 This is House Ways and Means, April 30th. And we are meeting on a couple of issues this morning. More discussion about the Education Fund, which is following on the discussion, the presentation we had yesterday from Tom Cavett and from Mark about revenues and sort of the challenge in fiscal 21 in particular. And then we are also gonna spend some time on S344, which is a bill that came from the Senate. I don't think it's gonna come in our committee at this stage. I don't believe that it affects the Education Fund, but I thought the committee should have a review of it and an understanding of it. I have invited Sorsha just to let you know, I asked Sarah, a couple of hands, if she wanted to join the meeting for that discussion or if she wanted to have someone from her committee, they're meeting at 1030. So she was gonna send an email to you and to me if she was gonna ask somebody to join and then you could send that person an invite if that happens. So she may come on or somebody from government operations may come on. So before we start, I wanna give committee members a chance if anybody's got any announcements or questions or anything before we get rolling. I don't see Jim Massum raising his hand, his actual hand. I believe you all saw it because I sent an email out within the last hour about request of municipalities to be able to move highway funds to the general funds within the town and vice versa so that they have flexible money for COVID responses. And I don't know which bill it goes on, but it may very well be something that we need to discuss with this community. So I'm, excuse me, committee. So I'm just letting you know the second time. Okay, great. Thank you. So I don't know where the discussion should happen. So just remember to bring it up when it seems appropriate. So thanks. I asked Ledge Council to draft an amendment and to suggest which bill that's moving maybe in GovOps or something that it may go to. Okay, right. And if it turns out that that bill is the right vehicle and doesn't come in the committee, you can do it as a floor member. Thanks. All right. I don't see anyone else with a hand raised. And just a reminder, if you can use the blue hand because I'm keeping the participant list up on the side and that's the easiest way for me to track it. And then I also know sort of what order people want to chime in. Well, Pat, you're back. Good to see you. I am. We've lost you briefly, so. Yeah. Yeah, good. Robin, were you trying to get attention or no? Okay. Suggesting Pat, turn his screen horizontally and then we'll see. Who me? Here we go. There you go. All right. So Mark, why don't you sort of start us off by reviewing again the one pager that we looked at yesterday. And we have, I guess, we have Doug Farnham here as well from tax. The reason I asked tax to come is if we decide we want to pursue something like this proposal. The two big questions are, one, is there money to fund it? And two, can the tax department do it? We can't answer the question about whether there's money to fund it at the moment. But we can start looking at whether it can actually be implemented. So taxes here to help us with that doesn't mean they've endorsed the concept or anything, but they would be the folks who would have to implement something. So Mark, I think you're muted. Mark, you're still muted. Yep, can you hear me now? Yeah. Okay, I was just, I was wondering, can you see the document on my screen? Yeah. I can. Okay. Okay, so this is the sheet we went over yesterday so I can just review what was going on. The proposal would be intended to limit the education property tax increase that we're expecting next year through the use of the federal money. It's not CARES Act money, it's a... Oh, there's a... Excuse me. It's okay. Oh, it's ringing here. A lot going on. Yep. Okay, so anyway, starting with one. The first thing we had to do is to figure out how much money do we need? Do we think we need an FY21? So there is basically $5 million, we think at this point, that we will need to cover from FY2020. It's possible that we might get some additional revenues to come in and be able to balance the fund or at least not go into a deficit in 2020, but right now that's what we're carrying. We'd also need $38 million to fully restore the Education Fund Stabilization Reserve. That amount grows a little bit every year, so that's up to $38 million. There is about $74 million to fully fund the spending that voters have already approved for FY21. And then based on Tom Kovetz's first forecast for FY21 that he presented yesterday, we're expecting the non-property tax monies that come into the Education Fund to fall by about $113 million. So big hole next year. So what this proposal would do is it would create two education tax rates next year. The first one, which I labeled a normal education property tax rate on this sheet in item two would be based on the education property tax rate parameters that the secretary or the tax department recommended in the December one letter. And those rates, if you remember when we went over them earlier, would have increased the average homestead tax rate by almost five cents, the non-homestead tax rate by six cents, and then the average rate on household income by about 0.8%. Those should be familiar to both school boards and voters. It's what we were working on right up until the time that the COVID-19 issue raised up. That brings in those changes alone, raise taxes and bring in about another $80 million. So by $80 million of this gap that we've talked about in one would be covered by the normal education tax rates that we have in place. That still leaves a big hole. So the next step would be to determine the additional money that would be needed in FY20 and FY21 that would be solely attributable to the revenue downgrade that's been created by the COVID outbreak. In order to cover that money, we right now, it does not look like the federal CRF money. It's a permissible use for that because they explicitly prohibit using that money to replace lost revenues. But just this morning, I heard some conversations in DC about making more money available or making the money that we have available more flexible. So that's still an open question as to whether or not some of that federal money could be used to close this. But that's sort of in a nutshell, that's the idea behind the proposal, how the money would actually go out to taxpayers I haven't dealt with on here, but there's a number of different ways it could happen. But so I wasn't any questions, that's about it. I've got a couple, but let me see if committee members have questions at the moment. So I've got a question, which is why would we start on the normal rate with the commissioner's letter rather than the rates that we thought we needed based on the school budgets, which were slightly lower? We could, I mean, that's possible. I used those because that was the last balance sheet that we were looking at in ways and means where we were using those parameters. So what changed was the spending estimates. So that the average tax rates moved around a little bit because spending came in a little bit lower than was anticipated back in December. But otherwise I used these, but no, you could use any rates on here. It just, it depends on how much you would shift over the COVID-19 rate versus the normal rate. So right now with these rates, you'd look at the COVID rate would be about 17 cents. So if these rates were lower or raised, it would affect that COVID-19 tax rate. Seems to me though that the spending's going up 73. something million, I think close to 74. And with the so-called normal tax rate, we're raising 80. So it just seems, I mean, I agree, it's just a choice, which category you put it in, but it seems more defensible to me to say that normal rate would cover what we know about spending, which would be closer to 74. I don't know, anybody on the committee have any thoughts about that? Not that people are gonna find it easy to pay that normal rate, but let's see, George and Emily. Yeah, I agree with you. I would like to start with the rates we thought we needed based on the spending that was approved rather than where we were back in December. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Mark. I was just saying in order to do that, we'll have to go back and pretend that the revenue downgrade did not happen and build a balance sheet with the original January forecast. Is that what we're talking about? What I was thinking is that we would take the new spending, which is 73 to 74 million, and we would set the tax rates to raise that, ignoring all the revenue questions. I would just say, does that make any sense, Mark, or not? Well, I'm trying to think it through. It may not, because I'm just trying to figure out where we would set those rates. I mean, the property tax spills in, whatever we don't cover, with non-property tax revenues. So I think we need to have something in there, even if it's a placeholder in order to do the calculation. Hi, Mark. Yeah. Sure, go ahead. I just representative Ansel, Chloe Wexler from JFO speaking, just letting you know that we can rerun those yields. There'll be about four point, they'll raise about $4.5 million less, but we can set the yields to do that. That's sort of what I was thinking. I realize it's kind of arbitrary, but if we're telling taxpayers, this is what you need to, this is what we expect you to pay and not a connect to the actual budget somehow. So I've got a list of people here. So Emily, Robin, Jim, and Bill. I think matching as closely as we can makes a lot of sense to me, so the 74. I'm curious about, I wanna try to better understand the mechanics of this, if that's possible at this point. Let me go through the questions and then we'll get to the mechanics, if that's okay. I don't know if people wanna weigh in on where we start. Robin? Yes, I agree that we should separate what the actual voters voted for and what COVID-19 is costing us. Okay, Jim and Bill. Yeah, this may be summarizing these last couple of comments, but there's a couple of ways we could approach this. One is, how do we present this to taxpayers? What's straightforward? And then the other one is, what's the most logical way in this committee to get to the number? And logic, I would see seems, I mean, we're gonna come up with a number anyway, but I, so we could approach this either way, as we've been discussing, but it certainly would be nice if we could tell taxpayers something to the effect of this is the least scary of the burden we're putting on you. Bill? Don't forget there are 19 districts with no budget. Yes, and you're one of them. I do, and we'll have a discussion about that. That continues to be a concern. It doesn't change the 73 million because they put those districts in on their proposed budget. So, and so that it wouldn't change the amount, but it certainly has an impact in those areas. Scott, I need to go back to Emily on the mechanics, but do you have a question on that, or a comment on what we've been talking about? If I have a comment, but by all means, finish it up with Emily if you need to. Well, no, she's gonna shift gears to- Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, I'm just, I really don't care for this plan. I think that the existing system of, whenever you dump money into it, you increase the yields, you decrease the non-homestead rate. This all, it's all the same. And then at the end, you make judgments, you make judgments to adjust the income yield or property yield or non-res rate. I think we're almost here doing a ready shoot aim exercise. We don't, this is a proposal. We don't have any analysis. We don't know what's going on with the different deciles and income. Some people are unaffected by this event. Some people are really making out really well on income. Other people are losing. And I just think that we have a process in place. If you dump money in, it affects the yields, it affects the non-homestead, then the legislature makes a judgment decision. I think the other thing you're really setting yourself up for by doing something like this is every district is gonna have a really high rate. And then they're gonna get the December one tax letter. And 22 is not gonna look real good either. And districts are gonna look at that different. They're gonna say, well, you know, this was our rate last year and this was our tax rates. And this, we want our tax rate to be the same this year, but you're not supporting us and then that gets thrown back in on the legislature, like it's our fault. And I just, I think we have a really good process in place for dealing with this. And I think we should use it. And I don't think we should pursue this. I'm trying to understand the mechanics of sort of sending money out separate from like, what do we even imagine this would look like on a tax bill for people to try to even understand this separate tax rate? Will people be able to comprehend it as a different thing? And then how soon or in advance would people receive separate money from for this as we imagine it? And I don't know if the thinking on that has even gotten that far. I just worry about money coming in advance and then it going out in a different direction before people are able to pay their taxes or it comes so far after tax rebates really only help middle, like upper middle income folks usually. So we'll have, that's why we have the tax department here is to talk about that. But sort of based on these comments, I think it'd be good if Mark walked through a little bit about what the concept is because that may help understand. I think the initial concept was to send back a flat payment to tax payers based on partial accounts. So if you wanted to possibly you would get this flat amount whatever it is, and you could use that to offset this COVID-19 tax increase that you're facing. When act 61st passed, we actually did send checks back to taxpayers to help them with their bills. So we found out that taxpayers didn't make a good connection between the check they received and the bill. And in this environment, it might even be more confusing because people are receiving checks from the federal government and other things. So another way to deal with it rather than sending a check would be to provide a credit the same way we do with the property tax adjustment now on the tax bill, or we could remit the money to the town and the town could apply a credit to the bill. So there's a number of different ways. I think you could do it. Tax department would be able to address this better since they would actually have to administer it. But I don't think we've gotten down way down to the weeds on this sort of conceptual still. But the other concept, which we've talked about some but just to say it again is that we would set the normal tax rate sort of along the lines of what we're talking about. That's what the base would be for the 22 discussion. It would be the normal tax rate. And then we would have a separate COVID-19 tax rate and in some way find money and find a method for applying a credit against that separate tax rate so that that would sit off to the side. That's the concept. I'm looking at this and I'm thinking taxpayers this year are not gonna be able to afford to pay a 22 cent increase. I don't see how that is gonna happen. So I'm trying to think about ways that we can help with that. But the reason we're having the discussion is that there'll be other good ideas and probably better ones in how to approach this. Scott, George and Emily. Yeah, by doing a flat tax credit, effectively some people will see a 22 cent increase or whatever it is because the credit will be such a small proportion of their bill. In fact, some people will get a really huge property tax decrease and others will get a really huge property tax increase by using a flat credit per parcel credit. George. I mean, before we argue about the final, the way to actually get the money back, I mean, I think we should have the discussion to make sure everybody's on board with the concept. The concept being we set the normal tax rate, we use as our base where we were, not back in January, but when the school budgets were, that came in, were in, and then we figure out a different mechanism, which will take a lot of discussion, but a different mechanism to get the money, the additional money, which would be 22 cents or actually a little bit more, I think. Because of where we're starting, I get that, figure out a different way to do that, but I think that, I think first, I wanna be clear if people are in agreement with doing the conceptual thing. And we've just really, we've talked very generally about this, this is the first time we've really had a chance to weigh in on it, and I agree. And I am very open to other better ideas if they're out there. Emily and Joey. Two things, one, are there, if we were looking at ways to sort of backfill school districts or the Ed fund, we already know that the CARES Act money has to go sideways to something somehow. We're not still, my understanding is we're still not sure exactly how we're allowed to make that flow somewhere. So I'm interested in exploring if there is another possibility of adding some other funds to that as well so that we can backfill, but that's a much larger conversation about other sources of revenue that I'm certainly happy to have and haven't had that with this committee yet personally, and I'm sure you've all gone around the bend on that a thousand times over before. And then, so I guess I'm not stuck on this proposal. I do think it's important to explore other ways of backfilling. And then complete point of clarification question, when we talk about a parcel, what exactly does that mean? So I think that my like two and a half acres at my house is actually three separate parcels because of some bizarre thing that happened somewhere once. How does that, what is a parcel? That's a good question. And- It's good for the tax department. It's a detail we haven't gotten down into yet, other than to try to identify districts or tax exempt. So that's as far as we've gotten down into that, but you're right. I mean, even your situation sounds unusual, but even apart from that, people may have multiple parcels. And if it was a parcel payment, they would get multiple assistance. Joey. So if this flat rate goes to everyone, it'll go to the top 1% of taxpayers and also the bottom lower income people taxpayers. I mean, it just, why in this time would we be giving money to folks that don't need it? If it's, if we did a flat credit, you're right. It would go to everybody regardless of income. The normal tax rate is income sensitized. So that wouldn't change. And a flat dollar amount is much more valuable, if you will, to somebody at a lower income level and with a lower property value. So the, if your tax bill is $12,000, that flat amount could be a really tiny percentage of what you'd normally pay. But if your tax bill is $600, it would be probably more than what you would normally pay. So that's the thinking behind it. But the only reason to keep it flat is the discussion that we haven't had yet with the tax department is whether this is even doable. Because if we're trying, you know, the I'm starting with the premise that people are not gonna be able to pay $22 or $23 additional cents this year. That's where I start. If I'm, I think Scott is saying that they can, I think that's what I heard from him, but he's on my list here, so he can tell me I'm wrong. But if the committee feels that that is something that we need to do something to address, then what we need now are people's ideas on how to address it. This is one. Scott, Scott, you muted. Sorry, no, I'm not saying that they can pay that. What I'm saying is that if you just dump the money in, like we do every year, different amount, obviously, and that supports the yields and that supports the non homestead rate and you bring the rates down to where they would have been using that method. Now, if you get to the end, and we do this every year, if you get to the end in the mathematical calculation, which spits out both yields and the non homestead rate, if we wanna look at that and say subjectively, we wanna push and relieve a little bit of the burden wherever we wanna push it or relieve it, we can do that. We do it every year. And once we have some analysis on exactly what the income deciles look like across the state, then we can make a good decision if we want to change those yields or change that non-res or ever, we wanna do it. I mean, our current process is perfectly capable of handling this situation. It does it every year, admittedly, to a different magnitude. But I think to try to create a new system and which will undoubtedly confuse districts and confuse taxpayers in the intermediate and then really confuse them when the December one tax letter comes out, I think that's a, I don't think we wanna go there. Jim and then George. Yeah. Okay, Scott, I think I agree with you with regards to the proposal idea concept, Janet put forward, we've done stuff like that before, excuse me, I may have to sneeze, where we recognize, as Joey said, that if money goes out to everybody, it appears at first pass that the high income earners are getting a benefit that they shouldn't. The fact that we have an income sensitized tax system, I think on merit, on all things considered has a lot of merit and may turn out to be the best way to do it. Anyway, my 10 cents for this morning, thanks. George. So I personally completely agree with the premise that we can't just add 22 cents to the property tax or whatever that number would be. And I agree, people cannot pay that. My sense is, although we haven't heard from everybody, that we didn't have agreement about that across the committee. Given that, to me, the next question is, what's the simplest way to do this? And if there were ways to just put the money into the Ed fund as additional revenue as Scott has, which is what I think Scott is talking about, that would be, in my mind, the simplest way to do it. Whether it's borrowed money or whether we can direct some of the money from the feds directly into the education fund, that would be the simplest way, in my mind, to accomplish what we're trying to accomplish. I agree with that. If that's what Scott's saying, there's no question that just putting money in would be the sort of the most, it'd be the easiest thing to do. So the reason for this idea is that we don't believe that we will have money that we can just put in. And so if we can come up with, I don't know whatever it is, 200 million, 250 million, to just add to the Ed fund, that'd be great. I agree. I don't know if that's what you've been saying, Scott, if it is, I've misunderstood what you said. No, I'm just saying, I think just use our current, just use our current, put it in, increase the yields, reduce the non homestead. We do this every year at the end, right? We put in money and it helps out and typically, and this of course is a bigger magnitude, but I mean, in the end, if you give 200 million back, I don't know what the number is, 100 million back in taxpayers as a credit, or you put 100 million into the yield, it still reduces the burden on taxpayers by $100 million. So just to be clear, I agree with you completely. If what you're saying is the best thing to do is just put money into the Ed fund, everything that we've heard about the CRF and about any of the federal money would say that we won't be able to do that. So this is a workaround, but yeah, you're absolutely right. The simple thing to do is just, just hopefully take federal money and put it in. I think it's more in the magnitude of about 200 million. It's a lot of money. So. It's a lot of money. Yeah, so Jim, Matthew, you need to unmute. Jim, you're muted. Yes, apologize. Agreeing with these comments, Scott and Janet, but remembering what Mark Verrall set us about the complications on trying to get CARES money into the EDGE fund, if it's all that more difficult, I just shouldn't avoid it. The one advantage or an advantage of the Janet proposal is that if taxpayers can see transparently money go from one thing to another through this credit idea, they at least know what we're doing and may understand and appreciate it. Yeah, Emily. Thank you, I'm muted. All right, what does it look like if the money goes, whether it's from the CARES Act or somewhere else directly to the districts because it can't go into the EDGE fund. So we send it to the districts instead of individuals. How does that, the rest of everything get calculated from there? Mark. I'm not sure I understand your question exactly. I mean, the yields would be calculated however you come about them as the normal amount. So if it was the normal amount based on December one or a normal amount that reflected where we were right before this thing hit, that would be a calculation. And then this additional part, the way it's conceived of now it's just a flat, it's just a flat tax on everybody. And everybody would receive a flat check and in your right, it wouldn't match up necessarily to what they owe or how much their tax increase or decreased. But... Can I try my question again? Sure, sure. Okay, what if instead of a flat tax and this proposal, the money went, whether it's CARES Act money or some other money, went directly to districts instead of to households? And then I assume we would then have to send less money from the EDGE fund to districts. How does that then get calculated? Like, do we? Well, you'd have to do it. So I'll jump in, you'd have to do that before you set the tax rate. So that because the... That's what we needed. And every district is gonna get different amounts to... I mean, I guess there'd be an allocation question. How do you decide how much each district gets? And the impact on different taxpayers would be different because of the complexities of the way tax rates are set. So there might be equity issues. I don't know that anyway. George, do you wanna take a stab at it? Are we gonna jump in on that? You're still muted. Mark, do you wanna try it again? I'm not sure what else to add at this point. I mean, it would be a lot more complicated than what we're talking about here. I would just need to think through how it would work if the money went to the towns as opposed to the taxpayers. This proposal tries to avoid all those issues by putting money into the hands of taxpayers so that they can pay the bills. And that way we don't run into the kind of equity questions that the town would have and other issues about how that money would get out. So I need to think about it some more. I'm not sure how to address this. I'm glad I have some ideas. Scott, did you wanna grab some of that? Yeah, I think that by doing that, if you did that, that would be effective by reducing a district's, by taking a sum of money, dividing it out to the districts on an equalized pupil basis, and then reducing all districts by a fixed percentage to replace that. That is effectively mathematically, I think the same thing as dumping money into the yield. The other thing I was gonna say, I think that, I don't think we'll have to do this, but if you actually did want to, it got to the point where you had no other option other than to give parcel owners a credit of sorts, flat credit, then really, I think the math would work out the same again as just dumping money into the infine. But if you did a flat percentage decrease of the property tax liability, that would work out the same. But it had to be a flat percentage, not just a flat. George. Yeah, so when the feds with the CARES Act, the way the money was distributed to the districts was by Title I. Yeah. I wonder, Brad, for Brad, if we know how that works out to the various districts at this point, is it anywhere close to our equalized pupil numbers, or does it give us something that's really kind of skewed and not ideal? And my second question is probably for Chloe, but that is, have we calculated how much we are talking about here? Do you want me to go ahead and answer? Please. Excuse me. At this moment, we've just gotten the application. We know how much we're going to, we have. It's just, it's a little over 31.1 million. What we don't know yet is how much is going out to districts. A minimum of 90% of that goes out to districts. There is the provision that AOE has allowed to keep 10% of that 31 million total. I don't know if we're gonna keep 10% or not. That's a question for the secretary to decide. Once we know that, we'll be able to tell people how much they're going to get. Right now, what I've told them is to give them a rough estimate. Figure is probably somewhere around 80% of what they got in Title I this current year. That's, you know, give or take 5% of points. That's roughly about what they're going to get. So, is there- I guess I'll stop there for the moment unless you have another question. Well, I guess is there readily available the information about what they got on Title I? What individual district's got? What's hold on to that? I knew there was another question. You just brought it to mind. Under our laws and an agreement with U.S.E.D., our LEAs are not the school districts. They are the supervisory unions because of how small we are. And so, when you hear that money is being allocated out to by Title I, it is actually going to the supervisor unions. They in turn have, will send it out to the school district. The language does not say that they have to send it out according to Title I from the supervisory union down to the school, down to the schools. Title I kind of ignores school districts. So I'm not sure what the SUs will do. My guess is that they will probably portion it out in some little fashion to the district but I don't think we've gotten to that point yet. So what is the AOE going to do with that? How is the AOE categorizing this money? Is this a federal grant that gets? It is a federal grant. It is a federal grant. They will have to do an application before it will simplify as much as possible. The uses for it are fairly open. But does it get netted against budgets in order to come up with a different ed spending figure for districts? It's kind of, I think it's a question of what it's going to be used for and when they're going to have that money, when it's going to be used. If it's used in FY20, it's going to offset some of the costs that some people are incurring right now if other people would roll it forward. They have, I think we have a year to send the money out from the time the bill passed. So that's, you know, we have to allocate the money out to the districts by March of 2021. The districts then have to figure out how they're going to spend it. Hopefully we'll get it out, they'll apply and get it sooner rather than later. But I think part of the question is which year are they going to get it in? And when are they going to plan on using it? My guess is most of them are thinking FY20, but I have not been in conversation with them about that yet. I still don't, maybe, probably you do. I may have missed your question. And I didn't hear, but I'm still trying to figure out whether this is federal grant money that changes the ed spending figure. It is federal grant money. It depends on how they use it, I think. If they use it in FY21 to offset some of their other costs, that their regular costs that they can, that they can use for them, yes, it would reduce what they need. But again, at this point, I'm not sure exactly what they're using it for, how they're intending to use it. George, did you get your question? Well, I guess, I'm trying to get at, is there any reason to think that when we get another federal aid package that they're gonna suggest distribution to schools if they do it all, any differently than by Title I? Or should we be on this committee getting ourselves a lot more familiar with exactly how the Title I money gets distributed to the various supervisory unions? I'll send you that later today. I'll jot down in a second. As far as potentially new money coming out from the federal government, it's all going to depend on what they say that initial coronavirus relief fund that the 1.2 billion five has had very stringent requirements on it. The CARES money is much more open and is being distributed differently. I'm not, I don't, there was another bill that came out. I forgot what it was, but I think that was for pounds or maybe it was just for states. I'm not sure. They're talking about another one. But at this point, I don't know to answer your question as to how that may come out or what it will be allocated on. Chloe, I see you have your hand up. Are you wanting to jump in? Hi, yes. I was gonna jump in earlier when we were, when Emily was discussing the option of sending money directly to the schools. And if that would potentially be another way of putting money into the fund in FY21, then we sort of went to Brad and he was discussing the federal money that's already available. But I did want to indicate that I do believe that that would be a metric that could work if money was sent out in a categorical grant, for example, to the schools. That would, that's something that could come out of their FY21 education spending. I think it could come out of the FY21 spending, but I think it would be too late in terms of what we're talking about here of the tax rate that has to be set. Right, completely. Yeah, I don't think it. Bill, did you want to jump in, Robert? That was my question. You have to get those numbers by June 1, right? Yeah. I'll tell you it's an offstanding revenue. They'd have to have it. No, it's an offstanding revenue by then. Right, right. They'd just be able to spend it, which is fine, but not what we're looking for. Right. Yeah. I don't see any hands at the moment. I want to welcome Rob Leclerc, who's joined us from government operations. Nice to have you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, and I didn't notice that Bill was here before. Other comments, George? While you're thinking, Chloe, I was asking earlier if we've calculated how much money we're talking about if instead of using the January tax letter, if we use where we stood with the Ed fund and the proposed tax rates right before the COVID hit. Sure, so the December one yields are currently raising only about $4.5 million more than voted spending. So, and then the COVID tax, which is 17 cents is raising $149 million. So if we drop the yields a little bit for that 4.5 million, the additional money that we would need to raise through an additional tax or any metric that you guys come up with would be 154 million based on the revenues that you heard about yesterday. I'm going to just shift gears to Doug Farnham to tax. I know that you have had some conversations maybe with JFO about how this, something like this might work. I guess the sort of general question is how would we get money back to taxpayers if we have money to get back to them? And so, can you share sort of your thoughts about it and maybe raise some questions for us and help us work through this? Of course, Madam Chair, for the record, Doug Farnham, Deputy Commissioner for the Tax Department, thank you for having me. This has definitely been an interesting discussion. I think to do a big callback to Rep. Kornheiser's question, a legal parcel is all contiguous land under the same ownership. So subdivision and zoning and all those other weird municipal things that can happen don't affect the legal parcel status. So if, say, someone owns 10 apartment buildings that are in a row along the street, that is all one legal parcel. But Mark, it's correct that we have many more parcels in Vermont than we have owners. So if it's not contiguous, it'll be a separate parcel. And we have about 340,000 owners. So mechanically speaking, approaching this solution, I think that there's a couple of things to keep in mind. The first is that the grand list fluctuates every year, 340,000 parcels. And we have somewhere in the nature of about 10 to 15,000 changes. It varies each year, depending on how many towns are reappraising, how many people are adding value to their property or dramatically losing value in their properties. And all of that fluctuation is managed and happens at the town level. So the problem with the tax department being involved in calculating a current year credit is that we don't have the accurate grand list data until after the fact. Towns don't send us their grand list until after they've already sent out, started sending out bills in many cases. They may send us abstracts and working draft, but they're constantly making changes to those grand lists on the town side. And it's kind of a side effect of our current structure. So I think that any solution, well, any solution that would come up with involving the taxpayer would have to involve the tax billing software that NIMRC maintains. And it would require development at the town level and kind of configuration at the town level. So it's not something that the state tax department could just unilaterally take care of. It would have to at a minimum flow through the town and likely most of the or all of the effort would be at the town level. So regardless of how that credit is calculated, whether it's flat or whether it's rate-based, if it's a solution involving the taxpayer's bill, it we would have to pull in NIMRC and figure out what it would take on their end, whether or not they'd have the capability to do it right now. And how much that would cost would be a secondary consideration. Of course, we'd figure that out after the appropriate solution was selected. Dr. Kinner, Jack for a second. When you said there are 10 or 15,000 changes each year, you're talking about the number of parcels? Or you're talking about ownership? I'm talking about, that's just a rough guess, honestly, of how many are changing each year. Ownership or changing that you have 10 or 15,000 new ones or fewer ones. You're talking about the number of parcels or you're talking about who owns them? Right. So the number of parcels doesn't really change all that much. That's what I was wondering. It's right around 340. It's not a description that you were talking about the number and I assume you're talking about ownership. I'm talking about ownership and value. So there's about 25,000 or so property transfer returns. And we could get a line on those fairly easily. But we're kind of behind the eight ball in that we haven't been adjusting the grand list for property transfers because it's not normally a responsibility. Yeah. So I think that's the main thing is that the department's data is behind, is a year behind. So if we were to calculate and send out a credit based on last year's grand list data similar to how the homestead and the property tax credit works, then you would have equity issues that would come up with that. We actually have complaints every year about the lag in the property tax credit. So we'd be recreating those same issues if it were being done at the department. So I think that data discrepancy and that need to involve NEMRIC is the main thing I wanted to highlight is that if it's a solution that would impact taxpayer bills having a conversation with them sooner rather than later would be the best approach. And that the relationship for the tax billing of property taxes is not between the state and NEMRIC but between the towns and NEMRIC. We have a contract with them for the grand list software but not for the billing portion. That billing portion is all a separate relationship between the towns directly. But I do believe they're in every town at this point as far as tax billing. So at least you have a single vendor too to deal with as far as updating the tax bills. Questions? So I thought the tax department sends a file to the towns with the tax information on it even though it may be based on last year's income TALIS for example, gets a file from the tax department that says I'm the owner and this is what my... If it's adjusted, this is what the adjustment is. You don't do that. Oh, absolutely, Madam Chair. So that is the home state file. Why wouldn't this be part of the file? Why wouldn't... Because that's 170,000 of which we only have about 150,000 or 20,000 right now, I believe. 170,000 total home state declarations. So that covers half the grand list. All right, it's not covering the non-home state. So the non-home state is where we'd primarily have the gap. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions anyone has? So you're telling us this can't be done? I'm not saying it can't be done, Madam Chair. You recommend instead, you're gonna hear from all the property taxpayers who can't pay the 22, 23 cents. What's the administration recommending to us? So at this point, we don't have a recommendation because we feel that the uses of the federal money and the actual size of the revenue shortfall are still too unknown. So we do wanna try to develop recommendations in May and June. And one thing is that options like this might have to be on the table at some point, but we simply don't know if we can use the money, the federal money in this manner at this point, and actually how much of the shortfall is. The presentation from Mr. Kovet was very preliminary and kind of a rough cut size. But I do know that the administration definitely wants to pursue, wants to discuss this and wants to pursue it. It's just we don't have enough information at the time to actually recommend anything. And I would say as far as mechanically, the tax department could be involved, but it would have the downside of having between five and 15,000 errors. We may be able to figure out a way to compensate for some of those errors, but that would be a drawback of the approach, is that we would have to figure out a way to clean our data. And also, we'd have to look seriously at whether or not, how quickly we could stand something like that up. If we could stand it up in time for sending it out in the regular credit file. Well, it does seem to me that the longer we postpone this discussion, the harder it is gonna be to stand something up. George. So, I mean, I don't mean to be argumentative, but the 2020, which is what we're talking about right now, that was consensus data, that's consensus information. It's the 21 information that's uncertain, but we need to deal with both those things. So I guess my question is for this 2020, do you guys have any recommendations for us? Representative, I would say that I'm, perhaps not getting the question because 2020 tax billing has already largely been concluded. And I know that there's been some concern highlighted about potentially people not being able to make, to pay their final bills in certain towns, but I don't know that that's actually come to light at this point. So I might not be aware of a major issue in 2020. Well, a couple of things, we're worried about whether that money is actually gonna come in the final payments, but we're also, even if we assume it all comes in, we are still left in a negative balance in the education fund for 2020, even if we use all of our reserves and all that sort of thing. Right. I think that's that, I wasn't prepared to talk about that today. I was basically prepared to come in and talk about the mechanics of the property tax billing structure and how the idea you were talking about would work. I haven't really taken a deeper dive on the balance sheet, as far as fiscal year 2020 education taxes. Karen, are you wanting to jump in on this subject? Thank you, Karen Horn with the League of Cities and Towns. I do have one question. We had suggested at one point that you might freeze the grand list. And in this COVID pandemic, use the grand list figures that we have already. It does seem to avoid a number of issues. And I just wonder what you might think about that. The committee or Doug? Doug, I don't have a thought about it because I don't know what it means. So anybody want to jump in? So I could jump in, Madam Chair, if that's okay. Sure. So I would say that freezing the grand list, it would cut both ways on equity is the main pause to doing it is that you could have people that hadn't built a house last year and built a house in the fall and then they wouldn't receive a tax bill for this year. So their neighbors would see them, not being on the grand list potentially, or people that could have had a dramatic reduction in value from one year to the next wouldn't be on the grand list. So those changes in ownership and value that I talked about earlier, you would kind of solidify all of those issues. Now, yes, it would, if you then went in with the understanding that you're solidifying that grand list, you're freezing it and you're accepting those equity issues upfront, then we wouldn't have the downstream problems of applying the credit to the wrong person. But at the end of the day, if you freeze the grand list, but the ownership actually transferred from one year to the other, what do you do in that situation? I mean, the ownership transferred. So I think there are logistical problems with freezing the grand list, that when something has in reality changed about ownership, you have to recognize that. You can't just send a bill to the old owner or send the tax credit to the old owner. So, but there's some, I think there would be things to talk through there. I'm trying to understand what the benefit would be. Could you describe that for us, Karen? Well, it seemed to us that the benefit would be that you wouldn't have all these issues around getting the grand list lodged, the whole Lister calendar issues. And you wouldn't have some of these issues that we talked about, that Doug talked about with respect to the fluctuations at the town level and the town having to go through all the process of with NEMRIC of getting the most up-to-date figures. It just seemed like potentially given the scope of the work that needs to be done in the current situation, that it might be a simple fix. Simpler fix. There's nothing simple going on here. There's nothing simple. No, let's see if anybody has any questions for Doug or for Karen. Mark. Yeah, well, Doug, here's- I just want your pro-host so you have to wait. I know, that's why, yeah, I can't raise my hand. Doug, would it be possible if it was made to provide a fixed, a flat amount per parcel for each taxpayer? Wouldn't towns just be directed to subtract that amount from everybody's bill before it goes out? Seems like there's space on the bill to do that now. We do it with the property tax adjustment. You would just be doing it for all taxpayers that the town's sending out bills to. Subtract $1,000 or subtract $500. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. I don't see how that would create a problem for the tax department or the towns. Neither. So, right, I think that for most towns, especially since in the template, it would go in the state portion. I think that there's room there. I think that it's highly likely that Nimricks could do that work. I just can't speak for their ability to do that work because if we were to do something at the tax department side, what we would do is say we went ahead with, okay, we know there's going to be in perfect data, but we're going to have the tax department add a credit to every parcel in Vermont. So that file instead of 120,000 property tax credits is going to be 340,000. And it's going to be a full span list of every span that we have at the tax department. There's going to be some errors there, but we're going to work through it. Again, I'm just talking about how this would flow. We would send an education state payment. At the town side, it would be blind to whether or not it was an income sensitivity payment or this COVID release payment. It would be rolled into one. That's the only way you could avoid development at the town level. So you could avoid development at the town level, but you would be incurring probably a higher rate of error in the actual distribution of the payments. So it'd be a trade-off. And that's what I was trying to say earlier is that if the department were to drive the process, there would likely be more errors because our information is not as timely as the town. But it is certainly possible. Any other questions for Doug? You are welcome to stay on. We're going to have a discussion of S344. I don't know if that's a bill that's of interest to the tax department. I assume it might be. And I also just want to sort of focus on the time that we have to figure something out here, which is we're running short and we understand that we've got imperfect data about revenue and about sort of the problem that we're confronting, but I really hope that the administration will work with us to try to figure something out that we can develop to ensure that we have enough money to pay for our schools without impoverishing taxpayers. Peter. Would it simplify the discussion if we focused on rendering aid at least initially and focus on the group who have filed and are homestead filers? Because it seems like it gets more complicated if you try to divide the aid between the homestead and the non-homestead folks. I understand that there's a bit of an inequity there, but my first sympathy goes, of course, to people who choose to file income taxes and a homestead declaration in Vermont. We've got this other bill, so I'm gonna move on, I think after this question. Did you have a question, Emily? I just want to respond to what Peter said and that I appreciate the idea of focusing the conversation more. I think that's really helpful, but whenever we talk about just homestead folks, I really worry about renters and how they make out in any conversation and how costs are passed on to them. Well, I worry about businesses that have been shuttered for the last few months. I guess it's not one of these situations where you've got non-residents who are managing okay. Anything else? Anybody's got tough conversation? No, we're gonna keep at it. And Doug, just so you know, I think we'll do more of this next week and we'd like to have the administration participate if we can. So I don't know if there's somebody else, but we'll hope that you'll join us. Thanks. So I'm not gonna take a break, normally we would, but I'm gonna just move on and go to S344. And I think Tucker Anderson is with us to walk through the bill. I said this has gone to House Government Operations Committee and we have Rob LeClaire, I think is still with us. I don't see him. Oh, there he was. Janet, he's not, but I emailed him that we were moving on to S344 now, okay? Oh, okay, good. Maybe he'll rejoin us. So Tucker, I think hopefully we've got the bill. I know we have the bill, because we have Sorcia, so she's bound to have given us the bill. The bill's here. Maybe we can do screen sharing and you could walk us through the bill and kind of help us understand what's in here. And Abby's here too, if we have questions relating to the education tax. Go ahead. Excellent. So I will start and get right into it in section one here of the bill. We'll start in subsection A. Important thing to note about the bill overall and in particular here in subsection A is that this is a temporary provision and that the authority that's being granted under this bill must be utilized during the state of emergency due to COVID-19. So again, the select board must use this authority during a state of emergency due to COVID-19. It does not extend through the calendar year. Another important thing to note is the clause at the end here, the legislative body of the municipality is the body that is going to be using this authority and we'll get to how that authority is exercised in subsection B. Subdivisions one through three contain the operative powers here. The legislative body is going to be using. Subdivision one, the legislative body is granted authority to extend or establish a new time and method of payment for the municipal property tax and the statewide education property tax that is collected by the municipality from the taxpayers. This authority exists. Can I interrupt? What does method of payment mean here? In the underlying statutes that would be the municipality staggering payment dates throughout the year. So it's not whether I pay by credit card or check or prize money. It's just a funny term to me in here. I believe that these terms are often bundled because the taxpayer is not always the one who is supplying the funds to the municipality directly. Recall that many taxpayers are bundling their municipal tax payments with their mortgage payments and the lender is often acting as the intermediary. That may be another reason that method is incorporated here. These terms are used in an underlying statute that allows municipalities to change the time and method of payment at a townwide vote. So what subdivision one is doing here is it is shifting that authority from a townwide vote to the legislative body. Okay. In subdivision two, the legislative body is authorized to establish a grace period for penalties, interest or fees imposed on taxpayers. They're also authorized to decrease or waive any of those penalties, interest or fees imposed on taxpayers for the late payment of municipal property taxes or the statewide education property tax collected by the municipality. This authority also exists in underlying law. However, it is another authority that must be exercised by the town at a townwide vote. Otherwise, the fees that are imposed for delinquent tax payment are by default an 8% fee that is applied by the treasurer or delinquent tax collector in the town. And in many cases, it is those fees that are used to pay those municipal officers for their duties. Subdivision three allows the select board to reduce the municipal property tax rate. You'll notice that this is the only subdivision here that does not mention the statewide education property tax. Of course, the select board is granted authority exclusively to adjust the municipal property tax rate. Subsection B clarifies that the acts that were previously discussed in the subsection may be adopted by a majority vote of the legislative body. And then this is the most important piece here at the end. Each of these acts, if they are adopted, shall expire on January 1st, 2021. There was a lot of discussion about what the duration of these decisions should be, whether they should apply to fiscal years or a definitive timeline. Ultimately, because of the variety of fiscal years that political subdivisions, specifically municipalities operate on, the Senate Government Operations Committee determined that it was better to apply a definitive timeline for calendar year 2020, rather than having it apply to fiscal year 2021, which has differing start dates, but in general, municipal fiscal years start either on January 1st or July 1st on balance. Most municipalities use a July 1st start to their municipal fiscal year. Subsection C provides some reassurance here. It states expressly that this section, this bill and all of its operative provisions shall apply exclusively to the property taxes collected by a municipality from the taxpayers. States again, that this section shall not apply to deadlines, penalties or interest imposed on a municipality with respect to payment of the statewide education property tax that is due to a state or a school district. This is important because the municipalities, if the legislative body does, for example, extend a deadline, waive any associated penalties or fees or adjust their tax rate, is still going to be obligated for their payments to the school district or the state. And the state's 8% penalty on those later deficient payments will still be applied to the municipality. So they will remain on the hook. And that's everything that I have for you. Thank you, very clear. Anybody have any questions? Emily, Bill, Peter, okay, Emily. Thanks, Tucker. If a municipality has not yet set a tax rate because it was not able to have a town meeting, is there only option under this to lower their tax rate and not set a tax rate? I'm not sure whether there are any municipalities that haven't had their annual town meeting yet. There is one, it's Brattle Row. Brattle Row. Oh, right, the representative town meeting. You are in a- Our special, special thing, yes. You are in a different situation there. Whole rest of the street. Any of the power that the voters would have used at the representative town meeting would now shift to the legislative body for a town that has not had their town meeting. So here all of these powers would still exist. They could extend the deadlines. They could adjust the property tax rate. I'm assuming that that subdivision A3 would allow a town that has not set their tax rate for the upcoming fiscal year yet to do so. Even if it was going up. Yes, the term that is used is adjust. Okay, thanks. Bill. And then Peter. Reduce. I thought it said reduce. It does say reduce. Not adjust. Yes, so they would only be able to reduce the municipal tax rate. It's a good point. If that language changed to adjust, what else would happen? They could adjust rather than reduce. I think it'd be quite something to say to legislative bodies throughout the state that they can increase the tax rate after the voters have said it. That's what I was thinking. I don't think that'd be a good idea. Peter. I think Bill was ahead. Oh, I'm sorry. Bill. So Tucker, section two or subset two here. That requires a townwide vote. Section one as well. Subset one. I had some trouble hearing you. Can you repeat your question? I'm having trouble hearing you too. Everyone else out here. So anyway, go ahead. Sorry. So I heard you say that subsection two requires a townwide vote. Is that the same for section one? Underlying law, all of these subdivisions would require a townwide vote here. No townwide vote is necessary. The temporary power that would be exercised by the legislative body. No townwide vote would be necessary. Thank you. Yeah. Peter. My understanding in respect to the authority that's presently available to the board of abatement in respect to water and sewer fees is that no forgiveness or waving can occur prospectively. And the word in your draft in section two is imposed. So in other words, the penalties and interests have to already have been applied and then forgiven retrospectively. Do I understand that correctly? I'm not sure that that was the intent of this language. Subdivision two, at least in the way that this was discussed was intended to allow the municipality to wave any fees that may be applied to currently delinquent taxpayers or to adopt new fee rates, interest rates or penalties that would be associated with future delinquency. If that's a change that has to be made for clarity, I'll review if that's a policy decision that the committee makes, that they should either only apply retrospectively or that the language should be changed to clarify that this is both current delinquency and future. It makes it easier at the town level if it can be prospective. I was focused on the past tense of the word impose. You'll have an ED there imposed and consequently because I'm familiar with the way the abatement works with water and sewer, that can only be forgiven or waived if it's already been imposed. Tucker, I have a question about the timing on this. So if a town wanted to, under the current law, is it possible for the voters of a town for fiscal 20 to change the time and method of payment? I don't believe so. I think that the way that the underlying section operates is that this is for future payments. So for this year, and I welcome Abby to jump in if I'm explaining this incorrectly, but for the annual meeting in year 2020, they would be voting on these issues for fiscal year 2021. So they would be establishing prospective due dates and methods of payment for the upcoming fiscal year. So then help me understand the bill. Does the bill say that the legislative body can make those adjustments, establishing a new time and method of payment for fiscal 20 and isn't that different from what the voters could do? This would be for calendar year 2020. And it's my- For calendar year 2020 includes fiscal 20 and 21. So I'm asking specifically about fiscal 20. The argument that I've heard for this, and I'm not opposed to the bill, but the argument I keep hearing is we're just letting the legislative body do what the voters could already do. But I don't think the voters can do what this allows the legislative body to do. I'll ask Abby, do you know whether there are still any FY20 payments that have not been- Well, there are plenty of payments. I'm talking about whether the voters could make a decision under current law to change the time and method of payment for fiscal 20. So I can- Yeah, Abby, go ahead. Yeah, so- Sorry, my cat has chosen this moment to join us. So I think it would depend on when the town's next installment payment would be due. But I'm trying to understand if it's, your question is about extending penalties and interest. Now my question is very specific. I'm just looking at this bill and the explanation of the bill that I've heard is that all we're doing here is we're allowing the legislative body to do what the voters can already do. And so I'm saying, what is it that voters can already do and already do for fiscal 20? And I think they can't do anything for fiscal 20. I don't think they can make changes in penalties, interest fees, times the methods of payment. I think they made those decisions already last year. So I think we're giving the legislative body authority that the voters don't have. That may be fine. But I just, I think it's a new power that the voters can't exercise now. So in the drafting of this bill, the different penalties and interests that were discussed were primarily the delinquent. 8% that towns are allowed. The focus on the fiscal year, not the content of what they're changing, it's just what fiscal year this applies to. All right, that's why the timing question comes up is, are there any installment payments left, which if a taxpayer missed them, these penalties would apply to that missed deficient payment. So I think that depends on the town by town. They clearly are. But does anybody understand what I'm asking? Mark, you use the understanding what I'm asking. You wanna try it? Yeah, I think so. I think your question is, could a town that still has an installment do, cause some of them are still coming. And I think Chloe has a list of towns that still have payments do. Could this bill give the town the authority to make changes to those last payments at this late date? And if without the bill, could the voters make those changes? Erin, are you wanting to jump in? Thank you. I do think that generally speaking, there's a timeframe after a vote is taken within which you could petition, for a revote on something like this. But I also think that you could have call a special meeting, I mean, under ordinary circumstances, you could call a special town meeting and change those penalties. Under current law. I do think so. I'm not a lawyer, but I know that towns do call special meetings for all sorts of issues during the course of the year. A special full, getting everybody, I mean, the problem is that we can't do that, but... Right, right. That is the problem. Yeah. So can I... And I'm not saying I object to this, I just don't, I think the power that we're giving the legislative body is different than what the voters currently have. That's all. It may be fine. Tucker. I dropped the underlying statute into the chat for you all. You'll notice that the language has similar ambiguity to what you are looking at now. And it does allow the town at a special meeting to vote to establish a new time and method of delivery for the tax payments. And reading the language, I would assume that that would allow them to call a special meeting during the current fiscal year to push those installment payments to different dates. However, being prudent and reserved here, I will say that I still do not know. Yeah. What's the difference between method of delivery and method of payment? Being a lot of questions that I do not know. Anybody else have any questions about this? Karen, is this something that the league endorses? Thank you. This is a bill that we asked for. We have a number of towns that are looking at waiving penalties and interests right now. And also we have a number of towns that are extending their due dates, that want to extend their due dates. The one distinction that the Senate Finance Committee in particular wanted us to make exceedingly clear to local officials is that this does not affect their payment to the education funder, the school district. And from all our conversations with local officials, and we've had a lot recently, that understanding is very clear. Yeah, yeah. And I listened in on one of their meetings as well, and it was pretty clear that that was a concern. And it would have been a concern for us if they hadn't include the language, I think. Right, right. Yeah, do you want to jump in, Rob? Thank you, Madam Chair. I do, I think I do understand your question and it does seem to make some sense. It would seem to me that the voters, unless they had a special election, really wouldn't have that authority right now. And by doing what we're doing, it does get us to giving that legislative body the authority, but without a special election. So I do, your question is a good one. Yeah, I mean, I don't, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the bill, but I just think that we are changing something fundamental in terms of the timing. Thank you. I have another timing question. What does it mean to change the dates? I'm just going back, the time of payment of a municipal property tax and the statewide education tax. So let's say the legislative body says that we're going to have three installments and we're going to have one this fall and one in January and one in May. And then midway, then I think what the bill does is it says that whatever you did under this bill disappears in January. What is that going to mean functionally? It's going to mean that any of those dates that fell after the December 31st, 2020 at midnight drop dead date disappear. So the legislative body will only have authority to set those new times within the current calendar year. If they were to set any that would be due after January 1st, 2021, their authority will magically disappear under the wand of the legislature and those dates will no longer be valid. And what does it go back to then? Whatever was voted by the municipality at the most recent town meeting. So if that was an November payment for a hundred percent and then they made three equal payments to them in January, what happened? I guess that town just can't do it, right? Because they can't take a chance on it disappearing. This was a question that did come up in Senate GovOps about how this was going to break out for towns if they were going to push payments or already had payments that were due in calendar year 2021. And the response that I heard was that the towns would be able to appropriately organize and manage their calendar of payments within the current year. Mark. I had a sort of a related question. I really, I don't know the answer to this so I'm just throwing it out. But when I read the law it says that municipalities have normally have 20 days after they collect the education property tax revenue to send that money to the school district. So 20 days. So if you're giving these the towns the authority to delay these dates and push them back, is it also going to be pushing back the date that the school district can expect to receive those payments? And if so, aren't you just moving the problem from one entity to another? In other words, the school districts would then have to go out and cover that period of time in which they would have expected to get a payment from their town. And now they're not going to get it because the towns decided to delay payments until June 30th or something. Does that make sense or? No. Anybody, Brad, do you want to jump in? You don't look like you do. Well, I do, I mean, it makes sense to me to understand exactly what you're saying, Mark. And again, it's, as I've said, if it sounds like under this scenario, either one entity is going to have to borrow or the town municipality borrows or the school district borrows in this case, if the money comes in late. So in terms of the tax payers, which pocket are you going to pay a little bit more out of later down the road in terms of interest if there's borrowing incurred? I don't know if there's, I think it's going to vary from town to town to town. The answer. Other questions, Peter? I have had a conversation with Carol Dawes, our clerk treasurer who also is an official in the statewide organization. And they favor this. I just want to be clear from, I guess, Tucker or Abby, our community, many of the parameters that Janet identified that the voters could or would change at town meeting are fixed in our charter. And I hope it's the intent and my understanding that this statute would also suspend or short circuit any articles offended by that statute that are in the charter, but I want reassurance of that. Thank you. Yes, Representative Anthony. One of the things that we looked at when we were putting this together is that there are many charters, particularly for the larger municipalities that not only have provisions that are specific to delinquent tax fees, penalties and payment, but also to fiscal years and due dates. So instead of calling out the Title 32 statutes that are relevant to this, the opening salvo in subsection A states notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary. So this is going to not withstand all of those very specific charter provisions. Other questions anyone has? Any other comment, Mark? Did you have anything you wanted to weigh in on? Right, thank you. As I said, we don't. Oh, Jim has a question, right? Yeah, thank you. This, the more questions that are asked, the more complicated this seems to get. And so it is, you know, I believe you said earlier, Janet, it would be nice to have a suggestion or guidance or, you know, work with the administration. At this point, if anyone has. I think that was on the other bill, but anyway. Okay, I'm extending it. Good. Any suggestions on the most practical way to cut through this would be welcome. I think. Thank you. Thanks. I have a question for Karen. The, we had conversation in the committee. I don't know if this is the appropriate place for the discussion, but we did have conversation in the committee about having with the state treasure. And I think you were present for the meeting about having the state help with interest rates. If the towns were required to do short term borrowing in order to make their ed fund payments. And I don't know whether the league has a position on that. And if you do what it is and whether that's something that you would like to have the committee continue to pursue or sort of what the thinking is about it. I realized it didn't tell you that that's what we were going to talk about today, but since we're talking about municipal taxes and fund taxes. Thank you. Yeah, we have had conversations with the state treasurer and I was in the meeting listening when Beth Pierce was in there. It would be very helpful to have the state help with the interest costs on short term borrowing or what might actually end up being medium term borrowing. I don't know what short term is like given the current circumstances, but we did talk about the fact that it would be far preferable for a town to do the borrowing and get help with that interest versus paying the 8% penalty to the state for whoever. So yeah, we don't have. So what that looks like, it is not entirely clear yet. So I know Abby, I'm just gonna bring Abby into this discussion. I know Abby's been in touch with the treasurer's office. I don't know whether there's, I haven't seen it, but whether there's a draft that Abby has that the league is seeing or sort of where we are in terms of trying to provide that support to towns. Do you have something to add? I've not seen any draft. Okay, you have another one. I have not received it. Becky Wasserman has been working with the treasurer's office and what I've heard most recently is she's still waiting for the language. I can check with her and get that to you when she's received a proposal. It'd be really, really helpful. The banks were pretty clear that they had money, that they wanted to be helpful and this seems like a vehicle for that kind of idea. If we wait till late May or early June, I think that just leaves towns in greater uncertainty. Late May, early June being when I'm hoping we finish with whatever we're gonna do on the education fund. I would rather put it in here if we can come up with something. So I'll give the treasurer a call as well, but I'd like to, if you all would continue to pursue it. If that's something that the league would find useful and I'm guessing Karen, it would be good if people knew that there was gonna be some action on it sooner than later. Well, that would give people a lot of effort. But are you thinking about putting it into this bill? Well, it occurs to me that it might go in there. I didn't, it's a possibility. We don't have possession of the bill, but that we could probably do something. Yeah, I would just be a little bit concerned about whether the other chamber might get upset about, I don't know, upset's not the right word, but worried. Yeah, okay, that's fine. There's no, we don't need to make a decision about it. I'd like to get that language in front of the committee though sooner than later and try to pick some action on it. Peter. I would think if the issue is for the towns to be able to borrow at the most favorable rate, simply a letter from the treasurer backing or using or lending or supporting any town short-term borrowing with the full faith and credit would guarantee the rate, then it's a question of whether we would want to recommend essentially sharing the costs, that is to say the state of treasury as opposed to the local FISC picking up a certain share that we would specify. Thank you. When we heard from the treasurer, she indicated that we did need legislation that she's not in favor of picking up the borrowing, but she is supportive of helping with the interest rate. So I'm just going with that discussion. Anybody else have anything? We've actually covered a fair amount of ground. Are people generally okay with the bill, the way they've seen it presented? Head nodding, I'm not getting head nodding. And I can understand Karen if people are concerned about it slowing down. So I'm, you know, I think the way it's come over to us, the worry that we've had about the education fund is basically dealt with so I appreciate. Anything else? Anyone has a talker? Go ahead. Sorry, I had to move rooms because someone's operating a chainsaw directly outside of my window. I wish they'd come to my house. I've got lots of things I need to change on. It's a little more strange in downtown Burlington, but I think they're trimming some hedges. May I ask for the committee members to stay after committee is over to discuss a non-committee issue that involves all of the committee members? It's an opportunity for me to provide some legal counsel, hopefully after the committee is done with its work today. This is the first I've heard about this and we don't generally meet without being open. So I don't know what you're referring to. You want to send me a note or something? Sure, I'll send it to you. That would be helpful. I don't want to discuss legislative business after we've finished our meeting. So is this an open discussion? No, send me. It is also non-legislative. Non-legislative. Okay, send me a note and then I'm sure I'm gonna think it's great. Okay. Anything else anybody has here? Okay, so committee, obviously on the Ed fund we have a lot of work to do and we're doing it with very little information but that's the handboard out. And so we will meet next week. I'm not sure exactly what times we're gonna have allocated to us. I've asked Catherine if we might be allowed to set our own schedule because Sersh is available to help us. She's gonna get back to me about that. But for the moment I'm bound by whatever the times they give me. So do plan on time next week and be thinking about better ideas. So, okay. Pardon me. I'm waiting for my message here. Any other? Robin, go ahead. Yes, just quickly. Are we expecting, sorry. I wonder are we expecting any other bills to be coming into our committee in the near future at this point or is it really gonna be focusing on the Ed funding? I think we're gonna be focusing on Ed funded. I'm not aware of any that are coming in. The bill that we just went over, if we were in the building probably would come in the committee. The given how cumbersome all that is, I don't think we need to take it in. So unless somebody wants it in the committee I'm not gonna ask for it. Is it in GovOps now or is it gonna go to GovOps? It's in GovOps. They got it from yesterday. Thank you.