 This is the continuation of the afternoon of House Appropriations Committee meeting. Let's see, we are with the military. We have General Knight with us and we have Deputy Adjutant General Ken Gregg with us. I don't see General Knight, is he with us? So, Ken, unmute yourself. Ma'am, General Knight had to make a short notice and tripped the drum this morning and they just cut off the ground about 30 minutes ago. So, he will not be back for this meeting. Well, we're happy to have you with us. Happy to be here. And we have hot off the press, in fact, it's still burning our fingers. We have just received the presentation from the administration on the administration's proposed budget for fiscal year 21, which is a whole 21 budget. It's just not the three quarter. They have built off, this is for House General to hear as well, they have built off the proposal that was put before us in January and they have made changes to that proposal. They have taken, you know, they've added, they've taken away, but it was based off the January proposal, just so everyone knows where the starting point is from the administration. And so, Teresa has a couple of documents that were brought by the deputy adjutant general and Teresa, if we could put those up, I think that we need to start right in with our testimony because our time is so limited. We will let the deputy go through his presentation and then please members of both committees, if you have questions, make sure feel free to ask them, just use your virtual hand and Representative Stevens and I will make sure you're called on. Tom, did you want to say anything to your committee members before we get started? Well, first of all, good to see you all. Those of you that are here so far. The question, no, I just, on behalf of House General, it's good to hear what these recommendations are. Military affairs is going to be taking up some of our time in the next month and Representative Toll, I think this is a question, and this may be part of Ken's, the deputy adjutant general's presentation today, but there is a question I know about the scholarships. Representative Fagan has been involved in trying to find language and I'm not sure whether that's going to be coming through your committee or is that going to be something that requires us to weigh in or is that, are we gonna be able to manage that just simply through the budgeting process? And I think if we can get an answer to that sometime today, that would help us as we move forward with plans on what we need to hear from the guard this fall. Thank you, Tom. I'm assuming that that is going to be part of the presentation today and Representative Fagan will work with your committee on it. We're doing a lot of working together and then with the other military pieces, it's Representative Helm who has the military department's budget. And so we'll all be in contact. This is new land for us doing a budget at this point at a beginning starting point like this. And so I think it's going to be a more all hands on deck and we're just going to make sure that all committees are working together and that we're keeping each other apprised so that we don't miss pieces. That's totally fair. Yeah, that's totally fair. And for something like this again with scholarships where it is a COVID response, of course, because some people aren't getting to basic training, but we'll hear more about that I think from Ken. So I'll just let it go. Either the governor, I believe, I think the governor did make a statement about that today. And I'm trying to think if it was within the administration's presentation or whether it was in his news conference today. But I believe that the military piece was addressed by the governor today and we'll let the deputy, as an in general, speak to that. Are you ready, Ken? Yes, ma'am. So unless you say otherwise, what I was going to try to do is break it down into two pieces. First part being directly the budget restatement from 21 to what it looks like now based on the recommendations. And then the second part I was gonna talk briefly about the recommendation for legislation on the tuition benefit for our students that can't get off the basic. So regarding our general fund budget, the request was for the military department to find $173,619 in reductions. That basically, and that's on our development sheet there. And also there's a few federal and special fund adjustments, but those are primarily because of the reduction in service-wise that were otherwise reimbursed by our federal or our special funds. But specifically to the general fund, that's $173,000 is made up of two parts. We reduced our tuition proposal by $136,000 and the rest of it at $37.6K is service-wise. Excuse me, could you explain? Yeah, again, the $136,000 directly off the original proposed budget tuition. I understand that I didn't hear that second part. $37.6,000 was based on our service-wise share. Okay. For a total of $173,000. For a total of $173,000. So for us, there's no negative budget impact on that operationally. The matter of fact, the proposed reduction is mostly coming from the tuition benefit program and in full disclosure, and some people may recall or not recall, when we met in the winter, I had identified that I felt that we were gonna execute 400,000 less than what we were, what the recommended budget was for the tuition program. So when the 90-day skinny budget was created, we upfront asked for the million $26,000 to support tuition and that's all we're saying we need. So with that, in addition to the $173,000, I believe there's another 264,000 that's available to go back to the general fund from the tuition benefit program. The, quite frankly, if I could, the benefit of leaving it in the budget for this conversation is it maintains our base budget going forward for next year. And if you'll notice on the tuition proposal, this year we're saying $1,026,000 and for next year we're projecting $1,285,000 and where the basis for tuition now is about a million, 290,000. So we would be right where we needed. Our intent would be to immediately after the budget was passed to give back the 264,000 in reversion to the administration. But we're good either way. We're saying we don't need that money. Thank you. And the intent would probably not be a base reduction. I would be just using it as a one-time event over in, that it's over in fiscal year 21, but the base is needed in fiscal year 22. Yes, ma'am. That's 264,000 that would be available. Representative Helm has a question. Bob, you need to unmute please. I don't have anything. Yeah, I apologize, Ken, but I am having a hard time making things add up to 173,000 way back at the beginning of this thing. I can't find the 173. I can find the 165, and now I've lost all my numbers. So I can't find anything. Theresa, will you bring the chart back up? The 165 was at the top, Bob, of just- Top of the first page, yeah. Yeah, go back to the next page, Theresa, the one with the green and yellow, the first page. And if you go down to the bottom, look at the yellow line. That bottom totals up everything up above. And in the yellow, you'll see that's where the reduction of all the totals up above, total 173, 619. So they- Okay, okay, all right, yeah. The top one wasn't the total. Yeah, okay. Yeah, all right, wait. And then within the 173, 136 of it was reduction in tuition, which Peter will be following. And that's up on top, right? Yep, and then the 43 are the remainder of them, which are the service-wide reductions. Okay, I got it now, yep, yep, thank you. Thank you, Bob. Ma'am, if I could regarding tuition, just as a line of sight, again, we promised the committee and House General, we promised everybody that we would make sure that we held full accountability for the tuition benefit program. And for FY20, we turned back, there's gonna be, I think there's a reversion of $650,000 of the funds that were budgeted to us in FY20. So when year-end rollover, we reverted $650,000 back to the general fund. But that's already been accounted for. Yes, ma'am. Yeah, you had me excited there that I had almost a total of $650,000. No, no, no, I understand. But would that happen as part of the year-end rollover? Right, right. Are there questions on the charts that have been presented before us at this point? Peter and then Mary, Peter, you're muted. Thank you, sorry about that. Just a brief question about the effectiveness of the scholarships. Ken, can you just go into that please? How are we doing? It's looking really good. Recruiting is up. It's still not where it needs to be. We didn't use as much as we projected primarily because we had a delay in the full implementation of the program. We saw about a six or eight, nine month delay in people really getting out there and promoting and marketing the program. So there was those delays. But from what we're seeing on the Army Guard side about 55, 60% of the recruits are identifying that they're coming in for tuition. So we're gonna start seeing that, this coming cycle. So as people, while I say that, we're having delays because of basic training now. And then the other complication and why a significant reduction or a projection of this year's budget is because the brigade is deployed, a chunk of the brigade is deploying and the air guard is deploying. So there'll be students out of the, that won't be going to school and it impacts fiscal years. It's the spring semester, this coming spring and the fall semester, the following. So it crosses two state fiscal years. So the other thing that's happening in a positive light and it's, but at the same time, it's making it challenging us to project what these numbers are gonna look like is previously the air guard component didn't get federal tuition assistance. But starting one October, they get the benefit of federal tuition assistance just like the Army does, which will mean every one of them are eligible for an additional $4,500. So obviously our money's gonna go further. And so we're gonna watch that really close. And if early on we see we're not gonna execute, we'll certainly be saying something early on. But from a recruiting perspective, we're seeing the benefit, definitely. And because it's also the age group we're seeing, we're seeing that 18 to 28 year old group, the high school up through a year out of school, maybe two, not the, whereas before we were seeing more of a 23 to 27 was the low end of the age band. So we're seeing a different segment of the population pursuing it. Good, thank you. Thank you, Peter. Mary, you have a question? Yeah, thank you. You've sure made my day by you're the first budget presentation we've had and to start off by saying, and there's a little extra, things are going well and there's a little extra is pretty fabulous. It makes me wanna quit while we're ahead. I was curious if the down in the utilization of the tuition money had anything to do also with the virus. And if you believe that's going to affect folks ability to take advantage of that program. No, we don't believe so. As a matter of fact, I'll be honest with you, historical trends with the military, right, wrong, or indifferent, if you take anecdotally over the last 30, 40 years, 30 years particularly, whenever you see an economic or an issue happen within the country, it tends to be that the military actually it's recruiting improves because it's an economic solution. So we're not sure that that's gonna be the case, but the biggest hiccup we have right now is being able to get people off the basic. So, and that's the next thing we'll talk about is we have people in the pipeline that now or in some cases are delayed as much as a year before they're gonna be able to go because the training commands have reduced their footprint. So they're putting through less people and less classes and part of that is taking, because it's taking longer because they're requiring the recruits to show up in quarantine for two weeks before they even start their training. So obviously the throughput is gonna be a lot lower, but they're telling us to recruit and we're just having to put them on the bench and work with them. That way right into your second piece, you've covered the budget restatement, the reductions of 173.619, which also you had highlighted 264,000 of general fund that can come back to us to help in other areas. And so the second piece has to do directly with this issue around tuition. Yes, ma'am. We wanna jump right into that. That would be- Absolutely. So what's become aware to us obviously is we've got members, we have these young people that have made a commitment to us and we've made a commitment to them. And they were planning on going to school this fall and in April and May timeframe, they weren't able to get off the basic training so that they could get everything done so they could be back here for the fall. They would still like to obviously go to school and not lose that time while they're waiting for their basic training date next spring, next summer. And we would like to be able to figure out a way to help them. The, where we're at right now today is we know of 10 members, 10 guardsmen that are interested in going to school and are delayed from basic. There are more than that that are delayed from basic, but currently 10 that say, yeah, I wanna go ahead and start school anyways. There are others that would but they're not at this point. So what we'd like to do is propose that the legislators and the administration allow a waiver or an amendment to the tuition benefit program to allow our members to go to school even though they haven't completed basic. Now, from a compliance perspective, they're still, they've signed a service commitment. They have a service commitment with the military. They still have to fulfill that service commitment and they also sign a contract for the money they're being given for tuition. So if they don't meet that commitment, like any other member of the guard, they would, it would become a debt to them and they then would have a loan to repay. So we feel that there's a hope there from a compliance perspective from a change in the budget, there is no net change because these are people we were programming in our budget that we're gonna go to school. So we're not anticipating that that would change the number. The only variable that Rep Fagan and I were talking about was that the administration was possibly talking about using CRF monies to pay for these 10 students this fall. And if so, then obviously our tuition budget could reduce by, it would be about $72,000 that could go back to the general fund from our tuition money, if that was the case. We need to see if that 72,000 was already reflected in the governor's budget because they did talk about this program. And so thank you. I have two questions and I'm Linda, Mike, Hollywood Squares are moving around and your hand was up and then you moved and I didn't see it. So I have Representative Myers and then Representative Hango. Deputy Craig, will the deployment in any way whatsoever affect any of the students who have signed up or have been in the tuition program and they're going and they would and what happens when they come back? So we will have some members that are going to school that are gonna go ahead and deploy. Obviously they defer their education and when they come back, they get back in the pipeline and they continue to receive their benefit. The other thing that's happening a year ago, there was a program that was put in place that members coming on board can sign up as they're enlisting, they can enter into a contract with the guard that guarantees them that they won't deploy for at least the first two years. Okay. So that they have a chance to actually get that baseline education going and getting things going. It's be quite honest with you, it hasn't been a problem because we often have people that readily take a semester off to deploy or they'll say, yeah, I've got a chance to go to this school. I'm gonna take a semester and I'm gonna go do that because they see the benefit of today our military career as well as their civilian, their life. Thank you. Thank you, Linda for that question. Representative Hango. Thank you. My question is about those approximately 10 students who if they were granted a waiver would start school. Is it for this coming fall semester that's just starting now? Yes, ma'am. That's why we're asking. So it happens to be, it's happened to work out that we're hanging out there and we're taking a chance or we're all taking a chance. I'm talking about the students as well, hopeful. It happens to be that all 10 students are at Norwich. And we sat down with the president of Norwich last week and said, here's our situation. The earliest there would be something to provide relief would be, could be as late as 30 September. So the school has agreed that they're not gonna build the students until the outcome of this and also no late fees or anything like that. So at that point we spoke to the students. So it's still ultimately up to the student whether they want to take that risk but all the pieces are in place to facilitate if this happens that we can execute for their fall semester. Okay, so those students, thank you for that. They are actually matriculated at Norwich and they are beginning classes in a couple of weeks. Yes, ma'am. Okay, that was my misunderstanding because I didn't know how that was gonna happen at any other university but at Norwich I believe it can happen. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Lisa, for that question. I did receive confirmation that in the governor's recommendation he has accounted for the exchange of those general fund dollars for the CRF dollars. So we're not able to add the extra 72.4 thousand but it is in that section B1105. So that would mean technically then our tuition we wanna reduce by 72,000, right? I think it's already reflected in the governor's version. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. Exactly. The tuition hasn't been reduced. It's been exchanged for CRF dollars instead of general fund dollars. So the general fund portion has been reduced but not the money for your tuition. Understood. Are there any other questions either regarding the budget restatement, the earlier piece or the language for the waiver needed to allow these 10 guard members to attend college in the fall? Ma'am, if I could make one clarification. Certainly. The intent of the language, and Rob Fager will have to correct me if I'm wrong, but the intent was this is gonna probably have a rolling effect, you know? So I don't think we're looking at just one semester. This will probably have a year to 18 months rolling effect. So the amendment we would ask for it to be, you know, open for a period of time. And I believe the language is written in such a way that I think it's incumbent on me to verify that their eligibility to be able to go without having attended basis. So the language would be written specifically as long as it's by COVID-19? Yes, ma'am. I believe that's the intent. But not open for the next 10 or 20 years. No, ma'am. And Kitty, if I may. Yes, the deputy adjutant general is going to need to verify that no students have refused to go to, essentially no students have refused to go to basic such that they would then enter into a recoupment situation. In other words, the seat comes available, they go to school. And that's the way that it's going to be. And I would estimate that if a student were to say, can you, you know, don't put me in school on like April, because I'm just finishing my classes. Can you do it in May, June? They would probably accommodate that. So. Thank you for that clarification, Peter. And the language is in front of the house general committee. Now we did send that on to the chair. So are there any other questions to ask? Well, the deputy adjutant general is with us. If not, I know you're busy and you have a lot to do. So we're going to have committee discussion with the two committees. So that just that we coordinate our, I'm just enthralled with John's cat. I keep losing my place watching his cat. I apologize. So we'll coordinate our activities to make sure all the pieces for the military fall into the budget as prioritized by the two committees. But thank you, unless you have something else you would like to share. We appreciate all you do and, and stay safe during, during the remainder of this pandemic. Yes, ma'am. It's a pleasure and hopefully all, you all will stay well as well. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Ken. And we'll see you soon in committee. Yes, sir. And so Tom, what I would ask is that is, you know, as soon as possible for your committee and we're asking this for all committees as much as we can work together. If you could provide us with a memo, I don't mind relying on my notes, but it's so much better. It's a very informal memo. Don't, don't, you don't have to cite sections of the budget. Just the two topics about the budget restatement, your position on that and your position on the language, allowing the guard, the 10 guard members to not have to complete basic training in order to start their schooling. Yeah, we should be able to get that to you soon. I have to look in my notes to see where the most recent in Peter, if you have the most, do you have more recent language than what you sent me a couple of three weeks ago? So let's make sure, Tom, that we're working on the same thing. So I've asked Maria to resend the most recent piece of language to Teresa so that she can then send it to both of us. Yeah, I just did that. I just sent it to her. Thank you. And then Teresa, could you upload that and then also send a copy to the committee members, please, all? Yeah, and send them to, and please send it to all of House General so that my folks can see it as well. I don't think it's a difficult conversation. And if we have the information in front of us when we start meeting next week, that would be great. And so I would ask, Tom, like for the military piece, if this is a quick turnaround, send that rate back to us so that we can get sections of the budget. And then if there's housing pieces, you can send that separately. And we know that there is some, there's a broadening of the language in lottery and your committee is definitely going to want to hear more about that and to weigh in. It expands for sports betting and eye games or I don't know, eye instance, whatever eye instance is. And, but don't hold off on getting us the military and the other pieces as they come, send them in. And I'm going to ask the members of my committee to keep track of the ones that belong to you so that we can close out these budgets because we need to do this in just a couple of weeks. Sure, no, and if you can get whatever lottery language, we haven't seen anything come from the DLL directly to our committee on it. And we have a bill that from the Senate that proposes a study on sports betting. But DLL had proposed the expansion of sports betting earlier in the year in January and we had not supported that in general. And given COVID and given the lack of time that we have, we're not even sure we can deal with the sports betting study, but if we can have that language to review and I think for the military stuff, I mean, again, if there's anybody on the committee, I did anybody hear anything that raised any flags in terms of what this was? I mean, I didn't hear it. This sounds like it's, as Representative Hooper said, anytime somebody comes in and says things are fine, here's a change. I think that's a good sign for this particular budget year in particular. And again, theoretically, at least in theory or people, and again, we can't take a vote today, but in theory people, did you hear anything in the scholarship exemptions to raise any flags for this particular year? I mean, I certainly didn't think that that was out of line and would require any major work and what work has been done, I think Representative Fagan has jumpstarted that. So I think when we meet next week, it'll be a fairly quick conversation and we can get to a memo by the middle of next week at the very latest. And I was just reminded that it's not a complete swap for the CRF money and the military tuition. That's with the condition that the guidance changes. And so they do have some conditional language in the budget that allows for if more federal dollars comes in or if the guidance changes and there's more flexibility with the money. So how do you deal with that then? How would you deal with that in terms of, would you put an asterisk next to all the material that might be able to be used if there's flexibility given, just like we've been waiting for? What we might have to do is rely depending on when we get the information, if we can make the changes in the budget, if we can't, we may have to have some language that allows for provisions like the joint fiscal committee, knowing the priorities of the house committees and then making those decisions through the joint fiscal committee after the October 1st, depending on whenever Washington gets us more information. So that's, we're going to keep great notes, I hope, knowing the priority of the committee. So if we agree upon that swapping out of dollars, which I would assume we would, the JFC committee could do it if we don't have the flexibility from the federal government before we adjourn. Yeah. Can I jump in? I'm confused now. I did not think the problem I'm interpreting from what you and Tom have just said that you were talking about CRF guidance. I thought that there was something on the state level which prohibited use of this prior to their completing basic training. So it's not a CRF problem. No, these are two different issues, Mary. So it is the basic training language. Right. But that's a different issue that we would make that accommodation that would be for a shorter period of time. But then also because these students are being impacted, the administration has some waterfall language of where they would walk out. Yeah. And so that's a separate issue would be to walk out. Okay. So it is a CRF issue of whether or not these funds could be used? Yes. I didn't understand that. Okay. And if I may, I asked the question and he said it wasn't an issue but I'm really surprised that they expect to put this many students through the program. I, everything that we're seeing with other colleges and universities is there to that not as many people are participating. And I don't know what house general can further information. And he said they expect it to be utilized but that just surprises me. So I wanted to share that. And we'll follow up on the use of the scholarships. I mean, there's one part of me that remembers that when this program started that there was about a three-year uptake they expected to hit their high end of their budget allocation in about three years. And this is probably year two given the COVID stuff. We can ask more precise questions when we have a whole slew of issues to talk about with the guard when we get back. And this was definitely on that list. So we'll follow up on the numbers too. And if I may, of course, those numbers were generated before they knew that they would be deployed at this time or coming up for their deployment rather. So there's pause I guess is the best way of explaining that, but yes, please follow up. And Tom, just as a reminder for you and your committee because we're on such a short timeline house appropriations will not be sending out a letter that identifies all the areas as we meet jointly. This is how we're hoping to inform you. So if you find other things that we've missed just bring them to our attention you'll be back in for liquor and lottery. So at this point, Maria or Teresa, could one of you send to either Tom or their committee assistance, the military language so that they have those pieces? Is that something that you do or is that going to become too cumbersome? Yeah, I think we can hand that. Yes, we'll make sure that happens. So just off the top of my head, I mean, we're talking in terms of where we really interact with you is gonna be on the housing perspective of course is the property transfer tax and the possibility of using CRF for the database that we've been talking about an H739 at the least. So, and then of course, liquor and lottery impact of COVID on their income will be important to hear as well. And if you could just get a head start on that lottery language change, I don't know when liquor and lottery is scheduled but you may just want to, you know. Yeah, we're representing, Jessup is going to share his language with me and we'll take a look at it. Okay, and then I do want to just, at this point, the administration, their CRF spending in the budget changes are all in one package. I'm not sure at this time if we'll do a budget and then a CRF bill, but right now we're talking about it altogether and then it may go on one train or it may go on two different trains. Okay. So we're on the two-week timeline, so hold on. Yeah, no, that's fine. No questions. It's great to have the other committee here. I just think that we're hearing more together. We're hearing your questions. You're hearing the same testimony and I think it's going to really expedite this budgeting process. Any final thoughts from anyone out there? Thank you for joining, thank you House General for joining us. It's nice to see all of you. I wish we were in the capital. I wish we were in our committee room, but there's a benefit doing it this way too with, you know, I think the communication's good. Does John's cat get a vote? Usually when John's cat sits on the keyboard, that's usually our signal to go. So for the general committee, just keep this in mind. This is something that we can probably knock off fairly quickly when we meet next week. I don't have scheduling yet from Catherine, so I don't know exactly when that's going to be, but this is certainly something that we can probably take care of fairly quickly. This particular piece to the appropriations. So good to see everybody, however briefly and I'm sure we'll see you all next week. And all the budget documents are on the JFO website. So anything you want to read with language changes, it's all on the JFO website and really easy to read. And I've fed them all up at the committee page now as well. So. Great. Thank you, Teresa. Thank you. We are coming back at 2.45 to hear from the agency of... 2.45 to read. We'll take a quick break and if you can jump on then, that would be great. And it's so nice to see everybody from House General and appropriation members don't go too far, but stand up and stretch and we'll be back. So I'm going to stop the live stream.