 So we'll start. Let's start with Michelle. She's first on the list. Do we want to work? I'm great. How are you? I have toasty. No, it's perfect. No, no. It's perfectly toasty. Yeah, look, the jacket is off. Yeah, I may take it off. It's a sauna. We're having a sauna experience here. Can you throw some water on the rocks now? Yeah. It's going to keep down. Good morning. I'm Michelle Fay. I'm Executive Director of Voices for Vermont's Children. I think two of those senators are rare voices, but for your benefit, Senator Susie, have you two met? We just introduced ourselves. So Voices for Vermont's Children promotes public policy that enhances the lives of children and youth, and we are particularly interested in improving equity in our community and our institutions. And for us, attacking equity means directing resources and targeting policies to eliminate disparities. So as you heard last night during the public hearing, too many Vermonters are thrown into financial distress or forced to make unthinkable choices when they grow their families or experience a serious illness. Access to paid family and medical leave is an equity issue for low-age workers, for women, and obviously for their children. So the U.S. Department of Labor has run extensive studies on leave-taking behavior in connection with FMLA, which has been around for 25 years now, and their data are clear. There are stark disparities in access to paid leave. Almost two-thirds of people earning more than the median income receive full pay during their leave, compared to only about a third of those who receive less for earning less than median income. And then, for those folks who have, who express a need that would qualify for FMLA but are unable to actually take that leave, it's substantially higher for people with children, people of color, and people with low incomes. The recent feasibility study on paid leave in Vermont projected that workers with families with incomes near the poverty threshold would increase their number of paid leaves by 38%, compared with 9% for higher income families. And roughly a third of Vermont children live in low-income households, that's defined as at or below 200% poverty level. So you've heard the testimonies of people who made it work when they experienced a serious illness or welcomed a new child without the benefit of paid family and medical leave. Backed into a corner with no good choices, they were forced to take steps that undermined families' financial security. 2012 FMLA survey data backs up their experiences. Leave takers without access to paid leave overwhelmingly reported that making ends meet was difficult, most limit spending to their bare necessities and many draw on their savings. More than a third put off paying bills and about 30% borrow money, 15% sign up for public assistance. Even those families who are technically able to arrange paid leave by using their education time are left with no cushion for routine preventive health care appointments or unexpected events like child care closures or school snow days, or even just a regular old sick day. Family economic security is fundamental. Welcoming a new child to the family, recovering from a serious illness or injury or supporting the recovery of a loved one are watershed moments that can set families on a path toward a healthy, secure future, or turn them toward damaging hardship. The impact of spending childhood and poverty are devastating both to children and to our communities. Children raised in poverty experienced poor health outcomes in relation to their non-poor peers. They're twice as likely to repeat a grade or be expelled, and more than twice as likely to drop out of high school. Girls raised in poverty are more than three times as likely to have a child as a teen. According to the Vermont feasibility study, an estimated roughly 1,100 to 3,200 workers and their families will stay above the poverty level due to the benefits. Supporting family formation matters. When parents have access to pay to leave to welcome a new child into their family, infants are more likely to be breastfed. I think you heard about that last night. They're more likely to have their full vaccination schedule and they're more likely to have regular checkups. Adoptive families experiencing a kind of change in transition are allowed much needed bonding and relationship building time. And this is an interesting one. Partners' early shared involvement in the care of children is linked to reduced divorce rates as well as improved cognitive development and educational performance for their children. So we all benefit. Supporting parents in their dual roles as employees and caregivers yields economic benefits as well. Evidence from states with FMLI show that these programs improve workforce attachment and support economic independence with the greatest effects seen among the most disadvantaged families. Other key economic and health benefits include that children recover more quickly from illness when they're cared for by their parents. According to the impact feasibility report, Vermont would experience savings due to increased number of Vermont's newborn infants that are healthy and have normal birth weights. And there's some data. I did submit my testimony but anyway I think I submitted it like 10.30 last night so it may not be up on your website yet. That includes 5% fewer low birth weight babies 8% fewer preterm births and 10% fewer infant deaths child deaths. Vermont's foster care community needs our support. I was really glad there were a couple of folks testifying about that last night. It was a whole different aspect that one we hadn't necessarily thought about. We worked really closely with Bufafa and we've heard from a number of members that those first two weeks when you have a foster care placement you are running the child or children to catching up from a doctor's appointment as they haven't had access to. You're taking them to the dentist taking them to parent visits. There's just a lot of effort, especially in those first two to four weeks. Back to those figures, the percentages right before there about low weight and child deaths. What were those numbers related to? Access to paid leave is correlated with those better outcomes for babies. According to Well, I can get the citation for that but I think this actually came out of the impact report. The feasibility study. The Feds. On FMLI. Yeah. Would you get your testimony? I did. Ten percent fewer child deaths. Five percent fewer low work place babies and eight percent fewer children. As a result of having access or any access to paid leave. So if you're, you know, I think we heard about people who are working up to the day their children were born. If you were advised to have bed rest or advised to do something a little different. If you don't have access to paid leave you're not able to do that. Is that essentially in the flip of that is that there will be ten percent more deaths if you don't have paid leave. Is that a same or same thing? I suppose. So I think I think we're talking about the north. Like what's happening now we can improve on that by providing access to paid leave. So it's not like doing nothing it seems the way where there are if you give people access to paid leave you can improve those numbers. Can you get us a little bit more information on those things? Sure. I'm really coming to the end here. Vermont needs families to to build and sustain our economy and those families need policies that make it possible to balance their roles as caregivers with their contributions to the workforce. The Vermont Department of Labor's forecast through 2024 lists food craft and food service and office administrative support positions as the job sectors expected to have the greatest amount of growth. These are the very jobs that do not offer paid family medical leave. They offer wages below a livable standard and are typically held by women. So if this is the reality of our economy it's incumbent on the state to invest in infrastructure to meet the needs of this workforce. And while establishing a family medical leave program will have the greatest impact on low wage employees in the service industry, it's a benefit that will attract and retain a vibrant healthy workforce across all sectors. So our specific policy recommendations will sound very familiar. We strongly support increasing the maximum leave back to 12 weeks as it was in the original bill. I think you heard a lot of evidence about why that's important last night. But it is the minimum recommended leave for recovery and bonding with a newborn according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. And in addition to the health benefits of supporting those 12 weeks of bonding, there is an infant care crisis in the state of Vermont in our early care and learning system. Paid leave is infant care and will take some of the pressure off this system. Implementation of FMLI program would save Vermont families and this is again from the impact study. An estimated average of between $1,017 or $1,800 primarily from liberated child care costs. And when you aggregate this across the state it's between two and three and a half million dollars that would be saved by families. The second recommendation is to make the benefit accessible to low wage workers by maintaining or even increasing a high wage level replacement from between 80 and 100% wage replacement. I think what we've seen from the early adopter states who for whatever reason started their wage replacements at 55 or 60% is that lower wage workers just weren't able to access that so we can learn from their mistakes and make sure that that benefit is accessible right from the get go. We agree with reducing the eligibility threshold back to the original level so that people who are working seasonal or intermittent jobs who are paying into this program can access it when they need it. Where was the original? I think it was 6 out of 12. 6 out of 12 months? For the original? Yeah. 6 out of 12 months. 6 out of 12 months, yeah. And then these are in no particular order. We all feel all four of these are very important but restoring the personal medical leave coverage is really critical. As I think someone mentioned last night, the DOL shows that the majority of FMLA qualifying leaves are for personal illness or injury so we need to design a program that works for as many Vermonters as possible. That concludes my testimony. So I have a question on you said that there would be I think you said a 38% increase among low income people in accessing families if it's paid a 9% increase. Yet the numbers we've seen so far so a very small increase with this bill in terms of the projected costs how do you square those numbers? I think I remember 6% is what they're projecting in terms of the increase in the number of leaves as a result of I don't know if it's this bill or it's the house pass bill or the original bill but surprisingly love. So I think a lot of that is I would attribute a lot of that to kind of pulling out what I'm about to say from the feasibility study but as we heard last night and as if you look at what other states have experienced families are making it work but when we talk, when we dig down and see how they're making it work they're using up all of their accrued time so at the end of there, for example if it's an intimate leave, a bonding leave at the end of that leave they have no paid time left to take their child to this next well baby visit they themselves get sick they're just bottoming out all their leave or they're taking the leave and going into debt putting everything on credit cards so we heard all those stories last night so I think it's a question of creating a system that supports families and doesn't require them to make these terrible choices that then actually impact their financial security for the years. I mean it can take a very long time I think to dig out from those debts and that impacts their children's well-being well beyond I think you're probably right but maybe it's the way we're describing it you say there's going to be a 38% increase among more people who are taking the leave it sounds like well I'm not sure it sounds like you're saying that they're not taking the leave now they're not making it work and scraping everything to make it work but just not taking the leave they're going to work so now there'll be a 38% of people who wouldn't go to work for 6 weeks or 12 weeks and yet the people who did the work up here the projections so very small I think I know what you're getting at now so the I spent a fair amount of time with the 2012 DOL figures and the number of people 38% of people who don't take leave when they have a qualifying or an eligible reason to take leave is very small so I think it's about 5% so that's 38% of that 5% you know what I'm saying it's like of the people who are not taking leave there's a disproportionate representation of low income people in that 5% so it's 38% of 5% almost half I'm surprised that so few people are not taking the correct way so few people are not taking leave if you listen to that testimony last night it sounds like most of the people are somehow continuing that supports that they're not taking the leave they're continuing to work when they shouldn't and they're continuing to work while they're sick and on chemotherapy and in radiation that will not equate no holiday for two years as a result that's the impression they're continuing to work and they're struggling so if most people are doing that and then you give them pay then you would expect the amount of people who take leave to go up more than 5% yeah but I think what Michelle's saying is that of the 5% that are working through the hell they're going through 38% of that 5% are the crowd that are more like that they're predicting will actually take an exit our staff is familiar with those projections it's just this the way I read it is that there's 50,000 people taking leave and there's going to be 50 there's going to be a small number increase after the law yeah I think that the there's two different dimensions there's a dimension we're talking about about the people who are working through it and somehow going to their chemo sessions and then going back to work and then there's this other larger group of people who are somehow making it work but not in ways that are actually good for their financial security and I think just a closing I started out talking about equity because now solutions that are equitable means really looking at those handful of thousands of people who are not being served by our system very well and figuring out how to make it work for them well what impressed me about last night was the people who are making it work are having it's not making it work but it's digging themselves deeper into that it's making life impossible financially and adds so much stress on the fabric of their marriages and their families and on everything else so it comes out elsewhere and in that all doesn't benefit employers it doesn't benefit anybody schools children children and anybody we'll see when we see my written testimony I put made it work because it's clearly not thank you I'm going to go a little bit out of here because I wanted to save the department for to be our end witnesses 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 7 8 5 6 8 6 Five minute break. Dave Buffard? Hi, this is Michael Soraki, Chair of the Economic Development Committee at the Legislature, and we welcome you. We have a room full of people here and two other Senators, Senator Clarkson from Windsor County and Senator Sussi from Rutland County up from Chittenden County. And I understand you wanted to testify on each 196 paid family leave. And we welcome your testimony, so go for it. Well, first of all, thank you very much for calling and entertaining, you know, live conversations with you guys. Just quick brief on the Vermont native, own a small grocery store in Georgia, about 10,000 square feet. Been here since 2005. I come from a corporate background where I was living for a number of years, 46 years, and we went bankrupt as a company. Did everybody hear me? Because sometimes phones are crazy. Everybody can hear me? Yeah. Coming through good. Okay, perfect. So here's the concern I have. Over 50% of my staff is under the age of 18. And when you're under the age of 18, there's certain things you can't use. You can't use knives and slicers and grinders, all these things are community bonded. And I have four departments in my grocery store. We're a full service grocery store. So we have a protest department, a big department, a post office, and a meat department, which are highly specialized departments as far as concerns. They're not like a cashing position, which is somebody who's on the floor working grocery. Those are more entry-level positions. When there's a protest department, big, post office, or meat department, they're highly specialized. And these are all full-time people for me that I give them between two and three weeks of vacation now depending on how long they've been with me. And we struggle to cover the week when they're gone. We're able to forward plan when my meat ban is gone for the week. We're able to forward plan because they do orders, they work on ads, they do pricing because the markets are so volatile. We're able to forward plan the week. And I usually filter the gap on the owner and on the guy who filters the gap because it requires somebody trained. And in this case, the trained somebody in the department or trained somebody in the post office or trained somebody for produce or for bakery, requires continuous maybe 30 to 50 hours of training time. So again, when you leave them, when they're gone for a week, when they take vacation, you can plan around that, make adjustments, and survive knowing that's back in the eighth day. So this paid leave, six weeks, poses for us a major challenge that a couple of options may occur as this is happening for us is that if somebody opts to apply and gets the state to allow them, they take this paid leave and if somebody else from another department at the same time has an issue and applies the same thing, it gets accepted. It puts the owner, it puts the business at a high risk because we don't have staff to roll into those departments to cover that six weeks in. In the case of the, in this case where I fell in, there's only somebody for me to have to go in and try to cover six weeks in the produce department and six weeks in the meat department. We would never be able to do it. So my option would be then I have to go hire somebody and train somebody. So then at the end of six weeks when that person comes back, I've got an extra person that I can't use, I can't maintain on my staff. And that's the dilemma that I use for this thing because it requires a way to fill the void and we don't have physical bodies to slide into that position because again, these are not entry level positions. These, you know, a meat cutter, a meat cutter really has two years of meat cutting under his belt before he's able to do a meat cutting thing. He has to go through basically a whole process that's known to gain the ability to cut meat. And that's the problem we have. And then, you know, what happens to us is we end up, you know, having to hire somebody, train them prior to which is added cost us, we're small business, we're very, very small. We're not a change, you know, we're- How small are you? I'm sorry? How small are you? How many employees do you have? We have 38, but over half of those are 18. And we're the right-hand school kids. We come in at four o'clock and rent, register, you know, from four, you know, fill the beer from four o'clock, fill the eight o'clock or 90 o'clock. How many hours do they work? This is Senator Susie, right? How many hours do they work? More than 30 hours a week. No, they're both getting there, mostly to 12, mostly to 20, personally to people. How many full-time employees do you have? We have, I have six full-timers, six full-timers, they're 40 hours, they're 40 hours with people. So, you have 38 people, just, I just have a question for our staff here. Would they be covered on your existing law right now, if you had six full-time and 30 part-time? The existing law goes off of average of 30 hours per week. And so it's really a question of, are there, in addition to those six 40-hour-a-week workers, do they have an additional four to nine workers who are averaging 30 hours or more per week? And so that's the question about whether they're covered by the unpaid leave law now. So, Ray, this is Damien Leonard from the Office of Legislative Counsel. Do you have additional workers in the, that average 30 hours or more per week, or is it just those six 40-hour-a-week workers? That's what I have currently. When college is out, I have a couple students that come back and they work 30 plus hours, but that's just for, you know, really, in June through, you know, August, or sometimes early, early part of September. So it's just a couple college kids. But that's pretty much it, my six full-timers. And again, the problem we have is that most of, again, most of my staffing part-time students, the parents get involved and say, I don't want to go to Johnny's working more. I need to have more than eight per week. You know, you know, school is more important. That's our emphasis, too. So it requires more bodies and we're open. We're open from seven to eight, seven days a week. We have to fill the void and we have to have staffing here. But it takes multiple people to do it because some will need to work eight hours a week. I've got a couple of my students who only work one shift, one four hours a week. So Ray, it sounds to me like you're probably not covered by state and federal law right now and guaranteeing that a person who wanted to take leave, if they could afford to take it, you wouldn't have to give them that person's job back. And so in that situation, you wouldn't have to give job protection and this law wouldn't change that in any way. If somebody wanted to take the leave and you were hard pressed, you could hire somebody else and not have to train them. You wouldn't have to then fire that person who you trained. You can keep that person on and you could lay off the person who took the leave. Yeah, but that's not a win situation for us because I'm taking somebody who has got a year's experience and letting them go. There's somebody who has just come in and has six weeks of experience with their bell because they work with them. Right, I understand. That's not fair, that's not fair. Right, but unfortunately what you're saying is, what you're saying is that you wanna, if somebody wants to take the leave now, you're banking on the fact that that person can't afford to take the leave to help your business and you don't wanna see that person get any money in order to take the leave. What I don't want to have happen is these jeopardize my business, my sales, my customer loyalty because I can't get rid of the person who came in to fill the void for that six weeks. That's what I don't have happened because people develop relationships. People who have a, we have a real, a real old patch of budget here where you can set the mind of these guys, they, you know, they, Jason, I don't know, this week I have somebody coming, I need to ram by an inch and a half that you can't get that, you can't get that kind of service at a dinner for a shopper. So they do what they do, but if you do that in my shop, you can come in and be, I just took an order two minutes ago for somebody who needs, he's fighting me to make me dirty. You can't get that at the end of the day. You can't go in and say, I need six pounds of jerky. They just, they won't kill it. So I would jeopardize, I would jeopardize my business if I was to let my, you know, my lead, my lead guys have been really strict where it's for set of cares, let him go in a six weeks because I can't, can't absorb the guys who filled in for him. That's suicidal for us. Ray, Ray, do you, have you, this is Allison. Have you had in the past of workers who have either had a parent die or, you know, go through the death of somebody in their family or, or a cancer, something where they've had to take some time off. How have you managed when, because it sounds like you have a good relationship with your employees. How have you managed those needs? They've never left me for six weeks. What's the most time people have left you for? But whether the death of a family might go for three, four days. You know, I, I understand that probably as well. That I'm going through an autoimmune disorder right now about CHP. I know what it's all about to be in the hospital for four weeks. Right. I was there, I was there, I was just there. Right. So, so, but, but the long story short of this thing is that, is that, you know, yet it's right in the end to try to do the best you can. We have a business to run and we have a responsibility to, I have a responsibility to my employees to, to my community and to my family to keep us in business and independent markets like myself are exactly disappearing. And if, you know, I just had, I just had the girl scout here this past week that he sold 270, 70 some of our cakes in a cookie out of my store. When stores like we disappeared because we kicked them forward, maintained and sustained business because of these types of things that keep coming at us, when reasons appear, try to go to the dollar general and try to self-cooking there. Try to go to the answer to try to set up these programs. Also, I just support for our local little league here, I believe for $1,000 each year that I supply all their shares. Right. Go to the dollar general and try to get $1,000 out of them. And, and Ray, we, we actually all appreciate that and are very, and are very grateful for those businesses. I'm just curious, how did the store manage while you were gone for those, that time while you were dealing with your disease? I was very lucky that my wife, you know, ran the store for me. For us, you know, she became, so I'm, I'm very lucky that I have a wife who has a great knowledge of this business and the beauty of technology for me is that I can still do stuff from my hospital bed. You know, technology is a wonderful thing, good and bad at the same time. Yeah. You know, but, but, there's something to leave me for six weeks because I don't understand fully how, how the constraints will be placed on people but it's my understanding that they can't take this time for themselves but they can take this time for family members. So, do we get a chance to weigh in on this or do we have any statement to as well? Because, you know, if, you know, the doctors, I know, I know doctors first hand are very convenient with what they, what they tell you because they try to cover themselves pretty tight. They don't want to run any risks themselves of saying, you're ready or you're not ready. They are very, very, very conservative. I know that first hand. Well, when you ask, how are we getting feedback? You're giving us feedback right now. So, and we've, and we've heard we had a public hearing last night where people gave us plenty of feedback. Were you on the verge of saying that you thought the bill at the moment needed to have personal medical leave added to it if we were going to go ahead with it? No, we don't. I, I, I, I was just curious if you thought if, in an ideal world, we could figure out how to replace your workers if we should add personal care back in, personal medical care back in. Well, you know, here's again, the problem we had. I am a small business without a wealth of people sliding into positions. We're not an enterprise where I could, or I could call somebody from another store, from another car to the chain to fill a void. I got nobody, I got nobody. So, so, you know, that's a problem we have. And again, I don't have the ability to, to sever somebody who's coming to fill the void than, than that's what the problem is. Because I can't, George, I can't. Not, not, you know, if, if, if the intention is to, you know, drive small business out, this is certainly going to be a part of that. You know, we're, we're getting fire and bomb, bomb orders every day would stop. You know, local, state, federal levels, it's unbelievable. I've been doing this for a long, long time, but I've never seen the flurry of activities that we're seeing now. I've never seen it. Well, I want to thank you for your testimony. You know, I just end by saying, I know it's not any great solace to you, but we don't, we, we have a significant, effective small business exemption in this bill at this point. And that, in some cases, works to the detriment of the workers who work for small businesses versus large businesses. So it may not be perfect, but at least you have your exempt from the law of having to protect someone's job. I'm not sure I agree with it personally, but that's where it is right now. And at least you have that choice. Some employers don't even have that choice under the federal law. So I appreciate you taking the time. We have a bunch of other witnesses you have to go through. I think we've heard you very clearly. And thanks for calling in. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you. Good luck with your health. Thank you. Thank you. I didn't realize you were moving around. Well, I apologize. I was three minutes late for that photo. You were, but Linda took some. Okay, go ahead. So what? Okay, go ahead. I'll make sure you film better. So I will be, I'll be brief as well for the record here in Seagrest with Vermont Retail and Grocery Association. Thank you for taking the time to hear from us. Just a quick overview. VRGA represents about 700 members across the state as you were aware of and shared with you in the past. We're made up of small businesses that serve as stewards in the community. Across Vermont, we support local organizations as you had just heard Ray talking about grossed out cookies. We hire young adults with little to no experience and train them with the foundation of real world experience. And quite often they work right alongside the employees seven days a week. I do want to throw in there that you know, these are the small businesses really are again, the stewards in the communities and they really do have fantastic relationships and they work one-on-one with their employees to ensure that their needs are being met. We have pulled members regarding H-196 and received feedback about the bill as well as the various benefits that they're offering to their employees including extended paid time off, short-term and low-term disability, retirement plans, flexible work arrangements and additional training to name a few of them. As entry level employers, retailers and grocers are the training ground for the workforce in this state and will be the most affected employers in the state should this bill move forward. Members have expressed a couple of concerns. First of all, fund sustainability. There's concern that estimates from joint fiscal are conservative and that more employees will apply and participate leading the fund to be unsustainable. Just a quick numbers crunch. An employee making the average wage of $13 an hour would pay into the fund $38.13 a year. And if they're eligible for the full six weeks with pay at 80%, they would draw down just under $2,500. We have significant concern, again that the fund is unsustainable. Number two, staffing concerns. As Ray was just talking, small businesses do have a concern about filling management or pertinent positions for those six weeks to ensure continuity in staffing and management of the business as well as customer service and managing employee workload. Quite often, six weeks, we'll take it on the chin, right? If someone is to leave for an extended amount of time, we manage workloads among other employees. That means that their responsibilities can differ and there is some disruption in the workplace. Finally, mandated benefits. You've heard this before. While small businesses in Vermont appreciate and continue, they appreciate the continued community support. We remind the committee that a state of 620 residents can only provide so much support. This is why we continue to have discussions surrounding the increasing disparity in wages, which we all have concern about. Small businesses are quite often working with individual employees to ensure that they have the benefits that are valuable to them. And each individual is different as is each business. Their ability to offer various benefits at their discrepancy is an opportunity to attract employees. Mandating benefits eliminates the ability to be competitive and the ability to provide flexibility to employees which they may request. We ask that should the committee move forward with this bill that it stands as is, we would not ask, we would ask you to not include an employer mandated pay. What am I saying? Are you calling it a match? Yes, a match, thank you. But to keep it voluntary. We would appreciate it if it were voluntary, yes. So the difficulty I'm having is the following. It almost sounds like the bill that came over has no job protection for people who work in small businesses. It doesn't require you to hold open the job. It sounds to me like you don't want to facilitate in any way these people taking leave. So you would, like if I was injured, and let's say it applied to the individual I was injured, I had to bear with all of my family to pay to support me during that leave. You wouldn't want me taking that leave, even if I had to pay for it myself. I don't think that's an odd case. Well, all this is doing is allowing people to pool their own resources, to buy an insurance policy, to get them through an illness or a family illness. But I certainly share Mr. Rufard's position. Rufard, Rufard position, that's not good for them that people can have the resources to take the leave. I think it's rather difficult for small businesses to manage a business short-staffed. I think that that's the concern that a number of small businesses share across the state. We're already at 0.3% growth in unemployment, which means that it's very difficult to find employees now. So if I have an opening, because someone has left for six weeks, it's very hard to find somebody to cover that six weeks anyway. So again, it impacts all of the employees because they're going to be stretched extra thin when they have to make up for a person's absence for six weeks. And that's why I think the federal government and the state and the house has left a very substantial small business exemption. If you can't deal with it, you move on. If a person wants to take the leave, all they're trying to do is set up a fund to help pay for their daily living expenses while they're ill and can't draw down a paycheck. Until such time they go back to work or find another job afterwards. But somehow it sounds to me, I'm interpreting it as that that little step of social, setting up a social insurance program to allow people to have some money during an illness or a family member's illness is essentially making it more likely that people will take the leave and, you know, like that. And I'm, again, sharing that there is concern about filling those positions for an extended period of time. Especially when we only have 620,000 people in the state and we only have so many people looking for positions. But we're not saying you don't have the choice that you always have to fill that position for six weeks. You could also go ahead and move on to find another employee. And I absolutely, I understand where you're coming from, but if we have a really good employee, our concern again is how do we fill that for six weeks? We don't, if we have a really good employee, we don't want to let them go. You know, we want to work with them. We're small businesses then who are backwards trying to work with the employees. I'm simply saying there is concern about how we're going to fill that. I understand where you're coming from, Senator. We heard last night about some union plans where they allow their members to buy disability insurance. And so if they work for a large firm now, they have a right to come back to work after 12 weeks. And the problem in the interim from the leaving is because they don't have any money to replace the picture. So the temporary disability insurance that people can buy through their unions is helping them take that time off. I don't see this really as, especially when the employers are not contributing anything, I don't see this any more than a universal pooling of small amounts of money to allow insurance policy out there to allow people to make insurance. Absolutely. But again, I'll go back to the fund sustainability. If an employee who makes $13 an hour is putting in $38.13 and drawing down just under 2,500, there's significant concern that it's unsustainable. And we'll be right back here next year or the following year asking employers to match that. And employers who are already being, it's already being discussed in this building about increasing minimum wage to $15. We have mandated pay sick days. It's a cumulative impact and small businesses in this state 90% or 96% of the businesses in this state are getting stretched thin. And we have significant concern that if this fund is unsustainable, we're going to be stretched even further then. And we have only so much elasticity before the van breaks. I don't necessarily, I think it's perfectly acceptable that you have concerns that the fund is unsustainable. But the fact that it only costs so much to get so much in benefits is not the full end of the equation. You have to look at how many people are going to take the benefits. And how many people are contributing? Right, how many people are contributing. So those numbers may be right, but on its face that doesn't necessarily say to me that it's unsustainable. Those two numbers. I agree with it. We'll be back here if not a number, if we don't have a large number of people who take advantage of this opportunity because it's a low contribution for a big benefit. I don't disagree with you that. I think that it's predicated on the fiscal notice on however many number of people actually participating. So if we'd be back if that number of people were not participating, we'd figure out something else. Aaron, the original house version and then it was changed was from 15 employees down to 10. Were if it was back to 15 employees, would that give you guys any comfort or is that not? I think the small businesses that we represent are right between the 15 and 20 employees. So I don't have the exact numbers on how that would impact my members. If you're interested in increasing the exemption. Yeah, I'm just looking at that. I certainly am concerned about small businesses and how they operate as I run one of them. But I also am concerned about these people whose lives have devastated who may not be able to work anyway, whether or not they're funded or not. For example, if someone gets pregnant and there's some issues, they're gonna be out for an extended period of time. The employer's still gonna have to figure out what to do with them. As far as there are some specialties, certainly that some small businesses are gonna be hurt. There's no doubt that the meat cutter is one example. A guy who paints cars, for example, is also, so the skilled worker is gonna be difficult to be replaced. But in the same respect, you want people to be happy and to be good employees. Absolutely, I completely agree with you. I think that small businesses, again, across the state, work very closely with their employees to make them happy. And nobody wants to be in an uncomfortable work environment. So including the business owner. So I think that you're right. Yes, we all work together. And again, I'm just reiterating the concerns that my employers are facing. How many employers did you talk to on this and were there some who were in support of it? That's a good question. I don't have exact numbers. I would say probably about 40% of the membership responded to this poll. Yes, there are some who are supportive of it. The majority of them are not supportive of it. I'm happy to get the percentage difference. It was a much smaller percentage that were in support of something like this. Because we heard, as you know last night, I can't remember if you were there last night, but we heard from a couple of small businesses that were very supportive of it. And yes, I did attend for a short amount of time, but as you are all aware, the public forums are usually quite one-sided. And the majority of my businesses that I have had come in and testify at public hearings are quite often disenfranchised at the end of the night. How so? For example, the minimum wage testimony public hearing, there were three people against and several people for. How is that disenfranchised? So there were several comments made throughout the night. One said that if you don't pay $15 an hour, then you don't deserve to be in business. There were several comments that were made throughout the night. One of my members from Burlington was actually harassed via email. You're kidding. Yes, and he's a very active person in the community. Reported that that was the first time that they had made a profit. This past year was the first time they made a profit. It was $30,000 and they gave it all back to the employees and they were still harassed via email. Well, okay, harassment never a good thing via email or otherwise. But putting that aside, and I'm not the biggest supporter of public hearings because as you say, I do think various sides tend to bring that people to be heard. With that said, the business community, I think, deploys very tough rhetoric when they don't want something. They talk about businesses leaving the state. They talk about, they talk down the economy of Vermont as a way of not getting additional regulation. So I think it's there on both sides. What I would say is, I know the chair was looking last night to hear from the business community. What are your substantive concerns about this legislation? So last night was entirely supportive of the bill. It would have been great to have some of your people show up and be heard because I don't think they would have been harassed. I think, again, the business community is rather disenfranchised. Again, why would I wanna bring my business- You're here to know it now? But disenfranchisement, that's the word I'm quibbling with. That means you can't vote or you're not heard. The business community has the bulk of the lobbyists out there that we're seeing in the building. Where's disenfranchisement? I don't get that. Maybe I'm picking the wrong word. The business community in this building refuses to make an effort because they don't need the harassment. Is there a sustained harassment? Well, I agree that I don't think that businesses in the public forum, that it's good for their business to testify because they can be, I won't necessarily say disenfranchised, but people can look upon them as being evil or being bad because they didn't support $15 or they don't support paid family leave. So I think there can be some repercussions for businesses testifying in a public forum like that. In that, it is one-sided. And that said, I thought it was a great public hearing. I really enjoyed the stories that people said. And it was impactful on how illnesses and tragedies have impacted families. But I think, again, we have to be mindful of the impact that these have on businesses. And I do think that it is a cumulative effect that you look at 15, I want people to make more money. And then you look at this and then another. And all of a sudden now there's a lot of regulations that makes it even more difficult to do business in the state of Vermont. Yeah, and I take that point. I was just that the representation of business owners as disenfranchised and harassed doesn't square with reality as I'm seeing it in the building. Business owners, by and large, get the legislation that they want. But with that said. I would respectfully disagree to some level. But regardless, I think that the ability for businesses to call in or to come in and have a conversation with the committee. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for allowing that opportunity. Again, I think that there is ample opportunity for the business community to participate in public forums in the future. However, it's gonna take more than one person trying to bring their members to the hearing. Oh, yeah, I agree. But most public hearings, I'm not sad on so many different committees when we hear have public hearings on tax or on firearm safety. We have so many pro and cons. It has been interesting in our two economic development public hearings that we've had this year that really there, it hasn't been an equitable number on both sides. It's very unusual for you. Totally, I'll share with you. It's because quite often the legislature continues to pit employees against employers. Employers and employees have fantastic relationships. We need to stop pitting them against each other. And offering these public forums is fantastic and I appreciate it, but there needs to be work on everyone's side to have it more balanced and have a balanced conversation. And when my businesses show up to a public hearing and basically say you don't deserve to be in business because you don't do this, this or this, I'm not going to go out of my way to bring my members. I'd much rather have them here. Sorry, they had that experience. And I'll say one more thing, then I'll shut up. I think the reason why honestly you don't use the public forums is because you have very powerful private forums and that's just the state of affairs. I apologize that that's how you feel. I'm sharing how I feel. I really try to get my members to go to the public forum and again, my members are concerned that they will have repercussions. They will face repercussions and it's not fair. They're working as, again, stewards in communities across the state, they donate their time, their money. They, again, are the workforce trainers of the state. I think that we need to start giving small businesses, especially the credit where credit is due. And it's rather frustrating walking into this building every day, watching employees being pitted against employers. I don't see it that way. Raising the minimum wage to my mind isn't pitting employees against employers. I personally believe that if we wanna lift the state up, we should be working on workforce development and providing public and private opportunities where employees can get additional training so that they can move up the economic ladder. And you know what, I mean that's a top on order. I appreciate your work, Senator. Yes, I believe that we can continue to do that instead of arbitrarily increasing the minimum wage. Erin, you mentioned the survey you did and you were gonna get us the percentages and you said that you mostly are very strongly against the bills that the bill has introduced or are general or as it is now. Good question, thank you. That was for the bill as introduced. We have not phoned them again this year, but I'm happy to do so. If time allows, I'm not sure when, what your timeline is for moving this bill. Well, I'm not sure either, but it's probably unlikely unless you can do a quick turnaround because we're all gonna be here for another month, so. Great. I will do my best. Because it's changed so completely, it would be interesting to. I'll get on that today. Thank you. Commissioner. Yes. I'm gonna be okay if I ask third place. We'll just have you. Sure. Sure, sure. So I think this is the first time you've been here on this bill. And I guess I'd like to start off, I'd like to do a deep dive in terms of your concern, but I'd like to start with, is there an administration position on the bill that passed the House? Sure. So for the record, I'm Lindsay Curley, Commissioner of Labor, and this will probably come as no surprise to you, the administration does not support the bill as the governor does not support any of the taxes and fees. So with that, we respect that you have a decision to make and there's been some really compelling testimony for sure. Okay, no, I'm just curious because this is a voluntary contribution. No, it's not voluntary. No, it's not. So far from voluntary, every employee in the state has to be. So everybody, it's all okay. So, no. I mean, I'm... So, we... But that looks like just a follow-up. I'm gonna get a reputation here. So is the problem, the point one for tax on employees, is that the governor's problem? Yes, yes. So that's part of the problem. The other part, which is I'll go into addressing going forward is just the department's role, as you know, in the bill is to design the system and implement the system and administer the system. And we've looked over the bill and have concerns because we were asked to do a cost estimate that became a very difficult task because the system isn't designed yet. And so the only thing we could really lean on to come up with an estimate was our current UI, unemployment, insurance, tax and benefits is done. For those, I think you all know this, this is a federal program. All of our employees that work in the UI section are all paid by federal funds. But it was sort of like something we could look at, it's an insurance program. So when we started looking at it and looking at the estimate that was provided to us and I can't remember, Joyce might be able to jump in, who created that estimate to begin with? Is there okay, Joyce, what is it on that? Well, are you talking about the estimate on administrative costs? Yes, as well as like the implement, like IT building and implementation and whatnot. So we look- Yeah. If you want to remain on choice, do we provide that initially? Sure, that's the feasibility study that was done for the Vermont Commission on Women in 2016. Thank you. So, as we looked down through the list of employees that they suggested we would need to have, it's hard to say yes or no. It looks like we need some clinicians on staff and whatnot. It's hard to say without really diving in and looking at other states and seeing their system. One of the things that really stood out for us was the cost to build a system. So right now, we are in the middle of a modernization project for our UI tax and benefit system. By the time that that is done, it is our expectation that we will spend between eight and $10 million. That is being built by, in a consortium, so the state of Idaho, the state of North Dakota and the state of Vermont are in a consortium. And the federal government provides us with that money to build the system in hopes that, one, that'll keep the cost of consortiums, arguably, keep the cost down and building those things. But also, it creates consistency across the US and then people that have more consistent systems, the better off they are in keeping costs down. So, in having different conversations we're trying to figure out is the expectation that we would piggyback this on to our current UI system? Is there a standalone system? Like, what might we be asked to do? And if asked to piggyback that on to our current system, we have some real concerns because, number one, we're not sure that the federal government will even allow it. Number two, because it's being built right now, if we were to go in and ask them to build more to make capacity for this, it would significantly impact our go live date, which is spring of 2019. But also, I'm not sure that folks that are building it in the consortium have the capacity or the time or whatnot to add to the project. And it would impact the third state too, right? Because there's quite a timeline going on. So, what are the three states again? Idaho, North Dakota, and Vermont. So, I'm kind of jumping around here a little bit. The other, so if we looked at the state of Rhode Island, for example, they piggybacked it on to a disability system that they already had in place, something Vermont doesn't have, right? So, if you look at the state of Washington, they built a standalone system, and while they're, you know, they are anticipating having more activity, so to speak, they estimated their IT cost to be 72 to 79 million dollars. So, even if ours is an eighth of the size, it's still going to be significantly more than what's in estimate right now, which is Washington. Washington. And that's just for this new family. Yeah, they're creating a system, and it's completely separate from their UI system. It's a standalone system, and there's like a lot of, like I said, a lot of different things that are mine where we're struggling to figure out how this works, because again, if it's somehow tied to the information that we, the data that we collect for UI, it's not apples to apples, for example. Let me give you a, okay. So, the new program, as we understand, the department can make rules and confirm eligibility based on employment of 12 out of 13 months. We don't collect that information. We collect quarterly information and employers report on a taxable wage base. So there's, I mean, that's just like one little piece, but there's differences in the information that we gather that would, you know, we would have to figure that stuff out. Let's see, we UI, let's see. Oh, so in Vermont, we have around 26,000 employers, and there's just over 22,000 that actually pay into the UI tax. So there, again, I think that it's going to be a different subset of employers who are paying in on the tax. So it's just some things that would have to be resolved. There's some technical differences. You know, that was why I asked if Dirk might join us because he's been, you know, working in a long time and has some more detail. If you do want detail about the differences, we can get into that more. Do you wanna jump in or? Well, I guess I'm, one of the things that I was thinking about is to make this as simple as possible by administrating this one forward. And it's may bring a, may change the projection because it may bring a few more people on. But why don't they just say, if you're eligible for unemployment, if you would be eligible for unemployment benefits, you'd be eligible for this. So there wouldn't be any new runs being done. It'd be the exact same criteria. And, you know, unemployment benefits, as you well know, in terms of eligibility is trying to demonstrate some connection to the workforce. So that's what the eligibility requirement here is. Whether you pick 12 or 13 months, six, the goal is to show some connection to the workforce before you draw down the benefits. So instead of reinventing the wheel, I would just use what we have. Okay. That's one thing. But you mentioned something there that you said some employers may have to send some stuff in here, but wouldn't have to send something in for UI purposes? Correct. Who would they be? So may I invite Dirk in on this one? Yeah, just, Dirk Anderson with the Department of Labor. All reporting done now in the unemployment insurance system is done forward. Right. Those quarterly numbers are not broken down by month. So if we have... I'm saying we're gonna use the same system. Okay. Are there different employers out there that don't have to look at? If we use the same criteria, the same employers would have to report, but we currently have a subset of employers that do not pay taxes. They file quarterlies, but they're so-called reimbursable employers. Right. State entities, municipal entities, school districts that do not pay a tax. So they just reimburse the system on a dollar for dollar basis when benefits are paid out. So that's an anomaly that we have to address. Okay. Yeah, that's a big one. I also, I wonder, I mean, again, I haven't thought this through, but I wonder if some of the very people that this bill is aiming to help might fall off though if the UI guidelines are used. I'm just thinking. Well, we can explore that further, but in theory, I would think probably more people would be helped because you don't have any requirement like 12 out of 13 months in UI to determine workforce connection. You can get on the program with six out of 12 months, even less, because it's a financial thing over quarters. So I think it's just a matter, if it's good enough for unemployment benefits, then why wouldn't it, in terms of workforce connection, why wouldn't it be good enough for this? That's the simple way of looking at it. But you're right, you can get ground. You're right. And you may miss some people, but we're missing some people with the house deed, which is a concern of mine. If we go forward with this, the grant workers are a perfect example. There's seasonal workers, they work year-round, but maybe 10 months, this isn't your net goage, you know? And why should they be out because they don't work 12 out of 13 months and paying anyway? They're paying anyway. And they are caught at UI. I mean, they're all included. They're all included. They're all included, so actually that would be a much simpler way of doing it. Yeah, and I would say that, you know, thinking about that, if somebody's time on unemployment benefits, so as you mentioned, like if a grant worker is collecting during that 10 weeks, if they're going to be part of this bill, I just would encourage you to consider, do we then tax their income? Do we apply the tax for the paid family leave on their unemployment benefit? Just something to think about, right? Because if we're going to utilize it. I don't know how to start with that, but. Yeah, I don't know. But I think they did do something about it, at least on the benefit side, right? You can't get unemployment and. You can't double-dip on unemployment and pay the family leave. There wasn't any, I don't think there was any tax. Tax is just on wages. It's just on wages, you know, yeah. So, yeah, we have to think about that. But I'm struggling, I tend to, you know, in some cases I make things more complicated, but in this area I think I look at, what's the ballpark figure that's thrown out there right now as the number of people who will take this leave next year? That's 6,000. 6,000. Out of how many people current, I mean, 325,000 employees currently. 325,000 are in the leaves, roughly. So I know I'm simplifying things, but it just strikes me that if you're processing 6,000 checks and calculating the benefits through a computer, and you get over the reimbursables aside, you get over the threshold of who's eligible, some third party could do this other than you, but they send it in to you and you just say, yeah, this person's eligible, it wouldn't be eligible for UI. That's all they need to know to write the check and they have to calculate the check. It seems like 6,000 checks doesn't strike me as millions of dollars in certainly annual costs. Maybe upfront it might cost the hard of their money. It just doesn't seem like that big of a program. I agree that your program may be expensive in terms of determining UI, but you're doing that already. So you start off by saying, oh, we piggybacking you're not. I think we should piggyback on steroids here. Yeah, so let me just state though, those federally paid employees would have to have an ability to charge to a state fund and if too much is charged to the general fund, then the federal government is going to get pretty grumpy. So again, you kind of have to picture, you've got like a whole separate group of employees that are working specifically on this program. So just keep that in mind when you talk about, right now our UI, we have enforcement, we have an ability to appeal. So just consider there's a lot of things that are not addressed in the bill that are probably important components to running a program like this. So I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the cost estimate of the people, the people that would need to be employed. I don't have anything to compare to, to be honest with you, so that's why I'm not disagreeing, these are things, my job is to say, we have to think about all these things so we don't break something in this or make the feds pull our federal dollars away because we've crossed the line. Okay, so let me ask you, would there be any, again, simplifying things? Let's say we, I don't think we'll ever wind up there because it makes sense to have you as the minister. I wanna ask you about the health assessment in a second, but let's assume we've found a third party to administer, all you are being asked to do was to someone sent you an inquiry saying, is this person, if you apply for employment right now, would he be eligible? Is that something that we're a file of the federal law to tell us, give us that information, share that information? Boy, there's David Bob on that one. As long as confidentiality was assured in the transfer, you know, the third party administrator would be bound by the federal regs keeping sort of unemployment insurance information confidential. But if we had that type of agreement, we could transfer eligibility information. This is the first time I've thought about this, but I think we could. Do you transfer eligibility information to any other agency in state government right now? We share information with various agencies, various departments of AHS primarily, to do wage and benefit cross match to determine if they're eligible for federal programs such as food stamps, Medicaid, subsidized housing. So yes, we do that internally in the state with other state agencies. Don't share a whole lot of information with third parties who are not state agencies. A claimant would have to file a claim for UI for you to tell them whether they're eligible. They couldn't just make an inquiry and say, am I eligible? Were I eligible for UI if I got married off right now? Currently, we do not determine monetary eligibility until an initial claim is filed. We would have the information do that if we were told to do that. But it's not currently something that we could. Also, isn't the 6,000 take-up number estimated on the current language in that if we expanded it to include UI eligibility, then the take-up rate could go up dramatically? If we included personal medical, I mean, I don't think it would happen. You know, of all the factors here, the size of the program, I don't think the connection to the workforces. Well, that adds all the seasonal workers. And we have a fair amount of them in the state of Vermont. Okay, so I don't know how much detail they did when they did the 12 to 13 months, whether they could get that grander to tell us what the impact would be. But I think the benefit levels of the weeks are much more bigger variables. So we'd have to look at that. And we will try to get out of that. And whatever we might have, how that would impact it. Joyce, would you want to join the commissioner up at the point? No, you can stay there. We're going to know the chair for you. Sure. And actually, I'm just thinking it's a good point to hear what the House did and how they calculated the administrative costs here. Thank you. Do you think Joyce might want to join? Oh, here you are. I would take Joyce out. Up to you. It's not close yet. Sorry about the cost and so forth. Why don't we just start with the last question, Senator Sussi? If we put this on the table, would you turn this to UI eligibility to be eligible for this program? I think it does do something in terms of administrative simplicity, but does it bring in a huge number of new people? Do you have any idea? Right. So for the record, I'm Joyce Manchester with the Joint Fiscal Office. So let me explain that I did not do the modeling behind this family leave program. As you know, the Institute for Women's Policy Research produced the big feasibility study for the Vermont Commission on Limit back in the fall of 2016. And we have been relying on modeling since then, as the provisions had evolved. Unfortunately, I talked to the modeler earlier this week, and he did not save all of the files that went with modeling, so he cannot tell me the number of people who were eligible a year ago when he most recently ran the model for us. So even if I knew the number of people who are eligible for unemployment insurance, I don't have a number to prepare it to. If this were really important, you could perhaps find some money to ask him to rerun the models from last year to get that number. Or there may be a different way to estimate 12 out of 13 months eligibility, I don't know. Versus 6. Versus the unemployment insurance. The initial model, which wasn't 12 out of 13, it was 6 out of 12. Right. So I'm less familiar with the original model, because I wasn't involved at that point. But a year ago, the legislature found some money so that he was able to model the bill, each $196. On the 12th to 13. On the 12th, 12 out of 13 months. Right. So very roughly, it seems to me like for the... There should be more people eligible under UI roles than under 12 out of 13 months. Oh, yeah. But I put it, it's also true on someone who incidentally, that I think the UI, the six months might be the logical number of the last 12 months to be eligible for UI. There's a lot of variables. I understand the UI system in a lot of different ways. But if I had to pick a number, a caliber number, I might say six months. It's bad. Work for the last six months of the last year, you're probably eligible for UI. So if we could look, if we could get back to it, we just don't have the six month number from the original bill. They follow that? We don't have an aggregate number of people eligible. We know the number of people who would take leave under this program. We have a guest. We have a guest. We have a guest. We had it at one point. So, was it six out of 12 months? That was the original proposal. Was that the original eligibility when the feasibility study was done? Yes. Okay, so... I don't know. I got one. The GAMS. I don't know. Just to clarify. So, to clarify here, the ways and means proposal from the House, which is the 12 out of 13 months was modeled. The feasibility study modeled at $9,079 in wages in the past 12 months, which is equivalent to 20 hours a week at minimum wage at the time, which was 963, I think, over the course of the year. So, it would have been six months in full time at the minimum wage, or a year at half time at the minimum wage. And so, it used in $9,079 of income in the last 12 months eligibility level. So, that's a greater income than, for example, it's required under UI, which requires a 2,000-something and a quarter and then an additional 40% of the highest quarter. In the other three quarters. There we go. So, it's very simple. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, that's a little bit higher level than UI, and I don't know if we have actual... But it was originally, basically, six months at minimum wage. So, we're getting a little off the field because I think what we're talking about now is whether it will increase the program costs and what the contribution might have to... If we do this to the contribution rate, might have to be adjusted to. I'd like to continue to focus right now on the administrative cost element and how we get that. What do you know about... What can you tell us about it? We've heard a little bit from the commissioner. She said she's looked at some other states. What can you tell us about the administrative costs? Sure. So, I think all of us have learned a lot in the past week about administrative costs. So, let me back up and explain that when I took a school note a year ago, I was relying heavily on the feasibility study. And the feasibility study looked at the three states that had existing paid family programs in operation. So, all of those three states built their systems on top of their temporary disability insurance systems. So, that's where the 2.5 million IT initial startup costs came from. Now, we knew a year ago that Vermont did not have a temporary disability insurance program to build on, but we naively thought that we could instead build on the unemployment insurance system. At the time, I believe the Department of Labor was fully engrossed in their overall of the IT system for unemployment insurance. It was difficult to get information. Nobody was willing to give us an estimate and so forth. So, we went with the 2.5 million. The really interesting development since last April is that Washington State in June, I believe, June of last year voted out their bill to actually fund a paid family leave program. And as part of that, they produced a fiscal note, which is amazing as a fiscal note relative to our fiscal note. Very, very thorough. And in that fiscal note, they talk about this estimate of $72 to $79 million. Now, that is the cost over six years, and it covers personnel staffing to run the program, set up the program, as well as to develop the IT system. And what we don't know is what's the portion of that large number that is just developing the IT system? Because it does cover... So, you take the $72 million divided by six? Well, the problem is that you need the big upfront investment to develop the IT system. That includes $72 million. Right. Right. And six years. And six years of meeting. Right. And running the program. Have you called them to get that program? So, I haven't called them. I believe I have a number so that I can't call them. This is all happening very recently. So, yes. So, they're a bigger state. And if we assume just a no basis to the assumption, but just articulate it, if we assume like $10 million upfront for hardware, then $72 million might be 62 divided by six. In their state. There's no basis for those numbers, but I'm just trying to give an example. So, we need to find that out and sort of see what's back. And that would be a standalone system. Yes. Right. I should add that I have been consulting with the JFO's IT consultant, a man named Dan Smith, who has done a lot of work for the state of Vermont in thinking about setting up different IT systems for different programs. He says that there are unlikely to be big cost savings because we have only 8% of the population of Washington state. He thinks that the big costs are in just setting up the program to handle all the possible eligibility rules, all the, you know, why are you taking medical leave for your child who has this and this disease and so forth. And also in making the connections to all those employers who are not currently part of DLL tax system. So he thinks that I was trying to be optimistic and saying, oh, well, we only have 8% of the population. So does that mean, you know, you shrink the 75 million by something? I can understand that. Well, he said probably not. Probably not big savings there. I was surprised at that. It's also true that the Washington state system includes sick leave. It's medical leave as well as family leave. And so I was thinking, oh, well, you know, that's a very complicated system. But in fact, you have to think about the very same problems if you're thinking about eligibility for people taking family leave to take care of a sick one. Or, you know, do they have a disease that really warrants a person? So how much are we expecting the program, the house-cast version to pay out the benefits in the first year? So based on last year's modeling, do I know this? 6,000 people might take it up. An average of 2,500 a person. Is that right? That's about 15 million. So my numbers say about 6,121 people. Let's see. On average, each of them takes 4.2 weeks. The average weekly benefit was $651. And the total benefit cost was about 16 million. That was a year ago. And we were assuming an ongoing administrative cost of about 7.5% of the benefits. So that would add another 1.2 million under last year's modeling. So we get to a total cost of about 17 million. So that doesn't include the upfront one time to build the system. Well, last year it did, because last year it was 2.5 million for the upfront cost. And we were collecting taxes prior to starting paying out benefits. So the year's worth, and we had assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that we could spread out the 2.5 million over two years. So we were able to take in enough in the first year to start paying down those IT costs and then pay them off and then have a little bit of a reserve going forward as the system was adopted. So the assumption here is that whether the one time, ongoing, or benefit cost, everything is going to be paid through this contribution rate. That was an assumption. That's right. Okay. So how quickly do you think we could get some idea on your best guess on the administrative costs? And assuming, I don't know if it helps you at all, that we will use a system that shares information from the department. It may still be free standing, but they don't have to go through a whole new eligibility calculation. That's just you. And where I'm going with this is we need to know whether it meets the straight face test. I mean, we're going to spend, you know, as much on administrative costs as you are on benefits. And my solution is we raise it up to no. Yeah. But we need to know that. But also, I just have a question to ask. How was this lab to get out of the house with more costs than contributions? I mean, because the contributions, as far as I can tell, if all 325,000 workers are paying in at only $38 a year, that's on average for a minimum wage. I don't know if that's average. So what are we thinking the total contributions will be in the first year? So, unfortunately, I don't have total contributions here, but I do know that what we did was to look at total Social Security number earnings at $150,000 or less. So last year, the bill said cap contributions at $150,000. So, you know, the Department of Labor nicely gave me a distribution of wages. Upward. We were able to look at total wages below $150,000. The total costs were divided into those total wages, and the rate came out, actually, well. So we decided to go with 0.141%, which would provide a little cushion, a little reserve, in addition to the benefits that raised, like, 18 or 20. So I don't remember exactly off the top of my head. The numbers definitely worked, and I have a spreadsheet that showed the reserves going forward for a few years and so forth. So it all worked last year. But that was with 2.5 million in the IT startup costs, and if it's now 30, 50, 70 million, we really don't know. Well, we need to figure out obviously how to make it work. Right, and the question is how long does it take to figure that out? It is true that I will talk to Craig Boyle, who's at the Department of Texas this afternoon, to find out if they have a different program that we might link into. So that would be run through the Department of Texas rather than through the Department of Labor. I don't know if that would work, but that's a possibility. Dan Smith, the JFO IT guy, cautioned me not to come up with a number and not to offer, you know, to come up with a number in any short time period because it's so complicated and very complicated on the details of the program and, you know, how the state is going to manage the program. Who's going to do it? How does it work? Well, what is the experience we got? Didn't we add on the healthcare assessment to the UI program at the Department of Labor? Have you gotten rid of it since? Yeah, we have. May I invite her again? Sure. So the healthcare assessment was given to the, one of the so-called Catamount Health back in 2007, I think, given to the Department to administer. So that was an additional tax that we were collecting and it was going directly into the healthcare fund. That's the after Obama was elected and that was 08. It can't. It wasn't counting on that. Around that, I don't remember the exact date, but 2008. We were able to accomplish that by using our existing UI staff. We worked with the feds to say, you know, we're going to come up with an administrative cost for this program. It's going to come out of the general fund or, I believe it can. Or it may have come out of the collection of the tax itself. I'm not sure, but basically we said we're going to use some of our federally funded people to administer this program, but they're going to charge their time to a state fund. And so we were able to do that and still be okay with the Department of Labor. And we were able to tax that tax onto our existing quarterly filing form and try to minimize the burden to employers. And we did that up until last December. We transferred the program to the Department of Taxes because it was not a feature we could build into this new modern system that we're developing with our consortium of Idaho and North Dakota because neither of those states had a similar program. So the cost and burden of building that into this system that we're developing was not something the feds were going to support. So tax... So you have some track history of how much over the years you're charging for this function. You should. Okay. Could you get that to us? Okay. Do you have any idea how tax is going to do it? How are they going to get this information or how are they going to build employers for this? Well, they're doing it now. Okay. But they're not on your four quarterly forms anymore? No. Okay. So we should. You know, we can't get you that just keep in mind we were not determining eligibility doing enforcement. You know what I mean? There was enforcement, obviously, for people to pay. But it was a different kind of program. So I just want people to keep that in mind in terms of the level of commitment from the staff that was working that hard time. But that, yeah. That's fine. That program had to go... Oh, yes, it did. So, I mean, it's just a ballpark to see if it can be done and how expensive it is. I'm a little concerned, Joyce, with the advice that you're getting. Because, I mean, you could put all the cabbage you want in your reformer. We need something. Yeah. You know? And that's... That's Dr. Fiskel's job to let us know if we want to move forward with this. Ideally, we can't just be told, you know, this could go to $100 million. Right. So... I think Washington sounds like even if we just have to borrow from what they're doing there, it's going to be... We don't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel, I don't think. I mean, it's not going to be exact one way or another. And that, in the bill, there is an understanding that, you know, this is the first shot across the bow. It could go down. It could go off, you know. But that's true of any program, I think. Right. So one thought I had was that we buy the Washington state system from them. So they are just developing that program now. Their program will begin to offer benefits until January 2020, I believe. So there's nothing to buy yet. But it's also interesting that they built in much more time to develop the system before they started the rollout of the benefits. So they had two-and-a-half years in between the time the bill passed and they first planned to pay out benefits. And, of course, that hasn't happened yet, so we haven't seen if they stick to their timeline. But I think we may have been a little optimistic last year in thinking that there would be one year for collecting taxes and building the system, and then benefits would start the very next year. That may not be feasible. The problem with the bill being delayed, though we did change the dates, didn't we, in this regard? We will change the dates. We have to change the dates. Yeah, we'll just do something about a year now, but then those dates could also be changed to build in a longer development period for an IT system or whatever it's necessary. The bill had passed last year. The dates in the last years, the dates in the last years were significantly less than what Washington provides. Okay, so I guess I do have a question. The governor talks about he supports a voluntary program. Do you have any thoughts what that might look like? I have not spoken with the governor about that. I think, yeah, I don't know if the state of New York is voluntary, but I do know that they, their program is more like a disability, short-term disability program where employers collect tax from their employees and they use that money to buy insurance, this type of insurance. I don't know, I honestly haven't really thought too much about that. I just, you know, I know my job is to think about how we might administer the program, and we've been thinking about that, again, just, you know, I know it's been challenging and Joyce has been really patient with us just because we don't have a lot of, I'm a number cruncher, I love doing this stuff, but we just don't have the capacity to do the research. And so it's challenging, and we're trying, I mean, we tried to reach out to Washington as well, but I don't know, I don't know what that voluntary program would look like either. I just, I'm not sure, you know, if people would pay in to cover the benefits for you. I don't know. I'm not sure. So I do want to mention that there are three states that offer employers the choice of working with their disability insurance companies to offer paid family leave. So New Jersey, California, and New York. Thank you. New York. And New York's system was just put into effect this January. So again, it's a brand new program that was just set up. The bill says that paid family leave benefits can be obtained either through the state fund or through the employer's disability insurance company or through self-insurance, meaning that the employer funds the program himself or self. But in fact, the bill doesn't have, or I couldn't find any notice in the bill of setting up that state program. So it says that there can be a state program, but I'm not sure that it's set up. I can speak to that. For the record Damien Leonard legislative council, the New York program is built off of the existing temporary disability insurance program. So the state fund was set up like 50, 60 years ago at this point when that program came into effect in the, I think it was the early 50s maybe. But that's beside the point. They've had that fund set up for a long time as part of their temporary disability insurance and their Workers' Comm program. So New York's system is unique in that it's run through their Workers' Comm law. So the insurance, your Workers' Comm insurer will provide you with a, basically a rider on your Workers' Comm policy that provides the TDI insurance and now will provide paid family leave insurance. And so it's part of that and the deductions, there is a maximum contribution from employees and then employers pay the balance. It's mandatory, it's not a voluntary. It's mandatory. So the insurance is mandatory. Where the employer gets it from is up to them. They can go through the state insurance program. They can self insure or they can purchase it from a private insurance company. But it's universal. But it is more or less universal, yeah. And I can't remember all the specific caveats and their law about eligibility and so forth. But it's basically, you have to either provide it or purchase it from the state. The New Jersey and California models are a little different in that there's the large state fund but then employers are allowed to purchase private insurance that provides at least the level of benefits in the state program. It could provide slightly different and more benefits but it has to provide at least the same level of benefits and I believe in both of those there's a caveat that it can't cost the employees anymore. It could cost them less if they're able to get it for less privately. I'm guessing that one of the challenges of anything voluntary is you get only a partial take up rate as a result of not having everybody contribute in the people that do buy it have to pay a lot more. Is there any examples or numbers out there of any state in the country that has a sort of a voluntary structure out there and can we see how much that's costing versus the the universal kind of system? I'm not aware of any voluntary state family leave or disability programs. I think your best model would be looking at you know sort of private disability insurance bills whether they're run through an employer or a union but that's way outside of my area of expertise. All of the state programs that currently exist have a mandatory whether it's you get it like in New York where you are just mandated to provide the insurance and then you choose where you provide it from or the other states which a mandatory state program unless in the case of New Jersey and California you opt out and I should note there's a summary of the New Jersey California and New York laws that I sent to the committee yesterday which I think will be posted on the website and it's just a page and a half summary of the three programs. It's kind of a 20,000 foot view of them. That's the tax treatment the other piece there on the back is the summary. Yeah private insurance options. Yep. So that's there for everyone and that should be up on the website for the other folks in the room. But yeah I'm not aware of a voluntary program and I think the main question with those would be how do you ensure that it's actually affordable? Right. Because you don't have the broader pay on and you'd really need to talk to an insurance expert who has expertise in sort of the voluntary insurance market where you might buy a personal disability policy or something like that. I just have no idea. Can you just pop your head and only have this can you tell us the contribution arrangements and mistakes that have this employer and employee right now? Off the top of my head I can't remember the breakdown. It is on the handout from the national is that national partnership for women and children women and families. Yeah they they have a breakdown of that and Joyce's chart too with the seven states also has a breakdown of whether it's employee employer just employee funded and I think that's the the way the states break out. The I believe Washington states both employer and employee yes I think so. Yeah. So that would mean I'm looking at three states that have both employer and employee benefits and two states that have employee only I'm sorry not that contributions. So three states employer and employee contributions. Are they all 50-50? No. Which sheet are you on Joyce? I'm kind of lost on sheets here. Well I have updated this sheet and I believe they This one that has that says comparison of family leaves in seven states. Yes and what's the date at the top? It's March 17 Oh that's X March 17? I have 14. March 14 not 2017 I believe it should say March 14, 2018. Okay I like to see if we have that. Did you update it in March? And I'm not finding my copy. There is an old version of that table that I'm looking at from last year's discount which is close except that Washington state government all that has passed version is half the one where we're at one zero one four the next one is a point two five five one point five then one point two point nine and point two eight so we're half the cost of any other state at this point. That's in much part because we don't offer a medical leave. Right. So the newest one we have is from the national partnership of Fed and that's February 18. I mean that's what I have in mind. So I think Damien did send around March 14 version which includes Washington state. Yeah the year was just not updated at this time Washington state. So is that the one sheet? This one right here this is the one you should look at. Okay so it is this one. Questions at this point this chart's very helpful for all the variables. There's lots. All right so no other questions we'll take a great tightening on. Senator Bruce is jumping out of his chair. He's so excited. We'll come out alone but before you guys go we'll work together especially if you need some you know what we need as best you can. Whatever caveat you need and I would like something back by weeks today Wednesday by next Tuesday. Thank you. Do you have anything else? Well I just wanted to say you know in addition to numbers I think part of the struggle is if you look at the Washington statute or the intention the PFL section it's like you know very robust like 50 to 60 sections and our bill is six sections which I'm all about simplicity I just I think part of what the struggle is is the lack of clarity of what we're trying to estimate. So for what it's worth I'm just I know that's not the answer you want but it just makes it really hard because the bill just doesn't give us enough meat. So I appreciate that but you need to give enough meat you need to give me some of that because I'm not sure what exactly you're looking for. I mean what does the system have to be able to handle in terms of like determining eligibility there's just a whole bunch of components that are not addressed currently. Well I think we'd like to assume that in terms of eligibility we'd like to use the law. We've got a couple of examples and you say you share I know you share you know whether people are getting benefits or not I don't know whether you share potential eligibility but certainly finding out whether someone could be eligible for unemployment you can look with the data you have and plug it. If you wanted to know at your office John Doe may be taking off will he be eligible you can don't do a run and find out. So at the very least we'd like to just use I think it makes sense I haven't heard to the contrary why it wouldn't make sense. It may bring more people on other people that I think is really unfair that will leave it off seasonal workers so I don't think it's going to be a big jump and you know there are other things we could adjust and we haven't decided what we want to land on as a contribution. So but beyond the eligibility what are the other things that you think are in these six sections. Yeah we'll regroup and we'll assist of our concerns and writing Yeah the programmatic things that we're just struggling with on how this will work and they may be really simple you may say like oh Don that's you know what I mean I think we just need to kind of regroup write something down we'll get it to you right away. So we're talking the same language here we're talking about how that detail impacts the administration Correct Yes Program I don't think there's any more complicated or less complicated than ours I mean I don't think there's anything in the House bill that's not defined that's what I'm concerned with I mean it's all there I mean there are like six variables and you know we've said what they are you know I'll go back and look at it I just my initial reaction to it was I walked away from reading it saying I have a lot of questions So we'll I just recognize what Joyce's task is too and I'm trying to figure out I know you want numbers I just it's a struggle so we'll work together This is part of what we're missing from the House in a way it's a more fulsome understanding of the full cost to roll it out So I think it's really important that everyone look at that feasibility study because the basis for the fiscal note is the feasibility study which lays out in great detail the qualifications of those people like B and so forth So there's a lot of background in that feasibility study that I obviously did not replicate in the fiscal note But just to clarify so we would be using the benefit amount from last year's House past bill Initially it may not be enough Now let's just deal with the the only thing we're changing is the eligibility and the IT costs So we're going with six weeks 80% for this Yeah just for initially Let me just be clear why would any of those things change affect the administrative costs So I'm going to give you a for instance Okay So for UI for example if you're collecting unemployment benefit every week you have to reapply for your benefit and somebody is determining whether you're still eligible Are these folks going to have to come back every week and have a redetermination or no but then how are we going to know they haven't gone back Those things just are not spilled out Those are the real question is because it takes time every time you're determining eligibility it takes a lot of you know people power to make those correct in terms of initial eligibility I think we can use your planetary termination I guess we got it if you're right I don't know if anybody's asked the question how often are these checks going to be issued and does the person submit a medical note or What do they have to do to check in to establish Right about where we're at and that's why I was saying let us write some of these things down because they may seem little but they could have a profound impact on the cost of administering if we don't address them up front we should be asking in terms of phone calls or whatever or other states how do they do that those details we don't have to reinvent the wheel absolutely not it's existing absolutely and those details are all covered in the three states for the existing programs and they assume that the Vermont program would be set up the same way so you are eligible at the start you're given a maximum of six weeks you choose how many weeks to take yeah it just it just strikes me bottom line is if this program whether it's piggyback or independent was prohibitively expensive administrative point of view somebody would have it already so as we can always take a little bit you know to cover the cost what we can't do is have a program that's 50% administrative cost yeah yeah so well thank you for having me thank you and California has been doing this for so long no they've been doing their temporary disability insurance program for very long time as have many other three other states I thought their oh two temporary disability insurance and the feasibility study there 16 employees so can you get your the joys by the end of this week by the end of this week oh yeah they're cracking thank you thank you all right that's exactly what I use yeah this chart have you got do you guys have this the feasibility study that's what I use yeah yeah yeah yeah