 Thank you. Welcome to the Vermont House of Appropriations Committee. It is Monday, February 13th, 2023. And we are getting started this, well actually this afternoon. This morning people have been working on their budgets. It was great to see so many people meeting with people within the building. Your chair has been digging into dollars and looking at as much as the one-time dollars. You know, tell people that we should make sure that we're looking at those one-time dollars, especially as they pertain to your budgets. And all these programs in there that we're gonna need to get some details on. But we'll get started with you, sir. You have not met everyone here. No, Madam Chair, I have not. So why don't we just use ourselves before you get started? So, I'm Representative Diane Lanford. I live in New Jens and I represent Addison 3. Hi, I'm Robin Schuy from Middlebury. Pat Brennan from Coldchester. Hi, Tiff Lillie from Burlington. Tristan Lillie, now from Bradford. Kerry Dolan from Weitzfield, and I represent Ducksbury, Houston, Moortown, Weitzfield and Ward. Holly from Calis, Mayfield and Marshfield, where together? Does that make seem right? Trevor Squirrel, Jericho and Underhill. Woody Page from Newport. Rebecca Holcomb from Sharon Stratford, Dufford and Norwich. Good afternoon, Jim Areson, Mr. Vindman, Kellington, and Weitzfield, Good to see you both. Representative, I didn't hear your joke, so. I know it was a time travel joke. Stick around, we have others. Sometimes it's hard to believe that, I guess maybe it's the size of the world. Oh, she's not here though, she's at the screen. Oh, there she is, I'm sorry, Lynn, go ahead. I forgot. It's good to see Anna and John again, and Lynn Dickinson from St. Almond's. I have to leave early to go to a Vermont State College Board meeting, but it's good to see you again. Good to see you again. And Madam Chair, before I begin, I have to concur with you, the Atom Project was an excellent movie. Oh, good, I'm glad that you did. My name's John Campbell, Executive Director for the State's Attorney's and Sheriff's. For the record, Annie Newman, I'm the Department of State's Attorney's Sheriff's Labor Relations and Operations Manager. And she really is the brains behind the operation, so you're gonna hear mostly from Annie today who's gonna walk through the budget. I just wanted to give an overall presentation as to what the department is for those of you who may not be aware. We have Department of State's Attorney's and Sheriff's as obviously as the states. We represent the state's attorneys, the 14 counties of each state's attorney and their offices. And then the sheriff's, the part we represent is we take care of their salary and their benefits passed through our office at our department, and then we handle the transport deputies. We do not handle the sheriff's running of their daily operations of their offices. Some people have thought that, especially recently there's been more news about some of the sheriff's departments. And so just to clarify, we just do the transport deputies and the sheriff's themselves, their salaries. We also have victim's advocates and the special investigative units are also through our department. All together, as I said, there's almost 180, I think there are 180 employees. We right now we're facing, especially the state's attorneys really take up the major portion of our representation in the department. And right now we are facing a huge case backlog with all the cases due to not just the pandemic, but prior to the pandemic, there was a backlog, but the pandemic absolutely exacerbated it and it still has resounding issues for us as a department. And in addition to that, the cases continue to amount. And a lot of that is because of the backlog with us trying to be able to take care of cases that are older, especially ones where if somebody is incarcerated or if this is something that's hanging over someone's head, you want to get through it. You want them to be able to go on with their lives and move on. So the folks that we have working for us are some of them, I mean, some of the hardest working people I know, they put in countless hours. Unfortunately, our states that are deputies and state's attorneys, they're handling caseloads of like 350 to 400 cases, which is outrageous. I mean, that's how bad it is and especially when we're trying to do more restorative justice to me and to also the people that I represent, it's been extremely important for us to be able to get people to work closely with people who have, you know, maybe, a lot of them have made mistakes, they've made bad judgment calls and we don't want that to dictate what the rest of the life is gonna be. So you try to help out and you try to match them up with programming but when you're handling so many cases, it's hard to do that. It's very difficult to do that. So our folks are, they're very dedicated but when you're dealing with that many cases, it's tough, the victims' advocates, now those folks, the men and women we have working there, some of them have upwards of handling 800 cases. So, you know, for anyone to think that you're gonna be able to get, you know, the full victim services, whether you have 800 cases, it's pretty tough to do that but they, you know, do it somehow and luckily they're not dealing with every case that wants but it's sad to see that something so important is not fully, in our opinion, fully resourced but we understand that times are tough and money is short but we do find that the funding of the victims' advocates is extremely important to our offices. So, what we will do now is I will turn it over to Annie who will run through the individual budget and then if there's any questions, we'll obtain those. Oh, well, we're on track. I'll turn my phone off. Thank you. Thank you, it's nice to see some familiar faces and I would like to make points to the new folks here. Thank you. So, what I try to do to make life a little bit simpler is I include for you this one page after each of these four of these for each section of our budget. So, our budget consists of four lines, the state's attorneys, sheriffs, the special investigation unit and the victim advocates. So, I can walk you through just generally and I have the opportunity, John and I and Barbara Bernardini, our fiscal manager here was encouraged to come up to the table in decline but if you have any real questions, Barbara's also a big part of the brains of the operation and John gives me the credit and Barbara is really the brains here. I had the opportunity with John and Barbara today to meet with Representative Spurl right before we came in and he gave me some good feedback about some information that he thought the committee would want to see as we kind of refine through this but let me give you the walkthrough as to what we're looking at. So, we have four sections of our budget. The largest obviously is the state's attorneys budget. We have about 109 full-time employees that includes the 14 state's attorneys, all of our administrative support staff, the victim advocates and our deputy state's attorneys. This year, the 5% increase that we receive in the budget from the administration is primarily going to be for wage adjustment that includes the union contract provisions, health insurance and retirement. All of those things were going up and that's pretty much where that money is gonna go. We will have to carry about $232,000 in vacancy savings which doesn't sound like a lot unless you consider the fact that that's probably three positions at least that won't be able to get filled during the fiscal year until we meet those, meet that vacancy saving. Some good news I'd like to report on is ARPA money that and I know that this is just a small diversion but this legislature gave us ARPA money to transition our criminal case management system. That was really necessary to do to kind of keep up with the courts who implemented a better system and we wanted to be able to integrate and talk to that. So that progress on that project is going very well and that is ARPA money that is still in our bucket so to speak and we're really pleased with the work that was done at ADS has been extremely helpful in terms of helping us along with that as has the contractor bearing done is just during the project management. We hopefully soon will have a contract for work to be done within about two months. The restarting of the trials, obviously it was like the flood gates are opening. There's lots of work that has to get done around that and our attorneys are working as hard as they can. The ask in this budget is sort of really two things in terms of the state's attorneys, maybe three but let me go to the one. I feel like as though we need additional positions across the board. So it's not just attorneys but it's victim advocates and administrative support staff. Now one of the things that Representative Squirrel has asked me to do is to lay it out a little bit more clearly as to what we would be looking for. For example, at the bottom of this page I say looking at it sort of very simply we were looking at well maybe one additional attorney, one additional victim advocate and one additional administrative support staff but the reality is that it isn't necessarily true that every office would need one of those. Not everyone needs a full-time attorney, not everyone needs a full-time victim advocate. So what I have committed is that I would go back and kind of do more of an actual plan as to how we would use additional positions and why they would be needed. So for example, Chittenden County being one of the largest field offices probably isn't necessarily an office that needs an additional attorney. They've been staffed well over the years but Franklin County, Washington County, Rutland County, Wyndham County, some of those offices are struggling mightily under the weight of their work. The other issue that I would say is this legislature had given us originally the 3.3 million in ARPA money which was then administration converted into general fund and it was able to put into a one-time bucket and we are spending that down. We would like to be able to be in a position of being able to more effectively spend that but as you have the money, you have to also get the positions out of the, with the Department of Human Resources. So we really, limited services really the more attractive way to recruit people right now we're writing letters because that money can expire at the end of each June can carry forward as it did last year but one of the things that happens is you have to ask for it. So at the end of the year, because it's general fund money, you've got to say can we carry it forward? And so as we are hiring, for example, deputy state's attorneys as limited service, their letters now say, your start date will be January 15, I think that up. And with a potential term separation date of June 17, unless money is available for us to use to continue your position. So that's a really, that's kind of a buzz kill when you're looking at deciding whether you want to keep, you want to take a position and we're giving you a position for a few months or six months and other places are hiring full time. We're competing just like everybody else or for employees all over the state. So we have to really, realistically, we have to say that because that money could be taken back. We hope it won't be. We've talked to commissioner Greshan and deputy commissioner Merrill about that and I think they hear us and they did last year. I know this committee heard us and was very supportive of us carrying that money forward because you gave it to us to clear the backlog or as representative Swirl said, work on the court issues. I think we're doing a good job but it's tough to recruit people as temps when they get no benefits and limited service when you've got, we've got to put it in the letter honestly to say June 17th, maybe you'll stay. Go ahead. Great, thanks. So just to clarify, you're talking about some permanent positions and you're talking about some limited service positions. And am I reading this correctly that you were looking for possibly 42 more permanent positions? Correct. But as representative Squirl and I talked at lunch that perhaps we can present a plan that would lay it out against maybe the backlog reducing. Okay, and then the limited service positions and I totally understand about why do you take a job? It could be gone in a year or something. Do you have a specific number of those in mind? I think, well, we're authorized to hire 10 attorneys as limited service and everything else was temps. Six paralegal temps and 16 administrative support staff as temps and we're just, those have been tough to fill because they have, as temps they get no benefits and they have a cap of 1,280 hours that they can work. So that's also challenging too. So 16 temps or 26 temps? We had 22 temps and 10 limited service. Oh, okay. That you were authorized last year? Yes, there was, most of them were still authorized. So you're not asking for, or are you asking for more on top of that? Well, in order to spend the money effectively because we still have money left from mid fair amount of that. I think of the 3.3 we probably spent 1.4, 1.5. So we still have a fair amount of that money we could put towards moving this along, moving the backlog along. So a combination and I think that that was the plan that I committed to representative squirrel that I would bring back a more firm plan. X numbers of temps or need X number of limited service, X numbers of permanent. And then the 42 permanent somewhere you'll tell us with all that costs. Yes. This is sounding expensive. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So more of a generic question. I mean, everybody's concerned about the backlog that the pandemic caused. Where are you today? Are we keeping it? I mean, are we gaining on the backlog? Are we still losing ground? Or are we just status quo? We haven't. It all depends on, we are, I think we are making progress on the backlog, but it's not as fast as, it's not something that you just do a magic bullet. There are some counties that we've asked that for instance, Rutland County had, I think three, almost 3,800 cases backlog backlog. I don't know, if you try them every day, you know, if you had a trial every day, that's not gonna, you're not gonna do much with that. So what we've been doing is trying to go through finding some of these older cases that might be able to be dismissed. And we just reduced the new attorneys, state's attorney in Rutland County, we're proud to announce that he reduced it by 20% already since being in there. But we still need, a lot of those are still gonna require, you know, the cases that be moved to where you have interaction with the lawyers, you know, to either try the cases or push them towards trial and then work out some type of clear agreement. The problem is that, as I mentioned earlier, is that the cases aren't stopping coming in. So there, we're dealing with these acute matters and then to try to get them to go back and look into the backlog, it's just really tough. So we need some folks that are going to be dedicated, solely to dealing with the backlogs in the offices. And that's been really tough. And it's not just us, I mean, this is something that you're gonna hear from the founder general and also the courts because we don't operate in a vacuum so that these folks are gonna have to, we're all gonna have to be in this together. And I must say is that, I think we've had a really good relationship with the court and with the federal general's office in trying to discuss and work ways that we can solve this backlog, but it is crucial. Well, and related to that, if we were to give you the positions that you have the money for, can you even find the lawyers to fill those positions? And that is a very difficult thing because unfortunately we're looking at, this is not the same pay as you would get in private practice. In fact, I read before I came here, I read two articles where New York and Florida were also facing the exact same problems with trying to recruit. Florida actually, the legislature just went and appropriated basically a $15,000 signing bonus on for attorneys to go to work for. I'm gonna, don't leave off. I was just saying. Yeah. Yeah, I was just saying. He said, start a little good. We got him to work down. I'm telling you. Sorry, Florida doesn't do it for nothing. Yeah, concrete jungle. Anyway, the point being is that it, trying to get them and then the other issue is trying to fill some of the spots is that if you bring somebody in from out of state, they still have to be thrown on the licensing to get here and to get their bar numbers, so. They need a house. Yeah, so that's delaying, yeah. But I will say that we are in our second full contract with Union contract with the staffs and the state's attorney's office. And I feel like that has made a difference in terms of us being able to better take care of our staff. Our administrative staff have had two upgrades in the past three years. And I think that that's been very helpful. Our state's attorneys, we went back and we took a look at anybody who perhaps did not get any prior service credits or credit for their relevant experience and through the union negotiations, we were able to take care of that. I wanna say it was pay equity and it really was in some cases. But the reality is we worked collaboratively with the union. We took care of all of that. They were very pleased about that and we're doing a much better. I think that the word is out there that we're doing much better in terms of taking care of our own staff in this regard. Yeah, one other thing though, I think it'd be remiss if I didn't mention is that, each year when the legislature comes, obviously they come up with new laws. And over the past couple of years, there's been several new laws that have really caused additional impact and created additional impact on us. And we got some of the positions, obviously when expungements came through, there was some, there was appropriation there, but they're exploding. I mean, to the point where you're getting more and more and more. And it's not that they're complicated, they do take quite a bit of time. They're not as, some people say, oh, it should only be 15 minutes apiece, which takes far longer than that. But we're also finding that we're having a lot of additional problems later on because some of the people who get any records expunged are now coming back and saying, well, we need our records because we're getting licensed to do this. And then we just had to say, the records don't exist because they don't. And so our people are getting tied, we have a couple of cases dealing with that. That and then public records requests have just gone through the absolute roof. Tim Dumont, who's our new, we just brought him on at Addison County Native. And Tim's doing a great job, but he's been absolutely barrel under, with the public records requests to the point where he's working until like 10, 11 o'clock at night. And just trying to handle them and redacting all of the information that needs to be redacted. So things just aren't getting simpler. That's just it. So I don't mean to totally stop you. You thought it was a good breath. Representative Mahali had a question and then I've got just a clarifying question to ask. Yeah, just help me out here. So the 42 permanent positions, that's a denominator against the numerator against the denominator of how many? I mean, what's the permanent staff size of? The permanent staff size in the state's attorneys is 109. We have 14 offices and this was really honestly overly simplified. It was one additional position for each office, one additional attorney, one additional victim advocate. Is that 109, in other words, it's 42, let's just take the 14 deputies' days attorneys. How many deputies' days attorneys are there? That's 62. Okay, so it's 14 over 60, all right. And I guess the other question I kind of answered would like to hear from you is, if this is a back, these are being hired to address a backlog. Why are they permanent positions? Why aren't they temporary positions? Because presumably, at some point, we're gonna be through the backlog, although it might be a while. They may be retiring by the time of the backlog. I mean, I hate, again, I hate to say this, but backlog is not, something's gonna go away overnight and people have looked and they'll come up and they'll say, why don't you just take off, knock off 20% of the cases? Well, we were fortunate in this one county to do that because he went through, he was able to go through and to see nonviolent crimes, people were in crimes cases where there was not a victim, but there's always that victim which you got a business, Jim Harrison, you know from your former position. Retail theft is just knocking businesses out of business, right and left. So it's hard for us to do it. There's people who would say, why don't you just take all the fish and game violations and just do away with them. Well, that's okay for some places, but if you're in the Northeast Kingdom or if you're in some other spots that feel like those are really serious issues that we as a constituency feel are important, you don't wanna see that happen. So, but the biggest thing is, is the fact that there are, we are finding that a lot of the names of the defendants, let's say. You're seeing the same ones over and over, many of the dockets and you're seeing generational issues which is kinda tells it, it's a telling story, unfortunately. And so it's not as simple as just going in there and dismissing a case and trying to get a trial going forward and asking, there's times when let's say the prosecutor say, well, I'm judge, we're ready for trials, you know what, your attorney's here, you know. And then you'll have the defense say, well, your honor, I need a continuance because of this. There's discovery issues that, because a lot of people during the pandemic, they used to sort of, everybody was sort of waiting to see, like, why should I settle my case right now if I don't know what's gonna happen, if you can't get back into court. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is there's so many variables to this one issue that I can tell you, I just do not see that the backlog problem, unless we address it, unless you all address it, I help us address it, not just us but also the court and the defender general, it's gonna be with us for a while. To the point where I was kind of kidding about saying that they'll probably retire by the time, but who knows? So I think my question too is around that same thing. Okay, the 42 positions, the one, one, one, somebody, you're gonna come back with a plan on that. But the 32, the 10 attorneys and the 22 temps are outside of that, obviously. Okay, and they're part of the 3.3 million from last, so there's enough to pay for them another year. Yes, there is. Okay, so for 24, and they're dealing, they're here to help with the backlog, right? Correct, okay. So it'll be 25 when we need to really address that gap as well, right? Am I seeing that? Because it, you're gonna. That is, I think, correct, but, if I can, but the number you decided, which were the 10 attorneys and the 22, which are parallels and add-in temps, our issue right now is just we really could need, we could use more positions. I know that sounds counterintuitive because it's hard to fill these, but if we had more limited service at, I think Representative Squirrel said that to me, you know, they're easier to fill if they're limited service. Absolutely, because they have some benefits. Right now, the vast majority of what we received were temps, and those are tough to fill. If you could add also, I think, what Representative Squirrel had told us today, because you were under the impression that those temps should have been limited service, I think. So you'd like to convert some of that conversation, those 10 and the 22. There's some research I still need to do on this because when we were having a conversation this morning, I learned something that I assumed was different. Okay. Well, that's why we all come to work here. And I don't want us to testify something that's not accurate. It was my assumption that when they made them all temporary and they passed a court reopening, that we convert them all to limited service. That's the information I got from that. And I want to make sure that in my mind, I don't think, oh, 32 are already there, 42, you just need really 10 more. That's not true. You need the 32 for this and 42. And Madam Chair, again, we'll come back with a more specific, and I apologize that we didn't have it right here now, but things are just, you know. Everything's in development. It's all alive. Right. Okay. All right. So that's essentially state's attorney. So you can move on if you want to go ahead and grab your sheet on the sheriffs. That's the next one. So there was a mistake on that sheet. I listed that the increase for the FY24 was 2.9. I'm sorry. That would be, that's okay. So if you go to the next section that starts with a. Yeah. That looks like about page 30 of our. 30. Thank you. Well, it's 22, and we're at one of 15. Yeah. All the sheriffs. You have three pages, and you should find it. There you go. Okay, great. So I listed it was 2.9, and I apologize. It's actually 4.8. I didn't need to make that mistake, but I did. I'm sorry. And the crosswalk is 4.8? Yes. Yeah, that's correct. That is correct, Madam Chair. Okay. Okay. So all of the money in this budget for the sheriffs is general funds, state general fund money. As John said, it pays the salary benefits for the 14 elected state sheriffs and the state transport deputies. And I'll just refer to those state deputies. Those are the folks who move people, pick people up at the facilities and bring them for their court hearings, and they assist in a variety of other activities. The interesting thing is that there's just tremendous requests for more assistance, not less from our transport deputies. They're doing a lot of work with the judiciary in terms of support security and human services, monitoring juveniles that need supervision before they find a placement for the kids. They're getting requests for assistance to OCS for child support and a recent request even from the DOL on some civil process issues. I can just interject for a second. Again, the state transport deputies, they are statutorily just assigned to transported prisoners or juveniles or also folks who have issue with the mental health departmental health. But because there are so many other problems that are existing out there right now with other departments and agencies, whether it be AHS or DOC, they're asking for things that we've never done before and as Andy just pointed out, with even the Office of Child Support, they're asking us to help enforce child support and which go back to you. So it's just sort of an interesting situation because as the conversation is occurring about, what's the future for the Sheriff's Department? So I just want to point out that there's an awful lot of work that's being done by not only our folks, but the Sheriff's others that what I would call their guardians, but they will actually work for the Sheriff, not for the state. There's a tremendous amount of work that's being done in rural policing in Vermont and other work that gets done by the Sheriff's, but our folks primarily are doing the transports and doing all these other services. We're trying to really help the judiciary. We've been very much supporting the judiciary and human services for the past few years particularly. You probably remember that we talked about that Sheriff Marcu out of Memorial County was supporting the motel program. Folks, the motel owners said yes, we will set these up as homeless facilities and let folks stay here, but we want some assistance on security and that was all being done by the Sheriff's. So, so there's- But not paid by, through the state. Well- Made by a contract with the hotel. Well, a contract, yes, but during the pandemic years. It was all one. We were letting our transport deputies who at the time were not doing a lot of transports because everything was remote, although they were moving them up to remote here. So that was occurring and we were moving people back. They re-allowed them to do a lot of other things. They were doing transports from facility to facility and they were doing more work with human services. There was a lot of assistance to human services during that period of time. So I'm looking at your cross worker that the transport is down. The mileage is down 30,000 and I'm gonna assume which is never a good thing that has a lot to do with the fact that there's more remote hearings. That's correct. Okay, so there's less we transport going on from prisoners and if we heard earlier in a budget adjustment, the judiciary looking for support which this committee and the house provided, so we're in the Senate right now, for the judiciary's IT to help. And I'm not gonna get this right. Basically, some of the remote hearings, the ability to have a sound proof room, so what it wasn't, is in the BAA, right, Representative Squirrel? So some of that will even help more so. We felt pretty confident that the reduction in the mileage would not come back and bite us for this upcoming budget years because they continue to have some of the remote process. And I think that that has actually worked really well because if you think about the fact that even for corrections, if they have to get someone ready to leave the facility, there's a lot of work that has to be done by the correctional officers and then when the person comes back in, there's a lot of check-in work that has to be done. So that's been somewhat of a relief even for DOC. But they don't have to stay with the person. They have to stay with the prisoner while they're there. No, once they give them to us to move over to like, if they get them ready to go. Not meant to share of stay with them. They stay in the courtroom. So it's additional security in the courtroom too. Because all but two of our transport deputies are level three. That's the highest level certification for law enforcement. All but two are level three certified and only two of them are level two. So there is a tremendous amount of assistance to the judges and the defendants and everybody in the courtroom. There's a couple of people standing around who are level three certified and can help in the event of an emergency. There's one share for every county. Yes. So 14. There are 14 elected sheriffs. There are approximately 22 transport deputies. And 22 transport deputies. 22, 23 or so. And we're working with human services to see if we can give them some additional assistance. The one thing I will mention is that last year the legislature allowed the state transport deputies to unionize. We have not yet started bargaining. The SVA just contacted me recently. I sent them a data dump, wages, salaries, benefits, all that stuff. And our first conversation on that is on Wednesday. I'm hopeful that we will have a speedy resolution to the contract negotiations. Our first two contracts with the state's attorneys offices resolved in about four or five meetings. No mediation. We were just able to collaboratively resolve a contract which was great. And I'm hoping that we have the same process with going forward with the sheriffs. And they also are unionized under the SVA. And I know for here this is the budget, but I'm just for those that might be paying attention why aren't we not talking about the other. I know that you've been over to government ops around some of the issues, other issues around what's happening. Not just one, but statewide when it comes to sheriffs and that's extremely unfortunate. But across the hall is having those meetings. So if we wind up with unanticipated costs as a result of the union contract or more assistance from other agencies, we could wind up in a situation where we run up, back a budget adjustment for mileage and per diem. We've never had to do that. So we're keeping our fingers crossed that we've managed this budget pretty well. And I think we're working very well with the sheriffs and getting them to be fully engaged to support state government. I think that that's been a goal for us. And I think that's really the current. Questions for the sheriffs? All right, next would be, next I believe is the victim advocates. The victim advocates, yeah. Okay. Okay, so we have 27 victim advocates that work across state government in state's attorney's offices. They provide victim support and assistance for everything from explaining the court process, making sure people know, the victims know what's happening because it's a really complicated situation. For people who are not familiar with the criminal justice system, they assist with making sure they know all about victim comp and victim restitution and other services. There's a lot of communities, in not in all areas, but in a lot of areas of the state, there's good resources for victims. And so they are really in tune with all of the support system in the communities. They make sure that the victims know about what's available to them. But there's a lot of making sure that they are fully aware of victim statement to the judge, all of that. So our victim advocates are really, as John said, are very engaged. If you think about the fact that an office might have five full-time, or six full-time attorneys, who all have the, as John mentioned, 350, 400 cases, and you have two victim advocates. So figure that one out. A lot of those cases have victims who wanna know what's happening. So our victim advocates have a pretty heavy workload. They do a great job. This was the first year for this line item in our budget. I'm sorry, yes, FY23, because we were funded by federal money, as you might recall this committee would probably recall that conversation. We were funded by federal money, and then CCBS requested the state general fund. The state general fund came to us. So we feel like we're hoping, we're keeping our fingers crossed that we're going to end up this fiscal year being able to make sure all the bills are paid around the victim advocate program. But not sure exactly. And if we have a problem, we will let you know in budget adjustment. I'm not just going to put it on the side. Is that, do you have a question? Yeah. Why the change from federal funding to state money? So the Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services, CCBS, for a number of years, for folks here who might remember the prior director, Chris Venno, and then she had approached the legislature and the administration about saying we would like the program to be funded by state money. What's the advantage of that? I, you know, I don't want to speak for them. I think. Okay, well, I can take it offline, too, if that is helpful. It just seems to me if you've got federal dollars available, at least we split it. Representative Squirrel, did you know? Yeah, I mean, it goes back to Crime Victim Services and the federal funding coming through Volca, which is a victims of Crime Act. Victims of Crime Act Volca. And we, based on the testimony heard last week, just with new folks, but folks have been around, but they're driven very much so by special funds and they've been declined. And the Victims Advocate Program that's in the state's attorney's office is funded from Crime Victim Services Special Fund, which is the Volca Fund. So the thought process is rather than just changing it to general fund and giving it to Crime Victim Services staff and giving it to state's attorneys just for the sake of funding with the program, state's attorneys. To make it general fund, that way the Volca money could help offset the funding shortfalls across all the special funds that they were experiencing. So they wouldn't have to keep coming back to us. So there's no less, it's not less federal dollars. We're not leaving something on the table. Exactly. We just shifted, okay. That's what I didn't see, but I don't care where I should go with that. I will point out, and we've got this conversation that there's still personal services increase in this budget, and I question that. And when we have a conversation with Adam, I think about what that is. It's down to 2.6 and up, yeah, right? Is that the other personal services? Is that what you're... Yeah, that's all my question is, the same. What is the down 2.5, 6, 2? I see it's level, but the salaries are leveled by the grade. Yeah, I'll have to ask them to speak to the crosswalk, and I'll set up anyway, but the reality is there's no personal services increase. It's like 68, exactly. Leveled funding. So it's really, if I'm correct, Barb, it's really was just a budget line shift, was it not worth it? This is Barbara Herney, Dean. Other personal services to salaries and benefits? Yes, because this is actually the first budget written for our department last year. It was switched during the fiscal year. So the down was last year's, 22s. 20, 23, yeah, 23? 23, yes. So basically what we received in the budget was salary and benefit and nothing else, but as Representative Squirrel pointed out, we don't have, it doesn't account for what we know is coming forward for the increase. We have a 2% across the board July increase coming through the union contract and $1,000 non-recurring bonus, which is, lines up exactly to what the executive branch did also, so that's not in here, and it needs to be. Yeah, they just didn't put it in, just like that. It wasn't put in, I mean, is that this? It wasn't that target. This wasn't given to us as a target. So we need to go back and get some of that in the instituted in. So when I see on your sheet of this funding for FY24, we'll not cover costs of union contract provisions for victim advocates. Is that what you're talking about? There's no money, there was no money allocated. Okay, but you did allocate it in the previous budget for the, you said it was in there. You know what you anticipated. Yes, yes. So we do need to go back and get the 24 budget fixed because it doesn't include what's coming forward next year for the contract. So we don't actually have the right numbers. Correct. Okay, and then those will come in through representative squirrel, this is your budget, so you're gonna monitor what the funding for FY24 should be that's not here, which would, you know, stay within the three, well, some of the other agencies and government were trying to stay at 3%, but some of them are at eight. If I could just make a, just want a followup to representative Herbson's comment. So we, so our department did not initiate the conversation to have the federal money substitute with the state general fund, that was CCBS. So we were one of, at the time, I believe 41 sub-recipients of the VOCA money. And as Representative Squirrel pointed out, that VOCA money for, has been going down. And there was actually a report that was done by Joint Fiscal Office to kind of give you those numbers. So to the extent that it has been a challenge, I think, to project ahead, you know, victim services and victim advocate services on federal money, I think that that was probably the impetus for CCBS to see the state general fund dollars. Yeah, no, I remember the conversation and the shortfalls and the funds. So sometimes it just, I think, here, two, three times. Because it's vaguely remembering something of this handy that way back from when I was on before, I didn't have this budget, but there was a conversation around the, you know, like question of what are we gonna do because this source is shrinking and shrinking every year. And that was back, I think there was a report back in, like, 2015, maybe. Representative Squirrel will bring us a number. We'll see what we can do, we don't know. Yeah, there's some pieces that need to get the next year. Okay. Did the administration give you your numbers, you know, the feedback fairly similar, like, I'm just wondering how come the feedback's so late for you. So, there was a conversation about the victim advocate program and the money. I think we need to go back and have the conversation again. Okay, so let's do it. All right. Okay. Any other questions on this? Representative Dolan? Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I just want to thank you for all this work. The victim advocate program is exceptional. I know for a fact, a number of my constituents have been able to do the data for the program and I thank you for this hard work. Yeah, we're really proud of the work of all the staff and the victim advocates, you know, they take, like all of our staff, the victim advocates, I think, you know, they take calls, nights, weekends. They put their heart and soul into this. Yeah, they really, really do. Okay, and then the last piece, again, if I can move you forward to the next sort of special sheet is the Special Investigation Unit. So this is in our budget, but other than the fact that there's one staff person who is not a state employee, never has been, it's been a contract position for a million years. It's the grant administrative program, SAU grant program administrator manager. That's Pam Hango. She took over from Mark Matier, who I think a lot of people remember, Mark, for years. And Pam, so Pam works with all the SIUs. There are 12 special investigation units across the state, not one in every county, but I think Grand Isle County works with Franklin and Essex works with Orleans. So there are 12 SIUs. The money, there's a grant manager position and that's what the 62,000 is and other than that, all that money goes out the door to support the SIUs. And there are two types of grants. There's program support and law enforcement and the program support would be for the SIU local administrator. Maybe the person who's the program director at the local level may in fact have a forensic interviewer. They may have that skill set and do both. They, so usually it's, so there's program support money, it can help with rent, it can help with supplies and equipment and it can help with salary for the admin support for the program. And then the law enforcement grants are also given to each of the SIU and then they work with local law enforcement, usually, to have a reimbursement, so to speak, for support from the law enforcement agency. So, for example, they might contract with a municipal, they, or a sheriff, to provide law enforcement support to the SIU. So they tell us what they need, they propose a budget and generally speaking, the law enforcement grants are a total of about 120,000, sometimes a little bit more depending upon if there's money that's able to be reverted back and we can give it back out again. And the program supports are usually in the realm of about, usually about the same. So we actually, probably, the program supports are, I'm looking at barbed twice a year. Twice a year. So, the biggest challenge that they have, we're not worried about the money, we think that that's working okay. The biggest challenge that the SIU's have right now are finding law enforcement people to be able to work the units. Because as the law enforcement agencies are themselves challenged with staffing, they don't want to dedicate someone to the SIU necessarily. So if we can contract for an actual person, that's even best. So we can actually say we will buy all of the time of your deputy sheriff, of your municipal officer. We will purchase that and then they are dedicated to us. But it's really challenging. The ESP has been a great support to this program. The sheriffs have been a really good support in the municipals. They've all been very helpful, but like the state police have had to pull back because they've, for full-time folks, that's just what we're saying. This is no different. Their big challenge is not the money, their big challenge is bodies. And you have to be level three to investigate sex crimes. So again, these are some of the worst crimes where we're dealing with sexual assault and crimes of serious child abuse. So they are, I consider to be some of the most critical investigations going on in the state. So there's one employee that grants out to the 12 SIU's. And those 12 special investigation units are made up from law enforcement across the state that get an average of about $120,000 a year to be a part of it. And then there's another program support. Did I, I mean- It's a program support for administrative rent, equipment, and then the law enforcement grants, separate, yeah. And the other ground, so. So there's no issue with the money or issue there, just the staffing. Municipalities, law enforcement, and other people are not, don't have the numbers to be able to be at a dedicated piece to this. But it's critical that we have. There is some really good forensic interview and training that would support through this grant for law enforcement and social workers and a whole bunch of people that deal with these issues kind of crosswalk of state agencies and federal, you know, state and local agencies. So forensic interviewing is really critical in this because you just can't go in and start talking to a kid who's been abused. Yeah, it's highly specialized. And if you don't have it, then you have a very good chance of losing your case or not being able to build one to begin with. So. Re-victimizing a kid who's just been abused. Right, yes. So you have to be very careful. So the forensic interviewing piece is really critical here. But there's, the good news is there's no, there's no ask there. It's just, just to share with you what's going on. We always want to tell you where you're not asking for something, so. Yes, we appreciate it. Thank you. So our time has got two minutes with you. Any other final questions? And if not, we'll filter our questions and we'll get more information from you on other numbers from Representative Squirrel as he continues to work on. He's got a large portfolio. And Madam Chair, if I could apologize again to you and to the committee for not having what the victim's advocate, you know, not having that specific numbers there for how they're set out. I appreciate your coming in. We're trying really hard to get everybody in before the end of this week so that we've got the big picture before we make any types of decision. And as you know, having people come in and tell us what's going on is how we find out. Things that we don't find out from just looking at the paper. So you can adjourn in three weeks, you know? Absolutely. I can do it like Friday if you just let me. But somehow, sir, they won't leave me alone with it. Well, thank you very much. And welcome to the new folks. And I can tell you after having 16 years of sitting where you all are sitting, I can tell you're gonna have a great time while you're here. So you've got a great chair. Great people. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye now. When I worked at the health department, it was Senator, when I had to go into Sears' room with him, the vice chair at the time, and it was really funny. Senator Kennedy. Is that what this is? Well, there's three of them in here, right? There will be two or five on this. On your shoes. On that, yeah, but you need the bigger shoes and stuff. All right, we won't move, right? Where else is it gonna stay? Stay put. Chef. Ethics commission. Are you? Come on, then. When you get coffee. We're still live. Thank you for that handout. Are you Christina? Yes, I am. Christina, I don't think that you have met Kennedy for us here yet. You haven't been in. I know, I was here last year when everything was remote. But everything is so different now. So many people are here. So why don't we, we've got a couple holes right now because people are off meeting with budgets and things, but we'll go around and introduce ourselves before you start seeing them. I'm representative Diane Lankford. I live in Bridgens and I represent Addison 3. I have Robin Chai from Hillberry. Let's see. Pat Brennan from Colchester. Take lonely from Burlington. Trust me, I know that. Harry Dulley from Waysfield and I represent Dexbury Faketon in Hort Town, Waysfield and more. Because you see him. Carol Deutling is a representative. Dickinson is from St. Albans. She's at a meeting. I'm a Mark and Molly. Call us more soon. Sometimes you just get home. Here at the squirrel. Representative Squirrel. I thought I'd read it for a chair. I'm representing the girls. It's a good one. Are you done? Absolutely. Yes, this is Rebecca Holcombe. She's from Norwich and a bunch of other towns. I'm Jim Harrison. Chip Ben Mendon. Killington. It gives me a lot more. Yes. And for the record, start off and tell us about it. Yes. I'm Christina Silverett. I'm the executive director of the Ethics Commission. And I'm from Bering. It's interesting what I'm going to do. Good. Tell us about your budget. Budget, sure. So I can just start with maybe a quick overview of the Ethics Commission. So primarily we provide services. We provide services to two categories of folks. So one is state of Vermont public services and state of Vermont public servants and members of the general public. So for state of Vermont public services, we offer services related to ethics guidance and advisory opinions. So ethics guidance is when anyone who wants to, who works for the state of Vermont or also some categories of volunteers can call us up with a question about ethics at the moment really focused on the new code of ethics and providing advice around that. And ask for confidential guidance that can be verbal over the phone. They can tell us their name. They can tell, they don't have to tell us their name. They can ask for something in writing, not something in writing. And then we offer advisory opinions which are more involved. The entire commission reviews and advisory opinion and those are a bit more time consuming but those are four more complicated questions. And those are posted on our website so that anyone can see them after personally identifying information has been redacted. And we also receive complaints and those can come from state of Vermont public service and also members of the public. So we don't have investigatory authority or enforcement authority. But what we do is we receive the complaint, we review it to make sure it actually implicates an issue related to ethics. And then we forward it onto an entity that can handle the investigation and do further reviews. That could be DHR, that could be the attorney general's office, that could be one of the ethics panels in the house or senate. Go ahead. Don't complain. No, I'm not complaining. I don't want to double that number. I could. But help me out. I realize you don't have enforcement discussion in this building from time to time. But you have three complaints. You, assuming you look at a menu, they sound legit. You refer it to, like if it was one of us, you would refer it to the legislature, right? Yes. If it's a state employee in the executive branch, for example, who would you refer to? That would go to the Commissioner of Human Resources. Something similar, if it was judiciary. Correct. Correct. Do you have any follow up on those three complaints as to what happened to them? Sure, I can backtrack a little bit. So we have three formal complaints that were actually filed with us. We have written complaints. And so one related to municipal ethics. So it was closed upon receipt. We really encouraged people to call us if they're thinking about filing a complaint to cost first so we can walk them through. So in this case, we would have told the person we don't have jurisdiction over municipal issues. The other two were complaints that were forwarded to DHR, the Commissioner of Human Resources, and they looked into it and they closed them without findings. Okay, so if I may, three complaints or the size of state government sounds like either one, we're doing an extraordinarily good job overall. Or two, no one knows about the Ethics Commission. Who would I talk to if I did have a complaint? Right, and I think that there's two things going on here. So this year, we changed how we categorized complaints. So in the past, we categorized complaint, what I would call now complaint inquiries as complaints in our total numbers. So I think this past year, we had about 12 complaint inquiries, which are people who called interested in making a complaint. We talked through it in some places. They weren't related to, you know, there weren't issues that fell under the Code of Ethics. In other cases, they had complaints that there were plenty on going forward with and they just didn't. So the number three is, yeah, it's a small number, but those are the numbers where they actually filed an official complaint. And to give you a broader context, I think last year we had the Executive Director of the Rhode Island Ethics Commission, which has a very robust ethics commission. They're very highly ranked nationally and they also cover all municipalities in Rhode Island. So I think they had an average of maybe like 30 complaints. And so three is a small number, but also putting into context that we actually do serve, you know, compared to other ethics commissions, we serve a relatively small population. And yes, there is, you know, this newness to ethics commission. And then also say that people have other vehicles in which they can file complaints, which I do think in other branches of government, sometimes people are encouraged to file them internally. So we don't actually know how many complaints related to ethics were filed with the judiciary, were filed with the Senate, House ethics panels, or were filed in, you know, other places. We do get reports back from the Attorney General's office related to campaign finance complaints. And we do have numbers on complaints filed with the Secretary of State related to municipal ethics. So, but in general, we only know about the complaints that come directly to our office first before referral and not everyone chooses that option. Yeah. Representation show? You mentioned the campaign finance and I was just reading ahead in your report. So does this mean that a legislator or a citizen or anybody could contact you about campaign finance violations? Or is the normal process to go to the Attorney General? How does that work? Because there certainly have been a lot of campaign finance violations in the sense of not filing on time and things like that. Does this mean enforcement around it? Correct. And so, to be honest, like the value add in coming to the Ethics Commission, yes, you could come to the Ethics Commission and file a complaint with us and then we would forward it on to the Attorney General's office or you can go directly to the Attorney General's office. At this moment in time, I think one reason people don't tend to file complaints with us is because it doesn't, the add on value is that we can talk somebody through the complaint if they need that assistance. But other than that, it's just going to be referred on to another entity. And so, the question then becomes why not just file directly with them to take? Okay, so that makes sense for that representative page. Why not just have HR handle all of the Ethics issues? Sure, and so, well HR, so. Because I mean, you're sending those cases to HR except for I guess one, two, Attorney General. Yeah, well it depends on the type of complaint that we get in where it goes. But I think the idea is that eventually the Ethics Commission is going to have independent investigatory and enforcement powers, which is the standard and the norm. But Vermont, you know, frankly is behind the rest of the nation when it comes to our Ethics framework. And so the starting point was to get the code of Ethics in place and then continue to build it out in the years to come. So is it safe to say that you don't just handle complaints with the state government employees. There's also public complaints and other, right? Anything that right? Yeah, public, so we handle complaints related to state of Vermont public servants. So it is related to state government and that can be employees, but it also can be, you know, volunteer board members and legislators. I mean, could volunteer that category. And certain other categories of volunteers as well. Say you're a full-time volunteer for the state of Vermont and you have, you know, certain responsibilities that, you know, you can make an argument that you speak on behalf of the state of Vermont, then you would also be covered by the code of ethics. And we put this into place, the Ethics Commission feels like not that long ago. Yeah, it went into effect July 1st, 2022. So, yeah, so it's brand new. Yeah, brand new, yeah. That's what I thought, yes. And I guess to go back to your point, why not just kind of have HR handle it? Well, the idea is that, you know, to have a real thorough and independent investigation. So right now, you don't want people to be investigating themselves in the sense that it's not a best practice in terms of, you know, getting to the bottom of the issue. People to come to us because they want somebody who is removed from their current situation. They already know the channels that they can go through internally and they don't necessarily feel confident in those channels. So a lot of the complaint inquiries that come to us where people don't move forward, their answer is, well, if it's just gonna go back to where I am now, then I know nothing is gonna happen. And so that's why a lot of people, you know, anecdotally tell us they choose not to move forward. Or you can assume that from the conversation that you've had once they find out that we don't have independent investigatory powers, they're like, okay, I'm gonna get that over to you. And then they kind of, their level of interest comes off and then we never receive the complaint. But it is, I think it's the step where to be able at some point to be able to provide that for this commission. Yes. At some point in the future. Yes. And then we get there. And it's sort of like, I don't know, I liken it to, and I could be wrong, sort of where we have sort of the heartburn between when you're trying to promote something and regulate it at the same time, there can be conflict of interest in it. Yes, and I think that originally, I'm relatively new, I've only been with commission for a little over a year. My understanding was that the commission was originally set up. The idea was that it was going to be an independent commission with investigatory powers. And then for some reason it just kind of kept getting put off until we got to a point where the code of ethics itself is new. So, four years, four or five years later. So brings representative Harrison and representative Cage. So I noticed that you get quite a few complaints about, well, relatively speaking, municipal. You don't have jurisdiction over it. Correct. Correct. Should you, or where, I mean, I can understand where the perception might be easy. You know, you have a small select board and a project gets approved and you know, somehow one of the select board members has some interest in that. It's easy to happen in a small town. But would, I mean, do you have any suggestions on how to resolve those other than electing somebody? Sure. So I can tell you that the category of calls we get related to municipal ethics fall into two categories. So they're from municipal officials themselves who aren't just into making a complaint because they feel they see something they feel is happening that they think is wrong or they're looking for advice. And so, and the other category of calls we get are from members of the public who feel that something wrong is happening and they also look for advice. So we cannot officially give anyone advice. We try to informally, you know, kind of walk people through problems. You know, if we say, okay, this is necessarily an ethics issue or yes, this could be an ethics issue, but we don't have any place to refer those callers to. And so that is a problem. And so it came up when we met with the Senate Government Operations Committee a few weeks ago and they've requested language directing ethics commission to come back to the legislature next year with a proposal on how to handle municipal ethics issues. Okay. Nobody in the state handles municipal ethics. Well, the Secretary of State's office I think they can provide some services but they are limited. I don't have a full understanding of what they do. It's my understanding is mostly what I hear from callers. And then there's a Vermont League of Cities and Towns which really represent the municipal officials. So if somebody is in a conflict internally where they feel like, you know, one member of a select board doesn't feel like something is happening that's correct with a select board, then, you know, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns represents the select board and not that individual. And that's my understanding from, you know, what I received from callers. I don't have any intimate knowledge of how the Vermont League of Cities and Towns operates. But I will say anecdotally, a lot of the calls that we get are for smaller towns where they don't have a lot of resources. And so sometimes people get directed to the city attorney but my understanding is not every, you know, city or town has a full-time city attorney that is available to everyone. Sometimes it's paid on an hourly basis to review contracts and so on and so forth. Yeah, I've learned a little bit about it from some communities that have called me in the past around this happen and that. Like you would think that doesn't seem like there should be a procedure for recourse that found out, there's not. Yes. And that's hopefully, and you think next year that you're gonna have a report based on what could possibly be for municipalities? Yes, we're planning on, so we're gonna wait and see what exactly the language directing us to come back with a proposal looks like but kind of look, look at what's happening nationally and what might work for Vermont. So my understanding just, you know, anecdotally and initially without having done a lot of research is municipal hand ethics being handled at the state level works best in small states, which does fit for Vermont but at the same time it's not handled very well in most places and generally speaking. So it is something that requires a lot of research and consideration about what model would actually work best for Vermont and what model would meet people's actual needs as well. Sorry. The commission, is this gonna be a long-standing, I mean a commission generally is for a short period of time. It's permanent. Permanent. It will be permanent. Yes, yes, so yes. I don't know of any states that have temporary ethics commissions. It's, it's not such a bad thing. So will that change to something else? I mean, I mean when I hear a commission I only think of a short period of time you do a study and then disband. Well I think they can take different forms. So let's say like state ethics commission tends to be the name in other states as well even though they're permanent organizations. And if you do get investigative authority over, what would your budget's futuristically thinking have? Yeah. What would it be compared to now? I mean honestly I think that's really difficult to say. I think that if the ethics commission is somehow involved with municipal ethics the next year we'd come back with a budget that reflected that additional workload that would probably require, like right now we're very small. We have to come out of one full-time person. So there's me, I'm a part-time executive director and only recently we've hired a part-time executive assistant. And so to take on much additional workload at some point in time we would have to hire at least one more full-time person. But I think that it's a little bit premature to say what our budget would look like in the future but it would definitely be tied to the hiring of additional staff. Well, I know that people from the citizens are looking for accountability in places to have in process for accountability of their officials and I welcome this work and continue work, work with government ops and others on this. So your budget. Yes. What's about your budget this year? Yes. So our budget this year, our budget request is $189,427. And that does reflect an increase over past years and I'll say the majority of the increase is reflected with the fact that we hired administrative assistant and that is related to her salary. And it also reflects what our actual costs are in terms of using outside independent contractors to cover some of the workload that cannot be covered with the, the manner in which we are currently staffed does not actually cover the workload that we have and that is related to the passage of the code of ethics and an increased, not only increased demand for our services but also an increase in the amount of work that we can actually do. So for example, we developed a training which is part of the code of ethics. There's a required training that all state of Vermont public servants have to take. So we had to develop that training and that was, you know, we spent money on that last year and so going forward there are more projects like that that require on the use of outside, outside services and consideration of the way that we are currently staffed. Great and I see that it's a, it's a half time position. Yes. And there's no general fund in this. I see that there's no general fund under the crosswalk and it's all coming from other funds. It's coming from the internal service fund and I'm gonna, what, Brad, did I correct me if I say anything wrong? Internal service fund that bills out. No, it's a pretty short, it's a general service fund. Okay. Everyone pays. Everyone pays. Yes. And they did get a general fund last year. You want to say for the record who you are for the week? I'm sorry, I'm Brad and Barry, I'm Deputy Chief Financial Officer for the Washington State Administration. I'm middle of, my name's Pittsburgh. Thank you. So they did get a general fund for a quarter there to start higher than their position this year. This year, it's totally. Nice. Any other questions? Whose budget, this is Darin's, Representative Jolin's budget. So any questions in front of developments? One question, with regards to this current budget, you mentioned about the training and I presume that's training associated with the Code of Ethics. Correct. And the responsibilities of the three branches of government regarding the Code of Ethics, is that correct? Correct, so we developed the code of ethics, the training on this code of ethics which is available online and so it's available through the learning and management system with DHR. So we worked on the substantive content for the training and they worked on the technical side of things and they also have experts on their team in terms of like how to develop training so it's more interesting for folks. So that training is available to all state of Vermont public servants. If you don't have access to the learning management system, you can take it through our website as well but we strongly encourage people to take it through the learning management system. And I presume it's mandatory? Yes. Is that the only type of training program that you envision you would be providing in terms of a ethics condition? Are there other opportunities that are falling short of in terms of raising awareness training to ensure that we have a full but comprehensive suite of ethics in the main place? Yes, incorrect. So this was our starting point. So before there was no formalized ethics training because we didn't have a code of ethics in place so it would have been just a very kind of general ethics training, now it's a specific one. So what we're doing now is logging the requests that we get for advice and the complaints that we get and the issues that they relate to and in the future we'll look to making issue specific training. So for example, we get a lot of our requests for advice and complaints that are related to conflicts of interest. We can see that's an area where people are concerned about or have questions about so in the future we'd be looking to develop specific trainings related to that and also perhaps gifts. So those are things that are all on the agenda. Right now we do have the issue of time and staffing and what we can do but those are things that we are planning for the future, yes. Well, you want to represent it? Yeah, go ahead. Represent it, age and representation. I'm just curious, if I had a chance to receive tickets to the Super Bowl yesterday from a friend, would I come to your commission to ask whether I could accept them? Is that how that would work? You could, if you felt unclear about whether you could accept them, yes. And so with that analysis, so you're saying it's coming from a friend and so there's a gift exception that you can accept gifts from your close relatives and genuine, bona fide friends and so you'd want to do the analysis of like, is this a close friend who you could expect to receive that type of gift from or is this like a friend where it's like, it's my neighbor that I see once a year at a barbecue and may have business before the legislature and is offering me these very expensive tickets and then you're looking at whether that's actually like a bona fide gift from a friend or whether something else is happening. Is there currently a limit on what you can receive for a value of survival? Without claiming it right now. Yeah, and so there's actually no process with the ethics commission for like, in generally speaking for public servants, I mean you might have different rules for legislators about you have to report but there are no reporting requirements but it really depends on the category of gifts. So it's from a close friend or relative, no there's no limit. If it's from somebody that you know, maybe you don't know very well but I think it's a $50 limit per time and then more than $150 per year. I'm not going to tell my family that for Christmas presents that it's limited. Right, there was a lot of gifts giving you Super Bowl tickets. That would be one thing but if it's your cousin. Representative Page would make you feel better. You could re-gift him to one of your friends. Oh, I suppose so. Like, she would manage. I can remember like a very sweet woman wanting to give me this knit hat and scarf or something when I was at door to door and I went, no, I just can't. I don't know, I don't know. It's probably breaking some rule, I just can't. But you had a question, sir. Yes, first of all, are you an attorney? Yes. Thank you for doing it because you could obviously as an attorney in your background, you have an ability to kind of sort through things. Process and probably a little different than some of us. So thank you for stepping up and doing it. You also have an uncanny ability to speak very quickly. My brain doesn't allow me to do that if I tried to do it, but the words would get ahead of what I should be saying. So anyhow, all good. Thank you for coming. Okay, no problem. And it's been a problem since elementary school. My elementary school teacher has told me to speak slower. It just hasn't stuck with me yet. The empathy of that is incredible. She's, well, I listened to her, I asked her. So I can take notes. Because when you give somebody 15 minutes as someone who speaks fast, most of the time, I get it. All right, we'll close that with you and then we're gonna have a break. How do we compare with other states? So we're quite far behind in the sense that the ethics commission does not have investigative powers, we're behind in the sense that the ethics commission is quite new and we're behind in that the code of ethics was just implemented. So we are at the beginning stages of building up the framework. So that's where we are. I mean, I'm not saying that, you know, we're terrible or something, I'm just saying that we are in the early stages of building up the ethics framework. Great. Thank you. Thank you. You're free to go. Okay. Thank you. All right, committee, we are off 30. We're 30. All right, we have to go off live. We'll see you at 2.30, if he's ever listening. Welcome back to the Vermont Health Appropriations Committee. It is Monday. February 13th, 2023, 2.30. And we are here blessed to have with us the department of liquor and lottery commissioner night. And with us also is the liaison from government operations committee. Representative Barong is on Zoom. Both are on Zoom. Your chairs look a little scarce, but glad that you could be with us this way. This budget is representative Harrison. So if there's any follow-up questions or things, commissioner, we will funnel them through representative Harrison so that you don't have to hear from all of us, but we do so like to communicate. So we have before us the department of liquor and lotteries 24 budget proposal. We have hard copies. And if anybody is tuning in, you can also find these documentations on line on our web page. We just had an interesting phone or noise that just went off just to make sure we were keeping up with the beat. And it wasn't coming from that side of the table either. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh. You meant the past, right? You are bruising. That's a long story. I'll just do. Okay. Commissioner, you were with us before. I'm trying to think if we should introduce ourselves again. Would you like us to go around and say who we are? If it's totally up to you, Madam Chair, I think there are some new members on your committee that I haven't met yet. The majority of our committee is new in a new room and new staff. And we're just all in a new day. So I'll start off and then we'll finish up with you. I'm Representative Diane Lanford. I live in Vergeance and I represent Addison 3. I'm Wendy Robinshye from Middlebury. Nice to see you. Pat Brennan from Colchester. Tiff Blumlee from Burlington. We knew one another from House General. Tristan Talino from Brella Group. Carrie Dullin from Westfield. And I represent Duxbury faced in Mortown, Westfield and Warren. Mark Mahaly from Calis. And I represent Calis Plainfield and Marshfield. But first world representing Underhill and Jericho. Woody Page from Newport. And to my right who's not here is representative Rebecca Polkham from Norwich. Good afternoon, Commissioner Jim Harrison. Triton Dynbendon, Killington, and Tinsfield. And the other member who is in here is representative Dickinson from St. Albansen. Oh, Albans. Albans. So, Commissioner, my mouth doesn't work always is the way I'd like it to. You. Representative Varong, you might wanna introduce yourself. Hello, committee. Yes, I'm Representative Matt Varong. I reside in Virgins and share the Addison Three District with Chair Lanford. Committee liaison for Department of Liquor and Lottery today, a couple of other things, but we are here for Commissioner Knight. Go ahead, Commissioner. Tell us about. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you all for introducing yourselves. I appreciate that. I look forward to seeing you all in person soon. So I have, I'm the commissioner for the Department of Liquor and Lottery. I have been the appointing authority at the department since July. I was promoted as commissioner in December and was appointed as deputy commissioner in April of 2021. And then when the former commissioner had retired in July, that's when I became the appointing authority. So it's about a year and a half now of being the appointing authority. I'm pleased to be here today. Lisa Allard is our new finance director. She is also on the Zoom call in case there are any detailed questions you have that I'm not able to answer. So thanks, Lisa, for joining us. Madam Chair, would you like me to give you an overview before we go through the ups and downs? Would that be helpful? That would be terrific. Okay, so the, and that's in your budget presentation. I'm just going to talk a little bit about kind of the strategies and the initiatives of the department. The first thing to point out is that the FY24 budget recommend that you have before you is a combination of five different appropriations. So we basically prior to this budget, the budgets were presented as five different appropriations. You'll recall that in 2018, the legislature agreed to merge the division of liquor control which used to be its own department and the Vermont lottery which used to be its own department. And while technically we have been one department since 2019, there's been very little evidence of that combined department. We up until last August operated in two different administrative offices and all of our reporting structure signified and reflected two different departments. So when the governor appointed me, he asked is one of my priorities to really integrate the department and that's what we've spent the last year and a half doing. And so we have our fully integrated department. So we're not functioning like we used to be where we have all of the folks on the liquor side reporting up through the commissioner or the deputy commissioner and then all of the folks on the lottery side reporting up through a deputy. We've completely integrated that. And so all of, we have a senior leadership team and many of the functions have both liquor and lottery personnel reporting up to them or we have positions that are now combined. So for example, our marketing manager started off being just the marketing manager on the lottery side. We combined that. And so when we start getting into the ups and downs as you'll see a sizable increase for what we call the request for reclassification because we were integrating the department expanding some roles. And we saw that on the lottery side, for example, some of the similar positions were paid lower. So we have done a tremendous amount of work in terms of integrating those departments. And that's why you see this year the extension of that integration is to actually present one budget. They're two different enterprise funds. So we are a department that operates the two different enterprise funds. That's the lottery, Vermont lottery and the division of liquor control. So while we're presenting one appropriation there's two different enterprise funds. So prior to this year, we would have a commissioner's appropriation for the commissioner's office. You would see one for office of compliance and enforcement. You saw one for the liquor warehouse. You saw one for the liquor administration and then you saw one for the lottery. It makes no sense to present that way because we don't function that way anymore. So that's the biggest piece to point out. So I have been talking a lot about the integration. So now we basically have three primary operations. That's the commissioner's office which has a lot of those shared department wide resources. We have agency operations and that again is liquor and lottery. So we contract out with 802 Spirit stores. Those are our liquor licensees and agent stores. And then we contract on the lottery side with about 590 agents. And so the agent operations are the purchasing of the liquor, the procurement of the lottery tickets, the whole sales function, the retail function. And then on the licensee side, again, that's combined liquor and lottery and we issue permits and licenses for liquor, lottery and tobacco. And so those licensee operations are the education enforcement and the permitting. So our number one priority, legislative priority this year is legalized board spending. So you'll see that in the ups and downs as a decision item that have been moved to a one-time budget because that's what's included in the governor's budget recommend is those one-time funds, which I'll get into, the lottery gaming operations. So the way the lottery works is the lottery industry you contract with these lottery vendors and they're the ones that operate all of the vending machines and the backend reporting. So we had a major conversion this year from our previous vendor to a new vendor and that basically was a 10 year, it's a 10 year, $150 million contract. So that conversion was a significant initiative for the department in terms of all hands on deck making sure that from the integrity to the security the tickets, so that went live in the fall. We also launched an online licensing portal so prior to last summer, if you wanted to get a liquor license or permit and Matt would know this and Diane, your daughter would know this, you literally had to print out an application, fill it out and write in a check, which is absurd. So we finally got into the 21st century, launched this online licensing portal and we've significantly improved customer service and the efficiency of operations. Used to take anywhere from six to eight weeks for a license or permit and we've cut that down to eight days, which is quite remarkable. And no, it couldn't be soon enough for our licensees, I think. And there's other pieces to that, there's education and there's compliance so it's not just licensing. On the marketing side, we really focus on the contribution that the liquor control fund and the Vermont lottery bring to the Vermont community. So on the Vermont lottery, we know that those funds get directed to the Ed fund. So we talk about like the educate and innovate a program that we have a partnership with the Ed fund, I'm sorry, the agency of education. We talk about the benefit to the schools of that money going to the Ed fund. On the liquor side, we talk about the benefit of the money going into the general fund and we encourage people to buy local shop at 802 spirits education. We do a lot of education. I think this is kind of new for some folks. They don't realize how much education we do on the liquor side. If you are getting a permit or a licensee in Vermont, you are required to have a certification. She required to take training on servers and sellers. And we do that obviously for people understanding the dangers of over serving, proper identification, how to look for signs of intoxication and also carding. We are always giving out carding techniques. We're integrating, as I mentioned, the education data in our online licensing portal so that licensees can access and see their certifications and know when they need to be renewed. And then when there's a new law or something passed, we do a lot of sort of infographics to let not only the public, but then our licensees know of the changes. And the 802 spirits retail operation, we're doing a lot of focus on becoming much more efficient and supporting our licensees, particularly the bars and the restaurants. One of the things that struck me as very odd is that if you were a bar or a restaurant, you basically walk into an 802 spirits store and you purchase your alcohol much like a walk-in customer. We are a controlled state, so you have to purchase your spirits from an 802 spirits store. But I always thought that was kind of odd. If we're in the business of spirits, which we are, where the sole distributor and wholesaler distilled spirits, it feels to me that we really need to be operating much more in a business support, business-friendly manner. So we're doing a couple of things. One, in July, we instituted an on-premise program, sales program with our spirits companies. So we've asked the suppliers, we have international suppliers, we've asked them to identify products they would like to offer basically at a discount to the bars and the restaurants so that we are giving the bars and the restaurants an ability to purchase the spirits at a little bit of a discount. That program's doing quite well. I think we've had almost more than $500,000 in sales through that program exclusively. What we're doing is we're getting more suppliers to participate. The average discount is like $3 or $4 a bottle. We just had a meeting with Gallo spirits that may have committed to putting 100% of any of their products in Vermont on sale in that program. So if you talk to any of the bars and restaurants, you'll find that that's a benefit to be able to save on their cost of goods. The extension of that program, which will be a B2B website, that's again meant for the bars and restaurants. That will enable them to go online and to search for the spirits they need. So right now, if you are a bar restaurant, you need a certain type of a morrow for your cocktail menu. You're basically calling around to the 802 spirits stores to see who has it. Again, terribly inefficiently operating. So what we're doing is creating way for people to search the products, see which agency stores the products are located. And if there are auto stock products, they can identify substitutions and then they can basically do an online shopping cart, use a credit card, a debit card, that's something we also clarified this year that the use of credit and debit cards is not constitute credit. And then they can have it either delivered for a private service or arranged to have it picked up. So we're hoping to launch that this summer and that should be another significant improvement in operations for the 802 spirit stores. We've added a number of new products. Of course, one of the complaints that we hear is, oh, you're a control state, you don't have enough product, New York has a lot more. I think it really has to do more with the size of New York or Massachusetts, for example, than us being a control state, but we're working a lot with our partners to our supplier partners to make sure that we get the products that we need, particularly for the cocktail menus. So we've done a lot more in our listing. We do quarterly listing meetings where suppliers come to us with the products they wanna list. We actually are doing much more of an outreach where we're going to some of these suppliers and saying, hey, look, we're looking to add more products from craft distillers, not just in Vermont, but around the country. We're looking to add more Amoros, for example, or cordials that are important for cocktail menus. So we've added quite a bit of new product. Commissioner, can I stop you for just a second? Of course. You know, if I'm tracking this, you've got 200 new items this year. Am I from that new item list? And 78 of them are Vermont-made products, correct? Correct. Nice. Nice. I'm just having a flashback to going to the warehouse many years ago. And it was not user-friendly, user-friendly for probably anybody. And I think there's been some really good upgrades to that. But my question really is, is there enough space? And- Deborah, you, great segue, Madam Chair, because the next topic is warehouse and logistics. So the warehouse has existed in, basically in TAC, the way you saw it probably years ago, there is no expanded space. We have about a 30,000-foot square house, which is tiny. We have a lot of product. Our caseload is increased by about 5%. So this holiday, for example, we were packed, completely packed. We have an annex location. So BGS has a space around the corner that mostly Fish and Wildlife or A&R uses. So we have access to that. And then this winter, when we were really full, and we didn't have a lot of auto stocks, we had four shipping containers for storage in our parking lot. I'm happy to say that we've made a real push to get all the product into the stores as much as we can. We don't have those shipping containers anymore. And BGS has moved around some space in that annex for us to have. The long-term, which is really kind of a short-term solution, we're actually in conversations with BGS right now to look at a lease option. And so we're hoping in the next three to five years we will be in a new facility that will not be just the liquor warehouse, but it will be the lottery warehouse and the administrative offices. So right now, our administrative offices, we've co-located space. That was the move that I referenced last summer. So the administrative offices are in one building over in Berlin. And we have two different suites there. So the idea is to get us combined into a complex that would allow us to grow. We need probably 100,000 square foot footage. What that's gonna do is it's gonna allow us to buy more in bulk and that's gonna allow us to save more money. So, and I'm gonna ask one other question that I'm gonna stop talking because I've strategically placed throughout the state. I'm thinking between the new restaurants, new products, Vermont made that if a bar or restaurant needs to purchase a great, great online, please. Thank you. But if they're getting that from the 802 store, there's a lot of handling there that the 802 store space. I'm just wondering if it would behoove us to actually have, and I'm sure you're looking at this like other spaces for like larger volume, to be able to be pulled from instead of at the store. You're talking about, so we're talking about space. Yeah, so we, I have asked about it. The logistics of such is that you would have to change the route, right? So right now they load, they deliver, they have a route schedule. The problem with the logistics of is one, you need CDL drivers, right? And so that's a problem because there's a national shortage in CDL drivers. So we have been talking about logistically making sure that we're certainly more efficient. We work with an organization, the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association and they have a lot of resources. So a store doesn't have to unpack it, put it on their shelf to then get the order to have to pack it back up again. It actually comes pre-ordered for somebody that's gotten it from the warehouse, but just delivered that the 802 store. Yes, yes, so we do the delivery. So the 802 spirits, we pack the trucks, just like deliver them to the stores. Right, I just didn't wanna have the store have to take it out and process it, that just seems... Yeah, and it's all automated, right? So the orders are processed and there's par levels. And so then we actually physically do the delivery. So our truck drivers go to the stores and unload the product. Sometimes there's pallets, sometimes their pallet drops like a bigger store and sometimes there's a belt like Pearl Street, so. Thank you, I just wanted to understand how that worked. Yeah, and sometimes the stores will, if they choose to, for example, an 802 spirit store in Burlington to get the product out to the bars and the restaurants, they will use a delivery service. So that the bars and restaurants don't have to come in. So they're Bay as in all of them. Right, yeah, yeah. So staffing, obviously it's a, we are fully staffed the department, which is quite unique, I think, for state government. We don't have, when we have vacancies, we're able to fill them even in the warehouse. We had two for a period of time and we were able to hire two recent hires on the warehouse side, which helps tremendously. If you're that busy in the warehouse and you're down to people and then you have someone out sick, it just becomes quite problematic. We are seeing, though, that the lack of workers in Vermont in general impacts our stores. We have some 802 spirit stores that have had to close. They close early, they're not open on Sunday, and we see the same thing with our lottery agents. And so that's just something that we're really keeping an eye on because if your store is open, obviously you can't sell lottery tickets or liquor. So we're in the business of selling lottery tickets and liquors, so we really wanna help the lottery in the liquor agents maintain those hours. And part of that is re-evaluating our network and our 802 spirit side to make sure that we're partnering with locations and business partners that have the ability to be open and clean the shelves and really participate in making sure that the store looks good in selling product. On the sales, and we saw $100 million in sales revenue on the liquor side, FY22, so we closed out June with $100 million in sales. That was up 6.5% from the previous year and we contributed 20.4 million to the general fund on the lottery. Sorry. I just said thank you. Oh, okay, on the lottery side, we ended the fiscal with 151 million in sales. That was down about 6% from the previous year and we contributed, let's see, about $30 million to the Ed fund. Keep in mind that lottery sales are largely driven by the jackpots. If there are high jackpots and Powerball and mega millions, you're gonna see a lot of sales. We did, I hope you all read the great news that this first time in a year, that Vermont had a Powerball jackpot winner that was in Middlebury. 300... This was me. Thank you. Congratulations. Just to let you know, representative shy is just hiding her winnings underneath the chair here. Yeah, $366 million in that netted the state, the share of that was $12 million in taxes plus whatever the state will get from a personal income taxes because that individual was a Vermonter. So that was a great boost in excitement for the folks at the lottery department. Representative Harrison has a question. Yes. Yeah, commissioner, just quickly, on the lottery end, it used to be at one time, instant tickets were a big percentage of it. What's the trend on the instant? And if you had to break it into two buckets, the online versus instant, what's the breakdown? So I can get you that. I don't have it right now by product. I can get you the sales by product. So there's Powerball, mega millions, that's what you're looking for, instant ticket, fast play. Yes. Yeah. I'm interested, especially in the trend on the instant. Because that used to be, maybe for the mega jackpots, the driver of a lot of the lottery revenue and that to the education fund, but not being true today. I can get you that, we definitely have that. I do know that the $5 instant ticket is the number one instant ticket sale. We look at the trends a lot to see what's the price point, where we're seeing that. So I can follow up for sure and get you that. Thank you. You're welcome. Still too rich for my place. Any other questions on some of the overview and the highlights before I get into the ups and downs? I'm sorry, what was that? Did you, anyone have any questions about what I chatted about just now in terms of the overview or the highlights before I get into the ups and downs? Doesn't appear to be. So looking at the ups and downs, I'll just walk you through it. I mentioned that we're starting with the FY23 appropriation is 13.9 million. Again, that's the five appropriations combined into one. Representing that fully integrated department. We are looking at a very conservative 1.6% increase. So the FY24 budget ask is 14.6 million and that represents the 1.6%. A lot of that is because of the integration of the department and sort of centralized administrative functions. So we're anticipating that we'll continue to reduce cost. If you look at going down that column total number, you'll see 364 for the salary increases and the RFR. So that's the uptick in salary pressures, that's 222,000. And then the request for reclassifications, I mentioned that we were doing a significant amount of work and reclassifying positions to have the employees be paid more. And this is reflective of what their duties are now. That's reflective of a more integrated positions. And it's also reflective of ensuring that some of the sales agents, for example, on the lottery side were traditionally paid lower. We wanted to bring that up on par with some of the work that's going on with the liquor sales agents. Just the RFR is the- That is a request for reclassification. So if you want to, if someone is doing more work- Oh no, I just didn't know what the initials were. Oh yeah. Request for reclassification, okay. So that's the way you are able to ask for a different classification, get those folks paid more money. So that's what we've done is we've spent a significant amount of time the last year and a half doing that. So that's the additional 142,000 there. On the decision items, you look at that. We, this is related to- I'm sorry, was there a question? There is, but we're going to hold off. Please explain it, and then I have a question. Okay. I'm ready to go on to the next piece of that. Do you want me to stop? No, I think after this piece. Okay. So I want to bring your attention for a moment to the federal funding call. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I want to bring your attention for a moment to the federal funding column, right? So you'll see your federal funding column under salary print, a negative 88,000. This whole column, basically your federal funding column, you'll see at the bottom that 840, 848, I'm sorry, 184,000. I can't talk sometimes either, Madam Chairman. So you're in good company. My tongue gets twisted. That is being moved across all the major object codes. That is because that reflects the FDA contract for tobacco compliance. That contract ends in May, we're not renewing that. So that's why you see that in the federal funding that all being moved. Just to be clear, we have three other means of tobacco compliance in education. So we do an online tobacco compliance program and that's an MOU with the health department. That's paid through the health department's global commitment funds. We have a state mandated tobacco education and that's paid through the state tobacco litigation settlement. And then we have a federally required tobacco education and that's called SINAR. And so those three are sufficient in terms of the tobacco compliance. So you won't see the FDA funding there. We're not requesting that. Presentative Harrison has a question. Yeah, Commissioner, I know we went over this before when we met. And my question is quickly, the amount of money you get from the federal government for the SINAR checks are the costs that you've had incurred with the overtime and what not doing those checks? Was it basically a break even? Or are we going to lose some money because some of those costs were fixed? No, we're not losing any money. We're just not requesting the FDA funding for the tobacco compliance. So we were paid by the FDA to do that. It was done through overtime. So it was a voluntary program where we would ask the investigators. That's why you see the overtime going away. So the three different ways that we continue to do tobacco compliance are funded in different ways. So there's no money lost to the state because we're not doing the FDA contract. Thank you. You're welcome. Representative Lomley. Yeah, I just wanted to clarification because I had underlined this on the highlights section on the page before where it says that you saw a 5% decline in tobacco compliance rates this year which we attribute to worker shortages. Can you just explain that in the context of what you just talked about? Yeah, and I'd have to dig up that report. We send a report to our policy committees. And I think the best thing for me to do is to send you that report because then you'll get to see it's the tobacco report that's due to the legislature. So what we saw is in the SINAR, not the FDA, the SINAR, we saw that this past year, which was kind of unusual for us. We had a 5% decline in tobacco compliance. And again, we are attributing that to the agents at the stores not having the workers. So perhaps they're not doing checking. All the more reason why we think that our just ask for ID program that we just launched a couple of weeks ago is gonna be really helpful. We're just guessing that that was the case as to the past year, why there was a slight decrease and people at the stores asking for identification. But why don't we send you that report so you'll have that? I don't give you more detail. Thank you. Commissioner, I have the report. Would you like me to share with the committee assistant? No, we can do it. We can send it. Thank you though. Okay, let's take a look at those shaded boxes. Okay, so the next area is the initiative for sports betting. And what we did here is those were originally decision items and we moved them to one time. So you'll see here, we have four personnel services. We've built in here a director of sports betting. We have an administrative financial position and then we have contracted services and then the other miscellaneous health, et cetera, over time. And then the operating side, we have ADS support and we're operating and self-exclusion list, et cetera. So that's for the IT component that helps us run the sports betting. The total cost that we estimate for that is $545,000. That'll be the one time ask. And then beyond that, that will be covered by the operating fee built in the sports betting programs. Representative Shah has a question. Thanks. So if the legislature approves this, you answered one of my questions, which is what happens after this year. But why does it need to be one time money now? You have a lot of money in these enterprise funds, not all of which go to the education fund or the general fund now. Can it be absorbed in your enterprise funds now? No, we don't have the funding right now in either enterprise fund. The way that we've envisioned this that would be a separate on enterprise fund. We don't have the startup funds for sports betting, which is why we built them into our FY24 budget. Okay, and so there wasn't a, was there talk of, you're gonna create a new enterprise fund for this, is that correct? That's my understanding. Okay. Because it will be funded separately, right? So we're gonna be running through the Vermont Department of Liquor and Lottery and that's my sense it will be a third enterprise fund. Okay. And so I know because I also have had the cannabis one when I had you, that when you create a special fund, you can temporarily go into deficit knowing that you're going to get funding back on the other side. So you're sort of, it's almost like anticipation of future receipts. And was that talked about? I haven't had a conversation about that. No, we, what we did is we built into our budget the cost of starting up sports betting. Right. So that might be another way we could look at is that using one time general fund of money. Yeah. As soon as your projections would cover the costs of it going forward. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. So then we get into moving some things around, right? So we move them from contracted services is our next group. You see the B2B website development there. Yep. 1.3.9 that was from last year. Obviously we are starting up that we did an RFP we're demo doing demos, et cetera. And then we, so now we move that down into the operating fund because it will be an ADS account. So you'll see if you follow that 1.3, you see it represented as a positive down in the operating funds. The same with the, but in reverse, you look at the grant for problem gambling, 250,000. We are moving that down into a contracted services. So that you'll see it in the bottom grant, 250,000 that gets moved up to a positive under problem gambling contracted services. Representative Schaiz got a question on the, is that, that's an increase in what that's a budget line? Nope. These are both fully funded. So there's not any increase. We're just moving a major object. Oh, you're level funding that line item from past years. We're just moving it, correct? It's 250. Was it 250 in FY23? That's my question. Okay. So if the legislature approves sports betting, I mean, we know I've read reports about this that when you increase sports betting, you're gonna increase the number of people who have problems with gambling, but I'm not seeing that you're increasing your support for people who will become problem gamblers. So the legislature right now, the legislation right now for sports betting has a problem gambling responsible gaming fund. It will be funded by 2.5% of the revenues with a floor of 250. So the way the sports betting language would set up the problem gambling. This right here, this problem gambling is for Vermont lottery only because sports betting is not legal right now, right? So the only thing you see here is for Vermont lottery. Legislature envisions allocating money through a percentage of the revenue of the sports betting to be directed towards problem gambling. Okay. And you said 2.5% of revenue for problem gambling and capped at- No, not capped, with a floor of 250,000. That's what's in the bill right now. Okay. And what is your plan for supporting people who have a problem gambling? What's the plan for that? So are you talking about on the sports betting or are you talking about Vermont lottery? Sports betting. I think Vermont lottery, you use the Howard Center and people can make a phone call if they think they have a problem. Yeah. So what we've been talking about, one of the things that I discovered probably in the fall is that the grants we have for the Howard Center should have been done through an RFP and sent out to bid, which is why we moved it to the contracting services. The other thing I discovered is that it's a very reactive program. We have been, the contract is for 125,000 a year. We get quarterly performance measures with the invoice and this past quarter, our invoice was 30,000, 31,000. We serviced one person. So what I started to see last fall was this was a very ineffective way of offering problem gambling resources. It was very reactive. And one of the things we've been talking about is actually we need something that's much more proactive. We need to be doing almost like a public service health campaign. We need to increase the awareness of what does problem gambling look like? What are the resources? What are the services? And it has to be a much more of a public education program. So that's what we're doing right now is we're looking at not just having it being referral based but being much more about the awareness of it and where to get resources. The other thing is there had been, we're in conversations with the Department of Mental Health on the sports betting. And I've been talking with the Health Department last fall when I was looking at redoing the Howard Center grant. I think there's some conversation right now happening about combining those services. So whether or not it's Vermont Lottery or sports betting, those kind of problem gambling, responsible gaming services should be combined, which makes a lot of sense from the mental health perspective. So I think that we'll see more discussions of that. Okay, thank you. Great, I just have a, what is the bill number for this? 127, H-127. H-127. And I know somebody on the screen is a fairly responsible sponsor of that bill. We'll figure out what its traction is going to be. Yeah, so this is one of those items, you know, that's right now that 545 is in the one time in the B-1100 section for one time in this. And I think Representative Shebring's a good point that because it's setting up something that literally that could be set up with anticipation of funds that are coming in. And we have to keep track of to see if it actually passes. There's more than, I'm sorry, Commissioner, to take your time, but there's more than just this bill that is in anticipation of actually passing. If I looked at it, there's at least three, if not four bills that are anticipated to actually make it through in our one time dollars. So it might not happen. So yeah, not in your world, there's other worlds, but yeah. Okay. Okay. So I am now on... Good news is everything comes in here eventually anyway. So we'll see it, I would hope. So I wanna talk about the, I can find it. Let's see, line item that says N-A-B-C-A grant. Yup. This will be a special fund. So that is the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association, it gives control states grants. We get grants from them pretty much every year. And that is just the spending authority for that grant. We have a $60,000 grant to do direct to consumer compliance pilot program. So that's just representing the spending authority for that. I mentioned when we start to get into interdepartmental transfers, if you go down, you see the drug recognition MOU with V-TRANS, you see a cannabis control board contract and a health department contract. Those represent interdepartmental transfer funds for spending authority for us to do the work of those grants. I think that kinda covers all of the major items. We've already talked about the grants, we've talked about the operating funds. So we end up with a 1.6% increase for a total of 14.6 million. Thank you. You've got a 1.6% increase, which is something of unusual from all the other budgets that we've seen. So congratulations. Would you maybe attribute some of that minimal increase because of the efficiencies that you've put in place this last year to kind of integrate? Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, it's really is that combining of the two different departments into one fully integrated department. Right. And the only other thing is how many staff like between liquor, lottery, warehouse, what do we, this? We have a, in last count we had 72, 72 people. 72 staff. Yeah. All full-time? Yes. Interesting, you'll find I was actually looking at the very first liquor control board report to the governor and we found it in our moves. We found some archives. So 1921. Thank you. No, 1935. Prohibition was 93, 1933. And then after prohibition, so the very first report, we had 11 employees in 1935. So considering the amount of how much we've increased, we had 100 and what did we have for, we had 127,000, 127,000 sales. Pretty crazy that we've only increased not a whole lot in terms of staff is the point I'm making. We're pretty lean in me. Well, I gave up alcohol when I took this job, so I'm not helping sales at all. Sorry. Okay. Well, maybe I'll play the lottery. Any other questions? And this representative Harrison's budget and we'll continue to work through him and keep your eye on the sports betting because that will have what happens with that. All right. On my list is to give you the breakdown of lottery sales and to give you that may a tobacco compliance report. Anything else? That is all that I had and you can send that to Aaron. She'll make sure it gets up to everybody. It will do that. Thank you. And I hope your back feels better. I appreciate it. Thank you, everyone. All right. Take care. Bye. Have a good afternoon. Welcome back to the Vermont House Appropriations Committee. It is still Monday, February 13th, 2023. We're just coming back in. Oh, we are a little bit late. Sorry. We're going to hear the budget from the cannabis review board, control board and their budget. And their budget. So we'll go around and introduce ourselves because I don't think you were in the book. I was here for budget adjustment only. On Zoom. On Zoom. But I wasn't here in person. All right. Well, we'll introduce ourselves because it's a good practice. I'll do it. I'm representing a dandelion. From Virginia and I represent Addison 3 or one of the members. Robin Scheiger middle grade. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Thank you. Just lonely Burlington. Just in time to write a book. Gary Dillon from Weitzfield. And I represent Dr. Spearry Fist in more town. Weitzfield, don't worry. Mark Mahaly, Calis, Marshfield and Plainfield. Robert Swirl. Anna Ellen Jericho. Carrie Page, New York. Rebecca Holcomb, Sharon Strafford, Norwich and Thepard. Jim Harrison, Chittenden, Mendon, Hillington and Fitzfield. Welcome. Thank you, director. You can take it away. All right. Thank you so much for introducing yourselves. It's nice to see many of you again. My name is Bryn Hare. I'm the executive director for the Cannabis Control Board here to talk about our FY24 budget. So I was here several weeks ago to talk about our budget adjustment request. And now I'm here to talk about FY24 budget. So I am happy to proceed at the committee's will. I thought I would go through our budget rollup report unless you would prefer to go through the more detailed crosswalk. I'm happy to do either. Oh, remember the rollup report we've heard. Yes. This is a really nice talking to thank you. Okay. You are welcome. Representative Shy, this is your budget, correct? Yes. She likes this. All right. Okay. So I'm gonna just hop on through and if there are any questions, please interrupt me, obviously. And I'm happy to answer questions about any other thing. I imagine the committee probably has some questions about other things that are going on with the Cannabis Control Board. So happy to answer whatever you have for me. So starting out with our salaries and wages, our 24 recommend is around 1.6 million. This accounts for 23 positions. The board looks like this. We've got seven compliance team members. We've got five licensing team members. We have a three member admin finance team. We have a general counsel and an executive director. We've got a two member medical cannabis program team. We have a data analyst and then we've got a three member board. So that is what is reflected in the FY24 budget. There is a request that has gone into the Senate Appropriations Committee for an additional budget adjustment request. And I'm happy to talk about that at any time. That would require three more positions that are not included in this FY24 request to be clear. And I'm happy to jump into that. And if you want to start with that, I'm happy to do that. It did not, it's something that's happening over in the Senate, right? Maybe we should talk about that now before we get into the budget because. Yeah, are they gonna pass, do you think? They have put it into the Senate approaches, put it into their version of budget adjustments. All right, we'll just give this an event. Just, yeah, highlight on that because I don't want to get it mixed up with what's going on. Just a clarification is the 23 positions what you'd have if you got the 1.66 million. The 23 positions have already been approved. Okay, so that's the current situation. That's right. What would it be? What are you asking for for 24? For 24, the ask is about $350,000 additionally for staffing. So it would be three positions. This is in the budget adjustment. In budget adjustment. Oh, I see. But it's, the phone is 24. So that, so let me back up. It's not, yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. No, it's okay. Cause there's so many, it's confusing. Yes. So where the, so there, the positions that we have currently are reflected in this 24 ask. We, I came to this committee with a budget adjustment request. And then I came to the Senate appropriations with another budget adjustment request based on an event that happened just as the bill crossed over to the Senate. That request was actually a bill that was introduced in the Senate. It was a part of a bill introduced in the Senate to create essentially what is a state reference lab or a cannabis quality control lab. So it's an appropriation for equipment for this lab. And then it's three positions that would basically administer the lab. So that was originally proposed as a bill in the Senate. It's S 71. I can talk about a little bit more about why we, why we requested that. Have you do that now? So I'm just gonna go, I'm gonna go. Yeah, yeah. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I'm just trying to understand. So those positions in the lab were in this budget for next year? They are not in this proposed FY24 budget. Okay. Because they are- They didn't, they needed them until we didn't- We didn't get passed over. We knew, we knew we were asking for it in a piece of legislation, but had a contamination event essentially in the state that prioritized this. And so we asked, we went to the Senate and we asked if that could be put in the BAA instead of taking the process through with the, with the introduced bill, S 71. So the lab could be up and running sooner so they wouldn't be dealing, so they could test more quickly for contamination. That's right. Purposes. If that authority to hire those positions was in BAA and that appropriation was in BAA, it would enable the board to start seeking out equipment and start getting ready to hire this position. So by the time the legislature adjourned and we hit fiscal year 24, we would be ready to go with the Canada's quality control lab. What do you do now for the labs? We are paying our licensed labs to run tests for us. So per, so per test, for example, the event that we had was a pesticide contamination event. So per sample, we're paying about $450 per pesticide test, run somewhere between 10 and 20 samples in the last week alone. Each, it's taking, it's about a four to six day turnaround time for us to use our licensee labs to get the results back and they are prioritizing the cannabis control board in front of all of the licensed growers that are trying to get their tests done too. So the idea is to have our own lab that we can use which would, which would reduce the turnaround time for the results quite substantially. And it would also probably be a wash with how much money we're spending paying to our licensed labs to run these tests for us. The director's trying to be very helpful because she knows what's coming and where it's gonna fall. So she's trying to prepare us for that that we may or may not know. Yeah, no, I'm good. Representative Mahalia and Representative Holcomb. I'm still working my way through this line here. So what then, I get the three positions sort of, but what's the $858,000 increase? That's not three, is that it? No, that is about 11 positions that were originally in our FY23 budget. Those were, I'm sorry, yes, in the prior version, those were under the per diem and other personal services. You can see in line 18 that they were put, they were coded there because we didn't have the authority for those positions when we were building our budget at that time. The legislature still had to give us the authority to hire those people. That's how we coded it. And now it's moved up to where it should be, which is salaries and wages and fringe benefits. So that per diem and other personal services was 1.8 million and now it's just 100,000. That's right. There's other stuff that must be, must have been moved to, right? All of that, yes. All of those positions were moved. Plus other stuff, because that's 858,000. There were, there's a couple of other things that fell into this category that have also gone away. Oh, they've gone, okay, great. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I now think I understand. Good. That was my question. Was the one, okay, okay. So what she's saying is watch, when we get the BAA back, there's a likelihood that this new, new information will be included in it, which then will be carried forward into 24. That's right. Do you think this lab, if you had this lab online right now, would it have prevented, must have caused contamination in an area not too far from where I live? Well, I don't want to over promise that we would have prevented it outright. I would say that we are still really getting our feet under us. So we had our first sales in October and the contamination event was really the, was, we're doing quite a bit of forensic testing, essentially to find out the source of this examination event. So I can tell you some of the details about how we learned it and our response to it. And I can tell you how the lab would have helped us. So we had a consumer complaint come in a couple of weeks ago about illness after smoking some canvas. We had, we were in communication with our lab who did the testing for that product because the product was, we had test results for the product that indicated that it was not contaminated. So after communication with our lab revealed that some of the test results from this product that were not associated with the sold product were positive. We started to do some digging. So we're kind of in an active investigation right now of what happened with this particular cultivator and with the retailers that sold their product. So we're doing, as I mentioned before, I think we've run somewhere between 10 and 20 tests last week. We're doing probably double that this week. We're pulling this product from all of the shelves of all of the retailers where it was sold to test that and really trying to dig down and find out what happened here. So the plan moving forward is that if we had our own testing lab, we would be doing spot checking, not only of cultivators, going out and sampling the product that's growing, but also spot testing product that's on the shelves. So that's something that we were just getting up and running right now. And if we had around a lab, we would be able to do that more comprehensively. Good question, sir. Go ahead. Just one other question. With this lab, will you be able to detect outside sources of materials that are not regulated by your department? Can you say more about that? Do you mean if a product on the shelf is, comes from outside the regulated market, for example? Yes. So we have an inventory tracking system, which is being built right now as we speak. We have kind of an interim inventory tracking system, which is essentially a self reporting system through a web form. We are building one that interacts with our sales force platform, which is our licensing platform and our product registration platform. So we will have an inventory tracking system that is connected directly to each cultivator. It's connected to the retailers and we will be able to kind of create a web of where something came from and where it is now. So once that system is built and it's expected to go live or on the end of April, that will help us to do exactly what you've proposed. Representative Harris. So in the BAA, you made a request for positions or for the lab or both? It's lab equipment. It's $850,000 of lab equipment and three positions. So total of that total of what? The total is, if I'm remembering, it's about $1.2 million. The $850,000 is a one-time expense for the equipment. Okay. So if that's done, and you're going into fiscal year 24 with a lab, what would the expected savings of the contracted service be? So you thought maybe it would be a wash? How close to a wash? The lab equipment is kind of one-time. Yes. You've got the ongoing. Yes. Personnel. So I'm anticipating that it would be a wash based on the receipts for the lab tests that we have received just the last couple of weeks. So I can give to the committee kind of a breakdown of the number of tests that we would need to run just for spot checking versus the number of tests that we would need to run to conduct some sort of forensic investigation. This is our first forensic investigation. So I feel a little bit like we're just now learning how much testing will be required in an event like this. My prediction is that I asked for, I think, $100,000 for a six-month period for the contracts with our labs to run this testing. I think that was an underestimate based on what we have done just in the last couple of weeks, given that we want to do both forensic testing and compliance testing to make sure that we are able to... So you think your net budget with the lab will actually go up because you think this is underestimated without the lab? Yes. Yes. Okay. Well, I just... We have to understand... Yes, thank you. I didn't understand the question at first. Go ahead. Yes. And so just to clarify, so the committee also knows, the money for the cannabis control board comes out of their special fund, and a portion of the excise tax goes to fund the special fund. So this is not general fund money, except if we're doing something... Maybe by... Is that general fund money in the lab and the equipment or is that used to the excise tax? That's still the special fund. So if we are appropriated the 850,000 prior to FY24, that would be a general fund transfer, my understanding, because the statute provides that beginning in July 1 of FY24, the excise tax revenue flows first into our fund, into the cannabis regulation fund, and then whatever is remaining transfers to the general fund. So the positions would not come from general funds. Right. But the lab might come. The lab might. The equipment, right? The equipment. The equipment. So, but in general... I shouldn't use the word in general. The money to run this program comes from the special fund, which is the excise tax on retail sales. And so it's sort of a feedback loop. Good. Just a silly question. If there are vendors who have repeated contamination, are they assessed to fund? Yes. So depending on sort of the nature of the event, it is a category one violation to sell a product that's... or to use primitive pesticides, for example. So there are penalties associated with that. And those go into a special fund? Yes. Yep. All of the penalties. So the fee revenue and the penalty revenue is a part of the special fund. Go ahead. I'm just curious. Do you have organic materials that our farmers are growing for your products? So organic. There's a difference between organic cannabis and just... Cannabis. Yeah. Thank you. No, not organic. So we're not... We really don't use the word organic because it's like a federal term. And our cannabis product is not a federal product. It's a state of Vermont product. So organic in sort of the traditional sense of what it means doesn't apply to Vermont cannabis. However, there are... It does. It does not. No. Because you cannot claim that your product is organic and you cannot consume it to the federal definition. Definition is... Yeah. It's right. But you could get in trouble for that. So however, we abide by the agency of agriculture's pesticide rule, which prohibits most pesticides on these products. There's a very limited set of pesticides that one can use on cannabis products. And so our agency of agriculture, I think is quite stringent in this department. So I do think that the cannabis sold in Vermont is going to be very high quality and clean. No pesticides. I can't wait for the questions. No, it's not out of time. In a few weeks, we'll see how it is. I just noticed that Representative Brennan is the only one not in the Vest Club today. In the water. Vest Club. We've had an excellent turnout at the Vest Club. Thank you for being so patient and clear with us kind of putting this learning curve to this, I think. I'm happy to talk to him later. All right. Okay. So I can, I can move down now to the contracted and third party service line. So 1.6 million for contracted and third party services reflects a portion of our BAA, our original budget adjustment. Ask. That included $100,000 for appellate officer contracts. $30,000 for the NIC fee payment processing. I could talk about, I'm happy to talk about any of these $5,000 for rulemaking. And $157,000 for IT funding gap. And it also includes 1.4 million, which is our estimate for phase two of our IT system. And I have touched on our IT system a little bit. I'm happy to elaborate. We have built our licensing portal at the same time as we've been licensing our cultivators. We have a portion of the our IT system done. We are currently, as I mentioned, building the inventory tracking system. That is in progress. We're also building a product registration system so that we can make sure that every product that is available for retail sale has been vetted by the board before it's on the shelves. And phase two is our, the kind of the second half, which is our compliance and enforcement part of the portal. So it will integrate our compliance and enforcement actions into our licensing portal. So our IT project is substantial and ongoing. And that is phase two of the project, which we hope will be the, phase two will be the last phase. Yeah. Yes. We're going ahead. So I just want to make sure that I understand here. So in the BAA, it's what you just said that this, a $1.6 million includes the 435 that was in the BAA. Yes. It's a portion of it. Not all of it. So I'm just one. I'm not. We did, but not the new one. Right. Right. Right. So is, does everybody do that? Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, Meaning put the BAA request in FY 24 budget. Depends. Depends. I mean, like if it's ongoing, is it a one time, you know, when did it, when did they find out about it versus when the budget was put together? Right. Okay. Right. I should have no money. I know. Okay. But they're building, they're building their whole. Well, I'm not quite, I just, I'm, I'm trying to understand your budget is just the process. Just understanding. Well, not everybody provides this spreadsheet and set up in this way with the BAA ask and then then the budget at any rate, self for me to know in general, you don't need to answer question that I have because I don't have one. It was really of our chair. I can't speak for the administration, but maybe it would be my assumption that when the governor puts his BAA, Okay. He's going to roll up his idea into 24. So we would have to be changed. There's like, we make changes. So it's like, if it's a change that we made in the process and now was over in the Senate would not be reflected because it wasn't the governor's. Right. Peace. You see what I mean? Yeah. So like if it was a part of his. Yes. His suggestion. Sometimes you'll see, you know, it's like part of BAA written in there because they're going to make assumptions that it's going through. Yes. Does that help? Okay. But then we track not only just his stuff that we make check on, Right. But the people coming in are thinking it's in. So we go, well, you know, that was, we maybe chose differently. And then as, as the good directors point it, the Senate will make changes to even our own BAA. No way. Yes, way. Exactly. And so I'm hoping not to take your time. Maybe Wednesday afternoon or so, the Senate will pass the BAA out or give or take. Right. So when that happens, our people will come in and walk us through the changes. And then we'll go, oh, that's nice. Okay. Thank you. Is that out? Yeah. I'm sorry if I took a stand. No, no. Okay. No, it's one to me. I'm sure I was reading these things correctly. And when I, so I love the roll up because it's a nice, because you're, you're, you don't have a lot of line and you don't have a lot of money. So it's doesn't, it isn't like eight pages long. But I'm here though. All of that is on. Yes. Yeah. And I could have been more clear when I was talking about that line by saying that the ongoing, the ongoing expenses are included there. So the hundred thousand dollars for appellate officer contracts is an ongoing need. We are required by statute to contract with a hearing officer who will oversee. Appeals from final decisions of the board. So that is an ongoing expense. Okay. And then the $30,000. And I see. Expenses also an ongoing expense. That's the state vendor for processing the online fee payments. Online. Yes. The payments. So anyone who wants to pay their application fee online. We're assessed. A charge. Okay. So that is an ongoing expense. Okay. And then the $30,000. And I see. Expenses also an ongoing expense. That's the state vendor for processing the online fee payments. So that's the state vendor for processing the online fee payments. So that's the state vendor for processing the online fee payments. I see. So I'll just say a charge for that. Okay. So all of their great representative Brennan. We're going to hear your voice. Could you describe what, what an appeal might look like? Or why? Who would appeal? Would it be a. A license issue or the, you know. Yes, a final decision of the board so far looks like a denial of a license. So if the board, if we receive an application and we find that the business is not in compliance with statute or rule, we would deny that applicant for a license, that would be considered a final decision of the board for which the applicant would have a right to appeal. Also a denial of social equity status. So the board is by statute required to make determinations about applicants who have, who are considered social equity applicants. Social equity applicants are entitled to reduced fees and also payments from the Cannabis Business Development Fund, which is administered by the agency of commerce and community development. So that would also a denial of a social equity status would also be grounds for an appeal. So those are two examples. There may also in the future be appeals of enforcement actions. If the staff recommends an enforcement action, a person who's subject to that action could appeal to the board, the board would issue a final decision about that action. And then the applicant would have, or the licensee would have the right to appeal. So you expect enough, I don't know, you're talking about two positions to. It's yeah, we have two contracts now. We're likely gonna try and have a couple more. This is how OPR has hearing. I mean, many state agencies have hearing officers. I'm sure you guys are very familiar with that. So I think typically agencies keep a number of contractors sort of on, they retain them to a certain extent so they can always have a hearing officer available for an appeal that comes up. So I've got one question on the crosswalk. There's a 0.2683 with no description. And I'm not too sure what that is there. Maybe it's a mistake. It's underneath the FY23 governors recommend. I'm on the detail report. The crosswalk and green and yeah, it's always colored. Oh, I see. You see that? I think it's, I guess it's under, I think it's called 20, 20, yeah. And I don't see the description. And what's the number? I don't have that. 0.6 on page 16. Okay. Right in the middle. I've had to do it. In the special phone crosswalk. I have this weird number. You see it? I see it. It's there. Okay, yeah, that's it. Yeah, I think it's not supposed to be there. I don't think that is supposed to be there. Okay, well, I will make sure that that's not supposed to be there. I don't, do you? Hi, we think we've got something here that's not supposed to be there. Not from here, but we just want to point it out to you. All right, in the crosswalk? Yeah. Yeah. It does work, it does work, it really does. They're too, yeah, they are. 0.2, yeah. Yeah, I think it's just two different things. They are different. Yeah. Thank you. What the heck? Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Yeah, what's? Yeah, it's supposed to be there. You're not touching. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I'll keep plugging on. So we're at the per diem and other personal services line. So that's the line where the FY23 Governor BAA recommend the budget is 1.8, and then it drops down to 103. And that's because that was the cost of the positions which moved into the appropriate place. That remaining 103 is the last position that HR has not created a position for us just yet. So that's why that 103 appears there and not in the salaries portion. So the 103. Yes. Must be on this detail detail. Yeah. It's on the roll up. I'm looking forward to it. Okay. It's gotta be in here then. Hmm. Number's up. Where's the 103? Okay. So where does that come from? It's a position that hasn't moved up to salaries and wages yet. So you, so it's gotta be a combination of a couple lines. It will move. Yes. Yes. It's a combination of lines on the, yeah. Okay. Like 200, there's a down. It's the 1 million and seven. I haven't seen this one before, but I don't know. This one. This one's the 1, the 1, 1.7. Right. So what that is is this minus that number. That's minus. Now that's the new recommended to it's down 1.72. So it was moved up here. So this is a, so this isn't new. This is a subtraction from here. A down. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Sorry. No, I'm sorry. But yeah, that number. We're just looking at it. Yeah. That's what moved up to the salaries and wages. So I'll move on to the operating expenses, if that works. No. I'm on the rollup report, but I'm looking at. So we've got a little bit of an increase in equipment from 5,000 to 10,000. And that is just factoring in the additional positions and the equipment that they will need. I think that the IT and telecom, that the slight increase there is also reflective of the additional positions. We have that 63. So we've got a big increase in other rental for those looking at the rollup, it's line 28. So that increased from 4,500 to 63,000. Okay. Those are the fleet vehicles for compliance agents. I think I mentioned, we've got a seven member compliance team and they are all remote, home-based and they travel almost every day to go to do site visits and compliance checks. And obviously that wasn't there before because we just had our first sales. That's right. So our property and our, let's see, our property rental is just under 100,000. We are at 2889 Main Street in the city center building. We're in the old Green Mountain Hairboard space. I understand it's a very expensive space. This is where BGS has put us and that is where we are right now. I have, and then the other expenses for supplies and travel. Happy to talk about those. We typically go annually to the Cannabis, the Cannera conference, which is a national association of cannabis regulators. So regulators from every state in the country or a part of this organization get together and talk about best practices. So they typically do attend that conference every year. So those don't roll up to 291, which would be a part of the public. Yes, sir. Sorry. I have a question that's irrelevant, but I can't resist. When you go to the conference, what do you discover about the culture of your organization versus others? That's great. I could talk about it. I could give you an answer to that question that would go on for a long time. It's very different. The Vermont cannabis regulatory culture is quite different from a lot of other states. And I can just tell you briefly that it's mostly because of the enabling legislation. The way that the legislature crafted this market is quite different from every other state. I think I've said this before. We have our proportion of small cultivators is the vast majority of our licensed businesses. They are operating, they are growing on a thousand square feet of space or less. That wouldn't even qualify as a micro business in almost every other state. So the way that most other cannabis regulatory agencies operate is they've got a handful of major operators that have quite big grows that are satisfying the demands in other states. So I don't want to say it's every state. I know that Massachusetts and California, they do have small and New York is now getting online with microprocessors and micro grows. But so far nothing really has compared to what we are doing. So it's quite different. And it was by choice. It was very much like, but very intentionally choice to make sure that we have, if I remember the conversation was that farmers in Vermont who might want to have a part of their crop be this, not be actually want to say out licensed by somebody coming in and buying, just being a giant production because there's only so much product that can be produced in a year because you have to sell in Vermont, what's grown in Vermont. So one very large place could end up being the monopoly of it. Right, so what the legislation did is it provided that everybody can only get one of each type of license. So there's no stacking of like multiple cultivation licenses or retail licenses. So there's really kind of an anti-franchising provision in the enabling legislation. So that's it. And we made some statements like through law around what a city or town can when they can say, what they can say no to, they can't because it's a different agriculture. Right, town. So it's a little bit separate for the types of. You have to be able to vote to have it sold in your town but you can't say no to being grown. Did you say that it has to be produced here? It does, yes. All cannabis has to be produced within the, it's like we've got an iron curtain. And we didn't run on the interstate commerce problems with that. No, there are, I don't know how well everybody is following what's going on in other states but in California, the cannabis regulatory agency just asked the attorney general to weigh in on whether it would be a violation of an, whether it is a violation of interstate commerce. The interstate of California, I know how that will put it. Representative Jolan, did you have a question? Yeah, I mean, interestingly enough in Vermont, in Weitzfield, we have two retailers and like a laboratory, what do you, what's the other license? Oh, a manufacturer, manufacturer, but two separate in different locations retailers which I guess in my mind, I had assumed it would be one per municipality. And you can probably see this in another. We do, yes. So I think something interesting that there is an opt-in provision, which we opted in, but I guess that one location did necessarily mean one. Yeah, the one one municipality. The one location rule applies to the licensee. So each licensee can operate out of one location, but a town was opted in can host multiple establishments. And given that opt-in provision, there are some interesting dynamics happening with how the retail operations are dispensed across the state. For example, Burlington, I think has eight licensed retailers now in South Burlington has zero because they haven't opted in. So I think, I do think there may be some sort of density or maybe density of retailers around the state given the opt-in provision. I think we have one, take one. You have one in Middlebury for Gens, we have three, I don't remember them all. I used to, I know they were just starting, they were just growing. It was the first weekend in October. One other thing that the enabling legislation did just to keep answering your question is that there's a requirement that the board prioritize people who are coming in from the illicit market. So the intent was really to make sure that the illicit market growers could join the regulated market so that we didn't keep them up. And that was another reason why I think our culture is quite different than other states. That was, again, also a choice, because they work and it would, we've incentivized for them to come to an open business. Anything else you need us to hear? I don't think so, nothing else from me unless I was happy to answer questions. So your total budget up is up about, is 1.2 million from last year, right? Right. And it comes from the cannabis fund. All right, thank you. Thank you. And thank you for helping to, I'm sorry, zero, yes. It's gonna, the eight fifties in it, I think, I think the chance that this shouldn't be about the lab work. That's not the 50th, it doesn't, that they were gonna respond to the fact that there was no, it's not to the product. If that needed to get passed, but right. So committee, you're still live and I think we can go offline and we'll see you tomorrow at 8.30 in here for,