 For the record, I'm Ken Schatz, I'm the commissioner of the Department for Children and Families. I know Riva Murphy, the deputy commissioner for Child Development Division, will come along shortly. I do appreciate the opportunity to talk about S40. And what I thought I would do is give you sort of a fairly brief statement, but try to then respond to whatever questions you have. To be clear, we as the Department for Children and Families are not taking a position with respect to S40 and whether or not there should be an increase in the minimum wage. But we did participate on the Senate side in the development of their legislation. To respond to, I think, an issue that you understand, I expect quite well, that there is an impact in terms of the so-called benefits cliff or benefits slope. So we have done a lot of work over the past couple of years with the Joint Fiscal Office to work on that issue. And that issue, both with respect to our Economic Service Division programs, reach up, lie heat, three squares, but also childcare. And I think, and you may have already heard from the Joint Fiscal Office, I'm not sure of the order in which you've taken testimony, but Debra Riden has done a lot of work analyzing the impacts of increasing the minimum wage with respect to those programs. To be straightforward, the eligibility levels for a public assistance program is really very low. So that if a person is even under the present minimum wage levels, working full time, they're not going to be eligible for reach up. Our major public assistance safety net program. We do have slide fee scales though with respect to lie heat and three squares. And certainly, if the minimum wage is increased, there would be some impact with respect to people receiving somewhat less benefits under those programs. But being straightforward, we do have with your support created several programs, particularly in reach up, to try to reduce the impact of when people get wages. Specifically in the reach up arena, we have created a reach ahead program, which specifically enables people to have an offset so that we don't count the wages that they start to earn towards their reach up benefits. So we protect people who are just re-entering the job market in that way. We also do our best to provide childcare for people with high subsidy levels for people who are in reach up. So the most significant impact with respect to the DCF array of services regarding increasing the minimum wage is with respect to childcare. Because there's no question that we do hear about individuals now who talk about if they go and get a job and they have or they have a job and they get a proposed raise. They've got to do the financial analysis about whether or not they're really going to be taking home more money or not at the end of the day after paying for childcare. And I'm going to sort of do the general, make the general point, which again, I expect you familiar with, but we have tremendous challenges in our childcare system in terms of access and affordability. I'm not going to go into that in great depth. The Blue Ribbon Commission report lays that out in great detail. But we really have to be clear, major challenges. As you know, we put out information as part of the budget unfunded expenses report clarifying what it would take to bring up our childcare provider reimbursement rate. Right now, we're at 2008 levels. In order to bring that up to 2015 levels, it would cost approximately $9.2 million to bring it up to 2017 market rate, it would cost a total of $15 million. Obviously, that's an incredible challenge. And we do have a sliding fee scale for families. But the point is, even if you're at 100% of the sliding fee scale, because of that disparity that I mentioned regarding our reimbursement to childcare providers, childcare providers in order to maintain a viable business need to require a co-pay, if you will. That is, families need to, in addition to whatever subsidy they get from DCF, they also need to pay out of pocket. That has become a tremendous challenge for many families as is. In our system right now, we've talked about that in various committees in various ways. Again, the Blue Ribbon Commission talks about it at great length. I will say we did just to put it out there quickly. You know, the federal government just passed a budget for federal fiscal year 18. We do expect to receive $2.8 million, which is obviously helpful. But again, I want to give you the scale. $2.8 million is helpful, but it doesn't get us to 2015, even if market rate, as you may, market rate levels, as you may remember in the budget that you passed last year, you did allocate basically $2.2 million additional money. We did target that money to programs that had high percentages of children with subsidy to try to, frankly, address the most needy and vulnerable families and childcare providers, because we appreciate those providers who take in families with children with subsidies. So I give you that broad brush to let you know that there is a major challenge for us as a state, as a community. The work that we did going to S40 specifically with the Senate side, and it's reflected in Section 2 of the legislation, was to, in effect, try to keep families harmless if, in fact, the minimum wage increase as proposed was passed. So the idea would be we came up with this language to reflect that we would address both components of our system to adjust the sliding fee scale, to correspond with any minimum wage increase that would occur over time. And then we would adjust the market rate so that we would continue to at least not make the situation for childcare providers any worse. The language is here is to the extent funds are appropriated. Being straightforward as a public steward, we needed to say, and I appreciate this Senate including that language, that obviously if we're given the mandate to adjust the sliding fee scale or the market rate, we need to have the funds to do that. We are in the process of, we've been asked by the Senate also to do some calculations about how much would it cost because again, as you may recall from the legislation, there is an increase under this legislation that would begin on January 1st, 2019. And so we have calculated that cost and we will have a little better information than me, but to give you a sense of the scale, it's roughly something less than a million dollars. Obviously the federal money could help with that, to be sure. But, so the bottom line is that I appreciate the fact that the Senate did look at this issue, did look at the issues related to the benefits cliff, the benefits slope, and didn't want it to enable families that if they did, if we did pass a minimum wage increase and there was a benefit in terms of increased salary, that at least we would not put either families or childcare providers into an even deeper hole than we already are in. But again, as you can tell, I think from my comments it's still a major challenge to have a childcare system that is really responsive to the needs of our families here. So let me stop there and hope I've given you a general picture, but glad to do my best to answer questions and I'll be straightforward with you. I apologize again, Reeve is not here, but I will certainly take back any questions and make sure I get to your answers to them if I don't know them. Representative Smith. See you in the childcare financial assistance program. Who do you see couples? You know, you've got a family with a child or two. Are these families that are in their 19 and 20-year-olds, or are they 30-year-olds? You know, I don't have that demographic background. I will ask them not, again, that's one of those things I'm going to check on to be sure, but I think it covers the range and it's certainly not limited to young families. I mean, I don't want to necessarily get into it too deeply here, but to be candid, one of the pressures on our system is actually related to the opioid epidemic. Because, and you may have heard me talk about it in other contexts, we have had a substantial increase in the number of children coming into state custody in our child welfare system because of opioid epidemic. One of the things we provide is, and many of those are very young children because they are of those young families to be candid, who are oftentimes affected by opioid addiction. And one of the things that we provide, and it's good timing because you can help me out here, but one of the things that we provide is, we do provide 100% of the child care payment for children who are in Family Service Division custody, so that we don't ask them to make co-payments. So we do our best to protect them in our current system. So the question, I'll give you a chance to catch your breath, but the question was the demographics of the families who receive CCFAP funding. Are they primarily young families, or how does that break out, and I acknowledge that I didn't know the answer to that. Well, we don't know age of parents. We do know age of children, and about a third of the children are actually school-aged children, and the rest are interested toddlers and preschoolers. So it's not quite even. Pre-schoolers are a little higher than the other populations, but we have a significant number of school-aged children participating in substance. So we put parents in the mid-20s range, probably. We have income demographics about the families. We don't have age demographics. We don't ask the parents their age. I will say some of us married a little later in life, so that when my children were in school-aged, I was in my 30s, but I think it varies, of course, so I think the point being is, you can't pinpoint the age. Probably, for our interested toddlers, you can make some assumptions about the age of the parents, but... That's entirely representative strong in a way. Can you mention the benefits, like reach-ups, three-squares, language, child care, and then you mentioned reach-ahead? Yes. Could you just briefly tell us what reach-up does cover, and then what the reach-up is? I haven't heard about that. Sure. So reach-up is our basic public assistance program for families that... Where there are children, and where there is basically no income or enough, because it's essentially the reach-up guidelines, and I could give you that data if you're interested, are very low for eligibility. So we provide... We actually have a population in reach-up that is... You can sort of roughly break out in thirds. Some of them are only children, so that the parents may not be eligible by themselves, but the children might be disabled. And so we have a child-only population. We have a population where families are involved in reach-up because there's a disability of the parent, and so they are unable to work. And then we have a third category where we have families with children where, for whatever reason, they are not currently working, but we have a... They may still be eligible, but we have a plan to work with them to gain employment. That third category over the last three years, and I'm probably not as surprised to you, has been actually significantly decreasing because with our low unemployment rate, in fact, we are seeing a lot of families successfully gain employment. And moving off of the reach-up program, as you may know from our budget, we've seen millions of dollars decrease in our reach-up budget because of people successfully moving into the economy. Now there's other challenges, and this committee has talked about housing and homelessness because oftentimes, and this relates to the benefit put, oftentimes these families get low-paying jobs, so they're not eligible for reach-up anymore, but honestly, they're one paycheck away from being homeless, so that's part of the challenge. But the reach-up program was created a few years ago with the legislative support, and the idea being, as people do obtain jobs, rather than having a hard and fast cut-off, we wanted to make it more of an economic or a benefit slope rather than a cliff. So the idea is we have what I referred to earlier, the earned income disregard, meaning that I think it's the first $250 that people earn on a monthly basis, we don't count, so that they still could get reach-up benefits as they earn income in a job to enable them to make the transition to full independence. And then we do also have a connection to the child care program to enable those working parents to have child care. Is there a time limit on how long the $150 is disregarded? I believe it is. I want to check to be sure whether I say it's one or two years, but I'll check on that. Thank you very much. The co-pay, which I'm sure varies by provider, is that, you know, kind of a meeting or meeting basis? $5, $10, $20, $30? I'll let Riva answer that. So the co-pay is actually, it could be two parts. So in the sliding fee scale that we established... $8, 0, 2, 3, 2, 3, sorry. The sliding fee scale that we established is based on family size, incomes, and the percent of the state rate that the family has access to. So when our rates are robust, a family that has 100% benefit would not necessarily have a co-pay. Our home is, our rates are behind, if you guys already mentioned that. And so we are not keeping pace with what the provider charges. Providers are permitted to charge the difference, and that difference has been growing over time. So the co-pays could be substantial. A family with 100% benefit, according to our calculations, could have as much as $2,000 a year that they have to pay in addition to 100% benefit for subsidy. And that's substantial for a family who's earning at that level. Some providers forgive that. We actually have a grant program that we have that requires providers to accept it to take 100% families at no co-pay, the Strengthening Families Grant Program. And so those are providers who are serving a lot of our kids, and they're using resources to not charge them co-pay, even though they're 4 and 5 stars. But then as families go up the income scale, we just can't protect them all of that time because providers couldn't stay in business. And as it is, providers get a little bit stuck in the middle of our rate and wanting to serve families and knowing families can't afford it. So it's 100% the provider's call if they wanted to do it? Yes, beyond our co-pay. Whether or not they're charging parents to reach there. And some providers have their own scholarship programs that augment our programs so providers make those decisions themselves. How many providers have 100% of their participants involved in the program? None of our providers have 100%. Well, head starts might be pretty down close. Though not all of the Head Start families are participating in CCFAP because they don't have a service need. So we have, for providers who are non-Head Start providers, we have a few who are up at 90% of our kids. We don't have anybody at 100%. And then that tapers off pretty quickly. We could give you a spreadsheet of that because that's partially how we calculate the early care and development grants. So we actually have a spreadsheet so we know exactly who's at the top and how that goes down. Representative Stevens. Can you just give us an idea of the numbers that we're talking about with respect to salaries in terms of what's 100%? I mean, we've seen charts about what's 100% poverty for all different family sizes. But do those numbers ever change? I mean, they're mostly federal numbers. Sometimes we make adjustments like in health care or health insurance. So I'm just curious, how do you make adjustments to what those poverty levels are? I mean, this sounds like what the earned income disregard is about. But if we did the math on a $15 minimum wage, we're talking about $31,000 a year, which is above the family of 400% or whatever the numbers are. So how do you manage these numbers back and forth to try to keep people who need these benefits receiving them right now? Right now, pretty much the last few years, we've been able to adjust. It's not in law that we adjust automatically every year, but we've been able to find the resources every year to adjust to the federal poverty level so that our sign fee scale right now is based on the federal poverty levels for 17 and we're building in to adjust to 2018. And that ripples through a little bit. The thing I will tell you is that the sliding fee scale is fairly granular so that adjustments in income, like people go from 100% to 99% benefit to 98%. So in the beginning, the co-pays that we assign are very slight. It's really the difference between the rate and the co-pay that makes the difference. And on our sliding fee scale, what we've observed at the times we've been able to really do a little research on it is that it's at about 150% of poverty where r-assigned co-pay becomes a little unaffordable. The fact that the rates aren't upper, absent that. That there's a bit of a cliff inside the sliding fee scale because at that point you reach about a 50% benefit and what we've observed is that less than a 50% benefit doesn't generally keep, with all their other costs, doesn't generally keep families able to afford childcare. So they make a lot of other arrangements. Some families will use subsidy for part of their childcare and make other arrangements for other parts. We try to be flexible with that so that if a family can get into high quality childcare for 3 days, 3-10 hour days, which is 30 hours and that's a full time rate, if they can get that with no co-pay from a provider and make other arrangements for 2 days, we let them make those arrangements to try to use our resources to fit their needs. What the Blue Ribbon Commission on Access to Affordable High Quality Child Care calculated was we looked at the livable wage data in Vermont and we looked at where people paid all their other expenses and we took childcare out of the equation and said at that point people need 100% support up until that, theoretically people would need 100% support up until they reach that point where they have a dollar above rent, all other things to pay for childcare. And then we looked at if you went up the scale at what point would families be able to afford the rate themselves. So that was kind of the calculations that they used there to think about how could the sliding fee scale mitigate a click? And so are you saying that those numbers are based on numbers that are gross income or is it net income? It's gross income. We do have some things that are excused but we don't use net income. There are just some things that are not counted like savings account for education for your kids and if you put money aside there that's not counted but we don't use a net income. Are there questions? So who should we talk about in AHS about the other sections of where the minimum wage may affect like the AAAs or any of the other agencies that don't fall under your bailout in terms of if the salary goes up and we're sending this money out to these agencies will services be cut? So my recollection and Deb Brigham would have more specific knowledge was the other major impact aside from our programs is actually Medicaid in that it would affect again with increased income it might affect eligibility for Medicaid and that would be a diva question. But again I think that Deb Brigham may have that information. And then we had a presentation last year from Deb and Paul Dragon. Right. And Paul Dragon is with the Secretary's office and in some respect you know if you wanted a larger presentation we've got that in terms of the general issues regarding the benefits but it isn't necessarily tied to this legislation. One of the things that Reeve is asking me about is child care wages and I didn't really talk about that other than to say that and it's worth saying that obviously the child care workers will be significantly impacted by an increase in minimum wage. Obviously it already is in state law but if you pass S40 frankly child care workers are some of the lowest paid workers in the state so you know we all have some impact. We'll have impact on those rates for a change. That was my question. Oh right. I must have. Since we took testimony, since we had taken testimony earlier this week from the providers it's interesting that effect and they did reflect on their impact and then the rate of support that their clients would have, their families would have and how that would interface. So being cognizant that I think it's really critical that we kind of balance that and take a very clear look at how that's going to affect things. So maybe having those broader numbers or at least some projections looking out at 24 what might that look like. So as you're planning you'd be able to. I do appreciate that question. I think this is one of those things and we did talk a fair amount about this in the Senate. We don't have that capacity within DCF to do that kind of projection based on the labor force. We don't know what individual child care providers pay to their staff. So there's some average data in Department of Labor but it's average. So for us to try to model how many would have to raise their wages. Presumably the people who have higher wages now will raise their wages again because they do that to attract staff. And one of the things we're hearing a lot about lately is we also have a bit of a child care capacity problem here. We're hearing that providers are having trouble finding staff. And when we talk to our friends at the Commerce Department at the Labor Department they're like everybody's having trouble finding staff. And if you're an industry that has some of the lowest wages you are having more trouble. So when we think about reflect on that is what's causing this like real providers from closing classrooms for lack of staff. We've been curious if it had something to do with the qualifications we've put in but the problem is they're not finding any humans. Never mind humans who are qualified or not qualified they're getting zero applicants. And some of that when we talk to our friends at Labor and Commerce who are looking across industries they're like every low paying industry is having that problem right now. You guys are just competing hard for that and we're trying to make sure that the people who are taking care of the kids are well qualified. So it's a bit of a perfect storm right now. Representative Stevens. How many people receive or families receive 100% through? We have about 8,000 families overall who are receiving subsidies and approximately 4,000 are receiving 100% subsidy. And it's pretty granular. So if you look at who are receiving who are in that less than 150 or receiving more than a 50% benefit that's pretty much 85% of our population right is towards the bottom. And how many children is that? It's actually 8,000 children. So that's 6,000 families. I have to put that on my head and not off your chart. So it's 6,000 families. And that would be 4,000 children. It can start as families. So it's 4,000 families out of 6,000 or at 100%. About 66% or so are at 100%. And that includes our protective services kids. Reach out protective services or have a category of eligibility for 100%. Other folks it's based on income. Sorry, I'm still struggling a little bit to make sure I have the families versus the children. Sorry, number right. The number of children overall receiving? It's about 8,000. About 8,000. And of those 4,000 are receiving 100%. No, that's the 4,000 is the family. So there's about 6,000 families, about 4,000 or at 100%. Those families, the average is, I think, 2. something children. But some have one. Yes, we can. So you just, you started with saying you would work with the Senate on this language. That's right. So that's, we did appreciate that opportunity to talk about how if the minimum wage was increased as provided in S40, how would we deal with this problem that we've been talking about to at least not exacerbate it. That is, I don't want to suggest this is going to solve it, but at least wouldn't make it worse. If we did get some additional funds and for these benefits, I told them that it was approximately a million dollars. We would make these adjustments with respect to the changes that are proposed in the bill for fiscal year 19. So don't hesitate to let us know if as you go forward you want us to come back. We appreciate the complexity here. So we're glad to provide more information as needed. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks. Thank you. So this is all we have for today that we want to talk about next week. We've put a lot of advice for the team scholarship. You feel good? Talk to us about what we have in a while. Thank you again, Karen. Sure you're welcome. Thank you. You're doing the best to allocate some resources there. We're just going to have a lot of extra ones to answer. Thank you. Thank you. For an industry that needs more, if you can call it an industry, it's not really a sector that needs more support. You want to take about a five minute break while you load up and we think about getting, asking Deanna to come back in. Do you need some time, Ron, or are you... No, I'm good. I'm good. I'm just waiting for this to find me. I'm in a concert at home. I heard us. Next week. Oh, yeah. What did you say? Next week. Month of the military child. It's happening. I don't know if you want to say anything about it. I have it on the agenda because it's happening, but not because it really involves them. We still have the resolution circulating now. Oh, yeah, I need to sign it. Is there anybody who doesn't sign it that would like to? Deanna. Since they lost their funding to be part of media extension, they haven't been as communicated with us about what that day looks like. They will be on the floor for the reading of the resolution, but I'm not aware of anything more that they're suggesting that we be acquiring. Great. Following caucuses of lunch, we'll be back in committee around one o'clock. We've scheduled Tom Cadet to come back in for our request. He requests that you have questions for him to address. He would really love hearing them in advance so that he can prepare for them. So, do you want to spend some time today or communicate with him? No, let's stop right now. Do people have questions that they... that they can off the top, that they can think of if they have the time? Anybody that's not going to sign it? Coach. Right. We'll ask him to go through this recommendation. We can barely do that. I mean, the other day. It was evaluation, I think. Evaluation or recommendation? Well, it was a recommendation. It was probably a recommendation. Okay. Following Tom, who I believe has to be out the door to sort of... I'll give it a little later. We have a twice-delayed hearing on H-127. Representative Stevens, do you want to say anything about that? It's a tough little bill, but the self-advocate, the situation might have been asking if he got a hearing on this bill, and he was in a condominium, and smoking is allowed in the public areas of condominiums, and it bugs him, because the smoke comes into his apartment or his condo, and there's no... What makes it difficult is that our statutes don't really get into condo law. Condo laws are almost self-standing in little countries amongst themselves. But he's been wanting to share this... The second biennium we put this bill forward, and it was next door for one biennium, and now it's here. I just want to be able to make sure he has an opportunity to tell a story. And it's in the same category as what Representative Meyers built. Really, with the gardening and condo public areas, it's frustrating for people who don't... It would be frustrating for me to go into some place and realize that you can't change the bylaws easily, and so he's just asking us to take a look to see if we can help with that. So it's anticipated that we'll take no more than a half hour, and may schedule something else before the end of the day. That's Tuesday. Wednesday we start the morning back to minimum wage. You can see we have an array of witnesses. Some of these are the books coming back that we had to send away yesterday because of the war back in the morning. So we have Reserve Room 10, just to make it a little physically and a little more comfortable for folks. I don't know at this moment if there'll be additional names on that list here or not. We'll see there are a couple of folks that are still in the invited category. So, afternoons still to be scheduled. Some of that has to do with the ever-present uncertainty of floor time and just direction as to where to get it. You know, in general, I probably shouldn't say this, to use less words, but in general I expect it's going to be a fairly light floor week next week. Let me help you out with that one. That's what I said yesterday. About the fourth. Anybody have information to the contrary? If I look forward to it, it'll be great. Nothing was on notice, I don't think so. No. No, none is on notice. A lot of stuff left behind. Okay. All right. So move it on to Thursday. So you just saw that little e-mail pop on my screen. Apparently the Senate was planning on voting on S-55 this afternoon. Let's get out of here before they do that. So Wednesday afternoon to be determined. Thursday, same idea. Although we're at the moment anyway, we're here in this room taking testimony on short-term rental S-204. That is a lot of people to have in this room. Can you check on Ethan Allen? I can work on that. Can we find a short-term rental somewhere? Are you ours? So as you can see, it's a mixture of folks. There are a lot of people, a lot of entities that have an interest in the subject. Right. But we've been in touch a lot. And we're getting some interesting comments, too. So I encourage folks to take a look at the comments that are posted on the website, including the report of the working board, which Katie may have touched on and her friend, her detective. She alluded to it. A reminder to members, public comment that comes, I posted to attach it to dates of hearings. So we had a hearing two days ago, so anything I got around then, I posted to them things that are coming in now, I'm posting to that date, to this date. So you won't be able to see it until that date. But if anyone ever wants a print out of all the public comments, you can generate that very easily. But you can also call it up by just the bill number. Correct. You can do that, you can find it that way. Yeah. So you see we have the town manager, Stowe called this morning, seeking, and there seems to be a mumbling measure of something around over us. Stephanie Bohnen is a place over right now while she figures out who exactly might come and testify. Then we switch gears back to minimum wage. Those two folks were among the folks we had to send away yesterday and they couldn't come on that side. So Thursdays, their only day available. Again in the afternoon, we don't have anything scheduled yet. There's a thought that we would break by around 3-3-30 before we reconvene at 5-30 for the public hearing. There was some thought maybe of a committee of you. I think that would be great to be in the session and it may be, I don't know whether it's possible to do it that day. Not so much for you. Not so much. Oh, are you not, will you not be here? No. That's right. He'll be recovering from his Gatorade dinner. I'm getting siphoned. I'm siphoned. And then Friday... I'll get my day to see the name cancer. Aren't you ready to have dinner? And as has been our nature this year, Friday remains unsteady until we see how progressive we are. And to have at least five weeks to fulfill it. So that's in the title. Minimum wage, short term rentals. Minimum wage, short term rentals. I should have said $17. Yeah, we should have a second reading. Did they tag anything on to that? They tagged us $17 on to put in a different version. So the language from us $17 is in title 20 in the version of age 771 that passed second reading yesterday. So it's, if you take the section on appointment by the governor from age 744, but leave out anything about appointment by the governor and just put in qualifications for the agitin general, so it doesn't have anything. It still leaves election with the legislature. That section has been added with all the other technical cleanup changes that were in there and the qualifications for the agitin. Section 2 of age 771. Section 1, which is the study, just had a very small technical change asking for the total number of guard members in addition to all the various information pieces about ranks and promotion and so forth. Just so that there's some baseline information. Okay, we're talking about out of 10,000 people, there are 300 sergeants and, you know, this many are men and this many are women. So the 17, again, does just the criteria? Does just the criteria for the agitin general and leaves the election as it is now? Whereas 744 transfers the election of the agitin general to the, or transfers the changes the agitin general from an elected by the legislature position to an appointed by the governor position. With the criteria and a research process similar to judicial review? Yeah, it's been a while since I've looked at that bill, but yeah, there is some process, I think. I'd have to look at it closely again. I don't know if it's not the committee process that this committee passed in the last biennium. So I think there are criteria. So the Senate bill is silent on that? It doesn't. It leaves it with the legislature. So it's specifically. Yeah, it specifically references submitting your candidacy to the Secretary of State for the legislative election. So, yeah. So, they're acting on that today? Yeah, in the second reading yesterday. Okay. It should pass the third reading today. It was a voice vote yesterday. So I don't want to dispute any hold-ups today. It's very disappointing that the Senate has not acted on our actions on, is it in two bienniums now? Oh, okay. To change the selection process. You started after General Craig was elected? Yeah. So you passed the same thing three times? Not that exactly. Actually, we agreed, I think we agreed on establishing a basic criteria for candidates. But we were concerned about the sort of completely wide-open election of the Adjutant General and the General Assembly. And we, after much work with some members of the Judiciary Committee came up with a review process that's kind of, it's part judicial retention, part judicial nominating, where there's a group of people, appointed people, who review candidates. And giving the candidates an opportunity to speak, giving citizens an opportunity to speak. And then bringing forth any names that meet the basic criteria to the General Assembly for approval and election. And just to kind of repeat some of the history that brought that on, if I might, when there was last a context of election, which was about a little over five years ago now, there was a citizen who was, who somewhat quietly expressed concerns initially about one of the candidates who was her superior officer who did not respond to her complaints about her supervisor sexual assault of her. And we were flexing about how to process this, given this process in which there was no committee vetting of candidates at all. And because she didn't have a way to add a way in and this respected officer didn't have a way to really weigh in other than through the press. And we didn't have that process. We just didn't have that process built into this election. So right now it's the same at this point. And the Senate is apparently not recommending a change. In the election process. Just the criteria. Just the criteria, which I think is important. The election itself is important as well. And we are the last, or the only state, I won't say last, but we are the only state that elects an adjutant general who is profitable using any process they're all appointed. It's not, it's not simple. So suggest or think about it and you'll have to find a way to come back to it next week after the Senate's decision, final decision. There's another issue we wanted to bring up before we leave and that is a resolution that was introduced that we heard of a brief introduction of actually before our break. That's JRH 12. A joint resolution urging Congress to establish a system that checks and balances for a decision to launch a nuclear attack. People remember that? I think it was Mary Simon who came in on it. I think it's in pretty good hands right now. It was actually disagree. I'm sure you do. Don't you Helen? Actually no. You're on your own right now. Is there interest in it? We have to do testimony? How do you handle a resolution like that? Do we do testimony? Or what? We certainly could. Talk about it, that looks like. That was a purely subjective thing. I know it. Who would you get? I imagine I'm thinking about a news article that I read about the current set up of powers around the nuclear codes and that that might be in terms of testimony of getting someone to talk about that, what the current process is. And this particular article that I heard also talked about the history of it, of why they're and how unique it is and the impacts of it. And that really, yeah, so I'll stop there. But that might be in terms of testimony if we can understand how things are currently laid out. Is it just a decision of the President right now or the President, Speaker of the House? No, it's just the President. And even questioning that has had people lose their military decisions, just asking for some checks and balances around that. So it's really under the current structure, no one is legally able to stop the President from sending nuclear weapons at any point to anywhere. There's no legal able to stop that. I'm shocked that in the last year, they had installed some sort of safety measures. And at the federal level, there have been bills to try to change this. But that really right now, legally, there's nothing to stop the President from sending nuclear weapons anywhere at any time and I know I'm repeating myself at this point, but people have lost their military careers just for asking about it. So what happens with something like that? Is it just a do-it-town meeting where everybody puts a non-binding resolution and they draw it out and it doesn't happen? I mean, what happens with something like that? Well, technically for this body, the fact that it was sent to us rather than going directly to the floor means that it comes back to the floor to treat it as a bill. And it would, if passed, would be advisory. We can't specifically direct Congress to take action to advise. That was my question. What? I could do this? Well, my district is a fairly quiet district and I have received a number of communications about this. And so representing my folks, I would be interested in taking this up. Where would it go from here? Well, if we took testimony, if we passed it out, it would go to the floor just as a bill. And if it passed out of the house, then it would go to the Senate just like a bill. And then if we passed it fully, then it would be this advisory message to Congress. I'm here, one way or the other. I think there should be checks and balances. Advisory stuff and non-binding stuff. I'd rather just try to stick to stuff we've got concerns with here in our state. That's what we're here for. Having said that, I'm not sure. I'm just going to suggest that we think about this some more. We'll talk to you about this over the weekend. Yes. Sorry, we've been so busy with floor stuff that I have not had a chance to circle back around on that. I basically made a decision to put it back on the wall. My concern was that there were some questions. There's a lot of interest. There were also some questions. And it really felt as though we were running out of time. That we believe that there's enough interest that it will come back, but not this year. All right.