 Hi, welcome to Town Meeting Television. We're here with Under the Dome, and we're here with Reps Julia Andrews and Tiff Blumlee. Welcome. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. And we're going to talk about money. We're going to talk about the big issues of this year's legislative budget and some of the tax impracts and the revenue implications, et cetera. So first, just introduce us. Tell us who you're representing and a little bit of your background, Julia. Sure. So my name is Julia Andrews. I represent the town of Westford and a portion of the town of Milton. And I sit on the Ways and Means Committee, which addresses taxes and fees, which I imagine is why I might be sitting here today. This is my first biennium in the House of Representatives. I also do a lot of other things, primarily I'm a marketing consultant as my day job. But like many legislators, do a lot of work in my community sitting on boards and things of that nature as well. Great. Thanks. Tiff. I'm in my second term. I represent the south end of Burlington. And I sit on the House Appropriations Committee, which and I've done, this is my second year on that. I first served on the Housing Committee, House General. And I have a portfolio. Everyone on the Appropriations Committee has a different set of budgets. And mine are housing, substance use, prevention, treatment, and then mental health. So those are just a few issues that never come up. Oh my gosh. That's a lot. And they're all very interconnected. It makes sense for them all to be in one person's portfolio. And I do have the legislative budget too as well. Before we go too far, I want to clarify for folks what the biennium means. Oh sure. So every two years, the House and the senators are all re-elected. And so you get elected for two years and we call that a biennium. And those two years march together. So we look at one set of possible legislation over two years. And if you don't get your legislation over the finish line by the end of the second year, you need to start over. Yeah, great. So and one of the biggest things that the legislature looks at is the budget. And talk to us a little bit about where we're at in the House Ways and Means with the budget. And maybe just give folks a little bit of step back into how does the budget make its way to where we are at today. Great. And I actually am going to toss that to Tiff because appropriations does. I'm the budget gal. And so the legislature gets a budget from the governor. And the governor presents it to the full body. And the Senate is in the chamber as well. And he outlines his priorities or she does. And then those budgets go to different policy committees for consideration. Our committee also takes testimony to understand where the numbers are coming from. Policy committees are, and when I say policy committees, I mean not money committees like Ways and Means or appropriations. Our focus is largely on the money. Where is it coming from? How much is it? How does it fit into the larger picture of the budget and the needs that we've identified? So those policy committees take a lot of testimony to understand the needs in a variety of areas. So health care will have the Department of Health and the Department of Mental Health and blah, blah, blah. And then they articulate. First, they take a look at the governor's budget. And they say, yeah, we like these things. We don't think this is a priority. Here are the things we would like to have funded that are not in the governor's budget and then send us a letter. We look at all of those letters and then try to work with the committees to better understand what their priorities are and then begin the work of trying to put it all together to honor the priorities of the policy committees but also to understand why the governor may have proposed various things. And it's like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. And then meanwhile, bills are coming into our committee and they have money requests. So we have to log those in. Sometimes we will say, if there is money, penal pending availability of money and pass it so it can get on to the Senate, sometimes we know we want to set aside money for that purpose. It was in our plan going into the session. And so we will actually appropriate money. But all of those. So it's just a lot of moving parts up until the time that we actually finalize the budget and present it to the House and then send it on to the Senate. Which has happened. And now they are having their way with our budget and identifying all of their priorities. And there probably are going to be a number of things about which we agree and probably a number of things we will disagree about. And we will then, they will pass it out of the Senate and then our committee will look at it. And the question that we'll have is, well, do we like this budget? Does this reflect the priorities that we think are important for Vermonters? And can we live with the changes that they've made? And if not, then we go to conference. And so three members of the Senate Appropriations Committee and three members from the House Appropriations Committee will meet together and go through every line item and every piece of language. And do you know who's going to be on that? Who will be the three members that was like, no. They're not really named until, I mean, you can guess the chair obviously will be and generally the vice chair is as well. But that third person, it won't be any of the Republicans on our committee because they did not vote for it. It has to be three members of the committee who voted for the budget. And tell us a little bit about how House Ways and Means comes into this picture at this point. Yes, so our purview is taxation in fees. And so when priorities are identified and they need funding, that is where we come in. And I think the most important work that we have in any year, but certainly this year, is funding the education system. So I think probably some of the people watching now will understand that that has been a very difficult year this year for school budgets. So education funding is a shared responsibility between local school districts and voters that vote for those budgets and the legislature that then funds the priorities as they're identified by local school boards and their voters. Do you have a sense, and I don't mean to put you on the spot, do you have a sense of how many school budgets failed across the state? Yes, I believe it has been 30, which is a really high number. It's very unusual to have that many fail. And so right now you're sort of hammering out how to proceed with ed funding. That's still in the works. That is correct. And so the legislature has some levers that we can use to sort of massage the school budgets into place. And really what we have to be aware of is I think right now we're looking at pretty high tax increases for homeowners. We wanna protect our property tax payers in that way. But also we have to be cautious to not buy down the rates too high because it digs a hole that we need to climb out of the next year. So we're really threading a really delicate needle this year. So what's the big impact? Why, what is the big budget impact? So there's actually just like most complicated problems. There's a lot of answers to that question. And so I've heard a lot of things that people say, this is the reason why budgets are so high. And it's really a number of things. So right now healthcare costs and any business have increased really quite a bit. And in the schools, I believe it's 16% this year. So that's a huge cost driver. During the COVID pandemic, we had a lot of federal funds pouring into the state, including into schools. Those funds have gone away, but the needs of students have not. So I think we all naively felt like, oh, if we really invest in mental health during this really tender time, it will yield results and we'll all be fine at the end. And that's not really what has happened. We passed something called Act 127, which is the pupil waiting bill. This was two years ago, I believe. And it changed taxing capacity in different towns. So... You might wanna explain taxing capacity, just that term. I'll get there. I know you live and breathe it, but... I know, this is the nerdiness in which we live. So basically what this means is if you have students in your district that are harder to educate and require more resources, such as English language learners, we would wait those pupils more heavily so more funding flows to them so they get the best educational opportunity, or I should say equal education opportunity with their peers that do not also then need to learn a second language to be educated. There is an increased waiting for rural schools. There's an increased waiting for poverty. So I hate to couch it in terms of winners and losers because I think that that's a little damaging, but some districts gained and some districts did lose capacity. So for those districts that don't have those more difficult students to educate, it was harder for them to build budgets this year. So, and we did some things to try to ease that pressure, but it's a tough situation. But then if you are a city like Winooski where you've got a lot of new Americans, maybe you have higher poverty rates than some other schools, schools like that are saying thank you so much for this work. It really, instead of pretending that we're all the same, it really sort of identifies what we need. Did we see per pupil spending go up or has it been relatively flat? That's a hard question to answer in lieu of what I just described where there's a lot of parts moving around. I think I wouldn't know how to answer that to be honest with you. I guess I'm just trying to get at a little bit of the impact of the federal funds going away because I think that's what we're hearing is we've lost a lot of federal funds from COVID even though year after year, the state's budget relies largely on federal funds. Is that right? Yeah, definitely. Actually, do you want to talk about federal funds too? If I thought I heard you. Well, I can talk about the budget more generally. Are you talking about school funding? Yeah, I think, well, I guess my question is, I'm talking about the impact of COVID money disappearing, right, and so we have both increased needs because there are new needs that were identified during the last three to four years, new programs created. Well, here's, yes, I just want to paint a broader picture. We had $218 million less to work with this year in general fund money and that seriously constrained both the governor and the house in developing a budget and there are a number of reasons for that. One, we are winding down on federal funding and the ESSER money that went to schools. We had a huge jump in healthcare costs across the board that the state and state workers and schools are absorbing flood recovery. We invested over $70 million in flood recovery alone in our budget adjustment. In state funds. In state funds, just to meet the federal match. So, and then we had to make adjustments to the workforce because we had tremendous workforce shortages in certain state departments like the Department of Corrections. We had to come up with incentivizing that work and that has all, I mean, and it's all come to a head right now and we have some of the needs that Julia was talking about in our schools that have just increased school costs regardless of where the money was gonna come from. Yeah, 218 million, so where's the money gonna come from? How are we gonna find it? Well, so I think there's a few different ways to think about this from the perspective of school budgets. One is, like I said, that delicate threading of the needle of not digging a hole for next year's budget but also trying to protect taxpayers with increased revenue. Also, I think it's clear that we need to reimagine the education funding formula, which is not something you can do for this year as you can imagine, that's a complex undertaking that requires consideration and thought. And a third piece, which is helping schools to find ways to be more efficient and cut costs. So, I mean, we can keep putting more money into the education fund, but I think what we're hearing from taxpayers is that the burden is too great. I guess that's my next question, is what are you hearing from your constituents? What are, you know, you get calls, you get little pieces of paper delivered by pages to you, right? If folks wanna know, you know, if you do wanna talk to folks, you can email them and or you can call a surgeon at arms office and just send a message over and somebody will run it right to you, right? That is true, yes, that's great. And what kinds of, what are you seeing on those little slips of paper? We're hearing a wide range of things and the thing that's fascinating is that some of those things conflict with one another, right? So, you know, sometimes it's like, please fund our schools, we need the funding. Sometimes it's like, please stop funding the schools, it's costing us too much money and there's a huge range of those items. But, you know, I think one of the things that we do as a committee and we've done a lot of work in conjunction with the Education Committee is to do really deep listening with school administrators, with people like the Vermont Principles Association and the School Boards Association. We certainly do hear from people in our communities. And so, you know, we have really built, we're in the process of trying to build the bill right now that funds education for this coming year and we've had to kind of make some decisions about what we can do this year and then also start to lay the groundwork for future years to shift away from what I think we can all agree is an unsustainable situation. I wanna move on to some of these tax bills that happen. You know, I think it would be helpful. Well, I think it would be helpful. There's a little context that I can provide that leads into a couple other tax bills that I would want Julia to talk about. So, our budget was within $3 million of the governor's budget. So, and that's because we had so little money to work with. Doesn't mean that we didn't change things. Probably one of the most substantive changes that we made in our budget was put back nine of the 19 million that the governor took out for child care. The bill that we passed last year was landmark legislation and we're okay with 10, we're not thrilled, but given the givens, that $9 million is gonna be used to expand coverage for people. And so that's really important. I think that the governor and the house both invested in things like opioid addiction, prevention and treatment and recovery in emergency housing and shelter in mental health professionals that are embedded in the state police, FEMA hazard mitigation efforts. The house made some other investments that were really important, I think. And $6 million that will be matched by the feds to improve a database in the Department of Children and Families that is the oldest in the country. Unreliable, can break at any moment. There's one person who can fix it and it, because the system is what it is, we can't draw down tens of millions of dollars in federal money to help support some of the services that we know families and children need in the state. We also- Because of this database. Yeah, because of this state of the database. And the feds, originally, I think even in the 90s, they said, well, pay 90% of it. We said, no thanks. We got it covered. And now it's 50% and just as early as maybe even five years ago, we said, no thanks. And that is just penny-wise and pound foolish, you know. And it undermines the safety of children who are in the foster care system, et cetera. So it's been well-documented. Finally, we're gonna put money into it. We also, there's something called a waterfall section. So every year, in a decent year- Waterfall section of the budget. Of the budget, right. Where there is money that is appropriated on the condition that we have extra revenues we hadn't forecast. So we put in 20 million in contingency money in waterfall money for emergency housing, knowing that that is, you know, we've already committed 44 million, but that buys us more. And we also increased bridge funding to the Vermont State Colleges. The governor put in five. We had promised 10, you know, four years ago, every year, each year. And so we went back to the 10. We also took a look at the ARPA landscape because there is money, still ARPA money that exists. It's just housed in this department or that agency. And some of it hasn't been obligated because it's maybe for big projects that probably won't get off the ground. Just because of the timing really and how long we were able to try to get them off the ground. And so we obligated the first like 90 million of that money that is unobligated and that we can use for other purposes to housing, you know, 55 million of it for housing and then another 60, I'm sorry, another 36 million for FEMA match. You know, the flood has really affected the flexibility we have in our budget and the wherewithal our towns have to meet the needs of the businesses in those towns and the citizens who are stuck with houses that can't be fixed by FEMA. And is there anything preventively for next year's flood in this budget? Because you're bringing it up now. I just, yeah. Well, there are mitigation. There's mitigation money to help towns redo things and like, you know, what happened in Waterbury was critical. I mean, they didn't experience the kind of flooding this time. But so this is all leading up to you. You know, the governor and the house agreed right from the beginning that priority issues were housing, public safety and mental health. But the governor's budget did almost nothing, substantive in terms of a commitment of money for those things. In fact, the mental health budget was only, I think, increased by 1% and not the typical 3% that most departments got and public safety, Vermont state's attorneys would have to cut up to eight deputy state's attorneys to meet the governor's budget when we needed to actually add additional state's attorneys and victim services folks. The defender general's office needs a million dollars just to break even with where they are right now. The public safety backlog is significant. Yeah, of course we're close. And the court system and the prosecution system, public defenders, you know, they're hamstrung right now and so we knew that that was one pot of money that we were gonna need to raise because the budget did not have the money for the kind of investments that we need to make there. And then in housing, you know, 40 years ago we made a commitment by creating Vermont Housing Conservation Board. It was a climate really much like this when housing was becoming unaffordable to many Vermonters. And we said, we need to invest in housing that is perpetually affordable. And we have underspent. So every year there's a statutory upper limit to what we should be dedicating out of the property transfer tax to housing construction. And nearly every year since we've had the property transfer tax we have underspent it on housing which has contributed to where we are now. We're also experiencing, I mean the price to construct is it depends on who you talk to but it could be almost twice as much as it was pre-pandemic. And so the governor in housing decided that he wanted, he was putting all of his eggs in the zoning and permitting reform basket. And there's no question that we need to make those changes and the house has a bill, we passed a bill to do that, there's one sitting in the Senate that is, they're debating right now but that alone will not lead to the kind of housing construction that we most need. Is this ideological political differences about what's gonna drive housing development? Is that where this is coming from? Well, I don't know that people would characterize it as an ideological difference. I think that the fact is building permanently affordable housing isn't cheap, you know. $500,000 a house, well it costs almost $500,000 to build anything here now. And so we need to build more starter homes, we need to rehab buildings, we need to rehab office spaces, we need to be able to provide supportive housing for folks who need extra support in order to stay in housing. And a 10-year plan was proposed by housing advocates and developers and estimated we would need to invest $100 million per year for 10 years to meet kind of the most critical needs in the housing sector. The big mansions, they will get built and there's a much bigger profit margin for developers in those. But it's that other kind of housing that is so critical that we invest in as we are an aging state. But people are not able to leave their homes because what can they buy? Yep, we're gonna go. Where would they go? So at any rate, these pressures, public safety and as those related to housing, then, and we knew about those in the fall led to discussions within house leadership about raising money, raising additional revenues, which we have not done for a long time. We've raised some fees, but and that brings us to Julia's story. Now we can thank you for that context, Jeff. Yeah, thank you, Jeff. That was actually really helpful. And so on the public safety side, kind of like Tiff was saying, we know just there's body of research that says when somebody commits a crime, if they're not held accountable swiftly, they are very likely to re-offend. So getting this backlog squared away in our public safety and our courts is really important. So we went out and looked at how we could adequately do that. And then also another piece of legislation that's tied to the taxation that I'm about to talk about is Medicare expansion. So or Medicaid expansion, I always confuse Medicare and Medicaid. We know that there are tens of thousands of Vermonters that when they cycle off of Medicare at the age of 65 and move into Medicaid that there's a cliff and they go from paying almost nothing to paying over $2,000 a year. And for those that are living in poverty, that's an unworkable solution. So the tax policy that we put together for public safety and also to protect our most vulnerable Vermonters will fall to our corporate entities. And we did really work to try to make sure that those who are making the most, as is our custom, are providing the most back into the system. And so we looked at increasing, we created a third bucket, if you will, of taxation where people will pay a little bit more if they have a corporate profit of over $25,000. Not people are paying it, it's the corporations. Thank you. But yeah, okay. Yes, and so I think it's important to just pause and remind people too that the way that corporate taxes are paid in Vermont, it's easy to say, well, you're taxing our local businesses and to a degree that's true, but the way that corporations in Vermont pay taxes is on their sales into Vermont. So we're also putting quite a bit of burden on out-of-state entities that then sell things to us, such as an Amazon or another online retailer, if you imagine how people buy things today. And really those large corporations are gonna be much more likely to have that kind of income where they go into that third tier of taxation. And in a nutshell, and I do recognize the time, and so there's three bills here, three sort of big tax bills that we're gonna talk about, but just in a nutshell, can you give us like, who are these corporations and what are these securities that are being taxed and what's the percentage rate and what's the revenue that you're expecting? Remember what the third tax, if you could. I can't even remember what the third tier is. Do you remember what it is, Tiff? And that's it, yeah. Of the corporate? Yeah. No, I don't. Yeah, the corporations, so there's age 721, right? So age 721 is the bill that's gonna levy taxes to support Dr. Dinosaur Medicaid and the judicial staffing. So let's just jump over quickly to the other two, which is the property transfer tax and the tax on people making over $500,000 in income. So this is a new income tax and a new property transfer tax. So what are you hearing? So, well, it depends on how much money you make on what I'm hearing. Well, we do, and to be fair, there are people who are making over $500,000 who say, yeah. It's totally true. Bring it on, taxes, we should be paying our fair share. And there are people who are upset by that and you're right, there are people who are like, we want to live here because Vermont provides us with a quality of life and this is where our family is, this is where we've built our life and we're happy to give our fair share to make sure that we fund the priorities to keep our state as good as it can be. So the property, I'm sorry, there's a tax on people who make over $500,000 a year. And then I think for most Vermonters, that seems to be like things that somebody can get behind. The property transfer tax is interesting because it's properties over 750,000. Correct, so when you sell a home or when you buy a home over $750,000, you will pay an additional amount of tax to on like the top part that is over 750. So there's two tiers below that that have been expanded. So what that means is I think the first one's like 1.25% on the first $100,000 that moved to $200,000 and then the second one is like I think 2.25% and that tier was expanded also up to the 750. So actually if you buy a home that is below $750,000, you will pay less in property transfer tax. And then only the people who are buying the biggest and fanciest homes for lack of a better term will be paying more. And it's $1,000 less. Yeah. In the property, you know, that's meaningful. It is. And at 800, I think I saw that it was just $300 more. Yeah, and you know, so there's a concept in taxation which we follow in Vermont called progressivity and what that means is if you don't have a high, if you don't have a lot of resources to pay, you will pay less. And if you have a lot of resources and ability to pay, you pay more. And we really try hard to make sure when we're considering taxation that that's something that we focus on and try not to put too much burden on the most vulnerable for monitors. So those are three new taxes. And I guess, you know, my, the question I have here is do you think there's support for these in the Senate at this point? Well, it's hard to say. I don't like to speak for my colleagues. I've heard rumblings that perhaps people are gonna try to find money in the budget versus putting it all on additional taxes. I feel a little bit concerned about that approach given what our friend, Rep Loomley, just told us about how tight the budget is this year. But I'll definitely be watching carefully to see what happens next. Yeah. And then, you know, overall, I'm curious if, you know, there are other taxes that are being worked on, but are there places that you've seen a decrease in funds from tax mechanisms that are drying up, tax mechanisms that are outdated? Is that something that Wizz and Means has been looking at? That's something we see more in fees. Like fees change, like fees fund very specific things that are aligned with the specific fee. So the DMV fee pays for the roads and bridges, for example, or the DMV fees. And really what we look at is, you know, when we look to maybe adjust fees, there's gonna be categories of fees that are paid, like I said, by people who are maybe not as wealthy. And we try to keep those steady or reduce them when we can. I think last year, I'm just remembering there was like a real estate fee that seemed really onerous that we were like, yeah, we should reduce that, that seems extreme. Even though it was for real estate agents, it just seemed like it was out of whack. So we do look for places to do that when it makes sense and really try hard to make sure that we're, we have policy decisions that kind of underpin those decisions. So it was just last week, I was talking to somebody who said, you know, well, I would like to retire here, but I think I'm gonna have to move out of state because it's just too expensive to live here. And I think there is a feeling like, people are gonna leave, people are, that's, that this story, and I'm wondering how do you respond to people who are really feeling, whether that's true or not true, whether it's a feeling or a reality? How do you respond to people who say, it's just too expensive? Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that I think about there. People do leave our state and people do come to our state. I don't always believe that people are leaving our state because of taxes. Like when I think about what I pay for in my family budget and like all of the things, whether it's heating fuel or food or tuition for my child to go to college, taxation is not the thing that I'm like, this is the big nut that's really breaking my back. It's often things like, oh my gosh, like my fuel oil went up by a dollar and a half, like how am I gonna pull that off? So I do think it makes, it is part of the picture, but we already live in a high tax state and people choose this for different reasons. It's because they have a great job here that they really like. It's because their kids go to great schools and their family has ties to the community. So I think there's a lot of reasons that people make those decisions. I also think, let me think you're right, and I think that there's research that corroborates that, that ties to community mean more to folks often than a higher marginal tax rate. And what I guess we're making investments to make Vermont more affordable in childcare by expanding Medicaid eligibility and the services that could be provided to families, those are among the highest drivers of people. It's most expensive for folks. And so we haven't driven down rents. We haven't driven down the cost of construction. We need to increase our housing stock for that to level out a little bit. But I think that when we are taxing people, it is to put more money in people's pockets for things that the state ought to be helping to support. And you just reminded me of something important that I wanted to say is a lot of times what we do to try to offset tax rates for more vulnerable Vermonters or even middle income Vermonters is to give tax credits. So over the past couple of years, we've increased the child tax credit. We've increased the rental rebate. We've increased the, what is it? There's another like earned income, that's what it is, the earned income tax credit. So that is a way that we try to even out taxation for a lot of Vermonters. Well, I think we just sort of begun to skim the surface, obviously in a half an hour. Well, I hope that you've had a chance to say some of the things that you wanted to say here. Just before we close, is there any last thoughts that you wanna leave your constituents with? Is there a chance to speak to them? You go. Go ahead. No, you go. This is the kind of comradering. This is how it works. And the legislature. Yeah, no, I'll just close by saying, I think sometimes some people are very kindhearted about the work that we do, which is really nice. And I think sometimes people feel perplexed by the work that we do. And so, one of the things that I think about a lot is, I hope that people do understand that we take a lot of testimony, we hear from a lot of people, we hear from everyday Vermonters, we hear from experts as we do our work and our aim is always to be making the best decisions we can for everyone across the state. Thanks. Well, that was very well said, Rep Andrews. And I guess, you know, I love it when people get in touch with me because then I just know that they're paying attention to what's going on. And you never know if you put stuff out on Front Porch Forum, you know, or if you have a Zoom and people don't have to register, you just don't know, like, is anybody hearing this? Is anybody concerned? I guess I've really encouraged a lot of constituents to get involved and to watch certain things and to tell them when a committee was going to be taking testimony on this or that because, I mean, it's not gonna be possible for a lot of folks, but for those who are able, I mean, I need them. We need their help to make the case for some of the things that we are talking about. It's not abstract. It's, you know, it affects people's lives and knowing that there is a public out there that really cares about this issue and wants to see a bill through, like the two bills that we just talked about, which I think are critical to our infrastructure. I think it's, I'm constantly looking for ways to kind of... Connect. Well, and break down kind of all the stuff that's happening and not over-report or give information that is gonna change anyway tomorrow. I'm not being very articulate about this, but I just think that... Well, it's a rapidly shifting. There's a lot of negotiations that are going on. So just as we want our constituents to know that, wow, you know, it does take a long time to do what we do, even though it doesn't seem like it's a whole lot of time to get all of that done, but we do take a lot of testimony. We also need the public to voice its opinion. And so, not just with us. We're the ones that are most often contacted and city council members. But once you get to the Senate level or you get to the governor, I mean, it's just, they do not... Yeah, well, it is reportedly quieter, right? And people have never really thought about actually contacting the governor with their thoughts. Which you can do. You can do it right on the website. You can go like to put your comments right in about the budget. And you can also, if you want, to go right onto Vermont, the Vermont Legislature webpage and look at the governor's budget compared to the House budget that's just been and see where the differences are, which is kind of interesting. I know we talked a little bit about that. I mean, the one thing that we didn't talk about, which I, if we have a few minutes, which I see we do, is the idea of results-based accountability, right? Sort of the budget is supposed to be built on, are we making a difference? And I'm curious in your experience as relatively new legislature, legislators, have you had some experience with that? And have you seen people showing you that the money that is being spent is actually having an effect? Or the lack of money being spent, which I think you've talked a little bit about, the lack of money being spent is having a negative effect. I'll just throw a couple things out. There's things that are, I don't know that we're asking all the right questions. And what we get from departments is often- You don't think the legislature is asking the right questions? I don't think we're always asking the right questions. And I think we're, I think sometimes we do, but for example, when we get kind of an RBA report, it is mostly focused on how much, how much did they do? How many people did they serve? How many meals were provided, et cetera, et cetera. And that doesn't tell us what we need to know. And I think that is in part a product of, I think we've had a kind of inconsistent commitment to RBA. I was running a nonprofit when RBA was introduced with great fanfare and we were gonna just do this. And I just think we have struggled and a lot of the faces are new, people running various departments. And so at any rate, I think- Well, and just to be really clear, if you're counting how many kids you're feeding at a lunch program, but your goal is to get more kids off of a lunch program or to get more kids on a lunch program because you want all kids to be served than counting the number, how many is that? Or to increase educational outcomes, which is really tricky because lots of things can go into that, right? Like what makes a good education? Certainly having a child come in with a good night's sleep and a healthy breakfast is one way to improve those outcomes, but it's not exactly a direct line. So I think sometimes items like that are a little bit tricky. Well, and here, so here, I just, we learned in our committee because we started asking this question of every single department that came to present to us, what is your vacancy rate? And then when human resources came in, we asked, how long do people stay? And what we learned is that 40% of people who are hired by the state within the year, they're gone. Just in the HR or overall? Overall. Overall. Overall. So that says to me, also $57 million in our budget is budgeted vacancy savings. Huh. From departments. What's the biggest employer in the state? Who? Can I ask you that? Who's the biggest, which agency is the biggest employer? I think it would have to be the Agency of Human Services. That's what I was gonna say. Okay, so a crop, but that involves corrections. Yeah. So what this is telling many of us is that, A, we don't really know the cost of providing the services that we provide because we have vacancy rates that are sometimes 20% in certain departments. That is so surprising to me. And we're counting on those savings so that we don't overspend and that enables them an administration to say, yep, we hit 3.3%. We, you know, that's as much as the budget went up. But no, it doesn't reflect, we are budgeting to 3.3%. And that means perhaps, you know, budgeting in a vacancy savings in a small department that is fully staffed, but that sees a vacancy savings rate of $24,000. Well, okay, $24,000 is not a lot of money, but still. Across the, but why? Why is there, they're trying to hang onto everybody. But in order to meet budget, they have to somehow lose $24,000 worth of a person. And, you know, there's some vacancy savings you always have to count on. But it is, that kind of budgeting I think is dangerous and will be inherited by the next administration and- So you started with, what are you seeing the results of? Yeah, and, you know, I think we are seeing the fact that a lot of state agencies have been hollowed out, not all, but a number of them have really been hollowed out and it makes it harder to keep workers and it makes it harder to hit targets and to evaluate the work that they are doing. Yeah, interesting. Do you have any thoughts on that? Same question about seeing the results of how money's being spent or seeing the results of where money is not being spent? Yeah, I was actually gonna kind of address this in a more anecdotal way, having to do with the childcare bill that we passed last year. So, one of the biggest email categories that I get from my constituents goes like this. Dear representative Andrews, my spouse and I each are college educated and have white collar jobs. We have two children in daycare, but we also have huge debt from going to college and we also have a huge mortgage. Can you please tell me when I'm gonna get the subsidy for my childcare because we're right on the edge, like we need this to happen as soon as possible. And I'll say it's October and they'll say, I think we can hang on to them. So, and so I'll just pause there, that's a lot and I have gotten numerous of those, it's very upsetting. And it makes me proud that we did this work because it's clearly something that is needed. And when I see a budget come across that does not adequately fund what we promised those families, I'm like, well, how can we have accountability to that? It makes things very tricky. We're always in this shifting environment where things are moving around and we amend bills over time. And so to me, it just makes, I was so pleased to see that money go back into our budget because I was like, we made these folks a promise. And then if we don't fund it, then we will not move the ball forward. So I think there's a lot of times where we just really need to think about, we're not maybe perhaps not getting the results we want because of decisions like that. Yeah. The one, I think that we'll call that, I think we'll call that it at this point. You're in charge. I'm in charge and I lost my train of thought right then. But that is okay. I actually, if you don't mind me saying one more thing about accountability. Thank you. So I sit on, like I said, this committee that addresses taxation. And sometimes I lay awake at night and think to myself, that's not gonna make me super popular. It's not like duty. And whenever someone hears taxes, it gets people riled up a little bit. And I do think it's important to note that we never look at raising taxes for, you know, just to put into the general fund. It's always for a purpose. It's always purpose driven. And so when we talk about the public safety issue when the court's being woefully under staffed, we are willing to make the hard decision to raise taxes because we know what will increase public safety. So I just think it's really important for people to understand that we are not, we are very intentional in the work that we do there. That's a great point. So Rep. Julia Andrews and Rep. Tiff Blumly, thank you so much for joining us here. Thank you so much again. This is the first of a series of Under the Dome that we're gonna be hosting on town meeting TV on Mondays at 2.30, this is live. It should, you are also welcome to call next week. We will have some other folks. You can go to cctv.org and check out the full schedule of events. And thanks for watching.