 This is a committee of hearing for the Senate Appropriations Committee. We're continuing to take testimony on the remainder of the FY21 budget. And today we have with us from the Agency of Human Services, Commissioner Hot, and I believe she has the staff, I believe, yes. Megan is here as well as Sarah Clark from the Agency Chief Fiscal Officer. So we're gonna get started with your testimony right now. We'll just go through what you're requesting in terms of your any changes to your restated budget request that was received in January. I don't know if you have a document for us to look at. If so, do you have that Chrissy or? Okay, great. So this is your traditional assembly sheet that's very helpful. Yes, all right. We sort of know who you are in your five divisions. So we'll scroll down a little bit more, Chrissy. This is the sheet probably that we'll wanna look at. And Monica, do you wanna run through this with us in terms of the overview? Absolutely, thanks all for having me. Monica Hanna, the Director of the Department of Disabilities Aging and Independent Living. And did you notice that our Deputy Commissioner Megan Tierney Ward is on the line, as well as Bill Kelly, our Chief Financial Officer. And then of course, Sarah is there. So I apologize, I'm not sure why there are all these funny symbols in this document. I don't know, but the other, that's a legislative symbol that we use, but somebody needs to go on mute. We're getting a lot of background noise, like shuffling of paper or, okay, it's stopped now. But I don't know what happened, but it doesn't change the figures at all. It doesn't, it doesn't. It's just a little bit distracting, but it's fine. And I'm happy to walk through it. So as you noted, Senator, this is a narrative that Bill Kelly puts together, and the numbers all map to the ups and downs on the financial sheets, but it's a lot easier to look at it here. So I'll just start at the top and work my way through and just pause for questions and let me know if you want me to do anything differently. Oh, perfect, thank you, Chrissy. So the first section here is just a summary of the overall budget. So you'll see that in total, there's a net increase requested of 3,009,833. And these, this is a summary of what you'll see in each of the appropriations. So I won't spend time here. I'll move right into the appropriations, but just for you to know that this summarizes the total request. All right. So Chrissy, if you want to roll down just a little bit, but thank you, that's perfect. The first appropriation is the administration, our administrative appropriation. There are three items for you to see here. The first is an increase to our vacancy savings across the department. You will recall that all of the day all salaries, all of our staff are rolled into this administration appropriation. So this increase to vacancy savings is proposed here. There are no reductions to staff proposed in the Dale budget right now, just this increase to vacancy savings, which we will be able to achieve through just the hiring freeze that exists right now, slowing down some of our hiring. It is our intent to continue to fill vacancies as they come up, but just to do that a little bit more slowly to hit this target. This represents about a 3.25% vacancy savings. So still a pretty reasonable amount for the department to operate with. The second item is a decrease from to all of our internal service funds allocations. So the fees for human resources, for the agency of digital services, fee for space, all of those things. And those were given to us through the administration. So that is that second number. And then the third number, the travel reduction is a modest $25,000, but achievable just because we've got staff that are not moving around and haven't been for the past few months. And it looks like that will continue at least until the middle of the year, until December. So we believe that we can receive easily achieve that travel reduction across the department. Should I pause after each, each appropriate? We know that there's been a freeze on hiring and a review process. We know about the internal service funds and we know about travel. So those are pretty standard adjustments that we've been seeing. So unless there's any questions, I think you should probably just move on to the next section. Okay. So under Dale Grants, there are two items. You are all familiar with our Medicaid attendance services program. So different from the general fund attendance services program, which you will recall is frozen. This is the Medicaid attendance services program. And this is a proposed underutilization of $100,000 in that program. Certainly it reduces the wiggle room in that program, but we believe we still have some flex there and can continue to meet needs even with this reduction in place. And then the second is actually a one-time reduction for our adult day programs. As you will recall, they received coronavirus relief funds for the next three months to supplant all of their operating costs. So this is just a one-time reduction and the CRF funds are offsetting that. Okay. Oh, that's okay. That makes sense. Because adult days were the one program simply because of the congregate nature were closed similar to child care as well. So obviously, but that had a huge economic impact, but which we address through the CRF. Yes, exactly. So then there are no changes proposed in DBVI, the Division for the Blind or Visually Impaired or Boke Rehab. So I'll ask Christine to just- I wanna go back to the adult day. I'm sorry. That's okay. And I know Sarah Clark is on and we've had some communication that the CRF money, the agency, and obviously some of this is timing in order to know what we have for money that would not be expended so that it can be reallocated because our goal is obviously not to return any of the CRF money to Washington. So I'm sure you've been hearing some concern about that October deadline. And I think that there's one thing, there's a difference between expending it as opposed to having confidence that between October and December 20th, the money will be spent. Has that concern been brought to your attention, Monica, or maybe Sarah can speak to it in terms of how the agency is gonna have a system in place to make sure money is available that will be spent after October versus that would need to be reallocated. Sarah, do you want me to jump in and then you can fill in or correct me if I misspeak? That sounds good. Okay. So we do, the adult days will need to reconcile the dollars that they received at the end of that first quarter, so July, August, and September. But they certainly, I believe, will be able to continue to expend them. And in fact, one of the issues that we are up against with the adult day programs is that although they are beginning to reopen and they've got a reopening plan in place, that's gonna happen slowly. And for many of them, they're going to need to reduce their census in order to enable them to reopen safely and still meet the mandates from the Vermont Department of Health in terms of distancing and the number of folks that can be in one space at one time. So we are planning to begin to work with them in the coming week to really ascertain how much of those operating dollars they're going to be able to spend by the end of that first quarter. And then if they need additional dollars to supplement that 50% census reduction, we should be able to identify that within those funds and determine if there's additional need from there forward. I have a question from Senator Nidka. I'm just wondering, is it expected that all of them will be able to reopen? That's a great question. We did a survey with them and I don't have that up in front of me. It looks like about 80% of them are feeling like they can reopen at some capacity. Some are just too tiny to be able to make that work and that's certainly one of the issues that we're up against and so they may not be able to reopen but it would be very individual, Senator, in terms of what each is able to do and we will have to work with them individually. I shared with House Appropriations earlier today that there was a call this week that I wasn't able to be on but the director for our adult services program was on nationally talking about adult day programs because every state is facing the exact same issue. It's such a critical service. It provides a very important support to families and yet there's no way to get around the fact that it's absolutely in-person with a really vulnerable population. So it presents this dynamic that's hard to work around with this virus right now. So I don't know what Angela discovered from that national call but I think we're gonna try to align with what's happening nationally as well and understand best practice for them. Thank you. Sure. Monica, one thing, the closure of the adult days, this has been a critical part of keeping our seniors and people with disabilities in their homes. So how are you experiencing or how have you been able to accommodate the closure of this service and still make sure that people are able to remain in their homes and has it resulted in the need to add, I don't know, more maybe personal care on the other side. In other words, have you had to compensate are you experiencing a higher demand somewhere else with other services during this period of closure? So it's a great question. What we've been able to do throughout the whole time has been to shift dollars within people's budgets, right? So not that people have, well, people do have specific service plans. So we've been able to allow people to shift their service plan to accommodate the fact that they weren't using adult day and to be able to put that into additional respite or some other kinds of supports for families. So I think that that flexibility has been really helpful that's been able to accommodate some of the pressure but I will be very candid with you and say I don't imagine that has covered all of the pressure that families have experienced. I'm sure that there is still a lot of many families that have had to step into more demanding caregiver roles for family members. So I think that we're gonna continue to see that pressure absolutely. I don't think that we've seen, one of the things that we worried most about was would people end up having to go into nursing homes because they weren't seeing the adult day as a service available to them. And I don't think we've seen that, although we've certainly heard anecdotally that that's a pressure, but I don't think we've seen that necessarily yet but it is something we have to address because it has been, as you said, vital for families up till now. Other questions of the committee? Okay, well then we'll keep going. Is Diane Delma still working? Is she still VR? She is, 40 plus years. Oh my gosh. I know, and she truly is the most creative human being I think I've ever met. She doesn't run out of steam at all. It's not as if she's just occupying space. She is charging forward. Sometimes it's hard to keep up. Oh, all right, well, Alice, another familiar name. I'll say. Yeah. Glad to hear it. Yes, we're lucky to have her. So now we're into the developmental services appropriation and this is a budget to actuals adjustment. We did this as well in the FY21 Governors Recommend. You will recall this is really an artifact of the way that developmental services is funded on a cash basis. And so this is dollars that do not impact services. There are no reductions to providers. There's no impact to individuals with this adjustment. Senator Ash. I am. Thank you, Commissioner. On this one, I think that the developmental service organizations suffer from historical budget and amounts. Their ability to pay has been hampered by the appropriations they've received for a long period of time. So I totally get what you're saying. On the other hand, that 1.6 million could be used to increase the pay of these positions at the lower end who basically get paid so little that they're often eligible for benefits. And the reason I mention this is I put it in the context of positions at some of our hospitals for PR positions that cost three quarters of a million, which are probably a third Medicaid and eliminate one position. It would free up 250,000 in Medicaid and we could use it to increase the pay of some of these people. So I hope that the committee will revisit this because just because there's been a structural unfairness for many, many years between some high paid administrators who don't provide care and actual people on the ground who do the grunt work and get paid next to nothing. We shouldn't necessarily let it persist in this kind of adjustment. And light of, obviously we've been very concerned about and as well as on the mental health side. And I know speaking of the wages and the concern out regarding people providing the care, I've heard very good things about Dale's response to the staffing and recognizing what it means for the direct care staff. And I just wanted to- Yeah, I'm not criticizing Dale or- No, no, I know you're not. But I think we have to put everything in context. There are positions at UVMMC, people who make 750,000 with benefits to basically send out press releases. A third of that is probably Medicaid spending, which we could deploy to assist Dale to provide higher contracted amounts to developmental service organizations so that they can pay people, one thin dime more each an hour if we need to to use the syroquinism. And we obviously don't always look at things as a comparison but literally one position could be eliminated at one hospital and we'd provide meaningful increases in pay for hundreds of people who are in this category here. I didn't mean to detract from the point that you were making and that is how in balance we're seeing where public funds end up where they end up. It just triggered the thought that I just wanted to give the staff some positive feedback from what- Dale does an amazing job and I absolutely think they've been the standouts in a way of this whole pandemic from the very earliest days before the state of emergency. So I would echo that and commend the commissioner and the whole team but literally one position could be eliminated at one hospital and commissioner Hutt could call with a congratulatory call to the developmental service organization saying there was gonna be a buck an hour increase for hundreds of people. Might even help with premiums people pay. It would for sure. Yeah. Any other comments about this adjustment? This is obviously this gets reconciled at the end of the year. So do you do it at the beginning or you do it at the end? So this is sort of a truing but it does raise a much larger discussion around how healthcare dollars are spent. TBI, this is just an adjustment based on utilization experience. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. So it's just a, it's an under utilization. It leaves us a little bit of headroom in the program still but it certainly makes it tight. You know, I will talk. How many individuals are being served now under this waiver? Oh gosh. Oh my gosh. It's a great question. Bill, do you have that? I wanna say it's like 75 in my head but I think that that's too high. I was thinking around 50 but I just was wondering. Yeah. My apologies. I'm usually prepared for that and I don't have it right in front of me. Oh. Well, I can understand that. So I think it's about, I'm getting a quick phone a friend text which you can't see but it's about 75. 75? Yeah. And as you will- No, Bill Kelly just said a proclamation. No, he said 40. I have dueling information from Megan and Bill. Actually, it's very helpful and maybe it's in the other documentation, but it's certainly in the FY21, the program narrative in our original situation. Yeah. Absolutely. The number of people being served in these programs. Okay. Yes. That's absolutely in our program summary. And I will say that- Chrissy, could I just ask a question? Then all that material, so we'll just go in. It's on the Appropriations Committee document handout. It is, it will be shortly. I'm having a computer glitch getting it loaded, but as soon as we break, it will be up there. All right. Thank you. So committee members, if anyone wants to get into that level of detail, it will be available on the committee website. We can certainly follow up with that too, just so that you've got it straight from us. My apologies for the miscommunication. Just as a reminder and traumatic in the TBI program, it's a rehab program, so it ebbs and flows for individuals that need continued care. They shift into a longer term under our Choices for Care program. So Bill is continuing to talk. I think 40 is 40. So what he's saying is everybody is right. Which isn't that the way that it should be? Oh, sorry. So about 40 in the rehab program and about 40 in the longer term care portion of our Choices for Care program under TBI. So about 80 total. I just want, I want Bill Kelly to note that I was right to start with. I just want him to, I don't know if he could type and acknowledge that. That would make me really happy, but he won't. And then we'll, go ahead. No, I was gonna say we'll look to see if we get a message. Oh, he's saying he does hear you. All right, Choices for Care. Fair enough. It's as much of an acknowledgement as I'm gonna get. So in Choices for Care, this is actually where we're requesting an increase. As you know, the Choices for Care budget is built on a three year caseload average. That's how we build it typically. And for this FY21, our estimates were just too low. And we're seeing actuals that are demonstrating a higher caseload numbers and also higher cost per care within that caseload. So this is a requested increase to that budget. Questions? Committee, this is obviously a program where we track its centers here. You've got your hand up. Yes. I just wanna make sure that the Choices for Care are available in generally statewide and not in specific areas. I'm getting. Oh, absolutely. It's a statewide program. Yeah, could you give me a, just a synopsis of the, don't have to do it today, but could you send me some information on the different practitioners in around the state that are taking advantage of Choices for Care? Sure. I mean, so it just does. Let me be clear. The adult days are basically closed. And that was one of the options. So how we replace that type of programming during COVID? Right. So Choices for Care, the organizations that we deliver Choices for Care through are through Home Health, the area agencies on aging. And there is a sort of direct service in people's homes in addition to the adult day programs. And can think what I'm missing here. Well, that's where I wanna focus a little bit on the adult days because I think they're all closed. They are all closed right now. And some of them were, we were worried during the CARES Act that some of them were going out of business. And I don't know what the situation is for them between now and whenever they're allowed to reopen. But I'm also concerned about what happens to the vulnerable people that are not able to access an adult home day as more and more people go back to work. Now it's been, in many cases, a family member has taken over the role because they're home unemployed. But as more people go back to work, I think the situation gets exasperated and I wanna make sure we have enough money to support those and other programs that are vital to seniors who need help. Absolutely, I appreciate your concern. So I would, yeah, if we could get kind of a email letter, maybe Senator Kitchell knows more, but... Well, I just wanted to, maybe Sarah Clark can confirm this, but when we did the Q1 budget, we actually separated out funding for our adult day system. So they're not having to compete as part of that provider stabilization. And that was, was it 2.5 million or 2.4 that we... 2.45, yeah. The question is, Senator, how long does that last? Will it get us through a pandemic? I just saw where the court has extended its emergency orders till December 31st. Oh my gosh, I'm never gonna get my back rent. Probably not. And that the, and my concern is what's happened, I'm grateful that we're keeping our adult days afloat and not letting them go bankrupt, but I am concerned during the pandemic, what happens to the people that we're using adult days? How are they being dealt with? That's my concern. So I guess it's more than, I was aware that we had helped them out. I don't know how long that'll last, but it looks like emergency orders are gonna get extended. If we follow the court, we're talking about at least four more months of emergency orders and probably into 2021, so. So the question I guess for Sarah and Monica is with the appropriation that we did move out ahead separately, recognizing that this provider group were closed down entirely, did the CRF appropriation, and unfortunately we can't spend beyond December 30th. Do we need to consider additional money? And I was reading the other part of this is senior nutrition. And that was the Meals on Wheels and the concern around that, and which we did put money in through the Joint Fiscal Committee to meet those higher costs at 600,000, but the report would suggest that, and I'm glad that Megan is here, but I guess it was Angela who put that report together that suggests that to keep those higher reimbursement would take another almost 570,000. So I just wanna throw that in Dick as well because it seems to me the nutrition side is also an important part of seniors at home and getting the meals to them. So I don't think that the budget or the CRF budget that has been, will be presented to us includes that higher meal reimbursement or if we needed to do more money for the adult day through the end of December, what would that be? So I think that's your question, Dick, is, you know, what are we doing for people that had been at the adult days and been, you know, the caregiver was in many cases has been able to stay home with the adult day patient. They care of them, but as these folks, you know, we spent a lot of time on how we reopened schools and the need for childcare facilities. Well, we haven't, I don't haven't heard any conversation about the need for help for senior citizens or other disabled folks who need those type of services. The other thing that we did, and then I see Senator Westman's hand is up and that we have many of these seniors are served by personal care providers that are funded, the pay goes through ARIS. And so the hazard pay, can you just speak to that, Monica, is that I know that's happening right now. I think Sarah indicated that over 400 employers had requested that hazard pay. So can you speak to your experiences that relates to the choices for care population? Sure, so a couple of different questions all wrapped up in that. Maybe to start with Senator Sears and the question around the adult day programs and what's happening there. As I mentioned a little bit earlier in testimony, what we've tried to do is what we've done is given maximum flexibility to those individuals to be able to shift dollars that would have gone to adult day to use them as respite or from a family perspective to actually have a family pay themselves to be providing some of that care. So you can make that kind of shift within your own service plan, within your own service budget. If you're not using dollars in one area like adult day to plug that into another area so that those dollars become available to you. So that is certainly one of the ways that we tried to create flexibility to support families where adult day wasn't possible. You're right in that there has been operational support for the adult day programs to keep them afloat as this has unfolded and we are working. Megan has done a full survey with all of the adult days to understand their capacity to reopen. They do in fact now have an approved reopening plan but it is still a little bit of a scary proposition for a lot of them and reopening safely will require them to reduce their census a little bit in order to meet all those safety guidelines. And so again, we're working with them individually to understand which of them feel like they can open and can those dollars, the CRF dollars that have already been allocated support them to even maintain operations with a reduced census beyond September. As I said, they need to reconcile by the end of September but if they can identify the need going forward if there's enough money in that original allocation of CRF they can use that to supplement that lost census. And then if there's, and once we figure that out knowing what they have now, what their costs are we're gonna work with them individually to do that. In fact, Sarah and I have been communicating about that pretty recently. We will determine if there's a need for additional funding to get them through to the end of the availability of CRF funds. So December to supplement that census. What we really want is for them to reopen as much as they possibly can because as Senator Sears pointed out it's absolutely a vital service and it's pretty challenging to replace other than in a physical spot with daytime supports that's what people are looking for. In terms of the meals programs there was a $600,000 CRF appropriation that has just been approved through Joint Fiscal Four Senior Centers and Meal programs. And that was money that filled the gap between their costs and expenses and actually be enhanced rate that area agencies on aging have been able to provide to them. So even still there was a delta between their expenses and that enhanced rate. The report that Joint Fiscal got on the 18th spoke specifically to the ability of area agencies on aging to continue that enhanced rate and to do so through the end of December or to December I guess. We are estimating that would be about $565,000. And so we submitted that report to Joint Fiscal on the 18th. I think we were waiting to hear back if that was something that Joint Fiscal wanted us to pursue. We were offering the estimate but I hadn't taken any additional steps at this point in time with that. So as a money committee then that additional funding of the 565 that's referenced in the report and Sarah you'll confirm this that is not reflected in any of the proposals that have been submitted to us. That's correct. So I guess obviously we're not gonna be turning around. We've got the budget then we've got the CRF decisions to make. So maybe there's a little bit more time to refine the question about will additional money over what we appropriated in the Q1 budget be required. And if you could get us some sense of what that might be I think the committee would be very interested because obviously our top priority is feeding and making sure that our seniors and people with disabilities are cared for. Senator Westman. If I wait long enough, a lot of this gets answered. I just say to you Monica I would like to sit down with you and your staff in that. I understand you've done a survey of what it would take to open and the things that they need to do particularly around the adult days. I'd like to compare that to a budget. What are the things they need to do if they're gonna be going at a lower staffing level and or not staffing level but lower census numbers, what's that gonna take? What are the extra things they need to reopen? If I've got one in five that are small but aren't going to reopen are there things we can do to encourage them to reopen? So basically what would, and I think that's mostly on CRF money that we could if we open before the end of the year. So I'd like to see a budget around that. Okay. Senator Ash, I think you're the next. On the meals front, I commissioner maybe just a plant to seed it does see I think the action of the Joint Fiscal Committee was very good since the meals themselves the funds to the maximum extent possible should go to the people actually delivering and preparing the meals. I hope you'll do some thinking about how we make sure on a permanent basis more money goes to support healthy meals being produced and delivered at the local level and not get sucked up in administrative expenses somewhere in the between the agency and those actually doing the direct work. So it's just a flag for future discussion. Absolutely. Okay. Other questions? I'm just checking my time 209. We have Sean Brown who's, I don't know if he's in the waiting room or listening. Other questions of folks from Dale. Okay. So Monica, you'll be refining and getting more information and in light of Senator Westman's and the other questions that have been asked center Ash. I would request that the commissioner if you can get back to me and or the committee with what we could do to increase wages at developmental services organizations for every $250,000 we are able to come up with. I just say that I wrote that question down. So when we separately meet Monica, I am gonna bring it up. Okay. Monica, did we not move refresh but your, those employees did get moved to the $15 an hour? Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes, across the developmental services designated agency system. Yes. Okay. Other questions? Okay. Thank you very much. Chrissy, do we have commissioner Brown? He's not in the room yet. He should be joining us shortly. We have Sarah still. Any more questions of Sarah? It is Friday and oh, it's Tim. And you have a question there. If we've got the time. Sorry, Sarah. Yes, Sarah, you don't mute yourself, Sarah. I'd like to return to this issue of sort of the morality of how much we spend on certain positions using Medicaid funds versus others who do direct frontline work. And obviously if someone is a heart surgeon and Medicaid covers the heart surgery, we're going to be paying a significant amount of money over the course of a year for that individual's salary. And I don't think there's any, no one's going to have a qualm with that. There are other positions which have proliferated over the years with some of them are politically connected people. Some of them are people who get into these drifting administrative positions with no actual benefit who make substantial amounts of money. And I'm wondering if the administration thought at all about limiting Medicaid distributions in support of certain positions so that it could free up money where it's much more greatly needed. Thanks, Senator Ash. I did take notes of your question and I will take it back with leadership at the Agency of Human Services. To put a finer point maybe then I'll just say there are positions out there that I think we would all say the whole world wouldn't even notice if they didn't exist anymore. At the same time we say we don't have more money for nurses, we don't have more money for LPNs, we don't have more money for developmental services, we don't have any more money for this, that and the other. The truth is we do have the money but a lot of it gets sucked up by a small number of politically connected people. So if you can see if there's any interest in perhaps cataloging certain job types for which it's not just or justifiable to ship major amounts of state funds to support them on an annual basis. So that we could use it in areas where we have already acknowledged we have real problems with retention or recruitment and so on. So if you can pose it in that way not meant to be punitive towards one but rather redistributive in a more fair and productive way for the state. And I guess one area that you could look and that is where the agency has control and that is in the rate setting process. Now a lot of some of the positions that are being referenced would go through the hospital budget review process but it could look at at least for those rates that are established and controlled by the agency directly is also a good place. Senator Sears, you're muted. I heard the word rate setting. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I should never, never, never come, R.S. Let me just, let me just suggest that that's- That's your initial, I can't use R.S. Because you'd say I was talking about you, Richard Sears. Right, rate setting could be expanded to those facilities so that Senator Ashes can well meant concern is addressed. That still doesn't take away from my initial position that the division of rate setting should be disbanded and sent to some other, those positions should be sent to other places where they could be helpful. However, as long as you all want to continue a division of rate setting, I think that's a great idea. The Vermont Supreme Court has ruled that the legislature does have legal authority to get into the administrative affairs of hospitals and domestic insurance companies. So Senator Sears statutes, you know, in our legislative work, we could, if we chose intervene. So Monica, you've lifted us to a very different a level of conversation and that is the disparity and how our healthcare dollars or our healthcare costs, what the different realities of how that money is being spent, which ultimately is paid by either public programs or through the insurance premium process. So do we have Commissioner Brown yet? Yes, we do. Do we have anybody from DCF who wants to talk to us? We sure do. Okay. Thank you very much, Meagan and Monica and Bill. Bill's already left. Okay. So we have, Sean is with us. Sarah is going to stay on. We have Sarah was in charge of your money and anyone else, Sean? No, I believe that's the DCF contingent today. Okay. Sarah plus the two of you. So we wanted to go through the budget. The other part, of course, that you're walking into by becoming commissioner is the whole discussion around Woodside. And I see Senator Sears is left temporarily. So why don't we, and we also, you've got the childcare, which is going to be a topic of discussion in terms of the 12 million proposal that is coming to join fiscal committee on Monday. So I'm sure this committee would be interested in what's being proposed as well. So if you wanted to just, do you have a document that you want us to put on the screen to walk us through in terms of your restatement for? Yes, we earlier today provided a PowerPoint presentation that I can walk you through. That'll highlight the restatement ups and downs. All right. So do you have that, Chrissy? I do. I'm just pulling it up. Just give me one moment, please. All right. Thank you. Can you all see that? Yes. It's very good. Thank you. And this is the screen you want to start with, Sean? Sure. Just at a real high level, just to refresh the committee, DCF's a large department within the agency of human services. We have over a thousand staff. And when you add in the EBT money that doesn't flow through the Three Squares Mod program, but which comes through the Treasury to our EBT vendor, we approach a half a billion dollars of dollars running through our various programs and divisions to support remote children and families throughout the various services that we provide. And if we move to the next screen, it just kind of highlights the third page of the PowerPoint. Yes, right here. That the biggest division is family services, just kind of highlights where our staff are allocated throughout the department, just for the committee's reference. The admin includes the economic services staff, the business office, the registry review unit staff, and then the commissioner's office as well. Then OCS, disability determination, OEO, Woodside, and the child development division. Or rather large expansive department covering lots of different services. Moving on to the next page, I just wanted to highlight some of the initiatives that we might touch on in our budget restatement or from the original governor's recommended budget. The first one in economic services, the elderly simplified application program. We had proposed implementing that July 1st of this year, but due to COVID, we pushed that roll out to October 1st and we're on schedule for that initiative to go live then for the committee's refresher. This is a waiver we received from the USDA Food and Nutrition Service that allows us to streamline and simplify the application and recertification requirements for households who fall under two categories, either older Vermonters or disabled Vermonters, which is about half our caseload. It really makes it easier for those populations to access and stay on the program. And so we're excited that we're able to still roll that out coming October 1st. It actually has a new name, which we didn't put in here. It's three squares, Vermont and a SNAP. So if you hear that name, that's what that's referring to. It's no longer referred to as ESAP as we roll it out. Also, you'll see that we're proposing in the governor's restated budget to bring in the CCFAP eligibility service into DCF. We're right now, we contract with partners across the state. Some of those are parent child centers to do eligibility. We have an eligibility service experience staff in ESD which would streamline the process and provide one stop shopping for those families that participate in all the benefit programs that we have to offer at DCF. And so we can talk about that more when we get to that specific area of the budget. Also, FSB have, yes. Okay, and that's been proposed in the past and it's been met with obviously concerned by some of those community partners that were doing that, I believe. Senator Westman, we'll get into this more, but is this, are we going to be getting, are there people that don't, would that oppose this? Yesterday in our testimony in house appropriations, we heard some concern that this could destabilize the parent child centers who, or I think there's only six of them who have grants to do this work and that this could destabilize them financially that was raised by representative Yacoboni. And so we're gathering more information to provide additional details to the committees and we'll have that early next week and we can share that Senator Westman in your committee as well. All right, Senator Sears, your hand is up. Yes, I have an email from my parent child son as well and they feel that this proposal is not a new proposal and it was an effort to move this a number of years ago with strong advocacy that didn't happen. I hope it will not happen this time. So I'm reaching out to you. Years ago, it was a state position that was moved to a community partner. Sunrise was identified as the partner. That is a, you know, one of the parent child centers and in an effort to save money for the state, there are many uncertainties this time regarding the proposal. Thanks. So I guess we'll be hearing more on that. And I'm sure the budget assumes some savings from doing that consolidation from a eligibility perspective, it makes sense to if you're processing that data and that financial information and it's a means tested to do it at all is a one process but that's why I raised the question. So obviously Senator Sears, you've already got an email and I'm sure other people will start getting them as well. Okay. And we're happy to have further conversations as well with committee, this committee and its members for to provide additional information. Turning to FSD, we continue to evaluate our residential system of care, particularly in our use of out of state placements. We have been able to make some progress in reducing our reliance on out of state treatment programs and bringing some of the youth back to and provide those services in state. And that work continues. Also, this July, the raise the age went into effect and so we're working across the state with our justice partners to roll that out and assess what programs and services, how they can be strengthened and improved as we move forward with this. And as we learn, as we move forward and learn from its implementation. And then also as you indicated in the beginning, Woodside's going to be a complicated conversation. A lot of moving pieces to that going on right now and we're happy to have that conversation with the committee, the child development division. Before you, can I ask you to make a comment about that? Madam Chair. Yes, go right ahead. Joint justice oversight met yesterday on the issue of Woodside, among other issues. And it's clear that we will be sending a letter to the other legislators saying that we're not ready to put a stamp of approval on the plan because the plan really isn't in place. Although there isn't, I mean, there is objection from the BSEA and others about the plan. That's not as much our concern as the concern that will this work for those kids. And currently we have one kid at Woodside that they are having difficulty placing. We have one kid at the Sununu Center lockup. And so will they be able to have a full-fledged plan by the time we act on the 21, third, three-quarter budget? Well, that's going to be very quick, Dick, because we have to have this in place by the 25th of September. But in my opinion, if we approve this and the timing couldn't be worse. I don't think we want to approve this in this budget without a better plan. Okay, well... I'm hopeful that by the time we begin marking up the bill in two weeks or whatever it is, the commissioner will have us better information on the different plans that he discussed with us yesterday. I realize we're moving at a quick pace, but it isn't like tomorrow. So I'm just suggesting that we hopefully will have some better idea before we adjourn whenever that might be. It may be that the Senate Appropriations Committee actually has to deal with it because we're coming after the House. Yeah, okay. So I just wanted to alert you to that. I don't think the committee, the Justice Oversight Committee is opposed to the phase down. It's just that we don't think the plan is ready. Okay, all right. So what you're saying is it's still under development and you're not willing to sign off on it yet, but hopefully before the Senate finishes up the budget, we'll have a better sense of the plan. I hope so. For one example, we don't know if the private provider that they may be working with will be able to get Medicaid match. We need to know that before we put it. Because we've been down that road before, if you remember. Dick, you and I have held hands and jumped off that cliff, remember? Yeah, I know, but I hate to jump off it again. All right, Senator Ash. So I agree that we wanna make sure we have a workable plan whenever we resolve what's gonna be next. But just for shorthand for me, before when there were very, the census count was like two or three, depending on the day. And I think Steve Howard assured us that sometimes it was an average of 3.1, not three. We were spending $6 million, I believe was the rough operating cost. I'm just wondering at this time, setting aside how many individuals would be appropriate for the classic Woodside facility. What is the current operating cost projection if we were to keep Woodside as is? Is it still that six million or have there been changes as a result of all the back and forth and back and forth again that's been happening the last year? You will see in the governor's restatement that we are proposing reducing staffing levels based on the program that's currently being provided and the number of youth and what would be an appropriate level of staffing. And so we're looking to reduce from a $6 million operating budget more or less in prior years to approximately 4.1. They also have five staff members on administrative leave and they're looking at whether or not they should be charged with child abuse based upon restraints and there's some other incidents as well. So that does add to that. Those people are being paid, but they're not there. Oh. Senator Ash, your hand's still up. You have another question? Well, I don't know if I have to or comment or comment. Physically take it down, but how many, and I know it's tricky because there's been so much movement back and forth the last bunch of months, but about six months ago, we would have been saying that there was somewhere between one and five kids at any moment in time, depending on the day or zero and five, I should say. How many right now are Woodside kids? You know, kids. Right now we have one youth in the facility, which we believe would benefit from a different treatment program, which we're trying to work with and develop and then get core permission to move that youth too. As Senator Sears indicated, we do have one youth placed at the Sinunu Center, who had we not stopped taking admissions due to safety and programmatic concerns, would have been at Woodside at this time, but we were able to place that youth through the interstate compact and that youth was from another state actually who ended up in Vermont. And so right now there's one at Woodside, but potentially there was this other youth who's at the Sinunu Center, who would have been in Woodside had we not closed down admissions due to safety concerns as Senator Sears indicated. There was an incident involving five staff in a restraint of a youth that was incredibly dangerous and problematic and those staff are on leave pending an HR investigation, but there's also a residential licensing investigation and child abuse investigations as well as a result of that incident. And then there was a recent incident that came to our attention in the last several days which we're following up on and there might be more information to share on that in the coming days and how we're approaching that. So at present, obviously there's a ebb and flow of kids who might be appropriate, but between one and two Vermont kids between four and $6 million to handle them. Yeah. It does, that does obviously raise a lot of questions about... Well, one very serious one. Yeah, also the question becomes one of... Four to six million for two, one or two kids, okay. Yeah, the sad part is this been going on for quite some time. Yeah. Okay. Can I just say something in defense of the system? Yeah, go ahead, Dick. Very hard to find private providers who are willing to take kids with a no eject, no reject proposal. Many of these community providers just don't feel they can handle that kind of kid in the community. And that's the real problem. And so you need somebody who's willing, who's able to do that, plus has a facility. But then the question becomes, is the facility Medicaid eligible, which is what this budget is based upon in order to take advantage of federal funding? But it would be, as I understand it, a walk facility. But I tell you, as a former provider, that's really tough to say, I won't reject this kid or I won't eject the kid, no matter what happens. That's a very well-made point. That's a very well-made point. And I get that totally. It just seems for four to six million, we should be able to find some other solution. Yeah, I totally agree, Tim. And I'm on board with that other solution. I don't want to be seen as putting all the blame on the Department of Children and Families. No, I think if there's something to blame, it's that we've found other strategies which have really been helpful to reduce the number of kids who need to be at Woodside. I think that's a collective success. That just makes the math at the facility more challenged for sure. I guess we'll put this, we know that this is an issue that we're going to have more discussion as we go through this budget process. And so unless we have more comments or questions on the Woodside, knowing that it's still a lot of work to be done, I'm going to suggest we move on to the next division, which is child development. And then we're moving into a year or two of our plan, the CCFAP plan, also transportation continues to still be a big focus. We were hoping to evaluate our transportation needs and contracts across the department to see if we could find efficiencies and improvements and how we obtain transportation across our different programs, because we spend a lot of money on transportation across the department, between our various programs and family services, CDD, ReachUp and other areas. And so we were hoping to find some efficiencies there due to COVID that that wasn't able to get to the point where we hope to be right now, but we are restarting that work. Also, we are moving forward in an incremental modular approach in our BFIS IT system replacement. We've just signed off on the ABC form and that module is starting to move forward. And then you'll see that we're starting to evaluate the maintenance and operations costs for that system moving forward. Also an OCS you'll see in the budget, we're looking to move away from mailing a lot of notices in OCS to using electronic notice systems, which would provide a, we think a better service to room owners, given many people use electronic communications, but also we would realize some postage efficiencies and savings as well. Also, our ReachUp caseload looks much different now as a result of COVID-19 than it did in February before the pandemic hit. We've implemented a lot of temporary program changes in response with many of the systems that our families relied on in terms of education and job supports shutting down. We made some changes. Also went to more online and on the phone connection with our families and no longer whom visiting in response to the pandemic. Also our caseloads have gone up with the economy shutting down. More families are on the program. And so that program's gone under a lot of change in the last several months. Also we're still moving forward with the expanded family supported housing initiative that was in the initial governor's recommended budget. Given how the state responded for homeless families and individuals, this initiative is more important now than ever. And then also given that same response to homelessness, we're not proposing to move forward with the community-based emergency housing program as it was initially proposed in the governor's recommended budget back in January. And that we'll be putting that conversation off and till the 22 budget. Just given we're housing a large number of families and individuals to keep them safe during the pandemic, we were not in the position to move forward with our providers to move that forward in 21 right now. Given that we were looking to move to a community-based model where shelter systems and other congregate settings played a big role and reduce our reliance on motels. And right now that we're relying more on motels and less in congregate settings just because of the inability to follow some of the safety guidelines in those settings right now. Sean, and I suppose Senator Westman will have some more detailed conversations. But when we did the housing, the last housing package, we put the administration had submitted a $16 million. It was a combination of interventions and included supports because many people could get into, once they're in permanent housing, they need support in order to maintain it. And I believe was calling on the use of Medicaid using some of the money that was in the general assistance appropriation, moving it to be the match to help fund those Medicaid eligible housing support services for those populations that not to pay for the housing, but to pay for the support so that they could, if they got into housing, permanent housing, they could maintain it. I'm having a hard time reconciling what you're saying now with that $16 million proposal that was advanced. Are you saying, is that moving ahead or are parts of it being. So that is our expanded family supported housing proposal I just touched on. So that does leverage Medicaid money for those supported services to help families that we place in permanent housing to be maintained in housing and retain that housing because that's a difficult time for many families when they first obtain permanent housing. They have the supports to be successful long term. The dollars that were allocated by the legislature, those 16 million of CRF dollars was directed at families and individuals that were currently housing and motels. So there was the service dollars component of that. There was a component to pay for some of the motels that right now I'm happy to report that FEMA has accepted our first initial claim and we are receiving FEMA dollars. So the state only needs to come up to the 25% match. Normally our hotel spending is 100% general fund to the general systems program. And so FEMA support has been incredibly important and we continue to submit claims there. But also there was money to expand in that rehousing plan to expand the Vermont rental subsidy program. Our goal was to end family homelessness, provide a rental voucher for all families with kids that are currently being housed in motels due to COVID and then rapid rehousing dollars were also a part of that for other households to help them move on and obtain permanent housing with really flexible funding for our partners to access for those households. And so all of those service dollars or the bulk of them have been allocated out to our housing partners across the state and they're staffing up and expanding their services with those dollars to meet the needs to move these individuals and families out of the motels and into more permanent housing. And we're just starting to see the benefits of those resources being dispersed throughout the malls communities. If I understand what you're saying is that $16 million proposal is moving forward and you're beginning to see the benefits of it. Yes, yes. All right, I just, I was just, when you were saying delayed till next year I was having a hard time differentiating between that initiative with that comment. Yeah, so in the governor's initial 21 we had proposed eliminating the emergency housing program the Motel Voucher program and making it a community-based program. And that's what we're delaying. Given where we are with the use of motels and the work the communities are doing we didn't feel we're in a position to move forward with that initiative that on the Motel Voucher program is playing a critical part in keeping homeless or monitor safe right now while we implement that rehousing plan. And in many ways that rehousing plan is our vision for that community provider system. And so the work we're doing now I think hopefully builds that system and makes the transition to it easier when we move to it. Okay, that's very helpful. Thank you. And I guess we should probably keep going because you've got how many more boxes here. A few. And then just some other initiatives and we just touched on it the housing plan or reach up case load. Just wanted to touch base on three squares, Vermont. We did issue out late spring the pandemic EBT benefits that was the value of the free and reduced lunch for all kids in Vermont who are going to schools participating in that program. It was a value of $387 per child. And so we were able to get that out working with our partners in the agency of education in hunger free Vermont. And so we put a significant amount of resources and families who children receive free and reduced lunch each child received $387. So that was it. So what was the total payout that went out to families? It was over $10 million. I can get you that number. It was, you know, in the aggregate when we think about the amount of, through all the different streams of funding, it's been an incredible flow of federal dollars to the state. I believe, okay. And that went out to every family, right? Regardless of income. Right. Regardless of whether you were on three squares or not to, which made it complicated. So we had to connect with all families who had kids receiving free and reduced lunch, not just those receiving three squares Vermont. So it was all kids on that program in Vermont. It was a large number. Okay. Yeah. Another area of work that had to get done and accommodated. So. Yeah. And then the, and just the other benefit to touch on that, that was the USDA and the federal government created was the emergency full allotment. And so that, well, each month that we're in a state of emergency, we're able to issue out to each household who's not already at it the full allotment for their household size. And so that really benefits family, large families with multiple members who might not be at it in each month that we're in a state of emergency. We're able, it's a little over $3 million a month in addition that we issue out through that emergency allotment. And given the extension of the emergency declaration by the governor into September we'll now are seeking approval from the federal government to issue it out for September. So each month we issue that out, that might be our six months. So just that benefit alone, it'll be close to $20 million that we'll have issued out after September's benefit goes. So it's a large sum of money that we're issuing out to Ramoners. Our concern with this benefit, and we've shared that with the federal government is that it didn't benefit families who were already at the full allotment. And for many of those households, those are your lower income households who really could have benefited from an increase in their SNAP benefits and they didn't get one. And those tended to be older Ramoners and disabled Ramoners who were already at the max allotment. So they really didn't benefit from this as some other families did. We're seeing the benefits to the emergency allotment and the PEBT really went to families with kids. And so there was this other population that really didn't benefit as well, unfortunately. And then we've issued out and working with the food bank on the CRF money of the legislature allocated out to the Vermont food bank to increase the food distribution network to address hunger across Vermont. So that's work we've been on as well. Also our FSD team just in response to COVID has done, need to do a lot of work working with the different programs to make sure they're implementing proper safety and protocols to make sure our kids are being well cared for in those systems. And that will include foster care, foster homes as well. Also, we're in the midst of another round of relief grants to childcare providers, the 12 million that the legislature allocated for childcare programs, summer programs, after-school programs, CIS, telehealth providers, as well as the parent-child centers. Those applications are open for that until next week and we're evaluating that to disperse that 12 million dollars. Also, you mentioned this at the beginning, Senator Kitchell, our proposal that will be going before the Joint Fiscal Committee on Monday to create these school-age online learning hubs as schools open up. Kids are not good school-age kids, particularly K through six may need a place to go and their parents' work are able to provide that level of support for them. So we're looking to expand the system of care for those kids so that they have a place to go for their online learning. And so we're rolled out this proposal to expand these hubs and also a change so that family-based center homes can increase the number of kids that they serve for school-age up to four kids to expand. We believe we need to expand the system of care by about 10,000 slots right now. And in Vermont, there's only 13,000 slots in the system of care pre-existing. So this is a pretty big lift. I've been impressed by the inquiry since the press conference by the governor announcing this and rolling it out. We're getting multiple contacts a day from employers and school districts, summer programs, wanting to sign up and take advantage of this program and provide hub and childcare slots for online learning. So we're pretty excited that this is really getting a lot of traction early and we're making good progress and rolling it out. Again, just expanded the family-supported housing which we talked about, the AHS plan, OEO and ESD have been in tight partnership with that. And then also the micro-business CRF funds as well. So there's been a lot of work going on in response to COVID plus the original initiatives we had proposed. A lot of work going on. That's our very busy. Okay, I guess you have more slides and that gets into the details of the budget. And some of this we touched on. So we have some, and some of these are net neutral. We're just moving because we're delaying things. We're moving money back from the original budget proposal back to the original home in the DCF budget. In admin, you would see that in the delay of the emergency housing initiative. Also because we delayed the rollout of ESAP for a quarter from July 1st to October 1st. Also with the move, a proposed move of bringing in-house the CCFAP eligibility to ESD, we would be moving some staff from CDD or the policy staff to ESD to support that move. Also, and I will defer to Sarah Truckel to explain this, but we need to account for how we spend our TANF money throughout our programs. Because we don't just use TANF in the reach-up program. We use it very creatively in Vermont. And we have to submit a five-year plan of how we're doing that. And so we're moving money around to reflect our five-year plan. And if you have questions, I'll defer to Sarah Truckel on that. And then the other thing we've touched on this CCFAP move, we have a MOU, Memorand of Understanding with the Department of Labor for Employment Services for the reach-up program, but also for the Three Squares Remont Program, our Employment and Training Program. And because it's serving multiple programs and not just reach-up, we're moving it out of the reach-up debt ID and moving it into the DCF admin where ESD's overall costs are. And that's just net neutral. And it just better than that. That is just not a reach-up that's serving all Three Squares Remont recipients as well. Okay, so the TANF, TANF last I knew had not been increased since it was implemented. Is that still at about 47 million? Correct, yeah. Sarah, do you want to weigh in? Sure. And I know that we have a maintenance of effort and I know that we look through, you know, we use earned income tax credits with it, it's pretty complicated at this point. So in order to meet those maintenance of effort requirements that are in place. So that's what you're having to do here with your five-year plan to make sure that those requirements are still being met. This is just a technical adjustment. We're moving money between the admin debt ID and FSD to properly show how we're doing it. FSD to properly show how we're earning those TANF funds. We're not making any programmatic changes with this. It's just a reflection of where we're earning the funds and which debt ID based on how we're reporting that. Okay, all right. So it's more just technical. That's an example of moving to a block grant and what happens. That's why states are very, very leery about that used to be the old foray program and used to get a federal match and it would move back and forth depending on economic conditions. And since we've got that, it's just another example of, and they up a reduction in support for our poorest families. So, but that's more of an editorial comment. I'm beginning to sound like Senator Ash. So I'm gonna move on to the next stuff and we're obviously gonna have more discussion about moving eligibility and referral. Although then, but you've assumed those savings in building your budget commissioner. Yeah, and you would, and here the downs would be some savings from bringing that work in-house and not having to pay all the providers to do that work based on what it would cost us. And then also the other is just like our human resource partners, agency of digital services costs are down. We know all that. That's everybody shows that. Yeah, okay. So, ready to move on. Family services division. You know, we had proposed some positions that would have been needed if Woodside had closed effective July 1st, that's not happened. And so we're just moving, taking those back out of the family services budget again, that the technical reporting regarding the TANF five-year plan, the internal service funds. Also, given Woodside is still open, we have one youth there. We don't need the replacement funding for residential programs. Also, with the FMAP increase, it affects our four E-DOT spending. And so that frees up general fund because we have more federal funds. And then also given Woodside is still open, the proposal to expand family group counseling is not needed at this time. And so that that's a down in our budget as well. I think the question will be, Sean, is will those reversions, I mean, obviously that you're continuing to spend a lot of money for the operation of Woodside, but we wanted to make sure that the resources were there that if alternative placements, and we can shut the facility down in the planning that the resources are there to meet the needs of those kids in other settings. And so can you just confirm that that is your plan here? Yes, yes, that if we move forward with closing Woodside, you'll see in our budget that we are proposing some position reductions, just given the number of kids we're serving there and the need for, we don't have that need. Many of those positions are currently vacant, just because we've had a lot of attrition over the last year with the conversation around closing. Many staff have moved on and found other jobs. And so we still continue to experience a loss of staff as a result of those conversations. We had two people, I believe, last week give their notice. And so we are proposing, I think it's 21 out of the 51 positions. However, if the program did close with the money allocated towards Woodside, we believe there would be enough to meet the needs for residential placements costs and walk not from that appropriation. Yeah, particularly if you have two kids and four million. All right, let's keep going. Child development, and I'm assuming some of this is really a technical moving money around between, so that a big down in fact is more just a matter of where the money is showing up. Correct, correct. Here we do have one up, as we talked about earlier, the transportation initiative. We were hoping to realize some savings in CDD based on that work. That work's been delayed. And so we need the resources for CDD to continue to pay for transportation services. And that's the one up. We are starting that work now. And so hopefully in the 22 budget, that will be addressed there. But one thing we've talked about most of the downs here in the CDD budget. And I know we'll have further conversations regarding the proposal to move eligibility over to ESD from private providers. One thing I wanna highlight here is that we have two grant monitors that go in and work with our partners, the community partners doing that work to do some grant compliance work. We wouldn't need those positions if that initiative goes through, just because we have staff in ESD that do that work and review our staff's work already. While these are filled positions and these positions would be rift, we have a lot of openings right now. And I'm very confident that we will find positions that meet the staff's interest and skill set. And that they wouldn't lose employment with a state of Vermont. They just might be doing something different and I'm pretty confident in that. And we're working on that right now. Also, the other thing I would just want Sarah to highly touch on the subsidy revenue shift is the one thing we haven't touched, the other thing we haven't touched on here. So this revenue shift is associated with moving the CCFAP eligibility and referral to ESD as a result of the way that revenue would then be earned by ESD staff, we're able to offset GF expenses in the admin depth ID. And then we have more CCDF in our block grant which can now be utilized in our subsidy budget. And we're able to offset some general fund. Okay. And that offset of general fund is how much and where does that reduction show? So it will show in the CDD depth ID and particularly, I'm just scrolling up, you'll see it in line 178. So 128,333 dollars moves from general fund to fed fund. Okay. And then moving to the next slide if there's no other questions. Off the child's board we touched on here. That's fine. We understand these two things. I'm assuming posted savings is, is there an issue with electronic notifications? Are you talking about notifications to apps and parents? And custodial parents, yes. And custodial. We send out a lot of notices to both parents in that program. Some of them are annual, some are quarterly, or case specific, depending on activity going on. And for a parent who perhaps does not have access to technology, then that would still be done through the usual postal service. Yes, yes, but that would still be an option for families that don't have the technology or don't believe that that works for them. Okay. Senator Ash. When I was on finance for years, there was an annual discussion about whether insurance companies should have to, basically every year the insurance companies would come in and say they wanted to only have to provide most general notices electronically and not by mail. And each year we would block that proposal because we knew that many people have email accounts that they change over time. For instance, a legislator might primarily use a legislative address, but then if they use that for their insurance purpose for some reason and then aren't in the legislature anymore, suddenly the email goes to nowhere and the person might not realize they're missing deadlines. So I think after I left finance, I might have, my guard might have been let down and they might have actually passed that. But I'm wondering whether they're, I'm not, I guess I'm asking commissioner, how do you prevent from someone having very serious consequences of what might be an email that goes to a spam folder or a junk folder, which happens all the time. Even emails that we send to each other sometimes as legislators don't arrive as intended. Is it possible that someone can lose custody over an email that goes to a spam folder inadvertently? Well, this would be for child support. So this would involve parental rights or responsibilities. This would be for their child support order or obligation or the establishment enforcement or modification. I'll be honest with you, Senator. Those same risks and concerns exist with the mail. If you saw the amount of return mail that we get in our application and document processing center on a daily basis for households that don't notify us of their address change and then we get mail back. We spend a lot of time now tracking down new addresses for folks and that work would also happen for households with emails as well. Yeah, undoubtedly either system has its issues except you've just pointed out that at least in the case of hard copy you receive the thing back which indicates that it did not have a recipient on the other end whereas emails can be sent to an existing address but that isn't checked regularly or at all whereas in an act of the department wouldn't know that. And so- Don't you have a system though that can go in and determine if it had been opened? Yeah, we, you know, this is a system we would work with our IT partner ADS to design. So there would be some legislative language as well regarding this. This will be a system that will need to be developed as well. Okay, I look forward to this. We certainly could build safeguards in for those concerned Senator because I think they are a legitimate and valid concerns for sure. Well, I'll look forward to seeing what the legislation is. And I think maybe when you come back when we dive deeper into this it would be helpful to know what the most serious consequence of failure to respond would be, you know if it's a minor inconvenience as a result of not responding that's obviously different than imprisonment. Oh, understood. And I'm happy to loop in Robin or now our child support director in those conversations as we get, look at that in more detail. Okay. Next slide then. Yes, general assistance here just the conversation we had just moved some money back to the GA debt ID from OEO where they would that those funds would have went out and housing opportunity grants to support the community-based initiative. Here it just moves it back to the general assistance debt ID where we pay for motels. That's the one you're postponing. So now we have to read up and your caseload is open because our block grant is well oversubscribed. This is a general fund. Yes, yes. And so we have our caseload increase that we're able to leverage CRF funds from July through December. And then you would see an up in our budget for those costs from January to June that we're not able to leverage. Those would be general fund costs. Those would definitely be ups. And then also the technical 10 to five year plan technical movement. So really the up here is about Sarah, if you want to weigh in about five million. Yes, yeah, yeah. Okay. So it's a total, well, assuming, I don't know, you've probably got different growth between July and December and January through June, but CRF will cover the July through December increase. And so obviously January through June, you're still expecting some caseload increase during those winter months. Yes. And these projections are based off our contractor Leslie Black Pluma, who we've always used to project our reach up caseload size and cost over time. And then also we do have some downs. There's the internal service fund. Although they also child support through its child support program and establishing and collecting on orders for families that are currently on reach up or we're in there's some arrears out with the expansion of unemployment to contractors. And then also the enhanced unemployment and the stimulus checks that the federal government sent out. We under law are required to wage with hold and intercept those payments. They weren't exempted under the CRF federal legislation. And so we are actually seeing some increase in our revenues, which offset some of our general fund costs in the reach up program. And then again, just the net neutral move of the MOU to the admin debt ID from the reach up debt ID. Here again, just the movement of the emergency housing money over to GA and then the internal service funds here are the changes in the restatement budget. And then here, just an internal service fund down in the weatherization program. And then Woodside Restoring. Could you go back to the other slide on weatherization? Internal service fund reduction results in a down. I would have thought it would then internal service fund reductions would give you more money for weatherization. Can you explain that? I'll let Sarah Truckel chime in here. So when we received the 5% reduction across the internal service funds, the way that it impacts each one of our debt IDs results in an allocation across DCF and this is the allocation for weatherization. So we no longer have those expenses hitting that debt ID as it relates to the internal service fund. Are you trying to understand the interplay with the trust fund in particular? Well, I guess I am. It's just, one would think that I understand what you're doing. It's just how that trickles down, all right. You see a very similar small amount of money in DDS which has, I believe 97% federal fund and 3% general fund. And we're seeing, I believe it's a $51 ISF reduction in that debt ID. So it's just the way that it hits each one. Okay. Woodside, we're back on that. And I guess we kind of talked about this sufficiently, I think for this afternoon, unless we have, want to go back to that discussion but it's open, we're going to have more information and it's sort of one of those issues that will be a topic of further ongoing discussion. And then similar to the conversation we just had as weatherization, as Sarah pointed out, we realized a $51 reduction and from the internal service funds from DDS who as Sarah indicated, this is primarily a federally funded program and regulated program. And so we spend very little general fund here. I do have a question. You've asked through joint fiscal to have additional staff in disability determination due to increased workload. And my question, I know some of it is maybe appeals or whatever, but are you anticipating an increase that would add additional cost to the AABD sub? There could be. We haven't focused on that yet. I think we were being precautionary with those staff based on the request from our federal partner because historically during economic downturns, particularly severe ones, you see requests for disability go up and so they were being proactive there. But at this point, we're not seeing those come to fruition yet just given the length of time we've been in the economic distress. Normally it takes a longer downturn for the flat to start to realize. So in the short term, we haven't seen that yet. Okay. Any other questions? We've gone through all your slides. It's about almost quarter after three. Oh, Senator Ash, I'm sorry, I didn't see your hand. I just went out to you very quick. Commissioner, I'm thinking on the childcare front. There's been so much sort of turbulence as a result of COVID and the initial reaction of the administration which was admittedly, you had to move quick and it was the paying 50% of the tuition even when the place was closed to keep a slot and then some slots aren't even gonna return. Now we've got providers all over the state making different decisions about reopening. The proposal before joint fiscal about the 12 million to do grants for community hubs and all that. All of it's so hard because it's statewide. It's like a tsunami of challenges. So I preface it all with that and wonder if the administration is contemplating taking a step back and saying, you know what? This system can no longer function like this where we're asking every parent to make a decision. We're having a three tier childcare system of home-based, center-based and school-based. It can't go on like this. It's now exhibiting very in real ways how much our economy can't tolerate this. So maybe we should have a different approach like universal childcare and make that a statewide program not unlike K through 12 education and stop with all of these eccentric attempts to Senator Kitchell has a guest. You know what I mean? It just seems like it's calling out that our current patchwork system isn't gonna handle future situations like this. And the question is whether the administration thinks it might be more efficient and better for the economy to just have some kind of entitlement system for all kids. Yeah. Well, whether I will say this, that whether I don't know if I can say that that's what we're gonna move to as a system but I would say my prior role as deputy commissioner in our response to our programs there and now in this role, I think once we have the ability and we're not in reaction mode, I think across the board we're gonna evaluate our programs and our services and what we learned, what worked and what didn't work and maybe how we can re-imagine our systems of care so that they're stronger in the future and more resilient when we encounter situations like a pandemic or a mass flood to the state or whatnot. And so I think that is work we're gonna do as a department for sure and I believe as an agency but it's something we are gonna look at and evaluate how we responded, what worked, what didn't work and how can we improve our systems of care moving forward. Well, I hope you guys will think maybe at even a higher level because K through 12 is a system that no one doubts it's gonna continue to run because it is an entitlement system with a funding plan which people can complain about but it exists so people know each year every kid is entitled to K through 12 education and the what works and what didn't work about our current childcare system I think we're all gonna know that many things despite everyone's best efforts didn't work and couldn't work and we can keep patching things together and at great expense or we can just have a system that's predictable, guaranteed, it will come at a cost but it just seems it's a very inefficient way for a statewide system, a non-system I should say and I hope that you guys will think maybe on a much bolder scale than trying to fix little elements of it. You know, this is a conversation I think we have out ahead of us of course we have so many vested interests in maintaining and so is it a matter of just we need to put more money into the system as we know it or the extent to which people are willing to say do we really need to overhaul sort of this as you used to term patchwork with something quite different and that's a hard conversation and it'll be well. If we let the quote unquote stakeholders be involved nothing will change I think we know that the question really is should there be a system which acknowledges there's different needs in different communities and Bobby's neck of the woods center-based care and home-based care might be necessary as part of a system that's appropriate and scaled and in Burlington it might be different and in LaMoyle it might be different Windsor and so on but the longer every lobbying interest keeps getting their peace it means we're gonna have to be very vulnerable to what's going on right now and I don't know it just it seems nuts well and expensive. I agree and so I see Senator Westman has his hand up as well do you have a comment or a question? I just have a comment just remember this patchwork that you're talking about only serves less than half the kids in the state over half of our kids are in unregulated care without and not state placements. So as you talk about that what you're talking about would be a huge sea chain. Yep. We also know that a very large percentage of care from that report that was done a couple years ago in fact is provided by family members and people are fortunate enough to have family members a lot of that family care relative by grandparents or is actually at no cost which I found quite stunning. Well it does have a cost it's no cost to the state. No they were not necessarily paying. Well that's saying that a mother taking care of a kid doesn't do something of value and I think that. I'm talking about financial compensation. I'm not talking about equivalency. I'm just talking about the data that we got from that report Rich. No I understand that but that all comes at a cost to someone whether it's time or it's money. Well that's what that's true. Other comments DCF staff or Sarah? Okay so it's the end of the week for us. I think McCormick's trying to. Oh I'm sorry Senator McCormick you're muted. You're muted. Okay sorry about that. We had a controversy back in the spring about visitation being in person or remote. How did that and then finally it seemed to get resolved because you folks felt that you could regulate in person visitation to make sure it was safe. How has that worked out? I will connect with Deputy Commissioner Johnson and get back to you Senator that's not an area I've focused on recently with the woodside issues in the budget but I believe it is in person is happening across the state but to the extent I can get you some hopefully get you some data. Yeah okay thanks. Are you talking about parental visitation? Yeah yeah foster kids and. All right other comments or questions? If not I know Senator Westman will be having some follow-up discussion with with the department folks. So with that I think unless I don't see any more hands I'm going to adjourn this meeting of Senate appropriations and we are putting together a schedule that witnesses for next week worked with Chrissy and so I'm hoping that we will get more testimony and have the departments and agencies in that we talked about yesterday we wanted to hear from and we'll move right along as fast as we can as we know we've got to have a budget in place by October 1st and that's our assignment and I'm sure we'll we'll succeed so thank you all for this week which is advance of the session and then we're going to actually the pro tem which has indicated that we will the session will officially start again at 10 a.m. on Tuesday. So with that have a great weekend everyone and thank you all.