 This is a meeting of Senate Appropriations Committee. We're still working on the governor's proposed FY 2021 restated budget and we have the secretary of ACCD with us today to present and we'll have more conversation around proposed CRF funding. And if the secretary would introduce the staff I can see who are on multiple screens, who have you brought with you today, Lindsay? That would be great. And if you have documents that you want us to screen share then please indicate that and Chrissy will do it for us. So I'll let you get started. Thank you, Senator. For the record, I'm Lindsay Curley. I'm the secretary of commerce and community development. And I'm here today with the team from ACCD to present our revised budget. Kathy Thayer Goslin, who is our finance director is with us, Deputy Secretary Brady is with us and he'll actually lead us through the bulk of the budget conversation, the overview, I should say. And then we have commissioner Goldstein from economic development. It looks like we do have commissioner Hanford, although he may be pulled away. We are missing commissioner Pellum at the moment. So we'll do our best to get through the tourism and marketing related questions without her today, but we can certainly follow up if there's anything we can't cover or answer. With that, I want to turn it right over to Deputy Secretary Brady. I know you're all excited to get on with your Friday evening and your weekend plan. So Ted, you're up. Thanks, Lindsay, for the record. Ted Brady, Deputy Secretary, please forgive the informality of coming to you from the streets of Virginia in my minivan. Caught me off guard by moving it up a little early, but thanks for putting up with me. Chrissy, would you be able to share the fiscal year 21 restatement budget? No, you are too good. And I'd like to start at page two, which is just a quick overview and highlights of what the restatement budget looks like. So really importantly, the governor's fiscal year 21 budget included a very small up of a few $100,000 to our base budget for salary, staffing, and operations, but it included about $15 million of one-time spend. And I just want to point out that this restatement budget recognizes the new time we're in and does not include any of those one times in the restatement. It actually includes a general fund down in our base budget in recognition of the general fund shortfall that we're facing together. So I'll walk you through that general fund down of 397 in just a couple of moments. The other thing though that the budget does include is some general fund one-time ups. These are new things that are in our budget. One is an equity stimulus program, which I know the legislature has been involved in for the last few months trying to figure out how to do this. The budget was built housing this program here at ACCD for $2 million to provide stimulus payments to undocumented workers and those who were ineligible for the federal $1,200 stimulus. I will be candid and say, I don't know that this needs to live with ACCD, but we're happy to house it. The legislature and the administration, if we and the legislature think we're the best place. It also includes a general fund one-time update of $100,000 for a public access television study that was included in H966 and was not funded, but was suggested that we go to the CRF in talking to the CRF consultants and in talking with others in the administration, we've decided that this would be best to fund with some general fund dollars. We see the value in doing it to try to help identify a password for the public access television system, but it was too much of a stretch to use CRF money. And because we're taking a general fund down, we can't just look under the cushions and fund it somehow as we kind of, you know, hope we might be able to. The other thing this restatement does is it includes a $1.3 million foregone revenue calculation of $1.3 million to do a downtown village tax credit expansion. We were oversubscribed by more than $2 million in the round that was just announced. Construction is still moving forward. Our downtowns need this more than ever. Do you remember the governor had proposed a $1.4 million expansion in his original fiscal year, 21 budget. So this is already baked into the budget as foregone revenue. Then we have two other areas where we're looking for your help, the one that's made the news and the chair has already referenced is the Corona Relief Fund. One times this $133 million that has four central components. You know, we've run this business grant program, the emergency economic recovery program that is just about out of money. We need additional funds to cover four key areas, which I'll let Joan get into later, but to help sole proprietors, which I know you've all been contacted by, to help nonprofit businesses, to help new businesses, the legislation didn't allow us to help businesses that were just formed within the last year. And to help businesses that have less than 50% loss. We see a lot of businesses that have 30 or 40% loss that we can't help. So that's that 23 million. The second piece is a consumer stimulus by local savings offer program. This is the program that people are referring to as the $150 per household program. The goal of this is to change people's behavior. This puts the money directly in the hands of the businesses, but engages the consumer. Does that kind of Vermont patriotism thing to say you, the Vermont consumer, are going to help us turn this around? And that's a $50 million program, an economic development and marketing program to seize the day to send the message to Vermont's the safest place in the country to live. You should move your family here. But also to market to that niche group and niche areas where we can attract people from currently. And when we get out of this in three, four, God knows how many months to do a full-court press on a marketing program like we've never seen before. And then finally of that 133 million, you guys know this as well as we do, the hospitality and tourism sector, we barely scratched the itch with that $150,000 that we've made available per business. Sounds insane to say, but we have documented losses many times that in our hospitality and tourism sector, and that's before the fall. We don't see the travel restrictions being loosened enough to say that the hospitality and tourism sector is not going to sustain devastating losses in the next quarter. And then finally, an $8.7 million ask of the Joint Fiscal Committee that many of you have already seen, but this shows up in the CRF request through JFC, the Better Places, Safer Spaces, designated downtown orgs and municipal facilities programs. If you'll let me go on my filibuster for a couple more minutes, Chair, I'd like to walk you through our up and down documents, is that okay? Yes, we will. I assume that's going to be how you got to the general fund reduction. And I'm sure it's going to be vacancy savings. It's going to be internal service, 5% reduction and anything else that you might have been able to negotiate some savings on. So, so yes, we can go on to, these are your general fund proposals. If we take page five, I think is where our up and down documents start. Yep, and as you said, so we have, just as a refresher, we have four, sorry, our department's responding to something. We have four budgets. We have an admin budget, which is treated as a department, it's the administration of our agency, and then we have housing, economic development and tourism. So this is admin, and you can see that we are taking $164,291 down in general fund. As you said, chair, most of this is in internal service fees and other miscellaneous savings. For instance, we had a down in our rent and national life because we downsized our footprint and we renegotiated our GGS, renegotiate our lease. We're eliminating the funding of a position at ADS to run the one-stop portal because the legislature was kind enough to fund that $2 million proposal to stand up the one-stop portal. So they have funding to fund that position now out of ADS instead of out of our general fund. And then we have a few other miscellaneous things, but the big one that I did wanna draw your attention to because it is important is UVM Center for Rural Studies. They are the state data center. They help businesses, they help businesses, communities interpret census data. Michael Moser and Jane Kolandinsky up at UVM are the keys here. We're proposing to eliminate a $50,000 grant to them going forward. This year, we can actually cover that grant from carry forward. So fiscal year 21 will have a down, but we have carry forward to cover this grant, but fiscal year 22, we didn't anticipate not having that in our base budget. So that's a notable one. So that's it on our general fund. You'll see a 750 up in the CRF fund, the column labeled CRF dollars. This is in the budget. We need some CRF money to help us administer our business support line. Every position of the agency of commerce has changed what they're doing now. We have people who used to help do government contracts. We have people that used to run the training program. We have people that used to do historic preservation. They are taking phone calls from businesses asking whether or not they can have three people in their business or two people in their business. They're taking calls from people who are asking whether or not they can get a tattoo. I wish I were kidding. This is a big difference in what we do. And so we need funding to cover those jobs because many of the funding resources, the federal and general fund sources aren't appropriate to fund that kind of work. So that's it. Ted, it makes me wonder in fact, if it seems to me that just as you say, just about everybody in ACCD has been converted to a COVID relief funded function. And did you look, did you think? Obviously, general fund, even some one-time general fund is really very precious. And so my question really is one around the extent to which the administrative costs associated with the CRF grant are we getting really the full, are we measuring the full cost that the administration of the grant is imposing on your agency? We've actually been conservative because of the guidance from the feds, right? The idea that just because I'm working on COVID related stuff doesn't mean that I can get reimbursed for COVID by COVID money because the nature of my work hasn't changed. As a better example, when we ask somebody in Heather Pelham's team who does web design to design the business resource center and the individual resource center for COVID-19, they're just doing web design. So the CRF guidance today says that that person can't be funded with CRF admin money, even though they're doing CRF work. It's a little more clear when like John Young who administers the training program when half his time is being used to take phone calls from businesses about CRF. Yeah, I understand that. And I understand around backfilling and for general revenues. And I understand that when we had a budget, but as of October 1st, we haven't budgeted a dime for you or anybody else with general fund. So that's why, you know, I'm just wondering if in fact there's greater potential. I don't expect you to answer it, but it does seem like normally our experiences, grant administration is even 10% is pretty stingy and 10% of 1.25 billion is. Yeah. So I'm just raising it as an area that we wanna see if in fact, we are as within the constraints of the guidelines asking attributing the true cost of administering this program. And I can't imagine any agency that has really converted itself just about full-time to the administration of this grants and then ACCD has. So, but you don't need to respond. I'm just saying, you know, we were still scrubbing things. Thanks for the acknowledgement that we're doing that. It actually doesn't mean a lot because it does feel very different. So if you don't have any other questions, if you can take me to page six, Chrissy, that will take us to housing and community development. I have several questions about the CRF grant at what point are the CARES money? At what point can I ask those questions? Is it related to administration or one of the department, which program, Dick? Travel and tourism, the $50 million. Oh, well, that's a proposal. And so I don't know if this is in your ups and downs or whether that is being done separately. And that's where the commerce committees are gonna be taking a look at that proposal. Yeah, but I'm, look, I'm frustrated by that. You know, I would hope that the appropriations committee would have some say, and that's what I'd like to- Well, of course we will. Well, I'd like to know more about it than what the commerce committee wants to look at. So, shall we- It's been my, from my point of view, my biggest frustration here is what can we do to help our small restaurants, the independent restaurants, small hotels in the travel industry? And so, you know, that $50 million, I realize, you know, we have commerce look at it, we'll have our general affairs, our committees look at it. But, you know, it's being presented today, so I'd like to talk about it. Okay, I didn't mean to shut off the discussion. It's just, it would not be, it's in the CRF proposals. We're in housing and community development. Where do you wanna best address those CRF related proposals that relate to the departments within the agency, Ted? The plan was to just run through the last three up and down documents and then open it up to wherever you took us. And we'd love to talk about the CRF proposals more. Okay, then why don't we run through just the ups and downs very quickly and then go to those proposals that in, within that include the business grants, the sole proprietors, the marketing, the whole thing. So, let's finish the ups and downs and then we'll go to the CRF package. That is the topic of a lot of questions, including Senator Sears. I'm good to me. Okay. So you're looking on the screen at our Department of Housing, Community Development up and down document. You can see that the change is in $146,930, $901. This is honestly a few, you know, allocated savings and miscellaneous things, but the big one is we're gonna balance more of our staff's salaries on our federal money that's been coming in, the Community Development Block Grant and such. So this is a shifting of, that normally we pay for them with general fund, we'll pay for more of their salaries with federal. This is unsustainable, if we keep doing it year after year, but we can handle this this year. All right. Any questions on this slide? So the overall reductions just shy of 150,000. Total. Yeah, Bobby? So no one that works in housing community developments working on the CARES money, or where's that showing up? The savings that people are switching from working on Vermont issues to the federal issues. Yeah, so for that 750 in the admin budget was placed there on the last slide of CRF money for the entire agency. It shows up in admin, but it's really for the whole agency. Yeah. Can I punt to Kathy Thayer, Senator? Yes, I think Kathy's got her hand up. So please, Kathy. muted. When she comes off mute, we can go back to her. Okay. Well, and what you did is you took all the CRF, what you thought were permissible admin costs and put them all in that one sheet, the three quarters of a million. All right. We were asked by finance and management how much we thought projecting forward, how much of our staff's time would be doing CRF stuff through the end of the calendar year. And that's the number we're up with. All right. Kathy, did you still mute it? Otherwise we'll just keep going to the next slide. Sorry. So that's not what we did here. So in this, what happened was that the HUD gave them, gave housing a bunch of money, funded through the CARES Act, but through COVID and we got the spending authority from that in excess receipts. We're allowed to have admin money against that. The program will run for at least a couple of years. So what they're doing to try to help is they're shifting that would normally charge. General fund is charging the admin money from the CARES Act that came directly to housing separate from the money that we're talking about that the state has. Okay. So you don't see a big up here. Normally you would see the down of 147 in general and then up of 147 in federal, but it happened through excess receipts. So that's the finance, because they had to have the money start July 1st. Okay. So basically it's a wash and we're using the federal receipts that are coming from this new HUD CARES funded grant. Okay. That's correct. That's correct. So that charge against that grant in no way would reduce the number of dollars available out to communities or however you would. No, no, not at all. In fact, there's more money going out because they're giving us money to help those businesses that are housing and stuff that are impacted. And I know that there was money for sole proprietors that went out under HUD funding to the Brattleboro Development Corp. Is that an example of this grant? Correct. All right. Any other questions? Otherwise we'll move on to the next department. This is a nice easy one in economic development. You see the 47908, the largest piece here is we're cutting back on registration, advertising, purchase services, travel, things like that. We're simply not anticipating needing to use them the same way, go to trade shows, things like that. Like we have in pre-COVID years, this may bounce back, but we don't think it's going to happen. So we've made a conservative cut here in our general fund. Okay. That is pretty conservative, 48,000. Any questions on that? Okay, then we'll move along to tourism and marketing. And that's 38,000 and it's... Almost all in contracted services, international services specifically, we don't think we need to spend a lot of money in England and the EU right now given the state of international travel. I think that's probably prudent. They probably don't want to come here and they don't want us to go there, that's for sure. Right, that's it, that's it, interruption down. Okay, so why don't we go back to the CRF proposals? Because I think frankly, that's where they'll be the greatest discussion and people will have differing opinions. And I think Senator... Okay, Senator Sear's question was down a little further. We've had a lot of testimony on the equity stimulus payment and the fact that they would like to have an increase by two and a half to five million, but that's what that's proposed there in the first one. The second expanded business grant, is that where Senator Sear's would be... The tax credit is one, that's foregone revenue, which means we have less general fund to build this budget. And then the next one down is starting with the CRF business grant. Is this, do you want to describe this to us and then relate it to particularly are the businesses that are most severely impacted, in fact, some of them were actually shut down for a period of time. So Senator Sear's, do you want to ask your question? My question was specifically about the business grants that believe it's done. I thought I saw 50 million as a number, but... Business grant is 23 million. Well, I thought I saw a hotel and a travel industry, more or less hotel and restaurants. And actually my biggest concern is those groups and then ski areas and how they're gonna be treated. And those communities are also been hit hard. It's not just the hotel and motels, it's the small grocer who was countered on a lot of travel and tourism. So how are those... A lot of them are gonna go out of business, sadly. And yet here in Bennington, we just saw three businesses sell that were actually above their assessed level. They sold for above the assessed level. So I don't know who's getting impacted more, but I talked to restaurant owners and hotel owners and motel owners and they are feeling the pinch and they're really worried about the foliage and the ski season. So in response to the concern, we wanna make sure that we're relating to the right proposal. So for example, the consumer stimulus, that's the $150 grand, et cetera. But for the concerns that Senator Sears is articulating around the business, should we be looking at that 23 million? I think I turn it over to Commissioner Goldstein and say actually all of these would help those businesses in different ways. In different ways. Senator Jones, if that's okay, Madam Chair. All right. Fine, if you can link them all together. The big question for us is which are... And I think that's why the memo that we got from Tom Capet will be particularly helpful. And that is we know that some of what the federal government did for moving money out was not targeted and didn't necessarily get it to the place of greatest need. So I think to pick up on Senator Sears' concern is how do we make sure that with the CRF money that we have that what is being proposed is strategic and is meeting the needs that are most acute. And I'm sure there are different views around that. So we should look at, I know they're all connected and all are gonna have economic benefit but would we look at the business grant program first relative to ski areas, restaurants, lodging, et cetera? Sure, okay. Thank you, Madam Chair and good afternoon to the rest of the committee. Why don't I just say a little bit about the experience we've had so far which formulated our kind of the genesis for these asks. We, as you know, we split the money between tax and ACCD and tax took care of the retail, restaurants, hospitality, the majority of them, right? And ACCD transacted for everybody else. And so in total, we took care of about 22 sectors in total in all 14 counties. And for the most part, we did get people with the largest loss. The thing that we left out, the buckets of people, the categories of businesses that we left out are listed here in the both the $23 million set aside as well as this $50 million for hospitality focused at travel and tourism focused businesses. So let me explain. We know that the hospitality sector is probably the most severely impacted, right? Because they are still operating at 50% or less of their continued capacity, right? They are not where they were last year at this time. They are going into what is historically a very good season of fall. They've missed most of summer and who knows what the winter holds. So we wanna make sure that there is enough money to help those businesses that are experiencing sustained losses. And if we want to have this sector alive next year or whenever we get out from under COVID, we feel it's important to have this chunk of money set aside so that travel, tourism related, event related, let's lump it all in of the people who are losing because people are not coming to the state. The other categories that you see here are categories that people who missed the mark but are still suffering. So in Act 115 and 137, you had to have at least a 50% loss for a period for at least one month during a specific period of time. There are people who had 47% loss as an example who were excluded. So we want to open it up so that they are also eligible. It doesn't mean that they're flying high, that everything's fine just because it's 47 but due to the statute and the way we had designed this, it, you know, they felt behind. Soul Proprietures, as you know, we, the current grant program only allowed you to apply if you had at least one Vermont based employee. We know of many lodging properties as an example, small mom and pops who don't hire a W2 employee, they have themselves and they might have contractors. And nonetheless, it still makes up the infrastructure of the tourism industry. So we want to make sure that Soul Proprietures are included on the non-profit side, the non-profits. I wanted to go back on Soul Proprietures because obviously the earlier bill that set aside the 5 million for the female and minority owned Soul Proprietures created a lot of consternation because there were many other Soul Proprietureships that obviously got carved out. At that time, at least this is what I was told that the agency was quite concerned about how that could be administered, that there are estimated 40,000 of those Soul Proprietureships, the concern was around how greater opportunity for gaming, you know, the integrity of the program. So if that in fact is sort of a correct description of your testimony or concerns earlier on, how do you address those issues with this proposal? Yeah, I mean, all of those things still remain true, but if we really do want to treat folks equitably, we have to open it up. And there might be a variety of different ways to handle it. One is, as you know, the CDBG money went to BDCC and to Rivers and they were able to transact a lottery program, which at first was, you know, gave to lots of critique, but in actuality, they only had about 300 applicants to that program. So we could either set aside the money and, you know, fund that program since it's already set up. That's one way. Another way is the way we're looking at this is, let's not do this based on a percentage of revenue. Let's do this based on a true analysis of need. And perhaps one month is not enough to look at. So all of those things that you said though are still true. There are like tens of thousands of them and it is difficult. They are probably the most difficult applications to assess, but we just felt that it was in an equitable situation to not have that opened up. I'm not arguing against it. As a matter of fact, I had said to people, well, when we come back, maybe we should look at and use that structure that you just referenced with the agencies managing the grants. So, but I was just trying to take what, why the past decision was made with what was being proposed here. So another thought, and we were up against it, there was a lot of criticism for us, not serving the sole props, but the other thought is, remember we all had imperfect information at the time of making all of these decisions. There was no way to know truly what the overarching demand would be, what the velocity of application uptake would be. And we aired on the side of prioritizing those businesses that are responsible for livelihoods outside of just their own livelihood. And that's not a bad prioritization, but being that we were able to distribute to over 22 sectors, 14 counties, now we could start plugging the holes in the gaps that we left out first time. All right, Senator McCormack, you have a question? Yeah, thanks. Expanding a little bit beyond the sole proprietor, what are we doing now about married couples who run a business where it's just the two of them? Because it's not a sole proprietorship, but neither of them is an employee. I suppose they could put the business in one name and have the other be technically an employee, but there are any number of the small mom and, we call them mom and pop stores, and we got mom and pop B and Bs and stuff. Are they still out in the cold or are we doing something for married couples running a small business? Yeah, I mean, it's not whether married or not married, but it's just whether or not the structure of the organization is a sole proprietorship. You could have sole proprietorships with employees. I think the thing that was the deterrent for everybody was this requirement of at least one employee defined as a W-2 employee. So in the case of the husband wife who's operating the inn, if they're a single member LLC or partnership sole proprietor, if they could not produce a W-2 employee, then they were out in the cold. And I think our proposed language for this is just to get rid of that requirement of one employee. So they could be in on that. And they would be able to, they would be able to apply, they would be eligible. Same thing for, we had some nonprofits that do very good things, but they have volunteers and they have in kind. And so they couldn't show that they actually had a W-2 employee, but yet they do great things and they were ineligible. So we want to fix some of those issues. There were newer business who operated or opened up in September of last year and the way the statute was written, you had to have a one month of loss from March through September, March through August of 2020 compared to 2019. Well, if you just started your business in September 19, you didn't have that. So yet you were closed and you still suffered loss. So we want to make sure that they are included. So we, in a way, our ask is to kind of right the wrongs, you know, the inequities from the first go around with the benefit of having the, you know, the experience that we that we gained from doing the program. If I do one more, and again, this is specific to a constituent of mine, but I presume that she's representative of other people in a similar situation. So sole proprietor, but doesn't make enough to live on from her small business. So she has, does part-time work as well as an employee. She was advised to go for unemployment benefits, which she did based on her part-time employment, but it's a fairly small benefit. And she would make a lot more if she went in as a sole proprietor, and she's told now she can't do because she's getting unemployment. And she said, well, I'll give up the unemployment. They said, no, it's too late. But she made that error based on advice from the, she says the state, I guess that means your shop. What can we do about someone in that kind of a situation? Well, actually, we did not dissuade anybody from applying for this grant program because that they went out for unemployment at all. Going forward, we may have to be more careful of that just because we don't want people to suffer a duplication of benefit audit. But yeah, we would not have advised them not to apply for that. I would tell, I mean, right now, there isn't money for it, but if we can get these changes made, I would say that she should apply. I just give up the unemployment. Yeah, it's hard to speak generally. I don't know that specific information, but I think the things that we're talking about now about how we would administer another tranche of this would be to ensure that we analyze the need and subtract out what help they've already received so that we don't put people into that situation where they have to pay anything back. So, Joan, I have a question. In light of the feedback like Senator Sears is getting and the plight, and, you know, Senator Starr has talked about the ski areas all, frankly, most of us have got a ski area. That represents such a big need. How did you decide 50 million, you know, to give people a $150 voucher as opposed to something directly to businesses? So why do you have 50 million on consumer stimulus and 23 for the grant program as opposed to a higher amount for the business grant? I'm just wondering how you arrived at these projections because, you know, I think that the feedback from many of our businesses is that they're in very fragile shape. And there's been a lot of money that's gone out to consumers in terms of that enhanced federal add-on to nutrition benefits, housing assistance to whatever. So how did, what was the thinking between how you were allocating the money between those competing needs? Because things like 20 million is kind of modest relative to 50 million for the other proposal. Let me clarify, there's two parts of the expanded grant program. One is this 23 million, which is at the top of the list, but there's another 50 million that we had specifically set aside for hospitality-oriented businesses. So in total, it's really 73 million for the grant program. The consumer stimulus is just another creative way of reaching businesses, it's helping businesses as well as getting people to spend at those businesses. And what was the other part I was leaving out? And then there's marketing to just convince people to come to the state to either relocate or visit. Okay. So another option that we are considering is obviously hazard pay for essential workers. That puts money into people's pockets at the lower wages that would go into consuming as well. So Senator Sears, I just wanna get back to you too, because we only have on our screen, we don't have the other, the 50 million. It should be. I've got it on mine, I brought it down. Can you tell me what page and I'm happy to move along? I think it's at the bottom of the page. Do I have that right, Ted? It's targeted hospitality and tourism. Yeah. Senator Sears and then Senator Nidka. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think there's, I've seen long-term businesses make decisions recently that they may not have made otherwise and that's to go out of business closed down. The Blue Bend Diner, one of the most famous diners in the state is closed. That's partly because the owner said, I'm gonna retire. And it is for sale, but still we're, I think it's a sign of what's going to happen over the next six to eight months if we continue with the current trend. And part of their frustration quite frankly is the same as we're seeing in other states. And that is who can come to travel here. And we're the only state with this county system which has caused some consternation. And I'll admit, it's working because we're the lowest in the nation. But we've also got Maine, which is saying people from Massachusetts can't go there. So their hospitality industry is hurt. We've got people from Rhode Island, I think it is, or Connecticut that can't go to Maine. So you got all these kinds of things that are standing in the way of money in the hospitality industry. And I see foliage is one of the big times. And when that hits, and then when the ski areas, you know, driving back from Montpelier on a Friday afternoon, it is steady traffic headed north on Route seven headed to the ski areas. Whether it be at Stratton Mountain or Bromley Mountain in my area or a Killington or wherever, they're headed here. And if we lose them and those towns, those businesses are really gonna be hurting more and more. And yet, those towns are also safe, an increase in people that were second home owners moving into those towns with kids who are now gonna be going to school there. So it gets really kinda complex here and there, you know what I mean? That's what I'm really dealing with in my district. Okay, that's kind of an expression of concern. I don't know whether you're getting any indication in terms of the travel restrictions or liberalizing that would have an impact on our fall foliage business. Within the administration is that, and I know Center Star raised the other day, the startup of our ski industry as well. So I don't know if anybody from ACCD can speak to that issue. Secretary, would you like to take that or do you like me too? Sorry, I was on mute. Either way, Ted, do you wanna start it or fill in or? Sure, so we recognize we have a travel policy that is part of our problem here. And that's why we have this really aggressive proposal. I actually think all $133 million, a majority of that money will end up in the hospitality and tourism sector. A majority of the $150 million we've spent so far has ended up in the hospitality and tourism sector. So we recognize that we are constantly reevaluating the travel policy and pushing to say, what can we do next? What's safe to do? And I can only say that at this point, the policy we have in place is firmly based in data and science. Vermonters are reacting well to it. We have 100,000 or more visits to the map every week. So people understand that they're supposed to be checking the map, using the map. We don't want to make this harder for Vermonters and people from away to understand whether or not they can come here by changing midstream to a system that might make Vermonters less secure. If you saw the BPR poll, more than 80% of people are concerned that people from out of state are going to cause their loved ones to get COVID-19. So I feel like we're in the right place public policy-wise, but that doesn't mean we're not constantly reevaluating and pushing to make the map greener, to find ways to target those people from those green communities. And in the meantime, we feel a responsibility to offer grants to these business, make up for a portion of their loss, like you said, to make sure they don't go away. On the ski areas, we are proposing a specific $5 million set aside for the ski areas to allow them to put in things like winter tents, which are very expensive, after a strict capacity in the base lodge. Oh, you're gonna go over there. Just a second, we need to mute Senator McCormick. I'm sorry, Ted, we didn't hear you. How much did you set aside for ski industries to help with startup? Yep, so $5 million of that $50 million of tourism and hospitality money is dedicated to ski areas to help them do things like bring in winter tents. We're going to have to restrict lodge capacity. We're also gonna have to have them do things like ticketless, contactless ticketing, which cost a lot of money, which we have to help them figure out. So we recognize what's coming. This winter is gonna be hard on our Vermont ski areas and in the hospitality sector. Okay. I have two blue hands. I can't see anybody. So I owe Alice, and then who is the second, Bobby? All right, so Alice. So with regard to, maybe this is targeted toward Joan more, with regard to the new money that might go to, say for instance, a restaurant that was denied before because it's being considered a new business, if those persons have that application and it's fully there, can they, if this all goes through, but can they start applying now as a new business or will you simply review those cases? Well, this might be the tax department who might do it, but will they be reviewed automatically or should they start that process all over again, provided all this happens with this one? We haven't sorted out the exact last detail of how we would do it. If we pick the same methodology, we would say, sure, they're already in the system. All the feedback we're getting is that our existing methodology has left some people short. So we may not just continue with the same. So unfortunately, they may have to reapply, but it's to their benefit. I mean, I think it's a, what we're contemplating is a more fair way to sort it out, if that makes sense. So, I mean, they'd be glad to reapply. They're the best known, most successful restaurant in the village of Ludlow in business for many years, but a guy who worked there from the time he was a teenager, now in his 30s, worked there through college, his wife's a nurse, she worked there too, and just purchased it in January. And they came in under the original proposal for time, but then they were told that they didn't qualify because I think the rules changed. No, it's a very tricky bunch of dates in the statute. You had to have been established before February 15th, so they reached that. The problem came to be that they had to compare their March through August loss of this year to a March through August loss of last year. So if they weren't in existence last year, there was no way to prove out that they had the loss, that we also base the payment on a percentage of last year's revenue. If they weren't in existence last year, what will we need to pay them? So they were stuck in between the sort of competing dates, so we're getting rid of that kind of, we're proposing to get rid of that type of language so that people are not confused and left hanging. That would be very good because they, of course, the guy had been working there from the time he was a teenager, now he's in his 30s, and he buys it, like just at that time, even though he's been the cook in the kitchen, and then there he was. Okay, thank you, Joan. You're welcome Senator. Senator Starr, you're next. Yeah, as far as the hospitality, money and the tourism, where I live, the travel industry is vital to our total economy. And when you talk about hospitality businesses, if we had a good fall where we had the leaf peepers coming, the motels would be full, the hotels would be full, the restaurants would be full, the little stores do better, the gift shops, and in our area, it is one community that the ski area basically pays the majority of the property taxes. So if they can't pay their taxes and pay their bill, that means the rest of the people have got to pick up that loss somewhere, or they've got to get the money from somebody. So I think it's very important that what you're doing is very important and to help these ski areas that attract people. All four seasons are very important and so when we talk about the hospitality business, it includes all of those groups that I just mentioned and probably a dozen more. And that's a great point. We in our recognition of hospitality, we are bringing out people who would not normally fall under sort of hotels, bars, restaurants, yes, it includes them, but it's also, there are tour operators and there are retail shops and there are people who drive taxis and there's just event venues and event affiliated businesses. So we are careful to include that in the larger realm of travel, tourism and event affiliated businesses to make sure we capture it. It seems one area that we're talking about and that's higher education. And in fact, Vermont, if our economists have talked about, in fact, that's been a very unrecognized component of our state economy and that we bring in a lot of students, they bring in money, there's a three to one return on that investment. It's part of the reason we're number one in terms of the number of our population under age 21 and our independent colleges, obviously we have done some response to our publicly funded higher ed. And if you could just confirm how you're treating independent colleges relative to the one thing that we have to address and we put some language in hoping that there'd be some other federal money and that is to assist those independent colleges with the cost of testing. Cause these students are coming in from outside Vermont and we want them, they're an economic important to our economy. And I'm just wondering if you can tell us how those independent colleges setting aside the COVID testing which we're committed to addressing how they would be dealt with under your proposals. Are they included? Do they have to? Yeah, I don't think that they're included. I mean, we do include nonprofits and for the time being we've got a limit of how much annual revenue someone could have before they could be eligible. And we're talking about perhaps doing away with that, but we were not contemplating funding independent colleges with this pot of money that this would be much more geared to the sort of smaller nonprofits, entertainment type nonprofits, people who have been forced to close or at limited capacity because of the crisis. So I don't know if I misspoke, Secretary Kerley, if there's something else that I wasn't aware of, but not contemplated in this. Is there anything that specifically excludes them? I'm just wondering in terms of eligibility. In the first round, Joan, I believe they wouldn't be excluded unless they were over the threshold, right? Correct. In fact, we have an education subsector, but they're not the independent colleges the way that you would think they are, but there were educational providers that did get grants, smaller operators, but did get grants from us. So there was nothing precluding the education sector. For going forward, what we've proposed, as Joan mentioned, we didn't specifically imagine education in or out. I think we were really, again, caught up in some of these that we had seen through the applications were so hard hit, but I think we could probably go back and look to see if some of those applied. I would agree that they're a major economic driver to our state and they're suffering too. It's all around. There's more suffering than there's money, I'm sorry to say. Yeah. Well, I just thought I would ask, I know that the issue of testing was brought up back when we were doing the earlier bills. We put in some language hoping that the federal government would have another bill that would provide maybe more targeted money for testing. That hasn't happened. So I just want the committee members to remember that we put that language in, recognizing that need and it's still, it looks like it's something that we're gonna have to look at on our proposed list of CRF funded supports. So Chrissy, if you're listening, you can add that to our list. I will do that. Okay. Other questions regarding the proposals? Senator Sears, Senator Westman, you've got a ski area, I'm sure. I mean, it seems like everybody's got a ski area. Alice certainly lives in a ski town. I just have one comment. I hope that as we look at this, it's very uneven in my community. If you're a restaurant that could have outdoor seating, you're doing pretty well. And if you didn't have outdoor seating, the most popular breakfast place in my town, still hasn't opened because they're on the main street and they don't have outdoor seating. The canoe companies, which there are three in my town that go down the runway are doing fantastic. We need to make sure that as we stretch this money out, we make sure it goes to those people that can't. And that's some of the difficulties I think we're hearing because this is very uneven. And my town now is loaded with out-of-state plates. From Stowe to Jeffersonville is all out-of-state plates and our real estate prices are going through the moon. So that raises the question about incentives to have people move here because now what we're hearing is, actually we're having this concern and I've heard people within the housing arena express the concern that property is just going off the market. People are buying it. People who have second homes, Senator Sears had commented, family's moving here, it's viewed as a safe place. It raises the question about, well, if in one breath we're saying, gee, are remoders gonna be priced out of their ability to buy and have homes? And then juxtaposed to that is, oh, we've got to provide incentives to bring people here. How do you reconcile and why do, it's not COVID doing exactly what these fiscal incentives would do. And that is, you can work remotely now. That's been proved. And actually people are working longer days and more hours remotely. And- Are you speaking about yourself? Well, you know, the problem is work at home as blurred. And so people, their commute times, which is good for the environment is being spent doing work. And so I think that from what I'm hearing, that the concern about productivity and hours spent remotely, in fact, there's no basis for those concerns. So one of your proposals is to recruit people to move here. How do you reconcile that with your other concern that remoders can't afford to live here because of housing prices being driven up by this increased demand for housing by people who find that the very reasons we wanna live here, they're finding attractive as well. Yeah, it's a great comment and question. I think a couple of things to that effect. We do hear about people moving to Vermont without us having to pay them to come here. And as a result, the one-time money for the new worker and the remote worker, I believe we had to give back, I don't know if it was half of it or a good percentage of it, a couple of things. We thought no need to pay people to come here if they're coming here in their own volition. And also to pay people to come here when there are many people unemployed. So, we just have that as a kind of overarching theme. The marketing, however, is something that we feel strongly about because rather than just be reactive, this might be our opportunity to actually actively promote how safe we are here, how prudently the crisis was managed and what a beautiful place to be and you could work anywhere, why would you not wanna work from Vermont? So rather than have the money to pay them necessarily, let's have the money to distribute that information very widely and make sure the whole world knows about what a great place it is to be. As for a supply-demand dynamic, you're right. I mean, if that's gonna drive up prices and drive our monitors out, that would be terrible, but that is assuming that there's a fixed supply of housing if we could take this increased demand and use that as kind of proof that Vermont is in demand, developers come and start building up homes to meet that demand, whereas maybe before we've just had a constant shortage, but also people were not building because there wasn't this influx of demand. So I think it's hard to just say if then, I think we have to think about how much more we would need in housing to accommodate newcomers and do we as a state want to increase our population? This might be the opportunity to accommodate that. Okay, I just know that there's lots of experiences around the country where certain areas become where the locals are priced out and that's why in Colorado, the high-cost ski towns, people are commuting at long distances to their labor force because they can't afford to live there. So it's the need for recognizing the interrelationship of these policies and what the impacts might be. I actually kind of like the Northeast Kingdom and not having as many people as Chittenden County, to be honest, Senator Westman. I just say I wanted to correct your, you can't work anywhere in Vermont, but we're hearing that if you don't have broadband, it's not a sale. And people, the first question they ask is that, our firm house, I'm just opening up on Airbnb and the first pit question people ask is, do you have broadband? And if you don't, they are coming. So- Yes, and if you don't like them, you tell them, no, you don't have it. I'd say that, but I just wanna anecdotally give you an example, I have two, I have 19 apartments, I have two young people on both that were looking to buy homes this year. The second couple just said they're staying because they just got placed out of a house and someone from out of state bought the house out from under them. And it needed some repairs and the cost of materials right now for any young person to do that, you can't get any pressure treated lumber here. Not over, so there's a lot of barriers here that are just for our own people to be able to move into houses. There's a lot of barriers now. And I would point out that this committee was prepared to put more money into broadband using CRF and we could not figure out any way to do it. So that's an ongoing challenge. And our economists will tell you and reinforce what Senator Westman just said. The best economic investment that we can make in economic development is broadband. So as we're looking at all these ways of supporting our economy, there's no question that and that's a great equalizer between rural and urban as well. So I see Senator Ash's hand up. Yeah, I do think we should give people the phone numbers to our congressional delegation and the CEO's office of VTEL every time they have a worry about broadband since the federal government already paid to make that problem go away, but their failure to do it has left us in the lurch. I just have a second editorial point, which is I think it's worth being conscientious before carve out programs for specific industries. And I'll just briefly say, Chittenden County, which of course is the brunt of virtually all the hostility from around the state has 7,250 people right now who are unemployed, which is more than all of the counties represented in this committee combined if you don't include Windsor. It doesn't make any one of those people more important than any one in the other counties, but the broad nature of unemployment in Chittenden County doesn't lend itself to the carve out approach to specific industries. So we just can't forget that there is no county that is immune from this. There is no sector that is immune from it with maybe a couple of marginal exceptions. And I'm just putting an award up in the least parochial member of the Senate for 12 years, but I'm gonna now stand up for the 7,200 people who are from the state people might say Chittenden County's got everything and loaded with money. 7,200 unemployed people right now. So before we give all the money to a couple of companies which frankly can't be exported, you can't export a ski mountain, but you can export a tech business or any of the others that employed people. So I just would caution to putting the money in a couple baskets. All right, Senator, any other comments or questions? Senator Ash, and then I'll move on to Senator McCormick. Thanks, this is just a comment. In good conscience, I gotta point out as we keep talking about the benefits of population increase, and I do get the math. It's more tap people paying taxes. It's a better ratio of young people paying taxes to old people collecting benefits and so on. But I wanna say that the population increase also brings problems with it. And we shouldn't be just cheerleaders for population increase. There are sociological and economic problems as well. All right, that's another statement or commentary. Other questions of our witnesses. On housing, we have Josh Hanford. I don't know if you have any comments that you wanna make Josh relative to the proposals. I know we've been doing a lot on housing in the first rounds. And so perhaps you have something that you want to offer to the committee. Thank you, thank you, Madam Chair. I just came in when we were talking about the increase of people moving to Vermont, which is very true. We're seeing it all over the place, but also did wanna point out that there is some opportunity there, and places like Rutland, Rutland City, Rutland County that have tremendous underutilized housing stock. They've had a couple of decades of population decline. And unfortunately, we've invested many million dollars in taking down housing in Rutland. There are vacant and abandoned homes and many of our older sort of historic manufacturing communities around the state that if some of the folks that wanna move to Vermont see an opportunity there to buy those and reinvest in those properties, which are contributing nothing to the tax rules now, are bringing down the neighborhoods, there's a win to be had there. If it's all just buying 10 acres out in the woods and expecting broadband out there and services, then yeah, that could be a challenge for some of our communities to deal with. But there's an upside if we can get folks to wanna be part of our communities, invest in these parts of Vermont that can use reinvestment and have plenty of housing stock that is in poor condition. Our most recent five year housing needs assessment identified that Vermont has over 19,000 units of substandard housing, which means that it's falling apart. We lose as much housing each year and fall and neglect than we build each year. That's across even our $70 million in housing investment through our affordable housing groups, private stock. So we're not keeping up. We're losing more housing than we're building and it's because of a lack of reinvestment in those resources. And if we could find some way to target this demand for wanting to move to Vermont for places that need investment and have had empty homes in decline, it could be a win-win. So that's all I wanted to say and there's many of us talking about that. What that looks like, I don't exactly know but it's certainly a goal of mine to capture this opportunity and make it a win-win in some way. That's good. I know that Rotland is an example of that. And I think we have to look at some of it comes into what it, if you own rental property, what it costs to keep it in top shape relative to what are affordable rents, relative to Vermont wages. And I think that's been one of the challenges is if you're to have good quality and you're to do the maintenance, et cetera, the rents that many people can afford. That's, and that gets into the whole issue around housing subsidy and affordability. So it's a challenge and people are coming. I know people will come to St. John'sbury and it's getting a resurgence because of the St. John'sbury Academy which has a very diverse student group, et cetera. Actually, the former owner of Fiji Water just moved to St. John'sbury, Senator Ash for that very reason. So we are seeing reasons to come back. The other thing that strikes me as we saw exactly what happened in cities, an outward migration to the suburbs. In our case, it was outward to the country, our 10 acres on a back road. And we saw the decline of our village centers and our residential housing occur. It's a much smaller scale, obviously. And now people are understanding the importance of coming back into village centers and the benefits that come from living in a village as opposed to that on my 25 acres on a back road. But it's a complicated issue. And if we can find ways to, and I know you have the proposals around the reinvestment, the big question is what do you have to have for rent that sustains the ongoing maintenance and quality of that housing? Particularly, and the cost of rental is great and there's not a lot of wiggle room for if you have a tenant who doesn't pay rent or does damages. So it's, as you well know from being in housing, it's not an easily solved issue when it comes down to cost, wages and quality and affordability. So Senator Nitka, and then I believe Senator Ash. Just one quick comment. Just yesterday, someone from Rotland who was thinking, they're kind of looking around to buy a new house, they own one now. And they said, you can't believe how fast houses in Rotland are selling right now. So exactly what Josh is saying, there's some overflow from killing 10, people are moving there. And of course I live in London, there's plenty of people with second homes staying here right now and are staying for quite a while. Maybe they'll stay longer than the originally planned. So they've been here for, since March. Have kids, they're staying. My mind, great. We need kids badly here. So. Yes, we do. Okay. Senator Ash, did you have your hand up or I'm just wondering. Thank you, I already called earlier, yeah. Oh, okay. I just wanna make sure that anyone else, Senator Sears, do you wanna ask any more questions about the proposals relative to the concerns that have been presented to you? No, I think they've done a pretty good job, but am I frozen again? I think so. We saw you earlier patting Marley, but right now you don't seem to be moving. I know, I've got problems here. Speaking of broadband. You're talking well. As long as I'm talking well, Bobby, but my lips aren't moving. No. It's ventriloquism. I'm good. Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay. Also, I wanna actually thank Ted Brady and the group there that they've been terrific when I've called and asked questions and tried to get answers to different constituent problems and it's been extremely helpful. I do wanna say that, even though they can't see my face. Oh, well, getting a compliment from Senator Sears is a high point. So it's a good thing that that's on record. Senator Starr? Yeah, I just wanted to say to Ted Brady that the ready program that came out of my committee that we frung up when Ted was in there, was somebody testified either last night or today that the ready program has generated over $4 million new dollars in grants to Vermont. And so it's doing well and rolling good for a $75,000 investment. But Senator Starr, you did hear is that the funding is not included in the governor's budget. I can't imagine that. Well, we're gonna deal with that, I'm sure. Well, I'm sure it's on your list. I'm sure it's on your list. Along with a number of other things that are in the budget. Unless there's further discussion then we know that we're going to be spending more time on the CRF and how we balance out various proposals. I have to say that part of what we wanted to do and having some money is recognizing that with the benefit of experience we're gonna have to make some adjustments. And we saw that when we moved the 75% down to 50, now you're saying maybe 50 isn't right, the dates need to be changed. And so I know that perhaps there were people and we had a lot of criticism that we didn't move it all out at once. But I think this experience shows that having some capacity to address very legitimate and very needy situations, having some money to do that with the benefit of experience was a fiscally prudent approach. So you don't need to respond, I'm just saying this is why we did it. And I think your proposal and the experiences that have been described have validated the importance of having some ability to spend. So we'll have a lot more discussion, I'm sure as we figure this all out, but we know that a lot of this work has fallen on ACCD and the response has been very good. And I'm sure that Secretary Curley is not unhappy that she's no longer commissioner of the Department of Labor. No comment. Because the public response has not been quite the same. And I can't imagine the stress on the staff in that department. And so I'm sure that everybody is doing the best they can and unless there are further questions regarding the budget, the budget itself is pretty straightforward. I think the issue is gonna be related to how that CRF money is appropriated among a variety of proposals at this point. So I realize it's almost four o'clock, it's Friday afternoon, the weather looks nice out there. We have been on Zoom, we were on Zoom until seven o'clock last night. And I think we're probably ready to call it a day. So unless there's anything else, I'm going to adjourn this committee meeting. And on Tuesday, we will have a schedule out, we are gonna be meeting. And some of our focus is finishing up on that hazard pay bill that we had some discussion yesterday. So we'll see you all Tuesday morning. When we convene and then we will be starting up committee work on Tuesday afternoon. And a nice weekend. Appreciate it.