 Okay, committee. Welcome, Senate Finance. We are going to continue our walkthrough today, trying to find a solution to our deficit in the Ed fund, but you know, we've been told to just declare bankruptcy and go home. So maybe that would be a solution and just walk away from all those pensions and all that stuff. And I don't know when Harrisburg and I think was Detroit declared bankruptcy, I was at Encoil and the insurance and bond market went berserk. So I can imagine what would go on if states decided to do that. I have never heard it suggested. So we're going to assume we aren't going bankrupt and we are going to figure out how to use that, fill that deficit, even though despite being told we would be able to use some of the CARES money to fill revenue slots, the directions that I saw at least four times today said we could not. So we are here with our deficit, at least for now. So we're going to start out with Graham and Mark. A quick clarification on that. So does that mean that we're talking about largely, of course, things that we're responding to COVID-19, but also new projects, new initiatives? It can't be used to fill revenue losses for already budgeted programs. It's my interpretation and I think I've seen several that agree with that. So school is budgeted and we are looking at significant revenue losses. And I think we've all agreed that school should probably open in September, health standards allowing, but education of some form will have to be delivered in September, end of August. So we are here and Mark and Graham, I just keep hoping one of you is good. Well, I think Graham's might be going to give us some good news, but we're going to start with what's the revenue forecast up, Senator Ballant? Just a clarification, Ann, since when we saw some of the language that seemed to be in this latest package, it seemed like they were giving some flexibility to the states and you're saying the guidance that you're seeing is not saying that. So where's the... I will stand. I just read the document and it said, couldn't be used for revenue shortfalls for... So where there's going to be some gray area in there, but I am not going to assume that we're going to get to use a hundred million dollars. And I'm starting to get a little nervous about going through the one billion if you start to look at proposals that are out there. So I'm working on the assumption that the bulk of this at this time, we're going to have to deal with this year's and next year's. If a windfall comes our way, then I'll happily jump on it, but I didn't see anything that said we could make up for revenue shortfall. Maybe some flexibility, but I didn't see a lot. If somebody else has read it differently, I'll stand by that. Graham, are you going to be first? I think so. Okay. I'm Graham Campbell from the Joint Fiscal Office and I'm here to essentially give an update to the committee about where revenues stand. I think just before I start that, I think the discussion that you just had about regarding the CRF funds is the correct one. The guidance was issued by the Treasury last night and specifically multiple times made in comments that this revenue could not be used for revenue shortfalls or operating expenditures that would have occurred anyway. There was some chatter in the most recently passed. I'm not sure if the House has passed yet, but what they're calling CARES, one and a half, which help which refill the PPP loan pot of money. Either there was going to be some more money for state and local governments to use for revenue shortfalls or the existing CRF money in CARES 1 would be the language around that would be loosened up to be used for revenue shortfalls. Neither of those things appears to have happened. So we're kind of where we were before in terms of with that money except for the fact that we have actual guidance from the Treasury on this money at the moment. And so there has been some talk of President Trump, I think, tweeted that they would look at the state and local aid in the future bills, but at this point it's rather uncertain. So I would think that's all I know at the moment for the CRF money. Senator McDonough had a question. Does the state have a budget yet? Not a past one, no. And have we established what we plan to the state plans to do for state aid education yet? Good question. Yes, I think it's the sales tax of the way the law is written. There's no general fund transfer. Senator Pearson has a question. Well, I think I understand what Senator McDonald's is driving at. And Graham, can you, we've talked about this, it's usually been a several-part test, right? Not budgeted and in reaction to the pandemic. Is that still where we believe? That's where we stand. Yeah, not budgeted and then also necessary. There's, I mean, I can send faith the document that the Treasury released, but there's some examples in there about what might be an eligible expense. And most of those examples are expenses incurred for COVID relief, like health care expenses, things like that. There is a section which talks about potentially, if you, if the state were to offer some economic assistance in the form of what they, for payroll, for businesses, that might be an eligible expense. And so there is some gray areas still left over in the guidance that was issued by Treasury. Although it specifically says multiple times, not for operating, it must be necessary. Not much has changed from our original interpretation of the money as it came, as it would have passed in the actual bill itself. So if schools had extra expenses, if they bought iPads, if they bought routers so that students could learn remotely, there's a chance that might be covered. A chance. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to get ahead of what might or might not be an eligible expense, but that's the kind of, I think, thrust of something that would be used. I'm just pulling up the actual document here so I can. Grant, broadband, for example. I mean, this could be, you know, we've recognized that we have, you know, a massive, we've known this, but this is highlighting a massive infrastructure deficit in our part. Good broadband. I mean, fiber, that kind of thing seems to me that the case might, and I know you can't be a judge and jury on this, but it seems to me that that kind of thing, we're learning that we have deficits and preparation, as the pro tem said this morning, which I thought was a really good point. How do we prepare for, how do we sort of do an analysis of what we did well, what we didn't do well, how do we prepare in the future for these kinds of things. And I guess my, I guess the one question I could ask you, Graham, is what are the penalties if a state were to make a mistake, a legitimate mistake? We invest a lot of money in broadband right now and, you know, somebody says, oh, you know, tis tis, you guys, that really doesn't fit the bill. What happens? Okay, so there's no, we haven't seen anything along those lines. Okay, we have that far. I'm still getting concerned that we're going to go through this money very quickly. There's just so many proposals out there, but we're going to go through the money unwisely and in an uncoordinated fashion. That's right. Yes. With respect to broadband, because if we go through and we spend all the money on things that people say they want and need right now, but we have no plan or no integrated strategy around it, we're going to, it's going to be a disaster. We're going to spend a lot of money that's not necessary. It's going to be uncoordinated. It's not going to fit together. And logically, it may not make a whole lot of sense by the time we get done. And this is particularly true if we fragment how we do it in terms of who's responsible for it. So those, I think, are significant risks that we need to make. I think part of the reason that joint fiscal has asked to have everything but the immediate health and safety expenditures, once we get to go through the appropriations process, and as I understand it, as requests come in, I think it's on joint fiscal's website, there will be a listing of the requests and then of how the money is being spent. But we need to watch that. There's already a group talking about reopening, but at some point we're going to have to make a coordinated effort. I think we know where we made some mistakes last time, and we'll make some this time, but hopefully they'll be very small ones. Madam Chair. Yes. I don't expect that we would have the answers to the questions that we might be asking today, but every year the relationship, the ratio between the state's share of education and the property tax or income tax payers changes, and every year we ratify that change and we debate it and argue it. We raise or lower the tax rates of any here and there. We haven't done that yet. And I would ask someone in the days to come, if we decided to restore the share of the housing paid for by the state, could we not do that? The state shares less of the revenues than they used to before the big recession and homeowners and property tax payers have never caught up. That's a policy decision. So someone needs to tell us what constitutes where we've crossed the line and where we haven't before we concede the choices we might have. So here ago, we began the work of the Act Structure Commission. Take a look at all of our taxes and how they were, what reforms were necessary on a gross basis, and they're due to report back to us at the end of this year. It might be useful for us to hear from them at this point to say, well, what have they done and what have they found? Is there any direction that they're moving towards to resolve the issues that, because these issues existed long before COVID-19. And again, I'd like to see us do this in a logical rather than a reactive manner because one of the problems for the tax system that we're in right now is we keep adding band-aids and making it worse. We keep cutting taxes, too. So were we going to get numbers update from? Midi, I want to let you know Senator Cummings just got booted from the meeting. I don't know why, but she's not here. It doesn't mean you can't go forward with Graham, but I wanted to let you know. I'll leave it to the committee to do. I'm going to continue with the numbers. Seems to me that we should give a few minutes, right? Yeah. So while we're waiting, maybe I can jump in. Senator McDonald, the problem with doing what you're suggesting right now is we don't have a forecast yet for 21, and we should have it by next Wednesday. And at that point, we can do the kind of analysis that you're looking for. Right. And the numbers that I'm going to give right now are only fiscal 20 numbers. We had a good, a very detailed analysis from the tax department, deputy tax commissioner. It was technically yesterday who updated this on the various funds and sales taxes and rooms and meals. And that's for this year. Come on, Madam Chair. Best text at her. I haven't heard from her yet. So Mark, maybe you'll tell us what you plan to tell us. I don't have a lot to tell you. I was just, Graham was going to give you a revenue upgrade, and I was going to show you that what that does to the education fund outlook for 2020. It's pretty straightforward. It just, you know, the revenue downgrade is not as bad as what we anticipated went from 89 to about 69. So the deficit in the education fund for FY20 is better than we thought initially, but it's still bad. And we've sort of been operating on the principle that before we start making decisions about next year, we have this year nailed down. So we're not trying to, so we know what we've already done. Yeah, but I think it's really likely that we're going to be carrying the significant deficit forward from FY20 and FY21, and we'll have an empty stabilization reserve. So it's a big, big problem. Mark, I have a Bible here. Do you think it should be sworn in or Here she is. You're muted, Senator Cummings. We don't know. I think we'll go to Graham right now. Okay. So I'm going to attempt to screen share here. Hopefully this doesn't, oh, it won't let me. As faith have it. I'll let you, Graham. Hang on. Okay. This is posted on our website. So Graham, try it now. Okay. Can everyone see that document? Yep. We can see it. Okey-dokey. So I'm going to give you an update of what Tom Cavetta share with us as of April 17th for fiscal year 20 revenue impacts. And as Mark said, the only real change here, as opposed to the immediacy and last is in the education fund, really. So the Graham, can you make that a touch bigger? That good. Better? Yeah. Can't see all of the last column. At least I can. I know about the, but that's because I've got people going down the side. Yeah. So Graham, I'm sure I've seen it. So at the moment, we're looking at about talking accounting for both the shifts in revenue from fiscal 20 to fiscal 21. And the actual revenue downgrades from economic impacts in COVID. We're talking about $381 million across all funds. And that's broken out by the three funds on the sheet. And so the line that's highlighted in red here, that's what is going upon the economic impact. So this is the amount that's just pure loss. And then the bottom line here is the revenue deferrals line. And so there's some talk that if some of the revenue deferrals came in before, all these deferred revenues came in before July 30th, then it's possible that we could book them in fiscal 20. So we're sort of not quite counting them as revenue losses yet in fiscal 20, but I'm just highlighting them here just so the committee is aware. So in terms of total losses, the sum of the three red numbers here is about $170 million, $61 million in the general fund, $42 million in the transportation fund, and $69 million of it is in the education fund. The queer change here is the education fund. That number used to be a negative $89 million. So it's been an upgrade. And that was largely due to not necessarily improvements in the economic outlook, but Tom Covet and Jeff Carr made some technical corrections to their modeling. And so it had a roughly $20 million impact. And so that's by and large the main difference in the estimates that today versus what the committee is seeing in the last week that I presented these. So I guess at that point, I think I saw a hand from someone. But I can't see the last column in red. Is that 50 that we think will come in in July? I've got participants going down the side. So on the last column was the education fund. What the situation there is is there's about $69 million worth of economic loss. So just lost revenues from businesses being closed. The sales tax and the other room tax, but also the lottery. And then there's an additional $41 million in potentially deferred meals and rooms and sales and use tax. You recall the administration waived interest and penalties for the March 25th and the April 25th payments of those two taxes. And so the way that the economists are treating that deferral is that they think that that revenue will continue to be potentially to be deferred. And so I'm putting that down in the bottom category here because so long as that money comes in before July 30th, it's possible that we can book that as a fiscal year 20 revenue. So it's not really a loss. Well, we started out, the number we've been using is 19 million deficit for this year. Are we still in that ballpark? 19 million for the education fund? Yes. So I think Mark can maybe better, but the last thing I think he presented to you the starting point was a negative $89 million loss in the Ed fund. And then once you've added in the stabilization reserves and things like that, it was I think what 39 and a half mark? Yes. And then there was the 20 million calculation change, which is I guess where I got to 19. So yeah. I think Mark might give you an update on that. Okay, Mark, do you want to tell us and then we'll get to questions? Sure. So Faith, you have the document that I sent to you. Before we leave this document. Okay, Senator Pearson. There you are. Hi, hi. So Mark or Graham, I was hoping you could explain the interplay between 69 and 41 in the Ed fund. So you're saying we're we're attracted to be down 69 million, but we may get 41 late is what I'm seeing. And I'm trying to understand, does that mean we're down 110 million? Or does that mean we're down? What's the opposite? 18 million, 28 million. Yeah, sorry about the fact confusion. What it means is the $69 million is just right now is that's just gone. It's that's sort of the best case scenario under these estimates. So 69 million is the loss in revenue from places just being closed, consumers not buying as much, not going to hotels, not buying lottery tickets, stuff like that. Right. The $41 million is an additional chunk of money that has been deferred. Or I should say the penalties interest on that money have been waived. And so those are payments for March 25th and April 25th on the meals and rooms in the south. So so long as people who owe the money in March and April make those payments in May, June or before July 30th of this year, that 41 will come in. If they don't make that money, that's additional loss. So worst case scenario here is that none of those people have the money to make that payment. And you add another $41 million on top of the $69 million. All right. Thank you. $110 million. Okay. Senator Sorokin has a question. Michael, you're muted. Michael. No. I got it. Okay. Sorry. Not sure this is related specifically to the Ed fund, but are there comparable shorts on the spending side? How much reduced spending we're seeing in or increased spending we're seeing in the balance of FY 20? And also what about, you know, federal receipts? If there's more food stamps or less food stamps going in and out? I mean, are there, if we're looking to balance a budget for FY 20, we're talking a lot about the revenue losses, but another part of it is adjustments we need to make on the spending side. So in FY 20, we can't make any changes on the spending side at this point. It's all, it's all local spending. So that's on the ed fund. Yeah, on the ed fund. Yeah. And that's what we're, we're trying to get a handle on right now. And that's the rest of this afternoon is trying to get a handle on where school spending is. And is it over? Is it under? We're, we're still trying to get a handle on that. I guess my question was more general to the other funds as well. And maybe Grant could briefly answer that. Yeah, I don't know if I have a satisfactory answer. I think the administration's keeping track of the amount of money that they're spending related to the crisis. We have a grasp of the federal monies coming in. And I think it's probably somewhat accurate to say that a lot of the expenditures that are happening right now are probably those that are eligible for some of this federal money. So the CRF, I mean, most of the expenditures happening are related to the COVID-19 crisis directly as a public health spending, things like that. And so those will be more likely eligible for CRF money than additional other monies that were in the CARES Act. But these ones here are more just straight up losses of revenue. And so these are the ones that notwithstanding any sort of additional federal aid that the state is going to have to make up for in other words. I've lost you again. I can hear you. I can hear you. I'm trying to shut it off because there's a phone ringing here. No, cancel. No. I can see you, Ann. I'm back. Okay. All right. I was trying to shut off the microphone, but it was covered by another pop-up. Okay. So I think the Appropes Committee is doing as much tracking on budgeted spending for this year. And we can ask them for an update, but I haven't heard anything on money chairs. All right. So are you ready to go to Mark? Mark, do you have a document? I do, Faith. Do you have that document? If you don't, I can put it, share a screen. But, um, space is still on here. Please share the screen. If I can share a screen. Oh, I'm disabled for screen sharing, so. Ram, you're the host, so you can make Mark a co-host. I do not have a screen share up here right now. All right. Faith is the host now. All right. I'll let Faith take over. So. Sorry. This is Faith. Were you looking for something from me? I just got through that. Faith, I sent you an update on Education Fund Outlook. I'm ready to share that, Mark. Hang on. That'd be great. Okay. That's what we're looking for. Okay. There it is. And a little. So, um, all right. As long as we're at the top, the numbers that Graham has been talking about show up on here on lines three, four, five, and six. They're non-property tax monies that support the Education Fund. Yeah. That's the revenue downgrade that was changed. So we're better by about $20 million. So Faith, can you scroll down to the bottom? So you don't have to spend a lot of time on this part of it. But if you looked down at the bottom where it was $39.5 million on line 26 as a deficit, the deficit's now dropped to $19.9 million. But so there's not a whole lot to tell you other than that. That money, you know, it's good news. We're not quite as bad off as we were expecting to be in 2020. But going forward to 21, well, I have you here. The problem next year is we have to make up that $19.9 million deficit on line 26, on line 28, that reserve is going to be gone. So the Stabilization Reserve would need to be made up. School boards have already voted to expend about another $74 million next year. And even if I assume that we collect as much as 80% of the non-property tax revenues that were forecasted in January for the Education Fund, we'd lose about $114 million there. So we've got a really, really big hole right now in FY21, given that a lot of the spending has been locked in, almost all the spending has been locked in, but the revenues are really uncertain at this point. Okay, Sandra Pearson. Mark, I've heard you say a few times that our reserve targets, with an assumption that we would pop them up after using them this year, what if we were arguing that the crisis is bad enough that we are not in a position to replenish the reserve funds? Is that not withstanding our statute? Is that a risk with the rating agencies? Can you just help me understand that? Because surely that is a reasonable argument. So the first part is the easy answer. In January, when the Tax Commissioner makes recommendations for FY21, the statute requires that he assumes that the Education Fund Stabilization Reserve has been restored. So you'd see a big tax bump in there for FY22 when you come through. But I think that the Education Fund can run a deficit. The question there, and I'm not the best person to answer this, is what the impact on that would depend on how rating agencies viewed that going forward. They like to see a 5% reserve in the fund if they don't see anything there. I don't know how that affects the state's borrowing costs or that kind of thing going forward. Just got a thing from Moody's Analytic that said the Vermont was one of 12 states that was in a position where it might survive this financial crisis with only a 5% reduction, and it was because of our reserves. So we've done a good job there, but I'm pretty sure I can remember not fully funding the reserves, probably during the last economic downturn. But all of these numbers are also based on, we're working on the assumption that property taxes are going to be paid. Two things. First of all, it assumes that the yields that were set back in December, the property tax parameters that were set in December are the property tax parameters that you would use next year. In those, there's a built-in 5% increase on average for homestead taxpayers and a 6% increase for non-homestead property taxpayers. That's one. And then two, yes, you're right. It assumes that all of the property tax, education property tax money that's due in both FY20 and in FY21 is collected. So what I'm talking about in some sense is a best-case scenario. So I hate to throw it out there, but just a small group here, so just I'll throw it out. We're looking at a problem next year that ranges from $150 to $250 million. I mean, it could be a quarter of a billion dollars to get schools fully funded next year, based on what we're looking at right now. And if we can't use the CARES money, the $1.25 billion options are pretty limited. I don't know what else you would do other than go to borrowing. So right now though, because we haven't removed the 8% penalty, the law says that those monies will be paid to the Ed fund. It is the town's responsibility to collect them. Yes. And for some towns, especially poorer towns, that amount of borrowing might be difficult. But no, but you're right. The way the law stands right now, if a municipality is unable to collect the full amount of education property tax that's due to the state, they have to come up with that money. However, they can probably by going out in short-term borrowing. So if we do away with that requirement, which we've been asked to, it would probably trend more towards $250 million? No, yes. I guess it would be on the higher end of that. Well, we don't know because we don't know how many people are still working remotely, how many people, we know how many people aren't working because we've got on insurance claims. But I don't think know who's working and how much they're making and who in that group is paying the property taxes. So it's a lot of unknowns out there. Right. And like I said, next Wednesday we'll have a revenue forecast. It won't be an official forecast, but I don't know what else we would use because we're not going to have an official forecast. I don't think until the end of the summer. And tax rates for the education fund have to be set before then. They have to be set before you adjourn or ideally before June 30th. So there's going to be continuing uncertainty going all the way forward. On the general fund side, you can pass a one-quarter budget and come back and deal with it when we have a better sense of how everything is sugared off. But with the education fund, because we need to establish rates, we've got to make those decisions based on incomplete or not as great information as we would like to have to make that decision. Mark, do you know is any of the money that the care money that's going to schools come in? Brad's on. I'll do that. Okay. I know that then I do. I know that they're waiting for guidance at the agency. You're muted, Brad. All right. There's Brad. You're muted. I'll break your corner. No, can't hear. There. Okay. You're unmuted. At the moment, no money has come in. As far as I know, we have not received the application yet from the feds. That's been worked on. It's supposed to come out anytime now. We were told last week it'll be out the end of this week. That's where we are. But no money has come in yet from the CARES Act. Okay. Have we gotten the list of what it could be used for? Is it just a flat grant? The only thing I'm aware of still is just what is in the CARES Act itself. They list 12 different uses for it. I would say 10 of them are fairly narrow. Two of them are fairly broad, but it's not wide open money. But we're expecting that they'll be given a guidance on how to use that in further details, what it can and cannot be used for. Okay. All right. Brad, I'm watching the, oh, we're, okay. So committee, any other questions for Mark? All right. Then we're a little behind. So I'm going to move on. And this is the second section of our agenda, which is updates on school budgets and plans. Brad, you're on first. Do you have things to tell us? I have, I have what the business manager told me. Okay. That's good. I haven't done this in a while, just for the record, Brad James, Agency of Education. Faith, would you pull up the one that says FY28 expenditure update, please? It'll take me a minute. Hang on. That's okay. I don't know how to do it at all. So what, what this is, is I asked the business managers yesterday afternoon what, roughly what their increased costs are and what their potentially reduced costs are due to the school closures and such. And what's, what's going on with them. And this is a kind of a compilation of what they had. And I heard, I heard back from just about 25% of them. Well, there it is. Thank you, Faith. So I heard back from about 25% of them. And the ones who specifically talked about their additional costs, eight of the, eight of the 12, 12 of them responded directly to that question. Eight of them said that they thought their costs were going to be marginal, incremental. At best, they weren't going to be very large. Four of them reported that they were going to have rough estimates who gave me actual numbers of between $62,000 to $170,000. I don't know if that, by other people, I don't know if that's considered incremental or marginal. I'm not sure what their, what their scale of magnitude is in terms of what they're saying to me. Probably depend on the size of the school budget. I think partly, but most of these districts were, most of these issues were roughly the same size I was hearing from that. And there's office and flexibility in there, but most, most were not terribly different. But they're all doing things a little bit differently. They are all saying that they're, what one of the things they're doing is they're using their money differently than they anticipated using it because schools are closed. They're shifting money from one pocket to the other. Most of them are still working very hard at keeping all their absolutely funded at 100% of their salaries. So that's going on, kind of following the governor's directives. So anyway, so the cost, the cost is there. It's, it's not insurmountable. If I was to take what those 12 districts, well, really those four districts report an actual number, and I did that wrong, I think about it, because that should have been times more. Give me a second here to turn on the calculator. If I was to take their, their numbers, their total increase in spending for those four, their reporting was for about $480,000. And if I was to multiply that by 13, just assuming that's kind of an average because there are 52, so 452 is 13, we would come out with additional costs of about $6.3 million for the, for the districts as a whole. Again, these are very rough numbers. Nobody's really going to stand by these numbers. I told them that I wasn't planning on standing by these numbers either. So I think we're just trying to get an idea of trends right now. Are they spending a whole lot or a whole lot more or less? It's a good question. And I think it's a relative question. I don't think, I don't think anybody's spending as much as I anticipated some spending. But I think if you look at that as that rough number, maybe call it $6 million for the state, that's significant money. Is it huge money for what's going on? I don't know the answer to that. By the same token, they're offsetting that a little bit by reduced costs. And again, I had only a few respond to about reduced costs, an actual estimated number. But three of them said that they were not, that their costs that they would be able to reduce were not very large. But in a lot of those cases, they were offsetting their increased costs. So they're kind of at a net zero. So a lot of them are kind of at a net zero at the moment. There's still a large number of districts out there who are not sure what their costs are going to be in terms of what the either expenditure or reduced costs. It's still unclear because it's very early in the game for them. The two who reported cost to me were 31,000, or reduced cost part of me, were 31,150,000. So you can see there's a discrepancy there. One SU did say that they were potentially going to have a very large fund balance at the end of the year because of their schools are closed and they're not spending a lot of money on passing anything like that. That was a significant amount of money for them. So it's, I think the takeaway is, I don't have good answers, obviously, but I think the takeaway is kind of all over the place. But I would say that probably if I was to take that number, if I was to kind of take a net number, multiply that by, say, 13, let me just put this around for a second. I think probably we could be talking about a net number when I take into account what they've told me about reductions, cost reductions, of maybe four million dollars total cost, total increase when you net it out. So that kind of gives you maybe, I think of roughly a lot of parameters on that, real big error bars, but a rough idea of the increase cost of four million dollars this year. Roughly, we aren't seeing a trend towards huge savings or huge overruns. The numbers we're talking about four to six million dollars is not that big. No. And I think the general trend is toward more cost as opposed to reductions. Okay. Senator Pearson. Thank you. Brad, are food costs wrapped in here because I know sometimes cafeterias are off budget and there's a whole variety of how we handle that. And I'm just curious if your understanding is that my understanding in general is that food costs are rolled into this. You're right. A lot of districts run their food services and enterprise funds, which is supposedly self-filling, self-funding. But most of the time they end just to be a transfer from the school general fund to help that enterprise fund out. But my understanding from what I've heard from most people over the course this past month is when they're talking to me about numbers and costs, food is a big part of it. A lot of them are seeing increased food costs. They're not getting the revenue in from meals. They're sending food out to people. They're still paying their food staff 100% even though they're not necessarily working full time in some cases. So their costs are not going down. Food costs seem to be going up in general. There is money coming in. I don't know much about it, but there is money coming up from the federal government in terms of offsets from those food costs. But again, as I know you've talked about in the Senate of Agriculture, the offsets from the federal government do not cover the costs of the meal. Thanks. Okay. All right. Any other questions for Brad at this point? Brad, do you have anything else to tell us? Yes. There are a couple of things there. Faith, you keep going down a little bit. There you go. That's about the end. On the number five that you're looking at there, I guess I mentioned that. Most of them are paying their personal 100%. For FY21, that's really where the big concern is for people as it is for you too. This managed a very concerned with what revenues are going to be available to them in FY20. They're worried about the increased costs specifically for commensatory education, special education, and potentially increased mental health services. One of the things that they're worried about right now, also for FY20, are a reduction in revenues. There is some concern about transportation revenues not being paid out and there's some concern about special education reimbursements not being paid out based on how people are working. In terms of transportation, what is happening now will not impact reimbursement for transportation this year. That's because the transportation reimbursement from the state is based on the actual cost for transportation from two years prior. Calvin just gave me a message. The special education is a little bit more detailed and we're working on that right now. A lot of the special education personnel are not working full seven-hour school day, eight-hour school day, whatever it happens to be. All the people are still paying them for their full time. The question is becoming how will that be reimbursable? We're looking into that. We're looking into how they do time studies twice a year for most personnel and each time study last period of a week for state reimbursement purposes. We're trying to use that and roll that forward. There are some cases where some personnel, such as paraprofessionals, if their job duties change and they have to do another a third time study. There are some people who are in that pot now that we're trying for what to do about that. It looks like we'll probably be able to say that most of those costs will be reimbursable. That's not a definitive answer quite yet, but that's where we're looking at, where we should have a decision for that in a few days. I need to talk to Secretary French about that once I gather some more information. I think the FY20 revenue should be okay. It's really FY21 that people are very concerned about. One other thing in terms of coming forward in FY21, that's that last paragraph I threw on that sheet is the use of reserve funds and end of year surplus. They're both treated slightly differently. A reserve fund is set up for a specific purpose and can only be used for that purpose unless the voters choose to do otherwise at a special meeting or a special vote to change what that's for. There's been some question as to whether that could be, what's the term I want, that could be changed for a year or two while I work through this crisis, this financial crisis, with the understanding that it's strictly to offset some of the increased taxes that are probably coming down the road. The second one is end of year surplus. Generally speaking, what the law says for that is that gets rolled forward into the next available budget to offset costs unless the voters choose to reserve it. But when you read the language and statute, what it's really talking about is an audited surplus. So if you come up with the end of your surplus this year, FY20, it would be audited in FY21. They knew what size that surplus was, and it would then be available for use in FY22. So two years out. So there's some question as to whether that language could be changed. So that's just some things to think about as to what could possibly done. People looking for business management are looking for ways to use their reserves that they have and any potential surplus they may have at the end of the year. They're like for a little bit of flexibility. Okay. So committee, any questions? I'm back to seeing everyone. Okay. Anybody have any questions? No. All right. Thank you, Brad. I'm sure we're going to see more of you as we work our way through this. Along with others. Yes, David Campion. I guess the only thing that I'm wondering is if all of these concerns that we're having with regard to how these dollars are being spent or that where we can spend them, are we communicating this to our federal delegation? I suspect the pro temp would be that point person. I'm just wondering if we've done that or if that's something we need to be communicating. I will look to Senator Ballant, but my assumption is that the administration, who as we know has been very focused on property tax rates, and probably almost every other state administration is in some form reaching out to the delegations in DC. I think we got our answer from the leader of the Senate last night, which was considered bankruptcy. You've got other people that would like to give us billions of dollars. You don't know yet, but I have no doubt that as we work our way through this and as administrations have the time to actually focus on something beyond the immediate crisis, and we are probably reaching that point in this state where we might be able to take a breath that we're going to find stuff outside of Ballant. Do you know? So only thing I would add for Senator Campion is we do have a joint rules committee meeting tomorrow afternoon, and I will bring it up with both the speaker and the pro temp, because I think a combined statement from all the members of leadership on both sides of the aisle from both chambers could be useful to the delegation if we haven't already made those overtures through the speaker and the pro temp. Great, thank you. Okay, so next on the agenda is Jay Nichols from the principles association. So Jay, you're okay, you're unmuted and welcome. Thank you. The floor is yours. What does it look like from your point of view? I'll share a few things with you. Three, four minutes of testimony, then take any questions. Thanks for having me. Jay Nichols, executive director of the Vermont principles association for the record. Thanks to the opportunity for me to share a few general thoughts around the education fund and budgetary issues. First, I want to share some concerns with consideration of major cuts to staffing, as I said previously. So we must be careful not to cut away human resources that our children will need now more than ever. Virtually all of our students will have adverse academic impact from this loss of real high quality instruction, despite all of the best intentions to do remote learning well. And our most vulnerable students will have major academic loss and regression in many cases. And maybe more importantly, the social emotional impact and challenges these students are facing and will face will follow directly on school employees' shoulders to carry that burden. As I said before, human resources will be more critical than ever. That said, 80% of our school budgets roughly four fifths are in personnel. So if we're going to look at cutting budgets down the road, we're looking at cutting people. This will also potentially mean more people leaving Vermont and more people on our unemployment rolls. So we need to consider all of that. The second thing that hasn't been touched on much until Senator Campion's question a minute ago, he mentioned what the CARES Act can be used for. I think the bigger advocation in terms of education funding needs to be around the next stimulus package that's being considered. I think it's critical that our legislation administration advocates strongly with our federal delegation in the U.S. Congress that the big stimulus package being contemplated passes. This is scheduled hopefully to pass sometime in May. It needs to have funds to stabilize state governments and to make sure that it can backfill for school positions. And I'm really thinking about 2021. The original CARES Act is historical, much needed. You're working your way through that right now. However, that's really more of an immediate urgent cost stabilization plan as opposed to more of a stimulus education plan. It's more about stopping the spread of the coronavirus. It's a short-term package. This in the short-term package is the biggest economic crisis has hit our country in the world probably since World War II. My understanding from talking to an economist yesterday is that our deficit in relationship to GDP is approaching World War II levels, which is the highest it's been in history of our country. I've also been critical of federal debt. I tend to be a conservative fiscally at least. But this is a time when I think federal government needs to step in. I can share with all of you a letter that I have signed on with other school leaders across the country if you'd like. Our National Principles Associations, there are two of them, our National School Boards Association and the American Association of School Administrators, which is the Superintendent's National Association, have all supported this and together we're advocating for a $173 billion package across the country to help backfill revenue for district states for education revenue cost lost caused by the COVID-19 economic problems. This is roughly two-thirds more, where I can correct me if I'm wrong, than we receive from the American Recovery Reinvestment Acts. The need is that big. States across the nation without extra funding from the feds are looking at budget cuts for education between 8 and 20 percent according to some researchers at the Education and Commission of the States and at our own regional and northeast educational research lab. That's scary. I've talked to principals across the state. We're hosting three calls a week, one with elementary, one with high school, one with secondary. Most of our calls today have been around crisis management. How do we get these kids broadband? What are we going to do about assessment and grading? What are we going to do about graduation and ceremonies? But the last week or so, a lot's been shifting to worries about the financial future, especially about next year. Lots of worries about potentially losing staff when they expect great academic loss. And more importantly, tremendous worries about students' social-emotional well-being and ability to access education, quite frankly. Principals are stressed out with their day-to-day responsibilities during this crisis as our teachers and other school staff. And they're really worried about the future for their students, who they know will be more vulnerable than ever before. So, assuming we are left essentially without any extra support from the federal government, and we have to do this all by ourselves as a state after this initial CARES Act, without the necessary federal support to avoid potential drastic measures in state, I think there are things that we could do. There are all things that would be unpleasant and painful in one way or another. However, I don't think there are things that we should discuss in a legislative committee necessary. I think the better approach here is a short-term budget approach, and to have a better sense of what revenue will look like, what the federal government will look like to get us through this fiscal year, and then see what the economy might look like when it reopens. Finally, from my perspective, my colleague Jeff Francis at the Superintendent's Association said, I think a week ago or two weeks ago in this committee, that he thinks the next logical step is for the administration and key legislative leaders, along with our associations that are represented here, meet the brainstorm potential solutions to this financial crisis. We at the VPA support that concept as the best strategy moving forward, and we welcome the opportunity to be part of those discussions. Working together, we are more likely to come up with solutions that don't devastate our education system and our response to children's needs, while also addressing the real financial situation we are in as a state. So that's all I wanted to say. Thank you for afforded me the opportunity to share these thoughts. Thank you. I think my hope has been that the schools, all of your associations, the towns, the legislature, that we all can have this discussion together. We may get more federal money. We may not. Maybe getting close to an election will do it. I think the thing we're struggling with is, I know this, the plan is we will do a budget adjustment for this year for the state budget. And we will do and they will do probably a three-month budget for the first quarter next year. But we've got to set a yield so that the towns can get out their tax bills. I think all of that may get a little delayed, but come August 28th or September 1st, whatever day it is, you've got to know you've got money to open school because even if we find out in October, November, we get shut down again because there's a flare-up. But it sounds like it might be a little smoother going to remote learning this time because we've done it once, but it doesn't sound like it's saving huge amounts of money. So you're going to need that money in place. And I think that's where we're probably seeing or feeling more pressure than all the general fund folks. Yeah, I can see that. I think waiting a while on the yield is certainly the right approach as we see what happens with the economy, whether we can reopen and so forth. And I do want the remote learning aspect. It may well go more smoothly the next time, but we still have major infrastructure problems as a state that make our most vulnerable students almost unable to access quality. And we know that we've been looking at federal money. If you could help us figure out where's the biggest concentration, because if we get federal money and we have to go one road in this district and one road in that, we're probably not going to get that much money. But if we have districts that really have whole sections that we could do, that would be helpful. Yeah, we can get we can collect a lot of that information. Unfortunately, in many places, 80% of the people live close enough or have the have the internet and 20% don't right within the same location. I was talking to people in Albert today. And for years, they were all set with high speed. They had great cell phone access. And then something happened, one of the Verizon towers is going to cost too much money to fix it and hasn't been replaced. And now people in Albert don't have internet anymore or very little. Oh, well, maybe they should call the Department of Public Service. Yeah, maybe. And because there's been trouble with the 911 up there, too. So all connected. Senator Brock, I think is taking notes. Many notes. Many notes. He knows I love him. So it's fine. Okay, so that that, yeah. And I believe Jeff Francis had trouble talking to us. And he's about a mile from the state house. So you know, that's his fault for living in an area that has ledges. But you know, it is not smooth. I mean, you don't have to go much more than a mile from the state house to not have cell service. And so we will are our internet. So we'll, we're working on it. But anything you can do to help us figure out where and because at some point we're going to have to make some decisions. Okay, any question for Jay committee? All right. Okay, so we'll move on to Sue. Ceglowski? Ceglowski, yes. Okay. Floor is yours. Okay, thank you very much. Sue Ceglowski, Executive Director of the Vermont School Boards Association for the record. Thank you very much for the opportunity to provide you with an update on school budgets. I'll talk just briefly first about the 19 districts that don't have an approved budget yet. And then I'll give you some information about our overall approach to keeping school boards informed about the status of the education fund. There are 105 school district budgets that have been voted on in 2020. 96 were approved. Nine were defeated and 10 districts have not held a budget vote yet. What does a future hold for budget votes for those 19 districts without an approved budget? There are temporary elections provisions that are in effect for 2020 only, which grant the Secretary of State authority with the governor's agreement to order appropriate procedures in light of the COVID-19 virus. And I won't go through all of the possibilities, but one of them is requiring mail balloting by requiring town clerks to send ballots by mail to all registered voters. The Secretary of State has not implemented any of these alternative procedures yet. The Secretary of State has issued guidance stating that elections scheduled for April and May should be canceled if at all possible. And under these circumstances, the 19 school districts without approved budgets are facing great uncertainty about when and how their budget votes will occur. And also uncertainty about the ability to see a budget approved in the current economic crisis. The SBA has called for an approach that would provide the 19 districts with legislatively granted spending authority for FY 2021 equivalent to their FY 2020 approved ed spending plus an inflator based on the statewide increase in ed spending from FY 2020 to 2021. And that would be approximately 4%. The worsening economy and potential legislative response to the resulting shortfall in the Education Fund is likely to lead to severe pressure on all districts. So to not stabilize these 19 districts with reasonable spending authority would definitely disadvantage them as they work to navigate the crisis. I want to be clear that we're not seeking any unnecessary dispensation or special advantage for the 19 districts. Our goal is really to see that they're placed on comparatively equal footing with those districts that saw budgets approved before the onslaught of operational challenges and fiscal deterioration resulting from the COVID-19 crisis. These districts have been the subject to the same challenges of every other district in Vermont in the early days of navigating this crisis and they will be striving to serve children and communities in the same diminished economy under the same state and federal policies that are established to contend with this tragic event. Several local education officials. I have one question. Sure. I know the towns that have voted voted 4%, but were all the budget proposals that didn't get voted on for a 4% increase? Or more? No, they differ. There is a chart that was developed, I believe, by Brad James and the Joint Fiscal Office that I can send to you. Brad's got his hand up. Brad, do you want to chime in? Yes. That was a good lead-in, Sue. I sent that to Faith and that is actually posted there. It shows something that I did for Senate Education, I think last week, that I have updated because House Education asked for it yesterday for tomorrow. What it shows is it shows the nine districts that had failed budgets, kind of where they are, if there's any update. It also shows what the potential increases were for the 10 districts who have yet to vote. I can look at it very quickly and give you a rough idea of what that average would be because I have it up here somewhere. I have too many things open. Here we go. Faith is loading. Okay. There we go. Did you get it, Faith? Let me go back there. Even I can read it. Good. Okay. If you would scroll down a little bit, Faith, where it's the not-yet-voted section, because I think that's what Anne was asking about. That column that says proposed percent education spending that starts with a 5.6% for Caledonia Cooperative, that's the number that you really care about for the education fund, not necessarily the change in budget. If you look at those, you can see where they are. I'd say probably, it's probably averaging, probably around the 4% range, maybe a little higher. That's my not very mathematical sense. We've got a few significantly over and a few under. I'm looking at the comparative size of the districts. Granville, Hancock's tiny, Oxbow's reasonable size. West River's not that big. Windham, Northeast and Windham, Southeast are probably the bigger ones. The bigger ones. Essex, Westward obviously, but they're down. They're lower. Essex, Westward is by far and away the largest one in terms of population, so they would weight that average. Now I'm becoming a geek, so be quiet. Okay, so we aren't over paying everybody. This is if they don't pass their budgets. Thought it's our headline that said Montpelier was looking or somebody's looking at drive-through voting. I guess maybe you could get your ballot by mail or get it in your car, fill it out. Burry town. Okay, fill it into the machine. Mostly at Thunder Road. Okay, get a little race in while you're at it. That is actually for places that use a voting machine, an interesting concept. To be able to drive through, put your ballot into the machine and it will get counted. Somebody would have to count you off as you went through or mark you off, but you could hold your name up in the car. Interesting. All right, so Sue, we got sidetracked in the middle of yours. Anyone have a question for Brad at this point? Okay, we're back to you, Sue. Okay, thank you. So just wanted to update you and let you know that there are several local education officials from the 19 affected districts who are going to be test fighting in the House Education Committee tomorrow afternoon on this topic. Okay. And then on our overall approach of keeping school boards informed two weeks ago, the Vermont Superintendent's Association hosted a webinar with Mark Perall as the presenter, which was wonderful. The local school officials were able to receive the same economic information that is being provided to legislators. I'm sure they were as uplifted as we are. Yes. School board chairs and superintendents participated in the webinar, which was very well presented, of course. And there were many questions asked afterward. And when it was all finished, VSBA sent the link to the recorded webinar to all school board members in Vermont. Soon after that, we followed up by sending an alert to school board members regarding the unprecedented fiscal challenges Vermont's public education system is facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the latest projections on the Education Fund deficit. And VSA is in the planning stages of another webinar with Mark Perall as presenter. VSBA has worked with VSA to increase our webinar capacity for the number of people that can be on at the same time in order to make it possible this time for all school board members to participate in the webinar. Wow. And are going to continue to keep school boards apprised of developments related to the fiscal challenges facing public education in Vermont. In conclusion, I wanted to let you know that the Vermont School Boards Association stands ready to collaborate and problem solve with the General Assembly and all of the parties that have been mentioned in previous testimony today to address the challenges of this once in a lifetime crisis. We hope it's a once in a lifetime crisis. Thank you. Yes, we do. Okay. Any questions? I feel like, do I have a quorum? All right. There's Senator Saratkin. There's Senator Campion. Okay. I guess I do now. One, two, three, four, five, six. All right. I started to have an all but black screen here. All right. Any questions? Okay. Thank you. And we're going on to Jeff Francis, who I believe is on the phone. Am I reading that correctly? Jeff, are you there? Yes, I am. Can you hear me okay? We can hear you fine. You gave up on video from home? Well, I can say I do both. So I use my phone to make sure that we're not interrupted, but I can see you when I'm not looking at documents. So Jeff Francis from the Vermont Superintendent's Association, one benefit of going after Jay and Sue is that a lot of the points that they covered, I don't need to cover so I could save you time. I'm briefly going to just hit a couple topics that we're thinking about at the Superintendent's Association in addition to the points that Jay and Sue made, which I largely agree with. So one of the fascinating aspects of the COVID crisis navigation is there's a ton of work to do every day, but we now have to look ahead. And like the General Assembly, school administrators are contending with the immediacy of the need and also preparing for the future. So in recent days, the emphasis has shifted from contending with the immediacy because people have things in order despite the unusual nature of what we're working on right now. So what it looks like coming out of the crisis or post-crisis factors, conditions, economy, and so on. So as Jay indicated, there's a lot of interest in not only closing this school year, but also what we'll need to do in the upcoming school year. A major area of interest, like superintendents and business managers and other school administrators, like it is for you, is the fiscal situation. And I was quoted recently in a VPR story saying that it nearly defies description. And I think that that's true. We're talking in terms of $250 million potential ed fund shortfall and understanding, trying to understand what that may mean. And then we are confronted with the most recent example of what we are going to be faced with with the state college situation that you spent a fair amount of time on over the last week and will continue to. And it leads me with really three summary thoughts. The first one Jay spoke about. There's nothing normal about this situation. So my belief and the belief of the association is that we're going to do better navigating the situation ahead if we do in fact collaborate. And I know that the administration is thinking about how to contend with this. I know the general assembly is thinking about how to contend with this. I can tell you that local school officials are thinking about how to contend with it. I think that we need to take advantage of all that thought process. And as Jay said, put people around the table and say, okay, what are your ideas? Because if the ideas come out in a manner that is not collaborative or collective, there's more potential for people to dismiss the idea, criticize the idea, say the idea is not possible because it's coming out from a singular entity rather than a collective. And I think the conversation is going to be safer, if you will, if it happens as a collaboration. So that's one point I wanted to make. The second thing that I think we're going to have to contend with inescapably is what we know about the characteristics of the public education system as it exists today. So for the last 10 years or so, there's been a lot of concern justifiably about the increasing cost of education, which is largely attributable to the number of personnel and the number of buildings that we operate. When I say personnel, I mean across the board. And when I say buildings, I mean across the board, and the fact that those costs have not reflected the decline in enrollment. And that's got a lot to do with the characteristics of our system. Act 46 was an effort to create an organizational structure that would enable more nimble response to the decline and to create management and governance structures that were going to be better able to deploy resources collectively in response to the challenges that we face, including the decline in enrollment. Well, Act 46, recently passed legislation, barely has a foothold. But one of the things that we've witnessed is that the cultural phenomenon in Vermont, despite the changes in the organizational structure, made it very, very difficult to make changes to things like personnel and the number of buildings you operate. So one benefit of working collectively and collaboratively to address the challenges ahead is because we can speak together in one voice and say, here's the recognition of the problem. Here's what we need to do to address the cost side of the equation. And I think the cost side of the equation is an interpretive aspect of this, regardless of what we see in terms of federal assistance or other measures that are taken to compensate for the devastation of the crisis. Because as so many people have said, you want to emerge from this navigation with a system that's going to be responsive in the future. So what does that mean? It means that despite the fact there are aspects and elements of the current system that many people hold near and dear, if change is imminent because of the nature of the crisis and its implications, then we need to be prepared for that. And the way we better prepare for that is to come together, put our heads together and say these are unnecessary adjustments. They're adjustments that we ought to consider together and how are we going to move forward. And that I think goes to the characteristics of the education delivery system. I think it was reflected in what you saw with the state colleges. I do think it reaches down into or reaches up from the K-12 system. You know, one example is despite the fact that we have such high costs per pupil, the General Assembly, if we hadn't experienced the crisis, was going to be contending with how do you contend with the fact that you've got an infrastructure that in many places is depleted because of age and in some instances is deferred maintenance. So that was a big policy issue two months ago. It's a less policy issue today because we're dealing with the COVID-19 crisis. But when things settle to the extent they do, that will be with us. Similarly, and I won't drone on here, but you were also going to have to contend and still will with the implications of the waiting study, which had some communities in the state, I think justifiably asserting that the system might not have been equitable in terms of things like morality and poverty and English language learners. So it's a fairly long window way of saying if there's going to be an adjustment that will be driven by the COVID-19 response, it's an adjustment that needs to take into consideration all the characteristics that I'm speaking of. It's an adjustment that is going to be with us, I think, you know, here to stay. And it's an adjustment that we're going to better navigate if people say, okay, we have the same understanding of the challenge, these are the opportunities to change. Not going to be political. You know, it's not going to be let's drive this agenda or that agenda. It's how do we dig down deep and come up with the best solutions that give us an equitable education system that is affordable for the taxpayer, that does the job we need to do for the kids of the state of Vermont. So, you know, my appeal is that we get to work on that and include all the parties of interest, including both administrators and teachers, as well as you and the body you represent and the administration. I don't think that work, I think that work is happening in from place to place right now. I do not think that the collective work can start soon enough, quite frankly. Thank you. I think that's what I've been trying to say, not so well, is that you're right, I mean, $150 million, but it wouldn't take us long to vote in that much, you know, over the next few years, increase to the cost in education. Unless our economy takes a whiff bound forward, we are still have all those issues. What was it two months ago? We were hearing about schools with open sewage draining into their basements and play, you know, all kinds of issues, mostly in poorer schools, and they're all still there, but because of the very unanticipated and drastic loss in revenue, I think, to accelerate the discussion about how do, before we end up where the state colleges are, is how do we create an education system that meets the needs of today's students at a cost we can all afford, and, you know, how do we move ourselves there, and maybe this working together will allow us to make some progress on that, because I don't think any of us want to just go out in the traditional raise taxes mode on this one. So any questions for Jeff at this point? I'm not seeing any. Okay, no. Okay, thank you, Jeff. Okay, thank you. Okay, and next we have Jeff Fanon. Hello. Hello. Good afternoon. So for the record, Jeff Fanon from Vermont NEA. Thank you for allowing me time to speak with you today about Vermont's educators and our publicly funded school system. The last six weeks obviously have been incredible, not just in the unprecedented disruption to all aspects of life, but in the amazing way that first responders, healthcare workers, grocery store clerks, farmers, and other dedicated frontline essential workers are doing an extraordinary job for all of us. I've also watched school employees work tirelessly to keep connections with their students. It's truly a bright light in the dark tunnel, it's our time that we are just beginning to comprehend the effects of this coronavirus on our school system. Vermont's health and our state's economic health, it's all mixed in here. My comments here are based upon my ongoing observations and understandings of certain aspects of the pandemic, the demands on the school systems now, and those we anticipate, and I think that's important for us to all look at, and the economic issues we all face because of this public health emergency. The public school systems are meeting the challenges presented by the state of emergency. Educators, peer educators, teachers, bus drivers, food service workers, school nurses, school boards, and administrators are doing their parts to ensure that students and families are safe, fed, and they get an education albeit in the remote environment. It has its challenges to be sure. Just to name a few, internet connectivity is a major issue across the state and personal protective equipment, PPE remains scarce for school employees who by virtue of their jobs interact with students and families in person during this pandemic. The internet connectivity issue is significant and they're found across the state including Chittin County. As you know, the students that had before the pandemic continued to have, and those of students that did not have before the pandemic continued not to have, and we need to address this inequity. Connectivity does not simply mean access to high-speed internet, but it also means having a device and the proper bandwidth in your house because you've now got parents and multiple kids as I do in my family who are all working off the same. It might work. I'm at the office literally because I don't have the bandwidth at home. I left and there are three people on the internet and I couldn't get on, so I had I come to the office. This type of access is now a basic requirement of education. It was before the pandemic. We just limped along and did the best we could, but the state needs to seriously address the connectivity issue. It has to be done. The last three governors made internet connectivity a priority, but the pandemic and school closures have made painfully obvious to every educator and student that we have a long ways to go to achieve this 21st century basic necessity. During the electrification of the country in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, we need to do the same with internet connectivity to the last mile. We need to do it. It's an issue of fairness and equity for all students and the pandemic has extended and laid bare the digital divide that has become even more deep. Schools have been sourcing devices for students that lack a lack of device. And schools have been working with telecom companies to provide internet access to families that lacked it. The state should reduce its excuse me the state should redouble this efforts to get more from mattress connected, especially now that when the lack of reliable high speed internet with will throw even more students and families under the economic bus, we've got to do it. We are seeing and hearing about students who are not doing well and we anticipate we will see increased needs when schools reopen. The social and Jay Nichols mentioned this and I'm going to go into a little bit more perhaps. The social emotional needs of students are going unmet during this pandemic and in some cases students are now in the most unsafe environment. The consequences of these realities will be significant. To better meet these increased needs, we are working with the Northeast Family Institute, NFI, to develop and provide professional development for educators. So they are prepared to welcome back students who have suffered some form of harm and or trauma and who will need support and relearning their self regulation skills and strategies. The signs are real that students are suffering and schools will be called upon to do more, not less than they were doing before the pandemic. Indeed Secretary of Education Dan French and earlier Jay Nichols both have echoed this now obvious fact that kids will need more services next school year. We need to prepare for that eventuality now. The growth in need is already upon us. Just yesterday I received word that the Windsor County special investigations unit is now reaching out to teachers to do more in terms of checking in with students and their well-being. In many cases teachers are the only adults able to assess family conditions and determine whether a child needs protection. And while reports about child abuse are down significantly since the pandemic started, sadly the belief is that the abuse and neglect continue, but the signs and symptoms are not physically visible with students no longer coming to school. The expansion of human services, human services being provided in schools has been a slow steady creep over many years and we need to acknowledge it and expand on it, not use it as an excuse to financially penalize schools who are providing such services. The extent of social needs among children has grown steadily, largely without notice outside the schools. And since neither the capacity of our social service agencies nor the state funds have kept pace, it has fallen to Vermont school systems to support necessary and social services that help make sure children in school are ready to learn and succeed in life. And the need will increase after this pandemic. Again, we should not pay for these services through the property tax, but rather the state must fund these services out of the general fund, not the education fund. Our public schools are the cornerstones of our communities and will be vital community institutions while we work to rebuild our society as we emerge from this pandemic. There is a bill in the House H804 that we support that would use existing resources to begin to shift schools into community schools to provide social services to students and families. The bill would allow school districts to have a dedicated staff person coordinating social services for students and their families by building and deepening partnerships with the community organizations to help meet the needs of not only students, but all community members. This is the right thing to do, but is an expense that appropriately could be categorized as a general fund obligation. As for the state's education fund fiscal concerns, we believe Congress is working right now to provide greater flexibility for states to use care money to replace lost revenues. The hope is that the next coronavirus federal legislation will pass and include flexibility you need to address the state's education fund fiscal issues. As Senator Campion noted, we are in contact with our national organization, the largest union in the country, NEA, as they advocate in D.C. for greater flexibility. Given the increased demands we see coming at schools and the significant resources coming to the state from the federal government in the form of $1.2 billion, we think there is enough money to address the FY20 and FY21 education fund challenges to ensure schools are ready to meet the needs of Vermont students. And finally, I think I mentioned this last time I testified, we firmly believe that Vermonters who are struggling to pay for rent or food because of the pandemic should indeed be afforded extra time to meet their tax obligations. However, a blanket waiver is short-sighted. Those who can still afford to pay their taxes should continue to do so. So giving a blanket deferral will exacerbate the already intolerable gap between wealthy Vermonters and working Vermonters. So we think you should eliminate the general waiver of the tax deadline date, if you will, and people who are able to pay should pay and those who can't should be given some extra time. So that's some of my testimony, and I'm happy certainly to answer any questions that you might have. Hey Jeff, first basic question. Is the NEA willing to work with all the school board's associations to come up with a plan to deal with the present deficit? And then I think we all know there'll be increased needs next year. Yeah, certainly we'll work with anybody and have worked. We're regularly meeting with the Secretary of Education now and the two prospect, what I call the two prospect folks, the superintendent's school boards and principals and special ed directors. So we're working with them, meeting with them weekly now, which is a good thing and certainly we'll continue to do so. We push for that to be very honest with you and I think it's a good thing to do. And if there are other conversations about the fiscal challenges we face, we want to be at the table as well and welcome that and certainly we'll participate in that. Okay. But we are working at the, you know, I just want to be clear, we are working at communication last night from NEA, the lobbyists down there, they're working to get greater flexibility so the states have it. And somebody mentioned it earlier, we're one of 49 other states are dealing with the same loss of revenue. There's a lot of money coming into the state. We think it just needs to be structured in a little bit different way to give you the tools you need to solve the education fund challenges you have. There's money there, we just need to figure out how to use it well. Okay. And that gets me to the next question. I meant to ask Jeff Francis. Jeff, are you still here? I see a phone, but it's muted. So he may not be with us. You are here. Just wondering, have any discussions started on the uses of the federal money that's coming into the schools? Yeah, I mean, Brad is actually a better able to answer that than I am. So why don't I, I'm assuming he's still on, I'll pause rather than I will. No, he said it hadn't come in. And I understand it's going as a direct grant to the schools. Yeah. So Mark Perrault has talked about that. Brad has talked about that. And I, they're better authorities on it quite frankly than I am. Okay. I was just wondering if the superintendents or fiscal officers had started thinking about how that money might be used. Yeah. And what I can say to that, and if Brad's on, he'll respond. Part of the context for the work that he did with them around added expenditures and areas of savings was trying to estimate what portion of I think $30 million was going to go in which way, but I'll stop and let him respond. Okay. Brad, can you? Yeah. I don't have a lot to say because I haven't been in great discussions with people, but we have told them that, you know, we've given them rough estimates, very rough estimates of what they can expect. And it's roughly 80% of their Title I allocations that they're getting currently this year. That's roughly the amount of money they'll be getting. I've pointed out to them, I've sent them the language as to what is in the CARES Act is what the monies can be used for. As I said, two of them are fairly broad, but we are still waiting on guidance from the federal folks themselves. I have not, I know that there is a, the leadership group within AOE itself is coming up with some general guidelines as to what the monies can and can't be used for. They're working on how to look at what we're going to put out as grants, you know, because this is going to have to be a grant program of some sort, where they're going to have to, we're going to make it as simple as possible, where they're going to have to apply for the money, obviously we're going to say yes, but it's going to have to have their work pieces in it and, you know, make sure that we need to review those and make sure that they're allowable. Because what we don't want to do is come back and say that these things were allowable, find out that they were not from the federal folks and then have to take the money back and pay it back. Okay. To answer your question directly, I don't have good information as to what people, the business managers, superintendents and folks in the field are thinking in terms of how they Senator Sorokin, you have a question. I do. Thank you. Jeff Fanon brought the topic up that we've been dealing with off and on for the last week about blanket delays and being able to pay property taxes or remissions to the Department of Education by towns, waving penalties. And it sounds like the NEA has some trepidation going down that road for some of the reasons that I think Senator McDonald mentioned this morning in terms of waving things, certainly for commercial and second homeowners. And I'm wondering if other groups who were talked to us today have an opinion on that issue, which we seem to be headed down the road to at least discussing because it sounds like the league is going to be asking us to do that. They have asked. They have asked. Okay. Anybody else have a thought about delaying? I think the bill that's come out of GovOps gives each town the ability to waive interest penalties to change their due dates, which should just impact inside the town. But they have also asked us to do away with the 8% penalty if they don't pay all the due property tax. And I think some of us have some concerns about, at least I do, about the potential for not collecting taxes that we could and should collect because those folks haven't lost their job. So Brad, I think I saw you first, then Senator McDonald. I don't know if I saw anybody else. Okay, Brad. Just very briefly, Mark and Chloe sent that draft to me yesterday and asked me to look at it and kind of weigh in on it. And the waiving of the penalty is money lost to the state. But if towns do push back their tax due dates, not necessarily this year but next year, then what will happen is that could conceivably cause a bit of a cash flow problem for the school districts. They won't be getting the tax, education property tax on the normal schedule they expect, which means they'll probably have to do short-term borrowing, which they normally do at the beginning of the year anyway, but it'd be for an extended period of time, thereby therefore increasing or thereby increasing costs to the district via interest rates. You can look at that two ways. It's the same taxpayer we're talking about a municipal tax rate. If the town has to borrow an education tax rate, if the school district has to borrow, kind of which pocket do you want to pay out of your left hand one or your right hand one, but it's either way it's going to have a cost. I don't know if one is more beneficial than the other. Okay, and it has been suggested rather than waves the penalty, we might discuss contributing to the interest or the borrowing cost. So that's what I know of that's on the table. Senator McDonald. We talked yesterday, I believe, or a couple days ago about how to get some legal advice on how we might help Mrs. Murphy or Mr. and Mrs. Murphy in paying their school taxes if they've been laid off or they're out of work and how we can legally distinguish between forgiving those people who resident homeowners and not wave Stouff Lake or Jay Peak or National Life or any other business interest who is wise enough and thoughtful enough to say why should I pay my taxes any sooner than I'm obliged to. Whether it's a condo association or a property in Stouff that's being or some other place being used to launder oligarch money, why would we be extending to those properties and those folks with such resources such an 8% waiver just so we can help Mrs. Murphy who will sell her Volkswagen to Beetle in order to pay her property taxes on time and not be embarrassed. Okay, Senator McDonald, I will recognize you again providing you reserve your comments about wealthy places to the mansions I have personally seen in the hills of Orange County. Absolutely. Those folks don't pay based on income. You hope. Okay, I think and I believe we did ask Abby to do some looking into that. I mean, I don't think we can discriminate between Vermonters and non Vermonters and but I think we also know that there are businesses, small businesses that have been closed that don't have resources and there seem to be some federal monies out there but it's again going to be putting a package together. Senator Sorotkin, that's your field. I just would like to ask if the school boards and the principal's association superintendent association could answer the question. I think we've gotten we've gotten an opinion from Jeff Fanon but we haven't heard from the other point. Yeah, so this is this is Jeff Francis. I haven't thought much about that question yet but today on a call with the superintendent and Secretary French superintendent mentioned that the implications of that. So my immediate reaction is that to the extent taxes can be collected and people are available and able to pay the taxes they should. So I you know I like I said I haven't really thought it through but the implications of a blanket delay or a determination that communities on a case by case basis could make that determination I think is a challenging notion and it's precisely the type of question or among the questions that I think ought to be put in the middle of a table with representatives of the administration, municipal officials, local school officials, and the general assembly because it's easy to sort of parse that out and make a decision or make take a position like I'm taking right now based on my my best available thinking. It's something entirely different to have all the thought process laid out in front of you and collectively come to the best decision and I think that there it's one example of scores of decisions that are going to need to be considered and addressed. I'm sure I asked for an illegal we get we get a proper legal opinion on where such discrimination may be lawfully exercised and where it may not be the Constitution prohibits. We did ask Abby Shepherd who is our council to look into that for us and we will invite her back to give us her conclusions. Thank you. Okay anybody else at this point I'll just comment on that as well. I think you know full disclosure last night I was sitting here making a list of all the things I thought we could do and a lot of them made me sick to my stomach. One of the things that did come up was maybe there's some kind of threshold as to who's allowed longer time to pay their property taxes and who who isn't. I agree with Jeff Fanon's premise that those that are able to pay we should want them to pay now to put more money in our revenue coffers and those who can't we you know they really can't we should afford them the opportunity to delay until they can. And I think the way it's being explained to us by the government operations committee is that towns can do this now with a vote of the community but a vote of the community is all but impossible under the present stay-at-home order and so this would allow the select board but I would hope that the schools would be amongst those consulted before your select board makes a decision and I think it also would depending on how these decisions go influence how we might vote on allowing the towns not to be responsible for paying in all the property tax that is all education fund tax before I get crime. Senator Sorotkin did I see your hand up? No he's muted now. No I was just agreeing with you Madam Chair. Okay other question. All right Mark. Yeah I just want to jump in and point out that apart from whether taxpayers can pay or not simply allowing municipalities to move the dates at which they collect and remit the tax doesn't solve anything it just moves the problem from the municipality to the school district. So rather than having a municipality have to borrow short term the school district has to borrow short term. So again if this is a complicated cash flow and Brad can jump in here if I'm wrong but simply delaying the payments that come from the municipalities I don't think accomplishes anything. Were the schools consulted by the government operations committee as part of this discussion were any of you involved? No okay that's interesting. All right good to know. Any other questions? Comments? Senator Brock. Just one observation regarding taxpayers particularly corporate taxpayers who take advantage of the delay on the payment due date one of the most powerful things that we have that encourages tax payment is the publication of the name of an individual who does not pay property taxes on time in a town report. Would it be conceivable to at least think about the notion of keeping the date the same as it is except allow a delay without penalty and perhaps just apply it to non-resident property holders that those payment is made on the due date listed be listed in the town report. That's something else we can ask Abbott. Well that one will probably get kicked through more of a constitutional but can we certainly publish it now when people don't pay it. Yeah but can we exclude Vermonters and just put second homeowners in there. Well you're doing on the home not residents. Property tax in other words yeah you're doing that for Vermonters they own property you're treating people alike regardless of their location we're just not doing it on we're doing it on one class property. One class of property okay. Um Brad did I see your hand. No okay Mark I saw your hand. Municipalities do have the authority to waive those interest in penalties I think on their own it's just that they can't then not remit the full amount of education property tax that's due to the state so two slightly different issues. Yes and we've been told that that the latter is ours the former is gov ox. So they've been the good guys and given the towns all the permission they want and we're going to get probably to say no. Senator Sorotkin. Well just following up on Senator Brock with a solution here is as I understand the problem from the finance committee's perspective or soon to be the finance committee's perspective is the towns may want to give relief to a lot of people who are hurting right now and one choice is to give a blanket exemption from penalties and interest but part of the reason they're doing that is they have a process already called the abatement process but I'm on the board of abatement and we'll just get buried with requests I'm wondering if it might not be something we can think about where we could set a standard whereby an abatement would be granted such as a form affidavit that somebody submits and it's just a paper thing and then they get their abatement and they just basically have to say I lost my job or I lost my income and therefore we distinguish between those who need it and those who don't and we get rid of the heavy administrative burden of having all these board of thousands of board of abatement hearings. You're not getting a whole lot of sympathy from me since my first year in the board of abatement we did the first cap-tap program and found all the bugs and I forget how many thousands of tax appeals I saw more moldy basements that year than I have as a realtor. Well that's just off the top of my head. It can be done but yeah but I don't think we want taxes abated. I think we're hoping that this is temporary and that those people will be back to work. Maybe just the penalty be abated then. Maybe they can do that now I think it's blanket abatement that would do everybody. It's blanket moving the dates that will at least delay and complicate what is already going to be a delay. Well they're going to have to move the dates anyway because we aren't going to have the homestead declarations until July 15th so I don't think any if not very few towns are going to be able to get those out and get their tax bills out in a reasonable time for people to pay on August 15th. That's Montpeliers I think that's as early as anyone goes so we're probably going to have at least that first date in those towns that pay then move back maybe only by a couple weeks but that also hits when schools are trying to gear up so a lot of fine details here. All right any other questions at this point if not William Talbot is back with us. Welcome back Bill. Oh thank you. I think you know everybody I think everybody knows you. Okay. So all right so thank you Bill Talbot I've been contracted with the joint fiscal office oh Mark's got a note. Yeah but Mark hasn't figured out his notes come out in mirror vision. I thought it was just a typical Mark note. Well maybe that's it too when I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. So I was just trying to follow the abatement. Towns can't abate the education tax. The tax commissioner can do that. They can lay the heavy but they can do the town tax then. Yeah they can't abate the education tax. That's the tax. Okay good one problem solved. 54 or 9 of title 32 but I mean so I really have nothing to add to Jeff said earlier Francis said earlier you go late you get everybody says it all now even more has been said and I mean I'm gonna I'm working I love working with the joint fiscal office those people are very good they're talented your guys are lucky you have them. I always appreciate working with Mark and maybe I even get to work with Brad again a little bit but so I could just you know what if you know what occurs to me though is that the options are really pretty clear when so I got involved in and I was in the house starting in 1987 and we've had our ups and downs in the last 33 years but they've all been with a manageable a difficult maybe but manageable band and this is far outside that or at least it appears to be appears to be far outside that so you all know kind of staying the obvious but but you go you you're bouncy it fun with the with the yield the two yields the income and the property yield and the non-residential property tax and so you can do that mathematically it is and it you know it's like a roller coaster one day it doesn't seem so bad the next day end of everything but you can do that on paper and and it all works and numbers will add up and as you've all said but can the people pay the bill and so you can you got four options you know you can look at spending and try to reduce that you can try to find a an economic tax base that we haven't touched yet if there is such a thing well I was trying to tax hemp cigarettes but that one hasn't you know that's the turn everything all the stones and then and then you'll you'll hopefully got a little federal money you might be able to use and then those things leave your shirt you can borrow and I mean I really one of what other choices do you have I maybe somebody will come up with something but it sounds like you got four choices here and and and excuse me the reality of the situation is that it's just really going to be unlikely that any of those really work that well um but you got to give it a shot so some combination I would think probably I mean I there an early idea I had uh right off which was last week was that you know you'd add a line to the to the ed fund outlook under under sources that was debt so you figure out what your shortfall was and then you'd fill the gap with debt and then later on a couple of years you'd add a new line um to the back you add another line where you start paying the debt back and you finance it over as many years as you can spread it just like flattening the curve doesn't really just spreads everything out over more time and buys your time this is kind of being overwhelmed well yes so hopefully you can you can find ways to finance this as you're borrowing if it's that bad that you can spread out over time I you know I just I mean I'm glad I'm I'm getting an opportunity to scratch head my head with people um see if there's anything else but it seems like it's pretty cut and dried okay yeah well I mean I I had assumed we would yeah we've got the 19 million that that's that's the kind of thing we deal with you know that that we can manage 150 to 250 million dollars and there's the next year we haven't even gotten to we know this coming year folks that lost their jobs aren't going to get tax rebates unless we can figure out a way to make the system work for them so this will be a miserable year the next year they probably will get a rebate because it'll be based on this year's income or some of them will but hopefully by then they'll be back working so we've got this is like our three year average on things we've unless we can find a way to make it easier for people to get a rebate this coming year I think we have the potential of doing a lot more rebates the year after and this may not be a two-year problem another I don't know yeah I mean that's that's the big question we're all hoping to get some more information on but I don't think anybody knows at this point I mean yeah look at the country the states are all over the map or maybe we got some experiments going unintentional experiments going on there that might point to point out some mistakes or or some things that work for us but um otherwise we're just kind of grasping in the dark you know another management thing we might look at it is it gets involved with the difficulty that towns are gonna might have in collecting taxes and it and it presents some perhaps cash flow issues as the way it works is towns collect the education tax on behalf of the state and they pay all of that to the school district up to the amount of the school district's budget and anything that might be left over they forward to the state in December 1st and June 1st and and if they're late with that that's where they percent penalty comes in that's not all the just towns that's just some of them that's only the ones that have collected enough or more than what their school budget obligation is but you know you could you could change how that works a little bit if it made any sense if it helped so that you would say that the towns don't have to give everything that they collect to the school district they only give a portion of that and anything over that they would give to the state and that puts the problem on the state but then you just have one borrower the state that you would accumulate the shortfall then at the state level and then the state yeah would borrow the rest because that was my concern is that the towns could delay or rebate and then they would pay their school but there wouldn't be anything left to send to the state because they didn't collect it not because they didn't owe it and if we did away with any kind of penalty on that we could see some of those poorer receiving towns really be in dire straits so yeah yes so i mean there's some things you can do to play around with it you know we've talked for a long time about why doesn't the state collect its own education tax which presents its own problems this would be kind of a phasing toward that direction but it just consolidates the issues that towns will have at the state level and maybe the state can manage that. I think the towns figured out there was some benefit to them i remember that discussion and the town courts changed their opinion on that. They make a little money on it and the bank the local banks you know get the deposits and they like that they don't want to yeah they do go short-term loaning and borrowing true okay mark you have something to yeah i just wanted to point out on the the eight the eight percent penalty seems to me to be kind of a red herring because what there's no reason for a district to have to run into the eight percent penalty to go out and borrow it would be municipal finance malpractice to run to the eight percent penalty it's there so that they make the payments and they can borrow to make those payments otherwise so what they're what the telling you is not that they don't want to pay an eight percent penalty it's they're telling you we don't want to make the payment right they want to they want us to have to borrow which essentially means whatever they don't collect gets added to the deficit um and something tells me they aren't going to like the increased tax rate to pay off the deficit so okay another uplifting day in finance all right oh i hope that we can start getting a group together and i don't know it might work best to let the school folks there's oh that's a cat senator mcdonald um have you know have the group start having the hard discussions because unless there is a major federal bailout there's there's gonna have to be some hard not like there isn't hard decisions every year but this year may be more painful than most and it makes me a little nervous that the administration hasn't chimed in except they'd like to has we redo the state colleges redo the entire education system and that just the enormity of that task makes me very nervous especially given the ease with which we can communicate as the brady bunch here um this isn't the the easiest way to to discuss so we'll work on it okay anybody else anything else okay we are finished early so thank you everyone committee next week faith and i are gonna try and find an hour or half hour tomorrow to do agendas anybody of anything you want i mean we keep at this point i will say i am not very encouraged by the response we've gotten from the department on the broadband money and what we're doing to go after it it feels very laxadaisical i will say i am unimpressed with the value of hot spots except maybe two teenagers who want to go stand on a street corner with their phones but it's not going to do a lot for telemedicine or teleeducation or remote work and it'd be good so you can contact your mother and tell her you're still alive but um and i'm starting to wonder can we put a little more teeth in i mean i just found out we're all going to get a rebate on our auto insurance um i've been asked or maybe we can have that discussion next week i've got a couple issues one came up with um farm workers apparently a large number of the farmers carry them on their books as the employees and they deduct taxes and unemployment and all kinds of other stuff that we all get taken out but they have an individual tax number but because they don't have a social security number they can't get a tax return and they can't get social security even though it's been paid in so i thought that you know at least we can't do anything at the federal level but maybe at the state level um somehow i end up always oh in the state more than the feds and it may just be how the money's taken out but if we could look at that and the other one was the chamber of commerce and i can't imagine mine is alone is concerned about credit card costs since they're now doing all their work remotely and payment is all remotely and i know for some very small sales the charge the credit card charges are more than the sales so or the profit on the sales so are they proposing something no i just said those are two issues that have been brought up to me yeah if we want to look at them um i'm more interested in broadband and i asked senator brock who is our resident expert well i i share madame chair your your comments i think we're we're right on the money i'm uh i'm very unimpressed with what we've been hearing and i'm very concerned that we have obviously a much greater need even now for broadband we have a significant amount of money presumably coming in to help address that need and the absence of a plan or a strategy i think is a is a major issue that this committee needs to look at and even if we're not going to get our 10-year plan i think we know that not in time to apply for federal money this year senator mcdonnell you're going apoplectic you've got to unmute yourself senator can i have this power and committee where i can just mute him no you shut off your video we're back to the problem of the back in the great recession where there was money available for shovel ready projects to jump start the economy um we have a place to jump start the economy with broadband but the federal government requires a plan and we don't have one and once again we're caught flat footed on that one and yeah the only person that had a plan um a few years ago was michelle detay i think he's the only one that's got one now yeah fortunately it's involving hot spots in 5g so that's where the money goes not to well let's i'm not sure that we can it goes to the person that has a plan that's ready to go so how do we get a plan well that's that's the real issue now we know that the department has at least done begun doing their piece of the 10-year telecommunications plan we know based on past experience that it is likely to be incomplete and and not as far along as we have the question becomes one of whether or not uh we can perhaps using federal money perhaps using money that we set aside like the 900 000 that we have as for the the hot spots to be able to get the funds to actually get some planning done using outside people who are competent and capable of doing it it may not be the full 10-year telecommunications plan but we need a strategy for deploying broadband to address this issue we need to start working on it now we can't work now we do have to at least understand better which i hope we will be able to do based on what we're told within the next week or so what the parameters are around that federal money in terms of what we can and what we can't do but at least i think we do need to think about how we get the plan the jumpstart of the planning done and i i think we need to begin talking about that now i think we do too so let's have the department and maybe the board i mean it's nice to ask folks to put up hot spots but i was thinking more of you'll run a couple more lives of fiber up the mountain and keep track of your cost and you know we'll if we get federal money we'll pay you back so far the cable companies are giving you a couple of three weeks which you know if you're hooked up it really isn't costing them anything to have it run into your house i mean it's it's it's you know they aren't sending any personnel out there but i haven't seen that they have stepped up that much and maybe we need to initiate these so what are you going to do with the department now i'm thinking of with the providers well i the only clarification question i have is i know there is an there are some plans that we have asked for in the past in legislation is that accurate i mean they are working they're supposed to do a ten-year plan right but aren't they working from other sort of draft plans could we get i don't know it's this is a it feels like a what is a ground hub day this constant conversation yes and and but i am afraid and i think we all are afraid that you know we are going to lose out on some real funding and some really powerful implementation of broadband unless we act pretty quickly and we got some no an independent person outside the state during the recovery got some large grants as i understand the kind of transmitter stuff that got put in really wasn't up right the levels that it needed to be and i was told we then couldn't get other rural development grants because we had gotten all of this money so if we leave a vacuum i'm pretty sure it will get filled in the same way because that's just one person that's got to put together their plan and and do this we need to even if it's not a ten-year plan have an emergency response telecom plan given that this virus is likely to come back in the winter when we can't get home health nurses out when we can't get you know so we need to be able to get telecom so that you could do telemedicine we have no idea if those kids are going back to school or not in september or for how long so we need to have those you know right i agree mapped and that's why i've been asking the schools where are the clusters where you know 80 percent of your kids don't have access well madam chair i wonder if this is really a conversation to start to have with some of the communication union districts i mean we these were structured some of them actually probably have these this kind of information i mean in a way they kind of bypass correct me if i'm wrong the department here you have chairs and vice chairs and just a number of different counties that have done research they're trying to their meeting they might ask them in i'm not sure they're any more shovel ready than we are okay because they have financing issues now they're just most of them are just getting started yeah but but overall we need a strategy yeah you know you can have all these individual pieces in and we get a little bit of a slice of a much better problem but the total of all these slices do not total 100 percent we need a top level strategy of how we're going to approach broadband in vermont we don't have that that was part of a 10-year telecommunications plan but we've never had it or at least the the plans that have been presented to us have been grossly inadequate they've been aspirational they haven't been practical to to get what we not i think that we've got to go higher some expertise who have the capability of doing it they might do everything for the 10-year telecommunications plan this is one piece of it but it's a piece let's see if we couldn't use some COVID money to do that to to fill the holes we found in those two things that they like the medicine and the education and get that in there um and then go you know develop on that I think what's happened at least recently is that the plan has been written to reflect not it is it isn't a it's being driven by the money meaning we're not raising anymore and so rather than do a plan as to what it should look like we're saying well we've only got what we've got left over in the connectivity fund so well we can do three miles a year or 10 miles a year that that's a work order that's not a plan I'd still Madam Chair like to hear from the CUDs because what I'm hearing is that it's a funding issue from them they actually I mean they need money to go and get their plans done and again it seems to me that we should at least have them at the table we approved their work last year and and I'm not sure who best to ask I mean we could add the person from Bennington County that'd be fine or the person that would be fine okay I'll check with that the best faith I've got your talent did I see you next yeah and then Senator McDonald I'm wondering if Anne you could reach out to the chair of the committee in the house that's overseeing IT get ourselves together for a joint hearing I agree with Senator Campion let's hear from the the CUDs but let's also if if we're currently feeling like we can't rely on the department to help us get a plan then we've got to build it and I mean I think we will all look back six months from now if we don't go after this money and and really feel pretty crappy about the whole situation I don't want to feel that way so the which let's get the right people in the room around telehealth around schools and let's let's start building the plan to get that money okay so let's talk to the it's house energy and technology right rep Brighlin Brighlin Brighlin and and Madam Chair it is also the joint IT oversight committee and there are a few ends people like Senator Kitchell for example who's on that committee we'll invite everybody and I'm going to have the chair of the Bennington County CUD speak a little bit about his work okay would you ask him to check with the other absolutely with the other chairs CUDs and find out give us a report about how they are you know if they're ready to go or you know somebody else wants to sort of what their needs are absolutely um we'll get somebody probably from the BNAs and the hospitals um to talk about how they're doing and I don't know which one of the school folks we have been to talk about particular needs we'll just throw that out to all of them and tell them to pick a spokesperson um so we got Madam Chair hospitals and BNAs okay that should keep us busy Senator Soroskin I just want to make it unanimous I feel similarly to the rest of the committee and also to fully make it unanimous I had a conversation with Senator Pearson after yesterday's hearing or two days ago and I'm sure he would echo the sentiments to the rest of the committee okay Madam Chair yes the when we approach this the situation piecemeal such as the commissioner telling asking for volunteers and then suggesting that they might be reimbursed every time we spend money to do cheap low-grade broadband we make it more expensive to serve the the everybody we constantly get ourselves in this position where because there's an emergency we give everybody a you-go and when they need a proper vehicle and it makes it more expensive for the next step so yes no I think we have long decided we may have to back down a little bit on a hundred a hundred um but I think we've decided no copper that we're looking at we've decided symmetrical yes which I've heard 50 50 thrown out and then there's fiber yes there's fiber is 100 100 well fiber is whatever once you have fiber it goes as high as whatever whatever whatever you can you can when you allow the the privately owned unregulated companies to gradually get out into the more of the market you make it more and more difficult for the community groups that want to serve everybody you make the price higher for those community groups because they lose customers okay so we've got bennington fiber we've got central vermont we've got ec fiber and we've got there's a northeast fiber kingdom fiber is it there's one in st j i don't know i don't know of another one but if we call any one of these guys they probably do so i'll see if faith can faith is listening i just i um i am listening and taking notes although i want to talk with you and i also want to remind you that the health energy and technology committee interviewed four p four c uds about a week and a half ago so it may make sense to really kind of that you connect with uh chair briglin yes it's going to get madam chair may i ask faith to just email us those four folks i'd just be curious who they are absolutely thanks babe well let's see i only came up with four so i think you can assume that it's all of them uh unless i missed one somewhere up in the northwest but okay so maybe we'll set up a conversation maybe we won't have maybe we will just ask house energy and technology to report back to us what they learned see if they're interested in doing this joint hearing um but i will talk to representative breglin and see if they're interested and then they're scheduling believe next week the house is voting first they're voting to allow remote voting and then i think do you know back on a separate day they're having a can you say it again in the house is meeting next week i've heard wednesday i've heard friday or both i think we're going to get the update tomorrow and joint rules because um it's not clear to me okay so we'll be working around that i know money chairs has been were and joint fiscal have both been trying to work around that um and i'm not sure it's even set in stone at this point okay well that will give us monday or tuesday or tuesday or thursday next week madam chair yes one of the things that i think would be useful is perhaps to ask joint fiscal about how much money the state has invested over the years and broadband initiatives and what the result of those investments have been i just have a gut feeling that we've shoveled money out to large telecom providers for years to get to the last mile and we're not there and we're not likely to give it what we're doing so i'd like to see what money has been given what to whom what the results have been uh to me that is an integral part of of creating a strategy hearing from people that may be individual providers telecom companies uh companies that are our communication union district that's all well and good to help inform us on money but it still doesn't get to the overall problem of we could see what we're doing but the question is what should we be doing and what's our strategy to link all these various elements together in order to get where we want to get i'm very concerned that we will spend a lot of time looking at the educational piece because it's in the covid bill that will distract us from looking at the larger picture of which education is just one slice right if the lines are off anything can go together if we and i would just say in response to response to that is we you know we directed the c uds to achieve the goal of universal coverage i think they've got to be part of this conversation no one's leaving them out with that we've got two different this is a report from joint fiscal oh i fully support what senator brock's talking about in terms of the dollars that have gone out in dealing with this yeah that's all this would be at this this will keep gray i'm busy for a while okay senator ballot you had just walked was trying to shut me down as usual the opposite ends of the state i wanted me to get rid of that phone i had an irate landlord and the phone came up here last night it's the landline okay senator ballot uh well given that we have a former auditor in the committee i'm just wondering is there a role the auditor's office can play here and looking at what uh was supposed to be done and what what wasn't done in conjunction with joint fiscal i just i'm curious is there a role for hopper to play or not really it might be if if you go into another level of depth but it may well be that joint fiscal has the information if they don't have the information they don't have the ability to get it then i think we could perhaps talk about that and they know if the auditor has done investigation i think work in this area that i don't know i haven't heard anything okay that'll keep us busy but i won't have to talk about deficit one of the things that i'd add though to all of that is you know regardless of of what's been done in the past i i think it's very important that we not look backward because we could spend a lot of time and effort doing that but look forward it's not just what we've done because we know that what we've done hasn't entirely worked question is what should we be doing right what's our plan to do it and how do we go get a plan to help us do it and to do it fast enough so we could take advantage of what we have coming from the COVID money and i'd like someone to tell us what that money is what we have to do to be ready to get it all i get is nothing hot spots which make me itch i know it's make me feel like we all got hemorrhoids or something talking about the hot spots i feel my dog had hot spots i used to have to put the stuff right all right that that's good so i will see some of you i think tomorrow at eight thirty that one i do have on my calendar i don't know how i missed this morning um and i i shall see some of you tomorrow morning and i'll let you know we'll get the agenda out it's a fluid process so any corrections additions subtractions let us know and we'll get it done okay all right thank you thank you now day's work