 Thank you so good evening everyone on this is the Senate government operations committee and we are holding a public hearing on the bill that doesn't yet have a number because it has not yet been drafted as a complete bill but on the proposal that was reached by the members of the pension task force around the pension system and the health care system for retired teachers and active teachers and retired state employees and active state employees. So now I'm going to have the committee members introduce us themselves and then I'll have a few more comments and then we'll get going. So I am Jeanette White. I chair the committee and I also was on the pension task force was a co-chair of that and I am from Wyndham County District. Hi folks, I'm Anthony Polina. I'm the vice chair of the committee. I represent Washington County. Good evening, Brian Colomort representing the Rutland District. Allison Clarkson representing the Windsor County District. Alicia Rom-Hinsdale, Chittenden County. So thank you and I know that Mike did talk about if you have difficulties to put it in chat and they'll take care of your problems, whatever they are. But I would ask you not to chat is not to be used. In our committee, we don't use chat because we consider chat a side conversation and if we were in the state house, we would ask people who are having a side conversation to leave the room and have their conversation in the hall. So we won't use chat. I would ask you not to use chat for anything other than technical difficulties you might be having that either Mike or Peggy or Gail can help you with. So with that, the way we'll do it is I will give you the person who's first to testify and then I will also announce the name of the person who's on deck and that person will be up next. Senator Collamore is our capable timekeeper and will be helping you. So that's the way we'll we'll go. I think I'm if I can just ask. I guess the we'll figure this out. There's some confusion about a name here and we will we will figure that out before we get to those people who are testifying. But so as you know, the task force, the pension task force met all summer from, I believe our first meeting was July second and our final meeting was January 10th. And I think there were 19 or 20 meetings in between. We heard from many, many people and the final report from the task force is on the web site for the task force and also for the this committee. It's also on the committee web page. It the decision there was a proposal made by each of the union representatives that came then to the whole task force and the vote on the task force just so that you know was 12 zero. We had a 13th member who was a non voting member, but gave us a lot of information. He was the deputy is the deputy secretary treasure. And while he couldn't vote, he did give us a thumbs up. So there was unanimity on the on the task force. Excuse me. So with that, I think that we'll start. And the first person we have up is and we're going in the in the order that you signed up just so that you know that we haven't changed any order in any specific way. So the first person that we have up is Bev foster and then on deck will be Peter Booth. So Mike will be moving you from place to place. Good evening. Say thank you. I welcome welcome to the man. I will say that this is the first remote public hearing this committee has had. So if we run into any little technical glitches or anything, please be a little little bit patient with us. So as foster, if you would like to weigh in here, we would like that. Okay. My name is Beverly Foster. And I've written this down because I speak better when I have it in front of me. I'm a teacher at Pledrick School in London Dairy. And this is my 21st year in public education. My previous job was in a preschool where I would have stayed because I loved what I was doing, but they didn't offer benefits. So I chose to come to the public sector because of the benefits I would get. And particularly the pension. So retirement security was in the forefront of my mind. I started my my career in education in my 30s. So I knew I needed to save on my own and be assured that I had retirement security. So I'm nearing the end of my career. And because of my circumstances and things that have fallen into place, I am retiring at the end of this year. I will start collecting my pension in July and it will go a long way to help me live a comfortable lifestyle. But I want that same security for my young colleagues. They need to know they can retire and live comfortably. They need to know that their pension is there for them when they choose to retire. So and I also sat on the internal of the pension task force for the Vermont NEA. So it was it was very interesting to go through that whole process. I'm very proud of Andrew, Molly and Kate are teacher representatives who hung in there and and I believe that the report is really good in the sense that there's the one time funds and the data the dedicated funds each year. And I know we've made some concessions and I think that will go a long way. Having that tiered system so we will pay more as we make more. So I just want to ask you to please vote to put this into action and to protect the pensions for one of the most dedicated group of people I could have worked with. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much Beverly for joining us and we appreciate hearing your testimony. It is very important to this committee that we have your input. And we were through a great evening and I'm going to send you back now to the other room where you can continue to listen to the goings on. Thank you. And this is going back and forth from room to room is it's something we haven't done before. So I think that that one went well. And next up we have Peter Booth and then on deck is Caitlin McLeod Blover. If I said that right. Peter. Hi there. I'm Peter Booth. I teach at CVU and actually I taught Senator Hinsdale-Ram's partner Jacob Math many, many years ago. I was part of the NEA Task Force that supported Andrew Molly and Kate and ultimately I am supportive of this proposal and hope that it goes through. But I do want to be really clear about one thing which is that the the JFO did a study and they found the underfunding which I understand probably none of you were involved in back in the 70s, 80s and 90s accounts for somewhere between $300 and $400 million of the current unfunded liability. And the $125 million payment into VSTRS right now is sort of being touted as we've made up for it. We're putting one time funds to make up for the wrongs of the legislative body in the past. But to be really clear, that's not accurate. Like more significantly more money than $125 million was was impacted on the unfunded liability. Now I understand there'll be an ongoing ADEC plus payment. And in the long run, perhaps it'll even out. But a lot of teachers are really upset about the fact that that full that we weren't sort of made whole that full amount of money. And then being asked to increase our pension payment is upsetting to a lot of folks. I like I said, to be clear, I'm supportive of this. And I understand, for me personally, the most important thing is that the pension continues to exist and gets healthy. But there are a lot of teachers who sort of signed on more than 30 years ago, thinking I'm going to teach for 30 years and then have a really solid pension and it keeps getting chipped away at. And what people who are upset keep saying is great, Peter, I'm glad you've solved this problem. But where will you be in 10 years when this happens again, they can't keep chipping away at teachers, we can't hire teachers right now. No one wants to work in our district in the in the the profession. And whacking the pensions is really troublesome to that hiring effort. Sorry for going over. Thank you for listening. Thank you. Thank you. Peter, thank you very much for joining us. We do appreciate your testimony. It is important to this committee that we hear your input. So we wish you a very, very pleasant evening. And I'm going to send you back to the role of the attendee. Thank you. And up now we have Caitlin McLeod-Bluver. And I hope I pronounced that correctly. Okay, great. Thank you. And on deck, we have Jodi Sabatso. If I pronounce that right. But so would you like to weigh in here? Thank you. Thank you all for being here. My name is Caitlin. I'm a teacher in Winooski. My third year in Winooski in my 12th year in public education. I'm here today to urge you to support the compromise put forth by the legislative task force and to thank you for all of your hard work. Clearly the past two years have been unprecedented times for everybody, but the challenges that educators have faced have truly been unmatched. This compromise gives us some hope. The proposed past path forward values our tireless commitment to Vermont youth and honors our years of service. And we thank you for that. As Peter echoed, there are many teachers that have some reservations. And I would echo some of those and recognize that this is a true compromise and educators feel like they're really putting in their fair share. We hope that this compromise can serve as a true example moving forward, giving the current political climate. Again, thank you for all of your work. And I will leave it there. Thank you. Thanks, Caitlin. Thank you very much for joining us. We do appreciate hearing your testimony. It is important to this committee and I want you to know that that we have your input. And I wish you a great evening and I'm going to send you back to the role as the attendee. Thank you. Next, we have Jodi Sabataso. Is that, did I butcher that? Madam Chair, I believe it's Sabataso. Sabataso. Thank you. And on deck we have Lance Mills. Yeah, so yeah, that is Jodi Sabataso. So yes, I'm a teacher and I've been teaching for 24 years between Ferry Haven and Rultin City Public Schools. And yes, I did have Brian Collamore Jr. as a student way back when. And you know, I'm kind of here to make sure and stress the fact that this was a compromise. And teachers really feel like they again have to solve a problem that wasn't created by them. And you know, yeah, I look at the group and I look at Task Force and what a great job everybody on that Task Force did, putting their minds together, coming up with a solution to the problem that was a great give and take. And thank you for that group of putting the time in meeting after meeting and coming up with a compromise. That really is the victory. What isn't a victory is that teachers having to give up more and more. In 2010, I believe I testified when we decided to change the rule of 85 to 90, get rid of 30 years of experience, asking teachers to work a little longer, but getting health insurance in the end. And I really think a lot of teachers in the state are worried that in another 10 years, we're going to be back in the same boat. So I'm really hoping with the continuing funds added to the ADEC with this package with teachers paying a little bit more and the progressive way of doing that will really solve this problem from here on out. So I really urge you to push this forward into a bill as an as is package. It really is not something that you can pick apart. This is a package that is a one time really offer and it has to go through as a bill as everything. So please make sure it makes the legislature legislature as is as the bill. Thank you, Jody. Thanks very much. It's good to see you and we appreciate hearing from you. It's important to this committee that we have your input. Have a great evening and I'm going to send you back to the attendee as well. So I guess my list is a little bit off here, but it seems to me it seems that the next person on our list here is or to testify to us is Dave Bellini. And then up on deck is Karen Deniston. Okay, I guess I got that right. So I can tell that you are Dave Bellini. So welcome. And you're not. No, I am not Dave Bellini. Hello, everybody. I'm Dave Bellini. And I have recently retired after 42 years with the Department of Corrections. I can't say everything in two minutes. I'm pretty good at it. The Department of Corrections has trouble with staffing and has had for four decades. I hope that you put this bill through without attenuating it in any way, weakening it, that is. And I hope there's no midnight specials. I used to like to call them in the legislature at the 11th hour. No funny business, please. It was unanimous. Bipartisan tripartisan support. Yeah, and I'm a little fuzzy about how the math works going forward in 10 years because I didn't like it ever. And you know, I wish I could go back in time and do a few things, but I wasn't in control. And you guys are. So please push it through, push it through quickly. What else? Oh, and then one thing I think this should be however you word it in legalese, this should be considered a contractual guarantee for state employees and teachers with the state. Enough, enough tinkering. Those of us that have been around for four decades plus, you know, this has been a lot of trips to bail out frankly, irresponsible legislators in previous years. And I use the word, you know, I think irresponsible is an understatement. So pay your bills, ladies and gentlemen, pay them now, pay them 10 years from now. And I hope this goes through and I hope it doesn't have any shenanigans. Thank you very much. And I'll see you one post pandemic. Thank you, Dave. Thanks, Dave. We appreciate you joining us and hearing your testimony. It is important to this committee that we have your input. So we appreciate it. Have a great evening. And I'm going to send you back to the attendee room. Thank you. And I up is Karen Denniston. And I am I to assume that Lance Mills and Jennifer Zoller and Patricia Bennett are not with us because on my list, the next person would be Lance Mills. But I will have Mike tell tell us who the next person is. And we will go from there. So Karen, if you want to join us and give us your thoughts, that would be great. Thank you. Hold on. Sorry, my dog is having a moment. Thank you. My name is Karen Denniston. I'm a 19 year state employee. And my husband is also a state employee with 12 years tenure of the state. So we are all in our future is directly tied to this fund. And I want to first of all, start out by expressing my appreciation for the work of the committee, particularly the labor representatives who served, the recommendations that were put forth were a dramatic improvement over last winter's recommendations. However, I still think that this plan is unacceptable. I urge you to reject some of the employee concessions. The overall issue here is that it's a renegotiation of terms. Any change to the status quo is a breach of trust. That being said, I am a reasonable person and I'm open to paying more of it means preserving the pension that I was told I could plan on receiving for myself and for others. I'm even open to paying more based on my income. My concern is that this plan increases my contributions from 6.65% to 9.15% over the course of the next five years and does the same to my husband's resulting in increased contributions from my household will over $40,000 over the next 10 years. And here's the kicker. This is all while I'm being told that I can plan to receive far less in return in the future. So you heard me correctly, more for less. And this is especially difficult to comprehend because the exact amount of diminishment is not clear. It's all veiled in percentages and possibilities, not specifics. We don't know how many years in the future there won't be a cola because of the new proposed floor of 0%. So in the future, if I live 30 years after retirement, how many years will I go with my pension decreasing in value and not keeping pace with the cola? I don't know. And you don't know either. And this is all at the same time that the administration is saying that there's no need to entertain your taxes because we have $190 million surplus that's not going to be part of the base in the future. So you're asking for state employees and teachers to take on what is basically a very specific task tax to that population while not considering alternatives. However, I don't have a lot of faith that she won't do this. So what I'm going to say last is I hope you will bind yourself not to come back to the well anytime soon. And as Dave Bellini said before, I hope you will consider this a contract and stop tinkering with the future that we've been we've been promised and that we've been planning for. Thank you. Thank you, Karen. Thanks very much for joining us. We appreciate hearing your testimony and it is important to this committee that we get your input. So we do appreciate that. Have a great evening and I'm going to send you back to the other room. So the one person that we have left in the waiting room, I guess is Allison Sylvester and the other people who signed up have not joined us. So Allison, if you would like to talk to us, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Allison Sylvester. This is my 22nd year teaching and I currently teach sixth grade math at Riverside Middle School in Springfield. I also serve as the Vermont NEA Vice President and I was a member of our internal pension task force. First of all, I want to thank the Act 75 Task Force and legislative leaders for all of your hard work, your thoughtful and deliberate discussions on how to ensure the physical health of the teachers retirement system has resulted in a fair and reasonable package. I especially want to thank our Vermont NEA members, Molly Stoner, Kate McCann, and Andrew Amrich for the countless hours that they advocated for the teachers across Vermont. This arrangement calls for both the state and teachers to shore up our retirement system while ensuring that our pension system is solvent into the future. This commitment from all sides addresses both the legacy underfunding and the structural challenges due to the demographic shifts in our teaching progression. The state will be adding $125 million towards the unfunded liability plus an annual commitment of an additional 15 million to our pension system. While teachers will be phasing in a progressive contribution structure over the next three years and delaying our own cola for 12 more months. These, along with other changes, will fulfill our obligations over time, ensuring that the pension system is healthy and viable for teachers across our state now and into the future. With the creation of the Vermont Pension Investment Commission and the Legislative Joint Public Pension Oversight Committee, we will have teachers and state employees working collaboratively with the legislature to make certain the state teachers and state employees never again get to the point where our pension plans are at risk. Again, I want to thank you all for listening to testimony, but also for the task force for the hours and hours and days that you spent listening. So thank you again. Thank you. Thanks, Allison. We do appreciate hearing your testimony. And as I've said to everybody tonight, it is important to this committee that we get your input. So thank you very much for joining us tonight. Have a great evening and I am going to send you back to the other room. How does it feel to be sent back to the other room without even having to move your chair? I didn't know how to phrase that. I know, I know. It's a weird. So I want to say, I guess though, the rest of the people who signed up are not with us, have not joined. I will say that we will be taking this up again. Tomorrow we will be reviewing the comments that we heard tonight and having some more testimony from both Chris Rup who is with our joint fiscal council and joint fiscal office. And we almost always have with us the union representatives and the treasure whenever she can get there. And we will be looking at this again and debriefing what we heard tonight. We will I don't know if we will have a bill ready for presentation tomorrow. Most of the bill has been done, but getting the exact agreements into legislative drafting language is a little tricky here and we want to make sure that everything that was agreed to is actually in in the bill so that there's no no confusion. We if we do not have a bill by tomorrow, I think someone just asked that question. If we do not have a bill by tomorrow, we will have it by next week. And I do want to so on in case people are not aware of this. There are 2 issues. One is a pretty major issue and I think that Mr. Bellini would be happy to hear this that we've been asked to allow the VSEA and the treasure to work a little bit harder on the creation of what's being called Group G which is a group for DOC frontline people and psychiatric hospital frontline people to have a package that's more similar to Group C which is law enforcement than to Group F which is the rest of state employees. They're working on that trying to come to a to make it but budget neutral and come up with a plan and they have until April 15th. We're hoping we get it sooner than that they have until April 15th to come up with that proposal and if it meets all the parameters then it will become part of the bill. So that really is the change that to the package that could be made. There simply wasn't time the actuarial reports on that on Group F I mean Group G came in late and just couldn't be incorporated into the bill as it is right now. But that will be dealt with by this committee when when it is presented to us. So with that madam. Yes. We had a question in the chat which I know isn't operative but I thought it was a good question just about when people might expect to see a draft of that bill presented in committee if you think it's going to be in the next two weeks or I thought that was what I was just answering but okay okay yeah no I just didn't know if we're going to get more specific. I can't if it isn't ready by tomorrow I'm hoping it'll be ready within the next week or so and and we want to make sure that the people on the task force who were so instrumental in helping us come to this agreement review the draft so that they can make sure that what was in the agreement is actually in the bill. Anything else that and we will take this up again and and I want to thank people for for coming tonight and giving us their their thoughts. I also really want to thank the people the members of the task force that the as was say they've been thank Molly Stoner and Andrew Amarich and Kate McCam represented the NEA and Leona Watt and Eric Davis represented the VSEA and Dan Trottier the VTA and everybody it really turned into a cooperative collaborative session and it took a little while to get to that point to be honest I will not shy away from that that there was a little bit of distrust at the very beginning and it took a while but I think we all ended up in a good place and I'm really really thankful for those six people and very proud of the work that that they did. So I guess with that we can end this nobody else has showed up. Is that right? Okay. All right. I guess we can end our public hearing and thank you very much and stay tuned. We will be dealing with this more both tomorrow and probably next week.