 at some point we're going to pay family bill to this committee and we have time right now and we've gone over once early on but we're just getting our feet wet as to what's going on in the house and what your committee did. We're spending the whole morning paid leave today and so if you wanted to give us a 10 minute or so overview or as long as you want we have pay me and we want to get on and he has time is limited so but I thought you could get the general of the general. Yes the general of the general. You've probably been called up before. No, no, I'm at the general committee. I just treated as if I no longer have a name of just the chair. You follow it. People want to talk to the chair. Editing right. No, thank you for having me and there will be. We were at chairs meeting yesterday and I was asked the question. Janet I represent advanced when I were asked a particular question. It's been a month since we passed a bill out of our committee and we've been waiting for boys and means to finish their work on it. So I'm kind of and of course all the other work we've done since that that filled my my short term memory. And so I was asked this question. I was like asked by a journey. So if I get anything wrong, they may know probably not behind me and but the so H107 passed out of our committee 910. We only had 10 members at the time that was right before we had our 11th member appointed by the governor. And so we learned a lot from last biennium on this bill. Mostly about how difficult it was to pass not only through the house, but then and we we left the Senate with a huge lift to make the bill better. We had a very difficult time passing the bill through the house, but this bill is actually remarkably similar to what we passed out of our committee 2 years ago because it retakes right that it because it retains levels of compensation that we feel for the population we're trying to really work with here, specifically people who make less than $55,000 a year that they should have a benefit that replaces their wages period because it's already a struggle enough. If we're not a our committee is going to say if we're not going to invest in ending the cycle of poverty in any way, then why do it? And this bill when people have things that are either an emergency on one's own health or simply having a baby or taking care of their elder parents that they shouldn't be penalized for that and that there should be wage replacement that is paid through an insurance program. We changed the name of this from paid family leave to family medical leave insurance because that's what it is. Right. The numbers that are being deducted from a paycheck are no different than for unemployment or for workers compensation. It is an insurance program that is there to be used when needed. You'll hear from both Damien and from Joint Fiscal about some of the back, you know, some out of a 12-week program statistically across the country in places where this has been an effect. People use approximately eight weeks out of the 12 weeks on average and approximately on average it's an eight-week benefit for people that they use. But like when we talked about paid sick days, the benefit is in the having of it. The using of it is there when we it's there as sort of a relief and a stress reliever but it's a real benefit and it's an insurance product that's not based on experience usage so the price doesn't go up because you use it more and also because it's being tied to an income, it's progressive. So if I make $10,000 a year and the number of the amount of the premium is 0.X% I'm going to pay that but if I make $100,000 a year I'm still going to pay that same percentage so it's very progressive and I know that you started to talk to the attorney about the governor's twin state plan and one of the things that's the hardest part to try to incorporate into positive thinking is the fact that their premium is a premium so it's the same price for everybody. So if you make $10,000 a year and you pay $100 and if you make $100,000 a year and you pay $100 the person's making $100,000 a year is getting 60% of their wage replaced as is the person making $10,000 and to me that is the people at the lower end of the economic spectrum are subsidizing the people at the top which is not what the goal of this particular program was going to be. I just want to ask a question on the side. One of the things that we found that we finalized on work was how remarkably inexpensive this program was and I think we got it down to like 1.018 or something of wages and is that those numbers still holding? The .018 was without a TDI benefit without a dis-personal disability benefit. What's in this bill which is not what you're going to get back from raising means but what's in this bill is a .93% to be split between the employer and the employees. The concept is that it would be split between the employer and the employee which we did not do last year for political reasons. That number now, depending on how ways and means shifts the dials on what the benefit is, that number changed. Even when the reason we kept it at .93 in here was because it wasn't until we were about to vote on the bill that JFO had gotten new numbers from the people in DC who had been doing the modeling. And as of February 13th, that number had gone from .93 to about between .67 and .73. And the benefits that are in this version of the bill, it may not be what you get when it comes across but what we passed out of committee was 12 weeks total. You can use those 12 weeks for any combination of personal, family, elder care, and we added bereavement. And the reason we added bereavement was my experience last summer, my mom was ill and then passed away, was I was her power of attorney. So as long as she was alive, I was her. I could sign documents, I could make decisions with and for her. The second she died, I was no longer a power of attorney for my mother. And just that idea that, oh, I'm going to take elder care from my mom or my dad. And then what happens when they die? You're into planning a funeral. So it's a semantic on one level. I think it's a real thing. I usually don't advocate for the legislation. I have a personal experience quite like that. So you can use bereavement for up to two weeks out of those 12 weeks. And you added personal care back in? Personal care is back in. And that's why the expense is different. So the expense, even at 0.67 or 0.73, obviously substantially less than the 0.93 here. So what would you give any advice for us? Anything in the process that you learned this year? I mean, we went through this ourselves last year. Right. And I think the difficulty is that this is a really, for our committee, this is a really easy policy to embrace. The thinking and the conversation about this in the building, both with, there's a number of people who didn't want to testify to our committee because they felt like they were going to get a fair hearing, which I disagree with. But they've chosen as is their want to fight the battle in the ways it means committee rather than in our committee. That said, almost everybody we dealt with is not as opposed to the bill as they were two years ago. Right. And that was an incredibly pleasant change. It shows evolution of thinking. Sometimes it takes a few years for any bill to get any concept to come through and to get to this point. Right. And so what I see in our work and then in ways it means, ways it means is trying to look at the numbers. And we're trying to look at the policy. And what happens in this building a lot is that what starts off as a really good reason to do this. And there are countless good reasons to do this building. Social, economic, personal and this that affect things. And you're not going to be able to get at what the positive effects are. What is it going to cost the state? How much is the state going to save? If I can take 12 weeks of baby bonding and I don't have to put a kid in childcare. Well, that's a personal saving. But it's also if I'm a two time up to two times poverty level, that's a state savings. And we can't compute that. Right. And while I hesitate to say that this is a family policy that's going to attract people to the state. I'm less about attracting people to the state. They'll come if they want. I want to take care of the people who are here now. I know a substantial number of young people who have chosen to stay in the state. So my experience is why do we need to attract, I know we do. I know all those reasons to do it all. But this is not a policy that I want the Vermont Tourism Bureau to put on the subway cars in New York City to try to get them to move here. That's irrelevant. It's about creating a policy for Vermonters that is going to work, especially for those of us in the sandwich generation who are taking care of elders and children. So my suggestion to you is to stay positive, to remember the positive elements of the policy. We took testimony from Rhode Island. Rhode Island has offered TDI since 1942. And everybody does it differently. Every state is doing it differently. They offer a different rate. They cap it at a certain income level of temporary disability. It's a personal injury. They've been doing it. They've been doing it. They offer up to 30 weeks of personal injury, state run, and then four weeks of family leave only recently. And his suggestion was it's cheaper for the state to run it. Once you get over the hump of creating the reserves, the financial hump, which is scary to a lot of people, then it is always going to be cheaper for the state to run this program. And there's talk about third party administration, which is all valid conversation to have. I have my suggestion for this policy committee is to remember the positive elements of this policy and who it's going to help. When you look at see how many people actually make less than $55,000 a year, how many income taxpayers actually make less than $55,000 a year, this bill is going to positively affect tens of thousands per month. And that's something that finance is going to do what Ways and Means is doing. They're going to try to figure out a way to be comfortable with how we afford it. But again, the difference between now and two years ago is that the sides are closer. People aren't as upset or freaked out about the notion of what this offers. It's a question of what benefit to offer as opposed to offering the benefit or not. And we saw that with the governor's proposal. Is that the fact that the governor and the administration made a proposal about this acknowledges the fact that families, not just young families, but that volunteers can really use this program. We can argue over the details. But I think that's a substantial improvement in the temperature of this conversation. That's good advice. So listen, I want to get back to you guys until 10 o'clock. I appreciate you coming in. Thanks, Tom. May I be coming back? I know there's a lot that you said. Yeah, and again, I know that when you have Ways and Means in, I'll be the other side of the table. I'm sorry. Hopefully it'll see you in confidence. I'm several. I'm several. Yes. So thank you for your time. Thank you for doing pre-homework on this. This is a real point. Just to ask a brief question, which is, did JFO actually do, you made a statement that it was the crux of the difference between the governor's proposal and this proposal. You said it's always cheaper for the state to run the program. Did JFO do that analysis, right? JFO was in the middle of doing, they were there in the middle of doing these numbers. The Department of Labor has been in the middle of redoing the unemployment software in a consortium with other states. There is never going to be a solid number in my mind about whether that would actually cost. The Department of Labor has been reluctant to say, yes, we can do this, or getting a really solid number on how much it would cost to build the program. The discussions over the administration costs are, again, we're using numbers that happen statewide. But because we can't use the federal, we can't piggyback on the unemployment software, apparently. There's a large range of what it would cost both in the administration, and I hesitate, especially because DOL just walked in, I hesitate to say anything definitive on what the costs are, except that which has been estimated, and there are varying numbers of that. So JFO is constantly working on it, they're constantly working with the modeling group in D.C. And again, across the country, there are differences in that. All right, thank you. Yes, there's a seat. At this point, standing feels much better, but I appreciate it. Good morning. Can you give us like a 60 input view of what's been happening at the House, and how great things are as far as you're able to follow us right now? Sure. For the record, Damien Leonard, Legislative Counsel. So you've just heard a little bit about the bill that came out of House General, which was 12 weeks, 100% wage replacement, added, believe it or not, for two weeks, and expanded the list of family members who are covered to include grandparents, grandchildren, and siblings. Yes. It did include, so it looks good. Yeah, so you are looking at Bill as introduced, and the key is to look at Bill as recommended by House General. But let's skip forward now to House Ways and Means as we fly across the country here. And what the discussion there has been, has been same as last biennium, pairing back the benefits and looking at how to administer this and do a program that's affordable for Vermont. So things that they've been looking at there are dialing back their list of family members closer to what's in our existing law. Possibly taking out the replacement leaf. The bill out of House General has a self-implied opt-in. Ways and Means is discussing whether or not to keep that in. And then the, and this is a little bit of a segue into the next thing I'll talk to you about, which is Bill that's currently moving in New Hampshire. And they're also looking at the possibility of bringing in a third party administrator or somehow contracting for a mandatory leaf program. So very similar to what the governor is proposing except for instead of being a voluntary program, being a mandatory program, they're with either a third party administrator or a third party insurance company that the state would then contract with. So the difference is. If two insurers are part of the insurer. So an insurance company means that the insurer holds, they've got the reserves, they hold the risk, et cetera. So with an administrator, they're basically just standing in the place of the state in terms of administering claims and processing contributions and payments and so forth. So, and those are things that are being discussed up there. They've also discussed dialing back the benefits and that's one of the handouts that I gave to KLL for you. Is that in our folder? It's this handout here. So it's the one that looks like this. No. So New Hampshire is the first one to have a proposal do that that I'm aware of that it's actually moved in the legislature. And the news on the New Hampshire bill is today is March 21st. It passed the House yesterday. So it's passed the Senate. It's passed the House. I don't know if the bill needs to be reconciled at all in the conference, but the recommendation out of that changed in the last 24 hours. So I haven't checked yet today. Okay. So that literally changed while Tom was talking. I checked. We had this presented with the governor's proposal presented on Tuesday. Right, Kendall? Yes. Thank you. And it is this proposal would be the only of the states that have passed this. This would be the only one of the third party. Yes. So New Hampshire would be the only one with a third party administrator. And then just like the New Hampshire, there's a parallel governor's proposal that's also getting worked on in parallel with this other proposal. So is the New Hampshire one a mandatory one that's coming from the legislature? So the one from the legislature is mandatory. Governor Sununu has said that he will veto a mandatory program. I don't know if that's changed, but that was the last news story I read. Kendall may actually have more details because they're in regular contact with the administration over there. But my understanding is that just like Governor Scott's administration is working on developing the voluntary proposal in parallel with the mandatory proposal that's being reviewed in the legislature, they're doing the same thing in New Hampshire. I think in hopes in both states that either way everybody can agree on something at the end of the session. So before I get to that, though, just in finishing up my summary of what's going on upstairs. We're talking about benefits. The three models. Yes. So let me... There you go. The latest modeling for House Ways and Means here. If you look at the top of these three models, this is where it was sent back down to the modeler in D.C. And this again is as of yesterday. You'll see that the three models that they looked at were 12 weeks for parental and bonding in all three models. That either eight weeks for family care and own medical leave or nine weeks in model two or six weeks in model three. So three different benefits. And then wage replacement is reduced in all of them as well. So 90% of Vermont livable wage for individuals earning up to the Vermont livable wage and then 50% of any wages above that, up to two and a half times the Vermont livable wage. So it's a little bit higher top benefit, but it's a lower curve getting there than what's in the current bill. And then model two is 90% up to the livable wage. 60% above that, but only up to two times, which is very similar to S-88, which we talked about maybe a month ago now. And S-88, it's 90% and then 60% of your wages up to two times and then 50% of anything above that up to an amount equal to two times the livable wage. So the curve's a little different, but it gets to the same top benefit. And then the final one is 80% up to the livable wage then 60% above that, again up to two times. All three of them are looking at no self-employed opt-in initially. And the committee's talking about whether to maybe have the administration come back with a recommendation on that in the future or to look at that, do it as a study. That would be also self-employed. So it's basically defined based on how you file your taxes. So if you're claiming self-employment income, that's actually what you're looking at. If you're LLC and you operate payroll. So then you would, if you're paying yourself salary, then you'd be paying in contributions to the program so you'd already be covered. So these three models that you have here, will they ask for by the Ways and Needs Committee? These were requested by Ways and Needs. There were a number of different options talked about, and these were sort of the middle ground on those options. Senator Clarkson. So it strikes me, the more people in this pool of bed, the more people, the less expensive, right? The more people contributing to the pool for insurance. So the catch with self-employed is it's an opt-in. Right. So there's maybe self-selection. There might be self-selection, but I would think that that would only help to bring the price down because they can model how many will take advantage of it. So the thing with that is it's not really clear what the impact is. And our modeler, our modeler, I'm not sure, and Juris can talk about this more, but the impression I've gotten is that there's no real good way to model the impact because it's a small group of individuals. They do self-select. And what we've seen is in the new states that have added this, they've added the initial contributions as equal to regular employees. But in California, that has a lot of experience with this. Their contribution rate is something like four times higher than regular employees. So that's... And that might be something that this committee wants to take testimony on if you're interested in if raising means takes it out in their final product and you're interested in adding it back in. You may want to find out why California has laid... I think their rate is like a 5% contribution for self-employed, but it's 1 or 1.1% for regular employees. And so there's a significant difference in those rates and the question is, are they experiencing a great deal of self-selection so people only enroll if they're going to use the benefits? And so there isn't as much of the pooling aspect. Or are they seeing... Is that a factor of something else? And so that's really the question there. I know that the other states that have added that recently have gone the approach of the bill that came out of House General where it's opt in and pay the same contribution rate. Other questions on that? Okay, so the next thing that I would turn your... Sorry, just before we raise the names. The range at currently in Ways and Means is 0.7... They're at high range. And it came out of House General 0.93%. And did you say or did you... Tom said that Ways and Means is the high of 0.73 and low 0.67. Well, so if you look at the modeling, on that sheet there... I didn't see... Oh my gosh, I've got too many things going on here. Is it beginning to rebel? So what you're seeing with the modeling here is the model for the 100% wage replacement has, like Tom said, somewhere between 0.67 and 0.73. And the reason for that is, and Joyce can talk about this more, but the earlier modeling that we had access to included years during the recession. So the wage base and other information threw off the model. We now have an updated model that has, I think it's from 2012 to 2016. So you're well into the recovery. And so with the stronger economy you see the rates are able to come down. And what you're looking at with these models here, if you look at the bottom line cost as a percent of total earnings, you're looking at 0.5, 0.55, and 0.42. And then the only question there is if you're going to adjust your wage base so it doesn't capture all of the total earnings, those would skew up. And the current bill out of House General captures about 95% of total earnings. House Ways and Means is talking about instead of, if you remember last year's bill had $150,000 wage base, adjusted for inflation, which requires the state to update their wage base for inflation every year. What's been talked about in Ways and Means and what might be added in or replace it, that wage base is just using the Social Security taxable maximum, which is $132,000, I think. And Kendall can correct me if I'm wrong. Did I get it? I misstated it the other day. You misstated it and it didn't go up, but she was right there. She was right there. And the governor's proposal also works up of the Social Security wage base. So it's something that people are familiar with. It's used for other programs, and the federal government publishes it every year. So it would be an easy thing to track. A question regarding the bills that passed and captured that are mandatory. Is there a rate bar mandatory? Is there a tax rate contained in that bill? Let me take a look at my notes on that bill. Is it 0.5? Yeah, so it's 0.5%. Which is closer to what's coming out of ways and means on their latest modeling with this progressive rate. They're looking at 0.42 to 0.55, depending on the benefit. Well, that's sort of down where they were last year. It's bringing it back down to closer to where it was last year. And this is still with your care for your own injuries here. Which, if you remember from this committee's work last year, dramatically decreased the cost if that was removed. But keeping it in keeps it higher. So that's what the difference is between last year and this year. Yeah, personal care. So if we could turn to Hampshire now, I think what I've sent to the community is, oh, I did send the outlines. There's a bullet outline of Senate Bill 1. What it is? Yeah, so that was they symbolically introduced it as Senate Bill 1. You don't have it. We can talk about this spreadsheet, which has most of the key points. That's it. Oh, I don't need a copy. So summary of SB1. Do you have another copy? No, we do. SB1. Yep, SB1. So David, on these models, how easy are, I don't know if I can't find the words, how easy is it to get them? Does it cost us money? Do they turn around very quickly? So they are doing a pro bono for us at this point. The turnaround is dependent on their work because they have to work for their paying clients first but if they can fit us in. Yeah, so they do have to keep their doors open and their lights on down there. But so far they've been able to accommodate us with, you know, sometimes delays of a week or two. And the longest one was when they had to recalibrate the model. My understanding is that depending on the nature that changes, sometimes it's very easy for them to rerun the numbers. Sometimes it takes more work and the delay may be longer. Joyce is the one who's been working very closely with Jeff Hayes, the modeler. And she can talk a little bit more as the committee gets interested in modeling results about what the considerations are and just the bottom line is we just have to remember that because they're doing a pro bono, we may not be able to get an overnight turnaround, which we all might like. So typically that's part of why Ways and Means is also modeled a range of options is to get an idea of what the ballpark is as they're continuing to think about this. I can ask this about the Ways and Means. I think it's the case. Well, I don't want to prejudge, but what Ways and Means come out with is last year it didn't really change that much in appropriations, right? Yeah, last year's changes in appropriations were minor changes around funding the startup, basically providing explicit language allowing the program to borrow against future receipts. So just to quickly go through what passed in New Hampshire, their program applies to the state and all private employers. Political subdivisions, so towns and counties, can opt in if the benefits under the statewide program are at least as generous as the benefits that they already provide to their employees. In some other words, they're not allowed to water down their benefits. I'm not sure why that got in there, but apparently that was an issue in New Hampshire. So it's mandatory for the state and private employers. It is an opt-in program for municipalities and other political subdivisions of the state, and they're only allowed to opt-in if the statewide program benefits are at least as generous or more generous than what they already offer their employees, and their collective bargaining units if they have one ratified, they're chose to opt-in. That is weird. They made it mandatory for state, but not for municipal or county employees. Yes, so, and that is a New Hampshire thing that I couldn't explain to you. And I'll just stop right there. So that is a unique feature of New Hampshire. The other piece in New Hampshire is they delay the effectiveness for employers that have collective bargaining agreements until their first collective bargaining agreement after the law takes effect. And then employees of a political subdivision who, so, employs a municipality who are not members of collective bargaining, in some other words, the non-unionized member employees and municipalities and other political subdivisions, if their employer chooses not to opt-in, those employees can opt-in individually. So that's another sort of unique feature to this. So going back to collective bargaining, what is the lay of the land of collective bargaining unit has greater benefit than the state and program presently? So one thing we could do is... New Hampshire did it for that situation. So New Hampshire in that situation said you can't water down your collective bargaining agreement. The non-governmental union? So I would actually have to look at... I'd have to look at for private employers. I think because they're not allowed to... because the law doesn't apply to them until their next collective bargaining agreement, it basically means that they'll be able to collectively bargain around the benefits and whether to supplement the state program or negotiate for better wages if they're going to lose benefits or something like that. So, but I would have to look closer at the New Hampshire bill, but I believe that that's the idea there is because your delaying effectiveness, they can bargain the impact of the new law on the collective bargaining agreement. So just a couple other highlights from New Hampshire. They cover grandparents, which is something that our existing unpaid leave law does not cover. It covers leave for parents and parents in law, but not for grandparents. So that's something to consider. The covered reasons for leave include the military leave that Massachusetts has. Contribution rate is 0.5%, as Kendall mentioned. And then there is an option from employers to opt out of the state program by providing their own coverage through self-insurance and employer benefits program, purchasing private insurance or some combination of those. So that's an interesting feature of New Hampshire. And then the other thing is contributions. Who pays the contributions is the employer's option. So contributions default to the employee, but the employer can opt to pay as much as they want. So it allows employers to differentiate themselves. And then leave is 12 weeks a year. Benefits are up to 60% of the employee's average weekly wage with a maximum weekly benefit of $896.75 and a minimum benefit of $125. Employees have to provide 30 days notice for all planned leaves. It looks like the bulletin says four out of the last five complete counts course looks like the line division is involved in the registration. So they're using their UI law as the basis for how claims and appeals and benefit payments are all processed. So they basically do a wholesale application by cross-reference. That's what we did for the benefits paid by the taxes. It's similar to what we did. Those is even simpler from a language standpoint. And that it just says the provisions of RSA X to Y shall apply to the processing and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then the question is, who's going to have to carry out those laws? Is it the third party administrator of the state? And we'll get to that in just a second. So employees have to not only provide 30 days notice to the state or the administrator, but also to their employer before taking the leave, except when it's an unexpected leave. So premature birth, car accident. Is that a parent? Are they going to have to leave? So, but it would be... Well, that's taking care of parents. I mean, look, there may be one parent left, so you have to go deal with that. If it constitutes a serious illness. So that's the thing here. So the medical leave is only going to give you leave to care for that remaining parent. If they have a serious illness or other health condition that requires inpatient care in the hospital or in-home care under the direction of a physician or other medical professionals. So that's kind of the issue there. So if it's just that you have another parent and you need to go out and settle the estate and arrange for their care, that wouldn't necessarily be covered. You need to have a doctor certify that the leave is necessary for a medical reason. So they extend job protection to employers with 20 or more employees, which is different than their existing law, which follows the federal law at 50 or more. What's the house of? The house is still where we were last year. Ten or more employees working an average of 30 hours a week. So it's the more protective of the two job protection standards in our existing law. Did the provision of the next available job survive last year? That did survive. But it hasn't survived in the house? No, that did survive through House General. I don't know what House Ways and Means is going to deal with that. The eligibility, so they do kind of a dual piece. So you have to have paid contributions for at least six months, and you have to earn a certain minimum amount of wages, which is the equivalent of 1,040 hours times New Hampshire's minimum wage, same as what we're actually doing in the current versions of the bills. But the requirement of requiring contributions for at least six months means that provided you earn the minimum wage and work at least 1,040 hours in those six months, everyone's on the same status regardless of what your income level is. So the thing with the bills that came out of House General is someone who has a higher income will be eligible sooner than someone who's earning minimum wage. Well, they're still in markup, so they've discussed the issue. They're aware of New Hampshire's approach, so they may address that. And then this does allow a safety valve for the commissioner of labor and their equivalent of our commissioner of labor. I think it's their commissioner of employment security or something like that. I'm seeing a head nod, so I think I got that right. Can turn some of the dials in terms of the amount of premiums, the length that they leave, and the amount of weekly benefits by up to 10% in order to preserve the solvency of the fund, which is a state fund, and then they have to report back in two years regarding rate adjustment and so forth. The administration of the program, so the way that's set up is that the state has to seek out a third-party administrator, and they have to issue an initial RFP by this coming July 30th, so it's very tight timeline. And then a proposal can only be selected if it's able to both meet the statutory requirements and do so at less cost than if the Department of Employment Security administered the program. And if they cannot find a third-party administrator who can do that, the department is required to stand up the program on its own. So, and they're required to do so by January 1st of next year. So it's an extremely tight timeline. Because they're not going to hear back from those. Right, so they're required to start collecting contributions without another change to the law by January 1st. So, like I said before, my understanding is that the New Hampshire governor has already stated publicly that he intends to veto this bill, so it may be that this is just part of a bargaining process with the governor. The other thing that you can see there since we've heard about, not just from our own administration, but also from other states, the length of time it takes to stand up a state program, either they're anticipating that they will find a third-party administrator, or they're expecting that they may do like Massachusetts did, where they passed the grand compromise and then they found some of the problems with the law and did a technical correction bill. A few months later, Massachusetts didn't have the issue of timing, which is a significant one, but that's something theoretically they could come back. But I don't know enough about how the New Hampshire general court works to know what the chances of them coming back in, say, September or October, if they're, you know, 90 days to go and they don't have a third-party administrator at that point. So the handy way to look at it is I've prepared a chart that includes... This big one that Cheryl has out. Yes, so that is actually the simplified chart. So if you remember the chart I had for... I may have actually handed out the updated version earlier this year. This is just New England and New York, so this is what's happening in our corner of the country, not looking at states like Oregon and Washington and, well, I guess Oregon hasn't done it, but Washington, California, where they're different parts of the country, much bigger than us and so forth. So this kind of breaks down what's covered, how long their programs have been around, how many weeks of leave are provided, and what their timeline is. And I've added New Hampshire's proposed Senate Bill 1 as it passed the Senate to here, and I still need to check to see if the as-pass-the-house matches up to what passed the Senate. You can kind of see all of the details of the different proposals broken out. Our governor's plan, H107, as it passed House General, and then as soon as we have something out of House Ways and Means, or probably really as-pass-the-house, I will insert that in here to replace what passed House General and bring an updated version. That's a couple of things, and I'm sure TDI Massachusetts passed more weeks for TDI than for parental leave. Well, let me go back to the states of New York and Rhode Island and TDI. How is that funded? So in Rhode Island, I believe that it's all funded through a single tax. It's 1.1% on the first 69,300 in wages. All paid by who? And that's paid by the employee. Employee. So it's all employee paid in Rhode Island. And it's been since 1942. So their own disability has been since 1942. The family care and birth and adoption was added much more recently. I think that was 2013 and acted in 2014 effective. Is New York similar paid by the employee? So New York is unique. So if you look down at the bottom of that page, they can charge 1.5% of weekly wages that they're capped at 60 cents a week per employee, plus the cost of family care, which is solely borne by the employee in New York. And then the employer pays the remainder of the cost for the TDI. But New York also sets it up so that they have 25 private insurers in their market. And if you provide workers' comp in New York, you're required by law to provide these other types of insurance. And so as an employer, you have the option of purchasing from one of these private insurance companies and just getting it basically as a rider on your workers' comp. Or the state has its state insurance funds that competes with the private insurance companies in the market and also provides this. So, but they're in New York, I think it is, you know, there's a viable competition between the private insurance companies and the state. So it's a market where there's widely competition and people are going on the basis of cost based on their situation as an employer. It says here, I thought the voters' plan was to excessive price. Cover your own disability. Yes, the governor's plan covers six weeks for anything that's covered by the Federal Family Medical Leave Act, which covers family care, birth, your own disability, and leave for qualifying military exigencies if you have someone being deployed or who's come back injured. So that's a difference in the governor's plan. Massachusetts treats that just like there were any other in terms of funding it as any other family members. Yeah, Massachusetts funds everything through the same mechanism. And it's the, you'll see here that we have it marked as 0.315% with a little asterisk next to it. And that's because the aggregate contribution rate will be 0.63%. Employees are responsible of 100% of the family leave premium and 40% of medical leave. And employers are responsible for the remainder of medical leave which includes family care leave and military leave. And according to their projections this works out to roughly 50-50. So we've put it in as 0.315. But that was one of the things where that's what their model predicted. It's not clear that it's actually going to end up being exactly 50-50. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. We'll take a break at 10.30 for 15 minutes. Thanks, Nick. Governor of your office. Heather, do you hear what I'm going to have to look like? Which one of you want to go first? You have the next 10 hours. I know you have to leave also. Should we go together? Sure. Presentation twice. So I just presented and go off. You did? Because H390... No. S151. Thank you. S151. Can you go off? That's weird because the bill that has 16 sponsors came here. I know you might want to speak to them. But I certainly am not involved in how the bills go. Where our bills is centered around providing the insurance coverage to state employees. So my guess is that's why it went to go off. Exactly. But I am lucky that history has been coming to your presentation twice. I should be able to join. Do you want to join us? Or at least be able to join us. You're so saying. You're standing all happy to be here. So thank you for the invitation to come back this morning. I think we were last year at the end of January for the record. We're here with Governor Scott's office. And... Governor Gaffney, Deputy Commissioner of Insurance. DFR. DFR. Really an overview of what's happening. Sure. Yep. We're happy about it. Yes. Thank you. So we do have some updates. Since the last time we were here. If anyone wants me to give a quick high level one overview again of the governor's proposal. I can do that. Otherwise we'll jump right into our updates. Okay. Sure. So what Governor Scott and Governor Sununu proposed was creating a voluntary paid family leave insurance program. And how that would work is we are taking the two state employee workforces and combining them. That's just under 20,000 lives. New Hampshire has 10,000 per minute classified employees. Vermont has, I'm sorry, they should not be used or classified, but they have 10,000 permanent employees. And Vermont has 8,500. So 18,500 lives. We'd be providing our state workforces six weeks at 60% wage replacement, as Damien said, for federally qualifying events under the federal FMLA. We as the employer of that group would be offering to cover 100% of the cost for the state employees. And we would be doing this through an insurance carrier. So when we would be selecting through in our P process, the insurance carrier for the state workforce, we would require that insurance carrier to let private businesses opt in to get the coverage. And I say private business, but it could be a sole proprietor. It could be a municipality. It could be a school district. It could be nonprofit. It could be anybody who wants to opt in. And concurrently, if you worked for an employer that did not offer this coverage, there would be a mechanism. So individually you could opt in. We envision potentially do like an open enrollment. That way there's access for everybody that wishes to have this insurance coverage for themselves. So that, again, that's like the very... Yes. So these are the updates. So since we were with you last, we put out a request for information. So back in December, January, we were having informal conversations with insurance carriers and they have voted us that they were thinking it would be around 250 per state employee. And so for us in Vermont, that would come out to about 2.5 million a year out of the general fund. And the governor, if we were to be able to come to a consensus and get this off the ground, we think we could start offering it in 2020 because the insurance carriers have the assets and have the capital to be able once that RFP is signed to start paying out benefits should somebody qualify or again, insurance coverage should someone qualify. So we in the FY20 budget put in 1 million as a placeholder for kind of half a year thinking that we might be looking at a July 2020 launch if we were to be able to come to an agreement. So we put out the request for information to formalize those cost estimates to be able to give you something in writing about from the insurance carriers and to again get a more formal kind of gauge of interest and what they might be willing to offer. So we put that out with the date on February 27th and we closed it during town meeting week. We got seven responses back, six from insurance companies and one from a third party administrator. So I have sent to Kayla all seven of our responses. For the most part, we got permission to share them unredacted, which is great. So you can see everything that we are seeing. I printed out two copies today that the deputy commissioner can kind of run through as an example in terms of what we have gotten back. And then if you wish to view all seven, they're posted on your website, but not to bury in paper. I just brought two, for example. So this that I'm handing out is kind of a summary of what was in the responses and the cost to do it as the governor's proposed. And I will pass it off to the deputy commissioner and let me know if you want me to pass those around or what. Thank you. Yeah. So the overview doc document that just went around, I think gives a good, highlight and I can give you a little more additional updates. But I think the important takeaway is that there was significant interest. We had six carriers that represent over 2.2 trillion in assets with average experience of 140 years. One of those being third party administrator. And about the same third party which there's a deputy commissioner and the deputy commissioner. No, I don't believe they responded. Not at all. But they also have experience in some of the other states including New York, New Jersey and California. In terms of strength, when we do our due diligence at the department, we look for obviously financial strength and claims paying ability. That's the key of any insurance promise. In terms of timeliness, it's important I think that this type of program that the administration of claims, the identification of eligibility is done in a timely fashion. These carriers already have an infrastructure in place to handle those things. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. Pause there for a second. I'll pass around the Anthem RFP. But if you flip page three, there's a little chart as to their average response times. You don't want to do this for everybody. But page three, just to illustrate that. We'll talk about one more. Sorry. It says page three, but it might actually be page four. The number is a little weird. So I will highlight on this. You see SSD in New Hampshire because it was a joint RFP with New Hampshire. So some insurance carriers replied to New Hampshire, some to Vermont, some to both. This person chose to put New Hampshire on a cover page. I'll pass it on that life. It doesn't say Vermont. Yes. That's right. Yeah. I think that's a good example of kind of the different components of what transpires during a claim. And just where we are in the processes, where we've received all the RFI responses, we reviewed them, we're providing this summary now. We've decided from based on that, and actually in the RFI, I kind of asked for additional kind of thoughts and comments. And while we got some in the responses that we're covering today, there were additional questions that we felt like individual one-on-one in conjunction with New Hampshire, we are doing. So we actually had two one-on-ones yesterday. We're having more today and on into the early part of next week, which really allows us to kind of delve into the details of their readiness to serve this and their interests to just, you know, sometimes there's a response to an RFI because of a deadline, but then through the conversations, you can really ascertain whether the interest is still there or if it's stronger than even anticipated in writing. So that's kind of where we are in that process. If you want to answer this or not, but do you see, let's assume that the administration wants to come to an agreement on this, and it has a mandatory element, and this government doesn't need it, like it's being threatened there. Is there an affidavit for all this still in terms of third-party administrators? Yes, yes. You could use a third-party administrator or an insurance carrier in a mandatory program. I think, Damien, when you talked about New York a little bit, but New York's program has run through, I think it's 26 insurance carriers. And that's one of the things that New Hampshire allowed, but in the fall, if you couldn't save any money, then you go back to the state. Well, we do have experience of other, at least with TDI programs, we have experience with insurance companies. Yeah, I'm looking at kind of at Jess and at Kevin. Do we have a TDI program in Vermont? I didn't think that you did. I didn't think that you did. Not in Vermont. Not in the private market. There's different versions of disability programs in the marketplace. I would say... This is where any work, regardless of which direction is going, there's something to... Yeah, we have a certain discipline we follow, and actually this was like an extra step, because you could have just moved to an RFP, but that would have been not wise, because we really need to vet the issues and now have these additional conversations. DFR has done the credit study and the workers' comp study. We know how to kind of follow a certain discipline. Yeah, we have a good balance of people with insurance experience and legal experience to work through both of those issues. So that's where we are. So we talked about the ability to do this timely, do this in a rather immediate fashion. They're kind of ready and able to... They're poised to do this. Kendall already talked about the cost. What we have in here is like an example of one of the respondents. We're going to continue to work through the cost, and I'll talk a little bit more about that. But generally, they're in that $250 range. We're going to translate it as 2.7 to pay for a fine. The examples we were given from the runs that are being done and ways of being raised without saying who's going to pay, and I think it was like 0.3 to 0.6. They were lower. 0.4 to 0.5. It's in that general same range. There's like any of you talking about, you know, average wage of 50 to 60,000 at the state employee level. So that's the cost. We did talk about the employee... Sorry. That's okay. I mean, it seems for lack of a better word. I can't think of anything. The governor's plan is less generous than the ones that are being considered there. Why is it the cost less? Good question. Well, I think it's not really an equal comparison right now because I think you have... There's a comparison that's happening now about operational costs, like the ongoing costs, but the difference between the governor's plan and the various plans in the depth in the bodies is that it doesn't contemplate infrastructure costs and startup costs. And, you know, we've done some estimates that, you know, if you go into the out years, you're talking anywhere from 70 to 90 million dollar additional costs. So you're saying that these figures from raising means and these runs are just for ongoing benefits and they would be higher if you added in the upfront costs. Absolutely. Whereas the insurance companies in the third-party, they're adding that in from the beginning? Right. They've got these national programs. So they're already well established. They're not turning on any additional IT levers. They're already in place. And we are having conversations with Jay... ongoing very productive conversations with JFO to when they come out with, like, a final modeling spreadsheet that we'll hopefully have some of both consensus on. Perfect. Yeah, exactly. The last time... We got the cost down a lot. It was debatable, but... we also had a phase in so that in the first few years you were collecting benefits to pay for the administration and then you'd pay benefits out at a later date. Right. So that... Okay. Yeah. We have models that were delivered to us this morning that does have an administrative cost of 5% in it. Beyond going... So that's the administration. So that's actually the prime of the example that Kendall showed in the RFI response. Yeah. That's the administrative cost. But not the initial software development, program development cost. In other words, hiring the people who built from on Health Connect to build the system to operate this. That's correct. That's correct. Yes. There we go. Yeah. So what... the Agency of Digital Service and Jess, please chime in if I have these numbers wrong, has estimated that it would be about $11 million to build the IT infrastructure to start and then I think about a $5 to $6 million on going costs to maintain it. And then VDAL would need about 60, 60 new employees to administer it. DC, who says of a similar popular... How many? 60. So DC who has a similar population in their pool is on target to hire 124 people to administer it. So it's not, again, we're not coming up with numbers that are not similar to what other states, if you pull how many staff other states have hired to be able to run their programs. We're in that ballpark. I mean, again, DC is 124. VDAL is thinking maybe 60. So... So in other words, what you're saying is the numbers that you're seeing here, such as this 0.50 to 0.55 understates it because the costs, those initial costs are not included. And I don't think, again, you should have to, I don't think she's trying to understate anything. They're very fluid, ongoing conversations that we're having with her and with ways and means to try to get to like what's the best, if there's like an apples to apples comparison, what does that look like? So those are like, again, we talked for a while yesterday morning. I can just say we're going to be talking again today, like they're very fluid. I just want to add that I don't think what was included in this consideration, we did send, and Commissioner Peject did send Joyce a new spreadsheet helping kind of create that apples to apples comparison, which she did not get to present to the Ways and Means Committee yesterday. So we have been conversating about that and going over that with her as well. So that exists and is being considered. So, Mr. Chair. Yes. Since the three of us were part of this discussion last year, I feel like the information we're getting now differs significantly from the information we got last year at Consenings. Well, last year, yeah. Land conversations are going on. Yes, absolutely. I was trying to understand. Because the experts could come to some consensus, but last year we came in and originally started with an $11 million, $10 million cost. And we felt we got it down to less than a million. Because so that was a whole debate because we were just going to piggyback on, you know, the wage earnings from UI, piggyback from, the tax department came in and they said, yeah, they just also do it pretty easily, cut these checks. But that's last year. So, you know, we'll hear from the parties let them keep working on it. Perfect. So we had some planned design discussions about progressive premiums. So premiums are more tight or more income-sensitive. So that's one potential option is that the premiums are a percentage of wage versus a per-member. The original had a plan. The RFI asked for input on both. So we laid out what we thought the plan design should be. But the reality is you want to then engage in this process. So you know what's realistically that can be actually delivered in the marketplace. And we've got to be somewhat progressive in setting the contribution or the relative pace. I mean, the benefit rate is based upon your earnings. Why shouldn't the premiums be based upon your earnings? Exactly. And then just to segue, you just segue into the next item, which is the progressive benefit. Where you could look at a benefit that is more robust for the wage earners that are below the median as the wage earners that are above. The general response so far has been don't try to get that too segmented. If you do it that way, it's a little easier to administer. Some may say a single percentage is the easiest way to administer it. But I think I'd like to pause there on kind of a, I think an interesting learning in our discussions. It's not really a learning for me because I came from the insurance background is that the 60% benefit has a lot of merit. I know we've heard discussions about 100% wage replacement, but the 60% merit benefit provides a material wage replacement that's not subject to FICA. So it's a little bit more on the net than 60%. But also what the insurance companies experience is the return to work results are much more kind of a, you know, there's a joint effort there for return to work, right? You're not going to be incented to push out. I appreciate the comment, but I don't think we want to get that grant anymore right now to say more. But it is convention in the disability market that you have generally a 60% benefit. There's no disability products that have 100% wage replacement. And then in terms of administration and what these carriers can do in terms of group size, they can go down to groups of, you know, two or three. They ensure groups as large as 200,000 so they can handle all aspects of the group. I'll pass this. So MetLife, for example, talks about how they can get saved can work with parties of two to parties of 200,000. Yeah. So that's not an employee. That's parties up. So what they're saying is that they could, it would be, I don't know, no problem. So what they're trying to illustrate is that they would likely be equipped to help with the individual enrollment if just the one person rolling or if you're a business of two, or if you're a business of 200,000 if you were opting in. Got it. Yeah. Got it. And I guess that's a good segue to the next item which is adverse selection. Where the discussion on that is is typically in the employer that would not opt in with 100% employee participation or not at all. If an employer chose not to participate, an individual employee that worked for that employer could then get access to the market. And of course, there is some potential self-selection there. So the cost for those plans could be higher. We have had initial discussions about what kind of mechanism we would use for the non-group, either the sole proprietors or individuals or employers that don't opt in and we could affect some pooling mechanisms to do that in a more cost-efficient way. Is there any discussion about requiring an employer batch for the employee that works to opt in? No. So if you're saying I'm not offering this, but then an employee individually decides they want to purchase it, would the employer be compelled to offer a match to them? No. I mean that goes to, again, what the governors are trying to facilitate is a voluntary approach that makes rates affordable so that people are incentivized to join in and that there's universal access, but not compelling an employer to have to pay should they choose to opt out. And? Yeah. Well, there's other mitigators for adverse selection. So there's plan design mitigators, like having a very kind of narrow open enrollment period, having an elimination period or waiting periods. These are all different levers that the carrier would, you know, could do in a plan design for a particular employer to mitigate costs. So maybe there's the standard plan and if they want to mitigate costs they could create a plan design that could lower costs even further or perhaps get the cost for a small group down to the equal to the state rate. And the other feedback we're getting so far in the plan is it's voluntary and it's voluntary in terms of participation rate. It's voluntary for people. It's voluntary for employers to opt in, but it's also voluntary in terms of how many of their employees participate. As it's kind of laid out in the RFI, the early feedback we're getting is that the cost will be impacted when participation is less than 100%. Right. Which is what I was trying to get at earlier. It's really actually a more significant, I think, plan design to mitigate adverse selection than the size of the group itself. Even down to groups of 20 at 100% participation they can they can forecast experience similar to a larger group as long as there's 100% participation. When you get to a real small group it's more volatile because you could have an individual with a group of five where it has more impact to the actual results. Voluntary work. Let's say you have a business of 15 who makes the choice whether on a voluntary basis or whether on a voluntary basis. Imagine vision and dental. Business chooses when you're signing up for your health benefits get your basic health insurance and then you can elect if you want to purchase vision or dental or life insurance or other add-on products. There might be a situation where you were all my employees and I said I've opted in to a paid family leave insurance program but you can choose whether or not you want to take it but only this side of the table takes it and there would only be 50% participation rate when this side of the table chose not to purchase that coverage for themselves. So the employer makes the initial decision of whether open this benefit to the employees but he says that you have to pay for it. They would decide so an employer could decide like other benefits how they want to do the cost share and of course we've decided we're going to pick up 100% of the premium but when it comes to the example of where the employer says I want to offer this benefit to my employees provided the employees pay for it. They could choose to do that or they could choose to split it 50-50 or they could choose to do that. Let us make sure they choose to have the employee pay for it. Does the employee have to pay for it? If the employee wants it and they say but why they might make that choice to say the whole premium is that they would get a better rate likely for their employees and if the employees had to just opt in individually through the individual market. Right. But there's no employer skin for the game so why wouldn't we if you're doing it that way I'm not saying I'm in any way in favor of that but why wouldn't we say to all employers you have to opt in and then you give your choice to the employees whether they want to pay for it based by case basis. So you have so that would then potentially come back to our job protection statutes and that by telling the employers that they have to offer it I'm trying to think you might be able to do that I'm just trying to think about if it would complicate again what the governor is trying to get away is putting this mandate on employers if they feel like they cannot offer it I'm just could I come back to you on an answer on that as I stumble around you might be able to do that but I'm trying to weigh that put that out in my mind. It would necessarily be a big deal to the employers if the employee had the individual choice of whether they pay for it. If they like to take it and so that is similar to the bill passed last year that it was still that was we can talk about that I would think practically speaking a small employer would actually discuss this with their employees and say this is what we're considering but it would be paid by employees and not just put something out there that employees wouldn't take they would already know that there would be interest on the part of their employees and then if that's the case then employees could pay whatever portion of that bring. If that was doable and then if we agreed to splitting it then we'd be back to our place. I was going to say it seems awkward for an employer to make this decision and then not offer at the same time say this is value so I'm going to opt in to have my employees have this precious benefit but I'm not going to have any skin for the game so I am just I want you to get back to us I think a lot of these employers already offer a suite of benefits that they pay for I don't think their approach would be inconsistent with what they already do for their employees I always think of it in those terms this is like a it's not going to be part of their major medical but it's part of their kind of group benefit pack but that brings up a good point which is if they're offering it and this maybe is a better deal would they be able to then split the cost of it according to what they already have I mean they may already have a split they can facilitate based on the flexibility built into this they can facilitate any type of posture for their employees you guys I have to do a conference call now so you can come back at 10.45 and speak to us for 15 more minutes I know you have to leave early we want to be up in house general at 11 so I don't know if we're going to maybe at 10.45 I can maybe have 10 minutes if you want to about what's going on with New Hampshire and then if you have more insurance questions you can stay and we can split the ticket okay great 10.45 they only have alright so the committee Damien touched on the status of what's going on in New Hampshire I don't I think Damien covered it fairly well but from my conversations they have passed a bill that Damien described it's mandatory 60% wage replacement for 12 weeks looking at using the third party administrator possibly they expect that that will reach Governor's new desk in about a week this is like the not fun stuff to talk about but he has publicly said that he is not supportive of that bill and plans to veto it however they are continuing to have conversations with their legislature about if there's a path forward looking at his plan looking at I think again similar to us all sorts of options so we're very hopeful that it's not you know it's not dead that there's still going to be ongoing conversations and work together around this issue in both states we also and again like I said I took off to House General but I will leave you with our deputy commissioner and we can ask all sorts of fun insurance questions to when I leave that is outside of my expertise that we do understand from the Department of Financial Regulation that on both sides so should one state say no it doesn't prohibit the other from being able to set up the structure independently and having a very similar rate amount so in the insurance world commission or PCHEC is in for me and Kevin to elaborate he actually said to me the difference between like when New Hampshire is originally looking at this you know 10,000 lives and 8,500 lives in insurance world is almost laughable that you would not really dramatically change what kind of rates you get so we could again depending on our work together and it's a dance with New Hampshire if we need it to framework for the legislature in terms of their planning no they have a longer session than us actually so they I think anticipate being there until like earlier mid June so I was saying when I was talking with our counterpart you know when our budget is getting baked we're like a lot of just different things all fall into place for us that's really like April and he was like for us that's late May early June and I was like well it's interesting in terms of staying on a similar path so they do they will be there a little longer than we will so they we've really been like I'm like constantly contacting them like as a go as a band they're like we have much more time than you do I know exactly yeah so they they are on a slower time so all my stuff over there you know I think Commissioner Pechak's gonna be over there so let me know so I can leave you behind that's fine so if it's so you want to go like you could say correct we'll divide and share our time thank you all yes and if you have any questions you know where to find me the stuff you provide is very helpful so Kevin what else would you like to share with us yeah I think just to finish out where we are in the process I think we're gonna be working with the Department of Labor and maybe other sources I have to really provide more demographic information for the our respondents and I would say just think of it in these terms when a carrier can more precisely estimate their exposure understand their exposure they can price it more more appropriate oftentimes price it lower because the more you know about what your the promise is the better you can price it more competitively so we're gonna do our due diligence to provide additional demographic data we have probably a lot on the state government side but we also have a lot through either the Bureau of Labor Statistics and those type of sources where we can provide the carriers with more so you've done an RFI you're doing one or more it's the kind of the continuation of the RFI process right so what happens which is probably likely to happen as we all know is that the House has a non-voluntary program that has been said that insurance companies still might be interested in running that mandatory program is there a way to get or are you intending to get feedback on what the House passes well I think where we are in the process it could be that we're not really going to be through the RFP I don't think we'll be through the RFP process before the end of the set the RFP is not out so we want to have these individual conversations because again we want to make sure that it's much more structured than RFP you know it's kind of you have a certain structure you have a sealed bid process and there isn't an opportunity for back and forth so we want to get it right the RFP so that's why the RFI is instructive to frame out what we want in the RFP so we're not there yet and the RFP would be flexible enough to look at various models because you're not going to have an answer what this looks like until we're getting an A yeah so that's one of the things we're actually discussing do we lay out an alternative AB I think those are all the considerations right now but I think the more information we can provide either in the RFP you know or in advance of the RFP in terms of demographic data we want to do that so that the respondents come with really a more precise product and I think the more precise we are the more opportunity we have to low cost precise still may by the way knowing this building this is going to be one of the last things decided so we can do an A and B that would help I hope you will do that as opposed to just doing an A because that could be just a waste of money but anyhow thank you very much you're welcome if you have questions for me about the Department of Labor or if I can come back with the Department of Labor I have a couple of questions I can definitely try I was just wondering in terms of talking about $11 billion is that is that because of the attempt to integrate with the new computer model? yeah so just with the Vermont Department of Labor I believe it was $11.3 million and that was an estimate given by the agency of digital services that is not assuming that we would be able to integrate with the UI system so that is a new system building I think over 3 years a new IT system firmly decided that is it because of the other states that you can't integrate or is it because it's too long down the road? yeah great question so I do want to point out that there is no other state that has ever integrated a any type of paid family program into their UI system so the existing systems have either been built from scratch you see New York has the private model all other states have integrated into their TDI systems and obviously Vermont does not have one it has not been firmly decided that we cannot do it at this point in this juncture where we are in upgrading our UI system we just don't know if it's going to be possible so the federal government is paying the entire price tag of that upgrade for the Department of Labor and the consortium that we are a part of so I think Cameron explained a little bit either here I think he explained a little bit here Cameron what are you I director that any changes that need to be made to that consortium delay the the go live date for other states which because we're in that consortium we do not have the ability to do so in the future we're not ruling out that it's not a possibility it would have to be completely state funded and it is not a federal piece of that program unfortunately it's it would be almost impossible for us to estimate the cost right now we do have a go live date that is in fluctuation but it is hopefully next early or late next spring 2020 so we could potentially come back with a better answer as to whether or not they could be built together at that time so one of the things that will be helpful to get back from you it's not urgent but you know we spent a lot of time on this last year and we kept going back and forth with the Department changing the bills the issues that were being raised by Cameron and others but we were striving to make it as administratively simple as possible for the tax department you guys, tax department you guys using your eligibility determination we made trying to make the eligibility determination very easy so it would be helpful to get a preliminary analysis of why you think the bill that passed out of this committee last year would still cost $11 million but would cost something less and why we tried to bring the cost down and we did and we thought dramatically without losing the proprietary or the credible nature of the screening process and stuff like that but we left some things out we modified certain things to try and make it less expensive and I just have this nagging sensation that $11 million may be this bells and whistles system that we may not need so do you get what I'm asking for? Sure so I think what I'm hearing is that you'd like an updated analysis because I will say that it's my recollection that the bill that left this committee and the IT structure and the administrative structure I don't think the Department of Labor was on consensus that that was we were going what was in the bill was exactly what we need to be able to administer a program but I would be happy to go back and that's what I'm asking for what that would cost what you think is lacking and why that would be effective specifically to last year's bill about this committee I think it may be the same it may be the same to the one we signed I think the House just exceeded the bill at the end and it's helpful I can also send you the updated analysis and spreadsheets from from the Department of Labor and the Agency of Digital Services that I helped create for the House General Committee as well because we did provide those to Joyce and the House General Committee in ways of means so I can forward you just a suite of everything so you can take a look at those great thanks actually there are plenty of people who can be monitoring upstairs okay feel free even though we've been focusing on the house what happened in the right year would be a perspective but it wouldn't hurt to give us a few factors of why this bill is necessary yeah which bill H107 just to put it okay perfect happy to do that yeah so there's one document that's Main Street Alliance's testimony and then one on behalf of the Family Medical Insurance Coalition so for the record Ashley Moore State Director of the Main Street Alliance of Vermont for those of you who might not be familiar Main Street Alliance of Vermont is a statewide organization we have around 700 small business owner members statewide we've been around since 2014 in Vermont we are part of a national network and really what our mission is is to elevate the voices of small business owners on important policy issues in Vermont we look at issues from a lens of not only how they impact businesses but also their employees in our local community so it's really a holistic approach so Hade Family Medical Leave has been a priority of our organization since really since just after we were founded I know I've presented to this committee before last biennium about our support so it's not that many of you we are right now we're around 700 roughly statewide and so Family Medical Leave insurance is a priority of our organization because most of our members are very small business owners most of them do not have the means to provide all of the benefits that they would like to to their employees all the benefits that employees need and so we really see the creation of a statewide universal Family Medical Leave insurance program as a solution to that it really enables them to to provide this benefit that they know the employees need that they can't do on their own because it's too cost prohibitive many times to do it within your own company policy so we part of what we do at Main Street Alliance is an in-person door-to-door small business survey year round it's not a member survey which is fairly unique to a lot of business organizations we do the survey really with the intention to get a temperature check from business owners on different policy issues hear from them about things that they're interested in or concerned about or very supportive about it and so I compiled a little bit of data from the last three years of our survey results specific to paid family and medical leave so we had a staff member go door-to-door and talk to business owners about the paid family leave initiative that was happening in Vermont what their thoughts were about that in general if they were supportive, if they were not how they would recommend that it be funded and so I compiled a little bit of information which you all have here in your document so the survey the past three years we surveyed 620 business owners in 14 counties, all 14 counties 85% of those surveyed have fewer than 10 employees which is also representative of the small business and landscape in Vermont since we know that the majority of businesses in Vermont have fewer than 10 employees of those surveyed the majority will retail which I don't think is a surprise to anyone if you go down the streets in Vermont the majority of businesses are retail we don't just focus on main streets but that is generally the hub of businesses in most towns across the state and you can hit more at one time I guess, definitely so from our survey findings 70% of those surveyed indicated that they would support efforts to establish a state run family medical leave insurance program listed our combination of do not support and don't know in terms of the funding structure 45% of those surveyed responded that they would recommend a combination of jointly funded programs so a combination of employer-employee funded I think there's there tends to be a common misconception about what employers feel about policies of this nature and how they should be funded so I think that this really does a good job of demonstrating that the business community is not this monolithic entity that believes in deregulation and fewer taxes when it comes to issues that are really supportive not only of small businesses but their communities and their employees they see that as a really important investment and this policy in particular is an incredible deal and so I don't think it was really you know it was kind of a no brainer to a lot of people we talked to that they would be happy more than happy to contribute to half the cost and then just to walk through the rest of the information 18.5% responded that they would recommend employee-only funding 1.3% responded they would recommend employer-only and then the 27 so 7.9% I should have organized this differently 7.9% responded that they did not support apparel deduction and then 27.2% responded they don't know so that's just to give you a little bit of a sense of what business owners across the state have been thinking about the financing structure of this program just to be clear these are not just members I think even if we wanted to do a more survey be really challenging because and I think other business groups seem to run into this too that most of our members are really small mom and pop businesses and they don't always use email and unless we wanted to go door-to-door specific to members every year and survey them it would be really complicated to get enough of a pool of surveys to make data really so it's essentially random we do every year we look at we do look at the counties and the towns that are underrepresented say if the staff person went to Bethel and their business owners happen to not be in their store that day we would try to revisit it but if we moved on to other towns when we're looking next year at our survey we would try to focus on the towns that were underrepresented so it's not there's really no overly prescriptive formula for how we go about surveying businesses but we try to hit every county and we try to get as many of a variety of industries to the extent possible with limited staff time so try to run the most efficient survey model that we can so I also included in this document some comments or testimonials from members from different regions across the state since you all have limited time and can't necessarily hear from everyone but a lot of our members are very outspoken about this and wanted to share their thoughts with the committee about why they think this is so important so I did include some of those and so just again to reiterate this is a priority of main street alliances we think that this is an incredible support for small businesses and their employees and Vermont as a whole most of our members again are very small businesses this isn't something that they could do on their own and this H107 really enables them to provide this really important benefit to their employees I will move on unless anybody has any questions specific to you know main street alliances position I will now move on to talk from the coalition I'll take for my coalition hat on yes so we as I said main street alliance of Vermont co-chairs the family and medical leave insurance coalition which right now is around 30 organizations in the state that are supportive of H107 and we've had several conversations over the past four years as a coalition of what are some key components of a model family and medical leave insurance program because the bill is currently undergoing some changes in ways and means and we don't know exactly what that's going to look like until after it passes hopefully today I just wanted to at least establish where the coalition is coming from in terms of what we feel is really important for the model that Vermont's pursuing so first of all I'll say universal coverage is a really from our perspective is a fundamental component of the model or ideal state family medical leave insurance program when we think about you know hearing conversation around whether or not something could be voluntary I will always say in theory that would be great but there's a reason that we and other states have not pursued voluntary models it's really challenging to make models of this nature work with voluntary approach I think we we all know that you need a very substantial risk pool to ensure that the rates are at a level that is cost effective for those who are in the program and so running that risk by considering a voluntary approach isn't something that we feel would be we don't think that's the best approach for Vermont and in fact this is information I could share if you're interested a couple of years ago I'm blanking on her name so I should have thought of this before I reference oh Kristen Smith she's from the University of New Hampshire and she did a study looking at how New Hampshire could approach a voluntary model and they ran a couple different models using different projected opt-in rates and this essentially showed that how significantly the rates go up when you have an opt-in model so I can provide more specifics on that if that's of interest to anyone can I borrow one of your pens? just so I don't forget another component that we feel is really important for a model family and medical insurance program is that it be publicly run publicly administered this is something that nearly every state there are seven states including DC that have family and medical insurance programs some are still in the phase where they're standing up the program or they're collecting benefits or they haven't even begun benefits collection yet there are a handful that have been in effect for a number of years and all are publicly run though except for New York which has a mandatory private insurance model and allows businesses to opt-in to the state insurance fund as well so it's a somewhat unique model we have heard from I believe your committee may have heard from to last biennium the person who administers the runs the temporary disability insurance temporary caregiver insurance program in Rhode Island and he's spoken to how you know they're the 100% publicly run model they're at admin costs are around 5% it's been incredibly successful they don't have fraud is not a problem and he credits their efficiency and low cost to the public administration of the program we have strong concerns about conversations around moving to a third party administrator or private insurer because number one there are so many unknowns we don't know how this would impact the cost we don't know how this would impact the benefits that we wish to see in the program part of the benefit of a public model is that we have control over setting the benefit we get to say you know we think we meaning the legislature you know we want this to be 12 weeks we want it to be 90% wage replacement we want these people to be covered when you shift to considering a private market there are certain restrictions and negotiations that are a part of the process that are really concerning to the coalition and we also know that there are there's an example of that I can't fathom if we pass the law and somehow the church can do something different well so I think the unknowns right now are around so when I'm thinking about the RFI information that we have from the governor's proposal includes information specific to you know this is how much this would cost with these different benefit levels we're concerned that we're not able to we aren't sure if we would be able to get the benefit that we want the 12 weeks 100% jointly funded including this wide variety of family members at the cost that we are looking at currently under H107 through a private insurance model because the information that we do have from the RFIs from the administration and from their per person cost projections would suggest that the cost for the benefit we want could be significantly higher using a third party administrator or private insurer because of the profit margin and perhaps there are higher administrative costs these are things we don't know right now so again this is all information we don't have so we're really making this case based on the information that does exist but the coalition is concerned that we don't know could we get the benefit we want at the cost that we have in H107 using a private insurer we don't know that information so that's our major concern right now we're also concerned in general about the using a private insurer the incentive to deny claims because private insurers operate for profit and so that is a concern of the coalition again we don't know how much these factors will influence the cost but these are conversations that have been really concerning to the coalition did that answer your question? okay so the other component of the program that we feel is really important is that the bill has a minimum of 12 weeks not only is that reflective of what's in current state and federal law with what's allowed under current state and federal law but it's also research shows that if mothers are able to take at least 12 weeks off children are much more likely to receive backups and immunizations so it's overall better for the health of children and mothers to have 12 weeks we also think that in terms of temporary disability insurance we recognize that most states that have TDI offer significantly more weeks than what we're asking for but we think of 12 as really a minimum standard and so we would be supportive of we're advocating for to be a minimum of 12 weeks in the bill what is the have you heard ration out looking at the chart it seems like states do offer more for TDI and family do you notice with the ration out of Massachusetts just did that yeah so I can only speculate on that I know that since TDI covers non-work related serious illness or injury that it's likely that a person could be in a car accident or have some other situation arise that would require them to be out of work for longer than 12 weeks for example but other than that I can only speculate why they would be significantly they would be offering significantly more weeks also those parents are all I mean they're embedded in the work culture Massachusetts hasn't even started yet but you were asking about TDIs and that was 1942 and 49 have you heard of Massachusetts I'm talking about paying for the illness of the worker and Massachusetts made 20 weeks for that I thought you were saying TDI I did but that's a form of TDI right I'm sorry you know just reminds us that once something is embedded in the work culture they're very accepted and people are more willing to build on it I mean I understand the value of some of this yeah yeah and I know I can't speak to the specifics but I know that Rhode Island I believe they have a pretty generous number of weeks for TDI I'm forgetting the exact number but it could be up to 30 is it up to 30 yeah up to 30 but though their average claim is significantly less than that so California has up to 52 weeks of TDI though it's I doubt they've ever gotten a claim where someone has needed 52 weeks I think it's just a consideration recognizing that somebody could have that would warrant their absence from work for longer than 12 weeks so the next point here is jointly funded by employers and employees again this is something that Main Street Alliance feels really strongly about our members and non-members have expressed support for a jointly funded program and the coalition shares that view as well it's something that benefits small businesses and it benefits employees as well and there's been an expression from the business community of support for contributing to that cost of the program and then the last three points allowable uses we feel very strongly that the bill H107 maintains the allowable uses that essentially parental leave bonding leave, family caregiving leave and temporary disability insurance or leave to cover your own personal non-work related illness or injury I'm only mentioning this because of how last year there was a conversation around temporary disability insurance which eventually was removed from the house bill and that was something that the coalition very actively did not support so thankfully what was that? yeah it was the ways and means committee in the house last year they made that change yeah so we feel very strongly about keeping those allowable uses and without speaking for the committee it appears that this will not be an issue but I wanted to at least state that lastly high wage replacement the coalition feels so strongly that if we want to create a benefit that people can actually use particularly lower income workers then it's really important that we have high wage replacement as close to 100% as possible there are some state programs that have pretty low wage replacement levels and I know that they've been actively trying to raise those because they're recognizing that there are lower take-up rates particularly among low income workers because of the fact that people can't afford to take time off with that and lose 20, 30, 40% of their wages and I want to just quickly note on this sometimes we hear this conversation around skin in the game and we need to make sure that there's an incentive to go back to work and I just want to say that on behalf of the coalition and Main Street Alliance that the purpose of this program is to fulfill a need that there is a need to take time off to bond with a new child and benefit when we all have healthy children and healthy parents that there is a need to have paid leave during an unexpected non-work-related illness or injury and we want people to be recovering during that time so this program is really the purpose of it is for people to use it and so we I just want to push back on that comment a little bit about why we need lower wage replacement to incentivize people to go back to work this program is meant to be there for people to use and then return to work so and lastly on the self-employed piece so we at Main Street Alliance we have a lot of self-employed members who have expressed the importance of portable benefit structures like paid family and medical leave insurance to allowing them to continue to manage their business and grow their business and so it's something that we feel really strongly that self-employed people in Vermont should have the opportunity to opt into the program there are some states that do this and some that don't and there are different ways that everyone can approach it and I know this is something that's being considered in ways and means right now but I did want to just reiterate that we think this is really important I don't believe so I believe they're all opt in but I'll double check on that so I don't understand if we make it mandatory why isn't it mandatory for every employer yeah but I mean I mean so why isn't even an opt in for people who are self-employed I didn't think that's what you asked I worked at Price so were there any states that made it mandatory yeah most I believe all are opt in for self-employed but I mean if we're so I don't get the idea of carving yeah it doesn't seem hard to they want to have the option but they don't necessarily want to exercise so I have one question that is a little troublesome to me why is the job protection on this list so yeah so it's not so this isn't a list of an exhausted list of everything that we think is important we were particularly focusing on things that were on the table for consideration and it hasn't appeared that job protection is at this moment I believe when I testified last year I spoke to how we believe strongly in universal job protection that remains on behalf of Main Street Alliance we are supportive of the provision that you had put in the bill that still is an H107 right now where are they for 10 so yes that's the provision that's in 107 yeah and so another thing for example that's not on this list that's really important to us is an expansive family definition the reason that we didn't include that in this list is because it appears that that is not necessarily on the table currently in the House as something that may be diminished significantly so there are a number of things in the bill that we feel very strongly about but focused really on the ones that have been under consideration in the House and there is a list of coalition members here too for reference and happy to answer any questions just in the ballpark figure of the number of people affected in the coalition who had said that there are a lot of really small businesses about how many people would you say are affected by how many people would be affected by those employees oh so how many of our businesses are not currently providing to you how many people who work for these businesses oh that's a good question I can see if I can get an answer to that that would be great even more powerful than 700 businesses yeah so I'll see what I can find for that it's hard sometimes to collect data that granular through membership but I can see what I can find out for you and the report was in addition no other state has it I assume you it's a negotiable discussion yeah I think so we're very supportive of the addition of bereavement leave I think it's incredibly important that people have time off to grieve the loss of a loved one it was an addition that was made and you're correct that it's not something that's included in other programs I think we would love to see it stay in the bill because it's something that was added fairly late and that it's not there are conversations around how to shift the benefit to cut costs it seems as though there may be a direction on that front in the house and so it hasn't been a focus of ours to prioritize protecting that but we are very supportive of it have you a job getting back to job protection are there any studies or information as to people not taking the leave because they're afraid of losing their jobs yeah I will look into that there are there is some research around why when people don't take leave under FMLA why that is and there may be information on that so I will get back to you right yeah there is job protection right yeah right right right right right right right yeah I will see if I can find some information on that it might be hard any Vermont specific data to related to family leave is really there is not a lot so right right right right right right Development yeah right right right right right right right right To that end, it would also be great to get, and we may need to just need to ask the tax department for this, about better data on the number of self-employed and the number of people they employ, because that is a huge pool swing for both the governor's program and possibly for ours, of that number of self-employed. I think when they're talking about self-employed, I think they don't know what person they're talking about, because you're not self-employed, you're not considered self-employed, you have employees. Oh, you're not, even though you pay my payers also go. I'm sorry, I thought you could be self-employed. Generally, we're talking about people who don't have employees, but I think there are ways that people can classify themselves, and so they could technically be self-employed. I think we need to identify the size of that pool, because I think it's going to have a big impact on the cost, and what the, I'm sorry, you know what I'm asking. Yeah, Joyce did do some projections. I don't know if it's in the models that you have. It might be that about, you know, if 25% of self-employed opt in, this is what the rate would be. All our records from last year, as you know, were incinerated. Oh, right. I forgot about that. She may have emailed it to us, and then you could have me caught in a partial habit, but it did. We don't have anything else for us? No, but I did just want to get back to the question you asked me about, you know, if the legislature passes a bill with this benefit that the insurance company has to comply. Was that your question? I think it was something around I just want to make sure I answered it. I don't know if just my playing devil's advocate why you sort of made, said you had a fear that if we pass something that the insurance company would not follow the law. Oh, right. Okay, so perhaps it was my, I didn't explain what I'm thinking. It wasn't, that wasn't our concern. It was that right now we're concerned that we, we want the best benefit we can get for Vermonters. We don't have the information about how much that could cost through a private carrier. So we're nervous about going that route right now. Would you not, as a result of an RFP process, have that in black and white and in a contractual manner so that we wouldn't know what the cost would be? Yeah, I think similarly though, on the contrary, if you have a publicly funded program, what's the guarantee that the publicly funded program will come in at the amount of budget? I can't think of a single case in the past 20 years in which we have left a software, a major software contract that's come in on time on budget. Yeah, I mean, I think the RFP process, this is something that the Ways and Means Committee is figuring out right now, which direction they want to go in terms of administration. And so it seems as though more information may become available at this time. We don't have the information to say that that's a route that we could support, but it could be. Yeah, in terms of, I would have, frankly, the actual opposite cost of the concern that you have, the publicly funded program, we wouldn't have a clue what it's going to cost, how many people it's going to take, or what it'll be done. Yeah, I think thankfully though, because the majority of, yeah, well, the majority of other states that have models have public models. And so we're at least able to gauge cost projections based on what other states have done. And from testimony from other states, we've heard that the cost projections using this economic simulation model that Joyce has been using have been very accurate. So we at least have that information to guide our thinking in our approach to supporting a publicly run model. As you look at publicly run models that you've looked at at other states, compared to New York, which uses a private model, is there a significant cost premium that New York is experiencing? So I wouldn't say that New York's program, there's a significant cost premium, though it is again, as we heard from the previous witnesses, it's tough to make direct apples to apples comparisons because every program is so different and things like wage replacement levels can dramatically change costs. So it's tough to speculate at this point with the information that we have. But again, hopefully we will be able to have more information on that from the house. Thank you. I'm Molly Leeson. I'm with the Alliance as well. I'm Will Becombe. I went down to Rockland, Martin. What's your name again? Will Becombe. This is Samantha Sheehan with EBSR. Who are you representing? A bunch of different global countries that are interested in RDCs, hospitals. We need to hear you. Sorry. Global families, RDCs, hospitals. Mr. Mutual, do you want to say a few words or anything? Burlington Free Press ran an article in late 2018 and they found it $60,000 for monitors for self-employed and largely in the construction industry and largely in the creative sector. We have a bill for that. Well, maybe not the creative sector crap. And when I was looking up federal. Thank you. What's your name again? Samantha Sheehan. When I was looking up federal data for representatives in the committee, the construction sector also has the lowest rate of where provided. Very clearly, Senator Brock, I was going to go over, it's nothing big, but I want to go over the education amendment to our data privacy bill. I assume everybody's going to be all right. Senator Brock, Senator Maruth explained it very nicely yesterday. You're going to do that now, right? I am. Can I just give you 30 seconds? Sure. We have 20 minutes. So, I'm going to pass this on. Sure, I'm just writing you the 3K and the third sent it to high schools, not just public schools. I don't know what the fourth one does. So, it strikes out, public does that. So, what would it be, independent schools? Right, all independent schools. They want to include everybody. It's kids. We're protecting kids. It's not wearing out of school. Right? That's not the objective. And I think their data has used. And then in another bill, we're going to punish them for a fake idea. We're looking at education to use to the data privacy bill. There's a problem right there. I was just going to find out what the last thing does. So, today's the 21st. It's the evening. It seems pretty straightforward. I was just trying to figure out what the fourth one is. Okay. I think you had to sort of turn around. I'm not sure. And I think I came up with a cabaret. In a lot of conversations, I'm modeling. I think it might be a little too heavy. I mean, we model so much, you know, climate change, modeling. I'll find that and let you know. Okay, I have it. But 2443CEE, limit the authority of a law enforcement agency to obtain any content of the information. This is all the applicability thing that tells you when they can share the information. And it's with law enforcement, prohibit an operator. It does not limit it. So, it says when they can share it. I don't know why they want to do that. It's like He's here at least. You want me to text them? Yeah. The chapter does not, the sub chapter does not, does not, does not prohibit, does not prohibit an operator from marketing education by direct grandparents. Yeah. So, they want to, they want to, they want to, they want to strike, is what it says. Subdivision. The law does not prohibit an operator from marketing educational product directly to parents if the marketing did not result from the use of covered information. Okay. So, his problem was if he helps his daughter with her math homework, does that then open him up to this marketing, direct marketing from the product, from the, the company or the operator? And frankly, unless he's running in under his own credential, then how would the operator know that the parent is involved? Well, I don't know that the Attorney General went through all their changes and approved their changes under that. I think taking this out doesn't show you this would do any kind of read the law if they were marketing something from some ancillary source that you could accuse as well anyhow. Well, I guess. You can get him in here if you want to. The judiciary is not meeting. So, that's why I suggest that I text for him. I wonder if he's, let me just, let me just check this next door. Okay, they're sitting here all out. It might be in the long run. It might be in the long run. Senator Sharp, yeah. And Rock, Senate Health Walker, are you able to talk about your amendments this morning? I'm sorry? Are you able to talk about your amendments this morning? Yeah. Okay. Before due to this appointment? Yeah, it's like that. They want me now, is it? They've got a brief view before we go in as we go down, because they've proposed a change. The Health Department has proposed a change to my amendment. Yeah. Okay. And also, I tried to explain for you. You didn't want to be able to talk about this, but this is the confidentiality of inspections. You're not involved in that, are you? Is that our bill in this committee? No. This is a health and welfare bill. Okay. This is a health and welfare bill. It's the only thing I'm talking with them about. I'm talking about the primary care thing. All right, so two different things. And about the operator. Okay. So we're a little lost. And the one to strike, the last one to strike subdivision five about parents, could you explain that? Well, I'll start by saying that when I asked Charity and Ryan, they went back to the stakeholder group and the stakeholder group was fine with getting rid of that because they feel like elsewhere in the bill it's covered. But the reason I didn't like it, it seemed to me the only place in the bill that was it doesn't proactively say you can do this, but it says it doesn't prohibit them from directly marketing to parents. And if I could prevent direct marketing to parents, I would. The striking this doesn't really do that because they probably can do it anyhow. Well, yes. Based on another source of where they got the information. Exactly. In other words, I don't think it hurts anything to get rid of it. It's clean enough. Yeah. And then are you... We're all fine with this. Okay. Okay, we just need to make sure we understood. Okay. And thanks for asking. So nice to be back. Thanks to you. How are you? How are you? I'm fine. I'm fine. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. Well then. Yeah. You just grown up. You're our love. Well, I have to say, like... You're sponsored with the bill. I really like my new committee, but it is not a fun committee. It's really not. You're very serious. It's very serious. Nobody talks. Everybody's fronting. We have fun in here. Yeah. Well, I mean, like, look at the wall. We do? Shh. Right? Right? Cheering room. Like, you walk into judiciary. You feel like there's a vault. Right. It's true. It's a little... The person is going to cuff you. And it's not everybody's fault. It's Alice's fault. Exactly. It's not very all right. We need to come to institution. Okay.