 This is a meeting of the House Appropriations Committee. We were planning to start at 8.30, and we will be done at 10 o'clock in time to join the floor action at 10.30. For those of you who are just joining us, we did not realize that we were not live streamed. It was, it failed. And we had some quick discussion about $10,000 that was appropriated for boys and girls state that is now, the money is now lodged with the American Legion. Is that correct, Maria, the American Legion? The committee did not take a formal action but took a straw poll that in order to be consistent, we agreed with the recommendation of Representative Helm, who has that budget to return the money to the state and then it will be considered with appropriations next year when hopefully we resume the normal and the safety precautions are no longer needed and events like that can still happen. And so that is all that we had talked about and it was not formal action but it's a recommendation of our committee and it will be voted on in the budget to return that $10,000. And now we are going to move to Representative Fagan. We received some communication from the Vermont State Colleges and I just want to make sure that the committee stated some of all communication. We received this yesterday on May 5th. So Peter, do you want to talk about this letter from the interim Chancellor? Do I have you, Peter? Anyone mute? Okay, there we go. Thank you, Madam Chair. So this letter was sent by the Chief Financial Officer for the Vermont State College System. It was sent to Senator Kitchell, your self-representative toll on the Adam Greshan. Peter? How can you scroll that up, Peter? Is there a way? Oh, you can't, you can't scroll it up. Maria scrolls it. Teresa will scroll it as we go along. Can you put it on one page, Teresa? Will it fit so we can see? I don't know if we can see it on one page. You all might have it in your email as well. Everyone should. It was sent by Teresa to everyone on yesterday. And it's from Teresa. It's got the house appropriations dash Wednesday. It has, and then in the comments attached is updated agenda in Vermont State College request. So Teresa will continue to see how we can fit it best if we can fit the two pages on one. So the first part, they talk about the requirements that the Coronavirus Relief Fund Act, COVID-3 Act, requires these expenses to be, and you can see that in numbers one, two, and three. That's what they pulled out of the instructions as to what was allowable under the CRF. And so this is their first request for qualifying costs. Other requests will follow. This request covers the expense that they are reimbursing to students for room and board that was unused. It is from the date of 15th of March and on. There are some students that may leave a little bit later or might have left a day or so sooner. They will reimburse based on that, but this is their what they're requesting to pay them back for those that room and board that they will refund in June. Castleton University, I'm gonna round here, 2.2 million, NVU 1.9 million and VTC $1 million for a total of $5.1 million in spring semester costs that they are refunding to students for room and board in June. One of the problems is this is the low point of the year historically where their operating cash flow is the most meager because there's nothing coming in right now. Everything is going out. They don't start receiving funds for the fall semester until later on, could be end of June, July, sometimes a little later than that. So their operating cash flow is at a very low level right now. These funds, they are requesting the receipt of these funds just as soon as possible. And then period. So that's the request that you'll see here. One of the last paragraphs indicates that some of the things they are figuring out right now is direct emergency response costs, transition to distance learning costs, the cost of PPE, the cost of sanitation because they're having to sanitize the institutions much more frequently than they would have in the past. Refunding of travel, paid sick leave and others yet to be determined. So all of those costs will come in subsequent to this. But for now, their first request to us from the coronavirus relief fund is a $5.1 million reimbursement request to cover the cost of unused students, room and board. I just wanna remind folks and I'm gonna read just a couple of relevant paragraphs that the speaker and the Senate pro tem sent out a letter. I believe it was in, it was certainly in the Rotland Herald. So it was probably in statewide media. The, I'm just gonna read two sentences here. The Vermont State colleges plays a critical role in strengthening the economic and human development of Vermont and Vermonters and a measured thoughtful transition will prevent devastating vacuum of educational opportunities and jobs in significant rural areas of the state. We are making progress on steps we outlined and are gathering financial and operational information needed to be able to fund a transition plan for the year. So as everyone knows, the treasurer is doing a financial review. That will be done in two weeks, she told me. And we'll know better at that point in time exactly what the extent of the problem is and then be able to work with the colleges moving forward. But for now, again, their request is for this room and board, a $5.1 million. I would also like to add, and this is something that I didn't discuss with Kitty when I talked to her that I was gonna do this, to be equal here, UVM has the same cost to the tune of $5.5 million. And we have a letter that was sent to the governor. I don't have the date of it right here because I've actually got it open to the second page. So if we wanna do like and like at the same time as would be my preference, I would recommend that we do $5.1 million for the Vermont State Colleges from the Coronavirus Relief Fund as soon as possible and then $5.5 million for UVM, same fund as soon as possible. And so, Peter, at this point, I don't wanna take any action on this. It's a proposal for us that we need to, understand if this is a budget adjustment issue or if this is part of the skinny bill and what the timing is. And yesterday through the joint fiscal committee, there was a process of three different categories to use some of the CRM funding and whether the administration would look at using one of the first two categories to address these issues, tuition and room and board reimbursement. So we just need to get a little more information on that, but I just wanted the committee to know that the room and board fell short. Right, well, they didn't have the dollars that went directly to the institutes of higher education were not sufficient enough to cover all these costs. That was minimal. It was, and don't quote me out, I can actually look up the amount I have it here. It was somewhere in the vicinity of $6 million to the Vermont State Colleges and half of that had to go to students for their healthcare and other things, but not for reimbursement or room and board leaving them about $3 million. It really was not much at the end of the day to cover the college expense. One thing that, and I agree, this is not a budget adjustment piece for several reasons. Number one, if we put this into budget adjustment, could if auditors in two, three, five, 10 years from now look at this and say, wait a minute, why did you put that in your normal budget? So that's a normally budgeted thing. So we're not gonna allow that out of the Coronavirus Relief Fund. I think we need to be very careful here to make sure that we separate this and it will be allowed. I don't see a reason why it wouldn't be allowed under the CRF, but we just need to make sure that we put it such that it is, you know? And that's why Maria, if we could bring that up after we finish this discussion or Teresa, that the Maria divided the budget adjustment into the three categories. So it's a little easier to track that, you know, finding the dollars for the 48 million dollar gap to close out 2020. And then the next grouping would be the deferred revenue that we need to identify. And we're working with the administration and the treasurer's office to determine the best way that should happen. And then if there's pieces of federal CARES dollars that are ready, that can be identified, that need to be rescheduled, just before we do that in a third category. Certainly under, as Peter said, that category of COVID-19 relief dollars. Any questions for Peter? I think there's a lot still in play. There's no final decisions made of exactly what anything's going to look like or what the need is, Bob? Yeah, just when, I forgot the times we went through this before, but when would that land on a campus? I think that's gonna be quite important because it's gonna be a while for now. When would what land on a campus, Bob? When would this money land on whatever campus it goes to? Well, obviously it has to go through the truncated. It has to go through the process, that's what I'm asking. Right, it's gotta go through. It's somewhat truncated process, and I'm gonna ask Kitty to speak to what we might do if we had to step on the gas. Because I, go ahead, Kitty. I apologize, I had to answer a question to the speaker. I apologize. No, that's okay. Bob asked how quickly we could get these funds to the colleges if it became very obvious that these funds were needed tomorrow versus a week from now. How quickly could this occur, this whole process, because it's gotta go to us, to the Senate, to the governor. It depends, obviously, if it was a coordinated effort. When we coordinate efforts, we seem to be able to move things very quickly if there's a need. So, I don't wanna get the cart before the horse, but we know these needs, and with the help of the treasurer, we're getting a financial picture of what needs to happen right away. So, well, let's presume it goes as slow as it could possibly go. Then when, would it land? I can't answer that question. I just know, Bob, that there is a commitment from the speaker and from the pro tem, from their point letter, that they are going to address these issues if they want to know what the numbers are. Well, I think in the beginning, and I don't wanna prolong this, but in the beginning of this whole thing, Peter, I think was talking about, somebody was, about cash flow issues and no cash flow. Cash flow, and they're just burning down whatever they've got in their account. And I don't think their cash flow is gonna pick up greatly in the next month or six weeks. And I don't know where, what the finances are, maybe they don't even have $5 million left, I don't know. But anyways, yeah, it could get real dicey for them. Right, and I think that that is being actively looking at, I don't have access to their financials and so I don't understand cash flow issues, but that information will come to us and the work is happening. Kitty? Yes. One of the things I requested of the treasurer when she called me to speak to me about this is that if she all of a sudden realized that they were in a dangerous situation due to a negative cash flow situation where they're just about to run out to please notify the speaker and the pro tem to CCU and to CCMate, and we would see what we could do. I know Bob, you like more concrete answers, but we don't have them at this time and it is being actively worked on. Okay, any other thoughts or questions? Diane, was that a wave or? I was gonna say something, but it's fine. Could we move Teresa? My hand's up. Oh, I didn't see a blue hand. Am I a co-host, Teresa, so I can see hands? I have it just. Sorry about that, I forgot. Oh, that's okay. I have Dave. Move Maria's sheet up. Is that what you were asking? After I get a question from Dave and from Chip. Thank you. Peter, this may not be, as I say, the juice may not be worth the squeeze. I'm just trying to understand a little bit more about the refund process and I'm certainly not trying to take anything away from anybody who's deserving. Let me give you an example, though. Let's assume my refund is somehow it's prorated. There's so many days in a semester and- That's what they're doing. Yep, my refund's $1,000, but my student aid was 90% of that, was 900. Do I get 1,000 or do I get 100? And does VSAC or whoever else get the balance of the refund? And conversely, if my student aid was not that great, it was $1,000 and I had to pay 900 of it, do I get the full 900? Is that worth pursuing in any fashion? I can certainly ask the system my point of contact on the system. One of the things and I have not specifically asked this question of them, this is me drawing on 12, 16 years of kids in colleges. The financial aid package does not cover room and board. If the room and board might be stated there, but that always drops to the bottom line for either the student or the parent to cover personally. So, but I will ask that question of them. Thanks, Peter. Certainly. Yep. Peter, my recollection is the same as yours that state colleges anyway got roughly 6 million and 3 million of that they couldn't use at least for this kind of paying back the room and board. But did they use of the 3 million that they had left that they could use for various things? Did they use that to try to address the room and board issues? And that what they're asking for now is to cover what's above that, or did they use that or are they planning to use that 3 million dollars for other expenses? I will ask. I don't have the answer to that. Okay. This letter came in late last night and as everyone saw and so I read it and was prepared for this morning, but that's a good question I will ask. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. Okay, let's move now. I don't see other hands. Let's move now to the sheet that Maria prepared for us and this will only take a couple of minutes and we have commissioner Schatz rate at nine o'clock. So this is information that everyone has already seen and the reason this is a maybe I'm on that sheet where it talks about the bond investment. I just want to talk, I want the treasurer to present to the committee her thoughts on that all of that is a maybe depending on what our committee determines, but that one was specific for testimony that we're going to hear tomorrow. So we have the revenues in the top, the adjustments that are needed, the little balance that Adam talked about is a cushion depending on the deferred taxes and how much comes in. Theresa, would you scroll up please? And then we have the deferred revenue, which was the 142 and the administration's proposal to cover that except we have made a decision in our committee not to use 753rd because that is a bill that's going to have to be paid. And then the final piece that we will address are any, right, but the number, any COVID-19 expenses that need to be added. So. Do we have that, Kitty? I'm sorry. This sheet. I believe that has this been sent to committee members? Not sure. Maria might have sent it, but I'm happy to send in post when we're done. Yeah, I have not sent it. So, okay. So the only thing I'd like to edit, Maria, is to take off, this is a maybe, because the whole thing is a maybe. Okay. Until we hear from everyone who is testifying and we make our decisions. Okay. If we have commissioner shats here, I just thought this would be easier to divide it into specific areas so that as we address it, we can keep our categories separate. Any questions on this? I don't see any questions and I think knowing that the commissioner is under a time of strength like everybody is these things. I would like to move right to his testimony. We have Sean Brown also. Madam Speaker. Oh, Madam Speaker. Madam Chair. Yeah. Well, you never know. You're getting a lot of feedback. So I'm wondering if you have something else with a microphone that's running at the same time? No. I don't, but there's a couple of people who aren't muted. Bob, do you want to mute? I'll mute them and see what happens. Maybe that'll help. Okay. It's not my jazz again, it's, I turned it way down. I have to tell you guys, the highlight of my day is when we're on these Zoom calls in the doorbell rings. It's like, yay, I finally got some company. And we've had three people join us. We have commissioner Schatz. Welcome, commissioner. It's good to see you. And we have Sean Brown. You're a little, I can, you have a, we can see you. I can see at least you're there. Welcome. And we have Sarah Truckel. Thank you for joining us. We have been presented the administration's budget adjustment. And there were some areas within budget adjustment that we wanted to talk to you, the commissioner of DCF about and get some updates on, on plans for certain areas on maybe perhaps some of the federal funding that you see as helping and any other questions that the committee had at this point in our process. And so commissioner, let's see. Did we, do you have specific, we sent you some specific questions. Would you like to start with responding to those and then open it up to questions from the committee? Does that work for you commissioner? You need to. Good morning. This is Ken Schatz, commissioner of the department of children and families. Thank you for inviting us this morning. I think the question that I received was respect to childcare, which is the one item that's listed in the BAA. So I'm glad to start with that and then answer any other questions that you may have. So again, we've been in touch with house human services quite a bit about childcare as you can imagine. We've obviously done a lot of work as I expect you are aware to try to do our best to support families and childcare programs. As you can see in the BAA line item, it does list $4.4 million in federal funds with respect to childcare stabilization payments and essential persons payments. That is because we did receive authorization with respect to federal activity through the childcare development block grant funding source. Candidly, we're going to spend substantially more than that within fiscal year 20 to support childcare. And so to that end, we are looking for other federal resources to help support our approach to childcare. I know we did receive some questions about how that money is being spent and how is it affected CCFAP eligibility. What I will share with you is that, again, as you I think do know, we are limiting childcare at this point to essential persons and their families. And so the support we're providing to other childcare programs is through stabilization funding. I can fill you in on the expected dollar amount. Sarah can provide that information more directly. I think that the approach is certainly one that's intended to address the ongoing concerns and challenges. And Candidly, we're not satisfying everybody. We are having challenges in terms of paying invoices in a timely manner because we did set up a new system doing our best to address those payment concerns by childcare providers as quickly as possible with respect to private pay families. I think you do know we did indicate that we would pay 50% of their co-pay obligation with the expectation that families would pay the other 50% if they wanted to preserve their slot in that particular childcare program. Even with that program, I'm gonna turn it to Sarah to give you a summary of what we expect to spend as we maintain this program. But before I turn it over to Sarah, I do wanna mention also that we're moving forward now quite assertively to develop a childcare reopening plan. That is as the level of infection has stabilized and hopefully decreasing. We, in conjunction with the governor's office, we are certainly working towards reopening childcare and developing a plan to do so. I'm hopeful, frankly, relatively soon, there'll be an announcement of a plan to actually make that happen. So let me stop there and turn it over to Sarah to give you some of the financial information. I just, can I just get one clarification question and I believe Adam answered this, but the $4.4 million that's reflected in budget adjustment is not COVID-19 money. It's a block grant. I would receive these dollars anyway, regardless of COVID-19. Sorry, I didn't get the beginning of your question. Yeah, you're in a little bit of a tunnel, a tunnel your echo we can. I don't know if you have a device. All right, okay, hopefully that's great. Yeah, it is. I was just wanted to, I believe Adam stated this, the $4.4 million of the federal dollars of the block grant are not related to COVID-19 dollars. Would they have come to the state anyway or was this additional support? So $4.4 million that we received from the federal block grant is part of the CARES funding. So it was tied to the COVID stimulus bill passed through the federal government and intended to deal with childcare as we respond to COVID, specifically around both stabilizing programs as well as providing essential childcare for essential persons. Thank you. I must have heard that wrong then from the commissioner. I thought that this was outside of COVID. So it wasn't either one or two of the COVID bills. It was in the CARES Act. So the, I believe third bill that they passed. It's part of the 1.25 billion. It's not part of the 1.25 billion. So the 1.25 billion is the coronavirus relief fund and then there's an additional increase in federal different block grants that they also pass. So that's one of the block grants that Vermont is receiving. So it's not part of the 1.25 billion. It's an addition. It was in either, it was in the second bill that passed out of Congress then, either the first or the second bill. I can get you the specific enabling legislation. Not part of the 1.25. It's part of the 1.25. It's either the first or the second. Okay, thank you. All right, I'm sorry for that. It's the third bill. There was more money in the third bill than just the 1.25 billion for Vermont. If you totaled it all up, let's say that was $60 billion nationwide. There was more than that. Thank you for the clarification. Kimberly. You can totally get here. Kimberly, you're on mute. Because I can't talk. Sorry about that. There was money that was funneled directly as I understand it to school districts to help with the great effort you all did in standing up childcare opportunities for essential persons right at the outset. Is any of that what I would call education money, for lack of a better word, does that show up eventually in the DCF bucket or does that stay under AOE? I am not aware of any of those funding. The only funding that we receive for childcare is that 4.4 billion or a million increase to the childcare development block grant. Okay, so I guess if they had to have different practices go on at the school, that would probably be under their budget. Yeah, okay, thank you. Okay, Sarah, I'm sorry I interrupted with that, but I'm glad I know exactly where those dollars have come from. And so if you wanted to continue now, with your testimony, that would be great. Sure, so what we anticipate seeing for the childcare stabilization and essential persons program that the Child Development Division has stood up is anticipating expenses around 1.45 million per week just for that program. In addition, we also are continuing our CCFAP subsidy program and the dollar spending. So spending somewhere between 2.2 and 2.3 million dollars every week on childcare. As Commissioner Schatz testified to, we are in the kind of phase of launching this program and paying invoices and moving through standing this program up. So we have gotten through paying those first initial invoices that have come in and are working closely to get the payments out the door and have a true understanding of the specific costs of the program. But based on our projected calculations, we're looking at about 1.45 million every week. I have two questions. Dave and then Kimberly and Peter. Yes, thank you. Just a clarification, are we paying CCFAP to families that are not utilizing childcare programs? So the childcare financial assistance program at the start of COVID moved from a attendance-based payment to an enrollment-based payment. So as long as a child was enrolled in the program, that subsidy continues. So it's that much then. It's over a million dollars a week for the children of the essential employees. The 1.45 million is both the essential person's payments as well as the stabilization funds for the 50% that the state is paying on behalf of private pay families. So, and that's the total then. So we're not paying for people for children that are not there. We're paying for the essential workers and we're paying a portion of the private pay families. Is that correct? We are paying for the slots that are enrolled in the system and if children are not attending childcare, the program can choose to participate in stabilization funds and receive 50% of that tuition payment even if they are not attending. Okay, so there are some children not attending. There are slots not being utilized and we're paying half of the cost to stabilize the provider network, correct? Correct. Can you tell us how many slots are not being used that we're paying for? I don't have that number. I can get you and we do have data around how many essential children we're serving right now and data on how many slots there are in the system but I don't know what the breakdown is on how many unused slots there are right now. And thank you. And I don't want to, there's only what, seven weeks left in the fiscal year and but why wouldn't we have just said to a childcare provider, furlough your employees, they can collect unemployment, probably make more than they were making with you. It's not a cost anymore. So our costs would drop, I would think, significantly to whatever their overhead might be, their rent and their utilities, et cetera. We didn't, we chose not to go that route because... I'm going to defer that to commissioner Schatz. Yes, thank you. To be clear, we wanted to move very quickly and so we actually developed this program before there was certainty from the federal government about what level of unemployment would actually be provided or for that matter, stimulus payments. So many of these decisions were made prior to that determination by the federal government. Moreover, we really did, as you correctly pointed out, wanted to stabilize the system as much as possible so that when we are able to restart, it would be as seamless as possible. It is as still the choice of the childcare program to be clear whether or not they participate in the stabilization programs. I do appreciate your question and we're glad to get your information, but it's also my understanding that a significant portion of our childcare programs decided not to participate in the stabilization program and may, in fact, have furloughed their employees so that there is a mix going on within our system. Thank you. I have a question from Kimberly and then Peter, Marty and Mary. Sorry, I can't hear. You're back in your tunnel again. Oh, right, I'm sorry, right, I'm sorry, yeah. Sorry. Can you hear? I can hear now, I apologize. Thank you. Kimberly? Kimberly, you're on mute. Oh boy, all right, sorry guys. You had mentioned, Sarah, that CCFAP was 2.2 to 2.3 weekly, Intermillion and I'm just wondering, how does that compare to normal times? I'm just trying to see where the pressures and the moving parts are of this budget. If, yeah. I think we lost Sarah for a bit. It was my fault having trouble unmuting, but I just did it. We're trying to socially distance testify here so that we're able to get be as responsive as possible. So the 2.2 is a combined number of what we are paying in the stabilization and essential persons program and CCFAP payroll. So it's not $2.2 million per week that we would typically spend on CCFAP. It is that it's the difference between the 1.45 and the CCFAP payroll around 2.2 to 2.3. That's the combined total. I think we are seeing with regards to CCFAP, those funds are continuing to flow. And we don't really have enough information at this point to identify how if there's an uptick in the CCFAP spending at this point. Okay. So just to, I'm sorry to take so much time, just to be clear though. So the 1.45 is a subset of the 2.2. Correct. Thank you. The 1.45 is what is new to our budget. The 2.2 to 2.3, because payroll does fluctuate a little bit every week is a combined total of what we're spending on the childcare industry, including what we had already budgeted for expenses. Thank you. Peter. Thank you. So, and Ken and Sarah, thank you for coming in. So, Sarah, I'm gonna ask a question that I did send an email about because I think it's relevant to everyone. I have heard from childcare centers and I'm looking at a specific email now from one who spoke to speaks directly to this issue. They decided to stay open for essential workers childcare. They dropped their capacity to a third of what it was. But as part of the agreement, they agreed to keep all of their staff on and continue to pay them, even though there's at least one who their lead teacher who has gone home because she's pregnant and just didn't wanna stay in the environment. They sent their first bill on the 11th of April and received payment to the tune of $1,600. They have sent an additional three invoices to the tune of $15,500 and have yet to receive any funds from either of any of those invoices. They're keeping their people on, but they're coming to the end of the rope. So at what point in time specifically will funds go out the door to pay these folks? And where will they come from? So this is Ken. So we're doing our best, as I mentioned earlier, to process payments. It is a fairly complicated system. Frankly, CDD did not have the staff to handle it by themselves. So we pulled in other DCF staff from other divisions to help them to move it forward as quickly as possible. We have gotten a lot of money out the door. I know that Deputy Commissioner Berbicoe did ask for some information to find out the specific programs that you're referring to. We're certainly doing our best to get all of this money out the door as quickly as possible. And again, I apologize to whatever extent programs have not received them as quickly as they might have liked. The source of funding in turn to your question as we discussed earlier is really the $4.4 million we got from the Child Care Development Block Grant plus to the extent as you heard from Sarah as it's $1.4 million a weekly, we're gonna exceed that or have already exceeded that. And so we'll be looking for other sources, most likely the CRF fund, but we are working with the Secretary's Office and the Agency of Administration to clarify exactly which sources of federal funding are available for this particular purpose. Thank you. Is the fact that we just accepted the coronavirus relief funds formally yesterday, is that holding this up at all? Candidly, we are not holding back. I will at my peril, tell you that we made this commitment. We are processing payments as quickly as possible and trusting that between the Agency of Administration and the legislature, we will figure out how to put all this together. But you don't, and final question, you don't yet have a, I know money is gonna go out the door to for the second invoices and or the third invoices by this Friday, for example. You can't say that yet, is that true? I don't know, Sarah might be able to help me a little bit more in terms of exactly when money's going out the door. So I've been working, my office has been working very closely with CDD on making sure that we're processing payments as quickly as possible within the last week and a half. We've done an incredible job at getting through the invoices that have been submitted and are now processing invoices every single day and sending funds out the door. It's hard to just identify the specific date that a payment will go out. But when we started this program, we were running payments every two weeks and we are now running payments and have been for the last week every single day and programs are receiving funds every single day at this point. So I think we've done a lot in the last week to address those particular issues and are moving forward with getting funds out the door as quickly as possible. Okay, so sorry, Madam Chair, one follow-up question. And this might actually be a- I have other questions. Okay. Move back to you. It's good that you're processing invoices every day that really helps. What date are you up to? In other words, invoices received yesterday or being processed today? Or is there a lot of backlog? It is more complicated. The reality, so it's not, I can't answer in that way. I appreciate the reason you're asking. The reality is because a lot of our childcare programs are very small and have very little capacity themselves. They provided information to us for purposes of us being allowed to make payments that wasn't always complete or accurate. So we've had hundreds of them where we've needed to get back to the programs to clarify, so it's not on a per day basis. The most challenging issues are the ones where we need to get back in touch to make sure for auditing purposes because we are using federal funds. I'm sure you appreciate the need to be careful so that that's part of the delay. Again, we're doing it as quickly as we can. And I can't resist putting a little plug in for having a better IT system would enable us to, I represent Relief here. I know you've been on this, so I see your expression and I appreciate it. I'll get off that bandwagon. Thank you. Thank you, Ken. Marty, your hand was up. Was your question answered? You don't have a question, it was answered. I'm all set, I'm all set. And Mary, your hand was up. Are you all set? You're all set. Kimberly. This is a question for Sarah. Sarah, do you have any way of coding or tracking for the dollars that are coming in as the 50% match from families? So the 50% match for families goes directly to providers. We are not receiving those funds and then sending the provider a full check. The family is paying their portion directly to the provider as they normally would and then the state is paying the 50% of their share. So for providers, they should still be receiving any funds that the family is providing for that slot directly from the family. Okay, and do we have any sense of how many families are? I mean, we could just take your number and divide it by half and that would give us some sense, but that makes an assumption that all of the families are doing so. And I guess it might be on the scope of our conversation today, but I'm just wondering how many families are in a position to do that and how many families are finding this a hardship and that may be a policy question for another time, but I'd like to bookmark it for what, yeah. I appreciate that. This is Ken, obviously we move very quickly and it would be very interesting to understand that information. We can certainly look into for future conversations what information we actually have to enable us to understand that more effectively. Just so I'm clear Ken about this. So if I had a childcare facility and I had 10 slots, I would receive, and I'm not an essential care facility, I would receive half of the payment, eligible payment from the state. And if families wanted to keep that slot, they would have to provide the other half. And if they don't, does that mean that the 10 slots still exists but it opens to other people? I'm not sure how that quite works. It's a bit of a complicated system. So maybe it's worth maybe giving you a quick summary. So first, what we would do is we will, based on enrollment as Sarah indicated earlier, we would pay the CCFAT payments to that program in total. We would also pay 50% of the copay for the CCFAT families. With respect to private pay families, if they enroll, if they continue enrollment, we would pay 50% of the fee with the expectation, but it's between the family and the childcare provider about whether or not the, and how the payments are made by the family. But the point would be is if they unenroll, then we would not be making the 50% payment on behalf of the private pay families. Okay, but my question is, if you're paying CCFAT in total and this 50%, are they obligated to keep that many slots open when everything reopens? Or can they say, nope, we're going to five or 10 of them, right? Yes, the expectation is for the CCFAT families that they will keep that child in the program. But the center would not close and be able to have kept the money, right? If they decide now, oh, we're just gonna close and they've received payments, are they obligated to stay open with slots? No, we can't control whether the program certainly can decide to close, but obviously if they decided to close, then the payments would stop. And again, it's related to also paying their staff. If they, so if they don't participate in the program, they're free to do whatever they want. If they participate in the program and they decide to close anyway, do they owe the money back? I guess that's my- That's your question, sorry. I think it's a question of, I don't, I'm gonna have to check back to be sure whether we would do anything retroactively, but certainly prospectively we would no longer give them payments. Right, thank you. Peter, you need to put your hand down unless you have a question. And are there any other questions on this topic for the commissioner? We need to be done at 10 o'clock Ken and I know you're extremely busy and what is your timeframe for today? I'm here, I can stay till 10 if need be. I obviously have other meetings, but I wanna make sure we respond to whatever questions you have. I do know the committee had some questions around housing. Are you prepared at this time to talk a little bit about housing and maybe what the plan is going forward, knowing that we're approaching a deadline date for homeless individuals that have been housed in motels? Well, let me start by confirming and we did send information to the House General Affairs Committee and I think other legislators, there isn't an impending date of closure. So the initial decision, so to back up as many of you know, we did basically waive our general assistance emergency housing rules in light of the pandemic so that we could enable people who are homeless to get shelter. We also recognized that the existing shelter system with essentially congregate care was inappropriate in light of the pandemic. And so many of those programs closed, many several others did reduce their capacity. So we've substantially increased the number of people that were sheltering in motels in the order of 1400 rooms if I'm not mistaken. The original decision to extend the waiver of GA emergency housing rules was identified as May 15th, consistent with the governor's stay safe, stay home order. We have confirmed that we, regardless of how the governor addresses that order, we are gonna continue to waive GA emergency housing rules beyond May 15th. So there is no impending deadline. What we are also doing very assertively is working with a variety of partners both within government and community providers to develop a housing recovery plan. We could talk a lot about the issues related to homelessness. We clearly recognize that they're a vulnerable population. Again, I think it's something that we as a state can be quite proud of is the number of homeless individuals who've tested positive is really minimal, which is really great. And when you look at other states, again, it's something we can be proud of. But having said that, this is not something that's sustainable. And so we're clearly spending a lot of money with respect to shelter. But again, we do want to work on a plan with other partners. We'll certainly be sharing that with the legislature hopefully very soon, again, to discuss an approach to addressing the needs of the homeless population in our community. Glad to give Sean a chance to supplement that. And then I'm sure he can help me answer questions as they arise. And Ken, I wanna thank you. I did receive that correspondence that the May 15th date did not apply to this group. Thank you for clarifying that. And I did receive it. Great. So Sean, did you want to add any more to the conversation at this point? Sure, just briefly, I would add that given that the economy shut down and hotels were asked to close as well and only stay open if they were housing GA funded client through the state, we've been able to meet the need because of those conditions. Otherwise, we wouldn't have had the motel capacity to serve 1,400 families. And we are actually bumping into capacity issues now given large numbers. And even with the new motels we've brought online, we're starting to bump up to capacity issues in some areas of the state. And then we've also just been put on notice that it's important that we move forward with this plan because many hotels are anticipating opening up in mid June. And it put us on notice that they anticipate stop working with us so that they have time to get their facilities ready to return back to normal operations as they accept preservations past June 15th now under the governor's order. Thank you. Are there any questions that the committee has? Mary. Thank you. Let me begin by acknowledging how extraordinary it is what you all have done. I thoroughly honor and appreciate what has happened. Thank you for that. Interestingly, it also proves that it is possible to take care of 1,400 families or individuals. And I hope we can find a way to continue doing that. I get that it takes a while to come up with a plan but I have a good deal of concern around maybe, we know that May 15th isn't the date but as Sean noted, people are going to want their operations back and we're going to have to figure this out. So I'm sorry, I guess I'm making a speech rather than asking a question. I appreciate that you have to come up with a plan but I'm very anxious to get it so that we can help provide the funding to implement it so that we're not putting 1,400 or 1,600 people back out on the streets. And just while I'm in the speech giving mode forgive me again folks. One of the things that really excites me is the fact that we have seen such an extraordinary reduction in the use of emergency room visits by people who have experienced chronic homelessness and mental health related issues. And we have to figure out how to continue doing that so that we're not putting that sort of pressure onto that system. So it's not just the issue that DCF is dealing with. It extends into DMH and Dale and our community partners and I just, I'm anxious. Give us the plan so we can help. Thank you. For what it's worth, I appreciate your speech and I concur and agree with everything. So we're on the same page. We're trying to move forward as quickly as possible. I also see that Sarah Phillips has joined us. Sarah has been a leader in this effort. I mean, I also want to take a moment to appreciate all the community providers because really it has been a team effort to make this work and we're continuing. And on that note, we will say we're also trying to work with the community members and providers in developing a plan. So that's, I do appreciate the desire and need to get it out quickly. We also want to be inclusive so that as we propose something that there's a buy in and people have been given an opportunity to weigh in about what's actually the correct approach. And so I feel that dynamic tension too. I want to share that with you in terms of wanting to move quickly, but at the same time, do it right. And so Ken, I just did want to follow up on that and this will either be part of the skinny quarter year bill or the bill that we complete in the end of August or September, but as we were finishing our work madly on that Friday night that we were last in Montpelier to close up, we were hoping the 21 budget, there was that piece left out with that we hadn't quite massaged to an end regarding homelessness, Motel vouchers and community partners. And so that I would assume now that one piece is off the table and is now part of a presentation, a proposal that you will bring to us in either the quarter year budget or in August. So we will definitely be coming back to you. I agree that we do need to provide you with the information with respect to the dollar amounts and the funding sources for addressing the homelessness issue, I don't know myself, whether that will be part of the skinny budget or we'll come to you later, we're working with the secretary's office and the agency of administration as we speak to pull that together. But you're building off the plan that you had presented earlier in the year. That's correct. Well, when you say, so actually let me make sure I understood what your question was about. Are you referring to the emergency housing restructure? Yes. So I think that that is still on the table and part of our thinking in terms of the approach to refresh other people's memory of in effect giving communities substantial amounts of money and flexibility on how to use that to address emergency housing needs. To be fair, as we develop this housing recovery plan, we are incorporating both emergency housing but also trying to enable people to move into more stable, sustainable affordable housing. So it's part of the housing recovery plan that we are developing. In total. So that proposal, when we look at a housing recovery plan, it will be all in one package and not traveling in two packages. That's certainly the goal. Okay, thank you. Mary? If I may, the emergency housing proposal that we were considering to me is just a very small subset of a much larger plan that needs to be placed, put in place and the difficulty of standing that up and the timeframe that we have has me deeply concerned. So I'm anticipating, I'm hoping that we'll see some temporary measures that will fill the gap until we get to those more permanent solutions for ending homelessness. I agree. Yeah, thanks. But it will come as a package and not as splinter groups. Correct. We're trying to, we are really trying to put together a comprehensive housing recovery plan and I think Representative Huber got it exactly right, that the emergency housing is one piece of it. It is a small piece when you consider the very significant needs of providing individuals and families with access to affordable housing. That's dangable. Dave? In the same way, I guess, maybe this isn't a good comparison, but we use the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board to buy farmland to preserve the open spaces. Is the concept of trying to buy economically failing motels and converting them to some type of supported housing on the table for exploration or is that method flawed? It is on the table. It's definitely been something that's been proposed and discussed both internally and from community providers. We wanna be careful that we don't institutionalize an approach that congregates very low income people in one place, whether short-term or long-term. It's not a perfect solution. Let me be straightforward about it, but it may very well be a portion on the one hand of a temporary solution. As Sean indicated earlier, we may have lack of capacity in existing motels that are viable and we might need to use something in the short-term like that approach Representative Yacoboni. And it's also conceivable as many of you are familiar, sometimes the properties that a failing motel is on can be rehabilitated in a way that even could be used for mixed income housing. So there's a variety of things to think about as we move forward. Thank you, Dave. Marty? I just wanted to add a suggestion on to Dave's talk about failed motels potentially being a source of housing. I think it would be nice if you would also take a look at empty dormitories on college campuses that could either serve as temporary purposes for temporary overflow of homelessness and or perhaps eventual redevelopment into more available housing. It's just another idea that's been floating around. Thank you. We agree. We're definitely looking at those potential, the properties as potential sites also. Again, there's lots of complicated issues as you can imagine with that too. Nothing is as simple as we all wish it would be, but you're correct that there is certainly underutilized property sites around the state. Thank you, Marty. Meada? Yes, thanks. I'm just looking for some reassurance, please. Within this big picture plan that will be brought forward, is there for sure going to be a more front end in the sense of sort of a bridge for folks who are currently in our housing situations in the hotels. Granted, May 15th is not the quote unquote drop dead date, but as Sean mentioned by June 15th or thereabouts, these buildings, these operations are looking to reopen for their quote unquote regular clientele. We will hear soon, very soon with regard to a bridge for folks currently there in the hotels. June 15th, well, further out than May 15th is still awfully, awfully close. And that's just about the time that the two budgets that we need to work on here in this committee will be hitting the governor's desk at the latest, I guess. So I guess I'm just looking for reassurance that there's gonna be a front end here short-term way to really look after these folks that are in these 1,400 rooms. So I do appreciate that concern. And again, we share that perspective. And so Sarah might wanna add to my comments, but we have thought about the housing recovery plan in the context of short-term, medium-term and long-term. So we know that we need to do things within the next couple of months to address short-term issues in part related to motel capacity and part related to the fact that some people with relatively quick support can move out of motel into other forms of shelter. So we are very mindful of the need in some respects to move quickly, but also that there will be more challenging circumstances to address medium and long-term. But Sarah, if you wanna add, feel free to do so. Okay. I guess I covered it well enough. But again, we will present the plan and then glad to have more specific conversations about it once you have that in front of you. And again, we appreciate the need to move quickly. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner. I don't see any other hands. Marty, yours, did you have a follow-up question, Marty? Your hand is up. Okay, thank you. I don't see any other questions. I know housing was a big topic and also the childcare and you have covered those two at this time. Was there anything else? I wanna be very respectful of the commissioner's time and the deputy commissioners and financial people who is, everyone's under a tremendous amount of stress and has more than a day's work to do each day. Thank you very much. But I will, especially with Sean here, it might be worthwhile also talking a little bit about the financial assistance programs and the impact of COVID-19 on them. And Sean can give you more information, but again, not surprisingly, we saw substantial uptake in applications for some of our financial assistance programs like ReachUp. We've worked very hard to address that need. So let me turn it over to Sean to just give you a quick summary of what's going on there. And then if you have questions, we'll be glad to respond. Thank you. Sure, just as the commissioner indicated before, if we've had a more current eligibility system, I'd be able to give you a little bit more accurate and concise data, so please bear with me. But we've certainly seen a large uptake in Vermonters needing our assistance from the programs we administer at Economic Services. In the past six weeks, we've seen about 4,200 new SNAP applications for three squares Vermont benefits. We've also seen about 850 new ReachUp applications. And so that's a pretty significant uptake. All of our casals have you recall over the last several years have been on a downward trajectory. And so these are particularly on the ReachUp side, those are some financial pressures there as well. We are current on processing all of our work. And so folks that are applying, we've been able to quickly process their eligibility. And if they're eligible, get them on the programs and get their benefits out to them very quickly. We've been able to maintain our work at our call center. We've seen a large uptake in the number of Vermonters reaching out and inquiring about how to access our programs and what services are available. And so we've seen a large increase in the volume of our calls. And we're extended our call center hours into the evening to try to meet that need. Pretty much been able to maintain our mode wait time, which is by putting extra staff on the phones from our district offices. We've quickly moved from being a district-based office-based organization to all of our ReachUp case managers and eligibility staff are working from home and processing work remotely and answering the phones remotely. And it's worked incredibly well for us. And that's probably a way that we'll continue to do business on a long-term basis as well as we get back to normal. Although we'll maintain a presence in the districts like we are now, it's a very small presence given the number of walk-in clients have been very small, small numbers coming into our offices. We have seen a large uptick in the number of overtime hours we're working. We really didn't work overtime before COVID impacted Vermont. In the last six weeks, we've worked about 4,000 hours of overtime to keep current on the work across our organization. We have about 330 staff in total across all the programs. I did wanna highlight some of the stimulus benefits that we're working to get out the door. Some of them have started to go out. And some of the federal stimulus spending, we've been allowed to issue out what's called an emergency full allotment benefit. Based on your household size, there's a minimum and a maximum benefit amount. And many households fall someplace in between. But the federal stimulus packages included that we could issue out the full allotment for a household size. And so in late April, we issued out our first emergency full allotment benefit to households that were active in the program in March. So it was a little bit of a delay. And so we issued out a full allotment benefit to just over 21,500 households. The average benefit was $160 increase that went out to those households. The total size that we issued out in that run was $3.4 million. But the benefit amount that a family received varied pretty widely. The low was a dollar and the high was 1,264. And so a family, larger size families tended to do much better under this provision. We're moving forward to issue out a second full allotment benefit for households that were active in April. That should go out next week. And then we will be issuing out a similar benefit in June for households that were active in May. And we've been told by our federal partners as long as we're in a state of emergency, we'll be able to continue to issue that benefit out. So over the next three months, we anticipate issuing out about close to $11 million in emergency full allotment benefits. So that's certainly good news for three squares Vermont recipients. The other benefit, big benefit that was included in stimulus is what they're calling a pandemic EBT benefit. And that's a benefit that we're gonna be able to pay to families with children that were receiving free and reduced lunches in the school system since the schools have closed. And so there are about 34,000 children in Vermont who receive free and reduced lunch. About 14,000 of those kids are in households that receive SNAP benefits. And 20,000 of them are in households that do not receive SNAP benefits. And we will be issuing out this benefit to both household types under this where required to under the stimulus payment. The average, the benefit that we'll be issuing out that will cover the full school year that the schools have been closed will be issuing out towards the end of May. It's about $386 per child for that time period for the value of the free and reduced lunch and snacks that they would have received in the schools. So we will be issuing out about $14 million at the end of the month to both households on SNAP and households not on SNAP with children who receive free and reduced lunch. So with those two benefits combined we'll total about $25 million issued out over a three month period. That pretty much doubles what we issue out during that time period in the three square Vermont program. So certainly that's a good thing for the Vermont families participating on this program. And so that's just some of the work we're doing right now in terms of the program. Thank you very much, Sean. It's incredible work and the overtime, the hours that your teams are putting in is just remarkable. I have just a couple of quick questions. I wanted to know, you know, with children home and needing more food, many school districts are sending bus loads of food out daily with lunch and breakfast snacks and as an afternoon snack for the day. Is any of that money going to help the schools or is that from a different pot of money? And then my other question is with individuals not receiving UI and perhaps applying for benefits, once they receive their UI, if they don't qualify anymore, is there any rebound there of what they owe or have you not seen any impact from? No, so we have seen the impact of the large number of Vermonters trying to access the unemployment system and the little bit of delays and the delays happening there. And so unemployment income does count as income for our programs and the $600 a week federal pandemic benefit counts as well. Unfortunately, while US Congress and the law exempts that as income for the Medicaid healthcare programs, it doesn't exempt it for ours. And so as we're receiving the information that those households are receiving that benefit, we are having to adjust their eligibility. We are able to treat it as a lump sum and not recoup any benefits from those households but moving forward, it would impact their eligibility and that increased federal payment of $600 a week goes through July. And if those families are still unemployed at that point, they might be able to come back on the programs based on their level of state unemployment benefit at that time. But given the level of that $600 a week, it puts household significantly over the income limits based on depending on their household size for our programs, eligibility thresholds. So I just was wondering if part of the 4,200, it wouldn't have been as high if UI had gotten the benefits out. That's what my question is. Are you getting people that typically wouldn't be applying had they gotten their UI benefits in time? You know, this is unprecedented for us to see this level of an increase so quickly. So I don't know if I really have the data to answer your question accurately. I can tell you we are now, right now this week started getting a list of the people who did come onto the programs since then who now has started receiving unemployment. And so I'll have more information available on that next week and the number of impacted regarding that. Thank you. And I just want to hear about the schools, but I can catch up on that later. Well, I can quickly say is that the money that the schools are receiving is a separate pot of money and the families can receive both. Oh, okay. Yes, yes. Thank you. Mary? Hi, Sean. How you said 4,200 new SNAP and 850 new reachup, how many people are normally in the system? At the time of, just to give you an indication at the end of February, we had a 38,928 households on three squares Vermont. And so this is a little over probably a 10% increase in the caseload in that sixth week period. And then on reachup, I don't have those numbers in front of me, but it's a similar uptick. So about a 10% increase. Great. Thank you. It's probably a little larger on the reachup side. I'll have more data available on that in the coming weeks as we're able to. Yeah, you guys are gonna have an accounting nightmare trying to reconcile all of these different programs. But thank you for moving so fast to get help to people who needed it. Thank you, Mary. I don't see any other hands up. And I know that you all are anxious to get back to the critical work that you're doing. And if I don't see any other questions, was there anything else Ken or Sean that you wanted to add at this point? I would just briefly mention a couple of other issues again, just so you know, in case questions come up later. Our Children's Integrated Services Program is another program that has been impacted significantly by COVID-19. We recognize that many in-person contacts of course are not happening. Telehealth has been approved as a, something that can be provided and paid for, but having recognized that the, again the Children's Integrated Services System of Care is something we want to make sure is stable as we come out of this. What we have done is recognize that some programs will receive to a more or greater degree less funding. So we have basically set aside a retainer pool of approximately 20% of our total budget and have let our providers know that they can apply for funding from that pool if their revenues are down and they need additional support to maintain their programs, their staff, et cetera. So that is something that I want to at least let you know that we've done to make sure we do our best to address another set of providers and constituents impacted by the pandemic. The other aspect that I'll just briefly talk about is Family Service Division and Child Welfare. We've recognized again impacts are significant there too. We have provided some additional resources for foster parents. I believe it's $10 per day. Additional payments recognizing the additional challenges and risks. Those of you who are familiar with our system know that the school's closing in and of itself has made a substantial change for those foster parents. And so we recognize that and trying to support them. The other aspect of that system that has significantly impact is our residential system of care. So that many programs have had to reduce capacity. Some have closed for any number of reasons. So we have worked very hard in our system to maintain our focus on child safety and protection. But when we think that there is a plan that could be expedited to have a child return home we're trying to do that. With respect to these residential programs we have been working with Diva and the Department of Mental Health because we share in the administration of these support of these programs we are trying to provide some additional relief for those residential programs as we help address this pandemic. So that is also a work in progress but wanted to at least let you know that that is also a significant body of work going on to address the pandemic and its impacts. Thank you, Ken. I have a question from Kimberly. Hi. Ken, one of the things that's also on my mind yesterday what came up is this discussion of CHINS funding. And one of the points that's been on my mind is we do know that DCF has taken on all sorts of responsibilities with substitute care and foster trying to wrangle various family situations and funding for a judicial master was part of that CHINS bucket. And I wonder if you'd like to comment on how you see any of the monies or any of the line items or ideas within that CHINS funding being more or less relevant given where we find ourselves. Sure, thank you for your question. From my perspective, again, the CHINS reform initiative as you may all recall was initiated a couple of years ago to set aside a separate pot of money, I believe from the tobacco litigation funds to try to fund the needs in addressing the challenges in our child welfare system. The one that Representative Jeff is referring to is the recommendation that you did approve to allow the judiciary to create a judicial master position to help address a significant backlog in the courts to cut to the chase. And I know because time is short here from our perspective, that is a very significant ongoing need. We continue to believe that approach is worthwhile implementing. I'm certainly in conversations with the judiciary. I know they're working hard on it. Obviously they have been significantly impacted by the pandemic. But from my perspective, the short answer is the judicial master from our perspective is still a very significant need. The issues of home visiting, mediation, parent support continue to be significant as far as I can tell. Those concerns are not going away. In light of the pandemic, we certainly want to look as time goes on about how the needs might be changed as we go forward. But right now, I would tell you that all of the issues addressed by the change reform proposals are still present and, in my view, need to be addressed. Thank you, Ken, for that. Those will be discussions in either the quarter year budget or that we'll have in late August or September. And that rolls into part of Chip's budget too. So Kimberly and Chip will be working with you on that. But as far as the budget adjustment that we're really focused on now to get out the door, I think you have answered all of our questions so that we can move forward on that. And we look forward to proposals around homelessness and the child care proposals that you're working on. And again, we thank you and your entire department for your endless work and your good work on behalf of struggling Vermonters and especially children. And thank you. Thank you very much. It's 10 o'clock and we want to be respective of your time. I was hoping that we would be done sooner for you. But thank you, Sarah and Sean. Bob, yes? I'm sorry to interrupt, but actually, Maria sent me a message. I believe Maria did. Oh, can I let Ken go? Is this? Oh, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, OK. I was waiting for a question representative, Helen. But OK, I'll leave you now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Sean, as well. Thank you. OK, Bob. OK, I got a message from David Cobb through a voice state through Maria. And he just he understands the situation exactly as words and would like to make sure that the funds for 2021 are not lost in the budget discussion. So I don't think anybody can guarantee anything like that. However, I think the intention is to refund in 2021. Assuming everything will be somewhat near normal. So I don't know if you want to respond to him or how you want to do. Bob, Bob, I would respond. I would respond by saying if I'm not be lost in discussion because it's part of your budget and you will make sure to bring it up in discussion when we do the 21 budget. And Maria, your head, yes? That means, yeah, he's got to make sure I get reelected. Well, you know. Oh, no, no, no, no. No, I'm here off. I'm here off. You're here off. You'll be here in August, Bob. You'll be here in August. First don't work in August. I'm afraid I will. Yeah. So, OK, I don't even know. I've got to communicate this with Maria because I don't think I know his address. Do I, Maria? So it's on that email. It is? OK. Yeah, but I'll send it to you separately so there's no confusion. Yeah. And you can get back to him. And I'll get right back to him. Yeah. Yeah. And regardless of anything that, you know, in this situation, we can't make any promises to anyone for 21, even if they're whole right now. I mean, we don't. I will say that I'm going to bring it up and work on it. But that's all I can, as far as I can go. You will make sure it stays on the radar of our, within our disciplines. So I, Teresa, does not have a schedule for this afternoon. We were not able to have anyone come in. We just have some updates. Linda's following the $2 million within economic development. That will probably not be a budget adjustment issue. That would be in the skinny bill, I would assume, Linda. In the skinny bill or the September bill, you're on mute, Linda. I am going to check with Adam on it. I've got the list from Joan. And just want to make sure where he thinks that's going to go. What's going to happen with that. OK. And also check in with Maria, too, with that information so that. Yeah, I've been sending her what I've received. So we'll go from there. All right. And Mary has the piece that she'll bring us on the auditor. Is that a budget adjustment? That would be in the skinny bill, Mary. I don't think there's anything we need to do in the budget adjustment. There's a reduction in the amount of money that they need. And Maria, I mean, I gave that to Maria six weeks ago, or three weeks ago, or something. And that's it. No change. That would be a 21, though, right? Is it in 21? The current year budget. Yeah. They're not spent. Yes, OK. So it can be in 21. My guess is it is also in 20. But we can just do that as an adjustment. They don't need as much money. OK. Yeah. I had thought that we needed a language change because we had authorized a position and I was wrong. So position is OK. And then the other piece that I raised with the committee is they are part of the hiring freeze. And they have three positions which have been frozen. And three positions represents about 25% of their department. And that is having a serious impact. And so I think there is a question on whether in our budget, we lift the hiring freeze on them. I would prefer not to do that. I would prefer that the administration sort it with them. But are you talking 21 or budget adjustment? Well, I would make it as soon as possible. I think they need to fill those positions. So I would not put it in this. Well, it could go into the skinny. But I would prefer to get it lifted administratively. And I'll talk with HR about why it's not being lifted. And if I disagree or don't see a resolution administratively, I think there's an argument for doing it in the BAA. But we'll make that decision when we get there. OK, so I'm going to set that aside. And you will bring it back to us only if it doesn't get taken care of administratively and if it needs to happen in BAA rather than 21. So it's going off my radar for now, then. OK, you can let it go. And then I'm trying to draw something from memory I have read in an email and it's in someone's budget position that is not being filled. But the department doesn't want to lose the position. They want to make sure it remains there but unfilled. Is this is this jogging something with these budgets? That's me. Yeah, OK. State's attorneys, they have two positions actually, which they just want to make sure don't get swept into the position pool. They're not asking us to fund those positions, but Annie wants to just make sure that if they have a way of funding them through grants or something else, that they have those available because they feel like they're only needing them. So you would follow up, Chip? I've already asked, I've talked to Maria about how we do that in the budget and I think she can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think she'll be prepared for whatever language or whatever we need to do in order to make that happen. And that would be in the 21 bill or the budget adjustment chip? 21. 21. OK. Good. Then I don't think there's a lot of pieces hanging out there once we talk with the treasurer in the budget adjustment. I think we should be clean. The section that we're going to want a little more understanding are the federal dollars. There's a lot in AHS and Adam. I think would prefer that we brought in all the departments, but I think that we would just bring in the secretary and have one person come in from AHS and talk about the federal dollars and the same with AOE. They were the two big ones of receivers of grants or of federal dollars. Does that make sense to the committee? Instead of having Ken back in and Dale in and every department just to have the secretary come in? Does that sound all right? Perfect. I don't see a need to meet this afternoon because we really need to wait until the administration and the fiscal office knows what federal dollars need to be reflected in the budget adjustment. And other than that, we're just waiting to hear from the treasurer, which is tomorrow, and which will do the end of year construct in the bond money as well as a bill that our committee may be taking up on municipal bonding to help with education payments. But Sarah covered a lot yesterday that I had written down and we have clean water tomorrow as well. And I think that that takes care of what has been asked for testimony. Marty, did you have a question? Your hand went up for a minute. OK, Mary, do you have a question? Yeah, I'm just thinking about the challenge of communicating with the house, with the body, as we get ready to present the BAA. There's going to be, we're privileged to understand how the whole process is going to work and have had a week or two or however long to sit with it and understand and get our questions answered. Folks on the floor don't have that. And I know you're thinking, I'm sure you're thinking about how we do these presentations, but thinking that we can't, we need to give people some time to understand it, go away, think about what their questions are and come back rather than cover it in a normal way. Yep, there's a couple of things. And Teresa, did the budget adjustment go out to all the committees? Are you confused as what you're asking? Are you asking? Usually, we send out just the pieces that impact. Did we just, we were just going to send the entire budget adjustment out to make it easier for you not to have to do letters for each one? Correct. Did that go out to all the committees? Oh, I see what you're saying. I have not done that yet, but I'm happy to do that, yes. OK, I think that that will be the first piece. The second piece I mentioned, I think last week, is we really, in a quick email that you could copy and paste, need to connect with all of the people within our budgets. I think that that's a really important piece that we have that personal connection. And the third piece is I'm sure we'll have a caucus of the whole via Zoom to put forth the pieces within the budget adjustment. And other than the committees being made aware, and we'll have to put a date on there that we need to hear back from them, there's not that much, but I know better than to say that. Yeah, and reach out to legislators and doing a caucus of the whole. What more, Mary, do you think we need to do? I'm wondering if we should do an overview of how we see the second BAA and the skinny budget and the bigger budget rolling out. And I know that Mitzi has done this. But people are going to be asking, why aren't you funding childcare in the BAA? And there's et cetera, et cetera. And I think that if people are going to need to see this information in a variety of ways in order to understand it, I don't think handing the BAA to the committees and saying, let us know. People have no ability to comprehend or to onboard that sort of information right now. The BAA is so small. The BAA is so small, and we're not going to address childcare other than accepting this money that has come in. And the housing piece, those are not close out year. Those are, by the time this bill, it will only be two weeks to the end of the year. And so to put a housing or, you know. But can I just understand that? Other people don't understand that. They won't understand. Where's the bigger picture? They won't understand. We need to show them. In a caucus of the whole, I have the entire body there to ask questions. And so we would do it as a caucus of the whole. If we want to do it prior to the budget adjustment being passed out of our committee, we can do that as long as there's time available to bring the entire caucus on between floor time and committee times. And usually we do it at noon. But there's so many meetings at noon now. And four, they're throughout the entire day. So does the committee think we need to do a caucus of the whole? Yes. Prior to. Right. And can I just jump in? Go ahead, Diane. So I would, I would, too, I'm agreeing with Mary on this. We need to be able to present the big picture. Here's how the big puzzle looks. And here's how BAA fits into it. So they don't feel like they should ask questions that are now going to be outside of that. We need to show them how the big picture is going to fit together. And then then we just present the small one, which is the BAA or whatever we're going to be doing. OK. And you think that has to be separate from the caucus of the whole where we present the BAA. We, you know, we've got time to combine it. If I can jump in again, my point is everybody is having a hard time comprehending information. We're getting bombarded everywhere. And so I think we need to look for opportunities to talk to people in different ways. So my suggestion would be everything that you've outlined and certainly us reaching out to our partners in the house. The thing that I would add would be a written outline to the body as a whole prior to doing the BAA caucus of the whole so that people can say, huh, OK, I see this framework. I see how this fits in. They're still going to ask us about housing or child care or whatever. But at least we can remind them of that they've seen the process. And we'll have a consistent piece that we'll all be speaking from the same language as well, because we've got 11 of us who might be speaking differently. And that that would not go well. We need to be one voice. So by tomorrow, I will write up not a script, but I will write up an outline of the process that I think. I just think if we send out a mass email, most people aren't going to read it. Our emails, you know, chuck full. I think that they're going to read it more if I'm sending this to you because, you know, I follow up on the budget with you. I try to make it more personal. And that personal piece in, I will write up something that's consistent so everybody's getting the same information. Right. And it might come from the speaker's office from everybody because we're going to have to figure out why, you know, they're going to say, why is there nothing in here about education? This is, you know, there's a lot more than just us. Yeah, let me talk with Catherine how the speaker's office sees the best way moving forward. I think the same issue is going to be on ed financing and what we're doing from municipalities. And I think that the range of topics, it could be absolutely and that has to be managed out of the speaker's office and managed group by group. But as far as our process to get a bucket adjustment out, a skinny budget out, and then another budget that we can see has laid that out to people, but we can lay it out with some more detail. Mary, your hands up. Is it up? Yes. Yeah. We are so good at how the process works and do such a good job of communicating with folks that it has never been an issue that people make amendments to budgets on the floor. And hopefully we will continue doing that. If we're not good at explaining what's going on, we need to be aware that that could happen. I mean, there's enough anxiety about, what are you doing for the state colleges? They need help right now. This is my vehicle. So I think we need to be attentive to that. So has anyone heard from anybody within their budget group that you keep contacting it that have had concerns about things that aren't being addressed? I mean, or I want to make sure this is addressed in the budget adjustment or in the skinny bill. Has anyone reached out to anybody? Have you reached out to anybody asking, or has anyone reached out to you either way? Have we heard from people? And it doesn't mean they don't have questions. They probably have questions, but have we made them to reach out to them knowing what their questions are? I have had a number of people reach out to me saying, what are you doing about? And I can explain the process, but yes, people have been in touch with me. I haven't gotten, I don't know where my list is. Maybe I'll have to ask you. Yeah, I don't know where mine is. Diane, do you have your list? Can you take a picture and send it to all of us, maybe? I think Teresa has it. If Diane should. If you put it somewhere, I'll dig it up and send it. Thank you. So we should reach out. Got it. And I will reach out to Catherine. I just want to make sure that the budget adjustment goes out to the committees of jurisdiction. Even if they're impacted or not, I want everyone to see what the administration has put forth. I, you know, a transportation is going to be taking their own testimony. The education fund is taking ways and means taking their own testimony. I don't know whether Ann and Bill want to, you know, take testimony again on the 4 million that has come in. I will make sure during a chairs meeting that the bigger picture so they can relate it to their committees. And we have a chairs meeting this afternoon that the budget adjustment will not include, you know, a housing proposal, a childcare proposal, a broadband proposal. You know, there may be some questions on clean water, but there will not be a whole new clean water proposal. You know, I don't need to go on and on that this is going to be just to close out the end of the year. And those chairs ought to be able to have that conversation with committees as well. So that will work. Let me check with Catherine and I will also write something so that if you want to personalize it at the top and then it will tell our process down below. I think that's a great idea. I don't know if Mary or Diane, which one, but I'll get that out. I'll have that ready for tomorrow. Anything else? No? I think we're pretty good to go. Here, and I'm not even crying. So we're not going to meet this afternoon. It is 8.30 with Julie Moore for clean water. And Marty, that's part of your budget. And then we're back at one o'clock tomorrow for Beth Pierce. And do you want to, on the agenda, Teresa, would you take off pensions in state fiscal health? Because we're going to, it's mostly going to be around BAA issues and municipal bonding. Municipal bonding, okay. And we're on at 8.30 tomorrow too, right? 8.30 tomorrow with Julie Moore, yes. Okay. Okay, and so we're going to adjourn for the day, but don't forget in five minutes, we have to be on the floor of the house. Okay, so I'm going to stop the live stream first. Okay.