 Thank you for coming this afternoon after the Federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed in December. Our team at the Department of Taxes working with a number of agencies and departments got to work evaluating the impact on Vermonters. What their analysis found was that while these changes will lower federal taxes, most Vermonters, due to the complexity of our system and its connection points to the federal calculation, it was going to raise state income taxes on Vermont taxpayers. If we had taken no action whatsoever or made no changes to our laws, about half of Vermonters, primarily working families with kids, would have paid a net total of $30 million more in Vermont income tax. This team beside me and behind me worked together to develop a smart, simple plan that not only protected Vermonters from this increase, but also achieved many additional benefits in the process. I'm pleased to be here today to highlight the fact that this plan, for the most part, has been enacted into law. Its passage and conjunction with our work with the legislature to eliminate that the income tax on social security benefits for low and middle income retirees provided $30 million of income tax relief to Vermonters. This is important because we not only cut income tax rates across the board for all payers, but it also put Vermont in a stronger, competitive position relative to our neighbors like New York. Further, the changes simplify our tax system and maintain our progressive tax code where the wealthy pay more than those with low and moderate incomes. This proposal was revenue neutral and ensured working families with children saw the full benefit of the federal tax reductions without requiring cuts in state spending. Additionally, it greatly simplifies Vermont's tax calculation, lowers rates, and encourages charitable giving by all taxpayers while adding stability in revenue collection. I want to thank Commissioner Sampson and his entire team for their hard work in this smart, common sense proposal that will benefit working Vermont families for years to come. As well, Administration Secretary Suzanne Young, who couldn't be here today, but as well, Deputy Secretary Furlan and Commissioner Greschen for their work. And I want to thank the legislature, the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees for their work in ensuring the passage of this proposal. While we have much more work to do, this relief coupled with the elimination of the tax on social security benefits for many Vermonters, two consecutive years without raising a single tax or fee in the general fund and level property tax rates for residential players or payers are critical steps to ensuring and helping Vermonters keep more of what they earn and move up the economic ladder. As I continue to work to make Vermont more affordable, grow the economy, and protect the most vulnerable, these steps help us move closer to each of these goals. I'll now turn this over to Commissioner Sampson, who will detail some of the specific changes. Thank you, Governor. Again, thank you to my team who are here with me today, who really helped track what was happening with the Tax Cut and Jobs Act as it worked its way through Washington, D.C. and then ultimately along the way we're modeling what the impact would be. So we are well prepared and had a plan designed to mitigate that $30 million impact ready to go in February and that's a really quick turnaround and so I'm really grateful for the work of those folks in the tax department. I want to focus on a couple things from a tax administration perspective. You know, the individual changes in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act sunset in 2025. So part of what we did here in simplifying the tax code and also having a stronger connection to federal adjusted gross income was make our tax code more resilient to federal changes. So we joined a lot of states who are more focused on adjusted gross income and in doing so we probably won't have as many of these years where something changes at the federal level and we have to react quickly and sometimes retroactively at the state level. I think the first takeaway for Vermonters is that this is a retroactive change. Act 11 from just a couple weeks ago is effective for tax year 2018. So this takes effect for, you know, all tax issues beginning January 1st, 2018 and we had to do that to prevent that $30 million tax increase statewide. What else does this mean for Vermonters? It means that right now with the passage of this bill, I don't have to adjust withholding rates upwards on Vermont income tax, which means, you know, had this not passed, had we not succeeded, we would have had to compute new withholdings on payroll and take home pay for Vermonters would have gone down at least on the Vermont tax side. And the same goes for estimated tax payers. And I think one of the one of the biggest changes that I want to talk about that, you know, Vermont is unique and joins only a few other states, maybe four other states in having a credit for charitable contributions or some type of tax advantage for charitable contributions in our tax code that applies to all Vermonters or to all taxpayers, not just folks who itemize. You've heard me say many times on this topic that one of the biggest changes of the tax cutting jobs act is that we expect instead of only 30% of Vermonters itemizing less than 10% might actually be itemizing. This credit is available to anyone who makes a qualifying charitable contribution that has a tax liability, they can reduce their tax liability with this credit. So we hope that this will introduce new motivations to donate even small amounts. So and I'll go into a little more detail on that. It also occurs occurs to us in the tax community that because up to up until now, only 30% of Vermonters have have really been in a position to understand itemized deductions and and the tax preference of giving to charity. A lot of might not know what they should be doing. And so in a moment, I'll introduce a tax preparer, local tax preparer who can talk a little bit about that. But you know, bottom line, what we're doing is connecting to what qualifies as a charitable contribution at the federal level, and then allowing that contribution to have a 5% credit against your tax liability. So we don't have any more different complicated guidance here at the state level. We will simply be referring to what qualifies at the federal level. And we think that was that the simplest way to deliver this benefit to Vermonters. One one more thing to highlight. The governor mentioned the Social Security exemption. You know, in Vermont, we have about 140,000 Social Security recipients. We are the only state in the Northeast and one of only a handful of states nationwide that don't have some type of exemption partial or full exemption tax state tax exemption for Social Security income. This does not exempt all Social Security income for all folks, but about half of the folks that had a Vermont taxable or Vermont tax obligation on their soul, sorry, about half of the folks that pay tax on some or all of their Social Security benefit in Vermont. Half of those folks will pay less or nothing now. And so those thresholds now are much higher than what the federal thresholds are for exemption. And for, you know, about 40,000 Vermonters on Social Security will see lower or no tax on their Social Security income. So that's that's a big change. And again, it's into this tax competitiveness world. I mean, we do hear from the prepare community and from taxpayers that some decisions are made on the tax environment both rates and what types of income are taxable. So Vermont is now much more competitive on that type of income with other states. So just real quickly on charitable contributions again, for folks who are uninitiated on the tax preferences there at the federal level, contributions to charities, religious organizations, churches, mosques and temples, volunteer fire departments, schools, veterans or other cultural groups. These are all deductible for itemizers at the federal level. And now they're available to compute this credit as a state level. Keep your receipts. Check the federal guidance if you're not sure there's a lot of guidance we've linked to it on our website. And certainly call the tax department if you have some questions or if you work with a prepare they're more than equipped to to handle that. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce Patty Bissen, who is a local area tax preparer advisor and consultant. I've had the honor working with with Patty since I've been commissioner and she's worked with prior commissioners as well on the tax technical working group where we interact with area preparers to understand changes like this and their impact on Vermonters. And so we did work closely with these stakeholder groups as we are designing and implementing this plan. So Patty was hoping you could come and give some preparer perspective. All right, I'm a newbie in this arena. And I'm excited to see so many faces. Thank you, Kai. Once again, my name is Patty Bissen. I'm a tax professional and I'm an instructor and I work with taxpayers and other tax professionals, helping them stay informed on tax and technology, how it affects and be strategic about it. I'd like to extend my thanks to Governor Scott to Commissioner Samson, to their amazing teams. I've worked with many of them. They're very talented. And to all of you here today for the press, I have the deepest respect for the work that we're all doing on behalf of Vermonters. The time and talent you put into the content that you make, it saves me time. It gives me access to timely information. It offers offers me opportunities to think and ponder and contribute to the conversation. And it's brought me on many journeys and experiences that I wouldn't have had without your your sharing that with us. Thank you for all your hard work and hopefully some of the information I'm bringing to you today will be useful to your audience. Tax reform at both the federal and the state levels means we're all learning. It's new to all of us. Tax tips, deductions and rules that were true over the past many years may not even exist anymore, or even apply to you today. So here's the takeaway. This is the right year for each of us to spend some time understanding what's changed. And then what it means for you, whether you're a professional working through the tax implications with your clients, or you take care of your own tax preparation. And just know that every taxpayer has been affected by tax reform. This is not just a Vermont challenge or topic. Therefore, you're learning right alongside with all of us. Understanding what's changed is going to help you focus your time and energy. Perhaps as in prior years, you usually would put this off until January, February, March, April. But I want to let you know that some of the changes mean that there are things now that you should know that will help you or your clients come tax time. I'll give you three examples. First, with the new federal standard deduction amounts, you may no longer itemize. This means you might assume that you shouldn't keep receipts, such as Commissioner Samson shared for your charitable contributions. Perhaps you haven't itemized in the past. And so you don't usually get a receipt when you make a non cash donation, or a regular donation, such as with a check or contribution of some other item of value. However, with Vermont's new charitable non refundable tax credit, this is effective January 1, 2018. You definitely should hold on to receipts, because you don't have to itemize to benefit from this. And so this may help you come tax time on your 2018 Vermont tax return. Another example, it affects you when you're collecting social security income. I find as a preparer that one of the top surprises that taxpayers learn about is that depending on your other taxable income, you may have taxable social security income could be up to 85%. That's taxed at the federal level, which means historically, that's been taxed at the Vermont level. Vermont has added a new social security exemption. There's additional calculations to determine how much is not taxable. But just be aware that these new Vermont tax savings may give you the opportunity to save and pay less now, keeping more in your pocket if you pay estimated tax payments. That's very common with social security recipients. My third and last example for today is that data is indicating that the majority of Vermont taxpayers who in the past have itemized may not end up itemizing in 2018. This is because the federal standard deduction has significantly increased. So in prior years, Vermont had an additional form called IN 155. And that form calculated a variety of limitations and add backs to your Vermont tax return. This will no longer apply. Vermont has instead created its own standard deduction and these amounts will greatly simplify the calculations on this part of the tax return. In my professional capacity, I'm a resource for over 23,000 fellow tax professionals nationally through a professional organization called NATP, National Association of Tax Professionals. I frequently asked questions when I volunteered to assist on Vermont tax knowledge about this form, IN 155 from colleagues both inside the state and outside the state who are working with Vermont tax payers. This change to a flat Vermont standard deduction will add simplification and then that ultimately reduces the chance for error confusion. I hope these highlights and observations will be useful. I always recommend that you speak with a tax advisor, read more about your particular circumstances, but just keep in mind that this is a good year to ask more questions, to read more and become more informed. And therefore, if you're unsure, don't be afraid to ask. Thank you again, Dr. Scott. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, Patty. Maybe now we can open up the floor to questions, maybe about taxes first and then we'll talk about other issues that you might have questions about after that. Here's your chance. You can start. All your tax questions can be answered right here in this room. You said in your opening remarks you said that legislature passed the proposal that your administration developed for the most part. What's left out? We had first come up with this plan for $30 million in total. The legislature decided to take $4 million of that and use it for Social Security. We would have preferred the full $30 million for that reimbursement, but we have to work with the legislature and we'll be back if we think it's something that is a concern in the future. But it was just a negotiation at that point. Govison results of the tax department missing the July 1st deadline. Some belong to a sort of concern across the state. Your thoughts and then maybe if I could shift it to kind of explain what happened and what you guys are doing to fix it? Sure. It was it's unfortunate. Obviously we're going to strive to do better. We've already made a commitment. The commissioner has acknowledged that we have more to do and not to let it happen in this manner again. And I'll let him speak to this and what really happened. But it's part of the new system that we have developed and implemented in the tax department that scrutinizes some of the returns more in depth than ever. And it's to try and prevent any irregularities. And so it's so sensitive that it pulls a lot of these returns because of data entry and other mistakes that are made on the on the forms and flags them. So they have to be done manually. And so with this new higher level of scrutiny it slows the process down because there are so many. But maybe I can let Commissioner explain from there. Yeah. I think first and foremost we acknowledge that this is on us. It's unfortunate for us to hear that clerks and treasurers are taking heat from citizens on this. And you know what we're trying to be crystal clear about is that if this has driven an error in a property tax bill in those communities that that build in July, that's something that the tax department has ownership of and has the responsibility of. So certainly we compute that of the July billing towns and of the files that we hadn't sent over and scrutinized yet about 4500 in property tax bills went out potentially with the wrong rate residential versus nonresidential rate or missing a property tax adjustment. The governor's correct. You know a lot of these are you know are growing pains of staffing and deploying resources between refunds are 29 other tax types and property tax reviews. You know the the upside of of this system is that it's highly dynamic and we can tune it and it's already been tuned to prevent some of these kind of over conservative flagging of returns but on the other hand it has also found just this year on the property tax realm about eight million blocked stopped adjusted eight million dollars of improper payments. So and that that absolutely a level of that could never have been detected before to and so that's important for the integrity of our tax system and for the fairness of our tax system. So there are certain checks and cross matches that just weren't possibly before. And the one other thing I'll add because I know the question will come up is and just very broadly what happened was that of the hundred thousand plus files that we need to load July 1 particularly for those July billing towns we still had 14,000 that were unresolved. We still needed human eyes on them. A lot of that is what we call courtesy corrections where that there has been a filing mistake. The most common is the wrong span number which that that's that property identification number. Wrong town code duplicate filings and or the span just doesn't exist so that takes a lot of work. It was our responsibility to look at our workload throughout tax season and make sure we had left enough human time in June to get those cleaned up and we failed in that regard again. So apologies on that but if there's there's one takeaway there's a lot of takeaways for the tax department in communicating with towns we we failed there but as far as that the tax payer we just we we really hope extra scrutiny on the data that you input into this and it will prevent a lot of this. Can I ask just for folks who don't have scrutinizing tax background, folks who just want to make sure they're filing on time properly. Were you noticing was this an issue with predominantly e-filers predominantly hand writing? Did it matter was this purely a computer program that wasn't reading? I saw you listed a couple different right challenges that popped up to explain to tax payers you know why are some people seeing it in a large part? I think a large part of it is there an anomaly or an error on the return and again we've always taken the approach historically in Vermont that we you know when we can find the error fix it and it's clear that you know how to fix it will do that that's kind of that that courtesy repair of an of an error. But between paper files and electronic filing in this situation I don't know Doug if you have a thought on that whether there was an error difference or if you know. Yes the the error rate on paper returns is higher. Generally because it's more difficult to read some people's handwriting and we do have validations built in to try to lead people to enter the correct information. So the lowest error rates were from people that used our website my V tax and then if they use prepare software they're usually usually getting it right and then about 10 to 15 percent higher error rate on paper returns. So that's and it's important to emphasize you know for the for the viewers what what happens next. So if you were in a July building town so so if you haven't received your property tax bill for this year ignore all this this this doesn't affect you. But for July building towns there you know check check your bill make sure you were billed at the right rate and if you're expecting a property tax adjustment and it's not there it could be that next week the file that we send over to towns next week will generate at the town level a revised bill. What you can do to figure out if you're in that population and make sure that we act because every year there's a population of folks who think they filed but didn't or file late and the same thing happens that's more routine where where we send the new information to the towns in a monthly file and they generate revised bills and that could be beyond homestead issues and peak property tax adjustment issues that could even be current use changes that kind of stuff. But on our website is on the front page it'll tell you how to get to the V tax website social security number and zip code and you can look up do we have your filing do you know whether it's just a homestead declaration or homestead declaration and a property tax adjustment if you see that we have that filing but it's not reflected in your bill then you might want to give a call and and just confirm that we that your information will be in the next batch. You mentioned that eight million dollars in improper payments is that are those payments that should not have been made to taxpayers or and what's the source of that? Correct so the source can be claiming it as a homestead when in fact you're not a resident or a part-year resident it can be household income issues in Vermont the income eligibility for these programs this includes rent or rebate relies on a very difficult form the HI-144 household income and where you're adding source different types of income and adding the income of all the members in your household. There's a lot of mistakes or abuse depending on your we're agnostic as to what it is we're going to we're going to detect it find it and adjust it so those are the main areas where where those preventing improper payments which are improper payments means either erently or intentionally filed for. I have a question if I may about actually governor the elimination or reduction for a lot of folks in taxes on their social security benefits was that something also that came out as a response to the tax cuts and jobs act or something you and your administration that had been seeking prior to that? Yeah this is something my administration I had advocated for during the campaign talking about eliminating the tax on social security and we put together a plan that we were able to to work with the legislature on that made a lot of sense for those receiving social security benefits as was mentioned we're just one of just a handful like five or six states I believe that doesn't give some exemption for social security taxes. Okay, yeah so feel free, feel free. I have a couple other questions on homestead. Do you want to ask another question about taxes? About the the homestead business. Commissioner Samson you mentioned to a colleague Taylor Dobbs that some some of the bills were actually lower than they should have been some bills were actually higher than they should have been. The potential for both exists so if it depends on the town and the school spending in the town but what we've seen in recent years is that approximately half of the towns the non-residential rate is lower than the residential rate so in those towns if we are still processing the homestead declaration and you were billed at the non-residential rate by the time we finish processing the homestead declaration the town will revise your bill to the homestead rate the correct rate and in that situation I think it is more common that because it's property tax adjustments and homestead or renon residential rates so it's more common that the revised bills will be lower but there certainly will be instances where it's billed at a higher rate in a town where the homestead rate is is higher. Do you have any idea of the proportion? I don't. Well it's about 50 50 oh of this population I do not. Okay. I would I think most people assume that the homestead rate would naturally be lower. It surprises me that about half the towns it's higher. Right. I guess this is a question from the governor is that a policy issue is that something we should address shouldn't the homestead rate be lower? Well it's been addressed in the legislature before in terms of trying to be competitive with other states the affordability of some of the businesses that are out there and as well as don't forget when we talk about the non-residential we're talking about apartment houses as well so it it falls upon the renters there too so it's a delicate balance and it's something that the legislature has tried to address over the years and will probably continue to address. And I just want to add if I may you know these are a function of of law and what happens in the legislature as far setting the yield and the setting the non-residential rate but the variability and the residential rate is very closely tied to per pupil spending so the towns where you're going to see a lower non-residential rate you're going to see a lot of correlation to high per pupil spending so there are a lot of competing pressures here one your thought of shouldn't it be lower but then that's countered by the thought of if a town spends more shouldn't their tax rate be higher so a lot of moving parts from the policy end of that question and since the the non-residential rate is statewide the residential rate is set town by town right right so per pupil spending does not affect the non-residential rate that makes sense um is this something um should the the increased workload have been anticipated either by your department or by maybe ADS were they involved in the new software system no the the well yes but uh who's responsible the tax department's responsible and i'm ultimately responsible for the workload so yeah for for me I should have been more attuned to that workload issue and um this won't happen again um there's there's several steps already that were you know last year we had the first year in v tax of the individual income tax and had similar issues with um not anticipating the level of scrutiny the system would would give or some of the kind of collateral things that happen uh we put together a team um that worked through last summer and fall um and met with senior leadership within the tax department and completely redesigned and recalibrated how we were doing that and we had as a result a much more successful refund season when it comes to timeliness same things already happening um on the homestead and deciding what's worth flagging and manually reviewing and to some extent that the big revelation is that you know we can do a lot of this stuff after the fact so yes we may have um some some triggers uh or some flags on certain filing um that we're not sure if it's a proper payment or not but we can send that to the towns we can get that information of the towns yes it'll impact the tax bill and then down the road we when we have the time when when we're not under that type of deadline we can review that more in depth and if we have to invoice uh taxpayer for an improper property tax adjustment we can do that so it's it's we're redesigning forms at this point because one you know to the prior question um you know paper versus e-filing we're putting in a a new scanning system that's the one piece of the department's technology that has not been updated and that's in process right now has been for several months that requires a um redesigning of forms and we work with the the vendor to help with that and that process and and this is the feedback we've received from prepared groups as well as like you can probably reduce a certain amount of errors by being more clear on this line about what you're looking for um and just the fact that we'll be able to scan and data capture um uh with more kind of resolution basically of paper forms that's going to help as far as workload goes we we are going to operate next year um around this issue under that this deadline is a deadline everything goes that's complete and timely filed even if we have to turn the dial down and let it go because we'll look at it after that's that's kind of the one high level step that we're going to take is understand that the deadline matters it causes issues for towns and taxpayers when we miss it and it's not worth it it's not worth the aggravation because we can still capture and detect those anomalies after the fact any other tax questions they're passionate about taxes just a staffing question or is the state having trouble like some businesses are finding not qualified workers in the tax or anywhere in general i think we're all suffering in some respects from our workforce issues that we face we'll may go across the state as i've mentioned many times there there are signs out looking for people people to fulfill the jobs that are available and we we have those issues i know in our public safety and state police we're addressing some of that and we're doing it throughout state government so we're not immune to some of the challenges we face as a state any updates on any of the acting or interim commissioners and secretaries there will be very shortly we're getting very close to making some announcements there what can you say which ones all the ones that are open to security governor some recent threats offices your thoughts does anything need to change is anything you being done to make sure going employees are safe well obviously it's our obligation to keep our employees safe when we take that very seriously in terms of an update i'm not sure if you've heard but in within the last hour i believe the person of interest was picked up and is now in the custody of law enforcement so that's that's good news and that one particular threat we continue to make improvements with safety within our state buildings and we have a couple of people from our buildings and general services here to give you some more details of that but it was back in i believe 2017 that there was a capital appropriation of a million and a half dollars for upgrades to to our state buildings we've we've now committed about 900,000 of that and continue to make progress in that regard but this will never be over i mean we we have to continue to work to address these needs as they come up but i might ask you to come up and identify yourself and tell them a little bit about what we've been doing good afternoon thank you governor my name is james sides i'm the acting director for state security under a buildings and general services and uh the last 24 hours i think is actually a demonstration of the corporation that we use that we had with all numerous agencies both within the state and within law enforcement to come together everybody doesn't has a shortage of resources and so when something is developing when we team up we can benefit uh from each other's unique resources there was three law enforcement agencies involved plus uh partner children's services and dcf doc and there was an extensive amount of communication as everybody had different pieces and we brought all the pieces together and was assisting the investigators and coming to an end with this for issues within the security and safety of our state employees and our facilities much is done that is doesn't have visibility we have a team that is performing a lot of steps and a lot of different venues and a lot of it is preventive to ensure that something doesn't happen or if something is starting develop that we catch it before it becomes public attention or gets that type of visibility and so there's successes that we see every day one of the examples is we have a system we put in place about 18 months ago a reporting mechanism online for our state employees if they see a security a safety or threat incident where they can file a report and and then we receive that we do the data link analysis we compare notes with other agencies and then move forward with the plan before something terrible happens did everything work properly when this threat became known oh absolutely yes absolutely would you skull your laughing for us yes it's fine it's a SIDES two brief questions Mr. Sides if I may one being actually when did all of you become aware of this particular threat or these threats and the officers that were stationed outside at the two state office buildings in Burlington and also in Wilson which agencies did they come from well I don't want to get into specifics of the investigation itself but with that we all became aware approximately a week ago and when it was a lower level threat but as we were tracking it and the intelligence was coming in and it was developing we made a proactive decision to place armed law enforcement at those two locations which the threats were geared towards and I wouldn't like to add that the threats were at those specific locations and nowhere else and so we have a contract we operate statewide with all of the sheriff's departments and then they will provide manpower as needed in this situation there there was shortage of time and so in the interest of time and with some limited resources with some sheriff's departments we then turned to the state police and will listen police to assist as well and the state police ended up picking it up because they could provide the troopers most rapidly and so they covered down in the city of Williston and in Burlington it's the shenan county sheriff's department that provided security at that building. How specific were the threats? Was it just a general location? Were there specific people? Well again I don't want to get in the the details of the investigation I would refer you to the Department of Corrections, Burlington police and then Shelbourne police who actually conducted the arrest this morning and so but the threats were in at those locations. Which agency made the arrest? Shelbourne Police Department. Do you know what the charge was? Parole violation and there may be other associated charges I have to refer you to law enforcement for those answers. They will again aside from Shelbourne should we talk to you? Burlington police was involved and then Department of Corrections initiated this report about a week ago and I missed your question sir. Was the arrest this morning or this afternoon or where was it made? It was in Shelbourne it was just before lunch from my understanding. Did you say where the arrest was made? I do not know. The $10,000 incentive how close is that to be prescribed in terms of how it's going to work and are you surprised that all these people are interested? Yeah I am very surprised that there's so much interest in this pleasantly surprised in some respects because I think that this is something that we can we can utilize another tool in the toolbox. We're still working on the details but they're continues continues to be a lot of interest in this and outreach from those who want to come to the Green Mountain State and live while working somewhere else. Are you a little concerned now with 2,000 plus people wanting to take advantage of it and only I don't know maybe a few dozen that the most can actually do it that there's going to be a lot of disappointment out there? Well if yeah I would I'm not concerned I would say that it's an opportunity. We'll look for other methods if this is an area that that will give us the highest return think about having more Vermont residents more people coming to Vermont and and that's what's what it's going to take we need more people in the state and this seems like a viable solution to that. Well again when you when you travel around the state as I do and we'll be going we'll be taking the cabinet out on the road again on Monday we'll be going to places like on Monday we'll be going to Windsor County and I would invite you to come to Springfield and ask yourself whether we should be investing in our downtowns. The new millennials want to be in our downtowns they so we have to invest in that and again you you wouldn't have to travel any further than St. Albans to see the tremendous benefit of investments in those downtowns the positive effect the transformation of St. Albans over the last five to ten years has been remarkable and we're going to see the same thing in other areas as well Bennington the renovation of the Putnam block would not be happening it's it's fragile as it is but it would not happen without the tax incremental financing so I see this as as extremely effective and for those communities have taken advantage of it even Burlington itself I'm not sure the waterfront would have happened without tax incremental financing so I see this as a beneficial to the state maybe difficult to measure but my from my standpoint these projects would not happen without that incentive confusion on the national level this week with the president how concerned should reminders be about what's happening out there well I think we're all concerned when we see what seems obvious to us as individuals that the the russians meddled in our elections and that we should not stand for that and I think the president's statements were unfortunate bizarre in some ways and and I believe that we can do better back to EB-5 for just a moment the regional center continues to operate while you are appealing its closing correct and so it can process all the necessary documents correct how long do you expect that period to be well we believe that we again we agree with the federal government we do not want our regional center to stay in existence forever but we think there is a transitional period where we need to wind this down in a structured way to protect those who the investors as well as the businesses and so forth that have that have been included in this program so we are going to make our case with the appeal and hopefully they'll see it our way in the end and on the on the fry that occurred investigation I guess it's going to take a long time because the order of account can't get enough can't get all the documents until lawsuits are finished yeah there is there's one lawsuit pending in the the so-called Russell Barr such a case and until that is satisfied I'm not sure that all the documents can be given to the auditor but as soon as that happens as soon as that is satisfied and and I don't know what the time frame is for that but we're going to move along the same path that we started on we want to release documents just as soon as possible we're going to continue with the redacting process in order to be prepared for that to happen and with the directors of the regional center James Candido left to go to an EB-5 operation and Raymond left to go to an EB-5 operation and there's a Chinese woman who left to go to another EB-5 operation do you think there's there was a sense that they were not watching properly they were looking out for themselves and there's kind of conflict of interest laws are difficult here because it's a small state yeah people have a lot of different as you know I mean the the EB-5 regional centers have changed tremendously over the last since they were the inception there was just a handful in the beginning Vermont being one of them who took advantage of this now there are literally hundreds as I understand it throughout the country so the model has changed and again I'm not I don't think it's appropriate for us to be in that business any longer so we again I agree with the federal government we should we should close our regional center when it's appropriate though not at this point in time in regards to those individuals I'm sure that they just moved on to other positions and and we are not taking new applications at this point we are just fulfilling our responsibility for the ones that are in the pipeline well I was suggesting that if those people had paid more attention to the problems arising at JP instead of concerning themselves or their own personal professional movement elsewhere maybe this would have been discovered sooner so if I mean if you're a state employee and you have certain fiduciary responsibilities is it proper to then move to the other side of the of the tables of the speaker well again this wasn't under my watch this was under a previous administration a couple of previous administrations so I wouldn't speculate on whether there's any improprieties but I'm sure the auditor will receive all the information and take a look last one from you sir increasing number of reported arrests or the Canadian border thoughts on that well I read that as well and we've been we've reached out to Christina Nolan our U.S. Attorney who was proud to nominate in conjunction with the Senator Leahy and I have a full faith in her response and and the way she's addressing this her from what I've read it appears that there is just more activity in terms of the border and she is not concerned that there's anything elevated that we should be all concerned about governor two things I'd like to bring up then I'll truck off as well one being the budget now that we are under 19 state budget have been for a couple of weeks now are you looking at anything you may perhaps be able to do provided you are reelected next legislative session to perhaps avoid the stalemate we just saw well again we're going to continue to work to do whatever we can to grow the economy make for more affordable and that includes many of the issues that will be will be developing our budget we'll be reaching out to legislators along the way again we want to to make sure this is seamless as possible we'll continue again to work with the legislature to get the best the best we all learn from our from our experiences and this is the same indeed and the one other thing I'd like to bring up then I'll shove my trap as well that being that the individual mandate working group has just started its work to sort of craft the particulars of what Vermont's mandate may look like just started meeting a couple of weeks ago is there anything in particular you might be especially keen on seeing them work on before they come back to the lawmakers I understand in November well again health care is a huge issue and that's just one piece of this the big puzzle and we're we're working with our agency of human services I'll be working with the Green Mountain Care Board as well trying to develop a program that works best for Vermont and and I think that there there's some good news I mean we've we've made a lot of changes with with the way we provide for health care in Vermont and we have a lot of work left to do so we'll continue to work with them but nothing nothing specific in terms of that the border patrol has jurisdiction or the search jurisdiction over any territory within a hundred miles of the border which includes virtually all of Vermont and I believe there's legislation in Congress to roll that back to to limit that reach is that a concern of yours that people could potentially be stopped almost anywhere in Vermont you know we've had that for quite some time I remember when they were it set up a checkpoint years ago down in the White River Hartford area but I haven't taken convenience for people who live there who use the free way to get around right right but I haven't seen any abuse of that thus far in in the lately so I'm not concerned we'll let them determine that on the federal level Lyme disease seems to be an ongoing health hazard in Vermont some jurisdictions in New England are actively trying to reduce the deer herd carries the ticks hither and not uh is there anything that state is thinking of doing to address Lyme disease yeah again it is a concern as we've seen started the concern started as far south as Connecticut and then meandered its way into Vermont and is something that we're all aware of and we all have a responsibility to make sure that we do everything we can to prevent the ticks from staying on us in terms of what we're doing with the deer herd I don't believe it's as big a problem as it has been with the moose herd and there's been an infestation on the on the entire herd which has led to reduced numbers by attrition with this with the ticks so we'll we'll continue to monitor the situation thank you very much for coming in appreciate it