 Good morning. Today is February 19th, 2021, and this is the Vermont House Human Services Committee. We are continuing our discussion and taking testimony on H171, which is related to the financing and development of child care. And today, this morning, our testimony is going to be a different flavor for this committee, and I'm quite excited. We are hearing from members of the business community. And to begin, we have Lisa Ventress from the Vermont Business Roundtable. She's the CEO Executive Director. Lisa, welcome. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, committee. Thank you for the time today. I'm especially happy to be in the committee chaired by my elected State Representative from South Burlington. So this is a treat as well. For those who are not familiar with the Roundtable, I'd like to just give you a snippet of who we are and what we do. But I want to begin by thanking the committee again for time today. This is a very important issue. We have been very interested in advancing this cause for a long time. We're grateful for your sponsorship of this bill, and we're eager to look forward to working with you in the development of it. But for those unfamiliar, the Roundtable is a nonprofit CEO member organization. We are nonpartisan, nonpolitical. Our members are from Vermont's top companies, both private and nonprofit employers located all around the state, diverse by geography, industry, race, representing all groups of the Vermont economy. And we're committed to sustaining a sound economy while supporting those aspects of Vermont that contribute to our quality of life. And we make recommendations on complex policy issues that we think can benefit all Vermonters, not just the members themselves. And so this is why for many years we have said that investments in early childcare and education should be our first economic development strategy for the state. We provided you with a letter dated February 11 in which we wanted to share with you our interest in this particular bill. And so we would like to continue that conversation today. But since summer of 2020, members of the Roundtable have been involved with stakeholders, including Let's Grow Kids and others, to build upon our respective efforts and try to find consensus around the multi-year legislative plan that you now have in front of you and to find a sustainable funding mechanism for this purpose. In this process, we've been represented by several members and they are here today with you. Mark Foley, who is CEO at Foley Services and he is our immediate past chair. Dmitry Garder, who is CEO at Global Z, who is a current board member. Paul Millman of Chroma, who is a retired CEO and former board member. He's not here with us today. And Michael Siever, a CEO for Vermont at People's United Bank, who is our former chair. So today they are going to share the business perspectives about why this bill is important and to also provide some perspective that we think will be helpful in improving the bill today. So with that introduction, Madam Chair, I'm going to hand it over to Mark Foley for his comment. Thank you. Thank you, Lisa. And Lisa, I would ask you and your folks to make the smooth transition to each other when you're finished. And is it, do you want us to hold questions until, how, how about we hold questions until you finish and then we will have questions for you? Thank you. Sounds wonderful. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, Madam Chair and thank you again to the members of this committee for your leadership and support on this important subject. I am Mark Foley and our company is based in Rutland Employee, just over 100 Vermonters. The issue of access and quality of care have become central issues for us and our employees and increasingly so over the last five years. We know we have a smaller workforce pool because of the lack of childcare in our community. And like many parts of Vermont, Rutland has socioeconomic challenges that also lay bare the vulnerabilities that parents, employers and their children face. As I transition to the Vermont Roundtable conversation, I want to emphasize our belief that the policy focus must be on our children. I'm going to refer specifically to the Roundtable statement of support. Many of you may have received a copy of that. If not, I'm sure we'll make it available to you. Following a thoughtful discussion at the board level and with the full membership at our annual meeting in January, the 100 CEO members of the Roundtable agreed to a set of principles to guide our involvement going forward, which state investments in an early childhood education system for children zero through five are essential to Vermont's economy and are urgently needed now to grow our workforce and population. ECE investments must not wait for the complex reforms that are needed to modernize Vermont's K through 12 education system, although we certainly recognize that that's critical. Stakeholders commit to engage in a prudent, rational and pragmatic process to identify a new source of revenue that must be evaluated and prioritized according to sound fiscal policy characteristics, including among others, neutrality and competitiveness. Parties agree to consider all alternative forms of revenues and consider broad and time frame, broad and time frames. And finally, ECE investments in the programs they fund require a governance and accountability system that is embedded with specific performance metrics and timelines to ensure that dedicated investments achieve their intended outcomes. Governance that incorporates meaningful private sector involvement, database methodologies of focus on outcomes, and the discipline to regulate the system is essential to the success of any new implementation strategy. I want to thank you again for the opportunity to speak about this important investment in Vermont's future, and I will now hand off to my colleague, Dmitri Garder. Dmitri. Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everybody. Just wanted to start by thanking the committee for inviting us to speak here today on this incredibly important issue. And Representative Whitman, it's good to see you again for the second time this week. I think we're practically neighbors. I live in North Bennington and I think your house is on my daily running route. So thanks again for your support of this bill. So I'm a co-founder and CEO of Global Z International in Bennington. We're a small company, but we've been in business for 32 years this summer. We employ 14 people in the strategically important information technology industry. So our employees are generally speaking high earners, but many of them have young children, including myself. You can probably hear one of them crying right now. So we understand the issues that working parents face with access to child care. Our concern with the bill is the last principle that Mark mentioned with regard to the governance and accountability system being contemplated. So Section 14 of the bill talks about the advisory committee and indicates that Building Bright Futures shall appoint 15 members of the advisory committee. However, there is no seat on the committee allocated to the employer community. Just one seat that's reserved for a community member without indication of what that would entail. So given that businesses and our employees are important beneficiaries of early childhood education outcomes, and particularly if businesses are going to be asked to help pay for zero through five early childhood education, the round table believes, and I believe, as we've articulated clearly in our letter of support that there should be meaningful private sector involvement, and we believe that should include representatives of businesses of all sizes on the advisory committee. So we would request that the provision be modified to include multiple business representatives at the table to participate in the governance and oversight of the activities. We feel that it's important not only to gain input from employers, but to maintain employer support, which we believe is really critical for the program's success. I believe that employer reactions to the financing study would be valuable as well. It's pretty remarkable that we've seen the level of broad business support for this initiative so far, even in an environment where revenue is being contemplated, which is quite remarkable. I've never seen anything like this in my 30-year business career. So I'm excited to see this momentum and really hopeful that we can maintain it, and we feel that our involvement is critical to maintain that support. I also believe personally that any business representatives on the committee should be excluded from the compensation defined in section 14 paragraph F. And with that, I thank you again for the opportunity to speak today and we'll hand it off to Mike Siever. Thanks Dimitri. Good morning and thank you all for having us, Madam Chair. It's good to see you again. I've seen you on Zoom as I've spoken about this issue before. So thank you for inviting us this morning. As Lisa mentioned in her introduction, I am the Vermont president for People's United Bank. We employ about 900 folks within the state of Vermont. So we're at the other end of the spectrum from Dimitri, but we do have employees in his community as well. And I just want to mention that Dimitri is one of the investors in the Putnam Block, which is a wonderful new project for Bennington and very, very important for that community. So I've been involved with the Roundtable for a long time and with that, been very focused on early care and learning. I'm one of those folks that for many, many years felt that we needed to invest here, but there was money available in the system now and it was really a matter of reallocating monies from the K through 12 educational system and bringing it down into this lower age group. In the last year, I've had a very strong conversion to that feeling. I no longer see that as the way forward. I still believe there's an opportunity for us to rethink how we go about educating K through 12, but I now see this as a very distinct effort and primarily because the time that we'll need to be invested in rethinking K through 12 and the urgency with which I believe we need to get at this early childhood issue. And it is that urgency that has led me to believe that new investment from our community is needed to make this happen. And as we've worked as a business community, along with Let's Grow Kids, I think we have come to feel strongly that this should be a shared investment between businesses and who need workers and individual citizens who need jobs. This is something that will benefit all of those constituents and therefore all should bear some responsibility for funding. It's very easy to say the other guys should pay for this, but I committed to building support broadly within the business community for new investment. And one of my caveats was that we would move forward with a shared investment with a very broad number of individuals and businesses having responsibility for that. So I do, sorry I had some notes here and I just had a pop-up on my screen. It's a new world here. So we've seen a lot of women leave the workforce during the pandemic in particular and that's been a huge challenge for my company and for many of my customers that we bank. And one of the primary reasons, the primary reason is the lack of affordable high quality care for their children. So we see this as a business community as both a human services issue, but just as importantly as an economic development issue. We talked to the governor recently about making some very targeted investments to improve Vermont and we feel as a group that investing in early care and learning is the best targeted investment that we can make right now. We think it's the best because it does benefit such a broad number of individuals and companies and we understand that it will require new spending, but the good thing about this targeted investment is that if we do it well we will bring more people into the workforce and by doing so we will generate additional tax revenues and those revenues will be available to pay for other key items like keeping our waters clean and focusing on other types of environmental things. Many other possible ways of investing new money don't have that direct opportunity to increase revenues for the state and contribute to improving our financial position. So it's really that two part that has led us to be so supportive at this time for this kind of investment because we have been talking for years about the demographics within this state. What better way to attract young families than to be able to ensure that there will be high quality affordable early learning and care for their children. So with that I will end my comments. Thank you once again for allowing us to speak and I think there was a little time left for any questions Madam Chair if you still have time. We absolutely do thank you and we have a question from Representative Brumsted followed by Representative McFawn. Thank you Madam Chair and thank you all for being here. It's wonderful to have the business community a part of these discussions and to be supportive so really really appreciate it. I want to go back to a comment at the very beginning. I think it was Mark Foley who said was talking about the importance of outcomes and my committee is used to me asking outcome questions so I smile a little but you talked you specifically I think said the discipline to regulate the system impact I believe or the importance and I wasn't sure I wanted to be really clear on that. I'm also a member of the Joint Committee on Government Accountability and I always try and think what is the data that if we collect it will have a better sense of whether or not the legislation we are passing is having the impact it was intended to have and so if you all have some suggestions and you don't have to give them to us today but in the next week or so of the cut unfortunately the next 48 hours right we're going to be trying to get this to our other committees that need work to work on it as well but the data that would really make a difference in our ability to do what I think you're trying to get at in that sentence and your thoughts on that would be appreciated. Well I'll take a quick stab at represent Branstad thank you and I'm not going to claim to answer this fully but I'm going to try my best to and I think part of the importance of the governance component of this is to fully identify what those are. I think that Let's Grow Kids is in their proposals have talked very specifically about some of the outcomes specifically around slots filled or new educators trained etc those types of things. There are certainly deeper and more differentiating data that might lead back to return on investment and there are several commission studies that are available. Our group was made aware of and was educated on that's talked specifically about return on investment and data points and so I will make sure that I know you're in a short timeline but I will make sure that you have that data we'll follow back up with you as well. If anybody else wants to add to that I may not have answered. That would be great I just bring it up because that word discipline is a little different than we normally hear so I just want to be sure that I'm really paying attention to the issues that you would like us to pay attention to so thank you. Next thank you and Representative McFawn followed by Representative Whitman. Thank you Madam Chair and thank you all of the individuals that are here from business it's much appreciated. I have one question and I don't know which one of the speakers mentioned this but they talked about multiple seats on the governance and administrative advisory committee. I would just like to flush that out a little bit and tell us a little bit more what you mean by multiple seats whoever that was that mentioned that. Yes that was me thank you for the question Representative so yeah I think the intent behind our recommendation was to capture a representative view of the business community's insights into early childhood education given that we do have a fairly diverse business community here in Vermont and you know rather than focus on a single business representative we felt that having representatives from a few different demographics might be helpful for instance the round table represents for the most part larger employers and we feel that the voice of larger employers is critically important however there are also smaller employers that have their own perspectives and so the intent is really just to have some diversity. Representative McFawn that is a great question and what I will ask Lisa your group and we're going to hear afterwards after this set of questions from Jordan Giacona from Vermont Business for Social Responsibility and when you testify can you think about that but what we would really appreciate is if you would by Tuesday flesh out your suggestions as to what those what representative you a couple of or multiple looks like I am following up I'm not letting top representative McFawn finish this question so he probably has more but his questions spurred me on to make that specific request. Madam Chair you did a wonderful job of summarizing what I was my next question was going to be how many and from what area thank you very much thank you representative McFawn we have a question from representative Whitman followed by one from representative Wood. Thank you Madam Chair and Dimitri thank you for that recommendation and it's just clicking for me that I've probably seen you running by my house and waving a couple times so nice to make that connection my question was actually for Mark and it's a little bit similar to Jessica's in that I heard some different words used about the qualities that you're looking for out of this proposal and it was let me see you mentioned competitiveness and neutrality and I wasn't sure if that was looking at the way that we look at sourcing the revenue or the way that we look at distributing the resources I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that. Sure thank you representative Whitman and I think it may be both there's been a series of studies this the comment that I made footnotes to a very specific study I think it was done by the state Department of Tax or some commission they are related to and it sets apart some guidelines about you know how do you characterize attacks what makes them equitable what makes them a competitive etc and how do they serve and and some of that actually has been distilled again by let's grow kids and some of their various studies so that they might be able to give you specific clarity about the the the the actual constituency that they're talking about but then more broadly we reference some studies that have been done on a statewide basis. Maybe I could reframe the question how could you see this going not being competitive or not being neutral as far as a way that we could implement this. Well you know Michael can add to this as well because he commented on I think one of the things that we talked about was how does it you know who does it benefit and how do how do we do that and so as we talked about a payroll tax and and and we talked about this split 50-50 as a model there are those benefits for the employer in that they have access to a broader workforce then there's obviously a benefit to the employee and so they're they're both sharing in the cost but they're also both sharing in the benefit and so as I think of equality or I think of representation and and again one of the tasks that our group had specifically working with let's grow kids was really to identify all sorts of different revenue sources that that could be used and getting to this particular one sort of provided that met those tests if that makes sense is that a better answer or more of your point. Thank you that's helpful sure it's helpful and then thank you everybody for speaking today. Representative Wood I'm not sure whether you still have a question. Madam chair the witness just answered my question so I'm all set thank you. We're having a lot of great minds thinking alike. Representative Redmond. Thank you Madam chair. A question here I'm really focused and concerned about the the issue that one or more of you mentioned about women leaving the workforce. We've read you know national stories about this trend and I you know I trust that this kind of investment will will get at that but I think there are constellation of issues here related to you know lack of flexibility at work the inability to work at home from time to time pay equity you know moms taking kind of the disproportionate share of caring for their kiddos at home during the pandemic. I just want to know that you that that we're looking at this holistically and not just as like this is our kind of magic bullet so to speak and I'm curious if you see it similarly and and what's you know what what's happening at the business community level to really address this from a more holistic standpoint. I'll take that guys if you're okay. So I that's a great question. Michael I'm going to interject you have about a minute or two to answer that question because what Representative Redman has done is framed this that child care is wondering whether whether the way she and many of us see the fewer number or the disproportionate impact on women that child care alone is not going to solve it and I'm going to let you respond but that is not the focus of today the focus of today is on the child care bills. Well thank you Madam Chair because I was going to I was going to add that as part of my comments. As a business owner not owner but leader and a representative of the round table I know that I and many of us are focused on many issues. We did not invest a lot of time in those other issues as we came prepared to speak with you today about this particular issue but I will tell you that in my own company this pandemic has certainly accelerated our understanding of how we can adapt our working conditions to support working parents. It is predominantly the moms but it's not always the moms it's but we have both moms and dads where we have found that providing them the flexibility to work from home has been a huge support to them. We've surveyed our employees about what you know whether or not they want to continue to work from home would they like to work part-time from home so we're open and I think many businesses will be open to much more flexibility where they can. My tellers that serve folks you know it's a retail environment I can't serve my customers in a remote way and have a branch open right but there are many positions and many of us are thinking that way so and you know remote work is something that will enable us to attract good talent. I have one of my colleagues whose husband flies for one of the airlines it was hard for them to commute out of Burlington so they wanted to move to Florida well she is a wonderful employee we didn't want to lose or said sure we'll set you up you know with a system in Florida and she now continues to work for us out of her office in Florida so we were flexible we kept a great employee and I think this has just accelerated the pandemic has accelerated many businesses thinking around flexibility in particular and we also are very focused as a company on analyzing wages and making certain that equity is there and I will tell you that the $15 minimum wage we have you know our entry-level tellers now 15 is the bottom and oftentimes we're bringing tellers in now at $16 because we can't attract folks so there's a few things. Thank you and I'm sure each one of I'm going to I apologize cut off the discussion of this and I'm sure that the other folks would like to talk about what their company is doing. Shall I say this is a good sort of foreshadowing of other issues that are important to many members of the legislature as it relates to supporting and maintaining particularly women but families in the workforce but we're going to go back to focusing on this bill H171 for which we will be voting it out by next Friday so we'll have as much information relative to this bill that we can get between now and then. Lisa you happen to have commented that maybe you sent me something if you did. Could you send it again and could you also copy the 12th member of our committee Julie Tucker who is the committee assistant so that she will make sure that we all get a copy of that and if that if that includes the principles I believe Mark that you outlined and if it doesn't if you have those that would be helpful as well so thank you. We'll do that madam chair and I'll also provide you with a study that the round table did on tax and fiscal policy 20 years ago but it includes references to characteristics of fiscal policy that could be helpful in getting at the question from representative Whitman. Thank you. Thank you Lisa and thank you for bringing all of these and I know that the round table has been involved before everyone else I mean not everyone else but early on in the exploration and the need for childcare and another organization that has been a champion of focusing on workplace and workers is the Vermont business round table and Vermont business for social responsibility excuse me you're the Vermont business round and so Jordan if you would talk to us. Of course and thank you madam chair and members of the committee I'm happy to be here you're going to make me blush I think you'll find before I kick off here you'll find that there's a lot of sort of the great minds thinking alike theme here in terms of our feedback but I'm happy to give an overview of VBSR a couple key data points we've collected from our membership and then a few recommendations there as well so thank first off I want to thank you all for your tireless work over the course of the last year of this session and beyond to really support Vermont business community our business community our families and others impacted by this ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the many disparities that it has exposed the work of this committee and the legislative large has really helped to keep us healthy and whole throughout this crisis but as you're all are acutely aware there's a lot more that we can do to help our little state endure this crisis and build back better for the future so to that end VBSR really appreciates the opportunity to comment and express our support for H171 and speak to the value of an affordable accessible and accountable early child care system so a little bit about us VBSR is a statewide nonprofit business association with an enduring mission to create a just thriving and transformative economy that works for all people and the planet we strive to act as an advocate an educator a convener for our members host a wide variety of webinar series and educational events we give voice to businesses on key policy issues impacting our communities and more recently we've also channeled financial assistance to struggling member businesses via our small business resiliency fund so as you all know the COVID-19 pandemic is really brought to light the critical role that child care plays in our communities in our economy and making clear that it's an essential form of infrastructure for a strong economy and a prosperous equitable Vermont unfortunately it's also laid bare a stark a stark reality that's really existed for a long time and impacted our state for decades being at over half of Vermont's youngest children don't have access to care so what does that mean for the business community I think striking on a lot of common themes here you know in the workplace parents are struggling to balance child care and work resulting in absenteeism tardiness and distractions at work more broadly child care access and affordability challenges force many parents to leave the workforce altogether and costing their salary potential wage growth retirement savings not to mention taking away from household buying power and over time a parent who leaves the workforce loses up to four times their annual salary per year and too often that burden falls on working mothers employers ultimately need talented focused and reliable employees the lack of access to affordable and high quality child care is a major hindrance to maintaining our workforce and was identified as one of the top four obstacles to success for vbsr's businesses per our 2019 policy surveys and for clarity we do it every other year it's a policy survey membership survey and then another policy one so this year we'll be issuing another and we've been more than happy to work with this committee and others to provide some targeted questions there as it deals with child care in a more recent post covid survey that we issued between vbsr and our partners of rittman street alliance of vermont 42.7 percent of business owners indicated that a lack of affordable and accessible child care was a challenge for their abilities or for their employees ability to return to work and then in a more recent membership survey that we issued broadly asking businesses which issues they felt were most pressing for us to focus on child care ranked third very closely behind climate racial justice and then there was child care which again speaking to the intersectionality of this they all sort of coalesce around one another and work in tandem so this is not only creating additional burdens for our businesses during our already challenging time but again it exacerbates historical gender inequities and racial inequities within our state as women and communities of color disproportionately impacted when it comes to caregiving and a couple of key pieces of statistics there that have already been gathered and according to change of stories vermont 2019 status report on women work and wages in vermont women are four times more likely than men to cite family and or personal obligations as reasons for working part time and seven times more likely to cite child care problems additionally four out of 10 women in the united states leave the labor force at some point to care for family members there's also been some major disparities in child care access and affordability for black hispanic and indigenous families nationally we don't have a ton of data on that vermont specific front and then but looking broadly more than half of his spare hispanic and american indian alaskan native families live in child care deserts where affordable accessible child care isn't available also affordability all poses a very significant challenge particularly for black families the average median income black family with two young children would need to spend 56 of their income on child care which is a significantly larger portion of total family income than that of any other group i believe in vermont the average is 30 i could be wrong moment i'll have to circle back so as our businesses as our families grapple with these challenges i think providers are simultaneously dealing with a childhood educator workforce crisis in vermont and that parallels a lot of the challenges that we face as businesses ourselves as low wages i mean the average child care provider earns less than $15 an hour very few benefits and increased health risks due to the pandemic are taking their toll and programs are struggling to retain qualified staff which is a major indicator when it comes to quality of care so again vermont vbsr supports h171 and feels that it would take us in a very marked step toward building an equitable and sustainable child care system one that's universally accessible affordable to all and values the tireless work and expertise of our early childhood educators i've said time and time again vbsr supports sort of we call it a livable jobs platform which looks at not only just your wages but also the benefits that one receives we see this as an economic and a moral imperative ones that promises to grow our economy our workforce and as others have mentioned attract new families looking to make a home in our little state so in terms of specific pieces to h171 we're really really happy to see the proposed expansion of eligibility for child care financial assistance program that would accommodate a much larger portion of vermont's low and moderate income workforce many of whom only qualify for either partial subsidy or or maybe barely miss that cut off for the subsidy despite some very significant financial hardship in terms of paying that tuition and then meanwhile we also really appreciate the proposed bills scholarships and student loan repayment assistance programs these are benefits that we have pushed for very extensively in the in the broader workforce and are happy to see this be targeted in particular toward the existing and prospective child care providers we feel that this could create more unpredictable employment conditions and be a really critical tool for recruiting and retaining high quality care caregivers and building out that workforce now in terms of changes to h171 again coming back on the the great minds thinking alike here we would also like to request that the committee amend section 14 of the bill to add i would probably say at least two additional seats to early to the early care and education governance and administrative administration advisory committee i had really struggled to sort of think about what exactly those chairs would look like so what i did was look at our profile in terms of our membership to see how many the size of employees in particular so just to give you a snapshot the majority of our members or what i would call small to medium-sized employers about 35 percent employ 10 full-time employees or less 65 percent employ 50 full-time employees or less and only about 60 about six percent or roughly 40 companies employ 300 or more full-time employees and as such their needs and the capacities vary when it comes to child care so i think from from our end i would likely you know the what i had set would maybe to have one one person from say a small business with 10 full-time employees or less if you could get a medium-sized business that falls right in with that with that 65 category that we have with 50 full-time employees or less and then another from a larger company you could also explore across sectors as well first ones that come to mind for me are typically your manufacturers your retail and your hospitality and tourism sectors in particular but certainly not limited to those we really feel that these representatives could speak not only to the unique challenges that they and their employees face in accessing affordable child care but also put forward some creative ideas that maximize the community and economic benefits of child care reform and that includes the and also includes i think it would be great to sort of have additional input from the business community in terms of the pay for for this and the financing mechanisms you know we we agree in terms of sort of the shared the shared investment on behalf of the the state employers employees we feel that employers have a big role to play in crafting these solutions and advancing them and they could also help to show that they're not overly prohibitive for our small businesses our startups and and low to moderate income for monitors as well so with that i'm happy to feel questions from folks i want to thank you all for your time and consideration of these comments we again really strongly support this bill appreciate your support and and again happy to feel questions and gather data to help advance this very important bill Jordan thank you and thank you for some of your specifics in terms of what what you would suggest we take a look at in terms of business what those business seats would look like or who would be in those seats let me ask if anyone on the committee has any questions for Jordan and for my business for social responsibility representative void thank you madam chair Jordan one of our earlier speakers spoke to the the nature of speaking to their members to ascertain their willingness to participate in the cost of increasing access and quality in our child care services and programs and i know that you referenced surveys that you took of your members that ranked it high on their need list and their concern list have you specifically asked them about their willingness to participate in the cost of providing these services at that time no but i think we were hoping to have more specific proposals that we could present to folks i guess to sort of speak to what your return on investment is going to look like so i feel that now that we have a very concrete plan put together and a major shout out to let's grow kids there for their leadership there i think that we have a very compelling very compelling program to lay out for folks and some pretty compelling benefits so we can help to gauge that for the community so it's something i'm happy to do going forward but not something that we have collected extensive data on in the past okay thank you no problem representative mcfod thank you madam chair jordan you uh you when you were talking about representation on the board what what we have in front of us is two representatives you talked about three can you just delineate i think you said ten or less and then something in the middle and then over something yeah i think so again this kind of comes back i i'm not wed to the idea of three seats i think two would probably be i would say ideally a floor just recognizing the differences and challenges between your small employers and maybe your medium to large size employers the way that i had delineated in collecting data from our membership and sort of piecing that together um we had 10 full-time employees or less that would be the 35 percent um and then for sort of the medium size we had 65 percent they encompass folks who maintain 50 full-time employees or less and then a much smaller portion of that has about 66 percent is 300 or more and then there's there's varying others sort of in between those various statistics but i figured that would give you the best snapshot i wouldn't say that should be necessarily your north star for recruitment i think there's also geographic challenges um and making sure that we look beyond solely chitenden county and look at some of the challenges facing our rural communities as well so it's a tough nut to crack it's not always easy to kind of find again sort of that silver bullet to getting the best representation but i do feel that employee count geographic location and sector are all very good pieces of guidance and things that you can sort of communicate out to the broader business community as you look to recruit members and again very to work with you on that thanks a lot of course representative rosenquist and then representative brumsted thank you first of all i'd like to say i i think back to my days on business roundtable very fondly we tackled a number of big issues back back in my time there probably 20 years ago anyway it's good to see it's still active and they're trying to address many of these issues my question was more following up on representative wood's kind of question to our last speaker but addressing it to the members from the business roundtable about you know how could employers participate in cost sharing have you considered some of these and you have some suggestions on what maybe we can look at in the future thank you Carl i'm a little are it or is the question for Jordan as well as the earlier witnesses yes it can be i mean i think he pretty well answered it so he didn't come up with a specific but i hate the question was really put to him i was just expanding the question to the rest of the group thank you okay um jordan if you want to or and then dimitri i'm looking to see who from um is still on from from your group i i just say representative to that point and i'm happy to follow up with you on this to get the sort of the specific model that was used in particular as a funding mechanism for the paid family leave program that one in particular looked at a payroll tax but we were also supportive of the idea of more sort of a shared benefit or a shared investment between employers and employees but that is one example of one where the the majority of our membership was supportive of of that kind of model i think recognizing that you are going to get a really strong return on your investment for what the initial program was offering so that's a snapshot i guess of of something that employers are willing to put into provided they feel that they're going to get a really strong return but happy to provide some some follow-up and info there from our our previous worker on paid family dimitri i don't know if you can add anything yeah that's a really great question thank you madam speaker and representative um and i think i think jordan encapsulated it well i would say from the roundtables perspective um our willingness to invest is i think tied more to sort of principles of investment rather than any specific source of revenue so you know the source of revenue would really follow the the guidelines and our guidelines are really about sharing the cost equally um and across employers and um employees and um having it uh having it be uh directly tied to the benefits uh that the economic benefits of early childhood education and given those principles a payroll tax seemed to be philosophically aligned with those particularly if there there are no carve-outs that all employers are in and all employees are in um so the you know the guiding principles there are more important to us than any prescriptive source of revenue however we also feel strongly that the governance and accountability system uh it is really critically important to ensure to the earlier question about outcomes and competitiveness that the spending is aligned with achieving the outcomes that um that the system promises and that's where we feel that um the governance system is just as important as the source of revenue so i hope that's clear and just invite mark to add any color that i may have missed uh to meet you know i'm not going to you i think you both both you and jordan uh really did in my mind provide a good answer to that question from the perspectives that i'm aware of representative um brumsted um you i'm not sure do you have a question yeah i i do i was trying to decide if i really wanted to ask it but um when you talk about the surveys in the in talking with your colleagues who are other business owners and so forth um one of the things we heard yesterday and we've all heard throughout the community and from our constituents i'm sure um is the real one of the hardest times for access um and the funds is that early time the babies between zero and two and i i wonder if as a business as a business you have considered at all um extending the time that people uh parents whether or not it's the mom or the dad is able or the moms or the dads are able to take paid time off at the beginning when a child often is sick quite a bit when they first come back so there's a lot of disruption to um being able to work as well and just that is the most expensive time for parents and also the um really difficult to find that early um access and we all are working on it and that's part of the bill but i'm i'm just curious um i'm just curious about how business how businesses think about it to be honest um um representative brumsted can you show me where in the bill there is something about um well when we think overall about the bills okay okay i just think wouldn't it be um i will as um when representative redmond brought this same issue on if it gives the business community um the opportunity to comment and by the nature of the continued questions and comments that members of this committee have to um to to realize the importance of looking holistically at how to support families um and uh we have a little bit of time so please um if you want to uh mark did a very it was mark you responded let no you responded last time no who responded last time anyway if any of the three of you who are still on want to comment briefly as to what representative brumsted was saying um i'll take it just a quick stab and i'm i'm not going to answer fully that's not necessarily my area of expertise but i will tell you that one of the considerations uh that's been described as the sort of diversity of employers and as we think about specific things like what you described that that circumstance you described it really becomes an issue of the resources of each employer and so based upon the size of the employer uh the the the nature of their business etc that becomes a really uh a point where there's a lot of a lot of different ways in which a business might be able to react to that situation and so as we think about specifically early childhood education it sort of does a really tremendous job of sort of leveling the playing field and sort of putting all businesses and employers on an equal footing as well as all employees rather than circumstantially um so that's how i would answer that more of an equity issue i appreciate exactly very much so um yeah go ahead sorry um i think just to build off that point yeah i think we have to look at this in a much more holistic sense recognize sort of intersectionality of these issues that pointed to some of the disparities that we've seen with respect to gender and racial equity and i think this also applies in economic spectrum as well i mean i can i can say um as a first generation college student from a very low income family um in rural Connecticut child care was a major major challenge i was fortunate and that my mother was a waitress and worked nights and my dad was a was a landscaper and worked during the day um but i can remember as a very young a young boy having days where my mom had to work the lunch shift and i actually would attend work with her and go to the restaurant because we could not afford to pay for consistent child care um throughout the throughout the duration of the week so i think it's you do have to look at this really holistically also in terms of recognizing that there's no one silver bullet for these challenges that comes back to sort of our livable jobs platform it used to be livable wage we sort of had that laser focus on on a $15 minimum wage but then it became abundantly clear to us that it's about inputs and outputs you're not just going to fix the the sort of the full spectrum of inequities with one problem so we look at livable jobs to make sure that employees are being compensated well but they're also offering really robust benefits and it has been proven time and time again that that yields really really positive outcomes for individual businesses and for our shared economy as well i've always said if you invest strongly into your employees they will invest strongly into their businesses and we all benefit and that's really a central foundation of true equity work overall thank you thank you uh jordan um we have questions from representative rosin quest and representative wood thank you i was just wondering if the business leaders that are here could address the issue that in the bill we talk about a base rate being set for lead child care worker in a facility and that's somewhat anathema to most businesses in terms of somebody else setting the rate of pay and i was just curious how you react to that portion in the bill i opened it up to mark marker demetri are for jordan please if anyone who is um able to answer or respond to represent rosin quest question and that's a great it is a great question thank you and and i think it also speaks to some of the comments that we've talked about earlier which is um the industry itself is predominantly made up of women and so when we think about pay equity and we think about opportunity and we think about career and we think about those issues um fundamentally having a profession that pays i'll use the word of jordan that a livable job um is critical to the success of of this overall i think again a lot of the specifics that we're talking about i think will be really well served by that strong governance as well as that um particularly the representation of this as it's crafted in its next phase so that again i think the advocacy for that helps to address a lot of these concerns as they are concerns of the business community and i think of employers and employees thank you uh thank you for the question representative rosin quest representative uh would followed by representative uh small um thank you madam chair um almost everyone this morning has referenced let's grow kids um in their remarks and my comment is really or a question is really um to to what extent are you familiar with building bright futures given that building bright futures has a uh quasi public private role in actually assessing and some of the outcomes that you were talking of earlier both groups of folks talked about earlier and so i'm just um curious in terms of what kind of participation your groups have had with building bright futures for representative what i would just say so i'm a i'm a relative newcomer i've been here for about a year but do you have some experience working with the group and i'll actually be um attending an event of theirs next week um as well where i think we're actually postponing our typical coalition meeting um on on early child on early child care actually to attend such events so i'm still familiarizing myself and building contacts with the group but my understanding is bbsr does have um experience working with that group and partnering with that group um but i will i will play the the newbie card on that one okay thank you i don't know um to meet tree or mark if you have anything to add i didn't know if the it's a business round table has has worked with um building bright futures uh lisa would be the best person to answer that question given her role in past efforts around early childhood education i know that the round table was instrumental in uh advocating for the existing uh pre-k system uh i i i know that as far as h.171 our primary interface has been with let's grow kids and they've been our conduit to other organizations we haven't had a lot of direct interaction with building bright futures although i i think that the the issues have been well represented uh by let's grow kids and we found that the the conversation has been very well balanced thank you thank you um representative where are you where are you there you are representative small thank you madam chair and thank you all for your testimony today i will say that what i have enjoyed most is hearing about this shared investment and equal investment in child care here in the state of vermont and my one question is is this a trajectory that our business community has been on will continue to be on or is this dependent on the positions um on the early care and education government uh admitting i would love to address that at a fairly high level and touch on some of the other points that were made um representative thanks for the for the question i think what we see is um that business uh broadly recognizes that some of the structural challenges that we've been facing all along have been really brought front and center through the pandemic and a lot of these are issues that i'll speak for the round table in particular i know vbsr has historically been very um actively involved in a lot of these uh issues and and propose solutions as well but there's an increased recognition by business that these issues are not only important for individuals but they really have a significant impact on on the economy and and the business environment as well so i think that this is a moment that can be leveraged to to involve greater collaboration between uh businesses legislators and the vermont community i'm personally uh really excited to see uh active involvement by all of the stakeholders in proactive solutions and i think that's important from the standpoint of positioning business as a partner in finding solutions that are good for everybody so i really feel that vermont can be a leader on this issue and can show that businesses more broadly can be part of solutions that are really good for everybody so thank you for the question and you're more generous than i am because taylor each uh soon you can continue to ask your question soon i'm just going to ask a broad question to the committee um we we have lots of questions to the business community that go past this bill in terms of your um willingness and ability to partner with the state to um make vermont one that works for all families and not just a few um and clearly i've not been able to keep the conversation focused on the child care bill so which is just know that there is interest in that um mark or jordan do you want to um add anything yeah sorry go ahead mark oh goodness uh the joys of working in the zoomiverse um represented small i appreciate the question you know i think it it comes back to bbsr does have a rich history of businesses i think recognizing that it's it's it's a shared responsibility to move these solutions forward both in terms of lending their perspectives and expertise but also i think um redistributing wealth and and power be it um when it comes to issues ranging from tackling the climate crisis to providing robust benefits for our communities to um you know tackling the racial justice crisis as well um i think it comes back to sort of this triple bottom line that we that we've often that's sort of been our our ongoing guiding star there being people planet and prosperity um and i think that's recognizing that you can be good to your employees be good to your communities good to your environment and we can still have a very thriving economy and that all of those things aren't mutually exclusive of one another but actually go hand in hand um so greatly appreciate the question and and also for the committee if you have additional questions in that realm always uh you know don't hesitate to reach out and i will say and thank you uh madam chair that particularly um my experiences with the business roundtable to to your broader question is that is an organization that is was really designed and built to do just what you suggested which is to provide non-political uh research-based data-driven uh uh sort of deep dives into these issues that we all care about and they all center around making vermont the best place to work live and play and so um and i will say the same that vbsr has very similar um uh mission as well ultimately you will find the business community i believe to be very anxious to help support your efforts understanding that we all do live in the same world and we all do need to cooperate and to uh bring value to each other in order for us to to sort of grow um and to and to describe the type of environment that you described earlier so we really do appreciate the opportunity to uh to be here today well um i really thank um thank all of you and uh for for taking the morning um and engaging with us in this conversation um committee there um someone from the vermont chamber was in fact invited and had a last-minute um conflict and so we have um asked that they submit their comments uh in writing um so uh with that i really want to um thank thank you all for uh participating with us uh this morning and uh this ends our uh morning testimony from the members of the business community