 Okay, so Michelle is here. We are scheduled for the clock to one o'clock to finish up the loopstand on S54. There have been a lot of emails going around over the weekend to try to make sure that we have adequately completely covered the deficit issue of the initial spending on the regulatory board. And then there was some work regarding the prevention activities both in the F fund with the 6% sales tax and within the general fund with the 14% tax size tax. So Michelle, whom we owe a lot of thanks to, worked probably much over the weekend and dreaded our emails. We really thank you. And maybe you can have Friday off. I don't know. I don't know. Probably not. I'm like, I'll go ask Lou. But thank you, Michelle. Sure. So we're going to go over the committee amendment and then I have one other little section that if the committee accepts it, we would put it into one amendment that we would bring to the floor. Is that all right with everybody if we bring one instead of doing them in sections? One has to do with prevention and the other has more to do with the addressing the formation of the board and addressing the debt. You know? We need to wait to see what we need to happen. I was going to say, okay, all right. Well, so for the record, Michelle Childs Office of Legislative Council and I have up on the web page, there's two things. You have your amendment, but I also did kind of just a guidance document which shows like if you were doing almost like a strike all sections so you can see language because sometimes I think it's, I know you guys are pros at this and looking at and trying to fit it in but because the underlying amendment is 95 pages, I thought it might be easier just to look at that too, but. Thank you. Is it guidance document? Sorry, what's that? Guidance document looks like this and so what I did is I excerpted the sections and I don't know what you prefer to go through. I can go through this one maybe first and it gives you a general overview and then we'll look at the actual amendment. So the first change, if we're looking at the guidance document and you'll see that when there's highlights, they just highlighted when there's changes. If it's strike through, it means it's gone, it's house government operations language, it's being struck and italics means that's new appropriations language. So the first change is in section two with regard to the board and that is changing the board from a chair and four members to the chair and two members. So you'll see that first change. Similarly on page two, section three, this is on implementation of the board and so because you have to stagger the terms at the beginning so everybody doesn't roll off at the same time, you have this implementation language and again, that's just changing it so that instead of having four members, you now have two members in addition to the chair. Next change is in section five. This is where the Canvas Control Board is to report back to the general assembly regarding the fees. So remember, you guys are the one of the legislature setting the fees, not the board they're gonna come back and make recommendations. And so in section five, in subdivision two, it talks about the fees that they're gonna recommend to the general assembly and you'll see the new language down there at the bottom that's highlighted is that when they're recommending those fees and they're to be looking at Massachusetts as a guide and they can recommend fees that are lower or higher provided that they're designed to provide sufficient funding to meet the regulatory needs of the board and then you're adding language and retire the, and retire the deficit. Sorry, this went through editing, but it'll go through again, I guess. And retire the deficit in the fund by the close of fiscal year 2025. Section six is just changing it from five full-time board members to three. Section six B, the appropriation. That of 810,000 appropriation came over from the Senate with a three-member board. When the House government operations increased the board back to five, they didn't change the appropriation knowing that it was gonna come here anyway and so they just left that. So the 810 was originally, so last year when the Senate passed it with three members, they put in 810 and Stephanie's done a recalculation and says it should now be 860. Even with a three-member, something. You would have had to put, if you'd stand at five, you would have had to put in a million and 50. So the Senate number for the three-minute board was too much? Well, I've updated it, it's been a year ago, you know. Oh, okay, that's a little bit. We've helped him and he's got a lot of information. And to the, so 860 versus 15, so about 190,000, that's just about 110,000. 140,000, yeah, 190,000, you're right, you're right. I'm going to add two numbers to, yeah, about $100,000 again. It's a little bit less than a full year and takes a little, that 860 does not represent a full year cost, I think it's like a 10-month cost. It's a 10-month cost. I assume it gets ramped up relatively quickly, but it's not a full, because it's gonna take a little bit of time to get it up this whole year, to get it all. And the cost of the five-member board was 1.2, you said? Was, it was 10, it would be the first year and 1.2 after that. 1050? 1050, a million 50, just under $200,000 more than this three-member board. Thank you. Next change is top of page four, and this is on the contingent offset, and so this is kind of paired with the idea that you're directing the board to recommend fees that are gonna retire the deficit after four years, and so you wanna tweak this, section C, so that you're bumping that out, so that if at the close of FY 2025 there is still any deficit, then you would use some of the monies in from the excise tax to backfill. Any questions on that section? Okay. Next is new section, section 6E, and this is a repeal of the Cannabis Control Board, and so this would be July 1st, 2024, and this is, so you would, if you would have the first licenses being issued in the first half of calendar year 2022, and so you would have a little bit of operation of the board, you have, just to refresh your memory, you would have the auditor's report coming in November of 23 to the General Assembly, so you would have that information, but the idea that in, starting in January 2024, the legislature could take the auditor's report, consider the report and what you wanna do, whether you wanna continue the board in its existing capacity or whether you wanna make tweaks based on the auditor's report or whatever it is that you wanna do, and so this is just kind of a mechanism. You know, it's technically, if it just went into effect without you doing anything, it's gonna cause a hot mess, but I think you guys are aware of that, so I think that's also, it's the point which is to come, is to ensure that the legislature's gonna be taking a look at this at that time, so this would be repealing those particular sections, and then section 22 is just tweaking the effective dates and this is to just reflect the changes that you made by bumping things out a little bit earlier on, and so I've just tweaked those, and so if you look at the amendment, you'll see, I'll just walk you through quickly, so first is the, first and second amendments are, with regard to the number of board members, but the third instance of amendment is to add with regard to the recommendation of fees and retire any deficit in the fund by the close of fiscal year 2025. Fourth instance of amendment is amending the number of board members again with regard to the creation of the positions. Fifth instance of amendment is amending the appropriation for the board. Sixth instance of amendment is changing, bumping out the dates for the deficit offset. Seventh instance of amendment is a placeholder for right now and that's something that members were working on with some other folks with respect to the ed fund and that will be forthcoming, and after I get done talking about this amendment, I was thinking maybe Stephanie can talk to you about what you guys have decided on that, and Thea, Dexter Cooper is downstairs writing that, and then I will go and incorporate Representative Tolle's new amendment into this one if everybody's in agreement. Eighth instance of amendment is the repeal of the control board, and then the ninth instance of amendment is just the effective dates. Any questions on these pieces so far? And we'll get review of the seven because you have a chair to read some. Can you put up the kitties, yeah. So we say clearly that the board shall set the fees sufficient to provide for the duties of the board and retire the deficit in 2025, and then later we're at the proceeds in 2026. We'll go to close out the deficit, but is that enough in terms of what happens going forward? So if the board get the fees, well, two things. I mean, I think somewhere else it says that the board will sort of regularly review the fees. So I would assume that after that month they would probably be reviewing the fees. But is it clear going forward from what's in here that if there's a continued deficit by the board that they would turn to the excise tax to pay that? No, this is just kind of a one-time, right? Yeah. It is a one-time payout of the deficit, but you do have the sunset of the board itself that will be generating a lot of conversation with about the board. And so you'll be seeing as you go along in 22, 23, and 24 what the deficit situation in that regulatory fund is. There is a hard payoff is the get to balance what happens to keep in balance in the future is another conversation that they'll be making sort of in tandem with all the future on the board. That's why the check back with the board was on the side. And the board's gonna be there. They've got so many things they've got to come back to y'all on every year. So I imagine it's just gonna be an ongoing continuing conversation about those fees. Instead of just relying on the author's report to decide to make the Legislature Act, the sunset really makes the Legislature Act. Or not, they just let it go. That's why I'm interested. Martin, what tricks is it? Can you give me some information on why the suggestion of reducing the number from five to three is that if we have money saving measure or is it thought that we don't need five bodies and that three bodies is sufficient for the... You work on that one? Well, it was a cost control. I mean, if you look at the cost going forward, the fees, there is a concern that it will be impossible to raise the amount of money necessary in fees to cover the cost of the board. You could raise them a lot, but if you raise them too high, people will not voluntarily come into this market. They'll stay where they are. So it was an attempt to have an analysis of that. I mean, I know we have some analysis of what the market may be. In part of Graham's background data, give us an idea of how many players there might be and a fee of $5,000 or $10,000 or $200, how that all might play together to bring up enough to finance the board. So the projections that Graham made around the excise tax that banned of high medium low was not, you know, he wasn't forecasting a specific number of participants in each level. Growers, wholesalers, retailers, et cetera. He was scaling what he thought the size of the Vermont market would be based on population and incidents to the comparable states that have the creative and legal partners. As I understand it, the Regulation Special Fund was going to get its money from licences. And so was there a calculation of how many licences you would need in order to raise this amount? No, it was a look at Massachusetts and what their fee structure was and what they were generating fees and saying if we scale Massachusetts on the same basis of population and incidents to Vermont, that's what we think is the most likely, the language is still in notice is no lower than something that's comparable to Massachusetts. And so that was our estimate of the 650. If you were targeting a fee structure that was similar to Massachusetts, but given the size of Vermont compared to Massachusetts and our existing already, we could bring in 650 more. 650, the direction to the board in this amendment is to cover your cost, which are now 860 at a three member board and to retire what's probably gonna be something like 1.8 million dollar deficit or a little bit higher when they start establishing those fees. So that was the, when you get to four years out and you have a three member board that's running at 900 or so thousand dollar a year cost estimate, that's a lot closer to 650 if that's, if the board may be able to raise the fees higher but the structure is the board comes back with a proposal of fees and you're giving them the sort of guardrails of where to oppose the fees at. And it may turn out that they can come up with a fee structure that covers their cost and pay off your deficit or maybe they can come up with something that covers their cost that doesn't pay off the deficit. Because that's it. Those are all to be determined as our best estimate of what's likely that 650 is a likely fee structure given our neighbor to the south. But again, that's not even enough to cover the existing much less than 1.8 million. Could it, elsewhere where we are not touching it, it says the receipts from the excess excise tax go to the deficit first and then it's divided out to 26. Right, but it says me on an ongoing basis if the ongoing costs are 60 or if the ongoing income is projected. License fees projected are at 650 and the cost of the board is 800, you're still not. But you also have that hard sunset on the board with the auditor's report coming back saying should the board remain three full-time state employees, should it change? So you will have a impetus with that hard sunset to review both the structure and the cost of the board in that timeframe that you set up. I would just worry that we're still setting it up to not make them want them to cover. Not unless we charge really, really high fees and there are people that are concerned about that that you still won't have enough to cover the board. And that's a possibility. If you eliminate the sunset and change nothing, that's, there's a lot of probabilities of things along the way. You've set it up so that you're actually forcing the yourselves and the agencies to actually continue to look at these questions along the way. Stephanie, you said something that has to be concerned. I had understood that the first dollar in the X size goes to paying the debt. That's right, in 2026. You know, every dollar in is going to pay the deficit. Yes, but with the receipts that start in FY26, the X-size tax will start coming in. In 23, and 24, and 25. But in 26 is when the first dollar of the X-size, we will know what the deficit is at the close of 25 and the first dollar of the 26 X-size tax is what goes to pay the deficit. And that's, you know, the full insure. So that means we will start spending. You will start spending, the X-size tax ramps up. And so you will, depending on how big that deficit is, if there is one, you could be, you know, having a slightly higher spend in prevention and other things in 25 and having a slightly lower spend in 26, depending on what the projection is for X-size tax in 26 over 25. But the only reason I wanted to pull the date out was to give us a chance to raise more in fees. But I had always understood that we, the first dollar in on the 22nd in FY22 would pay, begin paying the deficit because there is a deficit that year, I thought that's what that line of reach around the X-size tax says. So in that, I'm confused. So I just want to clarify the question. So in FY22, we're expecting the X-size tax to bring in 180,000. What, 180,000? And those dollars will go toward the deficit or it goes 70, 30, and part of prevention. So they would just go 70, 30. Because you will, so you want to start paying off the deficit sooner than, your fee structure, right now I'm assuming that, I'm trying to give you time to have a fee structure come back that might be higher than the 650 that we're projecting. And so if you're saying you don't want to, you only want to spend in anticipation in year. The question of whether the 180 is there, from 2022 will be a function of the forecast. It's our best estimate right now, but that's the, you know. So the way it is written now in 22 and 23 and 24, the whole 14% will go to the 70, 30 split. Yes. Okay. Do you see in that, I had it being paid off in 23 and whole. It would be, and that's what I'm really old timing. If you look at what I have up here, so you can see the existing or the government operations language has it. So what Mary was saying, which is that at the, what she understood is that at the close of FY22, then the 23 and then in 23, you start using that excise tax. So that's correct. But then you bumped it out along with the fee stuff, with the fee provision. And I'm gonna say something in a different way too. What you're saying, what you were suggesting, represent Cooper, sounds like you're actually dedicating whatever's necessary for the regulation to be from excise along the way. And then you sort of taking away any sort of impetus to actually, even though you're saying you're having my cost, you actually really not built up any debt. You're not building up any actual deficit in the fund. You have to build up the debt. I don't think that's probably better. It was never my intention that we would stretch out payment of the deficit until 26. It was always my understanding that, and I thought that was the way 7901 was written. And that's the reason I said the first dollar again of the excise tax is dedicated to paying the deficit whenever it comes in. And I thought it came in beginning. Well, you close a year and you know where your fund is. And then what you would be saying is that they close it every year after FY22. You would have the deficit in the fund and then you would dedicate in the next fiscal year the first dollars to reduce that. And that's an option you can do. It does in my, I wanna think about it a little bit, but it does, at the same time you're saying to the board, bring back a thing that covers the deficit, but you're not creating a deficit, so they're never coming up with fees to cover the deficit. Well, I don't know. You're trying to get them to create fees that cover their costs, recognizing any past buildup of forwarded money in that special fund. And when you start to pay off that sooner then it becomes a little bit of a tricky patty. When do they know what deficit amount to try and change forward the fee structure? So we have to set up the regulatory board. The costs of the regulatory board will be evident in year? Well, it's evident year 21 right now, if we remember board 860. But when will we actually have the deficit with the fees? Right off the bat, you're gonna have 860 if you're spending authority against zero receipts. So they'll have that deficit when they start out with, and then they'll have, we're hoping that we have about $500,000 of fees with the forward medical marijuana piece in by the end of 22. And so hopefully the deficit grows only for about $600,000 or so to the next year. And you can start to pay off. If you have a deficit in that fund of 860 and 300 the next year you're paying off a million, one, two out of the excise tax. But they're coming back with the fee schedule to pay off. To cover those costs. To cover those costs or do they cover them after anticipating the pay off of the deficit? Because you're setting up in a kind of a funny way. Well, my expectation was that the fees would be set to cover the actual costs of running the board. There is this problem of, will that make them too high? And so I don't know how to juggle that. So that's kind of one set of problems. But it was never my intention to defer paying off the deficit. And again, I had always understood the reason I stopped fretting over this this weekend that the first dollar of the excise tax in would go after the fees are paid. The first dollar would pay the rest of that cost of the board. The cost of the board or the deficit in the fund? The cost, the deficit in the fund which is the cost of the deficit between the fee and the deficit in the board. That was the goal. And so that would make sense for FY23. So you close FY22 where it is. Because there's nothing to be done in FY22. You don't have any fee revenue in FY21. You close FY22, you have a fee structure in place. In the close of FY22, you have whatever's accumulated as a deficit in the special fund. And then the first dollar of FY23 pays off the deficit and that structure stays in place annually thereafter. And that could be one way of... So that would, you would just be then leaving the... So you would just go back to the way it was for house government operations. But because section 60 is only one time, you'd have to tweak it to say and thereafter, anytime that happens, you're gonna do the offset. Any close future fiscal year that has a... And so you sort of de facto set up with the fee, no matter what the fee schedule is, if it's less, then excise is gonna pay it off the top the next year. Yes. Does anybody around the table need a chart of when the fees get in, when the deficit is, what pays off when the excise tax is due? Or are you all here? I'd like to see it. I just like to see it. I think we need... Okay. I can go... I'll update that chart for the three-member board. Okay. And then I'll show it. I do have questions about, Maria, about the three-member versus the five. The Senate has a three-member board. Right. And the House proposes a five-member board. Because they wanted more diversity or because they thought there was a lot of work to do or they needed more members or... I mean, I... I think I can... Yeah. So when it came out and when it was originally in the Senate, in Senate Judiciary, they had it as a five-member board. But concerns about being able to have enough fee, this issue around how you come at, you know, the right fee amount, and is that once it got to Senate appropriations, they sealed it back to a three-member board out of concern that there just wasn't gonna be enough money generated by the fees. And so then it came over to the House and then when it was in House government operations, they had the same concerns as Senate Judiciary was, which was that there's a lot of work for this board to do. And their concern was that if there were only three members, if somebody needed to be out or something was going on, that it might hamstring them and being able to meet their goals. Yeah, the goals. So... It was... They were looking at the functionality and left it up to you guys to figure out the money. Yeah. Kimberly? So couldn't there potentially be a middle road through that by changing the salary structure? Because right now it's pegged to judge X or Y, right? So you just change that salary structure and then you can have your five. You might be able to make the numbers work. My concern is the issue. Yeah. And that's what they discussed that quite a bit in the Senate about that. And it was in different places, you know, and I think just the concern is about, you know, who are you able to attract to the board? With the lower salaries. So back to the three versus five member board, the amendment on them. In front of us has a three member board. How many of, who would like more information regarding three versus five in the functions of the board and how they would run three versus five? We have to remember there is an advisory committee of 12 individuals who are also specialists in different areas that would supply who are there to support and bring information forth to the board as well. If I may, in my conversation with the chair and vice chair of GOV-OX, they were not concerned about dropping from five to three. They in fact anticipated that we would do that. From the policy. I'm not so concerned about the number per say as long as whatever work needs to be done gets done in a timely manner and with the right people with the right expertise to do it. I am concerned that I think the fees that they charge need to cover their expenses irrespective of whether they're too high or not. If there's work that needs to be done and we're setting up this system, I think the fees need to cover it one way or another. And I can understand we start out with, we'll start out in the hole because we don't have any money, but as the fees come in, they need to be set in such a way that they cover the cost of the board and make up the two years that you didn't have any fees in the first place and stretch it out for five years or whatever you have to make that happen. And there's also the look-back where when we look back at the board, the board may not continue as a full-time board. You may just have the executive director and that the other three members would drop to per diems and that would be a side-to-side, a legislative future legislature. But in that regard, it would not reduce the fees just because the board has less. No, but the fees would be more apt to cover the board if they moved to per diem and not full-time positions. Possible. Mary. Your concern was decisively mine. And that's the reason I've said several people threw contortions on Friday and trying to figure out how to deal with it. That's why we came to this, except then, see, I misunderstood the concept of it. But I agree with you, but where I finally landed is it seems to me there is so much unknown about how this thing is what you were. I've talked to some people who are convinced we can set a decent fee rate for kind of the small producers, you know, the people that maybe we wanted and sent, but for larger ones, you can set it very high. And that may be enough revenue to help cover the cost. And all of that is speculation. So at the end of the day, it just seemed to make sense that let's ask them to look at it and come back to us with a proposal for how to do it. I understand that it's unknown. And we could set fees and we think they're okay and discover later that they're not when you face the issue of do you raise the fees and what does that do to this market that's been established to set, screw it all up or whatever. But then my concern would be, where would you come up with the money to act? Well, and I certainly wouldn't want it to come out of either the excise tax that we're sending out to the general fund for other purposes that we think are gonna be impacted by this bill or just playing extra general funds. Or you raise the excise tax, you could do that, that might be impacted by it as well. You know, depending on, I know there are lots of unknowns, although certainly we've seen other states work with us. Our population is much smaller than places like Washington and Colorado that generate lots of money. And it's got out of the gate first to, oh, that's the big difference. Chuck. I'll just second that thought that my concern was the same as Mary's and yours, which is why we tried to work on that. And it was why I asked the question about is it clear what happens going forward about whether or not the excise fee kicks in? Because I want us to set it up so that it's clear that the board has to establish the fees in a way that is sufficient to support the work of the board, the responsibility of the board. Not only, but getting back to this, whether or not you spend the first dollar of the excise tax on making up the deficit, the only way that I can see that you could do that and still require, so I think both of our interests have been to say that yes, the fee structure should cover the cost of the board, but the board has been in existence for a little while or the costs have been there for a little while before the fees start to roll in. And we wanted to make sure that the fees actually cover that initial cost as well as the cost of doing the work going forward. The only way I can see that you could do that and have the excise tax pay is to make a projection about what the deficit is going to be and say that the board establish fees to cover the cost of the board and the projected deficit as of 2000 whatever the number is, whatever year it is. And have a number, a projected deficit of 1.2 million dollars or whatever so that when they set the fees they know that they have a four year period or whatever it's going to be picked to have the fees be more than the board costs in order to cover that. And that way, it's sort of paying, it would be paying, and then that extra money would have to go back into the general fund. You'd be repaying the general fund for the excise tax that had gone in to pay off that deficit. So Stephanie speaking from JFO, what did you, did you hear Chip's proposal? I know you were working on that. That's okay, you know what? It sounds like we're gonna have to have a conversation outside of the group right here and I'm happy to try to reiterate that a little more clearly than I just did. Because, I mean, Stephanie pointed out all of what seems to me that if you start saying that excise tax is going to, as soon as it starts rolling in, it's going to pay off the deficit and there's no incentive to have the fees do that. Thank you. That's the structure of the fees. Do you have? I mean, other than the fact that we're telling them. The excise tax, excise tax. So you do have the language saying that when they're making the fee recommendations and building out for the second and third year rollouts that they're, to be looking at those fees to meet the cost of the board and also retire any deficit in the fund by the close of FY 25, that way, because the way that, you know, I understand that you don't want to bump that out. You're saying you don't want to bump it out and you want to fill it earlier. But, I'm just trying, so you have something to address the issue of saying, you know, you have to build in those costs of filling the deficit in addition to covering the cost of the board in your amendment now. Right. I'm just saying that we should do it the way, and to get the outcome that Mary wants, I think you're just going to have to pick a number. You're going to have to say the projected deficit of so and so many dollars, and then the fee structure will be created so that it would pay that back over four years. If we go down the roll of the, okay, yeah, whatever number we pick. Well, I think the issues that we talked about about raising the fee so high, if you shorten that, I mean we started to make that a bigger and bigger problem. So I want to move on to the second amendment because we have Act 250 coming in at two o'clock and there may be a small group of you that move from Act 250 to the Act 250 and work on this piece, but I want to move to the other amendments regarding the substance misuse prevention funding. I believe this would be easier, amendment, but I'm holding. As a total amendment, as if this is for Stephanie. And I would recommend if we agree to this that we put it into one amendment from the committee. The seventh instance, yeah, yeah, question. No, this isn't, the seventh instance is a placeholder for the one that you were working with, Anthea. Do you want me to talk about it? So what you have just to refresh your memory is you have in the House Government Operations Amendment they, at the recommendation of the House Human Services Committee, they created the Substance Misuse Prevention Fund and then that's the fund where once there's excise tax coming in, there would be 30% of that revenue would be dedicated to that substance misuse prevention fund. This proposal would strike those two sections having to do with creating the fund and then directing the monies to the fund and create an session law, so section 18a, directing that 30% of the revenues raised by the excise tax shall be used for the purpose of funding Substance Misuse Prevention Programming as recommended by the Substance Misuse Prevention Oversight and Advisory Council. They are already statutorily created within the Department of Health. Last year we did that. And then section 18b, is that honor before November 1st, 2021 and annually thereafter, that council shall make recommendations to the General Assembly relating to Substance Misuse Prevention Expenditures equaling not less than 30% of the cannabis tax which shall be included in the officially adopted forecast. And then with hallway conversation and now I've forgotten what it was about adding something. About having in the 18b, having them recommend whether or not a special funds needs to be created. Okay, and? Should it be not more than because we're giving them 30% of the 3070 split? Not less than. And when it be? So they, the Substance Misuse Advisory Council, you're setting the floor of what from this particular source of funding for prevention. There may be, in their statutory structure, they record on all estate funding prevention. So there may be other sources besides cannabis tax that they want to spend prevention dollars for prevention activities. But this is equaling not less than 30% of the cannabis sex size tax. They are only getting 30, so they couldn't. They can't use more, but they shouldn't use less. There couldn't be any more, but they could choose to use less. Right. So why would we not less than? I'm not part of the end. Only because they're in the council. So I wouldn't looked up who they are and what their duties are so that I could be more comfortable because I know, like in my mind, I wanted to go right directly to the prevention unit that does this work. So I don't disagree that this is not a good place because it's within the health department, but there are charges, a significant portion of any new revenue generated by taxation of substance at risk of misuse, including cannabis, tobacco, tobacco substitute, and opiates be directed to fund substance misuse prevention initiatives throughout the state in accordance with the advice of this oversight committee, right? So I think that's a good placement of what we're trying to do. But they also have funds beyond what would be considered cannabis dollars. And so I would like to make sure that we don't, that these dollars that are coming in from the 30%, it would be my thinking that there's a great deal of comfort in making sure that those dollars go to very specific prevention efforts around cannabis abuse and not for tobacco or not only that, but even not less 30% then. Because that would be the full amount. Because they're well-being of stakeholders also include the elderly and nutrition things. There's a lot of good prevention stuff going on, but for this one, I want to make sure that it's for that purpose. I think that's the intent of naming who were okay with this. So you're good with this language? I'm good with this saying not less than the 30%. So that they make sure that they use it and not, and yeah, and not, you know, hang out with us. So can I just clarify, there's nothing in here that says that this has to be used just on cannabis prevention. This is for everything. What you're proposing is that's not about the not less, that's about just generally the proposal from human services was that it go to substance misuse, but not earmarked specifically for cannabis. And the only thing that gives me comfort with that is that they have to annually, therefore they have to come back with the recommendation of how they're gonna spend that 30%. Okay, so you're not proposing to. It says you're meant to where it's supposed to go. And so that they don't have the authority to just use it in a different way without it, without us making sure that it goes there. It's not clear there, so somebody eight years from now could actually use it in a different way, but they could anyway. And then we don't know what the need will be in eight years either. And then so at the end of the day, this committee appropriates the money. That's not, here's the fund, go do what you will. So they'll have, so that little piece allows this body, which we'll have to remember that this 30% is for a very specific thing that's not really written in there. Peter? The officially adopted forecast, I know you're talking about the e-borne, but it's not really obvious that that's what you're talking about when you read that. Is there another way to structure that sentence so that we can make sure that they're ready for it? Yeah, I'll define that from Stephanie. She was just sending me some notes about 15 minutes before this committee started. I didn't even know what the e-borne text was talking about. You mean the specific statutory reference to the July and January forecast? Thank you. Kimberly? I just want to say that I am in favor of some agility and flexibility. And the reason I'm saying that is, and I take your point and I'm not disagreeing, but who saw vaping coming, right? Here where all these prevention programs run a certain way, we thought we had tobacco covered, we were petting ourselves on the back, and then along came vaping, and we just don't know what lies ahead. And so I believe that give delegating to a body that has some flexibility in response, maybe it's meth is the big challenge, maybe it's who knows, and this is in the rear view mirror. So I personally appreciate the flexibility of having multiple lenses on this and potentially addressing multiple challenges that we may not around this table today be able to predict. Marty? I did. I understand that the substance abuse group looks at a much broader or can look at a much broader thing and that flexibility I think is important. I think some of the concern I have in reading this is that I probably wanted to make sure that not more than 30% of the excise tax went to this effort. Yes, they can get other funds from other places so that maybe this should say the expenditures, their expenditures don't include any more than 30% of the excise tax. Yeah. That works. I'm very expected of not more, not less. Not more, not less. Not more than not less. I mean, because they're talking about how much they spend and their broad income can come from other places than just the cannabis tax. I understand that, but I don't think we want those kinds of current structure. We have talked about 30% of the cannabis tax going to that purpose. That's what you do in the first section. What does that mean in the first section? And then this is just directing what you could actually reference back to what's in 18A, how to spend the proceeds for the fiscal year in 18A. You know, instead of doing not less, not more, but more expensive, can you work on the not less than 30% smooth out that language so it's not as stupid as it is? Is that okay with folks? In section 18A, you're saying we're dedicating 30% of the excise tax. And then in 18B, you're saying advisory council, prevention advisory council, come back and give us your recommendations on how to spend this money. And instead of saying not more, not less in that 18B section, how to spend the funds as they were invited. It's an 18A. Yeah, I would. Yeah, we would. Yeah, we would. It's wonderful. And then one other thing that this language does, it does not create a special fund for substance misuse prevention. And at that time, when the group comes back, when they do the report back and make recommendations to the general assembly, if we want a special fund to keep track of what these expenditures are and how much we're spending and tracking the good measures because they're going to be the best programs with resulting in the best measures, we would have to, if you choose to, we would say they could recommend the creation of a special fund at that time when they come back with the additional recommendations. Because it'll have to be drawn from somewhere. When they come back with a recommendation and I'm just fine, okay, we say yes, go forth, do this. But then that money has to be placed someplace for them to be able to draw. Well, it could be in the general fund and just track the general fund. Exactly. So we have to make sure that you actually... You have two choices. You can, the way it is here, it'd be just 30% of that line item in the general fund is dedicated for prevention. You can direct this advisory council to come back at the same time and then reporting on the first year that there's really any significant money to the investment prevention to also make a recommendation of whether or not a special fund is necessary. Yeah. And it wouldn't create it, it would just recommend it. Exactly. Whether they need it or not, they may not, they might. Thank you so much. It's not really... Or, you know, this advisory council just got stood up this year, you know, it was something we were asked last year. And so by the time they're back in the fall of 2021, they might have a much clearer picture of the whole whatever it exists, prevention, landscape, direct indirect and with a better sense of what a fund would need to be. Because it includes the state police, it includes health department, it includes the commissioner of education, there's a lot of high level people involved. So I'm gonna ask the committee, you have two choices here, either to leave it as it is where the 30% goes into the general fund and just track it, rate as it is in the general fund or asking when this initial recommendation comes back, but they also recommend whether or not a special fund should be created. It doesn't create it, it just says for them to reflect on it and give a recommendation. So leave it as it is or ask for a reflection on the special fund. How many of you want to leave it as it is? This proposed amendment? No, just that one piece. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. And how many of you would like them to recommend whether it comes back, when it comes back, whether we should have a special fund or not? Okay. Then I go to the next one. Can you go to the last one? That's a little bit. Four. Do I have everybody voting? I vote for her. One, two, three, four. And how many of you want to just leave it in the general fund? Because it doesn't mean that they can't the way it is. No, they probably, they can, but they probably, chances are they're not going to if it's not asked for, you know, specifically asked. We ate it. Yeah, I'm not going to put it down. Rest of them, cheers. So leave it in the general fund. Is that the best? Yeah, there are no requests of, yeah, that's fine. Okay, four, five, six. Okay. We'll leave that to you. So we won't, we won't have that piece. That's fine. And somebody can bring it up in some other time. That, you know, I don't want to get you here. They can do it for me. Okay. Okay. Okay, I think then, Stephanie, you work on that piece and then we're going to do a small group that works on the initial conversation regarding how we're going to pay back the initial deficit and look at how. Oh, you wanted to show us the shame. Do we have, are you on a two to three team move? That's not good. All right. No. Oh, yeah. Two to one. Two to one. Okay. Do we have two rounds for this? No. So do we? No. We're going to do a lot of the same things. Oh, okay. Okay. We're going to keep going. Yeah, I thought, we're going to keep going. I'm just waiting. So I emailed downstairs to see. I think you guys, so can I just get a clarification? So on the toll amendment, I'm just going to tweak it with regard to changing the not less than 30% and talk about how the money's going to be spent from sub through section 18A. And then I'm going to incorporate that into the committee of management. Everybody's good with that? Okay. And then there's one issue and I'm guessing that he is not done with the amendment yet, but this is the issue about the ed funding. And Stephanie, did you want to just explain the concepts where everybody can get decide whether everybody's on board? Maybe we need to stop Antia from drafting it? I don't know. We're creating a new section in the bill that speaks to how the 6% sales and use tax within the ed fund is allocated for, I'm going to just say expanded learning opportunity after school. So a bunch of education city words. To describe that spending. And then another section that has the, what I've sent to Antia was another section very similar to what we just talked about here where the in the fall of 21, when there's actually significant sales tax revenue going to be more capital to be in that sales tax line item of the ed fund where the agency of education to fall 21 for FY23 budget proposed a grant program consistent with the, you know, what the agency with the education committee was saying a grant program for these purposes, they would make the proposal about that grant program in time for the December 1st rate letter for FY23 that comes out. So you want that in November so that that money in the sales and use tax doesn't just automatically go to the rate structure, the property tax rate structure. You want, you're putting the onus on the agency to propose the grant program from that portion of the 6% on the cannabis. So it doesn't actually get tied up into the rate structure of the bill of the letter that comes out on December 1st. That's the way I tried to structure it. It gets semi-committed. Yeah, that is, yeah, exactly. More than semi. And that's a, you know, because that letter always comes out on December 1st and you want to be clear about what's available in that letter for the final, you know, the initial rate estimate and you didn't want this money to actually not be available for the things you want it to be available for. That's the idea that how it might need a little help with the actual words on paper, which is why Anki was working on it. Questions? Okay, we are going to start the meeting. This is just an update of the sheet I've given you earlier and what I'm showing. I'm going to go down there and update the amendment. Okay, I didn't do that. That's all right. It is, yeah, that five members have changed the three and the date up in the corner, I believe you've changed it today. That's a hard copy of that in. But what it shows you is that instead of a two plus million dollar deficit at the end of 23, in this scenario, we're still thinking that the likely run rate is 650 on the fees. The excise tax amount, either on what you see on line A1 or cumulative deficit in yellow, in FY23, it'd be 1.7 in the Hooper construct of paying off the deficit. And then it would be about 300 to 400 a year at this three member commission coming off the top of the excise tax to support it. And the question is, is that the comfort level of having that construct and still having some impetus on the fees to make this smaller than it is? So, in the negative number. The fee would bring in 650. And after we paid off the deficit, but we know that we have the deficit. You're still in a three to $400,000 gap. In 23, we reduced the excise tax and paid off as the bill states. The question for the committee is in 24 and 25, in order to get to a zero balance, the excise tax would have to put in three to $400,000 to make it whole. And the question is, if you raise the fees to 9.50 or a million, does that then change the cannabis tax base up above these you may not have as many licensed growers and sellers and. And the other thing to remember between 24 and 25 is when you're having the whole conversation, you've sunset at the board and you're having the conversation about the framework and structure of the board. Hopefully, having that conversation. When you're at the sunset, the board or? You're sunsending at the close of 24. The sunset is effective January 2024, but the actual date of the sunset is June 30th, 2024. So it's the close of 24. You will be talking about it either in the 24 session and maybe a little bit in the 23 session if you're anticipating it or the board is bringing it up potentially. But you will have the auditor's report November 23. You will have the trigger, the hard, hard trigger of the sunset on June 30th, 2024. So that to be 24. That means that your 2024 session will have this conversation happening in it. And what's our comfort level with that? So the three member board you can see is about a million dollars in cost. If they were to pregems that amount would be if we had the one executive director as a full time of the three pregems. Yeah. It would significantly. Yeah, if you actually, that's not reflected in the 25 here, but if you did drop the three members down, you would, to a pregem, you're easily at about $300,000 of savings. It's more than that a little bit, but you're in line, you're well in line with the 650, if that's what it ends up being. So it all depends on the decision of when the legislature sunsets the board and if they choose to go to pregems, the fees should be fairly close in line. And if they don't, they would have to make an adjustment. They would either have to sort of do this construct of permanently dedicating some of the excise tax to the function of the board, to supporting the function of the board, or increasing the fees. Or increasing the fees or changing the board in some other structure than it is. So the key piece was sunsetting the board. It's the only way that the legislature was really forced to look back at the cost of the board and the functions and the demands needed at that time. And if sunsetted and they go away, then that's a different problem. But if they go to per diem, the fees are pretty much in line. And if they don't go to per diem when the legislature would have to act to either increase the fees or choose to use the excise tax or choose something totally different. Yeah, some other, something other than per diem, some other change that we're not thinking of now. Questions? It's clear having that in front of us instead of just talking about it. Yeah, it just gives you a sense of what you're asking. Based on these, I mean, obviously these are all estimates. And the hope is that the language you've put in to try and cover the full cost and any built up deficit results in a fee structure that can be better than what we're predicting here. It's just, it's hard to hang your hat on something higher. Mary? Sun setting, as you've just said, forces that conversation. And if not only just do we continue, but how should it be continued? And so tying everything back into the sunset makes sense to me. Including assuring that whatever deficit there is, paid off by that day. So they essentially are starting a friend at that point, at that point. So you're only in the fund bound, right? You're just, I mean, So I'm just, I need more minutes real quick. So I'm kind of, not as deep. So future question because the board may not be able to fund itself with fees, right? Is that they could in the future, they're gonna sunset and then the question will come back to us. Do we want to increase the fees? Do we want to pay the gap out of the tax and some or other actions reducing the board doing something else, right? So that'll be the future question after the others. That's good. Other thoughts? It is the duty of this legislature to make changes when they're needed. I mean, that's what we're here for. If everything was just, you know, what we'll reserve just go, then why bother to be here except to do things? And this is so new. We don't know what's gonna. Well, that's part of the issue. We don't know in the estimates of the mid-range coming in, whether it's lower or significantly higher. And typically in this state, we don't take quite often. Taking the high range is more appealing because you have more money to work with. But as with the sales tax when we moved it to the Ed fund, we were very conservative with those estimates so that we wouldn't be caught short. Yeah. And just so you know. That's right, and we did that. Right. Well, except overall the estimates have run hotter than what we anticipated. Yeah. So notwithstanding the $180,000 potentially in FY22, everything's sort of keyed to coming back in the fall of 21, and by then there will be new estimates and then they will have to be embedded in the forecast for FY23 by then. You're talking about the prevention use. Yeah. Or just understanding what this world of excise tax and sales tax will be two years down the road once the board is up and running. This is our best estimate right now. It may change a little bit. It may change significantly if their timing is accelerated. If we see changes in the landscape around us. But what you've done in the other two amendments, having an entity come back and make a recommendation in the fall before the budget process starts, seems to be the right way to go forward. That's our normal process. Then you are here with those recommendations in front of you and make the decisions that you normally make about funding. That's the way it flows, General.