 Okay, good afternoon, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development afternoon session. We will spend the next hour looking, reviewing the budget for the Agency of Commerce and Community Development as it relates to our letter that we sent to appropriations with our recommendations in February and also looking at the one-time dollars that had been recommended at that point and now have been changed. So, Charlie, do you want to let's start first with the spreadsheet? Before you begin, I'm going to have to bug off at about one o'clock because we're going back and counting numbers one at a time dollars and so I'll just, you know, I'll hear what you have right now. Okay, thanks and what I'll do is send you and Copy Kitty and Teresa what we decide so that you can go forward at least with the budget part of it and we'll then continue on with CRF discussion and the language and everything this afternoon. Okay, and we're scheduled through, I don't know, four or five o'clock today, so. Okay, we probably won't see you again. Maybe not. Okay, well if you do get done and you're, you have an urge to join us, you're more than welcome to join us. How long are you meeting? We're scheduled till 4.30. Okay, well we'll see. Okay, very good, thank you. Thank you for the invite. Okay. Go ahead, Charlie. Okay. Yes, thank you and I'm just trying to get to the right screen to make sure that I'm sharing the right document. Please talk amongst yourselves for a minute. No, it's more fun watching you trying to figure it out. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. No pressure. No pressure. Oh no, I'm trying to get to the email that I sent you yesterday. There it is. Got it. Okay. All right. Yep. And now I'm going to share, share screen. Okay. So you should be seeing in front of you a spreadsheet that has on the top of it one time funds. Right. So you can see and so this is what had been proposed to the in January by the governor and all the different initiatives that the governor wanted to fund in the budget and we went through this as a committee in March in February and we had gone through this and marked it items as high priority, low priority, medium and no priority. And the particular this particular spreadsheet does not have that demarcation on it but it does include those items that we listed in the description of them. So the one time funds are all here in yellow and those are items that have been left out of the governor's new recommended budget so that we can go through that the Department of Tourism and Marketing if you remember had a million dollars. Think Vermont initiatives adds 500,000 that was a big thing for the tourism caucus at the time was adding $500,000 to marketing and another 250,000 for outdoor recreation marketing. So this is largely not included except that in the new proposal we have a $10 million request for marketing. So from CARES money. The second item is that clean grid technology I think we took a pass on this or we did not recommend that it be included when the original budget was acted upon and the clean grid optimization we were interested in this particular item but I can't remember if we recommended that it be included in the budget. Didn't we say that we wanted to send that over to energy and technology or did we get it from them that's that's what it was. You may be right and that may be included in the letter that we sent to appropriations down below. The Department of Economic Development for the T-Bed and T-Bed stood for technology based economic development and so the SBIR which is a small business entry somebody help me no it's anyway development grants and these I believe we did recommend in the governor's budget and we'll go over that and this is all about trying to attract or provide what one was I'm sorry one was bridging a gap in funding and I believe there's the I believe is a $200,000 one was to bridge the gap in funding that was between the federal funds and what the UVM had already spent in that office because they had committed so many projects so yeah so I think so the first one was to contract yep yep and then the second one was matching matching grants to Vermont businesses okay yeah and that contracts where right if they found an MIT expert or an expert at MIT with a specific technology it was to contract with that person and one-to-one match from businesses for R&D so all of these we thought were useful and trying to really fuel that kind of development economic development of businesses that would expand and we heard from a lot of different technology companies that had gone through this process and thought it was worthy of consideration at the time and it seems like it was about 10 years ago that we went over these numbers but it was it was only a few months ago yeah yes $150,000 this was the governor's proposal for modernizing the regulations we were talking about how it could override some kind of local regulations in terms of forcing inclusive housing but giving RPCs the task of working with different municipalities and that was considered I think with one particular RPC to provide that assistance and it was something that we were asking in another piece of legislation that RPCs to do but they came to us and said well we you're asking us to do more we don't have any any more time and you got to pay us for right municipal planning grants that was for municipalities to try to redo their zoning regulations to accommodate more dense development inside of their communities middle housing remember we talked about trying to find the next generation of developers for small residential developments because there is not a pipeline of those folks coming through the system I believe that's what it is and to develop that skill set and that aptitude locally locally support a place making projects that was only 250 that's interesting that's in the in the request from in front of the joint fiscal committee right now so that was the crowdfunding match I believe better places better places right I believe that's what it is is just looking at it without the description next to it remember there's two pieces one was the enabling language allowing the state to be that fiscal agent for projects that were done on a municipal level and also to provide matching funding so that community projects could actually get off the ground as long as there was a 50% raised by private funds I think Linda where you can take back with the kitty because I think joint fiscals meeting tomorrow to discuss those is that I'm wondering how they they are going to implement the better places without any any language behind it okay gene thanks that the the one-time money for municipalities that's it's a j that's going to join fiscal we really need that money and it's it's part of I've got it I'll pull it up but it's the it's it's part of the better places but it's also it's well it's the municipal one right yes municipal one that I just I spent the time away talking to cito and my and shape and Spencer from dpw and and also are we some a cuckoo from Essex and they need that money to in order to build out it's exactly what our guy from the 10 company was saying yeah that that would allow a lot of this yeah this is what they what senate senate ops took what what approach took out we thought we passed five million and then at the very last minute the senate took it out and it and as our guy from the 10 company said had we had it in there a lot more restaurants and a lot of their other businesses would have had a greater opportunity to the summer so this I mean that's crucial money back to municipal facilities grant yes a program five million five million yeah I think it is I gotta pull it up okay all right the housing itself okay I think a lot of these have already been taken care of um in the three month budget with the crf funds housing program working lands broadband deployment want the portal the business portal I think those have been taken care of yes we did not do this convertible capital investment law of the one million dollars for alternative veggie no um and the new americans initiative I don't think that 150 is in there I don't know no I don't think so okay any questions from anyone on this before we look at the letter that we sent to probes and I do want to have a discussion probably before Linda leaves that she can bring the kitty on the joint fiscal money that that they're going to be looking at tomorrow so that we can kind of give a given idea to to approach or to our joint fiscal members on whether or not we're behind it or not okay okay and then if we go over to the this letter is what we sent then you should be looking at I'm sorry this letter dated February 28th 2020 from from mike to kitty you see that yep okay okay so we just talked about the uh 5.8 million to accd and that one time funds so I'm glad that the number's actually equal um where we had voiced our support for some of those and not support for others um so and and david color coded it david hall color coded it so that it was easier to uh reference um so green is high blue medium yellow low and red now um so it just makes it easier to see so right now let's just look at the tourism marketing um we had that of course at that time is a high priority um I think in the CRF dollars we appropriated um what did we appropriate to 2.5 million dollars for total marketing yeah yeah so I mean I think given that um we probably wouldn't I don't know what people think but um remember these are one time dollars so um and we are looking at another that 10 million ask for marketing so I I'm just thinking that that's not not something that um we can we continue to support in a one time dollars anyway but and what we don't know Mr. Chair is how the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing is using all that 2.5 million we only know that 500,000 of it is being rolled out for that consumer stimulus gift card pilot project uh we heard today that they are making funds available to some regional marketing organizations from the okimo chamber of commerce that they have to apply by monday so we don't know if that's where they're putting another 2 million dollars so we'll find out I mean that was certainly not our intent when we met with them back in February and March we wanted them to develop those long-term assets that they could use to market the state of Vermont but they went in a different direction that's how I recall it anyway okay so did not support so these are still all one time dollars that we were thinking about so the question is do you want to recommend these instead of the ones that we had recommended before and still try to include them in the budget the administration obviously is not recommending them now right we haven't heard anything from the rdc's uh rpcs regarding any of the support dollars that they were asking for um yeah so what's um where is the money for uh micro business lending was that in the main budget or was that in one time that wasn't one time was it we wreck I think we're recommending that that we fund it it wasn't funded by the governor's office that's right so we had reviewed their base level of funding of like 200 and that's where the numbers are always different 278 or 291 someone thousand dollars is to their base level of funding but the 1.4 million dollars was included in the q1 budget right uh through the agency human services so they received that funding yes I mean there was some discussion yesterday as to whether or not it was still intact um so we we don't know that the answer to that question but it seems like it was still still intact the question is is that in the 12 month budget right and we don't know that I'm sorry I'm on on when you go down to section e325.1 is where I'm looking at the 298 base fund 298 870 base fund funding and then and then they're adding the additional 100 000 which I think senate approach took that out from from the general fund and threw it in use crf money for the 100 000 I'm not sure how that happened well if I remember right the crf money was used to build a hub um and to money going to assist uh businesses in a micro business lending programs that um had suffered losses because of COVID so I think this the regular ask is just their regular budget line item budget that that the administration had zeroed out that's right no okay so are we um mr chair are we on fg where do you where do you want to go here those are yeah let's just look at all of these um these are mostly one time dollars that we're looking at right now I believe these are still all yeah one time yeah I'm sorry for bringing us back to but what about the IDA is the individual savings program e323 are you still on the spreadsheet gene no no I'm I'm on the letter here we go yeah so let's let's go look at the one times first and then we'll get to that okay so that otherwise we'll be jumping around we meant okay so what is the committee's feeling the administration has zeroed out all of these one time dollars um and put in just two requests one charlie it while the two charlie had articulated one was for the migrant workers um the 1200 for them and that was two million dollars I believe charlie two million dollars yeah then there was a hundred hundred thousand um to look at the peg peg peg tv so I guess are we in support of that and this do you see anything in the one time dollars now that you think we should still consider funding the only one that jumps out to me is is six is the half a million for the vzac advancement grant program yes I think we're in a in a spot now where those grants are going to be extremely important especially for the people that are wanting to pivot their own employment and go to something learn a new skill or something that um they could access those grants jim no I didn't raise my hand no whose ipad for me oh by lenn um yeah I'm just um gonna renaming myself here for some reason it's um done okay yeah um one time money when you look at vzac and then you're below that is the vsc and other things uh one of the reasons one of the things that this is going to be my role as a vsc trustee one of the issues is the 30 million dollars bridge funding it is one time funding for the um for the vermont state colleges so that we can continue to fund um the existing campuses and existing things as we stand now this was something that came out as a covid issue it was an issue before that for years before that we've been in the red but it is um aggravated and accelerated by covid and we're working with we've had special studies done for we're working with um as you see on here we referred the five hundred thousand dollars to higher ed um we've been working with education and the house and the senate on this and we've been working with the leader legislative leadership as well as the governor he did not put the 30 million dollars into his budget um they're sort of trying to figure out how they can do crf money out of it which they might be able to do some of it um but not all of it and um and i know that the um appropriations is heard from them as well the the chancellor and their their cfo but when you're looking at one time money the v-sac money is you know that's the uh non-degree program that's really good but i think that we do have to recognize that there will be pressures for one time money in appropriations for the vsc which is a big chunk of money i mean we're looking i think when you figure it all out it it could it's work looking at a worst case best case scenario on the best case scenario is 30 million so anyway just to put that in there as we sit down and look at all these really good things some of which we've been able to do with um crf money i think we should just be aware of that this is our workforce development our biggest workforce development item and it is a major source for employers and for the long-term good of iran and they're in our our student bodies whether they're young or old just to put that in there yeah and i think maybe a caveat that we we may want to send to approaches um should there be dollars that are available these would be where we would put them after the the vsc is taken care of that's what i do um and also go ahead charlie i was just thinking number item number four not to skip around too much item number four though working lands initiative was taken care of in um in both the q1 budget and also i believe uh and also the additional funds we made available to the working lands enterprise fund yes yeah uh which was i think one and a half million dollars but um but i think there was already million dollars in the q1 budget so i think it was two and a half million dollars total do i have that right no it was two and a half million that we had a working lands enterprise board things and the uh carers money yeah okay psych uh thanks buddy i was um i'm sorry if i miss this i know you just i'm curious about gh and um k i know you just talked about something uh regarding the the artis rpcs and i can't remember what k is um and and if if we're replacing that with something else sorry if i miss that conversation well i i i i i believe the money that um that general housing put in um for um some of the rental relief and all of that actually had some incentive in that too um and that was using covet dollars yeah there was something about uh for developers some funding for developers i think but i can't i i don't know i can't remember what that that particular proposal was i think it was it was to get blighted properties yes bringing bringing them back up to snuff so that they're good rental properties good right that's exactly it yeah and i so i don't i don't think that there was anything about that in the crf funds that we sent out about remediating blighted properties so i would i would be interested in maintaining that um and then i think you i i do believe there were crf funds that went towards supporting um our rpcs but i don't know if anything was specific towards the municipal planning um which which still seems pretty relevant and i think that even the amount of money that we had asked for probably wasn't going to help do all that they needed to do um and so unless there was something else i those two things i'd like to try to continue with bet we should at least ask the questions too is like okay these were intended are these included anywhere else in crf monies because they're so complicated yeah and that's yeah so i would like that i feel i'm a little bit um fuddled about what what got taken care of in our the glory of the end of in june and so yeah so stefanie or would somebody want to jot this jot these things down that we can send to linda and ask appropriations to to make sure they look at to see you because these were priorities for us that um certainly if they were taken care of and crf funds that we would um we're fine with that so um so with this whole letter that we sent like we want to know what what well we're going to we i think there's going to be pieces of the letter that we're going to continue that we will continue to support i think when we're looking at these one-time dollars i think we need to say um you know we agree with the administration except for these points here but we're not sure if these some of these were covered uh were covered by crf dollars right and we would ask that that the appropriations would consider that um in their decision-making mike should we just ask about all these things or no because there's a lot of them that have been we that we know already you know working lands we already know that um one-stop portal um so you know the the vita convertible loan pro i don't even know that they have capacity to do any of that right now yeah and that's that's that that was the veggie thing anyway and you know that if we do that if we recommend that i'd still got to go through um ways and means and i don't think there's any time for that mike i'm leaving so good luck and give me whatever information you can give me okay linda we'll do that thank you thank you thank you i see you linda hi okay um let's keep looking shelved right um 150 dol we don't know about this um right right number 11 yeah i don't know where that wound up um i well i guess the the governor's recommend is to pull it i mean i think every anything in that one one time dollars um that we identify um this may be one of them that um you know everything's with the caveat of once you get the state colleges taken care of if there are one time dollars left that are available that these we would recommend that these get funded uh for their amendments so we didn't take this was in the budget we didn't take a position on these um in terms of the amount for the Vermont national guard uh national guard educational benefits uh agricultural working lands enterprise boards are base level of funding um child care stabilization grants of course that is much different this in this covet era in terms of the money that's been made available there i think we can't remember if it's 12 million dollars um we put there uh let's see end of it okay this is where you guys yeah yeah and uh so we are recommending the restoration of 170 000 dollars here right yeah and so i think you know we can does is everybody good with standing by this um these two programs that we recommending restore restore the base funding for them and and same with the regional micro business development programs mr chair they hit they're hitting the pop the population this most devastated by covet 19 we i can't be more supportive when yeah didn't we um didn't we put well the micro business was that included in the um um i think there was there are there's c r f dollars that we put for them to assist businesses um micro businesses that are that would suffered from covet related issues and also to create this this hub um for uh technical assistance for them but this is the base funding for assisting people that want to start their own business right right but i know there was something in there so the micro business stuff we put in c r f was for existing micro business yes yeah and and for technical assistance too right and the idea is that the idea that wasn't included in c r f no yeah all right and the micro business was one of the places that if you were a sole proprietor you could get money yes that's what i because yeah because there was there was a lot of minorities in micro business yes yeah right there's a million dollars in grant money there not a lot but it was someplace okay uh these all we didn't take any stances on these at all um they're included in the budgets yeah how to make myself popular with my fellow mountain banking constituents to get any any phone calls last night charlie or emails after yesterday you know i didn't to do no well you have to mountain biking and mountain biking and tourism and marketing did but we're our recommend is no okay mm-hmm yeah um we recommended increasing this to a hundred thousand from our employee ownership center uh and advancement grants oh advance for months sorry not advanced grants advanced for months the separate organization was looking for support of two hundred fifty thousand dollars we didn't support that right that we like tone yeah he's a very nice person and uh they have a lot of goals the question is should we be funding that that's exactly right so the question is does everyone support um um what we the original letter um absent the one-time funds yes everybody good with that yes yeah yep okay i guess the easiest thing is anyone that's not speak up so just to just to clarify mike we're we're we're checking in on the one like the one time's just going out but we're following up on some of the things potentially uh depending on i mean you know you look at you know one thing that charlie asked yesterday during during our visit with accd and probes was the the base funding that we've been giving to the convention bureau and and the bike association and whether or not we should continue to do that and i think it was our our stance that we should not be continued funding them because they are they are their own organization um i don't know yeah i'm i'm sorry mike i was um confusing something else yes i i support uh leaving out the one times okay sorry about that i have a quick question i remember a big discussion about um agency of digital services and money going towards um um chart of labor and fixing or helping their part of labor mainframe and sales force set up and all that sort of thing and and i and i haven't seen that sort of same amount of money in any of not only these discussions but other other literature i i think that was that's an ass that was through joint fiscal okay using crf money to to um try to prop up that system i know mary hooper is really interested uh to make interested in making sure that a solid plan of upgrading that whole system is is done and that whatever dollars we spend now can be complementary to whatever the the major plan is going to be that we're not just blowing away i think it was seven hundred fifty thousand dollars was the ask that's right so that we're not just you know throwing that money away for a short period of time so stephanie one of the things that uh in their request was uh four different elements for modernization and one of them was to include in that was to create an rfi or an rfp to go out and ask for the redesign of a system right um that would really to come back with a number after that as to what it would cost and how long it would take uh but they also as the three other parts of it is that they were putting the main frame of the system into a private a commercial hosting provider that would speed up the performance of the of the system right so then downloading or offloading a lot of the documents into a document storage system um that was different to also then make it faster and make it easier to retrieve things and uh and there was a third part yeah well there's something about sales force couldn't talk to other yes right that was a mule soft i believe was the name of that uh application that would make it possible for one system to talk to the other right um yeah yeah so we'll hear more about that on friday okay so let's what are the recommends the one time recommends let's go over those so we make sure we have them um what we what we will uh ask the probes is um so go ahead garyland i was thinking b uh i'm here one b this is the tourism marketing so i think we can skip one b a b and c which is all the marketing uh and then yeah let's just pull out the ones that we have some interested in yeah so this one um department of economic development fund technology based economic development so that's a million dollars um so that included i believe all of that sb ir funding yeah to to transfer technology into uh marketable enterprises and grow them okay um all right so is one person marking up this document oh that's what i'm wondering is there somebody can you do it charlie yeah i can do it i'm doing it all right all right i can't mark it as a p it's a pdf yeah so anyway um so we're looking at uh two f yeah nine dollars yeah okay these are the keeps okay yeah yeah with that caveat that again um should there be funding after we take care of the state college system right yeah g is 150 000 i think uh the question is what's happening with this right right um i think we can include that with the question you know are there other crf dollars that have taken care of the rpcs um okay yep got it municipal planning grants do you want to still ask the same question about that they're they're related i think so yes and maybe maybe this whole program um this you know they they were doing this middle housing um maybe that's gone by the wayside for the time being i don't know okay versus generally isn't part of our purview either right or it's kind of a joint placemaking we think that's taken care of in their request yeah yes yeah i think all of that um i think we go down to six um would be the vzak six vzak yeah okay um we're not v to stuff we're out of that and i don't know anything about 11 and mike we're gonna ask about uh k as well right that's the uh life yeah the incentive program just to all right you know has that been taken care of in crf dollars right okay yep and then down to 11 yeah um yep that's another question you know was this taken care of or has it been taken care of somewhere else would crf dollars okay yeah and i think that's it all right gonna write that up okay great and then the rest of it we we stand by the rest of the rest of our recommendations everybody good yes all right yes we had 15 minutes to spare whoo-hoo i have to stop sharing my screen well done so um amy we can we we don't can we uh just put something up that we'll be back in 15 minutes yes i can um so why don't everybody take a break for 15 um because the rest the rest of the time is going to be we're going to have three straight hours of going um maybe not if depending on how long how long things take but um i think we will be out for for three hours after so take a break jump back in don't don't leave the we don't leave the do we leave the um no we we all just stay and we'll take our video cameras off and mute okay yeah okay so everybody do that don't leave and come back on um probably about 12 minutes or so 12 13 minutes okay great see you in a bit thank you thank you so again uh we are we are live we have been live um we just took a short break um but uh just for people out there on youtube um we are now um going to look at a draft language for uh the remaining c r f dollars uh proposal from the administration and um we'll have our ledge council david hall walk us through that and and point out um he has a few questions and um i think the things that we need to work through with with you jones and heather and and the uh the agency so david if you could if you want to put that up on the screen and again good seeing you i haven't seen you for a few weeks so glad to have you back with us glad to be back um i don't know if you're all at home but in montpellier it is probably the most beautiful day we've had all year it's really lovely it's a little breezy here uh not as uh not as bad as in texas i'd guess um so for your record uh my name is david hall and your legislative council um um i are you all seeing uh a draft 1.1 on your screen yes that's good yes all right um so what this is is just you know the standard bill format with proposed language from uh the agency of commerce and community development there's a little bit in here that i have added on my own because i think it needs to go along with what i understand the proposal to be just for consistency and clarification and then you're going to see highlights as well so all of the changes that are proposed are highlighted in yellow and then green highlighting denotes that um i there's no change necessarily but i might have a question or want to flag something for your attention and then as the chair indicated i've been able to share a slate of questions with the agency just to try to clarify some matters and they have sent me information back but um i'll just flag my questions and then you guys can all discuss together um so my understanding of this proposal right now is uh is a proposal to uh spend additional coronavirus relief fund monies for business assistance um just to sort of frame it for you remember that you first passed s 350 and that bill is what created um the emergency economic relief grants through the department of taxes for those filers that paid meals and rooms or sales and use on a monthly or quarterly basis and then you also established a comparable program within the agency of commerce and community development and they were each given a pot of money uh commerce's authority under that program was quite broad and essentially it was uh authority to give grants to businesses that could demonstrate a 75 percent or greater revenue loss any one month period from um march to september of this year versus last year the same period last year and then the agency was tasked with coming up with guidelines and and application procedures qualifications etc but it was a fairly uh broad delegation to set that program up that was followed by each 966 which um appropriated additional money to the agency among others to make more grants remember that 966 was really a layer on top of the 350 program structure right so it said that it was putting more money into those emergency grants in s 350 but it changed the conditions a little bit in addition to adding criteria and standards about public records and confidentiality in the application process and things like that it also reduced the threshold for revenue loss to 50 percent over a one month period from march to september this year versus last year and then it also had some individual programs for money to be uh distributed through partners not just through the agency so the bill that you have in front of you this new proposal is to provide yet more crf money for business grants and in some respects it's uh i mean nominally it is changing the terms of s 350 um and in other respects it's it's creating new parameters and so i think that's sort of what needs to be fleshed out at the conceptual level let me take one step back and remind you also that in in 966 remember there was the last piece of your section in that bill said that if any of the s 350 monies had not been basically spent encumbered by august 1st then they would be commingled with the 966 ones and they would be subject to the conditions in 966 which of course also related back to 350 so at this point all that money should be in one big pot subject to all the same conditions and then the question becomes for you and for the agency how much is this new allocation of money what is it for to what extent should the old conditions apply to the new money and what to what extent should the new conditions apply to the old money um so with that in mind i i think we can move through this pretty quickly um so what i've done here in section one of this bill i'm amending section one of s 350 okay and uh that is the definition section you'll remember the discussion here about what an eligible business means and in s 350 and also 966 an eligible business means a non-public private organization is domiciled or has its primary place of business in vermont and has one or more employees in vermont now uh the consequence in large part of that definition has been that sole proprietors that are not structured such that their proprietor is also an employee uh generally have not been able to avail themselves of the larger pool of money at accd this does not exclude sole proprietors per se but it does exclude any business that doesn't have an employee and uh you know the agency obviously just had to work that out but the proposal here is to eliminate the requirement that a business have an employee to be eligible for a grant um my understanding of the agency's proposal is that they would like this change to apply across the board to all over the money all the grant program so that whether it's money on hand from 966 and s 350 to the extent there is money on hand or it's this new money the requirement that you have an employee be eliminated that is my understanding i welcome you or the agency if you wish to chime in or i can just go all the way through and then they can answer it's up to you mr chair again david i'm sorry no worries all i was saying is i was going to defer to you on whether you wanted the agency to address the point i just made about the applicability of this uh new language or whether you want me to go all the way through and then they can come back i think let's go all the way through and um and then we can uh we can work with the agency then all right so there's the first question uh eligibility based on whether now you have an employee on the next page the the other component of the definition of an eligible business here is its organizational and operational structure i i have it flagged first because the agency flagged it second because um my understanding from testimony and from reading the newspaper uh is the uh i think there's a sense that non-profit organizations and some organizations with sort of blended structures or operational schemes are not adequately served and that the agency would like to continue that discussion on uh adequately providing assistance for nonprofits so that's an issue to flag the next one is you know the business operation date so the underlying law is that it has to have been an operation on or before february 15 2020 um the proposal is to change that to march 1st and then there's some more later about these new businesses and whether and how they could qualify for assistance even though they weren't in operation last year and therefore can't demonstrate a revenue loss in that uh 2020 versus 2019 comparison that is the the otherwise the prerequisite for funding so a proposal of the day change there on your the date that you were in operation um otherwise these last pieces remain the same so the next section of this bill is amending section 3 of s 350 so this is where you created the emergency economic recovery grants and um there are some changes here so the first one is in the amount of money again the the technical consequence of the way this is constructed is that you are sort of retroactively putting money into a fund you already created and already specified in the mount four and I have this number in green because I'm not clear whether the intention is to add a new 53 million to the 20 or if the intention is to add 73 million new dollars I'm not sure I guess 73 but so if it's to add 73 new dollars then this would obviously be 93 instead of 73 as long as we're adding money to the existing program okay so David do you want me to should I just interject here just uh I guess the the expectation go ahead let's just let's go just go through but David flag that and then we'll walk back through it again that's okay if everybody's okay with that all right so the next piece in a to here um is is something I had asked Jess about the agency about um this is very uh this is very consequential to me um so so essentially this is adding to the program um sort of new eligibility categories that otherwise do not exist that's at least the consequence of the way it's proposed here so right now if you take a look at two B on line 11 you'll see that one of these four categories of eligibility is new businesses non-profit businesses and businesses with more than 30 loss so that's with the addition of these new businesses that's sort of already what this program does right it's for for profit non-profit businesses that otherwise meet the criteria and that that really is the scope of the current program so if if I'm following this correctly and what I'm flagging here is that this would create three other categories that may or may not be that I think are new but I want to kind of urge you to explore that so if you look at two A the first category here would be supplemental grants to lodging dining and entertainment businesses pursuant to this section provided that business demonstrate additional need and additional loss so I I have to what I surmise is that a business has already received a grant under this program and now would be coming back for more so my question is my questions are all right are these is it to date the case that a business can only get one grant and then it's done if so is this supplemental to that and what is the metric for determining what the supplemental amount of a grant is what kind of need and loss will they have to demonstrate is it the intent to limit it to lodging dining and entertainment what is entertainment so who what is the universe here in two A is it is it somehow different from the other criteria that are set up in this program already we've already covered to be so to see businesses applying through the Vermont sole proprietor stabilization program so that's a cbc bdg program that is set up already for small sole proprietor businesses different criteria and my question my fundamental question here is why do we do you need to tie this to that program if you're already expanding this program to include sole proprietors and businesses without employees if you are tying them together which set of criteria control because they're different in some cases do you have to satisfy criteria there and here to get money here how much is your grant here relative to there is it offset by what you get there first and supplemented here and then lastly there's a prohibition in 966 on receiving CRF funds from more than one source so that seems to me to be a problem here if you're getting it through CRF funds through the other program first you're technically not allowed to come here unless we're going to make a change to that law and then the last one is 2d this is this is now going to be available to Vermont ski areas to make necessary improvements at the ski areas to allow them to welcome skiers safely back to their businesses a lot of the same questions here what are the criteria that apply to this it doesn't seem like this is related to revenue loss and in fact the agency's response said that this would be supplemental so I think theoretically the ski area could already have received a grant because of revenue loss and now would get a different grant from the same pot for or from you know the combined pot for these improvements I understand the point I think my I think my overall conclusion would be that you already have a grant program that is predicated on certain eligibility criteria including what type of business you are how you organize whether you have employees what your loss was etc and then there are these three new pieces that are sort of grafted onto it and I'm not sure that they fit and I wonder if it might make more sense to say you know we're going to use new CRF monies for one to provide you know additional grants under the program we already have and then two to make grants available for these other types of businesses for these other purposes that's a policy question you guys can discuss but I'll also know I guess finally that there's no you know relative allocation among these categories so you know you've been very flexible and delegating to the agency where to how divvy money up but this you know for instance there's no limitation on one of these categories versus the other so on page four again we're in the the grant program and the proposal here is to reduce the loss amount to make you eligible for grants from 75 to 30 percent instead of being over a one-month period it's a three-month period from March to September I think there's a question whether September is still the right date it might be November now considering that losses are continuing so I flagged that in green second piece is about that these so new businesses so if you were established again September of last year to March of this year and you had a 30 percent of greater reduction in revenue in a one-month period from February to September of this year you could qualify so that's a new category of businesses that would be included and that's referenced above and to be again here in C you'll recall that the agency has the discretion to determine how much the grant is and whether it should be adjusted based on other assistance there's a proposal to change in the guidelines in reporting down here in the reporting piece just the first one is to just cross-reference that distribution of funds among those four areas we just discussed and then the second piece is to push back the report date from August to November 15th on implementation on this next piece section four of this bill proposes to make changes in section six of H966 okay so remember 966 is the second of the two bills this is where you gave additional money to commerce and tax for grants it was 56 million in that bill I have included on page seven here just this piece about the Vermont Arts Council and the question of calculating reduction in revenue not including tax-deductible charitable contributions I have seen and I have heard conflated or conflicting information about this principle so as a matter of statute this condition on how we how we calculate reduction in revenue technically only applies to the arts council money so right now through the general grant program this doesn't necessarily have to be a condition or criteria for nonprofits in the bigger program now whether you intended that way how the agency is implementing that is you know different questions but as a matter of law and statute that you adopted this particular limitation it technically only applies to the arts council grants and I want to make note of that all right the David before we move on yeah can you expand on tax deductible charitable contributions so that I think we're all clear I think there's been some um some thought that that either revenue derive from fundraising events or revenue derive from memberships may would not fall under revenue that could be counted and so I think it'd be good for everyone to understand just what a tax deductible charitable contribution is yeah I'm happy to prefer defer to uh you know more versed tax type people if you would like but I mean essentially the deductibility question is governed by other laws governed by tax law and in a nutshell if you just donate money then and it's to a qualified organization so it has to have tax exempt status approved by the IRS it can't just be any old group they actually have to have that status already approved and therefore your deduction is uh your your donation is deductible um then that does not count as revenue okay um so what that means in essence is that you know you give money you donate money every month to the Vermont food bank um you don't get anything in return for it other than the tax deduction um they cannot count that as lost revenue uh to the extent that they're not receiving as many donations this year as they were last year that is not the same thing as money that is raised and for which you get something in return or in kind and is therefore not deductible so if I buy something at an auction if I pay for a ticket to a gala for instance um then that is not deductible to me because I am getting something in return for that uh purchase that's not a donation I'm I'm I'm getting something in return for that and it's not tax deductible so that's my understanding um I'm open to being uh corrected but that's I think that was sort of the underlying principle uh of the committee discussions that did address this point and that was specifically that if you held events if you were a flin or something else and you could show that through the sales of tickets you would normally generate 25 million dollars and this year because you can't have performances you've only generated five million dollars and you've lost revenue of 20 million dollars but if you are the food bank and uh normally you have 25 million dollars in donation charitable donations and then because people are making less money they're not able to donate as much and you've only taken in 15 million dollars in charitable donations you cannot count the 10 million dollar delta has lost revenue because those are tax-aductible charitable donations that is my best recollection of the intent of committees that address this question um you know I again I welcome tax experts to correct anything I've said that's wrong or to obviously leave you the room to have your own sense and intent of what you meant with what you said okay thank you David yep sorry I have two dogs hanging out so this next piece on eligibility right now no sorry how about you give me one second glad you muted Charlie yeah all right so subsection eligibility remember that we're still in h966 and for the most part it layered on top of s350 it referred back and incorporated by reference the guidelines that the agency was supposed to set up but there was a significant difference in this one and it said that to be eligible for a grant unless otherwise provided you have to comply with s350 but a business must demonstrate itself for the 50 percent or greater reduction in revenue due to COVID-19 2020 versus 19 this is specific to um the dollars appropriated in this bill but remember that there's one more piece below that says I'm going to skip ahead to it it says that if any funds appropriated to commerce and tax in s350 remain unencumbered and unspent as of august 1st the agency and department shall combine and administer those funds with the amounts made available to them in this section subject to the standards and criteria established in this section so what that means is all of the money at this point as of august 1st all of the money appropriated through s350 and all of the money appropriated through h966 are subject to that 50 revenue standard and that's in 966 so even if you change 350 from 75 to 30 966 says that it controls and it's at 50 so to make this work you have to get rid of the 50 percent requirement here if you're going to amend 350 or you can disregard 350 and you could change this either way it doesn't matter but what what I think you're wanting to do is to say across the board all applicants any funding source or stream from among these three pieces of legislation you want to use that 30 revenue reduction standard not 75 not 50 not some for this not some for that you want 30 across the board that's my understanding everybody following that so I would recommend that if you proceed you want to take that out of 966 so the other piece I have again on page eight of this bill amending or we're working in 966 right now this piece about the limitation on one source I mean I just I'm cautious about again with a link to the cbdg program or even to say you know any confusion born of the fact that maybe you got a grant under 350 if you want to get an additional grant under this new language I'm just a little bit concerned about this and you might want to either not withstand it or amend it or something I think what I have in mind maybe is a bill that says you know we're going to give money to the grant program we have with the following changes and then we're going to give grant money to these other places and we try to avoid the back and forth between 350 and then 966 and now yet another layer we already covered this piece about the co-mingling so the last piece from the agency is this by local consumer stimulus and marketing money so this is 60 million dollars and that is my understanding and the way it's written is that it's distinct from the additional funds we've already been referring to this would go to tourism and marketing for restart vermont marketing program encourage visitation relocation consumer spending in vermont and it says to support businesses that have suffered economic harm through the public health emergency so that's good under b eligible uses would include so this isn't limited to what it would include uh it says 50 man I don't want to say not more than 50 but 50 right now a statewide consumer stimulus program with direct incentive to maximize consumer spending power for monitors sport restaurants retail stores lodging establishments tourism cultural attractions other businesses suffering economic harm due to continued capacity and travel restrictions imposed in response to COVID-19 so I'm going to pause on this one and say um you know it looks okay low risk low slash moderate risk remember we have to follow the CARES Act requirements about when and how and by whom the loss was incurred and what we do with the money and it has to be linked back to the economic harm caused by COVID-19 public health emergency and so the words are all correct here um I you know I think the things that give me pause would come in on the implementation side because of the way it's been described as essentially extending money to every vermont household or maybe every vermonter and then there'll be a list of businesses that would be eligible in the event of an audit I think you know you'd have to be able to show that the businesses that were eligible for the gift card or the $150 or whatever it is um you have to be able to show you know reasonably that it was tailored to the businesses that are suffering harm due to COVID-19 uh you know above in the grant program you set a threshold for what it meant in your view to have suffered harm and that was a versus 75 percent and then a 15 up 30 loss and income truthfully the CARES Act and the guidance and the FAQs give the most discretions to the states about determining what is appropriate and necessary for business assistance um it you know the flavor of it is intended intended to be remedial in nature and it does it says to the extent possible need to be tailored to ensure it's assisting businesses and individuals who have demonstrated need right so I guess what that comes down to is if you know the way it is implemented if it just is a blanket dollar is available to all households which can be used at any place any store in vermont then you're on the riskier side of the spectrum and if it's you know limited to businesses that the agency has vetted and can demonstrate some kind of loss harm due to the public health emergency then good and I say that because you know restaurant to restaurant some of them are tanking and some of them are doing okay and some of them are right in the middle uh you know are they going to look at every single one I don't know bike shops you think they were doing terribly turns out some of them were doing really great but if I got 150 bucks I'd want to go buy a new helmet I mean is the agency going to look at that and say oh sorry onion river you're not eligible because you're not suffering that much that just administratively that is a lot of vetting and again the the implementation side is where the real risk is for whether or not we're in compliance under b2 um you know 10 million dollars for marketing that promote travel to and within vermont to increase consumer spending tourism hospitality retail related businesses purchased locally made products to serve to support vermont producers and then promote vermont as an ideal place to relocate in the wake of covet 19 to bring new residents and businesses to the state to provide economic activity and communities sport businesses impacted you know I'll just I think in my view those kind of move from least to most risky on a spectrum I mean I think under 2a here it's it's just almost without question that any tourism or hospitality business has been adversely impacted uh retail related I don't know what that means maybe raises some of the same issues as above purchasing locally made products to vermont producers you know I think that's the next level again that depends on implementation who are the producers what are the products have they suffered harm some are doing better some are doing a lot worse it depends on how it's going to be implemented and then the last one tends to see promoting this is a place for people to relocate and live or work I um I have the most concern about I find it hard to reconcile that with uh with any sort of direct economic support to a small business for business interruption caused by the pandemic um and so I am more concerned about that I think you know you've already approved marketing money I I said for the record then I want to say again now because it's my job that um you know marketing though obviously has assistance to sectors that have been impacted it is indirect assistance it would be harder for the state to show that it is tailored for businesses that have specifically suffered harm it is not a grant to a business it is sort of a whole holistic uh campaign to benefit businesses in vermont generally and I think that carries more risk than targeted direct assistance to businesses I can't tell you if it's 100% okay or not okay it's a gray area I just want to flag the concern because again that's why you pay me last piece effective date this bill would be effective whenever you want it to be um but it needs an effective date because remember by statute July 1st is the default effective date and unless you want it to take effect next year which won't do you any good or last July which is problematic usually for retroactive dates unless we're careful about it I would say you want this to take place prospectively either on passage or october 1st ish beyond I'm going to stop talking now I'm done thank you David um would it make sense for you um to work with um either tether jone uh or someone whoever they wish um on the questions that you've brought to us outside of this outside of the consumer stimulus piece of it the last part of the bill but to get what I'd like is the agency's full thoughts um all the questions that you asked be brought to us and then we can have those discussions with them um so we know exactly what they're thinking and I think it would be easier so um would that does that make sense to to you to me personally well to yeah to you and to the committee and and to the agency I'm just thinking if they if people if they can go back and work with you like this afternoon I'm going to ask for an extra hour tomorrow I think it would be at the beginning of our time so that we could use an hour to then go over that new language or or the get the proper thoughts and clarifications that you're looking for that we have the agency's thoughts that they then they come to us where it's clear then we can have those discussions with them on how we want to roll continue to roll out um I I serve at your pleasure I'm happy to work with them I think for the most part that there are very specific questions for instance the dollar amount you know is it September or November I mean those are pretty those are pretty straightforward the the other pieces are things that my understanding from their response is that they don't quite have them iron out uh for instance the supplemental grants to lodging businesses and they wanted to work with the committee to sort of figure that out so I'm I'm open to whatever path you think is most efficacious okay Joan what are your thoughts sure I mean we could it's easier for you guys we could start clearing up uh some of the uh questions right now if that's at your pleasure if you want us to go through it David but maybe it makes sense to go through kind of what was in our mind and you could interpret it and and understand what what we have to do to the current legislation in order to achieve that does that does that make sense I mean I know that uh you know some of some of the things could be answered now I think okay so why don't we have you go with go through with us um let's answer the things that can be answered now um and then whatever else you need to work on we can come back tomorrow I'd like to I want to say some time so we can talk with Heather about about her her sections of it also sure so we've got let's see we've got another two two hours and 15 minutes so I think we've got plenty of time today so um let's see what's the best way do you want to be co-host and walk us through that walk us through David's draft um and answer the questions that you can the questions that came up that you can't answer yeah why don't we uh you have that could David share it again and we could just scroll through yeah yeah you can either way if you want to do it Joan or David if you don't mind doing it um I sent it now to Ted and to Joan in case they wanted to okay I think it'd be easier if Joan does it then you can control where you are I just made Joan the co-host to see okay Jim I know you've had your hand up for quite a while um so yep are you inviting me to speak or to hold my tongue well I don't know it depends on what you're okay um I think this is more the questions that I have are more for Ted and and uh Joan um why were the Vermont ski area ski areas singles out for special attention okay let's why don't we hold that as we get as we go down with questions and once we get there then we can get into that there's a whole lot of other questions above that too okay that all right yep so um all right so let's talk about the sole props um first if that's okay I mean maybe I'll turn this as like here's the problem set and then how it actually ends up getting into the legislation on which piece you have to amend I'll leave to the legal minds but um you know the problem set is how do we make the grant program equitable for sole proprietors as we know the way it currently is it needed one or more employees and sole props uh do not have employees so one thought was if we eliminate that requirement it opens it up to sole proprietorships is that that's not really the open question I don't know if that is or not I okay should I just proceed then if it that's if I can interject for just one second yeah um I just on all of the questions basically I my my broadest question is um you know does this apply uh going forward to everybody you know okay yeah I understood so let's uh let's go through what our assumptions are and that'll help I think illustrate it so our assumptions are that we're going to run out of money on the existing act 115 and act 137 funds um and so this was a thought of here would be the legislation to accompany uh additional funding and that additional funding would take care of things that have not been met and that's the way we framed is I don't know if that helps you right the one thought is you know and kind of bleeds into the idea of what should be the effective date that maybe we need a date certain where this becomes effective so that the other program and people kind of grandfathered or kind of in queue if you will will still be um you know we'll still be working through those applications let's say over the next two weeks so I don't know if I've answered your question but um that was our assumption going into this is that that fund those funds are expended and now let's take care of the people who were not in this first round one being sole props two being the new businesses what's three oh three is not I mean the nonprofits were were issued grants but not quite to the level that they wanted and why am I blanking on the fourth thing but let's go through it and it'll it'll come up okay so um my understanding is that heather has a hard stop at 330 and I don't know what is your time I have a meeting at 230 I think this was booked for an hour for me anyway but okay so in 10 minutes I don't know that we're going to get through every question maybe I should go to like what or David like that was helpful David your overarching question about is this for everything yeah the expectation would be first group of funds are spent now this next piece of legislation takes care of those who have not been um who have been left out of the first round and in addition to that those who still have unmet need I don't know if that takes care of his Charlie you have your hand up I do um John I think this takes care of not only the pure sole proprietors but also a partnership without employees and LLC without employees so okay so somebody who is up and breakfast and his husband and wife they own the whole shoot and don't draw a paycheck correct yep and so in this in this construct then this because this applied to programs administered by both tax and by ACCD what I'm not sure of is if all those funds get expended then who is administering this extra the 73 million is it all ACCD or is it also either going through tax and ACCD yeah I mean I guess that's to be determined um since tax takes care of most of the hospitality I would think they have a role but we have not gotten into that level of granularity just yet so we're thinking about this as one thing and then we will figure out whether or not they could assist on this okay okay so the next um what was the next open question was about I think it was about the dates so let me just scroll down I think the first question was the funds the intent as we're looking at this I think David's question was is it is it actually 93 million and not 73 no it's 73 um oh sorry I'm only speaking about the the grant site um for a moment so it's like 73 is the 50 million for the hospitality I'll call it the hospitality add-on and 23 for all the other people that had not been covered right so new businesses um the 30 percenters the sole props so it's in total 73 when you take the I think we had this broken down it's like 50 and 23 that's not including the the 50 on the um the consumer stimulus and the 10 million on marketing so the the question about is it 73 or 93 though is a good one uh you know John Kessler in our shop we looked at this as we're amending the original statute uh and therefore it's really 93 million because you already have 20 and you're adding another 73 to it so uh this goes to the question we're not really creating a new piece of legislation here we're amending the existing program for applications going forward but if you are creating a new piece of legislation that is really a new program then it would only be 73 right I think that's so so we we gave this to David thinking we were amending the existing legislation so we had to be additive to whatever existed there so that should probably read 93 if that's the path the committee's taking yeah well I think and I think the question is too is how how do we write this is there a simpler way of writing it um um and maybe had David had had brought up before as um you know maybe we should um maybe look at a different way of writing it the only question becomes is if that original pot of money is not fully expended because of the supplemental grants then you want to you want to make sure the sole proprietors of those other companies are still eligible for whatever is remaining in those initial pots so that's that's the only thing that I think makes sense to keep it in part of this legislation but otherwise why not new for a new program it feels like it's cleaner and simpler and just to be clear the remit the roll over funds from the other two bills is the 20 million and new money is the 73 yeah good thanks yeah the 20 the 20 million was the original got it you know or we could put something in there that says if there is leftover that it does then roll into this new piece of legislation you know just to keep it to cover that eventuality even though based on our estimates it'll be gone um just trying to go through what else were the what were the rest of the questions um maybe it's not here well I think the next I think the greens are so the ski areas and this is where Jim had a question yeah maybe Ted could cover that one yeah yeah so when we look at the winter coming forward we know we have to put our restrictions on the ski areas that we haven't published yet now we're anticipating having to tell them that they're going to be capacity restricted their lodges capacity restricted or travel restricted on their hotels and that they cannot survive unless we give them some resources to do things differently for instance get winter tents with heaters established for logic for day lodge operations to put in place new ticket and new line systems so that you can maintain social distancing the caveat to all of this is the existing program didn't really work well for ski areas because so many of them exceed the 20 million dollar cap that we have in place that we put in place and so many of them are owned by non-formant operations now but that we we can't leave them in the lurch because it's four million skier visits a year and without those skier visits or at least some portion of them our industry will be even more devastated and when we look at New Hampshire, Maine and New York we anticipate them to potentially have a more liberal travel policy than we do this this winter which means we're going to lose market share to places where people can travel more freely and if we don't help the ski areas we're going to lose even more market share and even more disturbing once we lose market share it's going to be hard to recapture that market share so we think this is an area that we need to do something above and beyond and the existing program hasn't helped them due to their size this is this is akin to the municipal the five million for municipal facilities the same thing towns that need extra money on in order to increase their capacity outside it's the same it's the same basic idea it's non-operational to their losses it's it's directly responding to the new restrictions that's eminently reasonable uh mr chairman yeah go ahead uh for ted um you know you just uh mentioned the the fact that uh you know the the ski areas are well i don't think you said multinational but conglomerates would that be accurate some of them certainly are non-vermahn owned and have a large or large business business footprints now yeah and i wondered do you did did they come to you with hat in hand and say hey we need some help or did this come out of accd you know as a way to ameliorate the uh the losses for the season and we we heard from at least one ski area that is very vocal and upset that they were unable to access the existing program because they exceeded the 20 million dollar in revenue cap i so they specifically asked us to have a proposal that would help them in our in our pack and instead of increasing it to all above 20 million we've see the sector is uniquely in need and then we did work with the skirry's association we've they've been working to build their restart plan and we just checked in with them uh last week about what their restart plan looks like and they're very much acknowledging that they can't they're they're not going to operate the way that they need to in order to make money and bring people back to vermont unless they make insignificant changes and some skirry's might be able to do that without assistance hi i'm not confident that most will be able to so we're trying to create a program here that works for most okay and i don't want to get too far into the weeds on this but you know this is uh very broad um and how would those funds be distributed and that may be a bigger question for a later time but i think it's an important one especially uh given the fact that there there are some ski areas that are gonna have have deeper pot deeper pockets and better bank accounts than others so i wonder if you contemplated that sure i think we have to take into consideration need when we're making grants and also benefits that they've already received from other places so i think our thought was to give us the power to do what we did with the uh first with the economic recovery grant was to build a program that took into consideration things like need and eligible uses of the money and duplication of benefits okay so that hasn't been worked out yet is that what you're telling me right okay final question for both you and and jone and this goes to i think i just want to correct myself when or if i made a mistake yesterday jone that you had it within the agency's purview or authority to uh readjust the amount of money you know the grants like the 50 million dollars for um the gift cards to be redistributed in other places is not am i mistaken did i mishear that i was not talking about gift cards that was had there so maybe um you just know the central question the central question is is it within the authority in the purview of the of accd to rather than use that 50 million dollars for gift cards and put it in it in another in another box that's my question i don't think that's our intention the way we've written this is we'd actually have uh a separate section on the stimulus program we might be able to use a different vendor than the one we're using currently we might be able to do a different program but it's still going to be consumer stimulus based on uh putting money in the hands of remoders purchase for month okay ten sorry to interrupt what i'm asking you specifically is with is it within your authority to take that money or is that 50 million dollars absolutely obligated to um that gift card program or can you just take it and say let's put it in logic or let's put it in some other area that's my central question do you have that within your authority within the purview of accd to do that but we don't have it yet all right but the proposal is that we would use it for stimulus we could we would have the ability to determine where what sectors needed the most assistance so that we could say we're going to make as many of these gift cards go to the hospitality sector like that would be something that i think we we would like the authority to do much like heather and her team did with this 500 000 they they put certain allocations in each bucket based on need so like there's a hundred thousand dollars in the hospitality sector in this first round there's a hundred thousand dollars in restaurants there's 25 000 in health and personal fitness there's 25 000 in retail so we we make sure that it gets distributed across the sectors based on need but it's still using the gift card system that's our vision okay and last question i promise you um what i'm asking you is that is that 50 million dollars does it have to be uh allocated to those different sectors that you just described or can it be taken and used in some other specific area it has to be used as consumer stimulus uh in in no we were we're not restricted by which sectors the current okay so you so you could take you could take that 50 million dollars and devote it to lodging solely i think under the existing statute the language we proposed yes we could say we're going to give all of these gift cards to lodging but that's not our intent so if somebody wanted to put guardrails on that we'd have no objection okay good that's the answer that i was looking for not to to say that you know it's that's what ought to be done but i want to know if it's possible so anyway thank you and i'll shut my mouth Zach it was just uh thanks mr. chair it was just uh in the above section i think david's question was about whether we wanted to create specific car vows with specific amounts for the um industry specific uh funding so i didn't know if john had commented on that already or if what she thought about the idea of doing uh car vows no we had not and as we learned before when you have car vows it it's difficult if you have demand more in one versus another and you don't have the capability to take your excess in one and apply it to the other so no we did not we did not identify that just think of it as one pool with one eligibility criteria of which we we pull from charlie and i know john's time is short i just have a few questions on changes of dates the february 15th to march 1st and then also looking at the loss requirement of 30 and if it has to be a new business formed between certain dates um it i know it helps to have clarity around those but it seems like uh i don't know why february 15th and march 1st but the others is that does it matter when the business was formed as long as it was formed before covid set in so that you could see that it was affected by covid and does it doesn't matter what percentage of their revenues was lost as long as they can demonstrate a loss and then qualify for a grant so that's that's so let me explain that so that you understand the how this came to be it used to be you had to be formed before february 15th which is great so somebody formed in september of last year but still couldn't get a grant the way the statute's written right now so because they didn't have a period similar to march through september of this year versus last year so the reason why we had the business established from september 1st through march is so that those people could now get a grant because they're not required to have the history of march through september of 2019 the only reason why we're doing 30 is because we're thinking about this as across the board we're going to lower the percentage to 30 so it's this way to keep it consistent everybody needs a 30 at least a 30 a greater reduction a new business only needs to show that for one month whereas an existing business we are expecting that it should be a three month so it gives them a little bit more leeway because they're so young and they don't have the history but at least it doesn't leave them out right now a business that started september 1st 2019 and after is not getting a grant from us so this we're hoping that this takes care of those those folks okay so a wedding business that formed november 1st and then has all these contracts throughout the spring and summer and they lose all of their revenues for those right so under current statute they would get nothing right i understand that yeah right and i'm just wondering why it if they can just demonstrate a loss for that period without it being 30 so i'm just wondering why the 30 oh it was just to try to be consistent with our new change of 30 a greater reduction you can't imagine the coding that that's sort of taking place to if then scenarios this seemed to be easier to to not have different percentages for different people just have 30 but if it's a new business they just need to show one month because i have such a limited history sack oh hi thanks john um for the i was i i like the idea of opening this up to businesses that formed you know in the last year of the but don't necessarily have the tax records but one one's concern that i have and one thing to try to figure out is um you know how do we figure out um that whether a business lost revenues because of coven or because that was the seasonal nature of their business you know like you have uh an outdoor recreation summer thing and and normally that type of industry would not have any revenues during the winter time in early spring anyways um but they were able to apply because they showed that they had a revenue loss i i wonder if there's a way of comparing similar type industries to be able to make that type of determination you know i don't know the i know what you're saying and i don't know of a clean equitable way to do that so yeah uh you know we on first blush they were left out right we don't want to do that we want to leave them in um yeah we're just thinking if they opened you know if the requirement is they have to have been opened you know before what's our new date now march first right um and they show that they you know a lot of times it's completely obvious because they're closed it's march you know what i mean or they they're in an event um affiliated business and everything's cancelled so it becomes kind of obvious that they've suffered this loss yeah i i understand i i hopefully there's a i mean i understand it would create additional bureaucratic sort of work but it does seem um important the the other piece that i was uh wondering about and i might be skipping it i don't think i'm skipping ahead but i know that we have not uh based on these losses on tax returns up until this point for verification because of the tax deadline being extended but now that we're getting deeper into the year and people are filing their taxes um our have we put further consideration into using tax returns previous tax returns to determine loss loss and and recently filed tax returns excuse me sorry first so the way the statute's written it's really about a one-month loss from one year to the next so um tax could find out that information precisely because they get monthly filings from many people but they're not going to find that out for everybody because it's you know some are quarterly filers we cannot do that because we do not have that type of data we can only have the year you know the year-end tax return and that's what the the actual award was based on 10 percent of the annual revenue so it was like what was substantiated by tax returns but i thought we didn't require um tax returns for the in the previous round am i getting that wrong so there's two programs uh tax you don't have to file it because they have the data so they can tell and um accd we needed to see some level of tax return to ascertain the annual revenue okay how does um um in terms of independent contractors and sole proprietors that aren't necessarily i mean they do their taxes differently is there um are we going to is there going to be more difficulty with independent contractors to verify loss and income it's extremely difficult with sole proprietorships they take the most time to assess but there still is a tax return there's typically a schedule c and i have to hop so i'll leave you in um Ted's good hands thanks thanks shown representative Watson one of the reasons that our sole proprietor program for the cdbg program um had a five a seventy five hundred and ten thousand dollar number was exactly for that purpose we weren't able to base your loss on your total revenue or anything instead you said if you have a revenue between here and here we're going to give you five thousand here and here you get seventy five hundred and so the idea was to reduce the amount of um complicated research you have to do and you're and you're applying that same logic to to this new sole sole proprietor program actually we don't have uh we're not a hundred percent sure if we would give this funding to the Vermont sole proprietor program though that exact program or if you'd run it through our existing program we haven't resolved that yet okay we have thanks thanks Ted Lynn uh yeah thank you um i just want to remind everybody that the taxes that were put off until July 15th with the 2019 taxes and those were healthy and strong and that nobody's done anything with 2020 taxes which is the lost year that you're going to be examining um sole proprietors and independent contractors and other businesses do pay quarter lease and those have come in for the first quarter maybe the second quarter and there will be more coming in on the third quarter soon but um those are guessed those are based on you're supposed to be based on what you paid in 2019 so those are going to be higher in most cases than most people are probably going to make um most people do their bookkeeping with profit and loss and you can probably ask for a copy of that that'll be but that's the thing that you're asking for to compare your march of 19 to your march of 2020 or your september of 19 to your september of 2020 it isn't going to involve your tax records because you're not going to be doing your tax records till maybe next year it's it's um it is a good faith observation i mean but if you can talk to you can verify with bank statements and other things that people use but that's that's something that accd and the tax department have to you know what when they're talking about the tax department they were talking about rooms and meals a designated tax that you could track every month for restaurants and lodgings and places like that but not for your general self-employed person jim thank you mr chairman um for ted and joan i i'm i'm ruminating on the ski areas and specific help with them and um i wonder if either one of you have have it at your fingertips you know what kind of tax revenues we're getting from um um ski areas in contrasting in contrast to lodging and here's the point that i'm trying to make is that without lodging those ski areas are not going to have anybody so that's the the point that i i'd like to make and where i would rather if we um pool our resources and in the lodging industry overall i don't have the numbers off the top my fingers i do know that the winter ski season is one of the primary drivers of our meals and rooms tax generation so without skiing there is no there is no winter outdoor recreation season so that that you know generates that much tax money so i hear you i think that's why we dedicate most of the money to lodging and hospitality and have this small set aside relatively small set aside for ski areas i hear you okay i'm pretty sure we're going to revisit it but just a warning to you thanks thanks i know we'll work out all the details in the coming days not weeks days but just one question i had ted in in terms of this paragraph that we have on our screen right now is the business was established yada yada and the business experience of 30 percent are greater reduction revenue in any one month period if there are new business 30 percent reduction compared to what for the previous month i'm trying to figure that out so if it's um i hope you can help me here that's exactly the idea so the idea is that if the business can demonstrate that from february 1st onward that they had a month-to-month revenue reduction of 30 they'd be eligible so if march of 2020 was 30 below february of 2020 they'd be eligible if april of 2020 was 30 below march 2020 they'd be eligible they could prove any of those or if there are summertime business let's say you know this is going to be weird but a covet a covet june to july 30 reduction would even be eligible with the concept that there's not a perfect way here to demonstrate the loss for a new business but we want to keep it consistent with uh at least demonstrating yeah the difficulty is for those businesses that are on that events business such as wedding businesses that uh everything's canceled you're not going to have that um that nexus from the previous month it's all going to be zero so my theory on that would be uh let's take a wedding and a wedding business that had 20 000 deposits and in june they had to refund 5000 deposits i assume that outlay of cash shows up as a loss on their books they'd be able to demonstrate therefore a loss and qualify for the grant it could that could be the wrong assumption though i i've certainly learned in the implementation of this program that i made many wrong assumptions yeah from an accounting standpoint it's just an asset and a liability you don't recognize it until you have the event but um it depends uh how you do your bookkeeping yeah bob i just wanted to comment on uh jim's comment um regarding uh a connection between uh ski areas and hospitalities i think it's uh kind of the chicken or the egg kind of question um i think they're uh they both need each other christy uh yes sir a little confusion on my part in listening to all this uh conversation and uh i appreciate very much uh um the commissioners and and the department's in on and explaining it but i'm looking at the 73 million dollar amount and yesterday we heard testimony and approves uh and commerce joint committee meeting of which i had this the uh deputy commissioner brady's uh supplement or the the the pdf file up we're looking at a out of that 73 million 23 million is for the business grant program is the other 50 million from the bill h966 or is that new money within the crf funding that we're looking at 133 million total that's my first question and what what was that 50 million what's the what's the 50 million make up of that 73 we have it right it's the 23 for the uh economic recovery grant changes and then the other uh 50 million dollars on that pdf is the uh fourth bullet under crf one times targeted hospitality and tourism grant funds so our intention is to run the additional 50 million dollars of tourism and hospitality assistance through our emergency recovery grant program correct and that was that's what i thought but we keep talking about the 50 million dollar consumer stimulus program as well and that's not contained within this bill is that correct this uh this draft that we're looking at it is it's in the uh bottom two pages last last two pages okay uh but thanks that clarifies that very much then i'm wondering we've had some conversations about maybe simplifying the language i can get my arms around both uh concepts uh the model that we have or the draft that we have versus uh something maybe simpler but when we when we target a specific industry such as the ski area of which i think most of us agree that that's uh that is significant to our economy in the winter time even though i don't ski so i'll quantify that um but by specifying a specific entity uh wouldn't it be couldn't we better change the rules that uh wouldn't be inclusive of them into this program as opposed to naming them specifically we definitely could i think we we debated this and came to the realization that this is what we want to do so let's just be clear and say this is what we want to do and not try to uh hide it it's with the big risk that well what about me's come out right what about this sector what did we get that but this one is big enough that we thought it deserved its own little attention correct but then my other concern was based on and i know the intent is not to take the the stimulus or the consumer stimulus money and and give it all towards uh lodging necessarily but in a sense we're looking at you effectively could have access to 123 million dollars for uh for that grant program if you take the 23 million first and the 50 million for the hospitality and then the 20 and then the 50 million for the the so-called card program you could you could have access to 123 million is is am i clear on that i i i guess in theory there's a chance that that would happen but i in practice we have every intention of spreading this uh through multiple sectors we've done 22 sectors in the emergency recovery grant program so far we have four or five sectors in the existing pilot for the consumer stimulus program we're running so that's not our intent yeah i understood i'm just trying to get uh commenting on representative carol's question and and trying to get my arms around the potential here thank you and i i i think christie that depending on how the legislation is written um i think to give the consumer stimulus program stands on its own i don't believe that money can be used for making um business grants um although it could be used in the lodging or the hospitality sector exclusively but it's uh but the same can be said with with other sectors that get named um that they need to help those sectors as you know everything that's in there so i don't i don't believe that they can just take all the money and put it to one one specific um but one i do have one question i know stephanie is up in just one second um we you know we're talking about the ski areas and trying to get around that 20 million dollar revenue cap um but we did hear we've all this morning we heard from a from a lodging establishment um that it also was over that 20 million dollar um revenue cap and can't access any grants and um and i don't know how many how many others are out there um within the state but um i'm worried about those medium especially the medium-sized businesses um that we count on not being able to make it and and our and our inability of not helping them yeah we've gone back and forth and how we're supposed to balance the needs of small businesses and therefore we weren't interested in moving that cap but we're open to the conversation with you folks okay good thanks stephanie thanks uh so i i'm looking at what i i see perceive as a as a gap here and in the last because we're broadening the scope of this to include sole proprietors and we're making a much smaller loss so we have potentially much many more people who'll be able to apply but what i've seen in in in my community and i suspect it's the same and other areas of vermont is that many small businesses lack the sound accounting skills to be able to apply for these programs and if they're a small business a cash-based business um it and and talking to a little local accountants i these people are having problems applying and i we had a large discussion about this in june and i'd like to see this again in that we have some financial planning advisory business advisory some some sort of help so that we can get more people just to apply so they're just not like throwing up their hands saying like this is just i'm not big enough i can't do it i you know what are the the sort of self-defeating peace might be and that we get more people to apply so i'd like to see some assistance somehow to get these this larger pool sole proprietors to feel like they are able to access these funds we hope the uh and here is it or is this am i is this something that can be done i guess and we hope that our technical assistance navigator network will be up and running in the next two weeks which would really help folks use this program better going forward uh the the woman in minority-owned business set aside benefited greatly from some work that was done by the partnership for fairness and equality and uh by the center for woman business enterprise i don't have an answer outside of that i think that that's our answer we're trying to build this network that can help them and i know that that i know that the women um in business enterprise what was great and they did a really good job and that's a very focused specific group when talking like a much broader i just um i i i didn't know that this that the assistance wasn't even up and running yet and um i guess i'd really like to be able to help people and send this kind of information to all of our accountants out in in vermont to say you need to get you know you need to help and they could help their own customers by sending their customers to something like this and said let's get your businesses in order so you can actually apply for these funds i'm going to channel my inner business person here uh if your business can't make a monthly profit and loss statement and if your business doesn't know what your 2019 revenue was covid may not be your problem this has been one of our struggles we have taken a lot of hard phone calls and uh the so that that may very well be true and i think there's a lot of businesses out there that are cash-based businesses they're doing business on the back of an envelope and it's and until the pandemic hit things are going okay for them but now this is an opportunity to teach people how to have better business practices and we're gonna quick books training all these things i'd love to be able to say they'll all be able to get the assistance they need to put in an application and i don't know if that's true but we will be running the programs that would give them the skill set that's we'll have five grants to recovery navigators in recovery positions that we hope to be executed by friday this friday good so as long as the stuff is getting in place i'm glad to hear that i i was wondering if it was missing from this bill but if you've already got it in place and perhaps we need to add more money to it i'm not sure but but as long as we're marching down that path good i just like to see i like this when this is all over i'd like to see more businesses feel really sound about their foot their footing and about their future okay thanks kim thank you mr chairman um to ted and jone and i'm sorry to hammer on it more but i'm gonna um it goes to you know the idea of casting as wide in that as possible and um you know i think at the root of where our tax revenues come from are the hospitality industry and i think that you know if if you go and contemplate this go back and re-contemplate this legislation to look at it at the redistrib- reallocation or redistrib- redistribution of those um covid funds to uh be more focused on the hospitality industry specifically lodging thank you thanks we agree that's why we included the $50 million set aside that's why we've made more than a hundred million dollars in grants available to the hospitality sector we're with you yeah okay um i think what i'd like to do what i what i really want to do is um ask charlie if he would work with with uted or somebody from the agency and work with david to continue to to go over this and come back again um with us probably friday with some tighter language that we can go over seems like right now we're spinning our wheels quite a bit and i think if if we have things a little tighter then we can get into and some of those questions that david had answered we can we can get we can get right to it but right now we have about half an hour with heather so what i'd like to do is is have heather go over the consumer stimulus and and the tourism marketing pieces just to give us a i know we got a slight overview yesterday but to dive in a little deeper and then i think we'll try to bring her back tomorrow for an hour i'm going to see if we can get in at 130 instead of whatever our time is for tomorrow i have to look again but heather if you'd if you'd like to go over with us doesn't need to be the language it's just um i think there's a lot of questions out there from the committee on just how this would this whole thing would work and um let's start there and go forward sure thank you chair i'd be happy to um so i did provide a status report to the committee if you haven't had a chance to look at that i would just point that out that it does provide um when you do have a moment to look at it a little bit more background on the program just as a reference point um you know the concept is with this because corona relief funds you know we're not able to give them directly to individuals but we do understand the buying power that individuals have and their ability to support our communities and our businesses through their purchasing decisions so the consumer stimulus is really about how can we use this opportunity with corona relief funds to support our local businesses that have been impacted and at the same time benefit individuals and residents and you know give them a little bit of an extra change to be able to to just take advantage of that while supporting the business at the same time so that's really the overall concept of it in the original allocation of the 2.5 million dollars for marketing we allocated $500,000 to this type of strategy so that we could really test this out and see how it will work you know we are just about to launch that program that the reason why I have to leave at 3.30 is actually to help run a webinar for businesses interested in in enrolling in that program we will be taping that I'd be happy to send that recording to folks um as soon as it's complete so that you have the benefit of of a little bit more detail about how that will work for businesses to enroll um we're hoping that we can actually do that in real time with a couple of businesses um so again there's this really there's two parts of the program the businesses will enroll and as we've talked about we are allocating the funding to target the sectors most heavily impacted by covid so that's as we've discussed lodging restaurants retail health and wellness entertainment and attractions that's the bulk of the consumer stimulus that's of the 425,000 that's going to go out and direct incentives from this initial pilot program 400,000 of those sectors we do have an extra 25,000 for other in the sense that we didn't want to exclude other types of businesses that might have been impacted um but you know we want to keep the focus on those that have been impacted the most uh one comment I can make that came up when um when David did that the overview of the the legislation as it's written we do have an attestation as part of the business lineup procedure that businesses do have to say that they were impacted by covid so that's you know one of the the uh the safeguards that we have in place I hope I hope it's in a negative way yes I'm sorry negatively impacted yes um so there's so the first part of the program is to get businesses enrolled again we want to make sure that's targeted to those businesses that need this additional you know consumer spending power to to really help them get those customers in the door the second half of it is to get the consumers to enroll in this program um so that part of the initiative we have the launch date set as september 8th we are putting together the communications plan right now this is a first come first or programs we want to make sure that people far and wide know about the program you know one of the things that we're definitely conscious of is that you know we want to make sure that this is especially impactful to you know for models who may not have as much spending power as others so we're working with the local support action team from the governor's mitigation and recovery task force who's been putting together strategies to make sure that we are reaching out to capstone agencies and other types of partners throughout the state who might be able to reach folks who could really benefit from this consumer stimulus the most and so that's the central part of our communications in terms of making sure that that residents are aware of the opportunity to sign up for this opportunity um so so again there's two parts of it so once the consumers signs up for it the way that works is that they indicate some interest that they might have whether they're interested in you know receiving a gift card for a restaurant versus a hair salon versus you know sporting goods store you know whatever it may be um and then what the program does is it looks you know the businesses in their area where they've indicated they might be interested and creates a match and says hey would you like this option or this option so that's up to the consumer to choose where they want to spend that incentive if they don't like the first couple options they're served up a couple of more and the program is able to balance it so that you know that everyone's not choosing the same pizzeria or the same restaurant um that we can balance that between different businesses so we can't guarantee that every business that signs up someone will choose you know that gift but we can balance it to make sure that there is a distribution between the options that are provided so that we can spread out that impact as much as possible um well as soon as somebody chooses you know I'd like to use my $30 gift card at this restaurant the business receives the money upfront so that's another way that we're getting the money directly to the businesses um and then the consumer would have the remainder of you know until the the end of the period until the end of the year to actually redeem the gift card um when they go into that store to redeem it the merchant will then they can either use an app or they can use a printed coupon that the technology is not required um but there then is the way to trace not only that they redeemed the gift um but also how much they spent in that transaction so that we can see how much of this consumer stimulus how much additional revenue was generated based on this stimulus so the business is going to receive the money upfront what happens if the person doesn't redeem the gift card the business retains the money the the consumer just doesn't get the benefit of that good or service and and unfortunately that means that we don't get the additional spending that they might have generated by going into the store but the business doesn't lose out in any way does this run into any problems with the sheets with I'm sorry with the sheets so is there would they have to after two years because someone hasn't redeemed that that certificate or that coupon or gift card would they have to turn that over to the to the state treasurer's office because no one used it and no I don't believe so because the the business is getting that money upfront so that's how I understand that that's not an issue okay I want to make sure sure yeah okay thank you Jim you have a question I'm sorry Heather do you have more that you want to give before I mean the only thing that I that I would mention and this came up in testimony earlier this morning in the senate is that you know I understand that the timing of this is not ideal to be able to prove you know how the pilot program has worked before we're thinking about investing more money into it we will be able to see as soon as the program goes live on September 8th you know how many businesses have enrolled how many consumers have signed up for it and as soon as they do start redeeming we will have some preliminary numbers as to you know how much return on investment we are getting we are getting you know I'm I'm more than happy to provide you know weekly updates as soon as information is available to show what we've been able to do with this program you know with this with this initial 500,000 if that is helpful to think about you know your comfort in creating a larger program based on this model yeah I think there's gonna we're gonna need a lot of comfort when we go from half a million to 50 Jim and I guess the last thing I'll say is just that the where that number 50 came from was you know what would it take to be able to provide you know this kind of benefit to the to hold to you know all 300,000 households in Vermont you know at $150 level was where that number came from the pilot program right now our goal is to sign up at least a thousand businesses and and have to get out the door just as an as an example of the scale okay thank you have it Jim thank you mr. chairman um Heather um Mike just brought up a very important point about cheats um and you know what this what this amounts to is that we're putting more money into the the pockets of businesses around the state which is a good idea it's a great idea but if those cards are not redeemed where does that money go it stays in their pocket yes that's a question I would be happy to to follow up um that is the advice that I've been giving direction that that this is not an issue but I'm happy to follow up with the committee on that all right and secondly you know you know there there there's a significant well actually um Vermont is by population as one of the oldest um in age it uh around around the country and there there's you know I would I would I'm it's just a wild guess that you know there's going to be a significant portion of the Vermont population who won't be able to take advantage of it because they won't be able to enroll um because they don't have computers or they're not computer literate um and quite frankly you know I I can't hold back I think this is a horrible idea um I think this money would be better spent in other areas in segment of uh the uh our economy who really need it specifically uh lodging in hospitality and I know that in some ways um it will go to uh hospitality but uh that's that's my opinion on it there is a certain level of technology that is required just to create a program of this scale you know we have there are different ways to sign up for it you know you don't have to have a smartphone like I said you know you can bring a paper coupon into the store but you do need to have um you know either email or you have to have a phone number if you know there are just some limitations as to how we can create a program and implement it you know within a three month period well just one final point you know um you you told us yesterday that or when I asked you you know what the administration of this program would be uh and out of $50 million that's five point five and a quarter million dollars for the administration of this program which could be better spent in other ways so I believe there was a misunderstanding yesterday afternoon when I quoted to you that the 15 percent administrative cost that was for the 500,000 pilot okay my apologies my all apologies chairman may I just address something also on the motivation of this program I we need we we can only do so much by giving businesses money we eventually need to get back to treating the cause of the illness and in this case the cause of the illness is people's habits people's habits are they're going to buy things online if you started buying your paper towels on amazon because of COVID-19 you need a reason to instead buy them from your local store if you started stopped going out to eat because you you know that's your habit no longer is to go out to eat once a week we need to change those people's habits so this is a very intentional new way of giving funding to businesses that fundamentally aims to change people's behavior and without it we're going to be in a downward spiral when COVID doesn't exist when COVID doesn't exist and people don't go shopping their local downtowns anymore because their habits changed we're in trouble so this all right Ted a question with respect to these gift cards when when a purchase is is rung up will taxes be included in the purchase so well in my question is will this be a revenue producer for the state Heather you know how we're doing in the pilot taxes would not be included so if you had a $30 if you're redeeming a $30 gift that there was taxable you'd have to pay the taxes thanks Stephanie a couple quick questions so how are we going to define a Vermont business is that a business where the profits stay in Vermont or is it a large corporation or is it just a brick and mortar business in Vermont or even an online business that's located in Vermont that's one question and the second question is are these only for I was thinking back to our discussions in early summer and I remember that the plan was to do it these gift cards or just incentive was just by local by region or by town or is a by local state of Vermont sure so I can the first question is the language that we use is that the business must be down a file in Vermont the primary place of business in Vermont it's the same language we use for the economic recovery grants and we do not allow franchises for this by local program the second question is yes we know when we originally were kind of batting around ideas we thought you know could we do this on the regional or local level what we did in the end is we realized that you know with less funding it was going to be easier for us to implement on a statewide level but give folks the opportunity to when they're choosing their interests it's to choose where they might like to have that gift so they can either choose to support a restaurant in their local community or maybe they're planning on spending the weekend someplace else in state and they'd rather support that community or you know have an opportunity to to spend that money elsewhere we also have another program that we have stood up which is the regional marketing and stimulus grant program which gives $10,000 grants to community organizations throughout the state to create their own types of stimulus programs like this so that's aimed at downtown organizations and chambers of commerce and other types of organizations like that you know who might have their own specific program that is similar to this that is also in response to COVID so you know we're really trying to look at different strategies to make to make sure that we're covering all all the great ideas that are out there and supporting them how we can so that we have you know that grant program that is for the local and the regional programs and then this program which is a statewide effort okay I like the idea that statewide so we can get people moving within the within Vermont um out of the maybe to the more rural areas and try support some of those more rural businesses thank you Mike you're muted yeah I know I forgot I muted myself because they're pounding on my roof right now look at that go ahead uh thanks Mike um Heather I had two questions for you the first was um is there a way to include uh nonprofits and the service industry in these um these programs say somebody wants to give to their local uh you know arts organization that they normally would have gone and bought movie tickets from or play tickets um is there a way that we can include nonprofits and and also the service industry in this so you know we use the term business loosely it's not necessarily saying that it has to be a for-profit business so if there was a cultural institution you know they could definitely sign up to be a part of this if they wanted to give a you know a gift card for for tickets to an event or something like that well um and then the other question was it was kind of I was thinking about uh Ted's comment about um the root cause and I'm thinking about too that you know that it's this consumer trends right now are definitely going towards online sales and and I don't think we're gonna I don't think we're gonna change that um and so part of me you know would love to you know it's uh makes me think of how do we how do we adopt to consumer trends and and in some ways that's we need to create a an online platform just like what you're talking about that lists Vermont businesses Vermont products and and some and like like an Amazon for Vermont you type in um chairs and it brings up every chair that's made in Vermont but I so I do think and I hope that there is opportunities to expand this so that we're helping Vermont businesses shift to consumer trends which is buying things online it is at the detriment of our downtowns but again we're not we're not shifting that trend like we're not going to change that no matter what we do here I think that's that's a cultural thing you know yeah I I I would I would agree with you I think you know as Ted mentioned part of this is really shining a light on you know what are those consumer trends and how people how are they making those purchasing decisions I will mention you know came up earlier that the technical assistance network that's being set up you know one of the ideas for that was to help businesses think about how do they need to change their operations based on COVID that was one of the goals of that program you know in addition to that financial planning and so forth is you know how are they going to operate in this this post COVID world and that may in fact be looking more at their online presence it may be about you know takeout or curbside you know all these things that we weren't used to being so top of mind before but we have become the new reality so I would agree there's lots of challenges here and in terms of how do we help our businesses survive you know and really set them up for for the future Amazon for Vermont that was my idea you heard it from me Heather I think so I mean the idea is to at least try to get some money to our local businesses I mean I hear you about the online but there's nothing like having a staycation and being able to buy from our local businesses and if I had another hundred and fifty dollars hey I would have bought another Adirondack chair you know I don't think we should just have the raise the white flag that it's over for for bricks and mortar I I think tourists usually frequent our stores and in their absence we need we need Vermonters to buy and then this would be a way to do that sorry Heather I just had to interject is that for me yes thank you Heather one of the things and I don't know maybe people remember this back in the summer the May June when we had people come in and talk to us about COVID then the idea of gift cards and maybe it was before that I can't remember but we did do extensive work on gift cards as part of consumer protection and the person who spoke to us was I think a retailer who said that they would prefer not to have gift cards because the demands made on a business to honor these gift cards if they're not utilized right away or there's money left on it is or pretty pretty extensive I mean maybe Charlie remembers because I think he was part of that conversation quite a bit about the gift card issue is does anybody mentioned any of this to you I mean it is a I understand the concern I think part of it is that you know we're using this gift card language as kind of a generalization and and it's my understanding that this is not the same kind of gift card the way folks are thinking about it that the work calling it that just because it's an easier language than to say you know an incentive that's a certain amount of money but I'm happy to I'm happy to follow up with the specifics of of the differences there because I hear you loud and clear and I understand that that was you know a concern brought up but it's again it's my understanding that the that the way this program works is that that the technical nature of it and how the the transaction works is that it's not the same scenario but I'm not a I'm not an expert in in those rules so I like I said I'd be happy to follow up okay thank you it does sound like it's a little different where I think by the sounds of it you will have you'll have the ability to know where people want to go and how much they want to spend and then that money will get transferred direct to the business and then they bring in a coupon or they have something on an app that says that they have a thirty dollar or a fifty dollar or a hundred dollar credit with that with that business yes yeah okay so it doesn't sound like it's it's an issue with money coming out of the business or or the business having to figure something out I mean if we were if we were to do something like this I think we would have to put language in that that would say that after December 30th that this money becomes a grant that way you get away from the estates issue and you also the money does get expended to the business as a grant ahead of the December 31 deadline but I think I'm sure that makes a lot of sense you know that's that's certainly the intention I can you know I cannot anyway that that makes less sense um I know you got about four minutes so jean thank you I I do I want to I I my jury is out as far as what I think of the program I just want to say that I know that in COVID in what's going on the lower income service worker as much it has a greater this has a greater impact on the lower income folks than they then the upper income and the professionals I'm from Chittenden County so I see that every day and what we're talking about is gift cards with discretionary spending I don't know if that's necessarily a match it's just a comment I'm going to leave it at that but I think we need to think about um if we're allocating you know I love the you know the initial you know 50 half a million trial program but when we're looking at the 50 million I think we need to have a really good look at where where does that hit our economy and what sex does it hit just saying thanks Charlie I know you gotta go but uh you know the since this news has been released people think it's a universal gift card so they can just take a visa card to any kind of store or vendor that would accept these are mastercard and that's and then now we're coming back to say no it's only these select vendors that you could select it from and you never get the actual money it goes right to the business so there's a lot of confusion about that as to whether or not it's going to work I agree with Jean that we're talking about providing people with extra money that don't necessarily need it and that there are some that really need it they may not be able to take advantage of it because they need some of their more basic needs taken care of from a from a business that may not be participating whether it's Walmart whether it's the local grocery store this in statewide or international chain so it's I'm not sure about this program actually I am sure I don't like it I'd have to really be convinced by the pilot that it proves something but on the face of it I'm just not a warm to it and I just gotta tell you where I am on it thanks thank you so I know you have to go Heather so our time tomorrow our original time is 1030 to 1230 so we are going to extend that from 1230 to 130 so I'm hoping that and and I know you have to go Ted or Joan I don't know if you have time constraints where if not we can stay on and and continue some Q&A but I'd like to see if we can get a new draft done by tomorrow at 1230s and I'd like to go through that new draft again and then I think on Friday we could bring you back in again Heather and and continue some conversation and I think you were going to check a few things out so I'll we'll continue the conversation Amy will send you a request to see if you can make it and we'll go from there if that works great I am available tomorrow I would I would not be available on Friday you're not okay okay we'll remember that thank you thank you so Jim you have your hand up thank you thank you Mr. Chairman I think it's too late Amy Heather is left but I just want to say as strenuously as I can think you're breaking you've broken up you're we can't hear anything right now can you hear me better how's that now we can okay I just like to throw the breaks on this and all together and stop Heather from going to do this webinar today this is 50 million dollars that we're talking about 50 million dollars the webinar that Heather is doing today is actually on the pilot program that's already been authorized hmm so that's the uh 500 000 right correct okay okay I just think we need to really think this thing through um this money can be reallocated to the segments that are at the foundation of where we need that assistance and we need to rethink this thank you okay um chairman I think Joan and I are able to stick around a little while longer Joan and I are also interested in getting together with uh Representative Kimball and David Hall yeah I think this is probably a good time for us to end unless somebody has any other questions so that that they can they can get to work and get things straightened out um Zach thanks mr chair um real quick question for uh now that Joan and Ted are back um I was wondering if uh um this is in regards to the 30 the reduction of 30 loss um I was wondering if we might see different businesses maybe seasonal businesses um that are only now starting to see larger losses and revenues because of their seasonal nature weren't able to apply for grants before because again the seasonal nature they weren't able to show a loss but now as we're coming through the fall for example um do you think we'll see more of those businesses and do you have a way of prioritizing um loss uh like those that have higher percentage of loss if we do this 30 reduction uh this reduction to 30 loss as opposed to 50 let me make sure I capture all of that uh how do we capture the seasonality is that what you're saying and if people are coming in now because their biggest loss is let's say august you know let's say they come in september the prioritization for the current program is first come first served so um we will continue to do that in the order in which we receive the the application um for the new uh proposal the 30 percent um I would think we're going to do first come first serve so I don't know if we're going to change that nature um yeah I I don't think we weren't planning on changing it but I you know as as we said earlier we don't have all of it hammered out um so open to suggestions yeah um like somebody's playing Mario Kart um uh yeah no I was just thinking about that and that that there's probably going to be I I'm I can't think of any specific industry so I might be talking about something that doesn't really exist but it was a thought that had occurred to me that there might be more industries that all of a sudden realize that they have some pretty big losses that were they weren't able to show before but um but the other piece that I wanted to ask about and um make a plug for was I was thinking about Perry and the 10 industry and they he and he donated those four tents and I know you know I think about they were on food bank and that they stepped up and they lent a lot of services towards uh food distribution without um any money from the state at least initially but I I wonder if there is a way that we can create a pot of money that goes towards businesses organizations that went above and beyond um during this time to help out other sectors of the state um you know unforeseen circumstances I wonder if that's been a part of your conversation if that's something you might consider I I um I've thought about this but don't have the language necessarily yeah there were great great feats of of many businesses who donated protective equipment uh you know all all kinds of great deeds and uh as of right now I can't think of an effort to establish any grant program or assistance um many people pivoted and they were also able to then sell some of their they're good so I don't think I'm satisfactorily answering your question I I don't have something right at the sort of top of mind I don't know if Ted has another view he probably does right no yeah well you understood what I was talking about so and that's that's good for me but if if it um if there does appear to be something that could lend itself to that idea that I would be open to that uh well I think maybe uh you know maybe it's public recognition you know it's a it's an accolade of sorts right there are many stories like that that should be these people should be celebrated you know for sure thank you um I have a question slightly different tech Perry also mentioned that um New Hampshire which sounded like it got a similar amount of money as we did a $400 million federal money what did they do did they I mean was that more money than we got did they get a lot more money did they allocate it out faster and in larger sums and I mean what did they do if he seemed to think they did it right of course of course what what was the difference there were you so their their entire pot of money was so statewide they got the same 1.2 billion in CRF but for the business support fund was 400 million so that is you know a good percentage more than twice that what we what we had to start with and what they did is they assessed the entire need and they divided what they had by the amount of the need that came in to come up with the percentage so they then you know this was one of the options we had that they would say okay you only we only have enough to to spread out for 17 percent I think that was the ending value of the of the pro rata share we could only give out 17 percent of what your need is so it's it's not really a panacea I mean I'm sure some people made out better than our program and there might be people who made out worse um so we we did analyze that thought when we were coming up with which methodology right we had a few choices first come first serve lottery uh a date certain where we get all the applications and we determine based on need but we thought how do you do that with thousands right for this or this methodology and we thought well with that methodology nobody gets what they entirely need like not one person right because you're getting if we thought we're going to give out 10 cents on the dollar you know of what the need was we weren't sure we'd be able to make it so I understand that everyone's going to come forward saying we could have done a better job and the state's done it better you know some states only gave out like 5000 10 000 I think New Hampshire because they had more money had a maximum grant amount of 350 000 so yeah that looks on the face of it that looks you know way more generous but they also had more money and they also subtracted out like a percentage of what everybody received on ppp and idle so it is a little bit like mixing apples and oranges it's really hard to compare one for another you know we had a we had a decision these were all I kept saying it was like the weeks of you know one hard choice after another like in any way we took it it would be somebody would be either left out if we figured this way at least there'd be people would get something from us you know yeah one follow-up on that there and I you know I remember trying to keep track of where this how much this money was there were you know 63 million here and 55 million there and 110 million it was just it was hard to keep track of what the total amount was there was it seemed to me the 400 million is what we were going to do originally and then it got cut back right governor was not happy with that um right so did we get 400 million for business you know for this no no so we had in total uh it was a hundred and 152 in total that came between tax and accd and then there were a few add-ons and set-asides the five million arts council five million for women in minority and there's a few other small set-asides so yeah it was a fraction of it and New Hampshire did start out sooner I don't think they went through the legislative process and they just you know did the program they did a prequel and then and that's that you know um yeah it's a it's a different tack we thought we needed to get money out right away we did we aired on the side of being very very conservative in terms of the cap as well as in terms of the percentage we paid out and that's why we have adjusted and adapted accordingly yeah and we did do a lot of work with um we spent like a couple of weeks just trying to figure out about loans and dita yeah you know it just it things that just didn't work that we had to go back and start over yeah I know that there is a rush to say that loans weren't really allowed or they'd have to be paid back but uh we are hearing from certain properties that they do need help on their large loans that are no longer going to be for bear so I don't know what to do for them because it's not anywhere near the grant amount is nowhere near what they would need so you know there is something to be said for a patient loan um well thank you okay so let's um let's let Ted and Joan and Charlie and David see what kind of magic they can come up with and um so let's plan um let's have uh see if they can join us again tomorrow at 12 30 and then maybe we can have a half an hour discussion with her and I think we're on the floor at two so I think if we run over a little bit as long as we're done by uh 145 or 150 before the floor starts I think maybe if the if the draft language is finished um we could go through that and then on Friday um sit down and and really go through it and um see where we end up I think everybody knows the probes would like this done by a week from tomorrow so it doesn't leave us much time Ted thanks all sounds good I wanted to end with just an impassioned plea for folks to reconsider a position on the 50 million dollar stimulus proposal we're trying to do something creative here because we worked with you folks to try to put money in the hands of Vermonters last time and it didn't work the CRF rules are really restrictive about giving money directly to Vermonters and so we're trying to create something that that kind of scratches a couple of different itches and since that's our problem right because we're trying to do so many things with one program it makes it unappealing because it doesn't do anything perfectly so if there's something else that we some other way to weave this we'd we'd like to talk about it but we think this is after a month and a half two months of playing with it this seems to be the way to get a square peg in a round hole and it does it in a way that ultimately benefits the businesses well engaging Vermonters in that process and giving Vermonters something so that's that was the goal thanks for that give me a chance thank you we appreciate we appreciate all the hard work that the agency is doing and that you all are doing and we thank you for it I can tell you that the comments that I've been hearing so far are not favorable and it's not just from my committee and it's not just from any other committee it's from some Vermonters that I hear from also that even in my store that are really skeptical about it so we will continue to discuss and try to get ourselves there I don't know that it will work but I think this committee has been very good in keeping an open mind and listening and weighing all the options so I promise that we will continue to do that so with that I thank you all for your time today my committee and for you Ted and Joan and for Heather for taking the time to be with us and we'll we can go off live now Amy