 All right. Well, good morning, everybody. This is House Ways and Means. And they, we are in addition, in addition to welcoming Emily to the committee. Our first task. Hello, Emily. We are going to start with Steve Klein, who's going to give us a review. And it's a pretty exhaustive review because it's a pretty huge bill. Of the federal legislation that just passed and is sending a great deal of money our way. So unless somebody wants to jump in with something before we start, I'm going to go ahead and let Steve begin. Okay. Thank you very much. Steve Klein from joint fiscal. What I'm going to do is go through essentially two documents, both of which are on our website. We have a joint fiscal office has created a COVID-19 page and you can get them there, but they're also on your website and available now. And the two documents first I'm going to use is an NCSL summary of the bill. And I'm just going to highlight that document and different aspects of it. And then I'm going to talk about a spreadsheet that the Senator Leahy has put together about some of the specific appropriations that are in the bill. One of the things I'm going to do is I'll go relatively fast. And then what needs to happen is if I get incoherent or I go too fast, raise your hand or let the chair or a source of no, and they'll stop me or if there's questions as you go along. It's a good idea to just have the same thing stop me and ask. So I just want to start right off the real focus. This is we just had this week at the Senate. And today, hopefully the house will pass the third coronavirus relief bill. And there probably will be one more. It's at least that's my thinking and we'll talk about that later. The first one was a small bill that provided money for primarily for the health response. So really the second bill was medium bill, which provided our Medicaid, a higher Medicaid match rates and money for uninsured. And that bill passed last week. It was like the week before last week. And then this week's bill is the $2 trillion bill, which has a lot of money in a lot of different places. And it's going to take a while to figure it out. The third bill, the fourth bill rather may correct some things in this bill, but also may move in a whole new direction. We can talk about that later. I'm going to take a minute here because I've got some. I didn't realize what's going to. Move. Steve, while you're moving the sun around, just to tell people that Sersha briefly got dropped, she's coming back on and somebody needs to tell me how I can keep this participant list on the side while the view is showing. Can someone tell me what to push? Emily. I don't know how to unmute you. Can you unmute? Yeah. So when it's up, if you minimize your, the video to change it to speaker. Like highlight speaker view. It's hard to remember the exact. Yeah. And then you can pull the participant list back up. And you can sort of stack them on top of all I need to keep dropping up because I don't know how to do it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So, yeah. I was going to have the document on the screen, but. Yeah, does it, people have their iPads because it's, it's on your iPad. Yeah. I think a lot of us do. So let me start off. I mean, there's the first piece of this. Summarize a lot of the aspects of the bill. And we're going to go through a number of them, but. I'm going to start with that. The education fund, which is higher education and K through 12. That'll be probably we're going to end with that. And then let Mark go into details about that. The disaster relief money. We'll talk briefly on that. And what I'm going to do is sort of go through the key elements and you will have time with your own. Leisure to go through details. Okay. So, this is a, it's a good list. The document is sort of great because it allows you to click on the area of interest and you'll see a lot of the programs. Well, the big one, the, the big thing I wanted to focus on is the direct economic stimulus, the funding to states and it's 150 billion. What's really unique about this bill is it has the highest small state minimum we've ever seen in a bill. If you take 150 million Vermont's population is generally about 0.18% of the US population or just below 0.2%. So we generally assume we're going to get a small statement of 0.2%. The statute and the way this bill is written and this 150 billion, we get 1.25 billion, which is, comes to about 0.8%. About four times what our normal small statement would be. You know, there's a lot of, you know, obviously no one's really written about why that happened. I think it's a, you know, we have obviously a very important Senator that's involved with the committee. You know, I think also that spreads the money to a lot of small states and the, a lot, it was a Senate bill. And for the Senate, a lot of states that probably have power in this, a lot of the senators in the Senate are probably from the smaller or medium-sized states. And they, it may be things like that. We don't know, but it's a huge number. And the states that are complaining about this program are New York's, the California's, the states, because if you take 100% of it and put 60, say 40% of those dollars and put in a small state minimum is essentially, you really are not going to have as much money for the large states. So that's just one of the things about this money. So we get 1.25 billion, which is a really large amount of money, but there's a couple of key issues with that there. And the, just go, if you go down a little bit to the, where it says funds can be used for costs that and you'll see are necessary expenditures incurred to COVID-19. We're not accounted for. Yeah. I just want to let the committee know that SIRSHA is not able to get back on the call in the meeting. IT is going to join. But that means that I hope people have the document up somewhere that they can see it. We don't have somebody to control the posting of it and moving it around at the moment. So, so if you, if you have a way to access it on a phone or on an iPad or somewhere, please do. Or, yeah, or, and, and this is a really just ask any questions. Stop me if this is it. I'll try to go more in detail of what I'm saying so that that's not a problem to close your eyes. Maybe you can imagine about this. So imagine there's this clause that talks about what the money can be used for. And there are only three, there are three conditions are necessary expenditures incurred during COVID-19. We're not accounted for in the most recent budget and we're incurred between March 1, 2020 and ends December 30th, 2020. So there are some glaring issues with that language. Since in Vermont, one of our biggest problems is a decline and the gram will talk about this later, the decline in revenues, which is going to make it hard to fund our base base budget. This one. The one that's on the face of it is for expenditures for needed expenditures and not for revenue replacement. So we talked to the congressional delegation about it. That's one of the issues nationally people hope can get addressed in the corrections bill. But right now the approach is this has to be everything has to be tied to expenditures in this period and not for revenue replacement, which creates a real problem. It also means we have lots of money for. Relative expenditures incurred during COVID-19. But as the base money goes down. And there's other language about, I mean, we have, we have a problem and we'll talk about other problems that the second thing is it says, Steve, I'm going to just interrupt and make sure that I'm hearing this correctly. The, this money can't be used to replace revenue. And so. Attempts to address the situation through revenue reductions is problematic. Correct. That's our reading right now. But it, we will talk more about that and what it, what it means. Down the road. We think this is primarily an expenditure vehicle. And so the. The other question that says, we're not accounted for in the budget most recently approved. There's a date of an act. Well, that budget is the budget adjustment that we passed. About a month ago and late February. The issue is that there's been some talk nationally about. Does that, you know, what other, what constitutes a budget. And so, for example, earlier this week we passed house 742, which is a, not a budget, but it does have some spending implications in that bill. So one of the things you'll see happening is the Vermont governor is not going to sign that bill until the. President signs this bill because. We just want to make sure of the date of enactment of even 742. I think this is a non issue. But just to give you, just be careful. I think you're going to see the governor. Hold on to the 742 bill and sign it after the, the enactment of this bill. Okay. Okay. So on the one hand, what you're seeing now, and what we're all thinking about is how do we use this money? In a way that. How do we use this money creatively? Because within those conditions and there's really, I would say for. Concepts about using the money before, and we're going to talk about it. Okay. So we're going to talk about it. Anyways, let me just take a second here to pull up one of the documents. Since we're kind of. You know, dealing with the documents in different ways. Could you remind us which document you're on occasionally? Well, I'm still on the NCSL. Okay. She provides 150 billion. And I should just say the, the, when I think about this bill. I have it in categories. I think it's not a good thing. I think it's a good thing, but I think that's just a good thing. And I think it's a good thing, I think it's a good thing. We have a great deal of money. And that's a good thing. We have a great deal of money. I think it's a good thing. And we're going to talk more about it. And then the second thing is. Categorical spending. We're going to go through a spreadsheet. Which outlines some of the categorical money. That goes to different entities. And the third is direct funding. And direct funding is primarily to. Like K through 12 education. Hospitals. biggest things is money and individuals and things like that, like checks and unemployment comp and stuff like that. So just one other thing on the 150 before we get into detail of that, or I should say the 1.25 billion that Vermont gets, one of the conditions of that is if you are in a state which has a city, which has a population of over 500,000 people, you could apply directly, you don't have to go through the state. Vermont is not in that case. So any relief to local governments is really comes from the source. And so we need to, I mean, they'll be up, they can get relief for other lines, but this is a source, we need to at least ask or consider how much of the 1.25 billion is made available to local governments. And one of the questions is traditionally, that would be cities and towns. The question is, and I've asked lunch council about this, and we just have to think about it is, could schools be considered, you know, a local government or not? Or is that something else we can use the money for? So one of the questions that's going to come up is how does that get done? What do we do for local governments? How is that addressed? And it's, you know, one of the mystery in this is how much of this bill, how is the legislature going to play a role? How is the executive going to play a role? How are those decisions going to be made? But I would say one piece is that sort of, and I, you know, local governments, what the language will be. Again, it has to say in the same stricter of local government money has to be to provide for expenses incurred of COVID-19, you know, based beyond the base budget and the all the towns past budgets that are as a town meeting week, except for nine. And so that there's these interesting questions and the same things will be applied to anything we do for towns. And there is recapture language that the federal government may recapture the money if we use it incorrectly. So we're going to have to think about it. And like in any major issue like this, there's a lot of gray areas. And, you know, part of the legislature and executive role will be to figure out how far into that gray area we want to go. How creative can we get in the way of using the money? So I would take a stop there and see if we're entertaining any questions or I keep going. Let me see. Anybody want to jump in and ask a question? Okay, great. Oh, George does. Okay, he does. Go ahead. Do you think as far as the schools go, the fact that our our schools are, you know, by our statutes, municipalities, will that help us in being able to just you know, I actually think, and again, I it's over my pay grade in a sense, but I think that they are look, I think we could count them as local governments. And I think that they will we will be able to provide more money. But the problem with it is that we just know it's only it's a reimburse expenses related to and yeah, I think it'll work out. I just don't know enough about it. I just haven't that's a research. It needs to be done. So conceivably, all the food that they're setting out is something that we'll see later that there's money, especially dedicated for nutrition programs to. So one of the questions that comes up. And when you'll see this when you look at the specific appropriations, if somebody is getting money for a specific appropriation, is it and yet this money is also tied to specifically address needs created by COVID-19. Do we have to subtract what's already gone out in the other bills? That's those are pieces that we need to figure out. But yes, I think that's a no brainer. I guess I think you're right. I think the the creative questions is, you know, in law, there's this concept about that you take your victim as you find them in some way. So, you know, there's a lot of underlying issues in schools. And if you would argue that COVID-19 took an issue and made it a little bit worse, how creative can we be in using the money either for the state or for the schools or others to provide for those underlying needs? And that's when we so I'm just going to let me go to one more thing. So first we're going to cover the direct costs. And that's what we'll do. Then there's going to be a sort of these then there's levels of moving from that. And one of the questions is really I'm 1.25 billion is a lot of money. I mean, you think about it in terms of and given that the bill has other pieces that bring it closer to two billion dollars and we'll talk about those. The question really is we're going to have to get creative to use it. I mean, and so I think that there's room for doing lots of creative stuff. So okay, I mean, I just to give you some of the questions that are buzzing on my mind is and that's I think part of what's going to have to happen this week. I'm getting lost my own thoughts here and I'm sorry to be confusing is what are those parameters? How do we use it? Do we say first, let's meet the immediate needs? Second, do we and the other question is how much do we use for today for April, May, June and how much do we really reserve for the next fiscal year where we don't know if this is a two-month crisis or if this is a multi-month crisis and how do we divide time-wise this resource? How much can we get aside for indirect coronavirus impacts? And you know, we all heard of the business issue, the hospitals. Do we eliminate co-pays and deductibles for all of our monitors? You know, do we put a lot of money into hospitals for to keep the system going and all that or the pension funds which have lost phenomenal amounts of money because of the downturn in the market really to COVID-19 in March or schools just to go really far afield school construction. We have a lot of unsanitary clinicians in schools because we argue that that's a problem when you move people back to school and we need to use some of this money to create better teaching and working environment for people or new systems for communication, you know, because of the way the schools are done. So there's a lot of room for creativity and I think we need to make sure we have the bucket of timeline solved, like how much for now, how much for later. We need to make sure we have the immediate expenses covered, we need to cover the needs of people, we have to think about the needs of people, businesses and the responders, the people, the emergency employees, and then we also need to be creative if we have money left for how do we use this to in the long-term benefit for mom. And Steve, one of the other questions is who makes those decisions? Yes, and that's a huge one and you know what you and again I feel like you guys, I feel like you nobody can kick me because I'm over here at my house now but I have to be careful not to go beyond my role but you know that's the question. One of things you don't want to do is have a battle, a public dispute between the executive and legislative branch and so the ideal thing would be to have some sort of strong cooperation on the part of leadership to figure that out or to set really clear guidelines. It's sort of beyond any one committee, it's not like the appropriate instruments to start appropriating, there really needs to be a frame and a some type of policy direction of how do we approach this money. And I think that there was when the era when the era of money was here a number of years ago and we did get a fairly sizable chunk at that time there was the governor and legislative leaders set up a little working group from the three branches you know to to think this through. You know it's a really, this is a key question and it's something that's way beyond sort of our role on doing and saying it and as you just said there's a political calculation need to be made there's policy decisions need to be made and the amount of money is such that it you really want to do it right you want to think it through. Joey has a question. Joey? I think Steve just answered it because I was asking how did we handle the era of money? Yeah and I understood you said it was a group, small group? Well there was a group that met and I think it was, I'm trying to remember who was on it, maybe, I don't know who is Janet. It was you and Senator Kitchell and I think it was the secretary of ministrations at the time from Burlington who's that computer person or was somebody, I don't remember who it was from the administration but yeah I think you were part of it and so. But there were different levels of decision making. Right and it wasn't really, they didn't decide everything but there was clearly a policy group that advised people and helped keep us working together and you know to me I think that there's something to be said for that type of structure. I remember that committees also met and made lists for their specific area that they watch over. Okay so that's, I don't feel like I'm shouting I probably, I hope I'm not too loud for the committee. Okay so I'm gonna move off this top, oh the other thing is in Washington right now if you look at the national on a website you'll see publications by FFIS George, George has got a question. So I, actually it's a comment. The consensus that I'm seeing in the medical world is that this is going to extend into the summer and go away sort of in the summer but come back with a vengeance in the fall. Right. So as we start thinking about how we're going to be up to money time-wise. Yeah. I think we need to be really careful to know that we were covered when bad things happened come fall. Absolutely and that's why I think just as much as the decision-making has to divide between the various categories of need you know immediate the indirect sort of things and then this long-term thing as you said we need to be a cognizant that we probably shouldn't let you know spend keep one of the, that's question about keep some of your powder dry or whatever it is just to be ready for this to be a longer event than we then people are thinking about and you know if you think about you know there's obviously a desire on the part of all people to fix it now and to put it out solve every need now but to the extent that there's big needs in the summer and your you know the election is November you're going to have that same feeling again all through the summer. So I just I think that there's what you said is is critical you know not to not to create a an allocation of all the money right now and to be careful about a you know sort of sometimes when we have a lot of money we sort of want to we create feeding friends usually not good it's a real important to think about husbanding the resource. Anyway I'm going beyond my actual world. That's okay we're glad Sam go ahead. Hey Steve I'm just curious I've never really been through this before how does it work in terms of like reimbursement from the feds or I mean they don't they don't send a check in the state doesn't put it in their bank account well actually actually you're in this case you're not right we are a lot requires that within 30 days of an act of this bill they're going to send us a check for 1.25 billion dollars and I've been talking to the treasurer about this it's a it's a slight problem because we have a requirement that banks that hold our money have to collateralize that money and there's no bank in Vermont that has capacity to collateralize that much money. So she's talking with banks in Vermont to see how do we and can we split it up you know she may have to use out of state banks it's a really you know the federal government has this unique thing they can they just in the bill said the treasurer shall issue a check and within 30 days of an act and send it to Vermont so uh we are going to get the money and it'll be sitting on our channel. Okay and then we draw against it is that what happens what and then we draw against it and we draw against it and the federal government can come back and say boy you really blew that we'll want it back got it we got it and it's uh it may change the nature of our cash flow issue for the spring but we still are going to probably pass language about to deal with allowing for inter-fund transfers to get it make sure we have enough to cover shortfalls in different funds so that's that's sort of a more inside-base volume. If I could ask people to use the computer raise hand thing that would be really helpful um but Robin I see you go ahead. Okay I had to find the raise hand again just a quick question on that and I'm sure the interest rates aren't very high but do we get to keep the interest regardless? You know we we haven't really thought about that I really we haven't really talked about that and so I don't I have seen no language about that I imagine so but as you pointed out the interest rates really aren't that high but still you're right when you have that big of some of money yeah it's something probably in about three or four weeks we'll get a chance to think about but I think at this point my assumption is yes that it's the week we get to keep the interest. Great, I wouldn't put it in the stock market. No, no I think that's a good point. Yeah okay Let me see if there's anybody else nope go ahead. Okay so I just want to it's on the same sheet against yourself and it's slide down and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this it has the capacity to click on everything like you can click on direct payments and expand it unemployment benefits and every category has the type of elements in the bill that are in there and so it's a great description of what the bill does on the overall and so it's a you can click on human services and read about the programs so it this is a really useful tool but what I'm going to do now is switch to the second document which is called formula funding for Vermont I hope it's called that on your website yes oh my god there it is right here screen and this is a document put together by Senator Lay he's office and it's a what's good about it is it lists some of the Vermont impacts and you get a chance to see how much money we get and and just to go to the top of it and how broad this bill is grants the state arts and humanities programs by grants for organizations there seem to be two of these and I'm not sure a lot about why they're different if you these ones are just if you look at the amounts of money four hundred and twenty one thousand four hundred thousand those are closer to what I would say is our population share you know that if you think about point one point eight one point point one point eight percent a little less than two percent two percent on the first one would be five hundred thousand dollars do we take next one be six hundred thousand so we're sort of below that then then you talk about this grants for public health preparedness you can see that funding for the election where the pre-season devoting and you see three million dollars so you know the first thing comes in my mind is what how does this you know how does it interact with the other one so the other one the money is definitely for costs that are incurred because of the COVID-19 and here we have direct money to help us with the COVID-19 can we double count can we apply this money and then use that for the same cost or do we have to take this off the top meet the use these to make the needs and have it be net I think double counting seems a little bit problematical but I don't know I mean these are the things you're going to have to figure out Steve Jim Maslin has a question okay Jim go ahead Jim you're muted still All right Steve start over start over on the on the document you were just reviewing I didn't see UVM or the Vermont State College is listed right that's a separate category okay I want to what I'm going to do is I'm going to reserve that but I would call it and then I have this other category in my brain of money that goes directly to other organizations thank you so that would be in that category thank you so so I don't want to spend the whole bunch of time going through this but I want to just it's there and it's it's pretty broad I mean they have things in here that were jumped out of me like LIHEAP money 4.1 million dollars and so the we have already pretty much funded our LIHEAP for this year we are through that season I think a lot of states it's hot and cool and so this might be summer money for them our budget is pretty much done so does that that may mean we can carry forward existing LIHEAP money if there is some left to next year so there may be room there to create capacity for the future there's a small amount of money I saw somewhere for weatherization you know so it did public transit that's the money and you can see the emergency relief we understand that's 100 funding there's no match on some of that one of the things that's going to happen is the the transportation agency may spend this money to get other projects going for and then use sort of current money there's a lot of moving money around everybody's trying to go how to maximize it how to best meet our project plans and just to give you a sense of the changing world if you were to ask us two days ago the administration and you probably have heard of this on the news the administration had this plan to put out tons of as much as we could on projects because they thought it would be helpful given the economic stress the employment and getting a lot of work done and there's some states have already started working on projects that are south of here have indicated the roads are sort of empty you can get a lot more done quicker but the most recent word we heard is the governor has basically said we're not going to do any project right now because of that stay in place order so it's an interesting dilemma because some of this will just be able to be done so it's for airports we need to you know how Vermont's construction season is so short how does all this work out and I think they're going to the apartment's going to have to figure out how that how that works out you'll see money in here for childcare assistance and you'll see money in here for I think for food the childcare thing 4.3 million you know do we use that for the there's so many childcare needs it could be used but that's one source of possible money for what's going on with schools so again we have this question about which pot can we take it out of the Catholic Oracle pot or the 1.25 billion pot and it actually raises another interesting question that up till we got this money if you were to talk to AHS they have been there was about 38 million in the first bill the second bill gave us in Medicaid increased match and then it will be about 19 million per quarter after that as long as this national emergency is in place and if they were going to use all that in human services but Medicare increased matches really totally free general fund dollars so because basically it's extra it means we have to use less state dollars to cover the Medicaid and the federal government is paying a bigger share so it frees up our state dollars so all of a sudden it makes very little sense to use that money which is free general fund dollars to cover the healthcare needs it makes sense to use this money which is tied and specifically to the needs that are generated by the COVID-19 problem and that freed up money might be better used for things dealing with the revenue downturn or dealing with the base budget where they can be used so this is really and we met with I mean the testimony of AHS yesterday this didn't even come up I you're you're hearing a lot of this and if you'll you'll hear if you're Adam Greshan you'll hear him talk about it in different ways this is real time and you know we've had these discussion last day or so the bill has yet to pass so this is what we're laying out a bunch of the things to think about what's going to happen and I want to just couch that there's a ton of uncertainty change adjustment the needs to occur maybe I'll take a breath and let if there's any questions or I've got a look to see if others do but I have a question about a couple of things one is timing is there how much time do we have to make some of these decisions okay so that's a good question it really varies I think the there are some decisions which have which we have no time and I'll give an example of that the Brattleboro Retreat Brattleboro Retreat is one of the institutions that has very major financial issues and last week I think it was the administration sent out $750,000 to help them get through their fiscal needs there may be other institutions like that and money is going out the door today so hold on there's the same type of issue and so there's a lot of the food programs are going to get federal money but before they get the federal money there may be a period of time when they need assistance from the state so in some cases we need to just act right away and the administration is acting right away in some cases and preservation of the human service system is a really major important issue but then again you know as we get through so the timing is all of the map it's everything from immediate to long-term thinking the other question I have and I know you've been thinking about this but as we use reserves is there a way to move this money into reserves so that we can rebuild them can you repeat that and sorry as we use reserves both in the education fund and the general fund I suppose transportation as well is it possible to move this money into the reserves and refill them I do not think we can I mean that's that's part of the revenue question you know is that a an expenditure this is for expenditures and I'm not sure that qualifies but I you know again these are they're all fair questions my first thought is no but you know that I would also say that this is an issue that this whole question about limiting it from use for meeting revenue downgrade issues maybe one of those issues that tricks in the next if there isn't a next bill because we you know you're going to be hearing from some of you from the laser office you might want to ask me about that all throughout the NCSL or FFIS that seems to be one of the quote technical corrections that they're everybody's pushing for because it affects so many states and if that happens all the things you delayed about could be done yeah let me see if anyone else has has a hand up I don't see anybody so did you have more you were going to no I'm willing to stop the oh no I have to I want to just respond about the this third category actually there's two more categories one which I'm not going to spend time on which is the checks individuals and you can have the late people talk about that in the UI but the other category is direct appropriations to the to the hospitals to the K through 12 and higher ed and those are part of the bill mark will be able to talk about the K through 12 money and the higher ed neither of those those two share one appropriation it's and the way I understand the division both the schools and the higher ed decisions feel as they have not enough money to meet their needs so mark can talk a little bit about that it but it goes direct to them hospital same thing they're going to get nationwide the number was quoted to me about 20 million per hospital and I don't know what that means for Vermont again that may be some sort of way below what's needed and it's I you know I understand and the hospitals need to talk about that but the hospital crisis and the health care institutional crisis is huge and just one thing on a flag about that by having people not do elective procedures you all may know this and I I don't want to bore you but by not doing elective procedures you're really taking a tremendous amount out of taskful budgets of hospitals and so it may in a short term limit around Medicaid exposure but this is part of it was important thing to do to make room for the COVID-19 cases but it is that that behaviors is going to create if shoes for that budget so I would stop there if you're unless you have questions well there's also this authority that we gave the administration to reduce or waive the provider tax which is just authority so they don't have to use it but it seems given all this that we wouldn't want them to right although a lot of and actually you're really right one of the things that would and this is just again I hadn't really thought about that that would probably not be the thing to do is reduce the private tax what would be the thing to do is use this money to address the I think in many respects that same concept goes elsewhere do we really cut taxes where produces free money for us to figure out what to do with and instead use a somewhat restrained money to really meet the needs and that's a really good point yeah other questions anyone has no I'll block it okay that all you've got Steve all you've got oh that's all I'm going to share with you two billion dollars yeah okay a lot of money but a lot of caution yeah yeah we got a lot of work you've got a lot of work in front of you we've got some but yeah the key thing is management which you guys have to do yeah yeah so thank you very much thank you and I guess Sersha we'll go to Mark is that what you were suggesting I think we've got Jeff Fanon on our list I keep losing my agenda I'm sorry here Jeff can't come on until 11 so we could go to Mark now okay let's do that that sounds fine is Mark here yes I'm here can you hear me yeah oh I can see you okay okay so do you want me to talk a little bit about the Federal Stimulus Bill to start with I'm not sure what you want me to go over but I can start with that one okay so the Federal Stimulus Bill includes about 13 and a half billion dollars for formula grants to states for K through 12 education that's the total and 90% of that money would go directly to school districts and the state can retain 10% of it for emergency needs the back of the envelope estimate of Vermont share that have done indicates that the share that we would get would be about 30 million dollars so that would go a long way towards closing the education fund gap in 2020 however that money is going to go to the agency of education and then directly out to school districts so it's going to entirely bypass the education fund so the whole that we're looking at in the education fund in 2020 wouldn't be addressed by this now I looked back because I remembered that's what we did yeah and we did this back in the great recession and we got two years we got 18 and a half million dollars two years in a row and what we did at that time was we reduced the general fund transfer to the education fund by that exact amount and the money then went directly from the feds or from the agency of education to the districts the districts were made whole in terms of what they were expecting and it addressed the problem in the education fund now however we no longer have a general fund transfer so we need to think about how that how that might work there's also a maintenance of effort provision in there but I don't think that's a problem because it looks at state spending over the prior three years and averages it so we've had growing growing expenditures over a year so that that may be not be a problem but I haven't done the analysis yet to figure that out so that's just something else to keep in mind so I do remember this from last time and it was it was awful if I remember correctly yeah yeah so I just went back we looked I think it was in 2010 and 2011 we deducted 18.4 million dollars each year from the general fund transfer and the districts then received that money the other wrinkle here is that we don't have any discretion as to how this money goes out to districts the federal law specifies that it's going to go out in the same proportion to school districts as their proportional allocation of the elementary and secondary act 1A funds so they've already decided how the money goes out so you know there would be just a little bit of a disconnect there if you if we try to reduce some revenues in the education fund well so so um what does that mean what you just just said um this the formula that they what does that mean okay this this is a new area for me so um there's an elementary and secondary education act as ESEA yep which Jeff Vanden probably knows about um that has an allocation to states every year I don't know how that formula works but I do know how much we've had allocated in prior years of the total and it was just a little bit over 0.2 percent of the total so um that's how I came up with the the 30 million dollar estimate it also specifies in the bill that that determines how much money comes to the state and it also determines how the state has to allocate it to the school districts so we just we're just we're just acting as pass-throughs so school districts get ESEA money yes through some kind of formula yes and this 30 million or whatever it is is going to go directly to the school districts according to that same formula yes it'll go through the agency of education but basically that's basically gonna go there yep so um now in terms of how the money can be used when I looked at the language I I don't think it's very restrictive I mean the the first use allowed is any activity authorized by the ESEA of 1965 which seems to include a lot of spending we'll have to do some more work to find out what that is and then there's also some specific permissions to spend the money for COVID-19 related things I'm assuming that's because those things are not in the ESEA world and can be spent but it looks to me like the money can be used for a lot of different a lot of different reasons so that that's all I really have for you on the on the the stimulation bill at this point the only other thing we've been working on is if if we end up having to set yields or if you have to end up setting yields for FY 21 and we're still flying blind at this point and we right now we don't know what we're going to have rely on reliable estimates for FY 21 there have been two two options kicked around one is the default yields and that would just mean using the FY 2020 yields and tax rate in FY 21 the other option that's a possibility is to use the December one yields that the commissioner recommended back in January the advantage of using those yields would be that when school boards were forming their budgets and looking at the tax rate implications for their for their voters those are the yields that they had in mind so the tax rates that result from those parameters that were recommended back in January wouldn't be a big surprise to either tax payers or school boards and but in the in the next version the next iteration of these the issue be if we've been working on Chloe did do some detailed analysis on this she actually went through and did the runs now you can't tell what the impact is going to be on the bottom line of the Education Fund but we can calculate what homestead property tax rates and the non homestead property tax rate would be what the average tax rates are and that kind of thing so that that information is available what we wouldn't know is what the impact is on the bottom line but it it may be that we're not going to know that for a significant you know amount of time so and then the only other thing I've learned since we last talked was there's a little bit more money outstanding that we then we were anticipating initially thought it was about $125 million in education property taxes still outstanding and based on new information that Chloe received from the tax department it looks like it's about $132 million now it involves a few more communities again that's that's a probably a bigger problem for those municipalities than it is for the Ed Fund but I think it's worth keeping in mind and the other big changes that the governor announced yesterday I think that the provision of child care by school districts is now encouraged as opposed to required because there were some problems getting the the teachers union to agree to have teachers doing that kind of stuff so that that will take some maybe take some pressure off of the districts there Mark who pays for that? Who pays for the child care? Or what fund pays for it? Right the only directives I've seen from the governor's office so far indicated that the state was going to pay for it and but the amount and the how that money would actually be distributed from which fund wasn't clear so I don't know if some of this federal money could be used to offset some of those costs but I'm flipping from my section here so let's see yeah so the the administration indicated that school districts that required supplemental funding for child care services provided to essential workers would be reimbursed source and amount for the funding is uncertain so some districts will be incurring that cost others won't how that money gets to them I don't know at this point okay questions committee has anyone joey go ahead and then George joey yeah I was just going to re-ask Jim Maslin's question about the state colleges and UVM monies I have not looked at that yet as Steve pointed out this money that was appropriated in the stimulus bill is a package that includes both higher ed and secondary and elementary education but I focused exclusively on the elementary and secondary education provisions when I went through it so I don't know roughly half and half money-wise though George does the announcement yesterday of does the announcement yesterday that the schools are not coming back in session this year does that have any implications for all of this for remote remote education and there is one of one of the uses that specifically allowed in the federal bill is to beef up your IT in order to do this so it's possible the problem for us is going to be that there's parts of the state that don't have good broadband access kids generally use the libraries the libraries are closed a number of other states are dealing with this I just read this morning that I think it's Philadelphia has decided that since they can't provide special education services on an ongoing basis for kids the rest of the year they're not going to provide any educational services to anyone so that it's not discriminatory so I mean this is changing by the minute I'm not sure what else to say on it but I know that particularly in a rural state like ours doing this remote kind of education is going to be going to be tough yeah I've got Scott, Jim, and Robin and ask people to just remute after you've asked your question that'd be helpful Scott go ahead Hey, Marcus Scott you there so my question is in that with this this 30 million dollars that's been allocated to Vermont by the feds if we shorted the education fund payment to the districts and then backfilled it with that 30 million dollars or some portion of it would that be acceptable do you think? Yeah, I don't know that's what Steve was addressing and I don't know what mechanism we can use to do it I know what we did back in the great recession but we did that by changing the amount of revenues that were going into the fund rather than changing the amount of money that was going out to the districts there is a requirement that we make those payments to the district in a loss so I would think it would require a change in statute in order to do that Right, certainly it would require language but okay thank you Jim and then Robin here we go Mark with regards to the UVM and BSC money is there a document you could point us to either now or after this session is over that we could go read Yeah, Chloe and I have started to put together a sheet on this that will lay out some of the stuff but we don't have it ready to go yet but the federal bill is available online but it's a long one Thank you Robin Jim Remute I'm looking for it Okay, Robin Thank you Mark, I'm looking at your document that you've updated and talking about the education yields and our two options of defaulting to last years which looks like it raises about 1.2 billion in the and if we use the December letter it's about 1.22 billion so if we do that and it's still not enough money for our we're supposed to cover the education but if it's not enough money where does the money come from First of all, I just want to clarify that these aren't your only two options these are two options that we have you're free you're free to do whatever you want Same question though regardless of whatever it is we do we're guessing we don't know what's going to happen if we guess wrong and we short it what happens where do we get the money I don't know That's true now though That's always a problem Yeah, going forward I'm more worried about it this year than I would have been last year Yeah, and I think again there's enough money floating around I think to get us through 2020 it's going to be what happens next year we don't know what the bottom line is going to be so you may have to set the yields you know where you think is appropriate and then come back and adjust things I mean I don't know what else to say So we can adjust Yeah, Tom Covet right now is working with you know this is crazy it's epidemiological studies to try to guess what the impact is going to be and how long it's going to last in order to give us a revenue estimate for 2021 but I think we're a ways from getting something that's what we could rely on Okay, thank you Yeah, a good question I think one of the things I wonder is setting the yields when we really don't have enough information to do it and knowing we're going to have to go back and look at them is that helpful or is it more helpful to acknowledge that we don't know and not try to set them But the only problem with that is for FY21 school districts starts normally in normal circumstances which starts sending out bills in August I know Well, exactly Yeah, that's what I mean there may be more time to deal with this there's no rush to deal with this until you're getting to the point where you're ready to adjourn We don't normally set them until May anyway Yeah, I mean technically we don't set them off until it's the last bill that comes out in the session so sometimes it's the end of May and it could go as late as the end of June but we'll start to create logistical problems for districts in the tax department at some point if they don't have the machinery operating to get the tax bills out and estimate of how much money we owe them and how much money we're going to collect and property tax adjustments and all that stuff Yeah, and it's something I mean, I don't know about everyone else but it's something that weighs on me because I know we're going to have to do it so it's not like we can just ignore it and not be thinking about it but it may be better to try to be patient until we have more information Let me see if I have other questions I do Bill, Canfield Go ahead Yeah, Mark I just want I just want to ask again the question about if we use our reserve and surplus to get through fiscal year 2020 What are your thoughts on us using this money to backfill those reserves for going forward? Right, that's the issue as Steve was addressing and it's a little tricky because the money comes from the feds goes through the agency of education directly to the towns and not through the education fund so there may be a mechanism by which we can you know, effectively have that money pass through the fund by lowering revenues or something like that and making it work but at this point we haven't haven't worked all that out yet Thank you But you're right between the you know, we're actually going into this the education fund is actually was fairly healthy at least the projections a month ago we had almost $50 million in surplus and reserves we get another $30 million in from the feds we're talking 80 and we're only looking at a $35 to $45 million downgrade at this point so there's a lot of money there it's just you know our system is unique I mean the other 49 states do not have a system like us when the feds write these laws they're assuming that we have a foundation grant where we're just sending money from the state to the districts as aid and the districts are responsible responsible for raising whatever they want otherwise we don't have a system like that where we have a we have a statewide tax and local administrations so it's a lot trickier for us to try to sort of fit shoehorn into the federal regulation thank you let me see if there's anyone else any other questions Mark did you have more that you were going to go over with us no that's basically the only additional information we've been able to gather so far so it's changing changing by the hour it is it is but it is actually it's encouraging to have the federal government step up to the extent that they have so at least at least the problems have shifted a little bit from just being underwater the one other thing I would mention I guess is that Steve talked about additional costs local districts are facing and I'm not sure how significant those costs are going to be over and above what they've already budgeted to spend for the year the if they get reimbursed for child care costs that's not going to be an additional cost the meals that they're providing should be reimbursed under the law through both the federal and the state reimbursment so it's only the remaining issues around remote continuing or remote education now that schools are closed there may be some significant technological investment schools have to make in order to do that but I don't know how you could do it in this kind of time frame I mean schools are already closed so it may be not be it may be that there's not a whole lot of additional spending in 2020 that we have to worry about yep good Sam has a question I mean this isn't necessarily a question for Mark but do we expect this bill to change at all I mean I did see somebody's potentially calling for a quorum in Congress so everybody's going to have to go back there but we don't know we don't know no nobody's really read anything about that come and I've read the same story but we don't know if it's going to change yeah I think that's more likely to delay it by a day or so then it is to change it but that's based on just what I read this morning somebody's got something in the background I don't know who it is maybe it's not me but anyway it looks like everybody's muted so so there you go okay thank you Mark it's nice to see you every day pretty much starting to get used to this this is yeah get used to it and so we're going to hear from Jeff Fanon on just sort of the general issues around education finance in schools and then after we listen to Jeff our next witness is oh I have Mark back down here again but I think it's probably Poly major from Senator Leahy's office is going to be with us and and then we will be done for the day I have a couple of things I just want to throw out before we adjourn though so Jeff good morning thank you welcome to my home it's it's it's funny that these Zoom meetings are very intimate now we get to see people's homes and I didn't see them live in Venice he's accommodating me we should all be so lucky yeah but and welcome Reps and Cornheiser so and good to see everybody and I'm glad everybody's in good health I submitted written testimony to Sorcia last evening and I think you have it and I also included a document from NEA that I thought was real I read it and I thought this is a really good summation and summary of the the federal legislation that's kicking around and hopefully we'll pass today or this weekend or whatever the case may be it gives an outline of all the stuff that's in play and I just thought one condensed item document was a really helpful research for me I thought I would share it thank you anyway as you will so I just thank you for giving me the opportunity here these last two weeks have just been mind-boggling and credible and trying to come to grips with the education system and comprehend the effects on the schools do you still hear me we can hear you yes Sorcia I'm going to suggest that we not do screen sharing on this document just so I can keep track of who's who's got their hand up and so on okay thanks so schools are doing it's on the website I'm sorry go ahead Jeff I'll try to be brief here but I I would be remiss if I didn't just mention all the great work that administrators are doing teachers support staff bus drivers kitchen folks the governor closes schools and everybody's stepping up in various ways in different capacities we've been trying to meet with the the other folks Jeff Francis Susie Glowski Jay Nichols there are issues coming along and we're trying to deal with them and deal with them as well as we can but the it's been a challenge the speed has been just incredible and you know this better than I do I know the economics of this pandemic pandemic are pretty serious to the whole that mark is talking about and possibly the federal legislation that might help fill it good but they are still problems one issue I think that I'd be I need to mention to you is the financial it's not in my memo but if school employees are being paid it's good for the state for them selfishly honestly but it's also good for the state economically they're able to go out purchase things sales and use tax and other things that's all good and they're doing that the one so teachers are now working remotely and expected to do so many support staff are working in other capacities some remotely but a lot of them going to the schools what you may not know or may not hear about too often is the fact that when they're doing that and getting paid they contribute to the state retirement systems and two-thirds of the folks in the VMware system the municipal system are in fact school employees so two-thirds of the folks in the municipal system are school employees the teacher system is the teacher system and when they don't make contributions to the system minor standings that typically what happens is that contributions come in from active employees and some of that money is used to pay current retirees not all of it but some of it if you start reducing that money for either this teacher system or the municipal system the treasurer may have two liquid assets right now the stock market is not very high and only it's taken an enormous hit last month or so and so the treasurer would be in the unenviable position or the state would be of trying to sell assets at a low a very extremely low point that's not good short term or and it's even worse long term so there's real negative consequences of not paying people so we've been trying to work with the superintendents and administrators to make sure that everybody's got something to do so they remain in the payroll that's good for them and also good for the state and I know that's not always easy in all places but we're trying to work it out and I know people are trying desperately to make that happen so that's out there the other pieces there are a number of I think it's 21 schools that haven't yet voted or need to re vote nine that read well that haven't yet voted and I don't know more cause concerns there and so those are the financial concerns that we share with you and understand that and I'm happy to answer any questions that's the gist of my testimony but we're working on problems trying to address them and I appreciate your work on this area as well thank you we've all learned something this is all at every level on different ways of operating let me see if there is a question same as same as one Jeff I was wondering if you're hearing any how much of a problem lack of internet access is for kids trying to do school work so I just got off we have a daily staff call now a zoom call and that was the last thing we talked about it is real it's nothing not real for the students I heard from a teacher last night the closest internet she has is 40 and just to prove the point we're losing you right now welcome to call us right representative I'm here Jeff Jeff if you turn off your video feed it might help the sound quality thank you probably better for you anyway um I look better that way so it's representative young it is a huge issue the internet and it's one of equity and it's bad and it's it's you know it's probably better in Chittenden County than in some places but there are still equity issues there too certainly in the northeast kingdom so and the more rural parts of the state some telco companies are stepping up and providing internet to students which is great but if their teachers don't have it that's a problem and that is we've got that around the state so it is it's shining a huge light on the infrastructure challenges that we've had and and it's been a it's been a long-term problem and I don't know this is going to solve it but people are desperately trying to get internet to the last mile and that's really important but it's not there yet it is an issue it's one of equity that's truly the equity issue and what about access to iPads and you know hard work whatever it is you need to stay in touch with your school I think a you know a lot of kids have it I just heard a story about how one teacher is reaching out to I think his first or second grade kids to they're having a zoom call all of them but that presumes some everybody's got a laptop and then she's she's also following up with telephone calls weekly to the students every single one individually talking with them but that's really tough on a young young family how you do that with a young kid so if you don't have hardware and they a lot of kids don't a lot of schools have provided Chromebooks to kids but not to all grades so it it's an issue hardware as well as internet access are both issues we've got three teachers testifying this afternoon in house education to talk about remote learning issues one from elementary a special ed teacher which is another whole issue as well as a high school teacher and they can really if you want to hear from teachers there are plenty out there but the special ed issue is a big one that we see coming down the road because as long as you're providing educational services to regular ed kids I'll call it that way then then under IDEA the individual education disabilities education act the federal law special ed law then you've got to provide special services to the kids on an IEP so as long as you're providing education for any regular kids you've got to provide it for the kids on an IEP and it's that's for good and valid reasons we are trying to roll out as the governor said yesterday by April 13th to have continuity plans in place and going forward and that creates a host of special ed challenges that the feds are trying to deal with and we may have to as well here in Vermont let's see if there's other questions Jeff Bill Canfield there you are I noticed you're talking about how the teachers and the administration or the the staffs are still teaching kids remotely and sending meals home twice you mentioned that the governor closed schools the governor dismissed schools and that's the terminology that should be used that allows the work to continue yeah I sorry if I if I said closure I sort of just in the head I think that's right it is schools have been dismissed so that's that's what we're all using and I think that the reason it's done is so that we can still keep people employed that was one of the issues as well as work then remotely they're dismissed for a period but to allow teachers time to sort of figure out how to do a remote lesson plan for all their kids find out whether they have internet a computer and all those good things so you're you're actually right represent Canfield is a dismissal not a closure let me see if there's anyone else Scott did you want to jump on yes go ahead Scott Hey Jeff this is Scott hello to what to what degree are schools able to recapture overhead costs that are no longer applicable lights heat supplies anything else that is germane to having kids in the school and are they able to capture that and if so are they transferring it to technology the answer is I don't know to be very honest with you I would hope that they're being smart about it and I'm sure I know they're working night and day I was emailing with a principal last night at 10 30 so I know that they are working hard trying to figure it out does that make sense absolutely can they cut down on oil or wood chip costs or something for heat certainly and I hope that they're making savings there and redirecting those to places such as infrastructure for internet that kids need so I don't know that there's I've never heard I've not heard people doing that specifically but I certainly think that they're trying hard to use every available resource to make give kids the opportunity to learn as much as possible yeah it would seem like a natural place to go to get technology to kids yeah the speed as you know is is just earth shattering and so people are just trying to catch up with the events of an hour ago let alone think of what's going to happen tomorrow thank you excuse me anyone else I don't see any other hands Jeff thank you and you know we recognize how oh I see Jim Jim is I know he's not just saying goodbye we recognize how much teachers are having to sort of rethink the way they do their work I've got two kids in the system and I know it's a ton of work for them so we appreciate that thank you all for your work and best of luck and I hope everybody stays well good thank you thank you so committee we're going to hear from well is she on I'm not sure I don't think so yet no okay I had a call in 1115 so she'll be on as soon as she's off oh okay that's fine so I just want to throw out I'm trying to think whether these are ideas that I should throw out probably not things that I I've lost my list sorry things that I hope that we'll be thinking about excuse me over the short term and some of it affects education finance and some of it's just revenue generally is this whole question about the trust taxes the rooms and meals taxes and the sales tax whether we want to create a deadline for both filing in order to be able to get the information that we need from filers that at that time combat and Jeff car need in order to be able to do estimates and then the other question about whether it really makes sense to get that money in as soon as we can understanding that there's a lot of support for businesses that we may be able to tap into from the federal money that would be more useful than the than diverting the tax revenue just stuff we need to think about and then the other another question is what if anything we want to do about the homestead declaration what if any but what if anything we want to do right now about the tax rates we clearly need to do them at some point but I'm not sure exactly when and I got something from Sorosha here oh she's on now I'll find my list before we're done so those are just things I want us to kind of be mowing over so Sam has a question Sam has a question Sam go ahead so are we asking for the trust taxes for people to file their forms so we know what they would pay even if they can't pay it is that what I'm kind of make sense to me that's one of the things I wanted to throw out there for people to think about if we were to do that then I we would want to put it out you know some period of time but you know like two or three weeks not not a long time probably but just it's it's something that's come up in the conversation and if we're if we're going to do a bill that would be something that I think we would want to put in the bill another another whole subject maybe I'll postpone this until we've listened to our next witness and I've got another couple of things Sarsha somebody just texted me I'm not even sure who but they said our live stream is silent maybe it's supposed to be no it's not Sarsha do you want to take a second and see if you can sort that out or should we just I'll reach it out to IT I think we should go on there are several people watching the stream and it looks like it's working for most but I'll check into it thanks Sam okay great Polly major I see that you're on I don't I think you're on oh you are oh good nice to see you welcome to our committee such as we are and I'm Janet Ansel we haven't met you can see who else is here on the call and we really appreciate your being willing to shift from yesterday to today and are looking forward to hearing you share what information you can from Senator Leahy's office well I was very grateful for the switch from yesterday to today because it gave me a little bit more chance to read some of this rather mammoth bill hello everyone I'm Polly major I'm a field representative for Senator Leahy I cover health housing human services education nutrition and representative Ansel when Sarsha reached out to me she said you were interested in hearing about education so I looked into the education stabilization and fund portion of the CARES Act and I can give a brief overview of that if that would be useful and on anything else if I don't know the answer I'll let you know that's great that would be great we've been sort of focused in the education world for a bit anyway so I think that's great thank you great so CARES Act which passed the senate and is going to the house hopefully to be passed on voice vote today but that's yet to be seen included an education stabilization fund of 30.7 billion dollars that will be available through September 30th, 2021 there are two percent of small carveouts off the top of that leaving a remainder of let me pull up my other chart 30.1 billion dollars that will be allocated to the states and that allocation happens in three primary chunks so the first is a governor's emergency education relief fund which is 9.8 percent so that nationwide is 2.9 billion dollars and I'm sorry I don't have the we haven't seen the formula runs for Vermont yet so we'll we can get you that information when we have it when we can anticipate what's coming to Vermont but right now we just have the national numbers so there's the governor's relief fund which is allocated based on student population in the states and it is fairly flexible for you supporting LEAs and institutes of higher learning and child care so that is a pretty broadly flexible fund that gives a lot of discretion to the governor there's then the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund and that's 43.9 percent or 13.2 billion dollars nationwide and that will go to the state agencies of education I believe the proportion is also based on the number of pupils in the state and that is to be 90 percent of that is to be sub-granted directly to LEAs to support educational activities through through this coronavirus pandemic there are a long list of eligible uses of funds that are pretty broad everything from supporting educational activities it's funding for technology both hardware software and connectivity technology mental health services the activities necessary to continue to employ staff so extensive list that I shared the section of the bill that I'm reading from with Sorsha to get out to you and if you're interested to see that breakdown it is right in there I think that's better than me just reading it out right now and these funds are to be allocated within one year so it's the timeline on the funds is there's a Department of Education will put out an application in 30 days from the enactment of the bill and then an award within 30 days within a 60-day window we've seen with the prior stimulus bill or the supplemental appropriations package that some agencies have been putting out funding a lot faster than that so we could see it within 60 days we could see it sooner than that and we'll certainly know what Vermont will receive much sooner than that there's also the third section of that stabilization fund is a higher education emergency relief fund that's 46.3 percent of the fund so 13.9 billion dollars nationwide and that's going directly to institutes of higher education and its formula is based on heavily based on the number of full-time equivalent enrolled students who are Pell eligible excluding those who are enrolled exclusively in distance learning um and that fund is 50 percent of it is for direct student aid I believe including support for food, housing, course materials, technology healthcare and child care for students the other 15 percent is to support the universities in any losses or um needs incurred because of the switch to distance learning and because of the virus so those are the broad the three broad buckets under this bill it's the the governor's relief fund the elementary and secondary school relief fund and the higher education early fund I think looking through the provisions at the bottom of the bill the last provision is around maintenance of efforts and it says that states that accept these funds will commit to maintaining support for their elementary and secondary education and higher education institutions for fiscal years 20 and 21 at the level supported on average over the last three fiscal years there is a waiver to this of states sustain fiscal burdens because of the coronavirus but there is that provision in there so that is that is my overview of of the section of the CARES Act related to education and I'm happy to take more questions it's really focused on the appropriation side because that's where Senator Leahy sits there might be other authorizing provisions in there that I'm less familiar with let me see if people have questions I expect they may has one I'll ask one we got a little bit of information about the how the money is going to be allocated the formula that's going to be used which of course doesn't really make sense in Vermont because we have this unique system is there any going to be any kind of flexibility I don't know how familiar you are with Vermont's finance system for schools but it's unique so just wondering if there's going to be any kind of flexibility for us you know that's I think a lot of our work moving forward is going to be trying to answer those questions this bill is definitely the the bones of these programs but there's a lot left unanswered that will be needed to be answered by the agency so that's something that we can either send really his office or as a delegation we request on behalf of the state of Vermont we need kind of more details but that's something we can keep our eyes out and look into I understand we're thrilled with the money but we're concerned about how how we can use it both but with respect to the schools we have this kind of weird situation there's also this broader question which I know you're familiar with is whether we can use money and the you know other out of the big pot of money to replace lost revenue which is what we really need to be able to do more than there's some reimbursing of costs that are associated with COVID-19 but there is a real issue with the fact that revenue is is going to be declining really dramatically and that that question relates to the general state aid fund yep also that's broader broader than education but I just need to put it out there because I got this issue I've got a couple questions here Jim I think and then Peter at least so Jim you go ahead yeah um all right Polly thanks very much in particular as soon as there's information available on distribution of the money for post-secondary education university state colleges anything that you could get to Sorcia that she can get out to us maybe that might be the simplest way be glad to read it as soon as it's available and I understand you're your time is spoken for seven ways but thank you certainly we'll get that out to you and I know my colleague has been working with Chancellor Spalding to provide the state colleges some understanding of how they can benefit from this I think because of the because of the makeup of their student bodies with them having higher proportions of how eligible students they were received you know proportionally a little bit more of this fund than other the private universities in Vermont thank you yeah um Peter go ahead thank you very much Janet actually you went right to my question it is because of the uniqueness of our funding system interpretations about maintenance of effort uh and what is reimbursable as opposed to using replete replenishing funds that amount to replacements becomes very nuanced in Vermont and I would just hope that the delegation in Washington and say Mark and yourself would would drop a kind of cheat list of do's and don'ts so that we don't find out that we we made a mistake committing funds from the wrong kitty thank you and I think that's something that the folks at the agency of education will actually have a lot of the expertise on there they'll be more familiar than I would a lot of the provisions within ESSA that govern how this money is being spent but we we are in contact with them and can continue to work with them to provide clarity and to advocate on their on Vermont's behalf other questions anyone has I've got a specific unrelated question if I'm I'm just looking to see if anybody wants to jump in on on the subject in front of us let me just ask you my unrelated question is there any consideration being given in Congress to allowing people who are required to take the minimum distribution on their 401ks to bypass a year I'm going to pass on that one would you relay that along because it's a real concern it's an awful time to take money out of your 401k and if you don't need to take it out doesn't seem like anybody benefits from forcing people to do that so I would really appreciate getting some feedback on it so that's can individuals with your delay withdrawals from their 401k can they bypass a year can we suspend the required minimum distribution from a 401k for a year thanks I will certainly ask our folks that we do have a as every congressional office does a casework team that's available to help people answer their individual questions and they actually are really our experts on tax issues so I'm going to ask them that but just remember that is the place where you can refer your constituents this is not an individual question this would be a law change yeah there would have to be a law change to make it happen looks like Graham is telling me something here Graham says it's in the federal bill is it yes madam chair that's in that that's in the federal bill there's two provisions regarding retirement thank you your retirement funds up to $100,000 can be withdrawn from your retirement account right now without paying the 10% penalty which we also have a penalty on ours which is linked to the federal so indirectly we will be offering that benefit but also there's a provision about suspending the minimum distribution rules for just 2020 perfect thank you let me see if there's other questions here I don't think so thank you very much for your help and the document that you provided which is on our committee page is excellent so I encourage people to go and look at it and start to take it in but I really appreciate your coming coming to our meeting there'll be lots of questions moving forward we're happy to continue to ask them of the agencies and we will we do anticipate looking at that further bill down the road we just want to see how this one will work first so keep that in mind that's a lot of our work in the next month very good thank you all right committee so we're closing in on whatever time it is we thought we were going to stop which I guess we're at it 1130 or so I finally found my list of things that I wanted to have people think about the first one I did talk about which is whether we put a date on filing the trust tax returns and I don't know exactly what date it would be but just make sure that people do file another thought is whether we ought to put an end date on this deferral that you you have to actually pay file and pay by x state and in order to avoid penalties and interest on the trust taxes so there's just an end date to it rather than having it open ended I have a note to myself whether we should have a state so somebody asked me this question whether it it would make sense given the difficulty that we're having with the timing of the education tax payments whether it makes sense to actually set payment dates so that we don't run into this kind of situation as this economic crisis rolls on another question that's come up is whether what to do about the penalty for late payments on the part of municipalities that what came up when Karen Horne spoke to us I think that's an 8% penalty if the town is late sending the money to the state seems like a lot and another thing Mark this is something I don't know if Mark's still on yeah there he is maybe you can answer this quickly but the if a school hasn't adopted a budget and for the schools that haven't adopted them it's going to be actually kind of hard for them to do it because of the voting challenges what what there's some rule that they go to 87% of last year I think or some number that's how that works yes and Abby Shepard may be able to help out here if you want but I'm going to have you on here too yes my check this so true there's two provisions one provision I think that if a school budget hasn't passed by June 30th there's a default in current law that would allow our district to continue to operate by borrowing funds necessary to enable it to operate up to 87% of their most recently approved budget I think that presumes that they can borrow which may be a question and then there's another provision that said that an interim homestead education tax rates shall be imposed at a base rate of a dollar without regard to any spending adjustment and then within 30 days after a budget is adopted and deadline is passed the commissioner can determine the municipality's homestead tax rate so that there are provisions in there in the event that a school district is unable to pass a school budget by June 30th so why do they have to borrow I believe they I love I don't want to spit ball here on it I'm assuming it's because they're not going to get an education payment but I really need to go back and this is an area of law that's been in the books all the time I've been here but we've never had to yeah maybe we could I'm sure education committee wants to know about it as well but maybe we can get some information on it next week and sort of understand a little bit a little there's going to be one school district out there that's not going to be able to probably more than one that's not going to be able to get a budget adopted so let's at least find out they do have until June 30th so there is a little time it depends on how long this rolls on before yeah yeah yep okay other anything else Sam has got his hand up I'm sorry I've been ignoring you it's okay it wasn't that long I just I did get a note that said that the tax department had asked people to file even if they couldn't pay the taxes yeah and that came in and then you made the comment about the 8% penalty and it also occurs to me that there's the 8% penalty on the personal level that this is always I've always kind of considered a little unfair I don't know well that 8% the towns can wave they can but there's a lot of individual discretion in it there's a lot of discretion in it I heard the tax department as well sort of the encouraged to file and I think that's really helpful but I'm wondering whether we need to say they have to file that that the way you get penalties and interest waived as you file and at some point you pay just because it seems to me that the way the federal money is designed the better thing to do is to move money out to where it's needed which is frankly a lot of our small businesses directly anyway probably a lot more to it than than I've been able to think through Peter Anthony go ahead yes thank you can you hear me okay yes okay I I wanted to support Janet's suggestion that maybe it was premature to wave open-endedly penalties and and whatnot for not filing I really think it causes additional problems not to have at least the homestead filing done by June 1st and I I think that illustrates a problem that Steve Klein had a suggestion earlier on in our meeting namely what we seem to be lacking and which will be extraordinarily useful as we draw down federal money is some kind of working group or working relationship steering committee words like that between the executive and legislative branches I really earlier in the week I ruminated about this somewhat audibly and I I just think it's unfortunate that people are leading but not necessarily coordinating the content of that leadership with other entities that are crucial to carrying out a successful policy particularly in the area of budget finance and now federal aid in the mix so thank you very much for that yeah and I want to clarify that when I was talking about filing I wasn't including the homestead declaration I think people should be encouraged to get it in I don't see how we can require it until their income taxes are due for most of them we can do a lot to try to help them to do it as early as possible but um I'm I'm at a loss as to how we can force it but anyway maybe we can come up with something so but I was thinking merely of the trust taxes let's see anybody else anybody got any ideas they want to throw out for next week we're going to meet as far as I know I will plan on Tuesday at 10 this 10 o'clock hour I don't know how it's working for other people I'd like to stick with it for a bit these meetings are a little tiring so I'm not we're not doing long days I don't know whether we'll start including an afternoon session or not I'm not doing it today but maybe we will next week whoops have a message from Scott hold on oh Scott's agreeing no he's raising his hand raising his hand okay Scott did you want to jump in I thank you Janet I just want one point regarding the the trust taxes and filing there I don't understand why why we're letting people delay filing just because you filed doesn't mean you pay and filing is really important because as we try to see clarity on revenue that's the only way we know what the actual dollars are if nobody's filing we won't know those dollars so I would really discourage any delay in filing although the real discussion is is the delay of any payment or penalties or interest the second point is regarding the yield bill and setting of numbers and everything maybe this is conversations happening I suspect it probably is but I think we need some real clarity about what the speaker and the pro tem think the end of the session is going to look like and when it's going to be because I mean this is this work is taking a long time because of the format that we've been forced to use it makes a whole big difference if we're trying to get this done early May or mid-June or it'd be nice if we could get some some clarity on that yeah I agree yes I think I think we I think we will I'm not sure that they're clear at the moment other than I think what I heard at this session yesterday is that at least in the for the near future we're not going to we're going to continue to do token sessions and you know keep everything open and operating but I don't know how long that's going to last Robin yes thank you to in response to what Scott's question about timing too I did read that Senator Ash told the Senate to assume there's going to be work done over the summer and even into the fall obviously that's not every day but that our work is not going to end at the normal time so I have that in the back of my mind as we go ahead yeah it's there's a piece of me that says gee I can't travel but probably couldn't anyway so I think we should plan to be plan to be working that's my guess but I but I don't know that officially heard the same thing you did Robin thank you others anybody other thoughts about next week well we'll stay with the 10 o'clock time frame other people you want to hear from I guess my feeling if people have anything specifically I want to hear from please let me know or let sources know but a lot of what I'm going to do is continue to learn you know it's kind of layers learn more about the things that we've already learned a bit I am going to ask the tax commissioner to come in again you know the I'm torn because they've got so much work to do same with our staff on the other hand you know we need to we need to get the information so we can begin to develop a bill I didn't want to throw out the miscellaneous tax bill and that if we are at a point where we're sort of had a standstill for taking testimony on COVID-19 related issues that we can go back and do some work on that bill I think we're basically done with it that that might be something that we can move along and I don't think we need to worry about whether you know crossover and whether we got a vehicle to do something I think we probably can manage that okay so so that's those are my thoughts for today I've got another another grab some food get on that meeting I hope everybody's doing well stay in touch this weekend if you have anything and just stay home stay well George will tell you wash your hands right yes okay and they've asked that I clearly announced that we are ending the live stream and then end it so can you give me a moment to do that we're ending the live stream