 Next is Commissioner Grisham, and this is Disco Updates. And Matt, you will have to excuse me. I have new glasses and I cannot read. I'm going back for my 30th year. Our chair can't read. If I sit and hold them against my eyes, I can see. No, it's the right way. I'm not sure what the problem is. Madam Chair, next time I'm going to use large type. This is large type. It's going to be 14-5 this time. Okay. So, anyway, good morning. I have the feeling in the air that legislative session is fast approaching. It is. The familiar cycle is. And here's where we're going to be. So, you have asked us to address a couple of things. The budget adjustment pressures. If it's okay with its share, we'll start with those. So, I think in many ways the ways we use that through last year's budget adjustment will see some familiarity in this year's. We have some of the same pressures. The committee will recall that at the e-board meeting in July, there was a, I think it netted out to about an $18 and a half, $19 million revenue upgrade. And to that, a couple of increases in direct applications and a little bit of revenue there and we have a little over $29 million available for the budget adjustment. I suspect that will be funding requests that are brought in line with that. For example, we anticipate asking the legislature to use some of that money to pre-fund some of our obligations that we know are coming up in fiscal 21, notably the 27th pay period and a couple of payments we need for E-ROF, the emergency relief fund that we have. We also anticipate a little under a million dollars in the request for the judiciary. I'm sorry, there's a weird noise. Yeah, and it's in my area. A little under a million dollars, I think they've pointed out to us. There's some requests from Public Safety for overtime, which you'll remember from before. We also have the Secretary of State's request for during an election year for funding. They usually get a one-time request for, I think it was $450,000 to run the election. Then within Human Services, I think some of these requests will be familiar. The Brattle Bar Retreat, we've been in dialogue with them. I think the folks in Human Services can give you more details on that, but we anticipate a request for the Brattle Bar Retreat. Within Corrections, there was an anticipated increase in out-of-state beds. I think our view, which you may hear later on, is we're somewhere at the point where we've topped out in that, but the out-of-state bed request has gone up. There's also some additional requests within General Assistance and the like. So in total, I think we'll be in and around what we have available. We're still dialing in various details and the like. Which we will let you know when we have a final number. I couldn't hear the beginning. You think it's about $11 million? No, we think it'll be about roughly equal to the available funds, which is seen in a written form. Did you say something about $11 million, or I'm just making that up? No, I think I said... It's just possible to hear back. Yeah. But there is something. Maybe I should sit behind you so I can hear you. I wonder how they conduct good meetings here. Well, they're probably going to have somebody drill in the street. I think it's a leaf blower out there. They're cleaning up the streets. So, I mean, my general point was we think the available funds and the available requests will be in and around the same. And we're still working on the details of that, obviously, but we wanted to leave the committee with the impression that the availability will match the demand in and around. With the budget development process, we... You know, there again, I think there'll be some familiarity with the prior year. We have similar pressures. We've got some pressures in human services and caseloads, and we've got the usual pay act. We've got some maintenance requests and the like. We're actively working on the budget. We are, as we speak, during the two weeks prior and over the next two weeks, we'll be meeting with departments who are actively going through our budget requests and trying to figure out what we need to do and what we can do. But I think the budget will be a similar story as we had in prior years. We've had a good amount of additional revenue. We have comparable, in fact, a larger amount of additional expenditures. And we're trying to make choices that will make those two equal each other. Caseload Reserves. Nat Ribbon, Deputy Finance Commissioner. I guess I would say that the state of Vermont's reserves is strong. The human services case of reserve in particular is a little bit under $100 million. When you combine that with our other general fund reserves, we are at approximately $226 million of general fund reserves, which is as high or higher than it's probably than it's ever been. It equates the combination of the four reserves, equates to a little under 14% of the general fund appropriations. And I think that some of the recent national stress testing that's talked about the impact of a potential economic downturn or substantial reduction in federal funds had us in sort of that sort of range in terms of the impact on Vermont. So that's good news. And we will certainly be thinking about the ways that our reserves should be structured in a way that present themselves in the best way forward with the rating agencies to demonstrate the fact that they are substantially higher than they've done in the past. We actually did some structural changes last year. Are we to infer from your comment that you're going to be proposing some other structural changes to reserves? That's no, I'm not saying that that would be above my pay grade, but I would say that we certainly want to at a minimum make sure that the rating agencies understand the reserves that we do have and that we have, for instance, we have some concerns that maybe with the 2753 reserve that they may or may not be counting that. So we want to make sure that they understand the reserves that we do have. Other questions? So the 226 million general fund reserve, are you including the 27 K-Royce? Yes, okay. That includes it. Yes. And how much is that? That is about 16 million. And the budget stabilization reserve is the primary reserves at 80 million and our rainy day funder balance reserve is at 32 million. Okay. Tax computer system. So that is a mouthful. It's known within our shop is CMF. And the committee will remember this was created actually over a decade ago, I believe. And there was a fund set up that was to pay for a new v-tax system, among other things, and also to allow it to be upgraded and new modules purchased as necessary. The committee will recall that going into last year, 80% of the additional revenues that were taken in due to the new v-tax system were directed towards the department of taxes to pay for the system, which is now paid for, and also to maintain it. The governor had recommended reducing that because the system was paid for from 80% of additional funds going to tax to 40%. The legislature saw our 40% and raised us to 30% or I forget the terminology with that, but the 40% went to 30% where it now sits. And we may have other requests of the legislature coming into this session on what to do with that. But you have a memo, I think, in part of your packet that describes in much larger detail what that money amounts to and the use of the money. A few questions, and I thought that our tax commissioner actually, our interim commissioner, was going to be there. He may have been thrown off by the earlier time, but he is available if the committee would like. Questions? Can you give us a hint of what was likely to come? We may look at the percentage that it is at now, 30%, and look at further changing that. That would be the most likely. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but I think they've been talking about that. I just want to be sure. I think we were pretty confident that the 30 was a good number, and you're not saying it was too low. I think the direction would likely be lower, but I don't want to get ahead of tax, and they thought about it. Question came up earlier. Who is our tax commissioner at the moment? We have interim tax commissioner Craig Bolio, and we are Bolio. I'll get that first. Thank you. I don't believe, but I think the earlier time, I'm probably at fault for that. As you know, I'm a former commissioner. We should maybe go ahead and let it go. The committee would like to hear from them, but I'm happy to find them. I don't. Does the committee want to hear? No. Okay. It was just a question that had come up in the people in the room earlier. It was the tax commissioner, and that says it was a reduction. There it is. It's a good stretch. I'll get to your call. So that is it. Any other questions for the commissioner? Thank you. Okay. We are on to environmental contingency, bottom expenditures for Elmwood Avenue, and Patricia Copolino. No. We're early. We're too efficient. I see finally, there was a request, I think, to schoolmate. It may be one of the grants that was submitted to us would be taken up by the committee, and I don't know if we'd let it be from that grant, but maybe we could have a, in the case of if you wanted to just explain what you're thinking. Yeah. Well, I thought in light of the fact that we actually were meeting, that we could take official action on the grant request. Oftentimes, the meeting and the need to make a decision don't coincide. So I thought that the grant to the Department of Health was one that we could vote on, and just get it acted on officially today, since we're meeting. So I'm willing to move approval of grant. It's on the 1155 time for the agenda. Okay. Accept that grant of $440,955 to do this analysis. Okay. Is there further discussion? I thought I saw some concerns floating around. No, I'm okay. Representative Sagan said he wasn't going to be here, but he was on with the grant. Oh, no, no. Senator Asch has a conversation and got clarification in terms of what the work would be. That was the one I saw. We were concerned about the suicide prevention aspects of it, where it would suggest we should wait for three years before we do anything. But his conversation had to do with consistency and accuracy of coding, and was much more technical and in its focus. So that question or concern got addressed. Indicated that he was following the acceptance. Okay. He's not here, so. No, he's in the normal group. All right. So it's been moved and seconded that we approve the grant number 2979,440,955 dollars. Okay. From the U.S. Center of Disease Control and the Department of Health, further discussion. If not, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Those say no. Okay, that carries. And we're back. And this is, I would like to spend your time for Elmwood Avenue. You, okay. Patricia Copeland, okay. So we're looking to have a permission to expend over $100,000 cap in two categories, from the Environmental Continuity Fund. There are two things that we're working on related to release of chlorinated solvents on Elmwood Ave in Burlington, Vermont. There's the specific to assessment of a release of chlorinated solvents to the sewer line that's in Elmwood Ave. And it's causing impacts to indoor air and homes where work needs to be done to take care of those indoor air impacts. And then there's a portion of the expenses that we're looking for related to assessing the degree and extent of that chlorinated solvent release from the sewer line. And the second piece is related to the second degree of cost for expenditures is related to actually taking care of that release, so to clean up a portion of it. The way the ECF is set up, there's different categories that you can spend up to $100,000. In each category, we're looking to bump up against those limits pretty soon. Questions? Yeah. Are you intending to go after the city of Burlington? No. And, you know, why not? The Gadget's dry cleaning is the responsible party. Well, maybe we should go after Gadget's dry cleaning. We are. There's certainly no questions. It says here that the city of Burlington discharged waste from a sewer line. Industrial discharges released from the city of Burlington waste sewer line on a sewer line. So there, wastewater sewer line is cracked in several locations that are downgrading from wire releases from the dry cleaning facility discharge chlorinated solvents. So we find the town of Bennington for putting a salt shed in a wetlands. I don't know why we can't go after the city of Burlington. Why are they different from the town of Bennington? So the direction from the attorneys within A&R, both in our general council and DEC general council have stated that going after a municipality for failure with their infrastructure waste water line is not something that agencies are proposing to do instead. Do you believe we find the town of Bennington on its wastewater system recently? Well, I think there may be differences between none of the waste water systems. There's the system, the facility, and then there's all the old water and sewer pipes. That doesn't mean that. I mean, what's good for one is good for another, am I? The state is actually working with GADDUES to try and get them to do their work in their insurance companies and the dry cleaning up before GADDUES. There's been a dry cleaning up in this facility since the 1940s. So you're going to... You're doing the work but at the same time you're working with the insurance company for the cleaner that actually produced and released the solvent. Once it got into the city's pipes, there were cracks and the solvent got into the ground. So now we've got to clean that up. City of Burlington going to play any role in cleaning that up, like digging it up, supplying the equipment, personnel. We haven't gotten that far into that process yet. So we're in the process of identifying that there are eight plus homes that have impacted indoor air. Right now we've directed GADDUES and their insurance company to address those impacts and have declined. So that's the first priority is to make sure that the people living in these homes have clean air to breathe. That's one of our requests so that we can install these systems. The second issue is that there is a release from the sewer line and a release underneath GADDUES dry cleaning building that needs to be addressed. The state is actively trying to determine the degree and extent from the sewer line and directing GADDUES to do both of those things. GADDUES has declined to do anything related to the sewer line. They're slowly moving forward with addressing impacts underneath their dry cleaner. Okay, so this isn't a new solvent that they are not supposed to put into the sewer line, but did, which is one thing. They're doing something that is presently illegal. Or is there a residue somewhere under their building that what happened? Or do we know? So there's a dry cleaner there that operated from at least the 1940s. GADDUES purchased that dry cleaner and then they subsequently stopped dry cleaning in the facility around 1993 or 1994. During the time frame that dry cleaning was operating, they were discharging waste through their wastewater line into the city of Burlington's sewer. They GADDUES owns the building right now. They're not dry cleaning there. They're doing some sort of furniture recovery process for property that was damaged during fire. So they own a property that has a current release under it and they are liable for that release. We've also determined that they are responsible for the release and the impact related to where the cracks are in the sewer line. So the agency of natural resources has directed GADDUES to address all of that. The release under the dry cleaner, the release related to the impacts from where the sewer line is and the release to all of the indoor air impacts in the homes that are there. GADDUES has declined to do anything related to the sewer line or the impacts impacted indoor air. The residents. So it's going to court? Yes. Other questions? I just find that I'm troubled. I don't want the residents of Elmwood Avenue to suffer with air that they can't or shouldn't be yet. At the same time, I feel like I'm hearing, I hear from so many constituents about finds that are levied by the agency and then they are not even going after the city of Burlington for their responsibility for their own sewer line. When I have to explain to my town manager why they have to pay fines for various things that go wrong in their systems. So it seems I'd like some kind of report from the Attorney General or from the agency about why we're not going after the city of Burlington. Before I, again, I'll support raising the cap only because I don't want to see the residents impacted, but I feel like we have a different standard when it comes to some places, mainly Burlington. I'm wondering if you have any insight into the extent or the possible extent of the contamination. I hear you saying that's part of what these additional funds will help you understand, but what are the concerns? How broad of a sweep is this? As the EPA removals program to come up and help us last summer, and they did an extensive survey of the general area around Elmwood Avenue doing soil gas sampling and indoor air sampling for us, we've narrowed down the impacted area fairly well so that we have a very good idea of the impacted homes so that we can address those. We've done a lot of indoor air sampling on our own with consultants that we've hired, which is part of the money that we just spent along with the work that EPA did, the degree and extent that we're trying to understand. Since most of the contamination appears to be around the sewer line, it's really hard for us to get samples next to the sewer line without causing an impact to the sewer line. So some of the work that we're trying to do is to come up with what the best remedial option will be. So whether or not excavation and disposal or there's some other remedy that can happen, we don't know how deep it is. Luckily, groundwater is pretty deep in this specific part of Brownton, so we're trying to understand how much mass is there to understand the degree and extent so that we can figure out the best path forward for remedy with that specific source area. Are you feeling confident that the individuals, the homes that are impacted, you've covered that? Or are there likely to be more homes that are affected? I think we've done a really good job identifying the impacted homes and working with them to try and address how to take care of their homes. We have done a really good job with outreach to the residents. I think we sent close to 40 letters to everyone when we knocked on doors just to make sure that we could sample either their homes or their soil gas so that we could get some good data to figure out who was impacted. And do you have a sense of what the potential cost at the end is to the state? I'm just thinking about the capacity of the fund to cover this. So we're estimating it's going to be around $150,000 to address some of the indoor air impacts and then do the additional degree and extent characterization. The cleanup costs are going to vary based on what we find when we get closer to the sewer line and that it could be upwards of $300,000. That would be initially borne by the state and then recouped from whatever parties are found responsible. Correct. So we will be covering through core actions. So that could drain the fund. That will come close to draining the fund. The fund has about $1,000,000. Oh, million. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Fortunately, yeah. And to Senator Sears' concerns, I would just say that I hope that we approach or spread as large as we can the ability to recoup the costs of doing this. I don't know if it's the city of Burlington, but whatever parties that are out there, we should be looking at them to pay for the cost of the damage they caused. It's always our intent to cover those costs. To me, it's not just the city of Burlington. As large as we can net, we can cast. That would be good. Thank you. Okay. I need a motion. Some won't. Senator Kitchell has moved that we approve, but no second. Senator Westman has seconded for the discussion. If not, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, say no. Okay. Thank you. It has been very quiet. Okay, Sarah, if you want to, it might be the only way to hear. I'll tell everybody, the acoustics in this room are terrible. Maybe they're good up there, but we need everybody to talk up. If anyone in the back is really struggling. Yeah, why don't we do that? Let us know, but the acoustics are bad. We have to do three handouts. Okay. Well, thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity. It's been 14 years since I had this position, but a lot of things haven't changed as I'm starting to realize as we move on. I'd like just, if at all possible, because I want to wait for Secretary Quinn to be here as well, to sort of move the IE&E portion of this until the end and start writing with the strategic plan and update if that's okay, Madam Chair. So let's start with this. Last week, I've been on the job for one full week, so last week I had the opportunity to review the progress of the agency's strategic plan. I would describe the progress to date as a culmination of a plan in developing a strategic plan and the progress to date, as you can see, some of the things that we have done so far on the slide deck is the fact that we have developed an agency-wide project team and development plan. We've onboarded consultants to support data analysis. We've compiled evidence and trend analysis from state national and international sources and submitted legislative reports. We've conducted cross-agency focus groups. We facilitated dialogues with department management teams, two rounds of that, and organized the integrated district and department feedback. We identified and prioritized several challenging trends and themes, which I'll just go in in a minute. I did ask the team last week after I had the opportunity to review this to do a couple of things, and I hope I want to get your feedback. I asked them to focus on the five years instead of the ten years, and the reason I asked them that is oftentimes 10-year plans become less focused, and five-year plans are more focused than 10-year plans. I also asked them to look at how this plan fits into the larger state strategic plan, because a strategic plan that doesn't fit into a larger strategic plan really doesn't have a chance of moving forward. I said, look at this as an ongoing process that needs to be refined and implemented. If we look at this as just a report, it's going to be just a report. So if we are really serious about a strategic plan, then it's an evolving document that continues over time as we move forward. So the update is we've done some work to date. We have more to do as we move forward, quite a bit to do as we move forward. Some of the things that we've noticed so far, and one of the things that won't surprise any of you in this room, is the fact that the aging population in Vermont is going to have a major impact on us. And how we sort of move to address those impacts is something that is going to be within the strategic plan as we move forward. So that's an update of where we are on the strategic plan. Again, more to come, but a lot has been done, but a lot more needs to be done as we move forward. The next item, Sarah, I'm going to need you up here. I think it's physical pressures as we move forward. The way that I've, we're on this slide, agency human services physical pressures, I've divided sort of the workload here because I have to get up to speed on the federal CHIP program as opposed to when I was knowing it before, and also some of the caseload items that I'll ask Sarah to address. The first one is an update on the Brattle World Retreat. I am fairly familiar with this. I've been quite a bit on the Brattle World Retreat, the status of the 12 level one beds at the Brattle World Retreat. Construction is on time and scheduled to be completed in the spring. These are level one, 12 level one beds completed in the spring of 2020. That's May. We do have the operating funds once those beds come online in our FY20 budget, and it's about $1.1 million gross, and annualized the cost of an additional 4.4 million gross will be included in the FY21 budget. So the total annualized operating cost of those, of those additional beds will be about $5.5 million. An update on the capital funds, estimated cost of construction has increased about $1.7 million. A couple of reasons for that. The original $5.5 million was an estimate that they have, you know, these are old buildings and some of the costs have escalated. We have mentioned to the retreat that we will support an additional $250,000 in capital appropriations to the $5.5 million. That would be reappropriated from existing human services projects and approved by the legislature. This has to be approved by the legislature, but that all costs above and beyond the $5.5 million plus the $250,000 that we said we would support will be their costs. So approximately $1.450 will be, will have to be assumed by the Brattleboro Retreat. About the 4.4 to 5.5, you mean they're going to have to eat the 1.4? They're only going to get 4. I shouldn't say that. They'll get 4.4. No, they'll get the, they've got the 5.5. Okay. We are not going to, we are only going to support $250,000 of the 1.7 over, so they eat 1.4. Okay. Okay. I think I'll probably ask that again. That's fine. No, it's fine. But we also mentioned that this needs legislative approval. So while we're on this one, where are you reappropriating it from, the 2.5? The $250,000. I think that's to be determined where it is, but it looks like we're not going to be spending all the money in the middle sex aspect of the capital bill and maybe looking at $250,000, shifting $250,000 from there. So we won't be spending middle sex, but that would be, yeah, I'm assuming that we'll have that need in the future. Probably in the future. Yeah. Okay. And for the, you said that you've got the operational cost of an FY20 covered in the DNH budget. In the base budget. Yeah. And so where is that coming from? Their budget was always tight. And so something's not going to be done as a result or the last quarter. It's, it's in the base budget. Yes. There's, we allocated that? Yes. Oh, yes. Oh, I forgot. I didn't put anything. No, partially there. It was a partially. Okay. Yeah. Then you can, it'll have to be annualized. Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. I misunderstood. Well, no, I, I actually misunderstood what we've done, but I'm okay. Okay. Okay. Other questions? Yes. We had the basic retreat and then in this year's budget, we added 12 more beds to go out more into the community. And they were described as more serving the CRT or providing a greater capacity for step down and therefore getting people out of emergency rooms. I'm just wondering if you could comment on those beds in terms of when they are coming online. Are you looking for a commissioner's role? She's there. Would you comment on that? Sure. And it's kind of confusing because we have 12 beds and then we have 12 beds. So for the reference here is for a commissioner of the department of health. So in terms of levels of care, we have hospital level of care and then we have residential level of care. So hospital level of care is the 12 new level of beds. Residential level of care is actually, once someone is in an inpatient bed, we just step down residential placement for them. The funding that you provided is for the most clinically acute CRT clients so that we can move them into a step down residential program in the community. And those plans are well under way. Are many beds actually online? Yes. So some of those beds went towards expansion of my pad as well as expanding community-based programs at existing facilities. So out of the 12, what is that? Are we almost there? I think we're almost there. One of the the challenges, particularly with the my pad model, folks remember this is a program in the Howard Center for Care's independent housing with treatment supports on site. One of the designated agencies that we're working with on this has been working to actually secure the physical building in order to provide the programming. So that is one of the barriers that we're experiencing right now, but trying to work that through with our community partner because this is all done in community, you know, with partnership with our designated community and public agencies. So they're coming on fast. You can retreat. Which will be later in the summer. Right. That's absolutely right. And just for the committee's background, I've asked Sarah to start looking strategically of where are we going with the whole system in the future. And we'll be developing that together as we move forward. Can move on to slide four in this package, which is about the federal children's health insurance match phase now, otherwise known as chip dip. I don't know if Stephanie Barrick coined that or actually something they call it as a federal level, but it's taken on a life of its own. So for the record, I'm Sarah and the chief financial officer for the agency of human services. As you may be aware, chip funding has a special provision called the qualifying state option, which is allowed for not to draw down an enhanced F map for children between 133 and 237 percent of the federal poverty level. So we were essentially able to leverage roughly a 90 percent federal share. The current amount that's built into our state fiscal year 20 base budget is roughly 15 million dollars. When Congress reauthorized chip funding in federal fiscal year 18, they also included a phase down to this enhanced F map. We in Vermont are going to start experiencing this phase down of enhanced match in the state fiscal year 21 budget. We'll be phasing down for 90 percent to 70.95 percent. This is going to have an impact on our general fund of roughly 4.8 million dollars. That's for state fiscal year 21. We will see the second year of the phase down of this enhanced match in state fiscal year 22 to the tune of roughly five million dollars of pressure on the general fund. After state fiscal year 22, we will be phased down on this enhanced match rate for chip to a kind of a relatively stable match for chip kids of 67.7 percent. That's the chip dip. Nobody told me this before I took the job. No other questions from the appropriations people? All right. Great. So for the other fiscal pressures, we are trying to highlight for you some of the things that are standing out to us at this point in time. I think ideally you will be familiar with several of these items. I believe I was in here in July testifying on a just kind of overall closeout picture. And so the first two bullets under FY 19 closeout items, I think should not be surprised to you in that similar to how we closed out state fiscal year 19, we are seeing pressures in budget adjustment and beyond within the Department of Children and Families in two primary areas. Family services caseload, foster care specifically, as well as within the general assistance emergency housing program. We are seeing pressure in both the 20 budget adjustment and the 21 build. And so we anticipate accommodating for these funding challenges when we submit budget adjustment and the 21 budget built to you. I want to comment on the emergency housing and working with some constituent groups in Bennington County. When you get told by an agency of human services employee that if this individual were in Burlington, we'd have a different outcome. It's really frustrating. I don't want to pick on Burlington today, but I guess I will. But it's very frustrating. These folks are very hard to try to get outcomes for many homeless people. These guys, you know, will end up probably in jail because that's the only place it'll take them now. But in Bennington County, we're told by an agency of human services employee that if you were in Chittenden County, he'd get jailed. The rules of the rules. The rules of the rules of how they're applied. Well, I would have to leave the housing available in one part of the city versus the housing available for someone who's an alcoholic who is living under bridges in the winter time and suffering from extreme, you know, may have to have his leg amputated. It's a different outcome according to the people trying to work with this individual. Let me look into it. I sent something to someone. Okay. It's a crisis. I had a mother with two children that fortunately had enough gas to get to White River to find a motel so that they were not out living in their car last winter. And she's still maybe out of temporary apartments because they can't get the vouchers to work. I have a question about the emergency housing. My understanding is when you closed out spending in that particular area was high, higher than anticipated or estimated in the budget. What did that look like? How much was that overestimate? Because there's been a lot of emphasis. We tried to get, particularly in winter time, we did get the central Vermont emergency shelter up. The one in Rutland, to my knowledge, still is never materialized. So how did we end the year? And how much do we have? So probably we're going to have a repeat at the end of this year. Sure. So emergency housing program ended state fiscal year 19 with roughly $2.7 million shortfall that was backstopped at the agency. Part of that $2.7 million, let's say roughly $700,000 of it, was actually liabilities from the previous year that had rolled into 19. The reason I point that out to you is because that's one time in nature. And so we're really looking at a structural challenge of around $2 million in the emergency housing program. Out of a total, I don't want to give you the wrong number, so let me get back to you with that number. If we had $2 million, could we find housing? Is the housing there and the money the problem? Or is the housing just not there or priced out of? Because we're talking at broad range. We're talking people with alcohol issues and I'm talking a family without alcohol and drug issues, all not being able to find housing. Well, you may recollect in this budget for the first time, I think since the mid-90s, we did an increase in the TANF assistance. And the maximum benefit for a family of three, a mother and two children, was what? $640 a month. And that's for everything, housing, shelter, clothing, etc. So you cannot find housing for the amount of money. We did, for the first time ever, do us relatively speaking. It was a decent increase, but still far short of what our housing costs are today. And those are families just driven by lack of money and other complications like substance abuse or domestic violence or whatever. If I may, the strategic planning process that we asked you to go through, I think this is a topical area that we hoped would be part of that. I can't think of any agency program that I've worked with that has to say, oh, housing. And so I hope that that will, you'll give us some good thoughts on that along with transportation. You'll definitely be part of it now. According to Stephanie, the total GA budget is around $7 million. So you can see that that's a large percentage. It's a very large percentage. Is that the tool for GA? Yeah. There's other components in the GA budget, but the housing is certainly the largest. Yeah, this is the total. This is the table? I thought it was more like 11, but no. Some of the other, there were two things that I wanted, three things that I wanted to point out because one will be exploring later this afternoon with another committee, but 211 contract is not one of them. I wanted to put that on the table. Last week I asked the agency to explore a more robust response to the current situation with the 211 contract while trying to avoid spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it. I will report back to JFC in the very near future on this exploration. It's a matter of days, not weeks, when I will report back to this. But like I said, I've asked the agency to give me some more robust alternatives in this area. So the short answer is you understand that it's a critical problem and you're working on it? I understand that. When I saw that this was on my agenda for my second week, I said we better put 211 on here and talk about it. So what does that mean? I mean, will the contract continue? Are you looking for a way to support it? I'm looking for a way to support it at 24-7. What components are in and what components are out I don't know yet. And frankly, I didn't get to this till Thursday, so I'd like just a little bit more time to figure out what's the best avenue that at the same time doesn't cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars. Originally, 211 did not do the after-hour emergency. It was more the information referral and a partnership with the United Way. I think somebody said we were spending about a half million dollars to support that information referral system. And then a few years ago, DCF expanded to use it in this way. So is there money already in the base that is available, if we're not purchasing it from Indiana or whatever state it was, is there money that is available to support this alternative yet to be developed? We are looking at those questions right now. I don't know if there's money in the base at the current time for this. Or does 211 need everything that's there to reach that? Yeah, that's those. Wasn't that a correct contract? In state, correct? There were two contracts that were getting confused here. There's the contract that we have with 211. 211 had a contract with Indiana and that was the snowball effect that sort of happened, that canceled. And now we're in the situation we're in. But we need to take this seriously as we move forward. Well, we had snow in Danville yesterday in the air, so we had it not cold, but there's not far away. You and the banana fell probably past. Just so you know, it's late this morning because my glass of nitrous closed. And it was seven cars. I heard stuck in there yesterday. So you're going to be giving us within a week or so? Within days, yeah. Within days, and that'll come to the committee. It will come to the committee. I just want to be clear what we're looking for. Okay, okay. DSRs? So Delivery System Reform Investments, we just wanted to bring this issue to your attention. I think some of you are probably aware of it because of recent events. But we are, as we develop our budget adjustment for fiscal year 20, we are taking into consideration these requests from the ACO. As I said, it is still under development. So we don't have any final numbers yet, but it is part of consideration. If Madam Chair, I think LIHEAP, Friday I went to bed really worried about LIHEAP and the LIHEAP block grant. We had not received the funding. There was no clear indication from the federal government of when we were going to receive the funding for LIHEAP. This morning I woke up and found out that the money came in over the weekend. At 90% of last year's amount, we'll be getting that money out. I planned to have spent more time on this, on sort of contingency plans and everything that we had developed. But we plan to get the money out on November 12th, which was the original date that we had planned to get the money out. We'll be finalizing all the IT things that we have to do on November 7th. But the funding has come in at 90% of the last year's level. And so that's, we're getting 90%. We're not going to get another 10 later on. Yeah, I'm not certain of that. But I was worried we were getting zero. Yeah, I don't know what will happen. There still isn't a continuing resolution on any of this. So how the federal government is giving us the money as long as we got it, I'm not asking. I'm just going to cash the check and spend it. That's right. And what is 90, or what's the difference? I think it's around $10 billion. I haven't really... So the 90% award is roughly 18.5 million? I'm sorry. So I think it would be in the 20 million range to get 100% of the award. Okay, 100% of where we were. Right. Nothing 100% about this award. Yeah. Okay. Other questions? Global commitment. This is an area that I'm generally well versed in. As you realize, as you probably all know that I was intimately involved in the original 1115 Global Commitment waiver. But I've noticed things have changed since then. To some extent, not for the better with constraints in the amounts and how we sort of use the Medicaid money so that we can spend. I'm becoming familiar with the new variation of the 1115 waiver. But I thought, so I wouldn't stick my foot into my mouth, is to turn this section over to Sarah to give a clear and more concise update. So I don't say 10 million as opposed to 19 million. As we move over to Sarah. Okay, so go to page two of the 1115 or the Global Commitment waiver presentation. For your awareness, the state has submitted an amendment request to CMS for a serious mental illness SMI waiver to our 1115 waiver, which is our Medicaid program. We submitted that on September 9th. This waiver would allow us to draw down federal participation for services and psychiatric institutes for mental disease, IMDs, where the statewide average length of stay is less than or equal to 30 days. And the maximum is less than 60 days. So from a fiscal perspective, this will essentially allow us to shift about 12 million dollars in expenditure from investments to our regular program Medicaid. This is critical and we'll talk about it on the last slide. This is critical as we assess our ability to make delivery system reform investments underneath our investment cap. We anticipate that this waiver amendment will be effective for January 1st of 2020. And we are in the beginning negotiation stages with CMS. I want to make clear, though this is shifting 12 million from investment to program, it's not actually new federal dollars. I want to make clear that for the forensic patients, they will long term, we have to phase down those folks as part of our IMD phase down. But we still have the authority to leverage federal dollars for the forensic patients as part of our investment authority under our existing waiver now. So the 12 million is net of the forensic? It is. The 12 million total will be shifting. But I thought you said someone still remain in investments for the forensic. So it's net then. Correct. Hey, the next slide, just in general, as we talked a bit about during the session, we are in our preparation phase for renewal of our next 1115 waiver. Our current waiver expires on December 31st of 2021, which is really not that far away. We are currently in the planning phases and will be requesting legislative authority from you in the FY 21 big bill to pursue this waiver renewal. We anticipate that negotiations with CMS will begin in January of 2021. And the new waiver would be in effect on January 1st of 2022. So some of the big considerations going to slide four for our next waiver renewal. We talked quite a bit about this during the last session is our budget neutrality cap, which is essentially what we have to spend overall in our Medicaid program. Longstanding CMS policy requires that 1115 waivers have to be budget neutral to the federal government. So that means anything that we spend with our waiver has to be less than what we would have spent without a waiver. So in Vermont, what our waiver has allowed us to spend Medicaid funds are our investments. That's one of the key areas in the calendar year that we're in now. That's 138 and a half million dollars that we would not be able to spend if we did not have our current 1115 waiver. One of the things that the federal government has signaled to Vermont and to all states is that they're going to continue rebasing budget neutrality, which essentially means they're going to continue to tighten down on that overall Medicaid cap, how much we are allowed to spend. And so as we prepare for negotiations, this is one of the key areas that we are focusing on. In addition, next November is an election year and so with the change in federal administration can come new areas of focus. I think it is important to remember that when we negotiated our last waiver, which is where we really started to see the tightening down of flexibilities that Vermont has enjoyed for years, that was under the Obama administration. And so the Trump administration is really kind of still continuing on what had been a tightening that started with the prior administration. Can you tell me what wow is with that waiver? Yes, wow is with that waiver. WW is with waiver. Wow. That's right. Slide five just it gives you thermometers kind of add a glimpse prior to the last waiver negotiation. Our overall Medicaid spending cap was cumulative over five years and at such a large amount that we would never have the state funds to even come close to getting close to that cap of spending. But as you can see from these thermometers with the new definitions of budget neutrality, we've gotten closer than we ever would have previously. So the middle thermometer is for calendar year 19. We are predicting to be within 8% of our cap, roughly $114 million. For calendar year 20, we are showing a slight increase to 11% of our overall cap just to kind of give you a flavor of where we are now and where we think we're going to be. The last slide talks about our investments. So underneath our overall Medicaid budget neutrality cap, we have a sub cap for investments. The small the small table with the numbers shows you over the calendar years what our annual investment limit was. So the middle column of $138.5 million. That's for the calendar year that we're in right now. So even though we are still you know a quarter from this year ending roughly, we are predicting to be roughly on budget when you see a balance of $304,000. You'll see that prior to calendar years, we were basically on budget in both of those years. As we look to the future, you do notice that there is more room in the futures, but that's because we are assuming in most cases, level fund budgets. And so we know that over time, spending will change and that we will likely continue to push up under this investment cap. So the analysis that my team has put together does allow for the readable rate increases that we both did last year, as well as for the 12 new beds coming online. That's a significant pressure on our investment cap. In addition, in this scenario, we are assuming that we are making some delivery system reform investments. And so we have to make sure we have the cap authority underneath our investment cap. We also assumed that the SMIs, serious mental illness waiver that we talked about my first slide, that we get that authority in January. We need that authority so that we can make the delivery system reform investments as we move forward. And so I think the bottom line space underneath our investment cap is tight. So let's Secretary Quinn. Morning, Dan Smith. Hi, Dan. It's Tracey. You're on speakerphone with the committee. Okay, thank you. Okay. We're off. Okay. This is a joint presentation between the HCE human services and the agency of digital services. We've submitted the required report on the integrated eligibility and enrollment project as a prerequisite for releasing the third third installment of the money's $750,000 appropriated through the FY 2021 capital bill. The update gave the status of various projects as of October 22nd and reported that three out of the four projects that were anticipated to be delivered in 2019 were either done or on schedule. The fourth product, the business intelligence has encountered delays and is now scheduled for delivery at the earliest of February at the latest of April, as opposed to the original date in July. In 2023, additional projects are scheduled in addition to the CMS mitigation commitments for the age blind and disabled so far. The premium processing and the online application deliveries are on track. The master data management project has been put on hold because of the number of the number of projects that are in flight. These presentations have been made to other committees and we would request the third installment of the $715,000 to be released. John, I don't know how these usually work, so take it away from whatever you want to do. I don't think there's any set product. I would just say John Quinn for the record, agency of digital services. Last time we were here Deputy Diva Commissioner Cass Madison was sitting where Secretary Smith was sitting. And to just talk about that transition for a quick moment, the AHS leadership has put new people in charge of the project. We're doing a retrospective right now on the road map that we've taken and the work that we've done to look at the overall project technical road map and how it aligns with MMIS to make sure that we're utilizing our money and our resources as effectively as possible across not only human services but across the enterprise. The new leadership in place comes from the MMIS side of the Diva house so to speak and we have a very good working relationship with them. I feel very confident in the communication going on with them and under Mike's leadership now I feel very confident that going forward we'll see project success with us. We took testimony on this at our Joint Information Technology Oversight and is there a memo from the chair and co-chair of that community? This is Catherine Bennett from the Joint Fiscal Office. There's not an official memo at this time but there were six legislators who were supposed to provide a recommendation and they emailed the chair and vice chair which I talked emailed and said yes they approve this but they're going to keep they're concerned about some of the projects and they're going to keep an eye on this project and we'll continue through the rest until the legislative session starts talking and hearing more about this. So of the six chairs that had to provide a recommendation I heard from five and they all supported providing approving this funding but along with the answer to this recommendation keeping an eye on how it's looking forward and I think there were some other questions but I'll let you know. The other question was you're able to keep in budget because some things are delayed in terms of when they're coming on or the expenditures and so there was concern overall are we going to be within the estimated costs and we were assured and I think this is the purpose of this financial sheet on the back that yes there's variability when bills come in and so forth and some things may be coming in higher some a bit lower we weren't seeing as many of the more ones but the estimate was within that estimate that was provided to institutions when they were developing the capital bill request. So that was I'm not the only one on joint information technology here okay so I'm just letting you know what our discussion was and then the other was the consolidation recognizing that the Medicaid management that's what the MMIF is it's a claims it pays the bills it pays providers so the MMIF which has been headed up by Laurie Collins it was viewed that because sort of the functional inter interplay between these two IT systems that it would be good to consolidate the project director I what do you call it I love all this new jargon in flight does in flight mean you're started and your plane has left the airport but it hasn't landed yet I mean from the time it leaves the gate right whether you're taxing on the runway or you're in the air so we could have just sitting in line no I take it as in moving right so the project that contracts have been executed there's people on the ground and we're starting to plan so that was what we had for testimony at the time that has led to this there was concern about obviously when you have a change in leadership but Laurie has been with Eva she has been there so long if she would start in social welfare so it's like 40 years experience in working with this and so the money was the other and the concern also was around what has what's in the red box and that was you know the the delay of that so that's sort of the discussion from your what are we gy talk all right it's that yeah that's correct pretty much capture and I believe Cassandra Madison walked through the ups and downs with Senator Brock after the last meeting to show where the where the low points were and where the high points were to to you know further explain in more detail than the report had I'm glad somebody knows what's going on because I'm feeling totally lost at this point Mary um thank you what is doing a retrospective me we're looking back at what we've done so far on the on all of the projects that we've undertaken as part of the IE portfolio what's worked what hasn't we've been moving so fast for the past couple of years so I'm making sure we're hitting timelines and building new capabilities for Vermonters that we thought with the leadership change getting everyone up to speed looking back and doing lessons learned what what have we learned so far across these projects what have we learned about our timelines what have we learned about budgeting for for these type of development projects what have we learned about our resourcing you know in the beginning I remember we were trying to do all of this in-house or a large part of it and where we've been unable to find the right skill sets to come and work for the state of Vermont there's the workforce shortage that we experienced just like everyone else and that's been challenging for us to be able to get some of this work done so to look back and say you know that hasn't been working for us what's our strategy going forward to make sure that we can meet the timelines that we need to meet I should say to the committee I I have a number of questions that came from representative Dagan and and representative Cole so I'm trying to kind of plus throwing in my own questions as we go along one of the concerns that Dan Smith raised and and represent Fagan did was the issue of leadership and having one individual responsible for this and I did I understand that we now have somebody appointed who who can be held accountable it's the individual senator yeah so that is the person in charge right so so the way I would address this because I think this is really important one of the things we've heard clearly from our consultant is that there should be one person responsible for managing this and obviously the secretary is at the or both secretaries are at the end of the day on the line for this but we want one person accountable in okay so there is so there is a program person responsible and that is that at this time is Lori Collins who's doing a great job the end of the day the governor is responsible right and holding secretary Smith and I accountable to make sure that this does this gets done but with these types of projects there's program pieces and then there's technology pieces so for you know what the way I look at it you know this has to be a 50-50 partnership under this new model of ADS and the consolidated model of IT resources you can't hold Mike completely accountable for something that maybe technology related that is solely you know on the agency of digital services and vice versa right so in my eyes this has to be a shared accountability between Mike and I I understand what you're saying about one person but in this bottle the way these technology projects work there has to be shared accountability I'm 100% at the table sharing that responsibility to make sure that we get this done you can be a little nervous I understand what you're saying I understand our government model that again we need one person who can call and make the phone call whose only attention is on this not on the vast array of obligations you all have under you yeah just that little triangle go next so so I'll speak if you don't mind go ahead in my eyes in our organizational structure that we've recently redone it's Lori Collins it's at the top of that so we want to say how come this doesn't happen in the way it's supposed to happen Lori is the person we want to have up here explaining to us what went wrong what went right okay I would keep the same way cast Madison and I spend the league of individual firm I haven't had an opportunity to really delve into that model yet but you know I understand what you're saying and the way that I understand that cast Madison had sort of you know you could call her I I want to try to replicate that as as much as possible I had one meeting on this already I just need to sort of filter through this and then as I'm sure we all were a deep concern about the business intelligence project and getting it going so we've discussed that but I just feel obligated on behalf of my two colleagues who aren't here to say that there's a real concern about that as well as with the master data management project I know that's on your radar I personally wonder if at what point do we have the courage to say it's not working we're done trying to do it this way and I I would hope that we that that you all look at that instead of it just seems that with a lot of IT projects we just keep trying to make it work and we find ourselves four or five six years later continuing to try rather than succeeding and I think we're all deeply concerned about about that and knowing when to fish or cut they to that point representative fagans original thought his original reaction was we should not be continuing with this funding we need to be you know holding um understanding this better subsequently having spoken with everybody and understanding the consequences of not going forward he's cautiously supportive of doing that which again I mean that's where I am and representative told were in our conversations about that but we just wanted to be clear about the degree of concern that we have um with this and that again at some point we need to say this isn't working if it's not working and we're looking obviously to our legislative committees but also to you all for assuring us that we've got it representative hooper let me just assure you and I have a reputation I'm not afraid to pull the plug if things aren't aren't aren't working I'm so as you know I'm pretty results driven and so if the results aren't there then why pour more money into it thank you I think the other thing that we need and it comes back in its reference all the time and that was the system that we set up at the time on the aca and and that's an absence being replaced which is so um as painful as this might be and this one area delay if we were to decide not to move forward with all the green which is some indication of success then we would be with what we have um which is enormously expensive um and um uh still requiring last I knew 50 employee work around so um I think um we are cautious if this had more red I think we would certainly be more concerned but in making any decision I think we've got to also um weigh out what does it mean to stay where we are or to pull the plug and if you should recommend that then we would have to understand what are all those implications I would assume if a plug were pulled that there would be a plan for you know how would how we're managing this right I'm not saying just stop but when do you know to go on a different path and now I wish I wouldn't have said pull the plug because it's not quite that it's not gonna make a difference for you yeah so I think it's important to mention that we we triggered a contingency so we have two paths going in parallel right now the path that we were on to do things in our environment that we already paid for in the state and then the second path is to add the uh Oracle business intelligence enterprise environment to the uh optimum fizzle environment there's all these acronyms I'm trying to make sure I spell them all out here in parallel we need one of those things in order to meet our federal requirements and comply it so we're we're looking at making sure that we have multiple paths so if we fail over here or if it's not working we're able to offer that other option as as I think what you're saying I mean the importance of technology that came home to us as many of you know we're going through justice reinvestment too and Mike was a member of the commission of the secretary of administration or I can't remember but one of the challenges we're having in trying to move forward is the lack of data that they're able to get from both DCF as well as the department of corrections department of public safety and all the different agencies so if you try to make data driven decisions and none of the systems talk to each other it creates problems and I asked so I asked the commissioner to see it well what's the recidivism rate among juveniles who end up in the adult system but we we if we even tried to find out we couldn't do it under our present system so I think it's before you decide to pull the plug it's tremendously important to have that information I've got to be more careful with it I think that we've always seen that as part of the value in doing this in our environment that we're already paying for us being able to use that data across not only human services but across the enterprise we're appropriate and by having systems siloed all over the place it becomes very hard to create those data driven decisions so you need a motion to authorize the release of what's it said I'll make a motion seconded further discussion if not further discussion okay all those in favor say I I oh say no that motion has carried okay that Dan we're going to let you go down Secretary's okay thank you very much thank you it's great to be back well what's the second one oh yes thank you okay we're now back Secretary Flynn good morning thank you very much we're here at your request as a follow-up I believe to the first meeting some questions were posed regarding the condition of the bridges that we just advised some of you about that point we followed up with the committee and I think the graphs are some more questions for us so we're prepared to discuss what we've been able to release public records requests at this point we obviously this is still an ongoing investigation being worked with the Attorney General's office so we will talk about what we have released and we'll try to answer whatever questions that you have bearing in mind we have to maneuver the investigation carefully okay I think also how do we know that this is happening in the future correct with me I think you all know Deputy Chief excuse me Chief Engineer sorry about that Chief Engineer Wayne Simmons Wayne spent the bulk of his gear also running our structures division which is bridges so he's eminently qualified and we will discuss how we provide oversight to our field staff which we tried to outline in this letter dated on October 3rd but it's easier to do it in person so I think I would turn that piece over to Wayne because construction and management materials is under the highway division and you can start there and that was that was in the minutes as well and that is is there kind of any any action underway in terms of compensation because at least from what we read in the paper the life span of these structures is less than would have been the case and so at the same time AOT is looking at these oversight practices is the Attorney General or any legal action being taken in terms of compensation to the state for the reduced utilization currently no action has been taken the Attorney General's office has filed a notice of false claims and potential breach of contract but no actions beyond that have occurred we are tracking all of our expenses related to this project you know our engineering time the testing the materials testing the contractor that's doing the testing and what what Wayne can talk about is what we see as the mitigating fix if you will which will deal with the shortened lifespan so those are all costs that we will attempt certainly to recover through the process but that process hasn't ensued yet what the plan is to absolutely I did have a conversation with Assistant Attorney General Dymond he offered to come before the committee but said he'd have to do it in executive session but that they are pursuing what to do about the loss I would I guess I characterize it as the last years off the project I guess it was supposed to be a hundred years and down to 25 so so you know that I mean I don't even know how long since the bridges are one of the bridges I use on this day I wonder I suppose I'll probably take my license way before the bridge comes right I'm just concerned that you know do we wait until it crumbles or do we replace it sooner than we expected how do you deal with this so if I may I can I can start there if you would like so for the record my name is Wayne Simmons I'm the chief engineer for the highway division for the agency of transportation so the the the design life of a bridge is not an exact science we are designing bridges every day and putting in certain practices that we believe that will get us to a hundred year life on a bridge as you may know we're replacing bridges that are nearly a hundred years old now but what we forget is is that for the first 50 years of their life they weren't subjected to road salt so the first 50 years were were relatively easy on those bridges which is why our interstate system we're replacing bridges that are 50 years old because they pretty much have had salt attacking them for their entire life so what do we do to extend the life of bridges it is in the types of materials that we choose we design them with reserve capacity so they're not designed to write to exactly what we need so and they also are designing a way that reduces the ability for salt to attack them so I believe it's my quotes in the newspapers that have talked about we may have lost up to 20 years 25 years of life on these bridges and what may not have been quoted very accurately in the paper was is that I qualified that by saying that I do not have an equation that says here is how much life but based on my experience and what I know of the situation we may have lost up to 25 years of life on some of these bridges and where I get that from is the fact that as I talked about it mother nature and salt attack our bridges and if we have construction practices that into that reserve capacity that I talked about we won't have that reserve capacity at the end of the life of a bridge to have that stay open and be safe so it is somewhat of a of a of a guesstimate and if I may I have some things to hand out and I'll get back to what we're what we're looking at in terms of repairs that we're considering so I'll just pass this out so I can set the stage for for what we're talking about so last June 2018 we were asked to meet with the federal highway administration our local partners here and they made us aware for the first time of allegations of improper construction practices on four bridges that were constructed by jay mcdonald and at the time you can you can see in the handout that the first sheet of the handout is a redacted version of what we were shared that first day it talked about two bridges on or over route 279 in bennington and two bridges on i-91 in gilford and the allegations had to do with anchor bolts and reinforcement in bridges so just to kind of set the stage because and I apologize I am a little bit of a of a bridge geek so sometimes I will say things like I know what people are talking about but I just want to get some language out so if we go to this picture of gilford bridge three on i-91 looks like this so the what you see here is a picture of one of the bridges and allegations there's the superstructure part on top that carries the traffic and then there are these intermediate supports those are called I'm going to call those bridge piers okay on in this bridge there's two piers and then at the ends of the bridge there are these components that I will call a but much okay that's where the bridge ends and goes into the roadway portion so when when we got the allegations it was vague in terms of what how much might have been cut where it was cut whether it was in the abutments or the piers so so we immediately took a look at the designs and we started to consider the risk associated with those allegations we reviewed all of our bridge inspection reports what we had on the project to see if we had any idea if we could narrow down what exactly was meant by potentially cutting anchor bolts or cutting reinforcing steel and what I will say is that from a wrist standpoint and the way that the bridges are designed we were much more concerned about any of those actions happening on the piers as opposed to the abutments there's a bunch of structural reasons for that but the short story is is that if reinforcement was cut in the abutments it likely was not going to be a safety concern because right now we weren't talking about life we were talking about all right immediate safety concerns what do we know and and how does this affect the safety of the traveling public so so we did some work some initial work and in September of 2018 we went out with a substantial effort hiring a specialized consultant to do what we'll just consider or I'll describe as non-destructive testing on the bridge piers that non-destructive testing is using radar and other high tech methods to look inside of the concrete to look for instances where it was likely that reinforcement and anchor bolts had conflicts which could tell us whether or not there could be issues there and to try to figure out what the extent of that risk is so we got some preliminary results and in January when the final report came in we were certain that there was a number of conflicts that made us concerned that these allegations there was something to to really look at we immediately initiated some engineering expertise from a consultant to look at the the way the piers were designed and to make some conservative assumptions on how many reinforcing pieces might be cut in any of these bridges and to tell us if the worst case came through do we have a safety concern again not knowing how much or the extent we just knew that there was likely an issue the results of that analysis told us that to varying degrees we had used the reserve capacity with these assumptions in all of the four bridges but that even with those worst-case scenarios that today there was no safety concern immediate because the bridges were still relatively new and and it was safe but we still wanted to make sure that we knew the extent of it and was the survey done just on these four bridges that you're indicating because I'm trying to is this confined only to 2011 so that non-destructive testing was confined to the four bridges in the allegation in the spring of this year as soon as the weather permitted we did order our bridge inspection teams out in the field and they inspected a special inspection hands-on to look at all of the bridges that jay mcdonald had constructed between 2002 and the present you have a list of those bridges that we inspected in your package not all of them had piers but the ones that did have piers I word the bridge inspectors to actually have full access so they could get up there and see them firsthand to see if there was any reason to believe that any of the bridges weren't performing the way that they were supposed yes company that's sold sometime between the period of time you're referencing so are the allegations both under the prior ownership or isolated with the subsequent to the sale or you don't know yet so the the allegations and the and the construction of these bridges preceded the sale of the company and they were all in a set period they were all at least for these allegations narrowly confined but you may be aware that previous to these allegations jay mcdonald alto was subject to an investigation again from a whistleblower about improper construction in a bristol bridge in which the federal highway administration and the federal government settled a monetary and they had to win and do repairs on the bridge after it was constructed to restore that so once we once we had the engineering review of these bridges done I prioritized the next steps based on how much of the reserve capacity was used because again to me I care about the long term but immediately it was about safety and making sure that we knew what was going on and because of the the design and the types of the bridge bridges the east road bridge over 279 was our highest priority to get to the end of the investigation and to take a deeper look so in July of this year using the results that we had from the non-destructive testing we started a destructive investigation not something that we take very lightly it's never good to break into new concrete to see what's under the surface but it was necessary here to confirm what we were what we believed to be the case so in July we began testing destructively on the east road bridge and we have received confirmation based on that testing that some of the allegations were true the the good news is that we did not discover anything outside of our initial assumptions that we made in in terms of the safe aspect of the bridge so based on that we are moving ahead and we have actually started a project to repair and restore the reserve capacity that we originally had in this bridge and that construction will happen most likely in the spring of 2021 this is the bridge that takes you to the Mount Anthony middle school yes so it becomes the school bus is going over this bridge daily dozens of kids from all over the supervisory union building middle school so I go under the bridge not over so so and again you know I mean yeah I'm just nearly every bridge has has school buses that go over it my family and and I guess you know if at any time I thought that this bridge wasn't safe for all of the loads including school buses we would have done something I would have had the bridge inspectors down there that day would park in their truck across that to stop it or the one of the things we could have done would be to make it one way to again reduce the loads but from from a certainty standpoint after the destructive testing as an engineer I know pretty certain what what I'm analyzing there so you know I think that we are in good shape until 2021 we'll do some repairs to restore that reserve capacity so that we'll get to the the useful life of the bridge as it was intended so that was what I was prepared to sort of tell the story of where we've been and where we are with those bridges and how to take questions yes if how do I know that on the way up here I used a temporary bridge the bridge is temporary but it was built with two lanes so that traffic could go both ways and it wouldn't hold up to 100 but something happened and so somebody didn't build it wide enough or decided it wasn't wide enough so you put in a traffic light to stop traffic both ways which is probably for safety but who's responsible for that particular decision to put up the traffic light actually I went on across this morning there was a fuel truck and and a dump truck coming the other way I don't know how a dump truck was there and both passed fine so how does that I mean you obviously paid to have it a two lane temporary bridge and then while you're building a new bridge how do we know how would you know is that new bridge is being built to the specifications that you're paying for and who's responsible for deciding the temporary bridge wasn't wide enough those are two questions who gets charged right who gets who gets the bill we're not doing it right okay so all right so so let me take the the responsible and I hate to use that bridge but it just does so so in in terms of who's responsible for the decisions about bridge safety whether it's that bridge or or any bridge okay we we have a a four teams of bridge inspectors that are out there daily inspecting bridges and we also get information from the field if it's a construction that gets pushed up through that group they are doing that analysis and essentially the bridge maintenance engineer okay that's in charge of the bridge inspection group is the first one that says we either have a problem or this is good if there is a problem ultimately that gets brought to me and I'm the one that makes the decision about whether or not something should be posted or restricted in the in the guise of safety so it's not a contractor that gets to make that decision it's it's not field staff out in the district that get to make that decision ultimately that decision comes up through very qualified people and they make a recommendation to myself my page for the failure I mean it's in our bridge so I know but who does the contractor who didn't put it in properly or is it a engineer who didn't plan a property so I did so on that particular project the the the one way versus the two way is not really a capacity issue it's more of a geometric issue and a safety issue during the construction phase so so we we often design and specify because in that case we designed the we designed where the temporary bridge would go we designed the curves but sometimes we can't always predict exactly how traffic is going to go through there and we can't always get that right and so sometimes we do need to make an audible where we say you know what this two-way all this two-way bridge isn't working so clearly in this case what was done was you the bridge was designed a certain way and they didn't complete the design in a certain way during the construction process we have periodic reviews in inspections by our people of the work being done so someplace in that inspection some something wasn't done for them to put the materials that were designed in the place but I don't see in any of this this outlay is what are we doing to make sure that that inspection process as these projects are going forward I think the agency in all of this had the right design they had the um um the right pieces the company didn't do what they said they were going to do when they left the bit so how are we making sure that in that inspection process during the building that we're changing that to make sure that we don't have this out before Wayne gets into the details senator I would say this we cannot not fully address that in an open forum which is what I believe the deputy attorney general is referring to okay um Wayne can with detail talk about the job of our resident engineers who are on our projects if not daily nearly daily at times we also have consultant inspectors we have a combination it requires communication from a contractor to the state and from the state to the contractor yeah so I think that's the limit on specificity regarding these bridges that I really been comfortable giving at this point we can talk about our ongoing process I and I think like we're not changing something we we believe the system we have is a is a decent system but it requires partnerships and so I just wanted to make that I don't want to compromise any of our case look what for me is most important is that going forward not looking back or anything that our inspection process during the construction period is up to snuff so we catch these things before it happens to us again you know it kind of seems like bridges built in 2011 and I'm in 19 and this is just coming out it's the luck of the draw that we caught this now and I want to make sure that what the companies that get the contracts build to our designs but I mean that what that would require though is some review of the process of inspection during the time of construction and I don't have to have an answer today and I don't want to compromise any case because I think that if all of this is true in my view McDonald's should pay but I want to make sure going forward that we get what we ask for so we would agree with that so let me talk about let me talk about a little bit about what we've done since since this has come to life we do have a a rigorous safety program the safety program frankly starts in design because again you know the design does recognize that not always are things built perfectly there's some tolerance so we have to accommodate that as part of the design but what this has highlighted yet again is is that there are certain means and methods that a contractor might choose to install anchor bolts on a bridge that are more risky than others so we have put out guidance to all of our designers and to those that write our specifications that we will no longer allow any anchor bolts to be installed after the concrete has been placed essentially the operation that caused some of this conflict that's taking a little bit of the creativity out of the contractor's hands but I think that it makes sense because it does lessen the risk that this is going to happen again we've also put out specialized training this spring to all of our field staff including the consultants about what the importance of inspection of this particular type of work is how to make sure that we get what we're paying for and that it's installed correctly but but at the end of the day we do have a a safety program and and actually pass this out here you have some of these this was a memo that we put together for Secretary Flynn to Commissioner Greshin as as a result of the last meeting knowing that there were some questions um on all of our projects we do have a resident engineer and you have field staff assigned to each of them to inspect the construction activities that go on this there's there's a lot that goes into what our quality assurance plan is and how we carry that out but the takeaway I'd like to leave with all of you is is that that is risk based we do not have the staff or the budget to watch every single thing a hundred percent of the time because it's just not possible but we are looking to make sure that these activities that are higher risk do have that inspection and they do have the oversight in the field and that said when the contractor is scheduled to be on the project and scheduled to do work we scheduled the field inspection to be there to match that and I think that as more comes out about this you'll see how this dovetails with um preventing what happened um on or is alleged to have happened on these bridges I'm finding it concerning if this were just one bridge I'd say we made a mistake but this is a whole lot of bridges that were done and fortunately it sounds like there's no immediate safety concern and I understand that we're working it through and we're doing some more training but obviously somewhere in our safety inspection program or something there's a problem and I understand that there's lawsuits and there's and I'm sure it's who said what to whom when gets in there um but as we go forward I hope before when this is finished that we hear what happened in a lot more spaces yeah more detail and if you have you know if you need more personnel if you need better equipment I've heard a rumor you don't always have the most up-to-date tech equipment that we get to hear that I mean I'm sitting and looking at all these nice shiny bridges but you guys drive to more town lately and then there was East Montpelier that bridge I didn't drive over it for a few years I got to go under some of the bridges in Montpelier and see where they were before we closed three of them I just we need to make sure that something at this scale doesn't happen again we would certainly agree with you and I wish that we could sit here and tell you things that I think would speak to your concerns but it that it's some of those things that in deference to the investigation that the Attorney General's office is running we're really not that liberty to speak about at this point I think it's important I hope you believe me I think I can talk about this because it's a matter of public record if you go back to the Bristol Bridge project and the settlement between Jamie McDonald and the United States government there was nothing in that process that suggested the agency of transportation was at fault for not finding something we're not seeing something done what occurred there was the contractor was charged with putting anchor bolts in the bridge which were deliberately shortened because of the conflicts that Wayne talked about it it clearly wasn't done while a v-trans inspector was there once it's in the concrete you can't see well bolts are yes that's true the bolts were shortened so the point I'm trying to make carefully and again that's a matter of public record and and I'm comfortable talking about it what I'm trying to make is I'm a moment ago I talked about there needs to be communication back and forth there has to be a partnership with the agency as Wayne said it doesn't matter how many employees you have or how many pieces of equipment you have this summer we have about 58 active construction projects are simultaneously around the state of Vermont so I'm obviously coming to conclusion now with the weather it is impossible it isn't possible to have eyes on every single muscle movement every day on every project but as Wayne said when these critical portions of these projects occur we always are but this all assumes the partnership this all assumes that everyone on that project is working in the same direction and again it's it's hard for us to not be able to share things with you and I can only imagine how frustrating it is one information to either determine whether you think we need to increase our oversight or or just to understand the situation and I certainly empathize with that so I think that only question not the only question but the question I've got is um and maybe it's a timing question uh given the fact that there was this issue around the Bristol Bridge shouldn't that have tightened our concern um and I know that putting aside these four bridges which were done in 2011 but we have contracts currently with this company in Waterbury in another just Waterbury which one um so thank you Bristol in in the chronological order of construction Bristol was the last one constructed so it's not as though Bristol had occurred we found out the government came in there was a settlement and then the bridges we're talking about down in Bennington and Guilford were constructed those were constructed before Bristol so my point is whatever had occurred on those bridges in southern Vermont had already occurred by the time the Bristol project I assumed that that was right but we but we entered into two other contracts we did we did i'm just i'm just we did we entered into uh at least two i mean the category two so that the the settlement on Bristol and the investigation done by the federal highway administration and the federal government um settled on the fact that this was an isolated incident perpetrated by the report says two rogue employees that decided to do this on behalf of of their employer and when when we reviewed the evidence and the settlement we didn't have any other information to believe that that wasn't true so that resulted in financial penalty for jay mcdonald and and substantial costs for them to fix the Bristol bridge to get the capacity back to where it was supposed to be but it also resulted in two jay mcdonald employees being disbarred for life on working for on federal projects so taking that at face value we were progressing and jay mcdonald was in good standing in terms of being pre-qualified to do other work now that doesn't mean that we weren't still looking at their work closely um they did construct two bridges following Bristol on the cabba danville project most recently very small bridges that didn't involve peers so and were a were subcontracted so again um and we've looked at that pretty closely so so your point is taken i think it's it what our approach was okay here's the settlement but we were in a mode where we were verifying that they would work they were doing the work and the water barrier project that's currently under construction does not involve bridges and is a very sort of different um utility and drainage type project instead of a bridge project and in water barriers case when we signed that contract we did not have evidence we had allegations but we did not have evidence i had seen paperwork when i became secretary going back 25 years on main street water barrier and i had to sign off on the last piece of that and made the decision that the right thing to do for the taxpayers the right thing to do for the residents of water barrier was to go forward with that because as Wayne says it's a completely different type of project it's a road project the company had a history of of success and capability on those types of projects and we are working very closely we are watching that project very closely but for a whole series of reasons to have attempted to have broken that contract the state itself probably would have been held liable and it could have taken a year or two or more to re-engage at a higher price with a different contractor meanwhile water barrier continues to wait that was the reason why that decision was made so i have ruled now over time so i'm going to have to start moving this my only comment is we have a j talk committee and i didn't know whether there was any discussion but um transportation oversight of which some of us are members as well um right um so i didn't know whether you probably had discussions with the chairs of the to the policy committee i would i would think that the transportation committee should take it up it clear my specific concern is not after the fact inspections on the bridges that we have out there but when you identify high-risk items and you need changes in both specification and employee training i think at some point you owe it to the legislature to say here's the changes we need to address those specific things because if the materials that they're using are not what we're specified ahead of time and we're caught flat footed after the fact that i don't care which company it is we should catch that before the project gets finished in your right we would i would agree that it's not about substandard materials though and again it's just hard to not tell you what i'd like to tell you okay we will i was at the judiciary committee will also follow up on the because inside we wrote the most false claims act we are responsible for that i mean an analogy we like to follow up if it has to be an executive session we can do that you know this might be a bad analogy but to the point about we changed inspection practices as a result of this or we gave different information to our field staff to look for different things i think some of the analogy i might offer is 50 years ago if you look at how police departments policed they policed i think maybe based on the body of knowledge that they have regarding the activities that they oversaw in a society as a whole myriad of activities changed in 50 years we have a whole different way of how we police to meet those needs so the analogy i'm trying to draw is it isn't so much about policing was not sufficient back then or it's not sufficient today but circumstances change and i think in this case we understand that we understand that the vehicles that travel are heavier we understand that more salt is being used we understand those of all change this is really a case of are we getting what we asked for the specifics of the contracts that are signed and apparently you've changed some functions that you've done and for a comfort level i think the committee's a jurisdiction which would include jurors um um judiciary and transportation ought to be a prize of what we've changed i'm going to have to wrap this up because we've got one at least one more issue we need to cover thank you for taking it up i some of us have a long history with bridges when they were the choice yes they did you know after crystal i wrote letters to the delegation and i wrote letters to the federal highway administration which are on open record you know in support of the company because as wane said everything at that point that we knew indicated that it was in the words of the center okay i'm soup on from driscoll office and we're gonna start off by just going through quickly like the grand approval process which the committee needs back on or uh basically just as background we changed the grant uh approval process a little bit but then i think i'll go over that and so that in the law last year and so what we need to do is make some sure so we're back to last year so last year in budget bill there were some changes to clarify the grant approval process in title 32 um a lot of that was separating out the executive branch approval process from the legislative and judicial branch process so that the legislative and judicial branches don't have to go through the same process where they're sending the grants to the governor's office for approval there were also some clarifications such as adding some definitions to clarify you know exactly what a grant is what's what state agencies that that have to go through the process um there was um also some uh reference to what a small grant means um if whether or not a grant with a certain monetary amount has to go through the process and then the last uh i sort of big change was that um the joint fiscal committee was um given authority to implement policies to to implement the statute um before this the only policies that were in place uh referenced the expedited approval process that was done off session and so as a result of the statutory change um we drafted some policies that speak to more parts of the process than just that expedited review did you want me to go on okay i don't want to go through all of it or do you want to just um highlight things from it or what would be um what would be useful what do we need to do i think we actually have to approve it policy and the it's a maybe that it tells what it is yeah i'll be like so um as i mentioned the only thing that was in the policy before um was what the process was for expedited review um so this this is much more um substantive detail this is it that's it those are the policies so um the first thing first sort of big change it does is add in some definitions and these are coming from what is in statute so um there's a definition for grant um for loan and small grants in state agency and this is just trying to clarify what we're talking about in the policy um the other uh sort of change or thing that is highlighted in the policy is that um in the statutory section it says that um when you receive uh materials from the governor's office it goes to uh there's a fiscal office who then sends it to this committee um but there's no timeline to that so what's added in section three is that the joint fiscal office staff will send copies of those materials once they are completed um to this committee as soon as practicable and i think that's trying to jam or whoever's working on a little flexibility of if grant materials are received and the package isn't complete then he can have a back and forth in their role maybe yes when did everyone know what they're saying please okay so um so there's just giving um some little some flexibility to sending over the materials as soon as a grant materials are completed um although the the hope is to get them to you all as as soon as possible um the statute was also changed to say that the legislative and judicial branches um had a separate approval process so in section four of the grant policies there's some language added about what it what actually has to be submitted um so they the joint fiscal committee is um requiring approval from the the legislative and judicial branches of grants that are valued at um more than 15 000 and those materials would be sent directly to the joint fiscal office um section five under expedited grant review so this was in the previous version of the grant policies um the change here is that there the process for expedited review requires that um a majority of the committee a vote to approve expedited review there was a little bit of a conflict in the language before one point it said a majority of the committee and then at another point it said seven numbers of the committee so it was changed to six numbers to not um require more than a majority um I don't you know the historical reason for that but that was just more of a cleanup change this is just to do the expedited review any one member can still that wasn't going to be yeah anyone right that is that clear that that hasn't changed or I didn't find it that any one member can place something on the end I have a 5.4 that says show not my way to the event of an ejection by anything the statutory changes also try to clarify that you know the the approval process is um doesn't apply to grants that are under 1500 dollars so some nominal gift doesn't have to go through the whole committee process um and but it does require grants over 15 000 dollars so there's sort of an in between amount between 1500 and 15 000 and it does say in statute that notification has to be made to the joint fiscal committee of those grants between those amounts of money um and so the policy in section um 6 the small grant notification is um is asking that that notification is made on a quarterly basis so a list of all the grants would be sent over that are valued in between 1500 and 15 000 and then um the final change in statute that had to deal with the approval of limited service positions so the the statute was changed to essentially say that to give authority to the joint fiscal committee to approve a limited service position in conjunction with the grant because the language was that was what was being done with the language was a little vague that that was the committee had that authority um and this is actually a point that is in the other part of my memo so the the language was changed to say that um if the position is explicitly stated for a specific purpose in the grant um that position is accepted pursuant to the same approval process that the grant goes through so if there's a limited service position request um for an executive branch grant it has to go through that same approval process um just to prove it's a longer than that today we have a five year one today right yeah yeah i i i think it's not a it's a subject i would love to revisit but not this moment but it's just uh the way we use that term is getting broader and broader you're right some of these limited services just go on and help you have any general there's a way to say to the public that we have this many state employees right big issue it is it's a much bigger issue than we have right and there's no statutory definition of limited service position so we we put in the um definition from the department of human resources personnel policies you know that's i guess a guide but it is a question of whether there should be a statutory definition since they're not following their guidelines but we're not or we're not either well they're giving it to us yeah and then um i guess the the second part of my the memo they're proposed or they shouldn't jet so i'm sure we'll be communicating with gov ops or in other words we're saying we really need to deal with this language about limited service um i'm just sort of like well now we have it um how are we going to we can we can give them information if we go to introduce it but we're the ones who end up approving them yes we'll get back to you on i think we just want to uh we need to make sure it ends up on an action list so that yeah we can go outside yeah the very least we should have if it goes beyond these guidelines should be approved by the full committee something about each rather than coming you know through the email system where six of us say yes i always raise a question about it so doesn't make any difference we don't have a great permanent position yeah look at that issue well this is the much larger issue how we go through the process so that is um just a summary of what the policy is i i do have another issue that i raise in the memo that has to do with limited service positions but i don't know if you want to deal with let's hold with just on the on the policy it sounds like the rest of it needs more time and like we're close enough now on the policy i had a question about 2.2 on the loan i don't know if you saw my yeah i did i did this is good language i just was wondering i'm sure so the the definition of loan in the policy and in statute is referencing specifically loans that are considered um a gift to the state where there's no they're getting something um for free so something that is interest for your below market value so what a loan that is that has an interest rate or is above market value or at market value there's it's not relevant it wouldn't it wouldn't need to go through the grant process because there wouldn't be there would be yeah you're not getting anything a gift or anything great okay thank you okay so what we need is a motion to approve this document some of the representative answer has moved and the second seconded okay we'll start that arrestment and seconded approval uh the joint fiscal committee grant acceptance policies dated i think we'll clean today's date um further discussion if not all those in favor say uh oh say no it carries unanimously and just to be before we go on the stage one of the you want to five years one they should come up in the statutory yeah um so this also has to do with limited service positions not the duration question but this came up i believe it was this fall or somewhere um late summer where um the judiciary had a request for a limited service position we realized uh we're looking at the language from last year that the um it says that the limited service position approval would go through the same process as the grant but the cross reference is just to the executive branch approval process so the statute actually doesn't really contemplate um an approval process that is separate for judicial and legislative limited service positions so what that would mean in practice is that um a judicial limited service position would have to go through a more cumbersome process than than would be required for the actual underlying grant so i i came up with some proposed language just to separate out those processes but i think we'll do it put this in a memo about women's service business issues it's similar to go up so yeah great okay i just wanted to like create this and then we'll break hopefully not too late um one is on you know one thing that's in my report is on the ed finance the december one letter it is going to be a little unusual this year because the arbitrator between on the health affair um uh determination is not going to rule until december 15th and that could have a 25 the million dollar give or take impact on the ed fund you know which way they go it's last best offer so when the letter comes out one of the yeah yeah let's see one of the other so we need to just think about maybe work with administration about how they present that letter because that's that's three cents actually and they can be and it's just uh or more so we just need a uh as that letter comes out make sure that that's handled in a way that's appropriate uh second thing i just it was answering the in the office report we did the previous negotiation a four-year contract with tom vet who will continue to deal with the economy it is a part of what that makes this re-invasion i think going to fit is um the price of his contract even though it seems a lot of 170 000 a year is probably about half or less than anything that could become close and i talked to some other states in this area and uh it uh i mean their numbers would be way even higher than that and tom actually did while he did sign a contract which has cost of the increases for the four years he did mention that compared to other work he does including for new hampshire uh we're less than half of any other billable rate so right right so i guess when i so it is done and it is uh at some point four years from now i mean maybe who knows what goes with his life and one of the things we'll think about in the four years is this process of external consultant makes sense but that's it finally i want to flag it wasn't in our report um there and actually um uh representative anselms and senator fitchell know way more about this and they can talk to you if you'd like to go with you on this more but there's the joint labor management committee is it's very legislated committee oh boy okay let's do a minute actually kathleen is involved with two staff and i'm the least involved but they are looking at the issues coming out of the ncsl report and two of the things they're doing are um or have done i think is separating out the uh it component and that means we'll probably move in the budget process a separate long item for um it as opposed to having it under uh less counsel uh and so the second thing that they're doing is moving forward in some way with human resources capacity which is a a big issue in the events of just maybe unifying unified unified classification systems pay systems things like that and then the other issue which is just coming up increasingly is just sort of uh hidden bias questions and just how do we really recruit our staff and make sure to do it in the way that's better and the details in that are not with me the only other thing i wanted to flag is there's been a lot of discussion about changing the structure on the joint fiscal office currently i'm appointed i was hired by you all and um predecessors my predecessors were hired by you all and we do a lot of work with the committee and one of the things that's come up is an issue of whether to let the joint labor manager play a legislative management committee do all the hiring of all you know the staff heads and i i'm it's just me if taking the position i think it probably should stay with the joint fiscal committee the hiring of the fiscal officer partially because of the unique role that we actually do your committee does a lot of work in the summer that we have to make decisions and delegated things like the rescission process and i think you have in the in the past it seems to work very well but you actually have an interest in who that person is and what it does right now we have a dream team during legislative management committee and we have two money chairs on it and the speaker and senator president both have been money chairs so the tremendous involvement but that's not a guarantee and uh so it's just that is an issue i don't know if you all want to comment on it because you were much more tired brief the committee because um there's been quite a lot of discussion about you know what would happen to the legislative council committee what would happen to the joint technology committee um and then what would happen to the fiscal committee and the joint legislative management committee has not made a final decision um i i made the pitch i guess the joint fiscal as it is um but i realized that we had not had any discussion in here um and certainly uh this committee's a few of that matters um and so believe joint fiscal as it is certainly in terms of its statutory functions but also in terms of its staff supervision and the hiring of the fiscal officer so that came up last week i think last monday in the meeting um and it just seemed like since we're here we should be briefed on that came out is some members of the committee really aren't that familiar with the functions and responsibilities on the joint fiscal and i thought um uh tim was not there but the speaker was there and really talked about the fiduciary obligations and that decisions have to be made when we're not in session and that the nature and the creation of this committee is somewhat uh distinct i just say there's been conflict between the leadership of all the the different players involved and i don't think joint fiscal is is the center of where that conflict is coming from no but there has there is a proposal um to establish an executive director which would sort of have um i i i i understand which i think the committee is not likely to do but it's possible i i understand it but i'm just saying from my vantage point part of all of this is coming because of the conflict in other places and i don't think that that conflict has been from joint the leadership in joint fiscal