 Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome. Is it a good morning? I have had coffees built all over me twice this morning. It's so far. Was it good coffee? It was fabulous coffee, but my clothes are not appreciating it. I'm sorry to hear that. I have a bunch. I have myself too. What are you doing now? Welcome to the conference on S23, which was started in your neck of the woods. Came to us while the four of us served on the committee last week. Let's just go quickly around to make sure that we all know who each other are. Represent Tom Stevens. Gary Montelier. John Calacchi from Southport. Michael Sarracchi from the county. Senator Ballin from the county. Allison Clarkson from the county district. Former House member. Former House member. I am the only former House member on this team, which makes me especially qualified to be on this conference. So with everything in front of us this week, I was hoping that we would be able to just dive right in. I think we both have expressed our bodies respective desires to see this pass. And so it's just a question, I think of being across the table and getting a clarification of what actually we're talking about. I presume it will be a little bit less complex than the family beef bill, but there are plenty of complexities within the differences in the two bills. So Damien and then Joyce, if we could get Damien, if you could just lead us through the differences and also kind of educate us on some of the changes that we put forward that may not be relevant any longer, whether it's because studies have been done or other language has been put into the bills into the statute someplace else. Joyce, if you could run through after Damien the issue brief that you were able to get done last fall, that would be great. Was it fall? Damien, all yours. Thank you. I'm just pulling up the document on my iPad for the record. Damien and Leonard will just see the council. And you should all have a copy of the side-by-side in front of you at this point. And just pull it up on my iPad and I will walk through it with you. What do you have? I apologize. Senator Clarkson here, I have an extra copy. Here. Here we go. Okay. We got it. All set. Here you go. Here, you can get your copy back and we have an extra copy over there. So just to bring us up to speed, the House's proposal of amendment to the Senate's original proposal of amendment on this bill was to go with a minimum wage increase of two-and-a-quarter times the CPI or five-and-a-half percent, whichever is less, until a minimum wage is equal to or greater than $15. And then after reaching $15, the minimum wage would return to its increase by the CPI or five-percent whichever is less, which is the current increase that we've been seeing year over year. The House proposal also established tip pooling requirements that were consistent with federal regulations and provided that the minimum wage increase that two-and-a-quarter times multiplier could return down to just the CPI in any year in which both state sales and use tax revenues decreased by two percent or more relative to the prior year and the state revenue forecasts have been reduced by two percent or more. So that's what's commonly referred to as an off-ramp or a... Recession trigger. Yes, the recession trigger there that's designed to kind of mirror recession. It's something that's done in New York and California or that is in their minimum wage laws. Damian may I ask? We know that New York has several zones for minimum wage increase, so is that true in each of the zones? Right, so in New York they can make the assessment with respect to any of the zones and that comes out of the understanding that the economy in the city may be different from the economy of the state. Particularly in the area. I mean north of Albany. And again that was done in a climate that was written in a climate last year where there was from the fiscal offices on down of pretty more than lukewarm fears of a recession on the horizon which according to the fiscal stuff last week seems to be less urgent. Less urgent. Always on the horizon but just less urgent than it was a year ago. So in contrast what the Senate sent back at the end of the session last year did away with the increase to $15 and instead came with an increase to $11.50 on this past January 1st and $12.20 on next January 1 and then returning to the CPI increase thereafter. So that's kind of the core of the bill. The other pieces in here in the House version there were some changes in the definitions. There was a clarification on the definition of student to be consistent with the current Department of Labor interpretation and the additional definition of tip because of the tip pooling requirements. That is all out of the Senate version. The next in the House version there were two sections, sections three and four that dealt with child care financial assistance program. Those sections complemented what was put forward by the House in a bill to address that issue and then what eventually went through in the appropriations bill at the end of the session generating I believe something like $7 million in additional funding for that and this was designed to complement that. So that has already passed through what is not in the Senate version. Section five of the House bill and section two of the Senate bill required a report on increases in Medicaid reimbursement rates that would be needed to enable the payment of minimum wage to employees of certain Medicaid participating providers and independent direct support providers. The Joint Fiscal Office has prepared an issue brief on this subject. They did not have some of the teeth in that bill or in that provision requiring providers to report but Joyce can talk more about the data that was provided in that report. Section six in the House bill created a study committee to examine the possibility of creating a separate minimum wage that would increase more slowly than the standard minimum wage for employers that provide certain benefits to their employees such as healthcare benefits of a certain level. Section seven would have required legislative counsel. That section is not in the Senate bill. Section seven of the House bill would have required legislative counsel and the Joint Fiscal Office to submit a report regarding potential alternative mechanisms to the CPI for indexing the minimum wage to inflation after 2024. That did not make it into the Senate bill just as an aside and I've said this to both committees of jurisdiction. This is something that any member could request from us at any time if you were interested in that. So section eight in the House bill was section three in the Senate bill. That created a study committee to look at the impact of altering or eliminating the basic wage rate for tipped employees. This is known as the tipped wage. So currently that's 50% of the standard minimum wage. And then I would have also looked at eliminating the sub minimum wage for secondary school students during the school year. I think everyone here is familiar with that just as a reminder. Under Vermont law currently during the school year secondary school students are subject to the federal minimum wage which is generally 725 but can be lower in certain instances. And then during the summer the break between school years are subject to the Vermont minimum wage which is 1096. And this has been a source of confusion for employers in recent years. I don't want to get too far in the weeks but can you just give us a reminder what would be the you said there are some instances in which employers could pay less than the federal. So they would still be paying the federal minimum wage but under federal minimum wage law for employees under I think it's under 20 I'd have to double check. You can pay a sub minimum wage for a probationary period at the beginning of their employment. And that's set by federal law. And there's also a training wage. That's about 425 an hour right? Isn't there a 425 an hour? I can't remember the rate but yeah there's a training wage for employees under a certain age. That's well below the 725 an hour. It's not only confusing but difficult for people who are actually trying to earn money to go to college which is wildly too expensive. So I mean there are lots of issues that are packed into that. If we establish a different rate our policy over I just wanted to make sure I wasn't over that. Yeah so the way the federal wage in our law works is it sets the floor and states can enact the enact laws that are equal to or more protective of employees. So you can a higher minimum wage, greater overtime provisions that sort of thing can all be set at the state level. For instance we have our minimum wage is now 1096 because we have what we put into law over time. New Hampshire does not have a minimum wage so they default to the federal minimum wage as their minimum wage. Just imagine what their expenses are being paid. So I think that that's, I mean the longer we do with the frequency that we do to go into this statute it's become clear that there's certain aspects of it that are outdated. You know the spread, the difference between our minimum wage and the federal minimum wage has grown over time. So I think that was the thought behind having that study just to say that this is this. I mean I can't imagine that someone would turn and say I'm going to hire somebody for 725 an hour when they can work next door for 1196 an hour. That's the market at work but the fact is that they can. And then in terms, if I can just jump ahead to the agricultural study which is next, we've learned the same issues. The agricultural workers can be paid the federal minimum wage but there are market issues. There are contract issues for other workers who come in. There's just the different levels and when asked, when you see the list of exemptions after a while you finally have to just ask why is this so? And so that's what this was for. We approached the House Agricultural Committee and the department last year and they both expressed an interest in having a study done so that they, because if you ask the Department of Agriculture they'll give you the 42 different answers that they aggregate from people. But this is just a way to try to get an understanding of it so that we can move forward with better information. I think that's what I'm going to ask you was written long ago. If we have in the Senate version, I know it's the same as the House and what we set over at the end, but in our original bill did we have a study on temperatures in there? You did? Yeah. That was something that the Senate added in the original amendment that they sent over to the House. The House added the agricultural wage study, which was then capped by the Senate and what it sent back. How about the subminimum? The subminimum wage for secondary school students, I believe that was in from the Senate and then capped by the House. Remember we had a fairly robust conversation about a universal wage rather than a tip wage, rather than a differential. We had that great professor from the West Coast talk to us about all the challenges that tip wage earners face. So Joyce just pulled up the federal rags for me while I was speaking and I can confirm that it's for workers under 20 years of age, the first 90 days under federal law you can be paid for 25 an hour and then you go up to 725. So we've talked about the working group to examine the wage in our law for agricultural workers. Before you leave that, so that makes the issue of when a school student becomes even more relevant if it can default during a vacation period to that training wage, right? So the way the department interprets it is during the school year on regular vacation periods and the department interprets that is basically from when you start school, whenever the first day of school is around Labor Day to the last day of school in June, that window there and all the vacations in there are subject to federal minimum wage. So that could be as long as 425. That could be if you're within your first 90 days. Regardless of the fact that we have a different federal, I mean a different minimum wage. Right because the way it's set up is there, we have I think seven exemptions or groups that are exempt from the minimum wage overall, agricultural workers are one and then secondary school students during all of the school year and regular vacation periods are another and that group. The department, because the laws are construed to be protective of workers, they construed that as narrowly as possible to be protective of student workers. So during the summer, if you're a high school student who just works summers, it's just the statement of a wage. If you work during the school year, your employer could choose to go back and forth between them or they could choose to pay you the statement of a wage. What they can't do is pay you the federal minimum wage year-round. So those two studies, both sides agreed on them and to the best of my knowledge, the language was kept the same by both parties there. The next was requiring legislative council to prepare draft legislation to modernize the wage and hour statutes, including identifying the opposite leader out of date provisions. This was left out of the Senate version, but two members of the House who are part of this conference committee here, Representative Colada, Representative Stevens, both requested bills that included that work. That is, and that was presented to the House General Committee last week for a bill introduction. So that is not necessary at this point. So can I ask you a question and go back to section two? I know you and I had talked about this in your office and I walked away thinking that that was put in as belts and suspensions. And that that is actually no longer necessary because of what the Feds have done. So the tip pooling requirements, originally, if we go back to last biennium, what had happened is the federal government had proposed regulations that included a very large loophole that would allow employers of tipped employees who do tip pooling to actually keep part of the tip pool rather than distributing it to employees. Congress, and it's rare that I get to say this, but Congress passed a provision that corrected that issue. And so they actually corrected the issue. So now the tip pools, you can pool between the front of the house and the back of the house, provided you're paying the federal minimum wage as your base wage to everyone, so at least $7.25 an hour. But it prevents managers or owners of restaurants and other places that do tip pooling to actually keep a portion of the tip pool. It has to go to the employees. So the primary issue that Vermont was concerned with was that issue of having some of the money go away from employees. Some of the initial language on this required that it stay with the traditionally tipped employees, but the latest language follows the federal guidelines where if you pay at least federal minimum wage, you can pool between the front and the back of the house. So dishwashers, people who are cleaning salads. Exactly. And that's part of a bigger overall issue about compensation in restaurants and what we're used to. But again, this goes to tip pooling only. This does not affect restaurants. This federal law does not affect restaurants that work our traditional way, which is to say you can pay 50% of the minimum wage as a tip credit, if you will. Right. Yeah, it does not affect them. So they have to have a tip pool and they have to pay a base wage to their tipped employees that's equal to or greater than the federal minimum wage. So you're already talking right now, our tipped wage in the state is 548. So you're already talking someone who's paying $1.75, $1.77 more than the tipped base wage in the state as a base wage to their tipped employees. So if they go back down to the state's base wage, they're not eligible for that federal tip pooling provision anyway. And because it's more protective than the state law, we'll follow it without requiring us to adopt anything. All we can do is we could adopt something that's more protective of the tipped employees. But at this point, the house's latest proposal did not do that. And so the Senate pulled out that language because it's not necessary to accomplish that. But the language about the student was also taken out? Yeah, so and that is not necessary at this point because that's the current interpretation by the Department of Labor. So the only benefit of including that definition is just clarity on the face of the statute. So that definition didn't actually change the status quo and just put it in the statute so that there is, excuse me, clarity kind of for employers who might not go to the department's wage in our regulations or might not call off the department for guidance. And that issue would be part of the study, no doubt. Yes. Right. And the study, if the study comes back with a recommendation to change the student minimum wage or eliminate that exemption, that would all be dealt with at that point. So that's an issue that would be front of the center in that study. Thank you. And so I didn't mention this at 10.30. But we need to be done today, this morning at 10, I'm sorry, at 9.30. So we need to be done by 10.30. So as do we. Yeah. And so just keep that in mind with our conversation. That would be great. And then we will try to schedule something else for later on today, reconvening later on today. So Joyce, please let us know. Actually, before we move over to Joyce, can you just summarize what is no longer necessary because of changes in statute and where there is similarity between the two? I think maybe it's obvious, but just starting from the top. No problem. So sections three and four are no longer necessary because that was addressed in last year's budget bill. Section two, assuming the tip pooling requirements stay out of there is not really necessary unless you wanted to get that clarified definition of student in there. But if you're planning to address that through the study committee, it's not necessary. And then on sections six and six, that's a difference there. And that's something that you'll have to decide. Section seven is not really necessary because you could request it on your own. But if you wanted to require it to be done as part of the legislation, you could include it. And then section 10 is not necessary because those bills have been drafted. Right. Section five. Section five is in both bills. Oh, well that is really something for Joyce to address whether her work this summer and the issue brief she wrote covers that. Thank you. Joyce. Thank you. So I don't have copies of the issue brief regarding the survey of wages for healthcare workers paying through Medicaid. But I believe that you've always seen it perhaps. We have it right here. We have it right there. Ron is unbelievable. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you. Okay. So I'm going to run through this quickly. The point is that we tried very hard to get as many jobs reported in terms of minimum wage in terms of hourly wage and hours work. As you could. We hired a contractor. We worked for three months to try to collect wage data. It turns out that we got wages paid for 6,631 jobs. We believe that there are about 7,200 workers who are paid $15 or less in the state paid through Medicaid in the healthcare sector. The jobs do not translate to the workers because many workers have more than one job. For example, the folks paid through ARIS, the direct care workers, might have four or five jobs in a single pay period. So we are not able to estimate the cost to the state of raising the minimum wage for those workers directly from the wage data. But the issue brief does contain information about the distribution of those wages. And you can see about 45 percent of the jobs for which we got information do have hourly wage of 1250 or less. But I would caution that those are heavily weighted by those ARIS workers, the direct care workers, because we were able to get complete payroll data, 4500 jobs for that group of workers. So the other part of our study was to try to update the inputs for estimating the cost to the state of raising the minimum wage for these healthcare workers. And there we relied on help from some of the trade organizations, looking at nursing homes and visiting nurses and hospital workers and all adult care facilities and so forth. So that we think we now have a better estimate of the cost, on average, of raising minimum wage for these healthcare workers. Now I say on average because there's no way to directly target the money to specific providers. For example, we know that providers in the Northeast Kingdom and in southern parts of the state pay less, on average, than providers in Jim and County, for example. And with a statewide reimbursement rate for Medicaid services, there's no way to send more money to the providers who need more money. So it would just be a similar percentage increase across the state. So that's a very quick review of what we've done and some of the insights that we've learned. Are there any questions about all that? I have one. So the analysis does not provide, at least in this issue brief, the amount of money the budget will benefit by in terms of increasing them. That's correct. Reduce benefits and increase taxes. That is correct. Because I remember when we did it for the child care, there was way more than enough money there to pay for the increase we want to pay for the child care. So I have two additional handouts that I can discuss today, if you like. One shows the new inflation projections that we just received from Tom, Kevin and Jeff Carr, the new consensus inflation projections. And just as an illustrative path, I've used 1175 in January 2021 and 1255 in January 2022 simply to illustrate what something would look like. So I have a handout there. And I also have the handout that is the table of all the numbers from the issue brief for the minimum wage. And this simply moves everything forward by a year. And again, uses the 1175 and 1255 dates. So shall we hand those out? Yes, please. And while we're doing that choice, just, Damien may mention that the study language that was in the bill, that was in the House version of the bill, gave you teeth to get more information from agencies. But simply doing the issue brief, you asked and they either returned your request or not, is that right? What is the difference between having the language in the report versus what you did? So I will confess I haven't read the language recently. But we did everything we could to get data. We had over 200 providers who cooperated and sent their data. There are something like 8,000 providers in the state who bill through Medicaid and they know that because we got the Medicaid budgets for all the providers from AHS. Many, many, many of those have very small Medicaid billing, probably under 1,000, maybe under 2,000, but we sort of ignored those. And we tried to get the largest providers in terms of their Medicaid billing. So we tried our level test. So is this a sufficient... I was treating this as a sufficient substitution for what we were asking for if this bill had passed last year. That is true. Okay. Yes. John. Joyce, you know, when I was looking at your study here, thank you, when you said 45% in 2012-50 or less, that means 55% are already paying over 2012-50. Yes. And this group of 7,000. And then on page five of this study, the DNA looks like 75% of their employees are being paid over 12-15 hour. Right? Yes. And then on the next page, the cumulative distribution of wages on page six and 75% of reported jobs are being paid over 12-15 hour. Yes. Is that... Yes, that is true. But again, we did not get a representative sample of all those jobs. You understand that? I understand that for the geographic differences. Right. But it shows in some places, the market places move that ahead. Yes. And in large part, that's because people start at a low wage. And after so many months, they move up to a higher wage and so forth. The thing to remember there is there's so much turnover in this industry that some of these providers have 40-50% turnover. Yes. So many people are starting at the low wage for, let's say, four to six months. But one of your fundings is when you talk to people, they said that raising the minimum wage will actually help with retention. Yes. They think it will help someone. Yes. Yes. The thing to remember there is that, of course, the minimum wage rises for everyone, including workers at McDonald's and workers at the retail store and so forth and so on. And they're still competing to some extent, but they hope it will help with hiring in the future. Thank you. Correct. Okay. So let's look at it. Representative Hook. No, if you were in the middle of the thought, go ahead. No, I was going to turn to the next. Okay. You said that the data is heavily weighted toward the heiress folks. Yes. And so what's the significance of that? Are they paying less or more? Do you suspect? Yes. So you can see on page four. So there are two types of heiress workers. One type is paid hourly and the second type is paid by the day. And folks paid by the day generally spend over nights with patients. Maybe they're doing hospice care or other kinds of care that require overnight work. So you can see that, let's see, about 50% of the hourly jobs are paying 1250 or more. And about only 7% of the daily jobs, once you convert to an hourly rate, are paying 1250 or more. Right? Only 7%. Well, it's 93% are paying below 1250. But the folks who work overnight may be able to sleep some of those hours and so forth and so on. So their pay rate is different. So I've converted to an hourly rate here. So, yes, 4,500 of the 6,600 jobs are the heiress jobs because we've got complete data for that payroll provider. So that means 2 thirds of those jobs are influenced by these folks that tend to be paid lower. And the amount of that 4,200, 400 are these daily workers. Correct. Well, this is 4,200 who are paying hourly. Oh, okay. So 4,600 total from the heiress and got it. Joyce. Yes. Do you have a sense? We did the minimum wage summer study committee. We looked at this population, obviously not in the same kind of detail as you do. But we came to the conclusion that in the first couple of years, increasing the minimum wage wouldn't necessarily have a significant impact on these heiress workers or other workers, especially when you factor in the fact that they, 60 days or 30 days or whatever they get a pump in their wages, substantially they were still ahead of what they were projecting for a wage. But we did identify that as years 3, 4, and 5, we had a problem potentially looming that we need to. Do you think that was in general given all those factors a fairly accurate statement based upon? I think we didn't have complete information. And we may still not have complete information, but we have a little bit more information that says the turnover rates are so high that there are many workers who are paid below 1150 or below 1250 an hour. So because 40% of those folks are turning over every year, starting a new job every year, there are that many people in the workforce who are earning the very low wages before they get bumped up, right? Right, but the target wage of the increase in the minimum wage was higher than that. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely, right. So may I just tag under while we're asking Joyce about what she considered and didn't consider. It's great to have the revenue data in one of your handouts here. What I don't see is, OK, so you have net reduction in federal funds to the Vermont economy decrease because the impact in what we'll save eventually over time, again, it's going to take a while. Increased income is, of course, a reduction in dependence on assistance programs, which we would hope would not only reduce federal funds, federal money, but also state money. And I don't see any net reduction in state money here. Is that where is that? That's up here. Oh, it's including both. That's all right. I just saw net gain, hoping to also see net reduction. Did you want to walk us through that? Yes, so let me just start with the minimum wage path that has the small table on the little chart. So there have been changes in the inflation projections that will affect both current law and any new minimum wage path going forward that is indexed to inflation. So the chart at the bottom here just shows that the current projections, I'm sorry, the contrast between the blue and the green doesn't show a better. It was perfectly clear on my computer screen, of course. Blue's on top. The blue on the right is on top, yes. So you can see that they're just a touch higher this year than they were last year. And you can see the big surprise was in actual inflation for 2019. The consensus had us up at 2.5% and it came in at 1.8%. That was the big surprise. But some of you may have seen some intermediate projections from this summer. We had some August projections. And those were actually a little bit higher than the current December 2019 projections. So they'll be confused. OK, so here we have on the top, we have the path under current law. So the consensus projections would now say that by 2025 current law would get to 1230 by 2025. Of course, that would have the same real spending power in 2020 dollars as the current wage 1096. It's simply indexed to inflation. If we think about the illustrative path, 1175 and 1255, then you can see that we would get to 1346 by 2025. And that, of course, would have the spending power of 1226 once you adjust for inflation. Assuming that we adjust for inflation. Well, no, no, I'm just doing current dollars. So I went from 1096 and then assumed that the 1175 and 1255 happens and then assumed that it's indexed by inflation. Well, that's what I mean. That's what I mean. Absolutely. So you get to 1226. And there's a note underneath here, underneath that table that says that current law gets to 1381 in 2030, but the 1175, 1255 path indexed to inflation thereafter would get to 1511 in 2030. Jesus Christ. I've done believable ways of being able to imagine. So we under this 1175, 1255 and inflation thereafter would get to approximately 15 dollars in 2030. And the bill that the governor vetoed, I remember we were suggesting that if we didn't do anything, it would get to 15 dollars in 2034. Right. Well, let's finish this. I think the difference is between the two. I think our plan ended up getting there given all of the different parameters of the CPI and to, you know, the algorithms that were created in order to push it forward. Got us there by 2026 or 2027. I believe the original Senate bill that came over to the house got us there by 2024 or 2025 with set increases up until that point. And up to 15 dollars, I think by 2024, which, again, the committee version agreed with that and then in the house there was the battle over with the recessionary language became very strong influence on how we determined what we came up with and then you returned two years that keeps us on a certain path that's close to what either one of the proposals would do but acknowledges that we actually want to try to have something that we can get signed. Right. And you felt that was more palatable. Is that a way of looking out of that there's not a, there's not a desire to like do two years and then let go out to 2030 but that, but by putting an increase for two years, the feeling was, let's get this going. Yeah, let's give it a jump start. Did I represent that pretty accurately? I mean, because I just, I just want to, I don't want to misrepresent that. Yeah, and I think it's important to recognize that what the Senate sent over also was a year ago and we were thinking that inflation was going to be about 3% at that point. So obviously there needs to be some adjustment from what we saw over a year ago because we've lost a year. Shall we turn to table two? So these are the fiscal numbers that... May I just say something sort of? May I just say one thing, Tom? I mean, for those of us who are also working so hard on housing, which is all of us, it is still beyond frustrating that these numbers do not reflect the cost of living in an hard-livable wage and that what I hope we can do as a legislature over time is repair the increasing differential between the livable wage and the minimum wage. And as we all know, Franklin, Bell and Roosevelt meant the minimum wage to be the minimum amount you needed to live on. And after having our head in housing all year, all summer and fall, to be looking at these figures when we know they don't even pay for a single bedroom, one family rental apartment in Windsor County is just beyond frustrating. So while I'm appreciative of all the work we've done, I just also am reminded that we have so much more work to do to make Vermont and bring our wages up so that we aren't 18% behind the rest of the country and our wages and help our people live with dignity in this state. So anyway, I just had to say that because here we are still talking about these amounts that aren't even going to pay for a rental apartment. Sir? Well, if I could just add a little bit on that because I don't know if everyone saw the women working wages in Vermont studying them. And women are a disportions share of Vermont who make less than $11 an hour. The median age of women earning under $11 an hour is 38 years old and 28% of them are in college credits so this is a gender issue in our state as well. So I think we're all on this that we have to increase this and then you break down disability and people color and it's unbelievable. So we're all with you. I just have to say that as we noodle these numbers which are already inadequate. And to be clear that that feeling is shared by the house on many frustrating levels and I think it's just really and that's why we put together the language about the future of compensation because of the difficulties in all of this and I think a minimum wage. We're seeing an economy that's heated up so less people are being paid the minimum wage but then you have statistics that show that all these things feed into this and we are... There's never a beginning and there's never an end and I think this gets us across a line with the acknowledgement that there's always miles to go. So what matters here? I mean we all care deeply about what has just been articulated but none of it matters if we don't get this across a line. So if we need... Yes, we have. We need to be cautious about that and what we're willing to do. And I just want to say that if you look at Joyce's chart here we're still talking about helping 40,000 Vermonters and putting another $121 million in their pocket. It is still a meaningful bill. It's over a shorter period of time but it is still meaningful. So I don't want to lose sight of that. Yeah, absolutely. Right. Sorry, that's just a long way to get to chart two and I'll just point out it's 10-18, so... Okay. So table two is simply an update from the fiscal note that was issued at the end of session and I've simply moved everything forward by a year updated to $20-20 and used the $11.75 and $12.55 pack. So these numbers should look very familiar to you. They haven't changed a whole lot. I will say that they are preliminary and that I haven't gone back to check the newest inflation estimates and how those might affect these numbers but they will be close. So you can see... Let's see. We've just walked through the jobs and the initial income gains of the low-wage workers. So the net fiscal gain to the state looks at how much more money is coming in and how much less money is going out the door for supporting programs and benefit payments. So that's the $9.4 million that you see in 2022. The net reduction in federal funds to the Vermont economy comes from decreased federal benefits and increased federal taxes because of course higher incomes mean higher taxes for some households. So that would be about $39 million less coming to the state. The approximate net unemployment which means the number of jobs that we would be down because of the increase in the low-wage is about $280 and this is according to modeling done by Tom Cabet for JFO. And that's jobs in the same way that you just described them before that it's not the people in those jobs. It's the jobs themselves. Correct. Yes. Out of how many jobs? I think it's over 300,000. Oh, it's certainly more than 300,000. In a year we know that 380,000 people work in Vermont. It may have been workable jobs. It may work more than 380,000. So the tax department gets 380,000 W-2s. So that means a wage report for unique social security numbers. I can't do math. So this is less than 1% far less. Far less. It's actually a 10% of a percent. And I feel like this is December is less than it was when we were looking at this year ago. So relative to the wage going to $15 an hour term. Yes, of course. And you can see the long-term outcomes at the bottom of Table 2 there, the net annual long-term employment, the number of jobs that we would be below business as usual, okay? So think of business as usual number of jobs. We would be down about 500 in the long term. I remember a quote from Pan-Covet that was really stuck with me from the summer study when he told me these numbers and people trying to get him to gauge the economic impact. And people were focused on the number of jobs part-time or whatever that might be lost. There were similar proportion when he said, but using these numbers he said, if I had to look at the fact that I'm a low-income worker and 280 jobs might be lost versus 40,000 that may see gains in the income, those are odds I would take. Employees an opportunity to work for a wage that is more attractive and might go of the job that is less attractive. And then there's the demographics that we hear about where people, the baby boomers, which is the bulge in our demographics is lessening in the workplace and so as people leave the workplace that's the people part, not part of the jobs part. So what do we have left choice? I just want to be conscious of the time. So you can see disemployment as a share of total jobs is the 0.1% that is similar to the short term effect. Disemployment as a share of minimum wage jobs is 0.8%. So that says that the minimum wage jobs that would be affected the most. The effect on the level of unemployment is very small 0.08%. And again that's business as usual, that line and they go down to 0.08%. Very small. Very modest. Okay. Well, keeping time in mind are there suggestions that the Senate would like to make proposals or shall we meet to find a time this afternoon to trade proposals or are we right now I think there is some proposition to conversations started on the floor so we don't want to do that. Why don't we come back to you with some proposals either orally or we may even have them written up? That's fine I think. So do you have time between I'll say as early as 12.30 and between before the budget address do you have time? I haven't spoken to my conferees here but I guess I just have to ask Becca what time our caucus is coming. So we're starting caucus at 12.10. I try to get them out a little bit before 11. So and the budget address is at 2 and we have to we have to be in our place in our seats by 10 of What time did you say that caucus would likely be over? So can we make a proposal to meet at 1 o'clock? 1 to 1.15 1.15 to trade proposals and have a further conversation. Sounds good. Damien will be slightly delayed explain that. We are on the record. Thank you everybody welcome back. Thank you glad to be back. I met with Damien and asked him to put together a written conference for your consideration and he said he probably could get it done by 1.30 it wouldn't be with it wouldn't be edited but he would get that to us. So I can explain what's in it and talk about it and hopefully by the time I'm finished and you're done asking any questions about it he'll be here with a copy. So based on our where we thought inflation was going and circumstances have changed since last May we're suggesting that we go to $12.55 in two years and that would be going to $11.75 in year one and $12.55 in year two. Now we keep the same CPI as what's in the bill. After that we keep the same CPI that's in the bill. So it's a straightforward two year proposal just like with the Senate. Right. The numbers are slightly different. As far as the I think if we went through everything Damien said this morning it seemed to me there was only two real studies left in the bill or two remaining issues left in the bill. As long as the agricultural study and the tipped employee study and student study and what you're going to get from us is a proposal that has joint fiscal and legislative council do a significant work up answering the same questions that's in the study committee as opposed to establishing a formal summer study committee. In the Senate formal summer study committees are frowned upon or at least more rare in second year of a biennium and having served on a number of these around these kinds of issues for instance on the minimum wage it's a bear in terms of the amount of time that needs to be expended in terms of all kinds of witnesses that come in and I'm not sure it adds a lot more than what Damien can provide I've seen his reports in really detailed and you can spell out what you want you want to know what other states have done what the impacts have been he can collect that data he can get position papers from the various advocates and attach them to the thing he's not going to be able to make a recommendation like a summer study would be but he is going to be able to give all the information we need be to help the legislature go forward in the future and so I think that we would prefer to go that route as opposed to the route that was proposed for both of these which was two administration officials two legislators and two stakeholders being part of the thing I think we've also seen I think you'll agree that these summer studies despite our best efforts tend not to get started until September and we're in an election year and people are going to be pulled in different directions in terms of November and so I think this would be clear and quite frankly it could be a more productive way to go so that's going to be a very simple proposal to you and I'm not sure if you have any questions or Damien comes with the language who makes the list of questions I mean I know that we have certain things put out here but who would I told him to take what was in both of our bills in terms of a summer study committee and try and address those same questions for him to answer to provide the back up information for legislature council and joint fiscal together so basically he would operate as I mean not unlike what he did with the bill that he already did work on by request which was the modernization which we originally had in here as a report request I made it a bill request and he did that kind of work so you're thinking along the same lines if we ask him as you said for the information that we need to then pick up the policy and move forward rather than have a committee that hears all that and then puts out a recommendation I would encourage you if you want to as you think about this I had a piece of legislation a couple of years ago dealing with misclassification and the use of debarment procedures that were not getting done in the state of Vermont and asked him to do a report the quality of that report was incredible what he put together I think it was 35 pages long so the question I would have for him and Joyce and JFO is just their capacity to take this on of course that's hard to say because we don't know what else we'll be asking but I think we need to be attentive to the fact that it's a good question I anticipated and I think he would agree that he would probably have to spend more time staffing the committee than he would in writing the report and Joyce you don't know because you haven't seen what we're necessarily asking but this capacity does that raise a flag on your side of the shock in terms of ability to produce so we have to be careful about how much we take on for the summer because we are a limited number of people but we just don't know what else is coming down the pike so I imagine this would fit in for the summer it's a provisional a conditional it's not a bright red in a minimum wage study we worked Joyce and Damien, pretty hard and so what would be the and they wrote the report too what would be the report due date and I think only in terms of our I don't know what our in the house I'd have to ask but we always operate with such a the senate has such a limited you have a deadline for bill requests that are pretty early but not in the first year with Miami we can introduce something it's a much more liberal deadline in the first point it's the first week of December it's not the first week of December I think we can introduce things in order to feel like we can ask for a bill that will utilize this as a report for its statistical backup we should ask him I think in the first year it's January 30th for us I think that's our plan we have we have but I know that there's been a desire but it also goes pretty late in terms of I mean there are many times where we don't get bills in the first year of the biennium until almost crossover just because the deadline is so late and that's why they moved up the deadline this year to try to make sure that all the bills are out for the second session and enough time for us to actually maybe act on them wouldn't that be nice so in one of the reports that the house was looking for there were in addition to members of these bodies in state you know executive people from the executive branch there were also representative representatives of employers and employees probably and I'm curious if we lose any richness in having that conversation by having those reps I understand the proposal I'm just thinking about what did the alternative structure bring and was there some richness to what the report would say by having employee and employer reps he can't he can't take testimony but he can ask for position papers from the advocates and ask questions from the advocates on both sides and somehow incorporate those as not necessarily facts maybe he defines them as facts but maybe as this is what we heard from these people these people so I think that's he can ask anybody he can ask anybody for information without he will pass the information on as if it were a report I guess I understand that I'm just reflecting on the fact that it's a different conversation as you have representatives of those groups at the table so thinking about the questions that need to be asked we need to make sure that you're getting that information I think that puts the onus on us when we consider the bill anyway regardless of whether there was a summer study committee with all the stakeholders present we tried to call on as many people as we could on this bill so it's the same idea it's just acknowledging that their voices had not yet been heard in ways that matter advocates yes but to hear the voices would be important and that's on us to follow through so you'll have for Damien until 1.30 we have 4 minutes we can check I can run down and see if I can text him I think he's here but you're probably going to want to look at it so a week because I haven't seen the final draft but that's not Damien but I'll set up another meeting later today what do you say yeah we should we'll take some time amongst ourselves to think about the number and and just discuss what we think about this idea I mean I don't on the face of it I agree that it is difficult to get these committees up and going but I just want to talk to and see where we are with this we're seeing the information I mean this gives us an opportunity to also another bill that's already in the works because it's an opportunity to think through this more if we find that that offer isn't sufficient but I believe we'll talk about it um you know as a freshman legislator and you're reporting that excuse is wearing thin with you I know but here's I hear what you're saying about the studies in the election here but my experience in our committee is when people who were working with tipped wages men and women in their lived experience of the sexual harassment they have to go through and their experiences of that and then people who work with farm workers and say they work with visas is this amount and they give them housing is this amount really made us think about we really have to get a fuller picture of however moners are compensated in this state all of this and so I think the studies to me were like okay this gives us an opportunity to go deep really go into lived experience and understand all these aspects of people who are working on farms and I have to ask or I have to be reassured by Damian that that actually can happen in a study where no lived experience can be informed I would say that that's not fully fair I think that you're right John I think we would have a lot of that in the summer study but I also think we can get that in our committee as follow up to the report and we can bring that into committees as we weigh these bills but the other the other thing is all of all of the reports he'll get from let's say VBSR or the chamber or from migrant justice or whoever is going to weigh in the restaurant associates the wonderful woman on the west coast all of them will be lived experience every report he gets will be like some aspects of lived experience so I'm not afraid he's not going to get lived experience it's our job then as we listen to the testimony as we explore and do the deep dive to bring in those voices to inform us of the stories that have informed the reason for their advocacy I think you make a good point you know the middle ground might be to collecting data from these advocacy groups to encourage them to submit anecdotal testimonials as well it's not the same as seeing a person live but the committees themselves will be very well prepared as opposed to us diving in right now I mean you'll have a lot of background behind you and I'll get you a copy of this this misclassification report it was pretty, I mean he does a great job and I think one possibility when we when we've envisioned the larger study that we have a bill for is to just the way you phrase it makes it fit into there and I think what you're saying is at the very least the technical information that Damien put together provides a base where actually witnesses wouldn't have to repeat themselves or you know go through it just it could potentially lead to this where it is about the lived experience rather than I think we get the best of both let's when John has an opportunity to talk to Damien um Ron did you call Damien off or is he still coming cause I have this no I just I think if he I mean really I would say that if we can run if we get like if we leave now cause we have to just I can just I've got to hold up but it's um we need to get a copy of it we need to take five or seven minutes ourselves I haven't seen the final version yeah but we want to take some we need to get the copy we need to talk a little bit privately about the solid proposal that's in front of us on the increase increase over two years and then um then we will each get your proposal that will look like have a draft so it will have you and if we what times do you have tomorrow morning 8 30 are you going back to your committee after the speech we are I mean this afternoon I think that would be our preference not even at 4 30 or 5 we have a meeting at 5 and I have something at 3 30 so let's do a first thing in the morning let's see and we have 8 30 on the work for us development but we could do 8 and we could push back work for us until 9 that's not my preference okay we'll leave it later because I am at 8 30 I'll skip I mean right now I have a hole in my schedule at 10 a.m. or we could meet at noon we don't we're sharing so yeah I mean 8 I'm saying 8 is not preferable 8 30 so I just 9 30 10 what do you have do you have something at 8 30 I can change it could you do lunch Mary yes why don't we just do lunch why don't we do 12 I'm getting 12 okay that's the default unless it changes somehow we can always if we can find a sooner time yeah Mary what this afternoon the governor goes to what is the next what should you do my committee has governor reps in at 3 30 and then that will go easily until almost 5 does the governor used to speak more than an hour oh I don't know I would say 70 minutes is usually okay so we couldn't say 3 o'clock no okay I mean we all have to wait until even till the 70 so and it takes us not to look at our different departments well notice we stopped we stopped the plodding we get copies of whatever Damien gets to you