements, but it's a different way to spend money. And it gets to the same goal. I don't know that it's limited just to the arts. Right. And my understanding of the capital improvement grants are, and I've just done a brief review of H159 and how it's looking at it now, is that those are for transformational projects. Which one? With a small T now. With a small T? Yeah. So I would say like those two to four million dollars are upgrades for H-rexes, but isn't transformational in a broader way. That absolutely will fit into a CIP application. That's why it's transformational now with a T, lower to 50. Okay. Okay. I don't understand what it was. It's not a big transformational project. It's no longer for big regional projects. Okay. That's what I'm trying to understand. Which is why, no, these creative sector grants would fit perfectly into, I mean, that's what we were thinking of as we went through it, is if we'd incorporate this bill in that. And these kinds of needs in that. Thank you very much. Yeah, you're welcome. You're welcome to stay. Thank you. David's trying to get the bill pretty straight forward. Yeah, it is pretty straight forward. I think he walked us through it. Just wanted to ask what you already tested it. That's fine, but yeah, I'm glad. I'll sit on the side, David. Well, let's hear it from Karen first. Alisha, David. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to speak. I'm not working, thank you very much. No, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Delighted to be with the committee. It's all yours now. For the record, I'm Karen Middlemann, Executive Director of the Vermont Arts Council. Thank you. I'm delighted to join you all. And I think what I want to say, building on what Representative Jerome said, you know, we worked with Representative Jerome and Senator Clarkson on various versions of this bill in direct response to the continued financial distress we're seeing in the sector. And your committee has already heard me testify about this. So I won't go through all the data, but I just, I want to say to the way that we crafted the grant programs, they're specifically geared to the data that we've collected on losses related to COVID on the economic harm that our sector has suffered. Also on the continued costs of COVID mitigation, like what Stephanie mentioned at the paramount, we've collected data from a sample of cultural organizations at mainly theaters and performing arts venues about the continued costs of responding to the public health harm of COVID. And we've also got both national, regional and state level data on continued audience hesitancy which Senator Clarkson alluded to. And it's clear that our organizations are still, they're at about 30 to 40% capacity right now because audiences are just hesitant to come back. That's consistent with national market potential data that we've seen that says in the arts and culture sector, we're not going to see audiences returning to full capacity until probably the fourth quarter of 2022. And that's assuming that COVID really is largely behind us of course, and there's no new variant. So just to the, to your question, Senator Sorokin about why the arts, it's simply because the sector is devastated. And because they're not, they're not coming back. They're, you know, 30 to 40% seating capacity is almost not financially viable for a large theater like the Flynn or the Paramount. So while their doors may be open, they may be welcoming audiences back, they're sustaining increased costs to operate in this new COVID environment. And they're just, they're not filling seats. And, you know, downtown brand and downtown Rutland, downtown Burlington depends on those organizations getting people in those seats because there are economic engines. So that's the answer to why this sector needs to be helped at this particular moment. I know House Commerce heard testimony from Eric Millett at the Paramount, which Stephanie mentioned. They were dark for 18 months and they just reopened in September, 2021 after 18 months of zero ticket revenue, zero venue rentals. They opened in September, 2021 with their audience numbers still significantly down. And then they had to add the costs that Stephanie mentioned of deep cleaning, COVID mitigation, vaccine checks, then Omicron hit. And by December, they were already looking at venue cancellations, national tours being postponed or canceled. And I know that in the first quarter of 2022, they're already back down in a deep hole. So their doors are open, they're back in business, but it doesn't mean that they're okay. Very, very few of our businesses in the creative sector are really okay. So we designed the aid packages in this bill as a bridge to kind of get our businesses and organizations back to some level of stability and safety. And I'm really grateful for everything your committee is doing to try to stabilize businesses across Vermont and particularly grateful to the House Commerce Committee for their confidence that a grant program was a more flexible way to deliver aid than a loan program. And their confidence in the arts council based on what we've learned frankly over the last two years developing and implementing for COVID relief programs. So we designed the package, the recovery package that you see in H624 based on that experience. Sure. Oh, I didn't know that was a natural breaking point, Karen. I just have a question. I'm happy to take questions. I'm okay being a bit of a broken record that I think housing is at the center of all of our economic crises right now. And I was glad to see how it's been kind of mentioned in the $750,000 for restoring vitality. I'm wondering how that kind of small amount of money would help, I mean, we see vacant college properties, vacant, like huge vacant spaces. And you've probably been to other communities where they turn an old school into artists' residences and do have a gallery in the gym. I mean, what are we talking about in terms of trying to have artists' housing and residences because I think those could be such a driver of vitality and it's not a lot of money. You're right, it's not a lot of money. I would love to see us able to invest more in some co-working and housing spaces, kind of combined work and living spaces for artists along the lines of what many, many communities have done, including our own. In Bellows Falls, there's a great example of that kind of combines residential and artists' space. What we envision doing with the $750,000 is probably piloting this program in two or three of the creative zones, two or three areas, and helping multiple businesses. For example, the Bundle project that Stephanie mentioned in Downtown Middlebury was one grant to one project through the Better Middlebury partnership, which is their Downtown Alliance, but it benefited 30 or 40 businesses in the Downtown. So two or three pilot projects, but they'll have a ripple effect and benefit many artists and businesses. And then if it's a successful pilot, we hope to be able to raise private funds to replicate it and expand it in the future. I'd love to see that. But it's not really meant to be a major housing bill so much as a focus on Downtown vacant storefronts. I mean, right, I mean, so it could have a housing component. Right. The landlord also had a pet space that they could also house artists, but it's really, I believe, I mean, I think our original intention was to fill storefronts with studios and with art spaces that would revitalize them. A lot is thrown into that paragraph, so that's kind of thrown in. I didn't know if there was specific attention. That's because we were working on this together and housing was potentially a piece we wanted to be. We don't want to preclude housing, because it's part of the community. So this is another example in my mind that the challenges this committee faces in terms of where we prioritize this funding because we have a Downtown credit program, which we're trying to expand that could easily fit here, that the applications here could easily go to the Downtown program to get the money. Yet we're making the decision here to carve out one specific group as opposed to leading that to the administrators of the Downtown tax credit program. Just another challenge that we've faced here. I'm not sure these kinds of babies would fit into the Downtown tax credit, all right? Certainly, if you're revitalizing, if you're re-taping or... It would fit under better places more and under, and it's other things. So a question I have, Karen, is this just for the performing arts, or is it broader than the performing arts? It's for all creative sector businesses and non-profits. If I'm a jeweler, even though I work alone and I don't interact with the public, I could still qualify for a grant here. For some of the grants, yes. So think of, the easiest way to think of this, I think, is think of the creative sector in industry segments. So let's take the performing arts slice of the creative sector. It includes the organizations we've been talking about, like the Paramount, the Latches, the Barry Opera House, the Flynn, our nonprofit cultural organizations. And then it also includes small creative businesses that support the performing arts. So a custom guitar maker who owns her own shop making custom musical instruments or a sound recording studio is defined as a creative business that supports the performing arts. So small creative businesses that support the creative production in our state are qualified for these grants, correct? Does that help? Well, it's obvious to me that the performing arts that have to perform in public, certainly in audiences have been hampered here. I mean, it was forced to shut down, in some cases, not practically, but by law. But the art world is much bigger than just the performing arts. And I don't know how you elevate them above other businesses. Well, the creative sector includes museums. It includes other places that have been hammered by public art space. I don't have a problem with that. I'm just trying to get at, you know, I'm just trying to define the art world that's covered in this building. Well, what the creative sector covers. And it covers everything from architects to crafts, people to museums, costume designers, jewelers, you know, jewelers of all range. So where, I guess, could you tell me a little bit about your administration of the $5 million, how you, was that enough for you to oversubscribe? How did you prioritize? I mean, was there any targeting within your group where somebody put in an application and they showed financial loss? Did they get their money in regards to, rather than they could go forward without the money? So two different answers to that question, if I may. First, that was the $5 million was a program, the Economic Recovery Grant Program that we administered in partnership with ACCD. And so it was, and it was initially run, if you recall, through ACCD. And what we did in the early stages of that program was to identify a set of, the set of businesses according to standard industry codes that should be considered for that money. That was specifically, if you recall, for cultural nonprofits. So it was for one slice of the creative sector. It was for cultural nonprofits, not for for-profit businesses. So we identified for ACCD, the list of organizations that should be considered for that set aside. And then they initially administered the grant program later because of various issues that you're familiar with. So I won't go into, the money didn't get out the door. And so we, the Arts Council took over administration of the final pot of money, the final phase. But we were largely administering a program that ACCD had developed. If what you wanna understand is, how would we approach spending the money in H624 that would be given out by a very different model? Is that what you wanna know? Is that the question you asked me? I was trying to learn from the past, but you have a vision or a handout as to what you see, how you administer this money. Yes, I mean, I think one of the things we learned from the past was that the grant formulas that we tried in partnership with ACCD were way too restrictive. I know you've heard about that, so I won't rehash that, but the grant formula and the requirements for applicants were way too restrictive. So we've looked for models for this grant program that were more flexible, less onerous and less restrictive. And as I think Representative Jerome mentioned, we're taking a model from the Colorado Office of Economic Opportunity that was very successful in giving out aid to nonprofits and businesses. And I can send you, I have a kind of one pager that walks through that program, which I'd be happy to send. Basically, it takes the indicators of COVID harm that are identified in the Treasury final rule. There are five indicators of economic harm, as you probably know, financial insecurity, decreased revenue, increased costs due to COVID, challenges meeting payroll and other operating costs, and capacity to weather financial hardship. Those are defined by ARPA, not by us, by Treasury rather. We take those, we put them into a rubric and an organization that applies for the funding must present their pre-pandemic financials. So they're 20, for most organizations, that's 2019 financials, a three-year financial summary, looking at 2019, 2020, 2021, and accounting of all other pandemic assistance they've received from government sources, and a narrative describing the presenting evidence of their COVID impact. And then we have an evaluation rubric that we would give to our review panels because most of our grant programs are reviewed by external peer review panels that we convene. That way we can bring in expertise that our staff might not have. So we would convene a panel and we would ask them to evaluate the severity of pandemic harm of these organizations. And then once they met the threshold of pandemic harm established by Treasury, they would receive a flat grant based on their pre-pandemic operating revenue. So I know I went through that really quickly. I can send you all. I followed you all to the end. Okay. And what? They would qualify for a flat grant. Oh, correct. Based upon that pre-pandemic. What does that translate? What does that play? So grant amounts would vary from say $5,000 to $250,000 or $300,000. The range obviously depends on what funding is available for the program, but just for argument's sake, let's say that's the range. We would establish, we would segment organizations and applicants by operating budget. And so if you were at the bottom, if you had a tiny little organization, you'd get the bottom tier. You'd get a $5,000 grant. You'd be a largest organizations with the largest pre-pandemic revenue would receive the maximum award as long as they met the threshold of pandemic harm established by Treasury. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. I mean, I understand, I'm not sure I agree with you, but you're saying so based upon your revenue, pre-pandemic revenue that would determine the size of the grant and not based upon your profits and losses or your difficulty, it could just be what your revenue was. So yes and no, because you have to meet the threshold of pandemic harm. And you're ranked by the panel based on severity of pandemic loss. So if you don't meet those criteria, if you didn't incur substantial financial harm, you're not going to receive a grant, right? You have to meet that threshold. But once you meet the threshold, we're not giving you a grant that is backfilling for specific dollar amount of your losses. We're giving you a grant that is a flat operating grant to help you with your fixed costs moving forward. That's correct. It's not, it's a very different approach. And it's one that was successful in Colorado and many other states, which is basically, I mean, take the example of an organization like the Paramount that was shuttered for 18 months. We're never going to replace all of their losses, right? We're not aiming to backfill, to fill, to make everybody whole. We're aiming to stabilize our organization so that they can survive and move forward. You have to meet all five of those criteria. No. Just one. So if you suffered any revenue loss or you were to qualify. No, it's a rubric. So you get scored, like you get scored on each of those indicators and then the, your, those total score is added up so that that allows flexibility so that if someone was hit harder in one area than others, that they can be, those can be weighed. So somehow there's a weighting system and you have to reach a threshold of all five combined. Right. To get in the door and then once you get in the door, you get a grant. Right. Because the Treasury guidance does not specify that an organization in order to read a business, in order to receive aid must meet all five of those criteria. They don't, that's not required. So we're just, yeah. I understand that, but one of the issues that we've dealt with over the last couple of years is that the, at least on the recovery grants early on, the administration wanted a basis just on loss revenue. It was one of the things that was allowed by the Treasury guideline and that's the way they went because it was easy for them to administer. And some of us had some problems with that in terms of targeting the money best way possible. But you're looking at a combination of factors. We're just, I'm sorry. Yeah, I agree. It's easier to look at, simply look at a drop in revenue, but we don't believe that's the best way to make sure that the money gets to the organizations that are genuinely struggling and need it the most. Thank you. I want to talk about equity for a second because I heard it mentioned, I don't see it anywhere in the bill here and I know it's something you've paid a lot of attention to, but in all of these grant making activities and initiatives, I worry a lot about worsening divides because so many organizations run by immigrants and Americans and people of color were already operating on a shoestring, already operating very informally. Now they've suffered through the pandemic and are not going to be able to show the same books and records as others and are going to experience sort of even more setbacks, I believe. So I'm wondering how you're thinking about that in the rubric and how Colorado thought about it. I mean, there has to be some measure at some point for equity beyond just pandemic harm to create a better outcome for people than they had before. Absolutely, and I'm glad you asked that because I think some committee members know that in our administration of CARES Act grants and the ARPA grants that we received from the federal government, we worked with Vermont Humanities on both of those grant programs and we used an equity lens. We made equity one of our criteria so that we were sure that we were serving BIPOC led organizations and organizations in our smallest, most rural communities that we got a good geographic distribution of grants and that the other thing we learned as a consideration and equity consideration is not just about how you evaluate applications but it's about the outreach that you do. So having a long application window is really an equity consideration because an organization with a large development department that's scanning funding opportunities on daily basis is gonna snap up your dollars if there's a short application window and that small struggling micro business run by one person who has two jobs and may have English challenges may take some time to even learn that you have a funding opportunity. So outreach and time and extensive communication are incredibly important. We've learned a lot by administering these grant programs that we're not doing nearly as well as I wish we were to be quite honest. I think that's a struggle for all funders, especially in a small rural state like Vermont where making sure that you're reaching everybody is so important but so difficult. But we have a lot of existing partnerships that help us deliver that the word. So Clemens Family Farm and the Abenaki Artists Association of Vermont, for example, we'll partner with us to get the word out. Clemens has hosted funding workshops that we've done to reach artists in their network that we know for whatever reasons they're just not taking advantage of our funding opportunities. And so rather than waiting for them to come to us, we go to them and we do a funding workshop at Clemens and we listen to them and we hear what their needs are and we give them a lot of technical assistance. My staff is fantastic if I can toot the horn of my wonderful staff for a minute. They do a really, really wonderful job of time on the phone, hand-holding, explaining, help with applications and that's one of the things we're absolutely committed to. So you won't be first come for a search? Is that in your guidelines? Yes, it definitely will not be first come for a search. Is the guidelines already in your mind or on paper? Yeah, could we see the guidelines? So we don't have written guidelines yet because we don't have a program yet but I will send you the one, it's a two-page summary of how we would design the rubrics and what we anticipate the grant amounts would be. That's the best I have at this point. The rest is still on the conversation stage and it largely depends, to be honest, on the scope of the grant program, the scope of the funding that we receive because we'll have to scale it appropriate, depending on the grant amounts. And if I might say one more thing circling back to a question that I believe you asked Senator Sorak and I'm most concerned about, you're asking about the overlap between what's an H624 and some of the programs that your committee has come up with. I'm really most concerned about the micro businesses, the tiny sole proprietors that Senator Hinsdale and Senator Clarkson mentioned who just didn't take advantage of earlier funding opportunities, either because they didn't know about them or because they were just intimidated, frankly. I worry that the two grant programs in H159 will not serve those small struggling micro businesses. And then I'm worried about cultural nonprofits. I think the financials and the situation of nonprofits is just fundamentally different than a for-profit business. And they don't always, that you can't have a one-size-fits-all formula for both of those groups. In the Colorado plan as you mentioned, I thought you put in there the word nonprofit. Is Colorado program limited to nonprofits? There's was for both creative businesses and nonprofits. Say that again. There's what the Colorado program was for both. For both. For-profit creative businesses and nonprofits. Don't follow our question, Senator Clarkson. So I really appreciate the fact that you recognize that the big operators will be all ready to go and come in and they're giving a window there for the smaller people to be doing outreach. I think the federal government was in the restaurant revitalization program. They actually said only small businesses could apply in the first few months. So it makes it a big change when the company take all the money. So I think it's a real issue. Maybe a small point overall, but I'm looking at the creative sector space in vacant downtown. And one of the things that it indicates is that a grantee may also use funds to lease residential space in the same building. The guitar maker that you spoke about earlier in that person, particularly the micro business, the sole proprietor leases the retail space for a manufacturer sale, whatever the case may be of their product. May they also use the vacant space, the residential space to lease residential space in the same building for a period of up to three years for their personal use? Is that the intent? I think that was the intent to allow that flexibility that it could be residential combined with business. Well, I guess the question that I would have is in other grant programs that we've had for business revitalization. Have we included the personal use of the grant monies for the individual who may be the proprietor of that business? And I don't think that that's something that they've done. We haven't done it. I don't think that's really an appropriate use of the money. So I would strongly question that particular section or the notion, I can understand the notion of adding the space in the same building in a downtown area, but I think there ought to be some guidelines and guide rails around that so that what we're not doing is creating a personal gain from the use of grant funds in these specific circumstances. The goal is to do the grant on the basis of the business or the sector, but not the individual. I just disagree on a week. I don't know that we funded it, but we have heard about startup kind of, like how we say, yeah, that does thing was, we didn't fund that, but we have taught, I mean, there are lots of things where we're looking at someone who needs their fixed, their fit up cover. Like, usually it's a person, it's an entrepreneur, an artist, somebody who needs live, work, space, we have not not had that conversation. I mean, that's not like coming out of other spaces. I always suspect that if you look at the federal guidelines, I would be surprised that the federal guidelines would prohibit the personal benefit in the first place. And I think that's just something that ought to be examined, but I would strongly object to it quite frankly. Yeah, it's a personal benefit and community benefit. I think quite frankly, they have spaces filled, but I think there are many artists, the reason we included this is if you had a big enough vacant space in a big window, this happens a lot in Europe. You could have a studio in the front and curtains and screens and a bed in the back. Lots of artists live in their studios. What are you certainly doing with a retail space? You could do with a manufacturing space. You could do with any kind of space. But that's part of what we included, the housing. But as I say, that's not something that we certainly thought about, including in any other kind of grant program. We talked about farm worker housing, entrepreneur housing, I mean, there are a lot of farm worker housing, entrepreneur housing. We have talked a lot about workers who live close to where they work. I just don't think that's an uncommon conversation for this. We haven't, it's not banned in our previous bills. I don't think it was envisioned. I think it gives an unfair advantage in terms of, if the grants were going to be sized appropriately to the need, you're basically saying somebody who gets rental space as part of their grant gets more money than person who has to pay for the wrong housing in an apartment. I think that's a matter of equity, nothing else. I mean, we will talk about that some more. I have a question. So I totally agree with you that, and I hope that the guidelines that come out, if the Vita program succeeds, have something either staggered applications or not first come first served in them when they come in. But could you just, just to play devil's advocate, if we put in our bill that the arts, performing arts and arts and culture get priority for the Vita capital investment grants, I know you would prefer this, but what is wrong with the agency when they see the wealth of information and applications coming in for them to decide who needs the money the most? So we're gonna get, I know we're gonna get feedback from the rest of the business community. Why is this one sector get this karma and nobody else does? Well, and we did identify those sectors as a priority. So we've done that. My concern first I should say, I think the Vita program has great potential for our sector and I have huge respect for Cassie and her whole staff. So what I'm about to say is no reflection on Vita. I think it's a wonderful program. I am concerned about those small micro businesses and the smaller nonprofits, frankly, that are not, they're going to be deterred by fear of taking on more debt even though I understand it's a forgivable loan. And they're going to be deterred by the onerous application process no matter how flexible Cassie and her staff try to make it. And I'm just speaking from experience having spoken to many of our cultural organizations, nonprofits and micro businesses that have tried, that have faced those really steep hurdles. And 60% of our cultural nonprofits have budgets of under $250,000. They're really small. They're not going, they're going to be intimidated by a forgivable loan program. I've got data on 230 cultural organizations. Those are, again, nonprofits, museums, theaters and the like that received some form of COVID aid in 2020 and 2021. Of those 230, only 83 got PPP. PPP was a fantastic program. It benefited all of our, most of our larger organizations, but 60% of our organizations are not, are small to medium size. And they're just, I worry that that's the group I'm concerned about, that smaller nonprofits are just not going to go for the VITA program. So, and similarly, I have concerns about the capital investment grants. When I look at the language of the bill, the criteria for evaluating grants say trans, the transformational nature of the project for the region and transformational projects that will provide each region of the state with the opportunity to attract businesses and create jobs. And so I've heard, I understand and I have huge respect for what you are trying to do with that program, but that language is still in the final version of the bill unless I'm understanding it. And I worry that once it gets to the administration phase because I, you know, as a funder, I know how that happens. You get from the legislative intent, which was one thing, to the language of the guidelines and how it's actually administered, which is a whole other thing. And I worry that that program is not going to serve the needs of many of the cultural nonprofits that need, really urgently need HVAC and assistance and other facility upgrades related to COVID that would be fully ARPA eligible, but that they won't get their needs met. Just a small point, but use the word nonprofits. Would it also apply to for profits, small? In that program? Absolutely. Yeah. So what about a solution? I mean, it is possible that we could allow the Vita program to do a carve out and contract it out to you at the very least, that would allow Vita to sort of size up how much money they have and where the arts and culture fit in. I mean, we have a $17 million program here. We don't have $20 million. I don't think both of them are going to survive. So if we wound up with $20 million, it's $17 million of that, of this recovery money is going to go just to the arts. So I mean, I can see that it would, obviously it would be preferable to you to get them full now, but your other concerns you're saying is administrative difficulty, the small business, most companies are, I think we could take care of that. What we are putting in the difficult position is how we were going to prioritize the very sectors and to the right extent. And I don't most, that's what we did to what we did because we wanted to leave it to somebody else to make those hard decisions. But to get the flexibility, I mean, I just don't know whether the needs are that much greater for the arts than they are for launching or for childcare or for all that stuff. And so I'm sorry, of course. So Karen, as you know, we took out, in part because of the artwork treasured rules, I haven't come down with the capital investment grant program. We did take out that in the first section. We did, in its definition, we did take out the word regional. So it is, I would hope, and I think one of the main concerns here where I think you would partner either way with Vita is the outreach piece because you're absolutely right. The outreach piece is going to be critically important. One of the pluses is Vita has, I think the staff provide some of the individual attention for our businesses that don't, are smaller, that don't fit into the, they don't fit easily into any particular product. So I'm hopeful that this could also be, and perhaps with a carve out, be actually very productive for a whole range of businesses. But I think it's totally dependent on the outreach we do. Yeah, I mean, I think, Karen, there's a whole other direction we could have taken equity that I know a lot of arts and cultural organizations are very aware of, which is access. And as we talk about what's government's role in helping any organization reopen or any new housing come into existence, we still have to think about who's most left behind. So I know I've talked to many arts organizations that say they've already had an educational mission and an access mission and tried to make sure there's either a sliding scale or some way for people to participate in their programming and offerings. And I do think that would need to be part of the rubric going forward for what government spends. I know these are organizations that are struggling, but we also need to make sure that what's the value? I mean, arts make life worth living, but are they only available to some people who can afford to enter a museum or a theater? We have to make sure that we're giving everyone access to the arts coming out of a traumatic event series of events like we just went through. So I just be looking for that as well in the language of what ultimately comes out as I believe in funding the arts because it makes life worth living coming out of a pandemic, but only if the equity also extends to each organization ensuring that they have some sort of access component that they are proposing. And to that point, the Colorado program that we're leaning on quite heavily as a model here included in their rubric, whether or not an organization's community or audience includes historically excluded groups or communities with lack of access to significant resources. And that's, we have an equity, we have an equity language that we plan to build into our evaluation rubric as well. So I'm glad you asked that. Chair, there's been a lot of criticism as you well know of the PPP program and how it didn't really meet its intended purposes. It wasn't targeted about if the money was directed to the bottom line as opposed to hiring more people. Has there been any segregation of that criticism that it doesn't exist with PPPOs that went to arts, the arts community or the nonprofit community? I think I view those folks as less business oriented and maybe there's less, the money was more effective in the arts world than in the rest of, I don't know if there's been any starting sort of. Yeah, no, that's an interesting question. I don't know of any, I would just be able to answer anecdotally about the organizations that I know that receive PPP. There were only 80 some, 83 as I said, in Vermont, but those are cultural, those are the nonprofits. I'm not speaking to for-profit businesses, but I know most of them found the program, the benefit to be incredibly helpful in kind of navigating and retaining staff. But most, I mean, the real issue with most of the federal and state aid was that it was an absolute lifeline in 2020 and 2021, but none of that aid was designed with the awareness that Omicron would happen or that the losses would continue so long. So that's why we're in this situation when we are now with needing another aid package because that aid just, it was a huge help, but it wasn't enough. Do you communicate with your counterparts around the country and do you get any general feeling of how Vermont's done with its AIDS packages compared to other states? We've had some anecdotal information that we eat the country and how much help we've given out to the business community per capita in terms of our programs. Do you just anecdotally get the feedback on that? Yeah, I talk mainly to colleagues at state arts agencies in New England and across the country, and it varies as you might imagine. I mean, states with massive budgets are like New York and California are just able to give out so much more aid to the creative sector and to the for-profit business sector, close to home. I know New Hampshire just passed a bill called Save Our Granite Stages, which is their version of the Save Our Stages, the Shuttered Venues Grant, that's specifically to help those performing arts venues that just are still struggling. And Massachusetts is probably the most remarkable example. They have a long history of very strong, vigorous support for the arts, and they just passed a $60.1 million bill from the state's ARPA COVID Recovery Fund that my counterpart, the Massachusetts State Arts Council is gonna be giving out and making one-time relief grants to individual artists and cultural organizations in Fiscal 23. 60 million? Yeah. Great. Oh, the news from New Hampshire almost counters everything else they're acting. Almost. Not quite. Any other questions? No, this is great. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to have this discussion. Yeah. Stay tuned. Community, we have Representative Kimball coming in at 10.30 to continue going through the workforce capacity bill. How do you refer to the bill other than by number? Age seven or three? Our workforce bill. What's that? You can call it the workforce bill. Workforce, okay. Your workforce bill is really a tour de force. So, it's a lot of, a lot of... And yet, as we're fighting out, not everybody. BMS is amazing that groups have already come to at least me after everybody else too. It's like, gosh, we have this workforce challenge too. I mean, BMS in particular is. Yeah. Thank you, Stephanie. Thank you. Well, I'm very much. Thank you. How many questions? Let me know. Happy to provide. Anything to add, really? Okay. We bill is really about as straightforward as a bill that's I've seen in a long time. Yeah. The only thing I'd like to add is that the creative economy is huge. And when I'm on the floor of the house, there was asked for a definition of the creative economy. And in the strategic plan of the creative network, they've placed over 110 base codes. So I think when we're talking. Forming arts, it is much, much broader when we're looking at the, this profit and profit. This body actually enabled the first creative economy work that was done by the Arts Council. We got the report behalf of our 2009. And it's a huge range of the creative sectors that are fast and employees of a ton of people. And it represents a significant percent of our economy. And so it's great. I was looking at my question. I don't know if you could answer it. The, did one stage of the grant bills, we excluded, we had language in there that was excluding groups or downsizing the grants of groups that were about to receive added financial help. We had the restaurants and the shuttered venues. Right. So one of the things that will follow up, I just want to know, I guess Karen's no longer with us. I want to know how much that shuttered venue would specify helped the, because it builds upon the equity argument in terms of how we're helping to perform arts at least the house. They didn't do anything for other grants and did this. And that builds upon the feds who did something special for shuttered venues and didn't do, in that search. That program was totally, are we offline? No. We're fine. So that, I just have to choose by language carefully. The shuttered venue program was a huge screw up. There were, it was, it took forever for it to get rolled out properly. The challenge in reverse was true for the restaurants, which is they got it up and going and then all those priority crowds got all the money. And then most of our restaurants like that, most of our restaurants in Vermont did not get anybody. The reverse was true as shuttered venues. Correct me if I'm wrong, Stephanie, which is it took forever to get that program worked out that we're a huge topic, which is with it. And I'm actually not sure how many of our performing arts community, I'm not sure how we ended up benefiting. Do you have a good list to get from Karen? Because some did get, I know that they did get some, but I do know that it was extremely bumpy. Oh, it ended long and took forever. And over, and exceeded a acre. Yeah, but they were took forever or not. I don't know about that. Yeah, I just want to know how that factors in to the eligibility of the size of the grants. Yeah. Because they had a metric by the money that other businesses could have. So. Yeah, I just don't know the answer to that. But you will be receiving this. So February 28th memo that the house commerce received on all of the outline of the spectrum of the Colorado. Colorado. And I think a lot of those factors. We have all. She said to send it to you. Extremely helpful memo. I need to email her. Would you be kind of thinking of also what the results were for the grant with the shuttered venue? That'd be great. I don't want to spend time with whether it's Cassie or Joan or both about businesses on a timeline where they are completely out of luck. I mean, I know Tom loads on breakfast with restaurants who that opens like in the two months before the pandemic. And, you know, we even that whole year of the first year of the pandemic that collected the collective wisdom was that this is three months and then over or six months and then over we kept pushing out the timeline and projects, you know, developed and sought funding and tried to, you know, build, build new efforts, quit jobs. You know, people made moves in the in some parts of the pandemic that may or may not have federal eligibility. Cassie in email said to me, it's very complicated. They have to prove more. I still want to know what that looks like and make sure we're not completely precluding those folks. If federal language still creates a path for a business that started in the early stages of the pandemic or an arts effort that was, you know, building its capital in the early stages of the pandemic, but they have some shot at this. Well, the language that we changed in the end gives them the authority to look at that if there's a mutual circumstances. And that'll be decided in the guidelines that come up with their fiscal office. So I mean, same contact with them. Yeah, I know we're giving Essex a lot of love already, but, you know, like the Essex experience is a really great example. The Essex experience is a great example of a really dynamic hub that's trying to create arts experiences and breweries that, you know, we heard right. And just having another example of an arts entity that's trying to do something really, you know, dynamic and new that started its effort right around the time of the pandemic. And as I understand it, outside of community they might not be eligible for anything. And so I just like to better understand our responsibility or consideration for those kinds of organizations before we pass a bill that just says we're giving money to the same product. As you're going through the bill upstairs, essentially our approach was, we get general guidelines in the bill, but we let the agency work with joint fiscal and more detailed guidelines to the joint fiscal committee. So the legislature, we didn't feel like we could get so much, because when you deal with the business there's so many different examples that could come up. And so we left those details to later on, but we didn't want to give up total discretion to the administration. So they're still being developed. That's the approach.