 Thank you for inviting us. Please, let me know if anyone has trouble hearing us. So I thought I would start with the beginning, number one. Fund transfers, diversions, and reserves. You'll note in your packet, there are two enclosures. The first is a letter addressed to Senator Cummings on the AG fees and reimbursement, Secretary of State Service Fund, a non-paying property fund that will show you the amounts and we can confirm that they will cause no undue harm or stress to those departments that are awarding those funds to the general fund. And second, there is a, that entitled FY19 General Fund Final Distribution. And you'll note there that we will close out the year with slightly over $51 million of surplus. So it's another good year, looks a bit like last year. And according to Act 72, the budget recently passed, half of that will go to the state employees retirement system medical benefits fund, which amounts to almost $26 million. We'll go to Bezier's Obed and that's going to go a good way towards helping us get off the mark there with refunding. Another 9.4 million of the surplus will go to the human services federal holding account, otherwise known as the blue book, and that will stay there and carry forward into fiscal 2020. And then the balance of that fund, of that surplus will go to the rainy day fund. So that's a total of over $16 million will go to the rainy day fund, which will bring that up over $30 million. So that is the distribution of the surplus from fiscal 2019. And if I may just ask you a question, so I know that a year or so ago, our sort of back of the envelope calculation for the long-term savings, that's a result of these kinds of down payments, if you will, or extra pages into the pension system was effectively three times whatever that initial amount was. Is it safe to say that the, let's call it 25 million over the length of time will be roughly $75 million of total positive benefit to the system? I don't think there's any question that's a positive that it's the system. I think the math is a little different there because we don't have a pre-funded fund that we can use those assets to upset and include liability. Once we get to pre-funded status, then I think the math will work perfectly. What we're trying to do is build up enough assets so we can get out of Pego and get towards pre-funding. When we're towards pre-funding, then the actuaries will be able to perform that path. But the reality is anything that we can put towards getting to the status of a pre-funded liability would work towards that. I should know this answer, but I don't off the top of my head. The AHS federal holding account, the extra 9.4 million that came in, is that reflected down below or is that separate in the blue book or NBR, whatever we want to call it and what's its total, the NBR now? So we don't consider that to be the reserve. Okay. So it's not reflected in the box. So that's not reflected there. Okay, so what's that total if we add 9.4, do we know our total in the NBR? Absolutely. I heard you mean that. I don't. Serves you right. So the balance as a fiscal year 18 closeout was roughly 25 million. It's still preliminary for fiscal year 19. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later, but it's holding roughly the same. But that 9.4 million is gonna come into the NBR and then there'll be a direct application in fiscal year 20 from the NBR for that same amount. Okay. For the clean water. Correct. Okay. But this is. That's the clean water for the NBR. Right. Do the clean water issue. Okay. So we can't spend. No, we are. In other words, we are. I think we're gonna spend it. We already have spent it. Okay. So as you see down below, we listed out for your viewing pleasure the various reserve balances, which according to our calculation, come to just over 224 million dollars, which comes out to be slightly over 4.5 last year. It's appropriated amounts. So I mean, it's, it makes a substantial difference and substantial increase. We're in the middle low 13 exactly last year. So we've moved up in the reserve balance department quite substantially. Can I ask one more question? Yeah. Does the administration have a target number of percentage that they're hoping to achieve? I'm just curious, or are you happy with 14.2 or is there a target that you're looking at? I guess as a financial administrator, I'd say I'm always happy with more reserves than fewer. We don't have a target. I think that's an understanding. I was at a conference in which our readiness for the next downturn was rated by various fiscal votes. This was an NCSL. And for the only time ever, Vermont was rated as a red state, which was very bad. We were not prepared. And their definition was to meet our current budget and then have enough to assume the additional Medicaid caseload that generally happens with a downturn. Do we have any idea if we're close to that? To? To having enough in reserve to cover our present spending plus an addition to Medicaid that occurs with a downturn. Do you want to? I recall the analysis, Senator, and I don't remember what the threshold was to get Vermont out of red into yellow, but as Adam said, the higher the percent, the closer we'll be getting to moving out of red. The other factor in that analysis is that we have a very robust and expansive Medicaid program. And so because of that, we are always going to be at more risk of federal impact than in other states. Okay. The other thing I would add to that is also in that analysis, they look at revenue streams. And we have a very more volatile in many states revenue stream. I know we saw some of it when we did the case, they weren't looking at the caseload reserve and a couple of other things. I believe it's reserves. Right. And we did put that in as a general fund. Actually, I'm glad you said that. I mean, that until budget adjustment wasn't part of reserve, so they never looked at that. I think that included, I suspect the, and particularly actually relative to our neighbors in New England, we're actually pretty enlightened in that regard. So, but anyway, we have a point over here. Can you remind us what the estimated gain was at the end of the fiscal year? What the estimated gain was when we passed the budget? A gain. Well, the estimated, I'm sorry. Surplus, if you will. We had a reasonable idea of what it was. The way that kind of the protocol is, is you don't recognize these funds until they're in support. But we had a reasonable idea that it was somewhere in the 40 to 50 million range. I'd go with the, we're a little nervous if it's May, June, those revenues can be quite volatile, but I mean, I don't think this number is a surprise to us relative to, I remember the discussions at the end of the book, so. And there was discussion about what was contributing to this as there had been any opportunity to understand that more clearly. I mean, there's been general discussion in the media like, well, we don't know if it's one, if it's the federal tax changes or it's other things, and at this point in time, do we know anything more? Yeah, I think economists will have more to say. I'm at it's partly legally, partly due to the federal tax reform from two years ago, which we're still seeing the impact of. The department is due to an unusually long economic growth cycle that seems to continue to power on. Those are the two factors that come to mind. I'm sure there'll be much more said about that. And so this afternoon, we should also learn how much of we could expect to be ongoing money or if these are still one-time events. That's right. Okay, so I'll take this. So the next item is a report on the JFC website is merging the state health resources fund and the general fund. And this is essentially looking back on action already taken where several head problems. I think it's given to their own perspective. The F119 budget adjustment, several revenue sources were removed from the state health care resources fund to the general fund. The action, I think it should be noted, was an example of effective consensus work between the legislature and the executive, in particular between joint fiscal office and financing management. Because those revenue sources were essentially fundable with general fund in terms of supporting Medicaid, but because they were deposited into a special fund, the rating agencies did not recognize them as resources that the state has access to and made our general fund look artificially low, even though the effect of any shortfall in the state health care resources fund was that the general fund can step up to fill the gap. So those funds were essentially acting like general funds, but they were reflected as special funds. So beginning in FY19, those funds are now reflected as general funds and they will be incorporated in the total general fund forecast provided by the economists, although the actual projection for those will continue to be done by the respective departments that have done the forecasting of that. And this will raise the state's general fund by approximately $275 million a year. And it will also mean that in the event that any, by having more diversified set of funds going into the general fund, it means that if one particular fund is one particular revenue source is down and another one is up, they can offset each other. So for instance, this year's cigarette taxes were significantly lower than projected and the other general fund revenues are higher able to absorb that impact. And the cigarette tax doesn't reflect the new e-cigarette tax that went in. I think that started July 1st. Right. Okay, so perhaps some of this, the cigarettes have been going down but perhaps some of it has been transferred to BAPES and revenue will pick that back up. Yes. We have lost revenues because of the move to age 20. Yes. Well that's the goal, right? Sorry, absolutely, I'm just saying so that had to be, yeah, we're successful, hopefully. So question regarding the source versus availability, I noted that the claims assessment, there's more in source versus available if that's an allowance for bad debt. I believe that that is the portion of the claims assessment that goes to health information technology but I'm not going to check into that. Is there an allowance for bad debt in claims assessment? There is a bad debt, not sure for claims assessment, I believe each of the items. Or is it the provider tax? I'm sorry? The provider tax. Right, I'm writing along some provider tax by for sure. Thanks. Okay. Other questions? Okay. Yeah. To Senator Cummings' point earlier about our status as a red state, their analysis, I mean, you don't know what NCSL was thinking, but their analysis probably did not include this transfer so they would not have been recognizing. I just want to make clear that that was probably old data and in fact we are positioning ourselves better than that. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And now we're on the five year spending analysis. Is it? So to say a few words on that I'd start by saying I don't think, Is there a handout for that, by your hand? I did not put a handout. This is the one that's been in the press. Okay. Okay. Oh. So we're going through an exercise over the summer that looks out longer term on budgeting and revenues and expenditures. I'll start by saying I don't think this exercise would be at all foreign to the appropriations committees. We've typically in house appropriations had conversations along those lines over the years. But what we did, we started out with two broad goals. The first is to kind of move out of the year by year budgeting and look at a longer term horizon, which we put it five years. Five years in this seems like a lifetime. It really goes through two gubernatorial terms to legislative terms. But nonetheless, I think in the scheme of things is not too far out on the horizon so we can't make reasonable predictions. So we wanted to expand our horizon and we also wanted to look at a projected gap and think of ways that we could lessen that as the Joint Fiscal Office frequently says, the alligator, the alligator's mouth. So we included all cabinet departments, basically any department of reports to a cabinet member. It was predominantly the executive branch working for me. We also included internal service funds. We excluded areas that are not specifically budgeted. For example, the Education Fund, the Legislature and Judiciary, which are budgeted but they're kind of outside the executive branch, as well as independent elected officials like the state auditor, the secretary of state, the treasurer and the like. But you know, even with those exclusions, we were somewhere over 90%, it's like 95%, I think, of total budgeted state expenditures. And the finance and management put together the exercise, my colleague Matt actually did a lot of the heavy lifting along with Rich Donahue, our budget director, and Tim Mateo, one of our budget analysts. And again, it included well over 90% of budgeted items. We made certain assumptions because we had to. We assumed general fund revenue would grow by 2%, which is not an unusual assumption in the scheme of things. And we assumed internal service fund department receipts would also grow by 2%. Federal funds and special funds were a little bit more challenging. We had to do that department by department, kind of looking at historicals. We wanted to be reasonable there. And we accounted for certain known factors, for example, or a phase out of the enhanced match for chip. In general, we made assumptions that were within the normal. And similarly, with expenses, we did the same. We looked at historical increases in salaries, looked at historical increases in fringe, and historical increases in our internal service funds. So it's kind of the scheme of things. It's not, on the one hand, I'll say, it's not a particularly challenging exercise to when you think about the assumptions and putting them together, it's very challenging to do it department by department. But we used broad assumptions. And maybe it shouldn't be surprising, but when we looked at what we're facing in fiscal 21, you know, this was done back in May, June, when we looked at kind of our likely GAT and 21s. It's pretty active, you know, when we actually put pen and paper and figured it out. So anyway, that's what we're going through this summer. We hope to have cabinet and commissioner recommendations by the end of the summer. You know, I think the way we're looking at this is if we can have really a compilation of small but significant changes. They can all, we're not thinking of blowing up the entire state of Vermont government. And I'll have to say that it's not like we're starting this as the only administration that's ever fought this way. So, you know, the old saying in this bill is no such thing as a new idea. I mean, there's really very, I think that holds for a lot of our exercise. I mean, many of these issues have been thought about and, you know, I don't want people to start jumping to conclusions and think that they're gonna come in and we're gonna have recommendations to change all of Montevideo. But, you know, I do want to communicate that we're thinking very hard about how we deliver government, the programs we deliver and who delivers them. And, you know, I think it'll be, actually, it'll be very useful exercise. So. Senator Ash? I'm not quite sure how this does, in fact, differ from what the legislature or every other administration, including this one in the previous three years, does. I mean, we're never thinking, oh, we'll do this year's budget and then everything is solved for the future, right? I mean, we're always thinking, which I think is one of the reasons why about 98% probably the budget doesn't change from year to year because we're thinking longer term as we make programmatic decisions and spending decisions and I guess I, my only, if you can come up with better ways and propose them to the legislature to deliver services, that's great. I mean, that's always welcome. But, I hope that people don't find themselves in some exercise which bogs people down without much of a light at the other end of the tunnel. The governor, when he ran for governor in the first place talked about finding some percentage of efficiency changes that would not affect any of our monitors in every single agency and that was gonna keep the budget level year after year and then it never quite works that way because it's not like we're, we don't pass the budget and say, oh, here's a squish factor of 2% have to blow it to waste. So I just hope that it has your directing people that it really is with an eye to making recommendations that would be toward positive changes in programs that are realistic and not a sort of a road to nowhere of theoretical exercises that are, would either be not eligible for the people of the state or the legislature's gonna really resist or even agencies would exist. Fair. I have a representative, look at it. Could you articulate what your criteria are about what you've asked commissioners and others to work toward? Because I haven't heard you say that. I mean, and I think it's been reported in the press in different ways, so I think, Lisa's, I remember there was some confusion as to what the timeframe was, what you were asking almost to work toward. Well, the timeframe is over the summer, so the end of August, but in terms of trying to find savings of what percentage in what number of years? So we asked departments and agencies to, again, the two goals I mentioned earlier, to look longer term after five years and to look at their gap that we provided for each agency and department and at a minimum try to find a way to close 20% of that. Okay, so I think that- You had to articulate, I'm just, I started to try to be, what's it, what your stated direction is about. Right. I'm kidding. These exercises are always good because they challenge what we do. But if you look at the large areas of spending, there, if you take education K through 12 off the budget, and then you take, depending on what you do in healthcare, that's about two thirds of the budget right there. So in some ways, my question is, and you said that departments would be looking at lean, but to me, one of the fundamental questions is, should this be something, what are the priorities of government? Is this a role the government should be doing? Because you could be doing something that's perfect, lean-wise and efficiency-wise, but it may not be your top priority. And so if you're, to some extent, you can say this is a fundamental service that we want government to continue. We think we could do it more efficiently in a cheap savings. Or you could say, well, we're doing this very, very well, but we just don't see that as a priority in this budgetary exercise, and is that something government should be doing? So I see really two decision points there. I know that you talked about looking at lean and the outcomes and so forth, and you may have very good outcomes, but that may be in the scheme of things you're gonna say that isn't a priority that rises to the top. So I'm wondering how that process across state government would look and in terms of decisions or recommendations about we create programs, but we never go back and say, and to some extent, I think that's what we're trying to get at with our child welfare study, is what are we funding? Is it giving us the return? Is it something that made sense 20 years ago, but world has changed, the demands have changed? I'm just wondering to what extent that kind of thinking or analysis is gonna be part of this? That would be central to what we're doing. And as actually, we pointed out when we sent the original notice to departments and agencies, of the roughly $6 billion we spend in state and federal funds, roughly four billion are programs. So we often talk about reducing staff or hiring freezes and all the stuff that we go through. The reality is that's a minority of what we spent and so we're acutely aware, and I know this body is acutely aware that the majority of our spending, I would dare say the vast majority of our spending is program-related. And to your point, Senator, I mean, we need to decide whether those programs and services that we deliver are a priority. Virtually everything we do in state government on comfortable saying is important in one way or another, but we ultimately have to determine what's most important. And that's part of the exercise for the agencies that oversee the various programs. It's very difficult. It's much more difficult talking about whether we should deliver a program than it is to talk about how many people we need to do. So. We said it all. It sounds, this is aligning exactly with the language that we put at the budget during, it was in the house side and taken out in the Senate and then agreed upon language in conference committee of doing exactly this exercise. I like to start when I said this won't be unfamiliar to the people sitting in this room. Well, that was to look at the future and trends, whether it be homelessness, whether it be demographics, et cetera. So it's a very large analysis that you're undertaking. I think it's going to be a busy summer. It has been so far. As part of this analysis, how are you going to engage the community partners who are delivering the services in the field who are not state employees? We have asked agencies and departments to do their work in any way they believe is important. We haven't reached out to community partners yet. We thought we would think internally about how we want to, what thoughts we had and recommendations we had, but it's an internal exercise. At some point I would imagine that that's an important part to be played because, again, in perhaps I'm mostly thinking in AHS, but so much of the work that is the services that are delivered to Vermonters, maybe not so much, but a good portion is delivered by folks who are not directly on the state payroll. And I would be concerned that we have their good thinking engaged in how to accomplish these goals. Agreed. Any other questions? All right, that gets us on to the close up. I have a report. So Madam Chair, you have, as part of your materials, a letter that we addressed to you on the T-Fund close out and the maintenance program. I would like to ask if anyone has questions on that. And I'm going to ask someone who can hear me. I'll look at the folks that are on the transportation committee. I think we want to ask any questions. No. No? No. Any questions? Yeah, I'm okay. Can we start over? He's in the hall. Okay. And I'm Sarah Clark with the Agency of Human Services. You have your packet, the med, you hear important, and so we're just going to highlight some of the highlights for those of you who found this to have questions. But the data reflects the most recent actuals that we have to date, but there's no actual sections required at this time, not until January. Expenditures for the Medicare, Medicaid, old equipment, children's health insurance program, other related programs, all of it, total is about 1.82 billion. This is about 1% below what we had budgeted, but a little bit above expectations in terms of the state dollar spend. Overall spending, total spending group, 4% over fiscal year 18. In terms of caseload, caseload appears to have stabilized in fiscal year 19. Medicaid enrollment showed a lot of the clients, about 4%, would decrease as well, every eligibility group. The largest decreases we saw were in childless and adult, which decreased about 6.7%. And then the state car sharing reductions had decreased about 20%. New adult withdrawal, the choices for care were actually up to 2%. In terms of revenues, Matt and Adam discussed claims, cigarette taxes, provider taxes, and the employer assessment. Will all be recognized as GF rather than state health care resources fund as pursuant to federal adjustment? These particular revenues came in 5.2 million below estimate, and it's only 650,000 above fiscal year 18 for those specific revenues. Interesting enough, the employer assessment raised $93,000 less than fiscal year 18. This is the first time since the deception that it actually did not raise, that it actually was below the previous years. The reason for this, we think, is because the total FTEs for which the tax is taxed actually decreased, despite the fact that the actual tax went up to 0.3%. Provider taxes came in $1.6 million below expectation. Part of the reason is what Matt discussed about the state health care resources fund, which is the general fund and the cash to accrual. And also Springfield Hospital did not pay all of its provider tax obligations. Our future provider tax work has to be this in consideration as well. Also, as Matt discussed, and Adam, the cigarette and tobacco taxes and health care claims taxes also fell short. Tobacco and cigarette came in about 2.5 million below expectation, and health care claims tax came in about 800,000 below. Global Commitment Waiver, as you recall, began in the calendar year 2017. It phases out the federal match for several investments and establishes a calendar year caps on the total amount of investment. We're not halfway through those phase outs. These will be fully phased out over the next two budget cycles with an approximate $6 million gross each year, 2019 to 2021. Just so you know, the calendar year cap for 18 was 148.5 million, and the calendar year 19 cap was 138.5 million. The administration will likely seek authority to begin the initial work for the next version of this waiver during the upcoming legislative session. So I think we'll have more discussions on this. Looking ahead, this is, they call it the chip dip, and this is actually a term that Stephanie did not coin, which is surprising, because usually she's one of the coins that is, but as you recall, the Affordable Care Act increased the federal, the enhanced match, enhanced it further for Fisley, federal Fisley years, 16 through 19 by 33%. When Congress renewed this match in 2018, it faded back down to 11.5% for Fisley year 20, and then it'll revert completely to its pre-ECA enhanced F-MAP for Fisley year 2021. The 20, and that's a federal Fisley year, so it'll carry into state Fisley year 2022. We expect a 21 impact of about $6 million, and a 22 impact of about $12.3 million a month. New adult, this one's a little funky, but calendar year, as well as part of the Affordable Care Act, and calendar year 14, as part of our, in fact, we were a do-getter state to our expansion state, our F-MAP increased starting at 75% for the new adults and increased up to 93% in Fisley year 2019, but then it actually levels back up to 90% for calendar year 20 and beyond, so that 3% increment leveling out is going to have a roughly a $4 million impact in that event. Thank you very much. Could I, no, let's take this again. So the chip dip, for those of us who are going to be working on budgets, 21 is a $6 million a day on the general fund side, and in calendar year 21 is the $4 million impact also 21? Yes. Okay, so the agency in doing its five year projection and the 20% target actually is having to accommodate a loss of federal dollars of $10 million is that, I just wanted to make sure that I understand the timing of those two federal changes. So, thank you. Otherwise, global commitment waiver expires at the end of the calendar year 21, and as I mentioned, the administration will be looking for authority on negotiating future with commitment waivers. On the employer assessment amounts, unless I'm missing an obvious thing, it seems the only way the number would go down is if there's fewer workers or more employer-sponsored coverage for the workers to exist. So I'm just wondering if we know which is the case. Those are great questions, and right now it's all speculations that have, those are the two things that I would think would be is that the reduction of FTV source tax for a movement of more people to employer-sponsored insurance, and maybe that's an economic, but those are the two things you mentioned are exactly my two speculations. Okay. The other thing that's employed there is that the association plans came in for a year. We had a lot of them, two years ago, did some study, but the feds have said no, one year was it, so we may find a shiver back once the plans go away because the testimony we got was that more employers picked up insurance because it was more affordable. Yeah. Okay, so that means we floss. Will we have an actual analysis? I mean, how will we, rather than, I mean, we're all speculating, but how are we going to know about that? And will we, is that something that someone is going to look at? So, do we have the data? Do we have, do we have the data? I mean, how do you think to do that? Well, it's like to find a tax department now. And in terms of the number of FTEs, that one has actually decreased. I have analyses that look at year over year over year of that, in terms of the social factors for the employers, access for employer funds to insurance, I don't know if we have any way to really measure that besides the Vermont Health School Health Insurance Survey a couple of years from now with the net retrospectively, or unless there's some kind of further anecdotal evidence. That one's going to be a lot harder to read. But the reduction FTEs, we do have that data. And it's actually. We had two basic organizations that were doing association plans. They might know who joined that, wasn't providing insurance in the past, might get a summit. Yeah, well, it's also hard to know. It might have made it possible, unless they switched providers, and then we don't know. It's awesome. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions? I guess I would like to just ask that can you provide us with the FTE data? Absolutely. It seems striking that the healthcare sector, which is in fact a large sector, that would suggest that it's a contraction, which doesn't seem counter-intuitive to one. I have a spreadsheet of historicals, and I'll share it. I appreciate it. Okay. Okay, this is the proposal for the electronic healthcare records. No, I misasked it was, ah, it's, it's actually, that's a carry. Okay, we can see you in a moment. Good morning. Good morning. I just wanted to take a second and introduce myself. I'm Martha Matts. I'm the acting secretary of the agency of human services. I've been the deputy there since January of 2017, and since Al's departure, I stepped in, in that position. And so I just wanted to come meet with you with Sarah and say hello. This is the B3B. Correct. We're gonna be just looking at how we just ended the year. Great. Okay. So, in large part, the agency basically ended on target for, say, fiscal year 19. If you want to remind you that it's still preliminary, we really go through the month of September where we actually finalize everything because we close based on estimates of federal revenue. So the first, on page two, you'll see a table that the PowerPoint looks like this. And so this table summarizes at a very high level, the department level, what each department's kind of closeout position was for state fiscal year 19. If you go all the way over to the bottom number in the right-hand corner, you'll see negative $2.4 million. So that will indicate to you at the end of the day with all of the revenue coming in, coming out, the agency actually had to rely on some of our non-budgeted revenue account, the federal holding account, the tune of $2.4 million. And you can see on this chart, we spent total expenditures, all funds duplicated, roughly $4 million, or excuse me, $4 million, $98 million of our general fund, which we have roughly a $970 million base appropriation of general fund. We had $23.8 million left in general fund at the end of the fiscal year. However, a large part of that were appropriations that we received either via the big bill that passed by you for state fiscal year 20 or from the previous year, balances of appropriations that we're still spending on. So that reflected, if you move over to the next column, $18.5 million of general fund spending. And that's for things like the lead program. It's for an electronic health record, which we're going to talk about, I believe next, LIHEAP, Woodside, a whole host of items. Moving over to the next column, we also will be asking to carry forward a general fund of $3.9 million to fund fiscal year 19 liabilities that due to timing and close out their lines, we weren't actually able to get the money out the door in state fiscal year 19. So we carry forward those funds to cover those liabilities into 20. That helps set the agency and the departments that is good fiscal standing heading into the new fiscal year. We will also be looking to spend some of our general fund balance for pay act, about a half million dollars across the agency. Which leaves us with about $900,000 that we will be looking to help us as we build our FY20 budget adjustment. On the federal side, again, we close based on estimates, federal spending. We are projecting a deficit of about $2.4 million on the federal side. And so when you take all those sources across at the end of the day, we'll be looking to rely on our non-budget revenue for $2.4 million. This is the first time, I'd say, since I've been the CFO, that we have had to use our reserves, but again, that's what they're there for. And so we can provide you more detailed information when we're here during the session. I noticed that the big chunk is associated with DCF 2.4. Yes, what was the funding source? Is that for E? So what are your federal? Yeah, let's go actually on the next slide. Same way. Because I'd say like the point to take away really are some of the challenges that we're facing, the Department of Children and Families. And so specifically with the Family Services Division, they close with a roughly $2.3 million deficit, which is largely due to caseload and the substitute care foster care program and staffing levels to keep up with the caseload that that division is facing. In addition, the General Assistance Program also had a shortfall of $2.7 million in state fiscal year 19 which is primarily attributed to an increase in the demand for emergency housing. So I raise these as precursors to what we would likely be talking with you about during the session. I mean, current housing was hot because it's very hot. Not just outside today. We were able to partially cover these overages by underspending in the child development division. We've also had this conversation with you last legislative session. So we were able to use $2.1 million of underspending in child development to help out the rest of DCF. And we were also able to, as you know, we were required to carry forward $2.2 million in child development division for the Child Care Financial Assistance Program as well as some other grant programs. And the balance to cover these shortfalls came from the non-budget revenue account. And that's really the agencies close out of the glance. And then the next is just shows our chart that shows our spending since fiscal year three. All funds but non-duper catered by global commitment. So we removed that double count. And the point I want to make to you is that since State Fiscal Year 16, spending in the Agency of Human Services has been relatively flat. I'd say from 18 to 19, we are experiencing an uptick. Some of that is attributable to the level of one-time appropriations that we have received accounts for some of that growth. If that's any questions. There's one other item that you asked for me to provide you an update on which is the status of the transfer of the Choices for Care Appropriation from Diva to Dale. I am pleased to inform you that we actually did transfer that appropriation that back in July 1st, 2019. And you will see that reflected in the FY20 budget adjustment and FY21 budget development partners. Sorry. Yep. Back to AHS, close out issues specifically DCF. And I'm thinking about the administration's direction to look at the delivery of programs and services. And I appreciate that. Obviously they can only ask for us for you to analyze yourself. When I think about what's going on in Family Services Division, that is deeply affected by things that are happening in court systems, things that are happening in certain actions of prosecutors, et cetera. This is just a deeply troubling area. And I know we're not just saying, oh, it's the opioid crisis, but we really need to go deep and to think across areas with other people who are delivering these problems into your hands. I don't have any good ideas, but I know that an important work is going to be done on the big child welfare question. I'm just worried about how we're going to get our arms around these immediate issues and the way they keep following me. So I just hope you can kind of look deep into that while we're also anticipating this work. The first week of January, there we go, we'll begin the session. So hopefully we'll start looking at some of that front end interventions and how it aligns with best practice, et cetera. I was assuming that that was mostly kind of within the system. And I'm also thinking about prosecutors, you know, those actions of state's attorneys, local policing, et cetera. I mean, a much bigger and more complex issue that affects that, then. Measuring variance is hard. We know there's tremendous variance from court to court. To court, yes. But we're paying for it in this system. Ultimately, for him. Okay. Other questions? Thank you. Okay, now that you did the post, and whatever, okay. Let me just move on. So please, listen to people. I don't know people who said that. I'm trying to form records on to us. Yeah. Yes. Okay. I don't know, come down and call me, show play if you want everybody. You're in charge. I'm in charge. Great. Okay. H.S. will kick it off. And Simone, do you want to come join me, so I can just transition easily? Jenny, do you want to just stand? All right, this one. He is coming as soon as he can, and I don't know if he's coming as soon as he can. I'll pull you over. Are we ready just to begin? Yep. Okay. Well, it's wonderful to see everyone. Sarah Squirrel, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Mental Health. And Simone Richmeyer, executive director of the Vermont Department of Partners. And I would just note that Jenny Sammelson, deputy commissioner from Diva this year, and a great content expert when it comes to this testimony and questions that may happen. So I just want to let you know that Jenny's one. Okay. Great. All right, well, we'll be diving in. Did you want to say anything? I just wanted to say, Henry Gris, who's our health information technology director is here as well. I think that goes through my whole list. Suspect. So I will thank you all. Anyone that wants to chime in, just jump up, raise your hand. But I'm trusting that we will carry most of it. Great. All right, well, I'll go ahead and get started. We are here to talk about the electronic health reference funding for our designated community mental health agencies to implement EHRs. And I think when, you know, I kind of step back and reflect on the overall mental health system of care, we can't minimize the importance of leveraging these technologies to really advance our work. And that will lead our successful in moving the electronic health record implementation forward across our mental health care providers. We will be improving the quality of care, entirely access to care, and really getting closer to whole health information. And the other note is that, you know, Vermont is really a leader in this that nationally the percentages of behavioral health organizations that are taking this on is actually still quite small. So it's nice to see that as we are pushing forward with all payer models, other innovative approaches to health care reform, Vermont, of course, continues to be in the lead in this regard as well. It's also the implementation of electronic health records also allows us to challenge this notion that behavioral health and overall medical health should be separate from each other. And as we look as a state around trying to look towards integration between mental health and whole health, this becomes a real opportunity for us to do that. And one of the biggest benefits, I think, of electronic health records overall, it really can be distilled down to better coordination of care. And that's for both health care providers and mental health providers. So a good example is that if you're a doctor looking at a health record and you're seeing the cardiac information, if you have information from the mental health care provider related to panic attacks, for example, those things are both connected and can really help inform good decision making, which is gonna lead to better patient outcomes, reduced need for hospitalization, emergency department visits, et cetera. So I think that we are on the right path in this state in thinking about how we advance electronic health records for our mental health providers. From an investment standpoint, in terms of the state dollars that have been appropriated, really the designated agencies are moving forward as healthcare providers. They are trying to implement a business tool that is gonna help them meet their business needs, operational needs, coordination of care needs. This includes their ability to participate in our health reform efforts in the state. So Department of Mental Health has moved forward with payment reform. We see this as another step in the right direction. And also for the designated agencies to be able to fulfill their responsibilities as a member of the accountable care organizations and their connection with one care Vermont. I think it's important to note that their process, I think of embarking on this journey, started in late 2016, is that correct? And that this appropriation made in 2019 as part of the FY20 budget just covers a portion of the cost. I think the $1.5 million is just shy of 25% of what the overall anticipated implementation costs are. So I do think that the fiscal appropriation that came as one-time funds specifically asked the Agency of Human Services and Vermont Care Partners to demonstrate how the designated agencies electronic health records project supports the goals laid out in the current health information exchange plan and other current health reform efforts. So folks around this table are aware that that strategic vision is around creating one health record for every person and improving healthcare operations and using data to enable investment and policy decisions. So we think that the electronic health records are in line with the overall strategic vision of the health information exchange plan. And as a state, this is outlined, I believe in the memo that the Agency of Human Services submitted as part of this testimony, we've learned a lot about what it takes to make state health improvement technology efforts successful and have applied our learning to that work to improve outcomes and we're very proud of that work at the Agency of Human Services. That said, it's just important to remember that the designated agency EHR effort is not a state HIT project. But we did look at approaches and criteria that other healthcare providers would be adopting and using if they were standing up on EHR and that the designated agencies would likely need those criteria. Specifically, the designated agencies are working with Vermont Care Partners and have selected EHRs that meet federal meaningful use standards for connectivity. The second standard for meaningful use is the ability to connect with state-wide registries and then of course, meaningful use also asks whether data is used for data driven improvements. And one thing we do know that there are reports through Vermont Care Partners, compare performance across the designated agency network that can be used by the network for performance improvement. So we believe that those factors really meet the intent of other kind of comparable incentive programs for meeting please. Okay, thank you. Meaningful use kind of gives me a rash because the fact is our experience with vital would suggest that we had EMRs all over the place that met the federal meaningful use but they were extremely problematic for the health information with a vital initiative with a health information exchange. In terms of the cost of support, the additional special programming to deal with the exchange of data, the quality of data. And so part of the language that we put in was to say we've learned a lesson from that vital experience. So I understand we want meaningful use but we want meaningful use in a way that is cost effective. And I know that the number of systems and you said, obviously this is not a state IT project but in reality it's gonna be a state funded IT project. Where does the revenue to the designated agencies flow? It's through generally most of the money is over 90% is from the state. So maybe the designated agencies look at it as their project but I would say that most of us who are dealing with the appropriation view this as a state funded IT project and we look at that delivery system more as a statewide network of services. So part of the concern, and I know the man is gonna speak to it in his memo and that is making sure that we are, because this is only one five out of almost a $7 million project, I would suspect that in order to get the project completed funding source is gonna be back through the budget unless there's some funding source that maybe other people are aware of but I'm not aware of. So my concern is just that articulation of not being a state IT project but many of us who put in a million and a half, I hope we could do a bit more but we couldn't but we know that there's more out there. And the question is how we go from here, if the state of Ramon were doing this and CMS were doing it for us, we'd have to have an APD, we'd have to go through an elaborate funding process that they would raise questions and all of that would be at the front end and we're kinda coming in part way into the process which makes it more difficult but I do think that with some of the questions that our IT consultant Dan Smith has raised there's gonna have to take a look at what should be some of the questions in getting additional data as we move toward this completion in terms of out a million and a half, I don't know how each agency is getting what are those determinations are made and there are a host of questions so I guess I just wanna say when we put that language in, it was in a way to say that we really want, we really want to, I really wanna express our concerns about how we feel that we have the data and the information and the oversight and so that's why I get a little nervous when we say it isn't a state project and it isn't in a technical way but there's tremendous accountability because these are state dollars, these are public funds that, and these are all general fund because there's no, we've explored this, there's no match available, we've tried, I mean a number of people suggested maybe we could get Medicaid match and that came to a dead end so I just wanna express in this forum and that's why we wanted to have the Joint Fiscal Committee get this information and this, but I don't see this as the end of the discussion in terms of the overall plan and that's why it's so important that what we're doing today, in fact we're not gonna say, oh my god that system, we should never have gone that way three years later and we've got a real problem so I just wanna speak for myself but a million and a half of general funds against the seven million need is a very significant investment of state-only dollars and I realize it is somewhat of an anomaly but I do feel a tremendous responsibility that we no way replicate our experience in terms of cost, delay, et cetera that we experience with electronic medical records with vital and I was part of that and I think, Tam, you were, you, most of us were here and yeah, so Senator Hitchell, we share, so I realize it'd be diagnosed as ill-defined anxiety but I have, I think we share the same free-floating anxiety, concern and overall sense of responsibility on getting a good outcome for Vermont dollars. We also find ourselves at the Agency of Human Services wanting to be responsive to a one-time appropriation where the direction of the designated agencies in terms of the selection of their EHRs has, they've been organically well done that path for some time so I think we want to have a product and an outcome that is cost-effective, that is efficient, what we have learned from vital. We also have incredible content expertise within DEVA to help us understand that and that we are also trying to be good partners to the designated agencies as they have kind of already embarked on implementation but certainly it's within our commitment to articulate what we see as additional areas of oversight and additional questions, quite frankly that need to be answered which we also articulated in the memo. I think one of the points that we were trying to make is that as we look at other healthcare providers that have kind of moved forward with implementation of EHRs where the designated agencies are in terms of their implementation from meaningful use in a place that they're on power if you will, is that the only gate that we want to be looking at as we move forward? No, there are additional gates to ensure that investment that we receive that outcome that we're hoping for. So the next note that I was going to make very quickly is that that said there are, there's still work to be done to meet the goals of the state and designated agency network and we've identified specifically what some of those areas are where we think there's additional questions that weren't answering that includes addressing the 42 CFR compliant consent piece which Deputy Commissioner Sanderson can speak to in much more detail than I can to really demonstrate very clearly that the EHRs can transmit data in a manner that the HIV can capture it that then we are really seeing a demonstration of clear interoperability with each other and other sectors of the health care system as we move towards this aligned system and ability to report to payers as health care and payment reform of all. A couple other areas that we also articulated in terms of ongoing conversation and discussion are related to implementation in governance and sustainability. So from an implementation standpoint the benefits of implementing electronic health records can be big. Implementation is very difficult and very complex and any article that you read related to successful standing up of EHRs, there's a direct link back to having robust implementation plans and that includes governance to ensure that we are not moving in a direction of distributed accountability but we are moving in a direction of shared accountability and responsibility and when we think about the implementation of the EHRs it does require an extensive investment in technology infrastructure. There are also readiness of users and human factors that have to be identified which I'm sure Simone will speak to in terms of your relying on your end user if you will are the staff and clinicians who work at the designated agencies who have to commit to utilizing the EHR that there is goodness of fit in how they do their work on a day-to-day basis so that they will be committed to it hence why having very robust implementation plans clear articulation of governance particularly that this is being embarked upon as kind of a network effort which is the strength of Vermont Care Partners are things that we think should be given great consideration to. And then the final point is of course related to sustainability that we would anticipate that ongoing investments will be needed by the designated agencies to continue this work to achieve those core functions and what we would hope to accomplish through the EHR and we need to have a plan for what that's going to look like from a legislative perspective. So I have another question and it relates to some of the designated agencies have both the DS program and some actually only have mental health and there's others that are only DS service providers. Can you just clarify the electronic medical records as it relates to two different programs and then the differentiation between agencies? So are we actually putting electronic medical records into DS only agencies and or are we bifurcating electronic medical records for those DAs that serve both? So this is an implementation for nine of the designated agencies it's nine of the comprehensive designated agencies. The single service agencies, the DS only ones they implemented a new EHR three years ago and it's a different vendor but within these this is for the nine that are moving forward with new. So with the DAs that have both mental health and DS they will have two systems. No they'll have one. That's what I was asking them. They will have even though they would have implemented the DS one three years ago. No it's just this, sorry, I know. It's so, we have five agencies that are single service agencies developmental disability only. They implemented a, those five, those five. All right thank you. That just was not clear on the previous question. So I'm just going to pause for a minute. Just I want to turn to Jenny and just say if you have anything that you want to add to what our state of Connecticut you think would be helpful before Simone presents their overview plan. I consistent with your feedbacks there I think one of the things that was in our recommendation and our memo goes to Senator Kitchell what you had mentioned that you would recommend that in the key areas that we have just laid out are some of the agencies that if additional funding were to go into those we would recommend further oversight. I share the concern that you do that you that need to use the EHRs it does not necessarily mean that they inherently connect to the Vermont Health Information Exchange in particular they don't break the data down in a way that can be ingested and the current HIE is structured for healthcare not mental health data. So additional work needs to be put in those areas. Thank you. So my concerns have some basics. Yes. Yes, thank you. Okay, I'm going to turn it over to Simone. Okay. With the five DS, with those electronic health records and then this new system that is being developed will they talk to each other? Will these, what kind of interaction will there be with the DS, with the DA, within the DAs compared to the DS that are separate? Are they just two completely different systems or can they relate to one another? They're two systems. We have a data repository that where every EHR beats our repository. So in that sense they can, we can aggregate data and analyze data but we are not creating a separate health information exchange. They will be able to talk to each other the interoperability piece of it assuming we don't need necessary interest. So in the future if the system were to change and the DAs all stood alone and the DS became their own or these five DS became part of the designated agencies, how would those records transfer, can they transfer into the new ones that they're developing? I'm just wondering. Within DS, the data that's being, that are being collected is the same. So that when we were, as we were working on this implementation we were also standardizing forms. This past seven, eight months, we standardized about 50 forms. So we're working on standardization across the entire network as we have the different EHRs. So it isn't much different than the hospitals were. So if I stand alone, no longer remain stand alone but became part of the larger DA umbrella, all that information could easily transfer into one system. You're not even talking to me. Good morning, yes, absolutely. I think that I only am concerned about working easily and also speaking theoretically about some future system that we know nothing about. I'm sorry, this is Ken Jimbrus, HIT director for my care partners. Sorry, I've never testified before. So easily is certainly a question and so I would be remiss if I were to be cavalier about making that kind of a comment about some future system about which we know nothing. But yeah, generally speaking, given a well-designed project plan and given the continuing improvement in the state of technology, yeah, I would say that if we got to that point that would be the case. I'd like to make one more quick comment if I may. I don't want to get too concerned about sharing information between the designated agencies and between the SSAs. There are some clients as we call them patients that do receive services in multiple systems but generally speaking, the vast majority of the folks that we serve work with one of our member agencies at a time. We're much more interested and concerned with connecting to the other care providers, hospitals, physicians and other care providers for those individuals. So although our systems will and can have the ability to transfer patients across from one to the other, we're much more interested in integrating the care with the other providers in their given community and that's the hard part. So I think that's the fundamental question is what is going to be my experience as a client or as a patient within the system and are we there? Are we going to, so I receiving services from Washington County Mental Health and I walk into the ER at our hospital, will my hospital have access to my electronic health record at Washington County Mental Health? So eventually is the answer to that question because there are two factors there. One is a direct interface between Washington County Mental Health and the emergency room. Once this EHR is implemented at Washington County, then it's a matter of the capabilities at the hospital and the willingness at the hospital to develop that interface. That's one option. The other is Vermont Health Information Exchange, the VI, but in order for us as a designated agency, if in order for us to have our data go into the VI, we have to, and the state and the vital are working on this come up with a 42 CFR part two consent management platform and process, which is the protection of substance use data. We're working on that and as we are implementing our EHRs, we are working on including opt-in for those people who have substance use data in the EHR, but that platform hasn't been and that process hasn't been completed yet. So we're getting ready so that when we do have a part two solution within the VI, we will be ready to have our data go into the VI, but as of right now, we wouldn't do that because we don't have this, the state and vital, we don't have a process for that. My confidence is going down and I'm sorry I didn't mean that. It's a federal law that we don't have a solution to. I can say that being a patient in physical health office that is actually part of central Vermont and they can't even transfer records and so I just, my anxiety, my free-flipping anxieties just as good as Senator Kitchell's and I'm not hearing that, you've identified the problems but we're a long way to the solution. Yeah and I think it's important to recognize that it's a, so can I just take a step back for a second? I co-chaired the SIM Health Data Infrastructure work group. I've worked on writing two of the HIE state plans and now I'm just going to use them. I'm very committed to health information exchange at the state level, but it's an entire delivery system solution that we need to come up with and as we're doing it, we also need to enable the providers to have IT systems that whereby they can have the data, analyze the data, provide the best quality care that they can and also report back to the state. So they're different levels but I think it's important to understand that the solution to health information exchange is with all providers and with the entire, the whole health delivery system, right? So these are EHRs that have that capability. They absolutely will be able to do that. The question is, can we get all those other pieces in place too? And some of that, you know, states across the country are struggling with part two. For good, I guess for a reason. So Simone had, Vermont Care Partners had provided a fairly robust report to inform the committee. So I don't know if you want to go over some of the highlights for that. Would that be helpful to walk through the report? Okay. If I may. Yes. And I haven't had the opportunity to read the report because I was going to print it out but then I saw that it was 42 pages long and decided not to. Thank you. I will read it. My concern here is the, there is not one person who is designated as overall lead for this project. One, to choke is that we're not leading one person. Well, when the agency of human services, when we received a briefing from them this year, the questions that I asked in that briefing all went to who's responsible, is the lead? Who is the person making the decision? Who reports to the agency secretary there was one person? And I was asking that question directly to her. So I felt very much better that we were going to have a great chance of success because there was one person who understood everything and how it was all supposed to come together. Yeah. Because you are multiple agencies each with their own implementation person who we don't give them enough money. We don't appropriate enough money for each of these agencies to have a person who's also a job is to implement electronic medical records or electronic health records, whichever you prefer to call them at those levels. So unless you folks are literally going down to each and every agency and doing it yourselves. No. Okay. So I'm very concerned about that piece. But then when you throw on top of that that there's no independent review. So my question here that I would like you to answer over the course of the next few minutes is why an independent review would be a really good idea here and why an independent, and leave the dollar amount out. We can not withstand the dollar amount. So leave the dollar amount out. Why it would be a really good idea to do it and why it would be not a good idea to do it. How many minutes do I have to think about that? Almost none. Yeah, I mean, you're right in that these are separate implementation processes and each agency is responsible just as they have been in the past. And I would imagine just as primary care providers FQHC's any hospitals are as well. And by the way, you mentioned FQHC. So everyone basically knows that I had a heart attack a year and a half ago and were not for me calling my FQHC and informing them that and saying so I need to get some work done. Oh my God, you had a heart attack? Right. My cardiologist, I could throw a baseball from my cardiologist's office and hit my FQHC. So I don't have a whole lot of, actually I don't have any confidence that my FQHC it feels like it wants to play ball in the electronic medical record sharing area. Okay, well, we're talking about this. We do want to play ball. I agree. And I mean, I think that I completely understand that frustration with the FQHC had the electronic medical record they needed at least to have, to be able to provide your care within there. Anyway, okay, independent review I will get to. I cannot say that there is one person that we're seeing this entire project. That being said, we, well can I, I think some of the questions will be answered as I walk through this. So I'm just gonna take a moment to do it. There were in 2016 a variety of reasons why the nine agencies came together to talk about developing an RFP and going through an entire selection process that lasted a number of years. We had seven agencies that were on a legacy, legacy platform that was on trajectory for our sub-setting. We had one agency where their EHR vendor was going out of business. We had another that was gonna be revamped. All of them were not keeping pace with the requirements. So there were a number of reasons we came together and we felt that it was important to find the efficiencies as we often try to do at, once the designated agencies in developing the RFP, posting it and going through the vetting process. So we in 2017 hired a consultant to help us with that process, someone who had been very involved in implementing, identifying, going through these processes and implementing EHRs. And so in 2017 we started that process and posted the RFP. The RFP was relatively unique and I think it's important to talk about it because not only did it, and I guess this doesn't provide that much comfort anymore but not only were we requiring meaningful use certification but amongst other standards, but we were also focused on finding an EHR that could really work within community-based agencies. I think you all know that more than 50% of our services towards a provider in the community. So having something like a mobile solution was really, really important to us. In addition, we were focused on finding solutions that would enable the agencies to fully participate in an integrated delivery system with value-based payments, things we knew that we were all as a state involved in and moving towards. So that was another really important piece for us. We funded the project management through a grant from HRSA, very generous to help us with that. We received 16 responses and after our initial vetting process, we ended up with five. We brought those five vendors in for a number of days each, went through clinical applications, billing, all the different pieces. And I'm not gonna get into the whole two years of the vetting process but it was a robust process and we ended up with two vendors, Netsmart and Credible. And we have four agencies that are moving forward with Credible and Single Installations and we have four agencies that are moving forward with Netsmart as a unified platform and one is still in the decision-making process. Two of our other designated agencies that are not part of this are also on Netsmart so that's important just to know that they are already in the state of Vermont. The two HRs are not being custom-built. They're doing high-quality off-the-shelf products that are being configured for the specific agencies. We wanted to also have vendors that were capable of enabling the state reporting which may be not as high tech as what these agencies, I mean as these vendors are capable of doing so they have to be ready to sort of move into the future and hold on to the past. Did you have a question? Because I did read this part and when I saw it configured to the agency's needs, that raised red flag immediately. Are they meant to be configured or are the agencies asking them to do something special? No, it's just that we have monthly service reporting to the state, for example. All the state forms. But these platforms are meant to be configured in the manner that we are configured. Absolutely. Okay, we're good. Yeah, please. We just wanted to make sure they have the capabilities so that we could do all of them as we know there's a lot of... If you're asking them to do something that they haven't done before, then we've got an enormous problem. No, definitely not asking them to do anything they haven't done before. And I think it's a great point. I was able to be briefed on I think it was that smart assistant and had a lot of questions having implemented some technology projects in the past and sometimes we can over develop something off the shelf and then we end up incurring extra costs down the road because we have between developers and IT people that then have to maintain all of those changes that we made. So I did have a lot of my fears about that put to rest because of how off the shelf it is and because those configurations really made sense for my technology standpoint. Good question. Yes, and maybe you're going to address this later, but why wouldn't all agencies go with the same one? Tell me the pros and cons. It just seems to divide half with net smart and half with credible and one undecided. Why are they all using the same system? Yeah, no, that's a fair question. So when we wrote the RFP, we had the lofty goal of everyone being on the same system in which maybe it would have been good. Maybe it would, I don't know. But in the end, they're independent agencies and each agency really had to decide, does this work for my agency from a fiscal perspective, from a end user perspective, to does my staff like it or my team, she's actually going to use it, from an assessment of their community needs and who do they need to share data with, who do they need to coordinate a pair with and all those different factors. And in the end, the agencies really chose the ones that worked best for their agency and I still see it as a great success. I mean, honestly, when I've spoken to other providers in the health delivery system, they've said, we would never have come here to do that. So I think two platforms is pretty amazing, honestly. I know it doesn't seem that, but for that question. I'm a client of Washington County, right? I move to St. Albans. I now am, is it North? North, St. Albans. I am now a client there. There are two different platforms. Can my records from Washington County be transferred to St. Albans or I go into crisis. It can be transferred. So I'm still living in Washington. I'm still there, but I'm visiting and I have a meltdown in St. Albans. The St. Albans people would be able to access my records and some idea of what might be going on with me. So our agencies work really well together. Okay. When there's a crisis with somebody, they're gonna make sure that the information flows. And I guess what I'm asking is, so can those- Can they just go into their EHR and find information? Probably not. I mean, my experience is the baseball, my husband's base in the doctor that prescribed 50 feet away, but the emergency room doesn't know what was prescribed. And I think that's why we get to the VHEP, I mean, the health information, it's the purpose of the health information exchange is to- And so these could all go through VHEP. So- A vendor, but once we work out the federal, whatever the new, yes, the problem is. So when we went through the vetting process, we worked with Vital to ensure that the vendors, that the requirements, their connectivity requirements, those requirements have changed since then, but we've been working with Vital, they're relatively, actually they're relatively the same, but we've been working with them to ensure that we will continue to do that and we will be heavily involved in the part two. So you could go to Vital, if and when we can resolve the federal prohibition on sharing, is it substance abuse information? Yeah, substance abuse. Okay, this is- And the channel, yes, I won't go into the question. Okay, that is the fed's problem, but if it's resolved that problem, the machines can talk to each other. They have the capabilities to talk to each other. It does require the development of an interface. Just as it does for hospitals or primary care, it's the same for engine provider. That's not a DA issue, that's just a, that's a VCAI issue, or not even a VCAI, it's just a technology, it's a issue. All right. I had a question about the federal requirements. If about, I think the last statistic I've heard was 75% of individuals with a substance abuse disorder, substance use disorder also have a mental health diagnosis. So that you have a very high percentage of co-occurring conditions, and which Trump's what? In other words, would you have, how do you split up that individual by diagnosis and federal requirement? That seems like, or does one take precedent over the other? So, I'm, you know, it's a really good question. I guess I'll let you thread that needle, but it just seems like an artificial whole thing, delineation, that you're having to meet. So, I agree with that, and it is a very good question. At this point, we consider any data going out of the designated agencies to be part two data for that reason. So we are not separating that out at this point. I don't know how you do that. I was just, to your point, yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got to deal with both. You can't deal with just one, or not the other. I'm just curious if, by the way then, on having one, or whether they were perfectly fine with NetSmart, NetSmart, and credit, they didn't go in on that. I mean, there's so many different EHRs going in there. I mean, I was playing. Right, and that's just, and that's a problem, because we have systems not talking to each other. We have information not flowing, and we know there's other issues, but. Yeah, one area of additional review that the Agency of Human Services did add, it's inclusive of those kind of seven follow-up steps, is actually doing some test feeds from the selected vendors to the HIE. So that was something we had suggested as a way to monitor, and that. You know, I think, and also just, that's a very good point, and I think the other point I'd just like to make is that technology changes so quickly, right? And the focus right now for us is on these EHR platforms, but it's also on the data that's going into that. So ensuring that it's high-quality standardized data, and the survivability of that data is what's important. And the reason I say that is because that's gonna be true across the delivery system with all these different EHR vendors. We're never gonna have one EHR for the whole state. I mean, I don't think, but the data's really, really important. We have a high focus on that, and these platforms will enable us to really be focusing on that data as well. So I'm just referring to the language that we put in the budget. Okay. And making sure that what we have put out, in fact, aligns with what you're saying. And so the plan shall summarize and develop an implementation and demonstrate product will support the goals that are set forth in statewide confirmation technology plan as to kind of, and on a minimum, the connectivity requirements set forth in the health, statewide HIP plan and the requirements of CMS. And so I just want to have confirmation that the language and the conditions that we placed on the front page are ones that we feel that the plan needs. I did, I do. I mean, this, we have on page six, the state HIE plans, primary goals. We talk about how it moves us towards those. The whole state is an act of creating one health record for every person, right? That's our goal. But these EHRs really do get us much further in that direction, for example. Thank you, Joe. Or just a question. Would you rather me just have- I'm watching the clock and even though this was supposed to be a couple of minutes fast, we've got a really tight schedule after this. Can I get you to talk- And Han Smith is also here at the committee who was our consultant on this. So if you want to hear, I'd like to give him a couple of minutes and I want to let you finish up. Just want to let the committee know this might put more pressure on the other end of the conversation as we move. So, let you finish what you think we need to hear. Okay. Okay, well, I do think on page seven, I think it's really important and you can all spend time reading this, but it is a part of this business. This is the hospitals and primary care. These vendors, these platforms will enable operational efficiencies at the designated agencies. We'll support the shift to balance base payment, which is really important as we move forward with the health and DS payment reform. Developing capabilities to participate in population health initiatives, supporting the integrated delivery system, our current platforms, they don't have the capabilities of connecting with other providers. And enabling quality improvement and care delivery. It's also a really big change for the front-end users and for the staff. And if they are, as you all know, if you're comfortable with something, you're more likely to use it, which enables the data to come through. So that's really important. I'm really working. I have a bias here. My primary care provider retired early because she didn't grow up in an era when you tightened one hand and your thumbs and talked at the same time and found herself up until 10, 11 o'clock every night transcribing. Are we working? Is your workforce of an age where this is second nature and not going to be huge? I mean, they're coming from already using an EHR, just not as nearly as robust of an EHR by any means. And they're really excited about things like the mobile solution that enabled them to be able to really still be, as opposed to going out, doing the work, then having to come back, taking the day, you know, so it doesn't mean it was efficient. They will have a mobile that, much like the police force, that will go with them and they can do the import or get the information. So if I've got somebody in crisis, I can get the information and know the person's background and what might be causing the issue. I had a whole lot of other things, so I'm going to skip around here. I would like to just quickly, if it's okay, walk through the financial go-live summary on page four, I think that's important to walk through, just because the numbers are slightly different than what the region looks like. And they are different in part because when we first estimated the implementation costs, they hadn't started the implementation, now that they have, they've been able to recognize the numbers a little bit. So what we have here are the agencies, they're go-live dates, so some are going live, three are going live September 3rd, and the appropriation would just be going towards the implementation costs, not ongoing costs. These are all subscription-based models, so it's really different than having to purchase the hardware and software and have on-premise infrastructure. So we put the current annual, it does not include the initial build, including hardware and software, it doesn't include ongoing maintenance, we can read all that, I don't want to read it for you, but, and then the, we have the estimated implementation costs, what we put here was vendor costs and external project management. We didn't include, you know, loss of work to the additional staff time, obviously it's gonna take, it takes an entire, a lot of people to be implementing an EHR. And then we have the new annual cost and the approximate delta, but the delta is probably less if we added all of the maintenance and other things into current annual. What I want to point out is that implementation is at 4.6 across the 10 agencies and the delta between current and new is a million across the nine agencies. And so it's just important to know that the cost is a bit more ongoing now, but the upfront cost is less because you're not developing it internally. And the risk mitigation is huge. I mean, having a subscription based and cloud based is a really big difference than having it on the equipment in one secure, locked road that is. If I may also, moving to this subscription cloud based model also is gonna reduce the IT infrastructure costs on the bottom lines of the agencies, but that's not reflected here. So they're currently maintaining a pretty robust stack of equipment with blinking lights on it. That's of course their current system that's all gonna go away because it's gonna be part of the subscription in the cloud based system that they're subscribing to. Yeah, I don't need good templates or you like to come somewhere above 30s. So, wow, there's a lot more to it, but welcome to our world. I didn't know, well, I could talk about this for hours, but I made you 45 minutes, that's it. So that's on the funding. Our proposal, VCP's proposal, and I understand it's VCP's proposal for the formula for distribution of funds would be to allocate it equally amongst the nine agencies even though their costs are slightly different. We felt that it was an equally difficult financial decision for everybody and everyone figured it out in their own way in their agency and so when the executive director's math that was a recommendation that they made. And again, just at some point, you know, page 15, it looks maybe complicated, but it's really pretty amazing to have three vendors amongst the 16 agencies all feeding their clinical data to one repository as we focus on standardization and on analysis for quality of payment and reporting to the state. It's unique and it's really exciting work that we're doing and I just think that should be noted and these EHRs will also help with the analytic piece of what they're, you know, what the agencies are doing in terms of services and supports they're providing. Okay, thank you. So if the better way perhaps to get an answer to my question would be to provide that before the next legislative, before we start again in January. Okay. Now I'm prepared to support this absent, absent very something in the next few minutes that I'm not anticipating here. But I would like before I allocate additional funding to this project, I'd like to be answered in my question. Okay. You know, why and really the reason why. Yeah. Okay. And you're okay with that coming. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Agency of Human Services, are we on the right track of the after-law clinical efforts? Yes. We did outline seven key areas that we think were more into additional analysis and review that should be taken into consideration as we go forward. All right. Committee, do you have any specific questions you'd like for Dan Smith or can we just move this along? I would like to have Dan give us briefly what happens after this and the areas that you need to be paying attention to. Because one of the areas that we've talked about, and that's your question, where's the locus of accountability here? Who is that individual ultimately? And through some other areas, I think we need to have that information because we know that this funding, unless something miraculous happens, is only going to be the first installment. And so I really think that Dan has summarized it here, but I might be here very quickly for Dan. What it is that we should, that he wants to focus our attention on as we make this decision, which cannot be made in isolation as far as I'm concerned, with our future course. Okay. We will let these folks have the opportunity. Thank you. Dan, you want to come join us? You can tell us in 30 seconds, I think Jane just asked. It's going to take me more than 30 seconds. You would change. I won't take that long because you pretty much said everything that I'm going to say, but I'm Dan Smith, the IT consultant for the Joint Fiscal Office. And I think the memo that I provided earlier pretty much says everything. It would be nice if there was an independent review over if this was not a state budget and it may be that there just won't be one. This may be the independent review right here in this part. That's what we're so good at here. I'm encouraging. Other than that, the things that I have really questions about going forward and other than Fagin mentioned that you mentioned it, it is in all of the IT projects, the state has had real challenges over the last four years. One of the biggest things that got them on track was getting one person in charge of, and that's been true of judiciary, that's been true of IE, vital, you know, we've changed the organization so it can say, okay, you own this and when literature or media or GFY has questions we have a person to go to and say, hey, there's a question, how are you gonna address that? And especially in a project like this that involves multiple agencies and integration of data. And the technology side I think is good. The justification, everything's good. It does worry me that there doesn't seem to be somewhere they're really on the system. So I would like to see that change over the next couple months. I'm not sure how it can be done. That's something that my care partners and the HHS and the like have done. The other concern I have at this point is the financial numbers. Going from the draft report a week ago to the final report from my care partners there was a significant change in the numbers. Originally the development cost was 6.7 million now it's four or something. The ongoing operations and maintenance, the original projection was an annual increase of 3.5 million dollars. The final report says the annual total appears in the summer round two. So I'm not so concerned about the numbers themselves I'm concerned with the fact that we may not have a real grasp of what this is really gonna cost. And going beyond that, what does that gonna cost the state in the long run? Those are things that may not need to be answered today but I believe before the next meeting of this group you might wanna have a little more clarity on why do they change in the numbers? What are the estimates going forward? What is the state going to answer? And that's pretty much it from my concerns. I appreciate that last comment about not maybe being so obsessed about the specific numbers at this moment but rather how it is that we're finding ourselves making pretty significant changes because then we do have to put it in perspective that every other element of our healthcare sector has had swings that dwarf what we're talking about here. That doesn't mean a million dollars in a lot of money in terms of like annual operating expenses but we don't wanna let these movements of estimates cloud our judgment about the wisdom of this larger enterprise especially since all who have come before have committed more obscene overspends. Okay, I guess the question I have is if we get this the green light today, is it more or less likely that we will resolve the question that you have particularly about the single leader? I think you could probably approve today and as long as we're specific on the questions we wanna answer by the next meeting I think that people involved are then very responsive as far as getting the information we need. If we say this is a concern, we want more information, I think they'll be responsive. But I think the question about having a single locus of accountability isn't an information question, it's a governance question. Right. So that getting more information isn't gonna help. Right, I was speaking on the financial side. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, and I would feel much better if we had that one person that said I own this project. I guess I still have the same question, if we green light it today, how likely is it that we're gonna have a single locus of responsibility identified? And that's something that I can't tell me might come up here, partners, they can answer that. Is that even feasible in this organization? I don't know, I'm not sure what it's about. So committee, we have a decision. Is she someone who was test-fied and was trying to respond? Yes. Would you like to give her a chance to respond? Sure, yes. So just to the first point about the lower implementation costs, so the reason it is different, it is different. The reason it's different is because we took out the staff time that was being allocated. It was very hard to do across the agencies in the same way we took that out of the estimate. So that's the primary reason why that implementation cost looked different. We decided to stick with vendor cost and text terminal project management of which that work is a success, so that's important. I wanted to say one of the keys in that is that we do have a EHR governance committee that meets and we talk about implementation. We work through the issues. People, you know, agencies are working together. One person for accountable for the nine private agencies will have to be discussed. They are independent agencies. I mean, alternatively, it's our money and we can have a direction of if you want this money, this is how it's gonna work. I know it's not that. You may have a chair from the board that would be the designated person that would be accountable. As accountable as you can make a person, we are paying. Can I just say that I think the questions that are amazing here are questions which came up when we first started talking about it in the healthcare committee and that it's important that they all get articulated. I think there's a certain, I think we should be aware that there's a certain irony here that the only reason we're talking about it here is because we made a commitment or preliminary commitment for some one-time money. That this project was, in fact, has been underway for a period of years now and we've stepped in because there was the good fortune that we might have been able to support this system with some one-time money in this one instance. Ironically, we were going to all pay for this regardless because it's going to be who it's going to be and it's going to be the expense of the DA system. So we're gonna pay for it one way or the other. I think it's important that we have these questions and had we not allocated one-time money, we wouldn't have even been having these questions in this type of forum. So I think having us continue to have some kind of oversight or some kind of continued accountability is probably the best we're going to get at this point. But a single point of responsibility at this point is important. We have a motion, so we need to make a decision here. We sooner rather than later. We should approve the plan with a possible addition to continue, we can add any possible addition we want. Or we can say no, we'll postpone this till our next meeting, decisions hours. Is there a motion? Sure, take a shot. So I've put it on the table. The Joint Fiscal Committee would approve the plan that's presented today for the development of the electronic medical and health records system for the DAs that's required, but that we would also include that we would request that the DAs continue their work with AHS and JFO for continued project review regarding the change in estimates and also the single points of accountability of the system. Good. May I suggest that Mending are providing an addition that we ask them to address the points that are raised in Dan's memo to JFO, which covers a couple of those, but I think there were some other. And I said, I agree. That's by our next meeting. Yeah. Okay. Has everybody got the motion? I'll second it. Okay. Further discussion? If not, I'll take some papers. Say aye. Aye, aye, no, aye. Oh, so no. Are you hearing me, Ms. Mannes? Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The writing of the motion. It's important. I just think of that. I think it's going, also. We're 15 minutes off. Sure. They appear to stay in treasure. Which is the up to one week. We're not wearing sunglasses. I'm not wearing sunglasses. I feel great. I understand. I'm going to get a shingle shot, right? Well, yeah, I understood. I've now put it up. Five people told me that they've done their shingle shot. So I figured that it's nothing else. I did a public service. So we would have liked a better result, Ms. Fish. But as you know, Fish has downgraded the state. This file was downgraded by Moody's in October. This was directly related to our issue of debt at the moment. So, and I like the analytical conclusion. I might agree the first pair of it. The downgrade reflects Vermont's IERGEO rating to AA plus from AAA reflects Fish's low assessment of the state's revenue framework. In particular, the in-expectation of low growth prospects going forward. Fish considers Vermont's growth prospects to be more consistent with it. Most of it's new input peers, which generally face similar economic demographic headwinds. If you look further down, the state's job recovery has trailed the national trend. Vermont's population is older than most states and growth has been relatively limited. The state's workforce has been flat and declining over the past decade in contrast to slow growth at the natural level. So demographics was clearly the driver in terms of the radius change. And that reflects also Moody's, take a look at Moody's October rating. They rate different sections in the economy. They moved, there are two components of the economy. One is this nominal GDP, which is not something that works well for small states. We got an A rating there. And in October, we had a triple A rating for the per capita income as it relates to U.S. average and that was dropped down to a double A rating. So again, both rating agencies are looking at some of our demographic issues as they relate to our future economic growth. I would agree with the administration and the legislature that this has to be a priority going into the next session to take a look at ways that we can foster more folks coming to Vermont. People have different opinions about how to get there. I think that providing certain types of benefits, death are important, including family leave and things like that are things that attract people. I think that dealing with our connectivity issues is extraordinarily important. I'm a little older and if I don't have the, I'm not connected to a place that I can live with that, but if you're 23 or 24, you live in a different environment and those issues are very important. As a daycare, something that you did address in the last session. And I think that that's one of the crime issues. Our pensions kind of still remain an issue, but I would like to point out that they saw a lot of positives in what we were doing there and how we get to that section. While Vermont's debt, they noted that Vermont's debt and debt pension liabilities as a pitch since 2008, state pension update report, and they cite the report, were very high, were high, 11.9% of 2017 personal income compared to a state water median of 6.0. But they also pointed out since the Great Recession, the state has negotiated with employee groups in this moment in multiple changes, including two benefits and contractual methods to improve this pension sustainability over time and getting to something that you folks did last year that I think should be commended for. The state has taken some modest steps toward keep funding OPEB liabilities and has made some progress in those liabilities for collective bargaining with unions. The state has also benefited from recent favorable healthcare claims experience. This relates to the two items that you did. One, paying off the loan for the teacher OPEB system which puts us on a track to begin to accumulate assets in many next year that can be used for free funding. And the determination that 50% of the remaining surplus after all reserves have been fully filled will go to the state OPEB. The state OPEB already had about $22 million in the kitty and added another $25 million here plus we had $2 million in terms of some of our appropriation. So we have a pretty good size amount of money that can be used toward free funding. And that is something that's very important. I also point out that the OPEB liability is dropped this year by about 242 million dollars because of some of the negotiated changes that the employees made with the administration around healthcare coverage and some of the contracts that were addressed there. You'd have to ask the administration for the details of that. We get a little lost in some of the issues of healthcare. One of the things around the methodology ratings, it's around demographics. And worldwide rural areas are getting really influenced by population changes. And the Northeast, and I'm just wondering, just because we're old doesn't mean we're poor. Actually there's a lot of wealth with older people. And so I realize that we have this historical bias toward the answer is youth, but people are living longer, we are higher educated. And I'm just questioning the methodology of reliance on somehow, and we talk about, we put a lot of focus on incentives and importing our cancer. I'm really concerned, we've got about 3,500 youth that are sort of peripheral to the labor market. And we need to start paying attention to some of our own in-house human resources because 3,500 versus 60 or all these huge successes is much larger. So I just want to put that on the table, is a strategy is making sure that we are doing everything we can to develop and experience the potential of a lot of our kids are young people who are really not participating at the level they should in the labor market. So you look around this room, the demographics, unless we say, it's a public policy, you go out and adopt two children, everybody. I just think we've got to look at some other strategies. And this year we put some money in for youth employment for that purpose, it was very modest compared to some of the incentives that we're offering other places. But I just, I'm just like, we're getting hammered on demographics and it's a rural and we're predominantly a rural state. It just seems like it is very puts rural states at a disadvantage in how our financial house is ready. Well, you know, we can't tell the rating agencies how they're gonna put together their structure. We did. Could we offer some suggestions? The National Association of State Treasures did to Moody's. When they gave us an opportunity to comment on the new rating and that we did. In fact, that was president of NASC at the time. And we did point out that it was. So did that new rating actually help or hurt us? That new rating hurt us. Okay. And we did point out that we thought it was somewhat challenging for rural states. But you know, obviously they have the right to rate the way that they believe is appropriate. I do think the demographics, we see some trends. Jeff Carr participated in our meetings with the various rating agencies. We started to see some stabilization of the population for the last couple of years and pointed that out to both rating agencies. The other thing that I think is important is that some of the studies that have been done that's been done during an economic decline in the policy session and property values and house values had not caught up at that point in time. And if you take a look at Massachusetts, for instance, which is one of the areas that we have the most in migrations from, Massachusetts, house values are now back to form. And that gives a person an opportunity if they're looking to move to Vermont, for instance, selling their house there, they're not selling at a loss. In fact, selling their house there and coming to Vermont, you may make a profit in doing that and find a very good job at our legal force. So there are some trends that we see that are positive, but we've got some work to do on these issues. Yes. So I find the way the rating agencies judge state performance to be horrible in a lot of ways. For instance, states that they would apply their measures to have huge poverty rates, ignore the environment, have terrible education systems. And one of the expenses that we have, which is reflected in the policy plan is making more contributions to cleaning up our waters. Well, lots of states are just a lawsuit away from having a huge liability on their books, but in those states, no one has yet sued. And we, in a sense, are constrained and punished for proactively addressing what are effectively the public problems. Again, I don't know. That to me is one of the problems here. And it's hard to understand the collective delusion that there is a simple policy switch, which is going to fundamentally change demographic trends happening all across rural America and our whole state is considered rural. Like attracting 1,000 people here, which would be a huge success, doesn't change the demographic trends that are being described. 5,000 people does not change, even though it would be desirable, doesn't change anything here. I don't know that there's a single government entity in the United States that has successfully had a policy lever that has single handedly done a thing about demographic trends. So I feel like we're in a really bad spot because we're going to keep being encouraged to do these little political maneuverings to be attractive and create an inflow of people. And I can't think that any business would operate under the belief that that's going to work. So again, I'm not the policy person, you folks are. And so I'm going to turn that back to you. So my question then is, if the Treasurer's Group has been unable to impress upon the rating agencies that different strokes for different folks is maybe the appropriate way for them to evaluate the state's credit worthiness, how might we approach rating agencies to do what you're just trying to turn back on us? Certainly, the comments I think that what we try to do in our rating agency presentations is emphasize the positive. For instance, clean water, we had Secretary Moore present on that during our rating agency discussions. We do get high points for governance, very high points for that. And I think that that's extraordinarily important. They see the changes in terms of our pensions. So I think that they see, and I think we're turning the corner on those things. What you folks did with S96 this past year was significant in turning the corner on our clean water. And I think that that's important in terms of people's interest in coming to Vermont. What you folks have done over the last few years in terms of funding the pensions and funding the OPEPs, we've turned a corner on these things. So we are taking control of those issues. There are certain issues that are outside of our control. I would agree with you that demographic is a very difficult thing, particularly in rural and particularly in England. But I do think that there are things we can do to attract employees. And one of the things that we're working on is we've got a secure retirement plan. And people have an opportunity to stay for retirement in their jobs. I think that that's something that's a positive. So I think there are things that we can do to the educational system. And we get that in terms of workforce. There are things that we can do to help. There are also factors that are outside of our control in a New England state. And we're trying to get those across, but from, we can comment to the rating agencies, but again, it's dirt. Sure. And if I might just one more question. One of the, I guess, dilemmas is, and they praise us for coming in consistently under the recommended annual borrowing level. And it raises real issues about the extent to which Vermont is governing itself anymore when it comes to constraints that are externally imposed upon us that we follow through. So demographics, one of the most important things would be affordability of housing. As you know, any attempt to do another large housing bond, which is a prerequisite to drawing young families and recruiting certain types of businesses with high-paying jobs is more housing stock. And for the rating agencies to celebrate a decline in annual bonding capacity, when that is probably the only government tool realistically available to do a significant increase in our housing stock, means that the varied things that are prerequisites to succeeding in turning some of these corners in a more robust way are being taken out of our hands before we can even use them. So I feel like our governance is really at risk at this point with the way the rating agencies apply a single set of measures across all types of states who have different needs. So with respect to the bonding, some place between 25 and 33% of the money that's outlayed through the bonding process is interest. You're paying interest over, even though we have a good interest rate, you're paying interest over a 20-year period. And it adds up. And I would prefer to see us use a lot of states, a good number of states, and I would guarantee mechanisms that use cash or supplement bonding with cash. Pay as you go, exactly, Senator. And for me, we should be exploring those opportunities. Years and years and years ago, when I was a financial operations manager for a town in Connecticut, we implemented a program. My boss came up with this, that wasn't my idea. And we created something called the Capital Non-Business Financial Plan. And we put a set amount in each year. We had rules about not using it all in one year. And that started really paying for capital projects and lowering the cost of doing those capital projects. But I think that's something we should explore. And I'm all in, as you know, doing a housing study for the summer. You're giving me, I think, five different projects this summer? I want to thank you folks for your projects. They'll teach you how to do a good job with the first one. The water one knows how. One where I wasn't in the room, I thought. We should not have a capital bill, theoretically. Well, again, other students are tightening their belts around that and using more pay-go. And we should explore ways to get there. And we are going to be doing a comprehensive housing study over the summer, come back to you with some recommendations. I'm going to have to move this along, because Tom Kovat and the auditor are in the rooms. Well, thank you very much. Any other questions? Anything else? My goal, by the way, is to get back to AAA, and be triple, triple AAA, all three. Okay. We're going to continue to work with you folks and the administration if that done. Thank you. All right. There's a revenue forecast, let's talk about that. Maybe I'll hold you in this case. Thank you. So I think everybody has a copy of the very, the very, um, least, you know, the forecast. And this will be the staff recommendation. And, uh, everybody goes right to the cartoon. I said, maybe it's the cartoon. I got the cartoon, but what was the cartoon? The chain was there, so I don't know. It just opened. Oh, it just opened? Put it down. Yeah. I'll try to be brief, because some of you have heard parts of this, and some of you will hear more of it later in the rest, but I adjust the thumbnail overview. Economic externals continue to grow. Economic externals continue to be really positive in terms of revenues. And that is what drove the, um, the overage that we saw mostly in April. It was mostly a personal income event. But there are three really volatile revenue categories that are large that can swing enormously in any given year. Uh, corporate income, uh, the state tax income, and personal income. And two of those three, this last year, did really well. One of them, uh, state tax was really bad. It was, like, 34% below, uh, expectations. And that's a miss that, you know, is rare, even in a really volatile category like that. But we are more heavily reliant on volatile revenue sources, like these three big ones that we ever had before. And, uh, in good times, we can really get windfalls, and that's sort of, sort of thing that happened last year. Uh, and in bad times, that can swing down just as hard. So, uh, even though the externals are positive right now, uh, it bears close watching, uh, and we're doing this to, uh, keep an eye on any early signs of imminent decline. The chart on the very first page shows, uh, all the economic recoveries since 1947. And you can see this line on the bottom, which is the current one. In this month, we came to the longest economic expansion ever. It goes back to 1854. Um, but what's notable about it is not just this longevity, but the trajectory. If you look at the slope of that line, relative to other expansions, it's been the slowest, flattest recovery of any. Which, at this point in the cycle, is actually ironically good news. Because it's one of the reasons they're not big imbalances that are obvious right now that would be suggesting a quick end to it. So it still could run farther in part because it hasn't grown as quickly over time. Uh, in the last forecast, on page nine, there's a risk matrix that identifies some of the risks that both Moody's analytics, whose, uh, economic forecasts we use and administration economists and I have assembled. And in January, one of the most prominent risks was this box here about a Fed policy error. The right now has sort of dropped down. That arrow kind of indicates where it might have been in January. And we had built in, so the Fed had raised interest rates seven times between 2017 and 2018. And they were announcing that they were going to keep going in 2019 as conditions warranted. And the economy was strengthening and faked into that were more interest rate increases. That is one of the classic ways that recessions start. The Fed thinks they're tapping the brakes, and they tap them, and not that much happens because they're pretty long lags and they're tapping the brakes and seeing something. And so things keep going up, so they tap them a little harder, and they keep tapping and tapping and tapping. And pretty soon, they've tapped too much, and everything cascades down. And we had built in a slowing, starting in late calendar, 20 and 21, into the revenue projections that we had before. The Fed really, between December and February, changed from not just saying there would be increases. They said that they would evaluate it, and there might not be any increases. And then about a month or two later said, not only will there not be increases probably, we're actually looking at cutting rates now, if need be. And in a couple days, I think you'll see the first such cut. So probably 25 basis points, but they'll probably be more later, a powerful change in position. And that actually pulls one of the most likely and most intense factors that could end the recovery out of contention or diminishes it significantly. And that's the basis for most of the macroeconomic change in the revenue projections that we have. So there are a whole bunch of technical issues and true ups and a lot of legislative changes in the last session that are all into this. So lots of moving parts, but just the macroeconomics are probably $20 to $30 million in both fiscal 20 and 21 additional, excuse me. And the complexity of the fund changes and all the accounting on this are such that I'm going to leave it to the Joint Fiscal Office to translate all of this into what it means with respect to the budgets. But basically there is some additional money. It's not enormous across all three funds. It's probably about 1% of total revenues projected. So that's not, you know, Earthshaking, but still good that it's positive. And, you know, understand that almost all of this, both last year and in the forecast, are coming from revenue sources that are volatile and they're volatile because there's a narrow base of payers that are paying very high percentages. So the question I have, Tommy, one of those non-volatile revenue sources and maybe we shouldn't, maybe we should get some. Well, sales and use is a very steady, meals and rooms is a very steady revenue source and there have been enhancements mostly through e-commerce to expand that. I guess Janet and Anne will deal with that. It's an income that's still volatile. Yeah, but particularly at the higher levels. Well, sure. And our tax is progressive. There are a couple of charts that just show that. And again, 2017 data or what we have that are, you know, handed your data. But, you know, the AGI growth has been in the high end and from what we know about 2018, it's more of the same. The tax rates are quite progressive. So we end up with more revenue as a result. But that's also really volatile. So the effective tax rates are higher but the volatility is increased. So other states are not. I'm just like, we keep hearing we have all in a lot. I was like, well, are others have other states found the secret to provide that stability? Well, no, I mean, not all states have an income tax. Well, yeah, well. Yeah, then you lose what progressivity that typically you have. So, you know, there are other ways to do it. So things like property taxes are very stable and we get a whole lot of money from that. And, yeah, I mean, there's no shortage of things. I don't know if the tax commission studies can have some thoughts on it. But yeah, it's the real ring with respect to this. So in the state, you know, across a wide range of metrics, there's significant improvement. One of the most timely and detailed at a regional level metric is the unemployment rate. And Vermont in both May and June has the lowest unemployment rate in the nation. What's of interest is that that's percolating down to areas that are typically much worse off. So, you know, the racial disparities nationally and unemployment rates are narrowing. When we look at the state, there's a chart of both county level at the U.S. level and then in the state, the highest unemployment rate in the state is only 4%. That's in Orleans, you know, and that had been double-digit at periods of time in the last recession. And there's, you know, the longer this lasts, the more improvement it causes even in areas that traditionally have been doing as well. So that's really positive. There have been 23,900 jobs created since the low point of this last recession in Vermont. And, you know, that's only about 8% growth from the trough compared to the United States about double that rate. But there's been a lot more population growth nationally than there has been at the state level. But across a wide range of metrics, the state's doing substantially better. And that creates an environment for more tax revenue. I know we've been seeing job growth, but it hadn't translated to wage growth. We're starting to see wage growth. Yeah, we have not only nominal wage growth, but the more important is real wage growth. So there is a chart, which is page 7, that shows nominal real wage growth. This is national data, but it's similar. So the national data for about the past year has been over 3% wage growth. And significantly, because inflation hasn't really ticked up, it's been fairly tamed, real wage growth has been between 1% and 2%. So that is significant. And, again, that's something that the longer the labor market is tied, it's brought in a lot of people from, you know, that are marginally employable and unemployment rates across age groups are quite low. And so that has been happening. That's the quick version. I don't know if you want to go into detail. It's about noon now, but if there are questions, I can cover them. There's a lot more, of course, in the report, but I think that's the 15 minute version. Oh, yeah, this is my barcode. It's just on the back. Yeah, it's not even a color. And upside down, right side up, it's sort of the same. But what's interesting about this, when I was looking at all the recessions back to 1854, it was, you know, I have these bars graph. So this is by month of the gray bars are periods where there was an economic downturn. And then the yellow areas are areas of expansion. And what you see is, you know, this early period between 1854 and 1929, a phenomenal number of recessions and long duration events. And the notion after the Great Depression that Keynesian economics through deficit spending during times of downturn could offset and affect the economic cycle is starkly evident here. So you really see how that changes after 1929. And it was spending around World War II that really demonstrated that. But there's also a chart here on page 12 that pertains to spending when we're not in a recession, which is what's happening right now. And there's phenomenal deficit spending going on. It's part of the reason the economy so choose is the enormous fiscal stimulus that's occurring. And that is not typically the right policy prescription when things are going well. And the CBO just came out with a very good report on this, looking at current law projections of what this debt would mean. Very soon, like in the next fiscal year, the interest payments on this debt will exceed the primary debt that the payments are going for. So it's a substantial, important issue and one that is getting virtually no attention. But long-term problems that could come from this are extensive. And CBO lays out some possible paths. But they could happen pretty quickly. When confidence gets lost, there could be a cascading series of events. And we are very much tied into the global economy through this. So much of this debt is held by foreign players. And foreign players would rather not be supporting the United States in many cases. So, you know, there's just... I don't think we've been there before and that's when you start to get problems and there's some new universe of new reality and there hasn't been an economic cycle that stressed that in the same way. So, anyway, that's a longer-term concern. It doesn't even show up in the short-term recession things, but it's not on there because it's not a short-term thing, although many of the things on there would be triggered in a big way by this. And a lot of those are related. I don't have a long-term issue, but I wanted to flag it because it's out there. It's sort of a climate change-type issue. You know, okay, what's the problem right now? It doesn't feel real hot. Well, it's a little bit hot in here, but you can see what's happening and it doesn't take a lot of scientists to understand. That's not going to be good. And, anyway, it's not on the political horizon of either party, doesn't seem like it. So, if there are more questions, I'll see some of you, too. And if there are questions we can cover, I'm happy to do it one on one, too. So, if you agree with that. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Next is State Auditor Bill Cotter from the SOAR. If there's someone... I know a bit too many. If there's someone you want to talk to. My deputy's here, but he's... Okay. We didn't even recognize him. And Emily L. Depp, yes. And she's... I'm sure she was the... who bothered her. Okay. And good afternoon. Thanks for everybody to be here. Good afternoon. I will ask that with your indulgence, two minutes of my time, and you are for another very important time sensitive matter that I'd like to make to your attention. Okay. You're getting between us and lunch, so... Lunch. I'll make it part of the 10 minutes. Okay. As you probably know, we undertook this work to... They interpret what we did as an interpretation when, in fact, we did no such thing. GAGA's audits backed by work papers that fill half of this room. There's no statement in that audit that is not supported by a work paper. And the opinions are from the AG. We don't make that stuff. Right. The AG is the legal officer of the state. So... Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Emily, do you want to come back? Because... We'll go back to cleaning up on Champlain. No, you just have to come back after lunch. Because I'm truly... I don't know. We're finishing up. We'll meet the governor at two o'clock. All right. Well, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today. So, I can launch you just to a few comments on the audit, but then certainly leave this out in order that you might like to take questions. So, as you are all very aware of this very large and complex body of work to both meet the obligations that we are under for the federal orders, the TMDL, the pollution projects, not just for Lake Champlain, for Lake Macrovaegar, and other bodies of water around the state. And we welcome any and all assistants in making sure we've got eyes on the process, and that we are both as efficient and as effective as possible. And certainly, our end goal is phosphorus reduction both within Lake Champlain and all the rivers, lakes and ponds that drain into Lake Champlain. And that we do so within the timeframe by the federal order. So, within that, there are a number of different ways in which work is driven, if you like, through this process. Not only do we have the EPA's TMDL, we also have the Mons Own Clean Water Act, Act 64, and now we have the latest Act 76. So, in addition to trying to make sure that we're getting the monies on the ground in the most cost-effective way, we have been over the last three years and continue to develop tracking and reporting tools and the science behind those. And with the funds that have gone on to the ground so far, and I appreciate you ordered to recognizing it has been an increased amount of capital funds, or now rather a decreased percentage of capital funds, that has led to a number of different, if you like, constraints and forcing mechanisms within the system. So, first of all, related to wastewater treatment, Act 64 put in place obligations for reissuing permits for the storm water plants that are in the Lake Champlain Basin. So, that is a body of work that has been moving forward. And with those, as you can imagine, there are multiple different stages to these projects. So, the point at which we're actually able to and account for the phosphorus which has been reduced by a project is not when it comes in for initial feasibility, not when it comes in for design, but when we finally actually have a project built. Can I ask a question? So, let's take Lake Champlain Basin storm water and wastewater treatment. I think off the top of my head, 60% of Vermont falls within that Lake Champlain Basin. So, if you're saying any wastewater project within it, I mean, part of what we struggle with is a relatively small part of money. How do we make sure that our first projects out are the ones that give us the low-hanging fruit, so to speak, in terms of making identifiable, measurable progress? So, I'm just a little concerned. Maybe I misunderstood, but if we basically said we're going to fund any wastewater project within Lake Champlain Basin, that's a pretty wide pool. So, in fact, it's those that are driven by the regulations, so by current obligation. Is that a wide door? I haven't got an idea. Small. So, let's take the example of storm water and developed lands, because that's an area where we have substantial reduction we need to get from the developed land sector, and it's also a place where we've got a lot of regulatory obligations at the same time. So, Act 64 for storm water advanced the jurisdiction of storm water permitting. So, this means that any three-acre parcels that are currently built that have three acres of impervious surface are now coming under a storm water permit. And in addition, in working with the legislature, we dropped a threshold for new developments from a half-acre from one acre to half an acre. So, that's an example where regulation is driving the timing of projects. So, it's not kind of at choice that either private or public entities would be coming in and starting off the process of doing a storm water or a wastewater treatment plan. But there are regulatory triggers that have been occurring in the early years. So, if I could just kind of like I just want to add on to this, Senator Kitchell, with a couple of the other drivers. So, with any of the funds that we have, within the capital funds there are other drivers, and within the more flexible funds there are some similar drivers. So, with the capital funds we also count in here the state revolving funds. So, in the clean water state revolving funds and the efficient pollution control grants, both of which have a phosphorus impact. So, we count them in here. Each of those has their own project, prioritization, and readiness process. And for all the flexible funds that we have, we have stood at our last few years a number of the granting programs. You might have heard these under the banner of QUIP, or ERP, or the system restoration grants. So, with each of those, we put competitive grant grants out. So, with that what it means is the projects that are at a stage of readiness, and so once we have those projects that can enter an competitive grant grant, we pick the best projects that come in at that point in time. But there is like a project staging a bill. So, from the day that Act 64 was passed, from the day we learned the EPRT and the obligations, all the projects we have to complete over the next 20 years were not ready to go. So, you couldn't just have a choice pick the most efficient projects of the best, because it can take a number of years to stand at any one of these projects, whether it's driven regularly, which tends to be the storm water and the wastewater, or whether they're the additional natural resource projects. Okay, I think this is interesting, but I'm not sure that it's a problem we're going to solve today. I think the message and we understand there's reasons using capital money, but that it doesn't have the biggest bang to the buck in reducing phosphorus necessarily. You are going to be doing a phosphorus assessment in the future. So, all the different project types, there are various proven scientific methods to evaluate phosphorus for some others around the development. So, for an individual storm water practice, for example, the science determined what is the anticipated class of production for a practice is there. If you have a look at, for example, investments in combined sewer systems in the town where you might be separating out some of the sewer and the storm water, you then need to have a look at each of those individual unique situations and then you want to have. So, that's just going to give you an idea of that. I think we're getting too far into the religions, though, on this one. It's not something that can't wait until January and it may change. But I think we've got the message that part of you know, because of restrictions on the money and readiness and a whole lot of other things. I think this was just a report. I know we've got a couple other reports coming that may be more controversial. And we just had the TIF one dropped on us. So, I think unless we have any specific questions that we might want to wrap this up. Could I just make two very quick references? One is obviously to Act 76 that was passed by this body in May, June. And so that actually represents a very substantial shift in our delivery. So that's going to be a very important body of work for us to come back to the legislator over the next two or three years as we're standing on the system looking at how that really does create a system which the phosphorus reductions of a project are the crime redriver. A clean water service provider will be allocating the phosphorus load to a water chain. They will have an amount of funding to accomplish that phosphorus load and so built into this system now and these again are for the non regulatory projects is a compulsion, I'll call it that to actually go after the best phosphorus reduction targets. So when we have the regulatory schemes moving ahead, we have a new three-acre permit for stormwater, we continue to make advances in working through the reparmitting of wastewater facilities and this, you're seeing a lot of capacity come into the system coupled with some very significant investments over the next couple of years to make sure that we've got the science for example for flood plain phosphorus reduction and other things. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I want to get on with the facility assessment and we have a memo and Mary you're here to talk to us about that and is anyone going to cue this up for us? I understand. Mary can. Yeah, but the basic issue is the law says that for directional oversight has to approve this and then joint business law has to approve it. Okay, and maybe Mr. if I can tell you what it is. Okay, so this year's Capitol Bill said as you suggested that the joint justice oversight committee which was the correction. I was saying justice and said, no, that's corrections, alright, you changed it. Yeah. Needs to look at this and then make a recommendation to this committee and that recommendation is attached and so we have documents in our package, I think it's the last document, it's labeled G. It's a memo from the to us and the recommendation from the joint legislative justice oversight committee is attached to the member on page three and what it is is essentially her the Capitol Bill and the discussions of the legislative justice oversight committee that the funding to go ahead to begin the very initial stages of how do we move forward with replacement of failing correction of facilities is that some work be done by BGS and they suggested some restrictions on how this work can be done and that's described in attachment. It's being necessitated by that house institutions and corrections committee by what I said a moment ago is failure of some of our correctional facilities they are just really on their last legs we had an instance in the past year where they had to shut the kitchen down in the St. Albans facility because of a roof failure they couldn't use it the facility in South Burlington has had kind of similar really fundamental problems. This isn't just about because it's a very broad and general analysis of what is it going to take forward to site something somewhere and it isn't just about a new women's facility because that was the kind of impression I got when we had our phone briefing on today so it's not that. So the women's facility which is the South Burlington facility is probably at the top of the list of facilities that need to be replaced but they follow pretty rapidly by the one in St. Albans and Rutland and kind of go around the state and have problems with each other so there's a view that we need to replace facilities and you need to kind of understand what the scope of the problem is not we're going to replace the woman's facility or we're going to replace St. Albans or we're going to build something of a certain size but just trying to begin to get your arms around what the potential citing needs are the potential costs some of the administrative issues and trying to just kind of go into this on the first level so that future legislatures can make decisions about how this would work. I'm having a hard time understanding the scope of work here we all know that our old regional professional facilities they're designed actually we replicated some of the same thing when we did the psychiatric hospital but the way that they're designed varied staff costly so and we know that there are hundreds of several hundred million dollars of capital needs so is this analysis to look at our population both male and female what would be the capacity what would be the recommended size of a facility to get the most efficient staffing as well as programmatic services we heard obviously our correctional health care costs are higher because of this you know community so it's like I don't know how you build something until you determine for whom for what size what you know what the component pieces so is this to really help do that first analysis that to me isn't bricks and mortar it's really that taking that creating that policy context establishing them getting the data and the numbers and the and the population needs and level of security and then that would determine what number of facilities for whom so that's what I'm struggling with Mary I'm sorry I appreciate that and I think that's something that we're all struggling with and I think that the answer from again at least the house institutions committee and this is the testimony that we heard in joint justice oversight is essentially because it takes so long to figure out where where to build something and how so citing you know but what it's designed but hang on so that we're going to do a parallel process and you'll see that in this the proposal from the Justice Oversight Committee it specifically references the work that we're having the Council of State governments do do for us and that that study will help inform this process going forward so it's a parallel process and it's because again come back to failing facilities that you know we we actually maybe Senator Ash remembers this in the last session of the Justice Oversight Committee had a discussion a fairly long discussion about facilities and what should we be doing we never really got off the dime and there's this notion that we need to we need to push this ahead so it's a parallel process I think it's absolutely intended to inform the decision that the the number of folks who are incarcerated the type of people who are incarcerated the reduction and the numbers that will be part of this of the end decision but that we're coming on the Council of State governments to help us with that thought making process but at the same time there is a notion that we need to begin figuring out some of these other just like how do you build it and some of those questions are regardless of a man or a woman is you know the type of fence etc it is just you know what size is the box essentially I just have a question about the shells because we don't know what the Council of State Government is going to bring back and that we shall accommodate for those results so if their results are if they conflict with three and four how can we already determine three and four when we don't know the recommendation from number two when they're all shells they may say do small facilities that are medium security with those sizes or they may say one facility of a larger size and then it doesn't accommodate for number two because three and four in my mind they conflict with one another so I think there was a strong feeling that we wanted any of the work that BGS is doing that was learned by the Council of State Government study so that's the shell on number two on number three I think there is a view that in the past we have built facilities in general to a very specific population need that is not flexible enough to meet whatever the population needs are that and we heard this from the Department of Corrections that they believe that it's necessary for it to be a medium security facility that we are always going to we don't have any high security in the state we ship all of those people out of state those handled very well can that continue to be our policy? well so that's an interesting question but I think it is a big discussion but medium security so the shell around the medium security is a way to attain the highest degree of flexibility possible with these facilities what the Department of Corrections will tell you today is they currently I think it's about 10% of their beds are not being used which means those 10% of unused beds are accommodating people who are out of state they could be brought in because those beds are not flexible enough in their use and so the view is a medium facility is the most flexible facility that you can get and still kind of meet overall goals of the state I am confusing you well part of it I've read some places it was like a 50 it was like very different sizes and then there was a limit of 200 that's a policy decision that is creating a constraint on if someone came back and said the optimum size for the most efficient for this population is 350 and that will give you better healthcare give you better education it will get you better then we basically have predetermined in advance of the analysis what is the most effective in terms of security staffing and also the kinds of services that our inmates would need that's why I believe one way to think about the sizing think about them essentially as modules that you could add on so it's saying it won't be any more than 200 maximum that they're going to consider the design for but it could be more than that on a particular site I mean we all have some very large tracts of land yeah so interestingly this memo initially said it won't be more than 800 beds in the discussion at the justice oversight committee said no bring it down to more than 200 beds because again so there's this interesting tension because we know healthcare costs and management and administration costs one large facility is much much less expensive to run per person but we also have rather strong feelings about large centralized facilities and that's going to be a policy question these bodies are going to have to answer going forward none of what BGS is proposing to do will limit those choices going none of what we're asking BGS to do will limit those choices going forward will give us sufficient information to understand kind of how those building blocks will fit together and what the potential costs are any clarification but could you have a question I guess I was just going to comment that that's not the way the words read to me what you're saying makes some sense but what I read here sounds much more perspective and smaller that's why we're not understanding what you're saying and I think this is the tension being kind of wanting to get data and being a little bit concerned about the consequence of some of that data so my question is exactly that so did you say Mary that there could be a larger campus where individual buildings for certain types of women or men or different security levels geriatric could be on a campus but in one pod there could be no more than 200 beds but there could be several pods on a campus that is certainly the way I have imagined this could work I'm not sure do you think that understanding is shared by everybody on whatever committee this is so unfortunately I was not at the discussion for when I actually was there was part of the writing of this and I know they wanted their shelves but I wasn't there when they actually said yes we voted on this but they did vote in favor of this they believe that it is important to go ahead with the release of this funding because we are going to be sitting here in another year saying we don't have enough data to be making these decisions and we have people out of state because we can't bring them back in because we don't have the beds for them I'd just like to say that the sequential approach versus the parallel approach strikes me as a fundamental question and I totally respect that everything you said speaks to the reason why nothing's changed and that they would be planning for things without having the CSG work complete to me signals that we'll find ourselves in the thing we're trying to avoid anyways which is after we get these sort of pod and different style assessments then we're going to have the CSG then we're going to have to revisit all the things that BGS has told us in order to take what we've learned because it's not going to be like they can talk in real time it's going to be more like this council state government process is going to work its way and then produce a report of some kind so I don't want to second guess the committee it thought about this at a greater length than we have here but I think it's pretty likely that we're going to find ourselves facing the same timing problem and then revisiting and wondering what we got for the 200 there is an expectation that CSG will be talking with CGS and that they will, there will be communication back and forth so that they're understanding what those needs are and I it seems to me this is much more than designing a facility it's really looking at a variety of options it seems like you need a structured analysis of the advantages disadvantages of cost implications for the different choices for legislators to ultimately make good decisions so I'm just wondering how BGS I don't see this as an engineering or a design issue as much as I see the analysis of the inmate characteristics and needs and so forth so and what we have for different options and sometimes our perceptions are not to necessarily bear out in reality so I'm just wondering is BGS hiring somebody to do this or is BGS is here or is the commissioner going to do this analysis I'm not going to say part of it would you just stay back there I think my concern in all of this is it says that BGS will work with the council state governments and you know they'll be communicating but I can see the council state governments coming in and saying you got to build one great big or whatever they come in with if they come in with some it would not be unheard of for us to say yeah we agree with everything you like but we still want to have something else in the meantime we've done a study that we haven't seen or read to yet what we're asking the council state governments to do is to help us figure out how to reduce the population we have diversion and we have some very good ideas for what need to be done but CGS CSG is going to help us think through that regardless of how we can address our numbers we still have facility needs that have to be addressed and rather than waiting to find out if we're going to have what we have 1600 people incarcerated in state today and rather than waiting to figure out if we're going to have 14 or 10 you know a thousand let's begin the process of figuring out because we know we have to replace those facilities let's begin the process so that's the parallel getting an estimate as to the cost of the the septic system the acreage required I assume if we do one big or we do one alright I think it's not been clear and then the last thing if I may we have an or the JFO staff received an email from Senator Sears last night when he said he couldn't come and that he supported this I just wanted to make sure that's all the members knew share that do we have to take action today I mean I would really otherwise right on your head Mary to you know present this you know recommendation these questions are I was just wondering whether so the problem with tabling it is that the amount of time that it takes BGS is going to um um it's not BGS staff they're going to have to hire folks so they're going to have to go through an RFP process which it stopped about a year um and so tabling it pushes it off for a couple more months the house capital the institutions committee was hoping that it would be able to put this into its budget proposal and the timing won't work so we will if you push it off so if we push it off they will not have time to do an RFP to be able to budget the study in the capital it does it does strike me your explanation is more helpful it's helpful in understanding CSG and I'm familiar with what we've done before in terms of recidivism trying to reduce recidivism reduce the number of remoders incarcerated etc so they're they're a great resource on that so that's helpful to remind myself that's what this is talking about not facility design etc but it just but is there anything that would keep BGS from beginning to work on a draft RFP that is going to be is due at August 29th and we're going to be on September 17th it's like that seems to me like there's nothing that they need $200,000 for to do the draft RFP I would have agreed with you but their testimony at the oversight committee meeting was very clear that they would not begin drafting an RFP until the money was released I think on that we're going to have a commission rather than need what I'm going to tell is what he says is being asked to do and what his time frame is for the rare Chris Cole commissioner buildings and general services so in terms of the time frame we're already up against it I doubt we'll be able to meet the March 31st deadline it takes us more than 30 days to draft an RFP so right now the language that was approved by the joint oversight committee which I did not attend has this presenting it to this committee in August 29th I doubt we'll be able to do that to the oversight committee to the oversight committee and then next time I come back so two issues there not sure I can meet that deadline and number two I'm not sure what the review is going to be regarding the RFP we generally aren't used to having the legislative branch review executive branch RFPs you asked us to go out with a golden mind to the policy rejection or a policy issue so that's just something to discuss that would be helpful thank you I was going to say you didn't have any don't know all of them so the council state governments is going to finish their study December 31st there is a large part that we need to review in terms of their recommendations to you folks they're going to be talking about incarceration levels as you mentioned and what other states do and what are other programs and policies that's going to inform us as to what we develop I was there for the testimony in the house I was there for the testimony oversight while it may not say one's correctional facility that's what from our perspective based on the testimony is what this is all about because of the correctional facility in Chittin County is not one of our worst correctional facilities in terms of condition it's just not being used as it was designed and it doesn't have space it doesn't have space to expand to offer the types of programming for inmates that we would want to offer and so in large part it's about building what is an appropriate replacement for the women's facility and this is why you see the numbers 5100 and 175 the 175 is a recommendation by DOC as to what they would like based on the number of inmates they have and the 5100 are numbers that are just scalable that we could go down in size for that type of facility and it says the facility shall not be an assessment of the 100 beds facility in northwestern Vermont is 350 so we already have experience with what that costs you know when you're getting to larger facilities I think there is a magic number with a stand-alone facility I don't know what that number is in terms of optimization and efficiency we don't know what that number is but I do think there is a number out there the committee was not supportive of a larger campus-like facility which we believe brings the greatest number of operational facilities but that has not been in the Vermont historic experience so it's kind of an outlier for all of us as to what would that look like how would it operate and does it deliver the type of quality that most people associate with a smaller centrally operated or stand-alone facility I don't know how much I can't really tell you how much of this work will it be of value to the state until we see the work that comes from the Council of State Governments and how will they mesh clarification because I'm hearing that this is really focused on the women's facility and I'm hearing that it's not I think I'm hearing that it is so my question is is it is the Council of State Governments focused on both men and women or is it focused on women I just I keep going back and forth in terms of what I'm told so the commissioner wouldn't know the answer to the CSG question and it is my understanding that the Council of State Governments work is at reducing the overall population not specifically on women's yes we have been focused on the flaws with locating women in where they are currently located which is the reason there has been this discussion about women but it's been very clearly stated in the committee hearings that I've attended that this is about again not for a specific population of people but generally trying to the overall costs of when you use the word this you're talking about Council of State Governments you're talking about the buildings and general services buildings and general services because I just heard you say women I did thank you the cost of the facilities so facilities exist to support programs and until you know what the program is you can't adequately design or cost estimate what the one-time capital cost would be to build and so we can we already know what it costs to build correction facilities in terms of the square foot number the question becomes the add-ons beyond that do you have trauma supported rehabilitation in your correction facility what are the different programs what is the treatment program you have what is the educational program you have what is the worker training program you have what are the transitional programs like the community you have all of these programming informs your design and until we know that what CSG is recommending in terms of programs for whatever types of facilities and population we're talking about it's difficult for us to do that we can do the commissary we can do the recreational space all the other stuff the CSG program where you're looking at a variety of different policies that the legislature could enact in terms of reducing our inmate size directly correlates to the work that we'll be doing so I can't give you any assurances the value of this exercise when they're running currently side by side there's a desire to be moving on it did BGS express that at the not you said you weren't there but did anyone at BGS say quite the way you just put it at the Joint Justice Committee meeting in terms of the challenges that you guys were faced to will you do the job the way you would typically do it in encompassing the programming as well as some of the basic physical needs we've been trying to thread a needle legislature in their efforts to get this information we'll study whatever you would like to study it's just been challenging for us because the ball does seem to be moving between a women's facility or a general facility and it seems now that the desire of the legislature is on a general facility study in terms of those costs and you know your biggest cost in a facility is choosing your site you have a lot of work to do to get that site ready to house your facility so that's really critical and this study isn't going to do that it's going to pick out the elements of what a good site looks like but we already know all that so in answer to your question probably not in this level of specificity we've been really trying to cooperate and get along and trying to achieve the goals and where this started out from which was in the House Corrections and Institutions Committee so if I may so this has been discussed by the Justice Oversight maybe twice and you and I were at the first time which is what's discussed and yes my recollection is that we had this specific conversation about and it has been difficult my interpretation has been that BGS has not been particularly this would not have been your chosen path for how to do this it was the chosen path path of the capital bill which is where this came from so it was the chosen path of these bodies we had this conversation about how to run these two processes parallel and this was the attempt to continue to kind of thread that needle and I just come back to the concern of got to get off the dime something needs to be done and this was a way to try to push both to push the construction of a facility to meet our needs forward while trying to understand what the policy issues are that we need to be addressing which CSG is going to help us do thus the parallel business and I we've got a lot of questions I don't think we're going to get any better answers than we have at this point and I'm just wondering if this committee feels ready to move forward or do we want to table this until September which point Justice Oversight will have a chance to meet and know our concerns which I think boils down to we haven't seen what CSG is going to recommend we don't know what the program is we're going to be building a facility to house and until we do we're kind of wasting time do you already know a square footage to do some cement walls and floors and living kinds of things that we've done before so why spend money until we know what fine tuning we want on that and where we want do we want it in Central Vermont do we want to go back up to the kingdom where land tends to be cheaper do we want to go you know do we want one two or three I think that's what we haven't really answered so committee I'm looking for a motion or another question alright I'll put it out there I make a motion we accept this and get off the dime and get it going okay so Representative Fagan has moved I believe the official wording should I read it thank you attachment alright so I was just making this comment subsequent to the motion what I hear from the commissioner of BGS is that they do not need $200,000 to come up with the answers to the questions that they already have the information about generally building a correctional facility and size and so if we support this I don't understand why they would spend $200,000 the testimony I heard today is now already have the information I'm happy to support the BGS going forward in providing the information I'm frankly a little bit confused as to why I mean I agree we need to get off the dime so the testimony that the commissioner appears to be providing is that they don't need $200,000 to do the assessment that is being asked for and I think what we are essentially we're being asked to do this because we've got $200,000 to do the batch so if we approve it we are approving the spending of $200,000 I'm confused so is that an accurate assessment I don't believe I testified that BGS did need the funds to do the study what I testified is we already know the square foot currently of what it takes to build a correctional facility but until we understand from council and state governments what a modern correctional facility looks like with all this programming in terms of its space I know the state of Maine just built a new correctional facility expressly for women and it's a very innovative and progressive and policy-forwardly design which is completely different than what we build here in state of Vermont and so in order to educate ourselves because we are not familiar in order to have project managers that design those types of facilities we would need to hire a consultant who would need to detail best practices in terms of programming in facilities that would hopefully line up with council and state governments work and that we're not too far off the market we've educated ourselves and can give cost I know how to build a cost associated with the correctional facility and attention facility not the type of policy and rehabilitation facilities which differ from what correctional facilities would look like to make these policy I feel like you need to have that policy framework or those decisions in order to know what you need to build so I don't know perhaps we're tasking BGS to do that policy work that legitimately should be undertaken by the agency and the department of corrections I've never had BGS I would not want BGS to say this is the kind of programming that we think is the most effective and state of the art for a particular group of inmates but maybe you want to morph into that role but it seems to me normally the administering department outlines what it is for the building's needs and specifications so I think that's what we're struggling with the role that BGS is being given here and that's why we're having a hard time it was never the intention to ask BGS to do any work on programming and that sort of understanding was simply to understand the shell of a building and the site sort of questions you all clearly have more questions than you're comfortable voting one way or another on I think we did give a submission or say that even in this time frame given the current wording which asks for an RFP to be submitted to the justice oversight he can't need that so we're already slipping the deadlines I'm hoping JFO is listening to this hard to have a conversation with the justice oversight committee at their next meeting to come back to the original motion so my representative is him I don't want to vote your motion because I don't want to kill it that's kind of where I'm going I'm hoping I know so I'm going to begrudgingly recommend that I withdraw my motion I'm going to withdraw my motion in my concern here and I did reach out to Butch Shaw and the representative Shaw and I had a discussion with him and while I didn't get into specific questions about this it was very clear that the discussion that went on at the committee meetings was very beneficial and that they really wanted to get going with this instead of continuing as I've turned it chasing ourselves around a poll just trying to answer questions etc my concern right now and I am going to withdraw the motion is that now we're into the next legislative session and we may not finish the work that this entails in time to be able to affect anything at the next legislative session and that's the reason I'm begrudgingly withdraw I understand that but certainly the further we kick the can down the road the more after we are to lose the ability to take action can I get another motion so I'll move that we defer action until the September meeting I think in the meantime it would be very helpful if we got a clear understanding of the work CSG it's going to do because I don't think they get into the facility of details that we perhaps some people might think I think we need to be I think there more in terms of how you reduce the population what are effective strategies so I think that would be helpful to get some clarity around what that product would be so I'll make the motion that we defer our action until September Sandy Kitchell can I get a second Sandy Kitchell has moved seconded that we defer action on we don't have numbers number G until our September meeting further discussion is not all those that fail to say aye those say no that motion carries and Steve talk about being between us and last just jump in I just want to make some clarity on what we've decided to do with the web security before we close out while we're still sitting here we're writing the letter did we put on doing that and when is that going to get done and how I'm just a little unsure if we did I think it's really important that we weigh in on this but I don't want to just give it so we hadn't actually taken an action and talked about taking more so there's really two approaches we could take as I see this one would be to write a letter from the committee or authorize the chair to write it or to have the chair contact the attorney general's office asking them to intervene or do both my only view at this moment is that I think the attorney general's office should be the one who does it but that's my view and it's because we're going to be back dealing with the wrinkles around the TIF legislation like we do every year trying to customize especially now that we're community doing it so I'm not going to make the motion but I view those as the two choices so I think that I would think it makes more sense for this committee to weigh in rather than the attorney general weighs in it's just the lawyer arguing against another lawyer and the chair of a committee that deals with TIF I have some real concerns about about the way this issue is being handled and being addressed and so I don't mind writing a letter I'm happy to have the money chairs could write a letter I think it would be important that the letter come from me since I've probably been the biggest supporter of TIFs and at least the senate I know you and I aren't generally on the same page funded and so I think that a letter coming out with my name on it somewhere as head of this committee would be on behalf of the committee but to say you're risking your biggest supporter because this is concerning so is it appropriate to make a motion that we authorize the chair to write a letter on the two issues on behalf of the VEPSI committee that's a motion Senator Ansel has moved that it means representative that's Trump it's Trump the chair to write a letter on behalf of the committee requesting that VEPSI not postpone that perhaps he postpone action on informing municipalities given the joint clarity on the lives of clarity on the legal until the legislature is able to meet and wait in to provide clarity you got that Steve good we'll look with you on thank you okay for the discussion if not all those in favor say aye opposed say no I just wanted to take a couple minutes to just say people have asked what is the remedy forecast need for this as we had a 51 million dollar surplus in FY19 we talked about that in FY20 there was a language in the bill that said if the surplus exceeded 20 million dollars for that year we would go to the teacher's note surplus came in at 18.4 million so there would be nothing going forward other than just money available budgeted so is there some place where the actually forecast is telegraphed yeah it's not in the document actually there was a I think a sheet sent out an operating statement could it be something like that the one page sheet because I didn't really understand I saw John's charts in his wonderful cartoons but I had no idea what was happening he didn't say the bottom line today and so that wasn't that probably and we'll be excepted at the board but what becomes meeting board comes not everyone here so we will definitely send out the operating statement after the meeting it would also be what we anticipated but in fact it's going to be the revenue upgrade how much of it was sort of anticipated to support the obligation of funds to the clean water does people have to remember that so and we do have a sheet that has a four at white one page on that but we don't get it in 4-2 we can't encourage our respective members to vote yes or no we won't maybe step and you can send that sheet out but yeah we have it all done and sent right out now the FY21 is a little more confusing on the available bill we're up about 20% we're up 1.7% the problem is that since a lot of what we passed were fees that we're still trying to work with the administration to sort of net out that and figure out how it really ends up but um they turn into direct apps they don't need that even though the revenues are revenue something we actually should consider over time to a lot of the direct apps I'm sorry that's a technical thing it's something we it's revenue we have a lot of revenue that is something to think about how much revenue comes in not through the available revenues we may want to propose something next year to look at that so the raw numbers are driven the 18.4% we'll send out right away the 28 million or so is still being worked on for the next year and since our budget is about 1.6 billion it's about 1.7% growth and that's assuming we don't spend more this year on base expenditures so it's not given our usual cost pressures there still is going to be a gap a pretty sizable gap talking about 4.8 to 6.9 or that's what we're going to work on just a couple of the quick things we're going to send and notice to all of you there's a reference to my fiscal report the past commission has just done a report on demographics it's really interesting what we have a chance to read it we'll send out just a soul link I know it's part of my report and there's a link in that but we can send that out again the other thing is this new federal agreement that's being done now about spending in the last few years not being as concrete as we plan one of the things we're thinking about is to really look at what we should be telling our congressional delegation about needs that we have because there is some more money to play with than there was before and I think maybe some of you work with the administration on and try to think about what type of guidance and I know we're losing the enhanced match that would be an example but are there things that we should advise them on that are important for federal funds? Just a thought we'll play with haven't done anything on that yet but I think we might have an opportunity and that they're all going to go to the budget with a different balance than they had before that's that's it we're trying to show this flag we haven't heard the exact number 7.5% I think they're probably close to the 6% return this year so that will go downwardly that will be work out in the actuaries report there's a question I don't think there are things in the report that you all wanted to focus on we still have clothing and fun that's right we're going to have clothing we're going to take a couple minutes from there sure just we're going to cut you out that's right we can't okay what is it the actual revenues for FY19 came in and the education fund was the revenues were pretty much as estimated so that year looks good we did see a significant downgrade in the sales tax for FY20 so a downgrade over the estimate the sales tax revenue the estimate has come in about $6 million less than we previously estimated which as of right now has eaten up that deficit that surplus that we left at the end of the legislative session we did that yes so and this will all again get updated in November when we do the December 1 letter but as of right now we're fine because we didn't have that that surplus good always good not to spend that on the last set alright would have spent into the reserves yes we would have spent okay other questions always be last yeah alright committee I think that's it unless you have any other business we'll be back in September 19th right 17th 16th Monday 16th that's 16th first that we came up with making sure everybody's okay with those things I have no idea I think the 16th and November 1 should be at 133 Street and 4th October October we did have to send this lots of reminders don't expect this it's up to you by the way okay yeah still have we need a motion to adjourn so moved second wow yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah