Good morning. You are with the Vermont House Government Operations Committee. We are gathering here this morning to do some work on the pay act for 2020. And so we will be hearing from a number of witnesses from various parts of state government. And in particular, we will be spending quite a bit of time with our own joint fiscal and legislative council staff to understand the bill that is before us and its fiscal implications. So I think we would like to start with the commissioner of finance and management. So Adam Greshan is with us and we would like to invite him to help us understand the administration's perspective on this collective bargaining agreement and anything else he would like to share with us. Good morning, Adam. Nice to have you on committee. Good morning, Madam Chair. I hope everyone can hear me well and maybe nice to be with you. So my comments will be that typically the administration when it submits its budget in January does not include the pay act as part of the budget because as the committee knows, the pay act is a separate bill which comes out of your committee and finds its way through appropriations. However, we do account for it in our expenditure projections and thus we always anticipate an amount for the pay act to be either added to the appropriations bill as it has been in some years or appropriated separately. So in the governor's recommended budget in January and also in the revised core one bill that we submitted last week, we did not include pay act as part of our submission. However, we anticipated that pay act would pass or a pay act bill would come. Subsequently, as I think the committee is aware, the house appropriations committee added pay act language to the Q one and to ensure that pay act was accounted for in appropriations and the governor does not object to that. We did not put it in our bill, but the governor is fine acknowledging that the administration as well as the legislature intends to fully commit to the collective bargaining agreement and the money that that would require within the appropriations bill. So I will stop there and see if people have questions or comments. Jim Harrison. Good morning, commissioner. Thank you for joining us. I have a couple of questions. I noticed in the appropriations three month bill that they include an appropriation for the pay act, but only year one. And I think the draft that we're looking at is an appropriation for year one and two. So fiscal 21, fiscal 22. Any idea why it would be done that way? As I said earlier, we did not put a pay act in our Q one submission to house appropriation. So I think the better people to ask on that would be the legislature or the joint fiscal office. However, I would note that the Q one bill is meant just to get us into the new fiscal year and a full budget will be debated and agreed upon and signed later on in the summer. So the fact that one year is in there as opposed to two probably is a bow towards the fact that this is just a one quarter bill and the full amount will be put in later in the summer. Can I just, yeah, I just want to respond that I think that's more or less right. This is really just a placeholder. They didn't want to get ahead of your work. And so they just put in the appropriation as we had understood it in a middle change to whatever your bill is. It was just to basically hold the place for a pay act because there is a possibility we don't know that after the house acts that the Senate may incorporate the pay act in the budget. And we just wanted to have a place to link it in. And they didn't want to go too far down any policy line. They just wanted to put the money in for the first year and leave it at that. So that was sort of the thinking behind only including one year. It was not a statement other than just to hold the place. Okay, commissioner in the draft bill that we're looking at, if you just there, I think it's on page 19. It talks about transfers. The secretary of administration may transfer from various appropriations and various funds in their et cetera, liquor control. What does all that mean? Is that different appropriations or is that where this, well, no, I'm sorry, above that. There's the 15.8 million from special fund federal and other sources. We have any breakdown and what does that mean special fund? Is that state dollars? It does. Special funds can be state dollars. They don't have to be, but that would be anything from the fish and wildlife special fund to clean water special fund to the literally hundreds of special funds, some of which fund our employees and payroll based for those employees who are working in the various specially funded areas. Okay, so we don't know exactly how much of the 15.8 million is state tax dollars versus federal funds. We have, I mean, those numbers, department of human resources has very specific numbers as to what is general fund? What is special fund? What is key fund and the like? And we can certainly provide that breakdown for you. Okay, so I look back at the pay act from two years ago. That was my first experience on government gov ops dealing with that bill. And as I looked at fiscal 19, the general fund and the transportation fund appropriations was 8.5 million. The second year it was 10.9 million. And that's before the other fund. This year, those two are 15.8 million. Any idea why such a big increase? The collective bargaining agreements call for certain amounts of additional money each year, cost of living increases, typically in step increases. And so the funding amounts in the pay act are meant to act on the collective bargaining agreement we have. There's also from time to time changes in number of employees and payroll amounts will reflect that. Okay. You probably better than most people in the state government understand the budget challenges we're facing. I think the latest estimate from Steve's office was 377 million decline in revenue across state government for the coming fiscal year and another 220 million the year after. Given that it looks like next year alone, the cost of the pay act, and again, I don't know what portion is federal, but is in excess of $30 million. If we cannot fund it, yes, we can put it on paper, but if that ends up being a deficit, then we have to cut elsewhere. What does that translate into state employees if we're not able to come up with revenue to cover that? Could I ask, what are you referring to in terms of what does that mean for in state employees? Well, so let's just use a specific 30 million dollars. Okay. So if we are not able to give you $30 million more in revenue to pay for this, and obviously we're not gonna have revenue growth if it doesn't appear, what does that mean in terms of state positions if the only option you have is cutting positions? If the question is, what does $30 million translate into positions? Just a typical rule of thumb that I would use would be roughly 90 to $100,000 per position cost. That's all in payroll and benefits and the like. So that would be somewhere around 300 positions. Okay. Thank you. And do you have any idea how we account for the revenue and just $30 million? It's part of our overall revenue picture, which includes a general fund revenue from various broad-based taxes and the like. So we include that with our total revenue picture for the general fund, which is somewhere in the order of $1.7 billion. Okay. Thank you. Rob LeClaire. Rob, you'll want to unmute yourself. Sorry. New with the iPad. Commissioner, the governor's put out there, we're looking for like about a 2% reduction, I guess by a quarter in budgets going forward. Can you tell me does that number taken in consideration pay increases from the budget act? I mean, the contract or would that be over and above? That number includes everything. So that includes everything that goes into making a budget. The governor did not specify that he wants the reductions in spending to include payroll or not. He told departments and agencies as part of his submission that they should find ways to deal with a 2% reduction represented as 23%, not 25% of their full fiscal 20 spending. So it was not specified whether that would be operating expenses, payroll, programs, grants and the like. Right, but does that 2% reduction where that include the pay act amount or is that so far not including the pay act amount? The pay act was not included as part of our submission. Okay. Very good. Thank you. You're welcome. John Gannon. Hey John. Thank you. Hey Adam, how are you? So I have heard at least one group who felt that there was a 2% reduction in cost plus pay act. So that's not the guidance from the administration. The administration was a 2% reduction in general fund FY20 first quarter or full year spending. So we looked at what a department spent over the entirety of a year and we took 23% of that and we asked them to live in that within those means for the first quarter of FY21. That's how we did it. Okay. So part of the recommendation we heard from Beth Bustigie is that there would be a pay raise for exempt employees in FY22. Did the administration consider not having to pay raises for either fiscal year? As you're probably aware of the administration, you're probably aware of the administration has asked exempt employees to forego their wage increases in FY21. It has not extended that to the classified employees. Right. No, I understand that. I was getting at FY22. Why there is a pay increase for exempts in that fiscal year? We have not dealt with FY22. You're aware that we're in an environment with revenues very volatile and we're really trying to look closer near term. We realized we need to have a FY21 budget, certainly a first quarter budget before we leave and by the summer a full budget. And so we're looking shorter term until the revenue picture becomes more clear. So the current draft of the pay act includes pay raises for exempt employees in FY22. So you're saying those shouldn't be there? I'm not saying that. I'm saying we have not dealt that far in advance yet. Well, but they're in the pay act. Right. So in the pay act, traditionally they would be in the pay act, wouldn't they? So we haven't changed the pay act except for the first year of exempt employees. We've asked them to forego raises. Right. In a normal pay act year where we're not facing the financial crisis we are, yeah, there would be pay raises actually for both fiscal years. Right. But this isn't a normal time. Right. And we have looked at the first year and we reserve the right to make decisions about the upcoming fiscal 22 either in the summer of this year or when we do the fiscal 22 budget in the fall of this year. Okay. Now you're fully supportive of the collective bargaining agreements that were signed by the executive branch with VSEA. We support the agreements that were signed. Okay. Thank you. Marcia Gardner. Thank you. Commissioner, do you know what the average pay for all exempt employees is? That would be a better question for my colleague, the commissioner of human resources, Beth Testigy. I don't know of him. Thank you. Beth or either of your numbers guys. I am actually missed the question. I'm sorry. Could you repeat that? Yes. Thank you. Do you know what the average pay for all exempt employees is? All. All of the commissioners and I do not have that at my fingertips. I don't know that Harold Schwartz will have that as a fingertips either. We can certainly get that. I have the average of pay, I think for all employees combined and then probably just for the classified, I can get that from the workforce report, but I'm not sure if average pay for exempt employees is in there. So we'll have to get that. Harold, I have those numbers. Thank you. Yeah. Harold, you did yourself. Do you have, do you have a calculation? I don't have the calculation right now, but I'm checking the workforce report to see if we've got it in there for last fiscal year. Last fiscal year, the average was, let me take a look. Well, give me a couple of minutes. Now, the average was 85,236. For exempt employees. For exempt employees. Okay, thank you. That's executive branch. Can I follow with another question? Absolutely. You know what the average is for classified employees? For the same period, which was last year, it was 62,440. Thank you. Executive branch. Thank you for your quick work on that, Harold. Jim Harrison has a question. Thank you. I'm not sure if this is for Adam or for Beth, but given the huge uncertainty in revenue for the coming fiscal year and the year after, has any consideration been done with by the administration to consider asking the union to delay implementation and vote until August, when we have a hopefully a better picture of whether we're getting federal help or the revenue forecasts are firmed up a little bit. Don't all jump on. I'm happy to answer that. Go ahead, Adam. We have not had that discussion within the administration or with the union. Okay, so given understanding that, I might be something you want to consider, given that the way this is structured this year with the $1,400 per employee lump sum payment for cost of living, if my understanding is under the current terms, if we pass this, this is paid on July 1st, give or take. What happens if an employee leaves on July 2nd after they receive that? They receive their payment. Okay, so it's just something, well, it may be too late now, but normally if that was the equivalent of 2.2% or whatever the number is, that would have been spread out over the year and you would have gotten paid for the weeks you were, correct? That's correct. Okay, maybe this is a question for Beth, but percentage-wise the $1,400 plus the average step increase, am I correct in assuming that the classified employees will be receiving 4.1% on average? Understanding some will get more than that and some will get less depending on the step increases. That's correct, I would say that the difference is that it's not what the lump sum makes it so that is not built into their base salary. So the only part that would be built into the base salary is the steps, the step where employees who are going to get a step that year, that step is typically in the 3% to 4% range of their salary and then employees that are not going to get a step that year, they may be getting a step every other year or every third year. Those employees would have really a 0% increase in salary and then the way this contract is stated that in year two, they would get that 2.25%. And I did want to actually step back when you are asking about the difference in pay act costs from the last pay act to this pay act, there's a couple of things to keep in mind. Across the board increase for that was instead of typically it comes in July, it came in January. So it really amounted to only an increase for half of the fiscal year for fiscal year 2019. So that was where you saw some savings there and also the amount, the 1.35% is certainly lower than the 2.25% that we negotiated this time. Sorry. Okay, and no, no, that's helpful. And I understand last winter when this was negotiated was a different environment. We were fortunate that revenues were actually increasing. We were beating projections and I don't fault anybody for the outcome. It just strikes me, quite frankly, given the excess of 20% unemployment, a number that has not been seen since the Great Depression in hundreds, if not thousands of businesses potentially closing that aren't going to weather this summer, this spring and summer, whether without economic help that, and I think the administration at least started the conversation with postponing any increases for exempt positions and some of the other constitutional offers have done the same for their shops. I just, we're asking people on unemployment to pay more taxes if that's how we have to fund this at the end of the day. And I am very worried about that scenario. So I would encourage you to consider a request to the union to postpone this discussion until August when we all have a better picture and hopefully we have a better understanding of what we may be able to get for help from Washington, et cetera. And if it looks good, we can make it retroactive to July one and keep everybody whole as per the agreement. But I am very concerned about that. And furthermore, if I may, I'd like to follow up on Representative Gannon's question, would the administration consider removing the exempt and elected position increases for year two of the pay act? And if things are good next year, we can do a new pay act to reinstate them. For the, I just kind of go from back to front, I guess. So for the elected officials, I wouldn't, I think that we don't generally make the recommendation on that. Legislature makes the recommendation on that and it's typically been based on the agreements in the union contract. We didn't recommend backing out the exempt increases in fiscal year 2022. Basically, we haven't even considered that. The legislature authorizes them, but the increases in whether or not exempt employees under the governor's review get the increases is really based on the governors and the secretary of administration's recommendation. So as we got closer to determining what raises and how we would do raises fiscal year 22 or if we were to do raises, we would take the financial situation into account of that time and make the determination of that time. So just because the legislature authorizes us to make the increases, unless we are statutorial or contractually obligated to make those pay increases, we would take that very seriously, just like we have now and recommend to no increases for this current fiscal year. Thank you. And one final question for you. From your perspective, what would happen if we opted to do a one-year pay act and postpone discussion of funding of year two of the pay act until next session? Let's say that's within your purview. We would want to make sure that we were able to cover our contractually obligated fiscal year costs for this fiscal year. So if however the legislature wants to do that and authorize that, I don't think that we would have any issue with. Okay, thank you. I don't know if there's any other legal implication to that. If there is, John Burrard, our Liberation Director is very familiar with this Liberation's Act and I don't know if there's any other issue with that. Is there, John, that you're aware of? Arguably have to go back to the bargaining table and bargain some sort of second year freeze or wage re-opener provision to, because the money would not have been appropriated at that point in time by the effect of data in the agreement. So we'd have to go back to the bargaining table. Okay, so even though there could be a expectation that the money would be appropriated next year for the following year, that would upset the terms of the contract that you signed? Yes, because the money would not be appropriated. So there's no guarantee that the money would be there to fund the second year. We'd have to go back to the table and build in some sort of contingency for that. Okay, thank you. I guess, I'm a novice on some of the ins and outs of the collective bargaining agreement. I was reading, New York State, the governor unilaterally uses emergency powers to freeze, I think a scheduled 2% pay increase to state employees, 80,000 employees, Pennsylvania governor froze pay. So evidently they have different powers that we don't have unless the governor has some that I'm just not aware of. Thank you. I have a couple of other committee members who have questions, but I wanted to jump in and ask Adam a question before I go to other committee members. So Adam, you've been around this track a few times. You know that we are heading for the home stretch and now is the time that these decisions need to be made. And a couple of your responses have been sort of tepid as far as the commitment of the administration to uphold this collective bargaining agreement. I just wanna get a real clear answer from you. Do you intend to fully fund this collective bargaining agreement for the two year pay act? And if not, now is the time to let us know that you intend to go back to the bargaining table. I would point out, I think it's the legislature that funds the pay act, not the administration, but the... The collective bargaining agreement. Right, but the administration has entered into a collective bargaining agreement. Our signature is on the dotted line and we intend to fulfill it. Thank you. Hal Colston. Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a comment for you commissioner and thanks for being here and enlightening us. And even though Representative Harrison stole some of my thunder, the comment I wanna share is given that we're in this very volatile financial crisis. I think it might be very prudent for the administration to have a plan B and even a plan C in place because we just don't know how things are gonna play up. And that's what I wanna share. Thank you. And understood. One reason that the administration and the legislature has decided on a quarter one bill as opposed to a full fiscal 21 budget is to give us some time to think about it and come up with a plan B and a plan C if necessary. At the moment, it's very difficult to have any certainty with the length of the crisis or indeed the revenue impact of that crisis. So we are keeping the lights burning for the first quarter. We're continuing as we were for three months and then we will have a full discussion with all options on the table this summer. So I take your comment to heart and that is what we intend to do. Thank you. Thank you. Mike Marwicky. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I would like to add my, I don't have a question right now. I just have a statement that I appreciate but Adam just shared and I agree. I think to try and push the envelope right now to open up renegotiation at this point in time is really putting the cart in front of the horse. And if this is the sense of the committee then maybe we should take a straw poll as to whether we wanna do that now but I don't agree with that. And the idea that we're trying to push things in this direction to open up an agreement and change things right now. And as Adam just said, we're here right now to create a quarter one budget and to take the time if we need further plans as Hal said, a plan A, plan B and maybe plan C. At this point in time, we're working on quarter one and I'm not ready to push that and aggregate agreements that have already been made. So I have a question maybe for Adam. I'm not sure. Have any state workers during COVID been released or put on leave or told that their job wasn't essential? So we haven't had rifts or furloughs if that answers your question. There have certainly been people at various times that have not been, that have not had to come to work but we've paid them based on, if they had a job that required them to be just let with the stay home, stay safe order if their job required them to be do their work on site and they couldn't come on site, we paid them to stay home. And presumably somebody else had to pick up the slack. No, for example, when the stay home, stay safe order came home and everyone had to stay home for two weeks and a lot of industry was shut down. For example, construction was shut down. So we weren't doing construction on our employees that are kind of generally doing construction and maintenance on roads. They might not have been coming into work maybe just a skeleton crew, but the full crew because we were not doing the work maintenance at that time wouldn't have come into work. Thank you. Committee, any other questions for either Adam or Beth while we have them both on the hot seat? All right, please stick with us because I think what I'd like to do now is ask either Steve Klein or Stephanie Barrett if they can help us with a breakdown of the numbers in the pay act. And then of course, when the camera's off, you don't know whether they've wandered away. So I would suggest that Stephanie do the breakdown of the numbers. She's been working on that more. So the numbers that were in the section that are in the quarter one bill were estimates that we put in yesterday or the day before based on the original amounts, sort of an estimated amount of how much the general fund would go down with the exempt piece. We just received updated numbers from Harold for the executive branch. We're slightly different in the judicial branch and the legislative branch than Harold's numbers. So I'm wondering which would you like to walk through? Do you want Harold to walk through his executive branch numbers for FY 21 and 22 and have us walk through judiciary and legislative branch? I'm trying to figure out what the best approach is here. I think that makes sense to ask Harold if he's got those numbers to present for us and then we'll come back to you for a judiciary and legislative branch numbers. Thank you. Okay. Harold, do you have a document you'd like to get up on our committee page? Is it already there? Then I just haven't seen it yet. Madam chair, hello, it's Betsy Ann. Just to clarify, the draft 2.2 that's now posted, the numbers will appear different than what Harold will be presenting, but I can send over to Andrea some updated numbers. If you'd like or else Harold can just point out where his figures differ than those set forth in draft 2.2, which is currently posted. Okay. Harold, are you with us? All right, well, let's go back to Stephanie and let's talk about the legislative and judicial branch numbers. And maybe Harold has stepped away from his device for a moment and will be back with us. Beth, I don't know if you have a direct line to him and can poke him to come back because we would like to get him up. Sorry, I was unfortunately muted. I'm having a hard time looking at the 2.2 but I've got the numbers that I came up with that I've sent recently to Betsy Ann and I can walk through those numbers. Okay, thank you. This is the appropriation numbers for executive branch general fund, 11,234,950 dollars. Transportation fund, 3,868,451 dollars. Other, 12,809,440 dollars. So the other is the combination of federal and special funds, is that? Yes. Questions from committee members? Want that? Nobody's diving at their screen to put their hand up. So Stephanie, can you help us understand the judiciary and legislative branch numbers? So the judicial branch numbers, Pat Gable earlier in the week sent us an analysis based on, you know, if there was across the board the full piece, but in a scenario B, which is without the judicial officers and no increase for exempts in the judicial branch and that number is the $872,330,000 number that was included in the quarter one bill judicial branch estimate for FY21. The second year estimate, FY22 estimate from the judicial branch is 1.258,759 dollars based on the collected bargaining units and application to the judicial officers and exempts in FY22. So those are, it's only general fund in the judicial branch and the legislative branch. There's no other source of funds for those two branches. In the legislative branch, Dan Dickerson in our office runs through the entire all the staff sections and includes the legislators. So for FY21, the estimate is $241,000 for increases. That does exclude the exempts at the top, the chief fiscal officer and the chief ledge council as an exempt and from an increase. And then in the second year with the legislative expectation that it would, the change would include the staff and COLA increase for legislators, that estimate was $397,000 for FY22 in the legislative branch. We see in Harold's analysis, there's a significant difference in FY22 estimate in the legislative branch and offline we'll have a conversation just to understand what that difference is, but it's significant. So he's much higher in the FY22, but I think it's just an interpretation of the legislative change perhaps. So Stephanie or Steve, I'm not sure which of you would be best to enlighten the committee or remind the committee about this, but we've been doing a bit of work with consultants from NCSL on our pay rates across the legislative branch, understanding how our pay for fiscal staff and attorneys compares to other similar jobs in the industry and how our staffing rates compare to other states of similar sizes. So Steve, can you just fill the committee in on sort of a top line message that we got from that study? Yeah, the study which was done I think a year ago did look at legislative pay and compared to executive branch personnel and private sector personnel in other states. And there had been a fair amount of adjustments made to the pay that is being in place this year from that. So most of that I think is incorporated at this time. There's a lot of changes that are planned for next year as far as management of salaries like joint legislative management committee is gonna oversee this personnel benefits and issues like this more than right now it's a lot of independent agencies, independent legislative entities doing it. We, when we did the pay act assumption we did not build into it any sort of increases beyond where they are now other than the salary increases that were reflected in the pay act. One of the big issues that you're raising though is all legislative employees like all judicial employees are gems in technically. And so what we tend to do if you look at the executive branch, there's a total number of employees of about, and I don't know if I have my numbers totally right but they're in the neighborhood of 8,000 and the classified are 7,600 and the exams are about 400, which is about 5% exams. And judiciary, once you take the judges out on their considered exams and we're giving them no raise in this bill the ones that are gonna be technically exempt from their point is about seven of their total employees. A lot of them are confidential, personal and things like that. So it comes to about a 2% of their total employees. So what we're trying to do is one of the things that came up in that study is a lot of our staff, both from the ledger councils around fiscal everywhere is really tied to classified types of people. I mean, a lot of our pay is compared to a senior economist and the executive branch versus an economist here or a staff person. So they're all classified. So one of the things we're trying to figure out and we didn't really, at this point, I think it's definitely pointed out it involves a no pay increase for the top leadership, which is myself and Luke. They may go deeper. We haven't really judged that yet. That's sort of a, we built the numbers now but we totally understand that that's something the leaders haven't figured out. And every person, they decide to not give a pay increase to in this year, it's about a $3,000 or $3,300 reduction. So it could go down to the level that going down the 20,000 or so the difference between the two numbers may just be seven more people that the administration assume wouldn't get a raise. And I don't know where that land up. It's sort of a, if you use the executive branch number that could be in the neighborhood of depending on how you count three to 12 people in the legislative branch, it might be two. So it's just part of that's up to the leadership and maybe the JLMC as they work it out. So we just built in what we, after talking to the speaker sort of the first cut position. Thank you. Committee, any questions on that line of testimony? Jim Harrison. Yeah, I just wanna go back to the numbers in general. Maybe this is for Stephanie, but the numbers that Harold gave us are different than what Betsy Ann has in the draft. Not significant maybe, but I'm just, what are the right numbers? I would say the executive branch numbers, I would use Harold's numbers, newest updated numbers. For the other two branches, I would use the numbers that those branches are calculating. Okay, thank you. And that will be part of the tasking to make sure that we've got the right numbers. Harold, anything that you wanna add to that? Yeah, I will defer to Stephanie on the judicial branch numbers, the legislative branch numbers. My number is considerably higher in FY 22, if you include the increase in legislator pay in the legislative branch, because unless the statutory language has changed, I haven't looked at 2.2, there's a considerable increase for legislators in FY 22. And that's why my number is considerably higher. I can talk to Stephanie offline on that. Yeah, and we think he may have a slight error in the way the statute's read, but we should definitely have an offline discussion. I think we incorporated the legislative increase also. And so part of it is the statute reads a lower legislative pay number, about 580 or something. In reality, legislators are gonna pay 743 because the statute increases over time what legislators have paid. So if you take it from their current salary, which is the way the draft reads is, legislators are level funding this year and next year, there's no increase at all. And if you use that plus 4.15%, I think you get a lower number, but we'll work that out with, we'll let Harold know why we... Yeah, I'd be happy to discuss, yeah. Thank you. Any other questions, committee? All right, before we go to Betsy Ann for a deeper dive into the language, we have Annie Noonan with us. And Annie, I just wanted to make sure that we gave you an opportunity to share any other documents or thoughts that you haven't yet had a chance to go through with the committee. Great, thank you, Madam Chair. And good morning, committee members and other staff that are on. So I just wanted to say thank you. I sent over an estimate for the FY21. I just wanted to give a little clarity to that. So that includes our, that estimate included our new bargaining unit employees, which are basically our deputy state's attorneys, administrative support staff, and that's our bargaining unit. It has the victim advocates, but those are charged to federal money. So that's not included in this pay act. We charge the center for prime victim services for those salaries. But also as part of the 21 pay act numbers, we would have to include our 26 transport deputies, state transport deputies, and about four other non-exempt folks that work for the department, such as IT staff and central office. So the people again, who are not getting pay raises for our department or the state's attorneys, the sheriff's, the executive director and any exempt employees. We also have some other positions that are charged to federal money and those are domestic violence prosecutors. We have 3.5 positions funded by federal US DOJ. Two-handled domestic violence and sexual assault prosecutions in the offices. And we have two staff that are funded by the governor highway safety program, which is part of the national institute for highway safety. And those folks, those two prosecutors deal with DUI issues, particularly serious injury fatality cases. So they're also not charged to this, except for a 20% match that we have to do of their salary. But for the most part, they are paid for by federal dollars. We have four current vacancies among our prosecutors, our deputy state's attorney prosecutors. And we are looking, we are asking for those to be filled. So we did budget for those in our rollup of the advantage rollup back in the fall. And we are hoping that we will get approval from the secretary of administration to fill those because this thing, as you know, our caseloads are very, very high and mostly all of our offices. And we've lost two positions, prosecutor positions. One is a loss of some federal dollars and one that we had to give up in meeting our FY 21 governor's recommend numbers. Looking ahead, and I don't think you necessarily want to talk about 22, but we, you know, again, following the executive branch contract for both in both 21 and 22. So in 21, the $1,400 plus steps, and then in 22, the 2.25 plus steps. The one piece, and this was asked the other day when I was listening to the testimony, someone, one of the committee members asked, why would there be additional costs? Why would the first year of this contract cost more potentially than the second year? And the answer to that is that there were benefits agreed to through the collective bargaining agreement that we're not budgeted for because we were not done negotiations. We were, we didn't start negotiations until January 29th of this year. So some of those new benefits are not budgeted for 21. They, that number, that additional number, which is about, and then about 163,000, we should be able to then institutionalize for our FY 22 budget and would not be part of a pay act appropriation. So it kind of, it just shifts. It goes into the base budget, but not in the pay act. So in the subsequent year. So the kinds of things like that, if you're wondering like, what would those types of extra benefits be that were not able to be budgeted would be things like we had to switch to a different long-term disability program. And we have to have the costs for that because we, as bargaining unit coverage extended to our employees, they are not eligible to stay in the state's exempt plan. So we had to look at the costs of that. After hours call increasing, annual leave payout and some overtime budgeting that we have not previously had to experience. The other thing I think that I'll just raise this with the committee is, you know, certainly we're giving you numbers for 21 that don't necessarily, they aren't yet reflective of any potential retirement increase numbers that we haven't heard from retirement divisions. So those numbers might skew at some point later, each department's need for additional funding, but we don't know what that increase would be. And just two other points. The question was about people working. Our staff has been working during this entire stay home, stay safe process. Most of our deputy state's attorneys have been rotating in because as you know, the courts haven't been able to completely shut down or to completely telecommute. So for example, there have been arrangements in court arrangements. They would be things like emergency cases with juveniles or homicide arrangements or things like that. So we have had our deputy state's attorneys in and out of the offices on a rotating basis, admin staff obviously being there to prepare packets that needed to be handed to the defense and defendant. So we have had our staff, the other staff have been very grateful have time to write briefs that were due in cases and motions and things like that. So our deputy state's attorneys and our admin staff have been working on data entry work that is always something you put to the side when you really need to deal with a crisis standing at your desk. So there's been a lot of opportunity for them to do catch up and hopefully create some better data for us. The other point I wanna make that I think that other commissioner Faustigi and commissioner Greshin have made is the whole question about what would happen if the pay act is not funded and the insufficient appropriation language that's incorporated into each of the contracts basically does require us to go back to the bargaining table if the pay act is not fully appropriated to the extent that we can't meet an obligation we have agreed to in the contract. So I will stop and see if there's any questions and otherwise I will be working with sending as much data as I can over to Stephanie and Steve Klein or Betsy or whomever's working on putting together the actual real numbers for your pay act. I think the numbers I've given you are good. Although I'm just running one or two additional questions as you always reach, I don't know about you but I always recheck my math 20 times. So I think those are relatively good numbers, madam chair but hopefully I'll be working with them to make sure that we are included in the pay act appropriation. Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate your desire to double and triple check your math. Always appreciated. So I think John Gannon has a question. So thank you for testifying me. Just a quick question. I see that the sheriffs are getting a pay increase in January of 20. Oh, no, sorry. Skip that. Another question which is, why is the County Sheriff more than the other sheriffs? And I mean, then you look at the state's attorneys and all the state's attorneys are paid the same except for Essex County and Grand Isle. So apparently years and years ago, there was some provision that came to the legislature, some requests that came and it was actually for the Chittenden County State's Attorney, the Chittenden County Sheriff. They both get higher rates than their counterparts. I don't know what was said to facilitate that or that led to that, but that has been longstanding. And the two state's attorneys who receive less money are part-time state's attorneys, Essex County and Grand Isle County. They are only required to do half-time. I think they do more than that certainly, but they are considered part-time offices. For example, their administrative staff are only four days a week. And I think that maybe, and I think that maybe one of those offices actually does close one day a week, but I don't know the history of that representative again and I just know it's been in play for a lot of years. Thank you. Thank you. Committee, any other questions for Annie before we switch gears yet again? All right, I don't see anybody diving at their computer screen. So that's- Thank you all. Thanks, Annie. Thank you. Okay, so now is the time. We get to put Betsy Ann in the hot seat and she can run us through the bill language. I believe we have a draft 2.4, which means you have been working steadily to refine and improve the drafts even as we've been meeting. So thank you.  And thank you to Andrea for posting in for all the support I've been getting from JFO and DHR and Department of Finance and Management on these numbers. I have updated the numbers at the end with the feedback I received from Harold and John and JFO. So I appreciate all that. For the record, Betsy Ann Rask, Legislative Council. This bill draft is set up as a committee bill from House GovOps. The introduction just gives a high level overview to summarize what this pay act would do. This would fully fund all of the collective bargaining agreements for fiscal years 21 and 22. It would authorize compensation increases for exempt employees in the executive branch, but that's only for FY22. Then it gets into adjusting the statutory salaries. And again, those cover the judicial branch, executive branch, and our county elected officers. And those would be only for FY22. And then it provides appropriations to fund these increases. Also, it's actually not specified in the statement of purpose, but you'll see in sections 11 and 12, we'll also get into the statutory amendments for the legislative pay statutes so that legislators would be put on equal footing with the other constitutional officers in the pay increases that they get. Because to summarize, in normal pay act years or in normal fiscal times, the other constitutional officers are able to get the same increases as set forth in the CBA. And so that is not only the COLA, or AKA across the board increase, but it's also the step equivalent. And legislators by statute are not entitled to get that step equivalent. And because of the current terms of your statute and the CBA, legislators are not entitled to get a pay raise in FY21 because there is no COLA, just to remind there. But getting into the actual text of the pay act, we start out with section one. And this is just an explanation. It's an easy reference for all legislators to see that this act would fully fund all of our collective bargaining agreements between the state and the VSEA and the separate one between the state and the Vermont Troopers Association for the two fiscal years, starting July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2022. So that includes our executive branch, the judicial branch, and also the state's attorney's offices. Their employees, I thank you to John Burrard for providing me with helpful information that those state's attorney's offices are not technically executive branch employees but are more municipal officers. But regardless, this pay act would fully fund all of the collective bargaining agreements for both fiscal years. And on page 22 or page 2, you'll see the description of what all of those collective bargaining agreements or CBAs provide. In fiscal year 21, it's the average 1.9% step increase and the $1,400 one-time payment to employees employed as of July 1, 2020. And then in fiscal year 22, it's an average 1.9 step increase and 2.25% across the board increase for a total of 4.15 increase. Section 2 permits exempt employees in the executive branch to receive salary increases not to exceed 4.15% but only in fiscal year 22, beginning on the first pay period, which is July 4, 2021. And again, that's because the recommendation from the executive branch is to only give exempts in the executive branch an increase in FY 22. There in section 2B, it's just an explanation that that permitted increase in FY 22 is consistent with the CBAs for classified employees in the executive branch but only for FY 22. So then we get to section 3 at the top of page 3. And this section is essentially a definition section. There's two provisions of law set forth in 32 VSA 1003B and 1020B, which use this phrase, the total rate of adjustment available to classified employees under the collective bargaining agreement. And that language is saying that the employees that are subject to those increases, which are executive branch agency and department heads, deputies and executive assistants, are able to get annual salary adjustments or special salary increases or bonuses consistent with, quote, the total rate of adjustment available to classified employees under the collective bargaining agreement. So every pay act defines what that term actually means. And so it's defining here that in FY 22 only, it means that 4.15% to be able to give those exempts who have language in statute about what it pay increase, they can get, it's defining what that pay increases and it's to be consistent with the FY 22 CBA, that 4.15% increase. So Betsy Ann. Yeah. If just following along with some of the line of questioning from earlier in committee, if we moved forward with this language and when we came back into session in January, we, for instance, had not seen additional revenue support from federal COVID relief money. Could we change this so that when we're considering the FY 22 budget, we were, for instance, not offering a pay increase to the executive branch exempt employees? Yes, I think you could go back and change it. I mean, the General Assembly controls this pay. For exempts, it's not subject to any sort of contract, but maybe if you are feeling that that might be something that you would pursue, perhaps some additional session law language, just to say something along the lines of the General Assembly reserves the ability to revise these increases as necessary dependent on the fiscal situation in FY 22. Just perhaps that would be helpful for people to understand that while so they don't expect 100% that they're going to get these increases. That might just be helpful for people to read that in text. So since you are the master at statutory language and we are citizen legislators, could you help us envision what that might look like? Something that was akin to a harder knock to say, come back and look at this. Remember, this is something we said in motion that we may want to reconsider after we have more understanding of the fiscal landscape. Yeah, I could definitely come back with just a session law section to reflect that these increases for exempts for the employees that are not subject to the collective bargaining agreements are subject to further amendment by the General Assembly dependent on upcoming financial situation of the state. I can come back with language for you to add to that. Thank you. I appreciate that. I've seen a couple other nodding heads on that question. Jim Harrison has a question. Yeah, thank you. Betsy and along those same lines, can the General Assembly, if worst case scenarios come to be, can we cut the funding of the pay act next year or later this year? I think you're going to run into, for the employees that are subject to the collective bargaining agreement? Yes. I mean, I think then you're going to run into those contractual issues at a minimum. It's going to mean that they'll need to go back and renegotiate based on the amount that's actually appropriated to fund their collective bargaining agreement. So if, well, yeah, I get that. But if next year the revenue picture hasn't improved, we didn't get any federal help. And the reality was we could not afford the 30 or 35 million that was allocated in this bill. Can we revisit that issue next year? Understanding it would force the contract to be redone. I think that you could. I don't know what exactly that would mean for the collective bargaining agreement. If you were to enact this with fully funding the collective bargaining agreements and there was that expectation under the contract, but then to go back and reduce the appropriations to support the contract, feel at a minimum. It's going to cause issues with the contract. Aside from renegotiation, I don't know how the DHR Department of Finance and Management would view that proposal. Maybe they could help if they could weigh in on what that would mean for them. Probably be good to hear directly from them. OK, no, thank you. I'm just looking for options. None of us have ever experienced this. Hopefully we never experienced this again in our lifetime. But these are very, very uncertain times. Thank you. I'm seeing the commissioner. Should she, Madam Chair, what would you like to do? I would love to ask either Beth or Adam to jump in on that. If the appropriation was changed midstream, it would send us back to the bargaining table to negotiate to whatever had been, whatever a change would have been made, of course. And then, also, we wouldn't really have any mechanism for clawing back money if it's already been spent. So I can't. But we've already paid somebody something. I can't take it back. Absolutely. Adam, anything you want to add to that? You're muted. I have no additional comments to that other than we can't reach back into someone's bank account and take money we've already paid out. It's bad for them. Not that we would want to, but we certainly would be beholden to what the legislature decides in that regard. So Adam, when you were testifying at the beginning of this committee session, you said something to the effect of because the collective bargaining agreement wasn't completed when you presented your January budget, you anticipated how you would incorporate the pay increases into your budget. When the administration comes back to the legislature in whenever late July, August timeframe to do the remainder of the FY21 budget, you will be presenting, I assume, a budget that does incorporate the honoring of the collective bargaining agreement. Is that correct? Mostly correct. I think the budget, this is testing my memory, but I believe the budget ended in January had a set aside for the collective bargaining agreement because I believe at that point it had been negotiated. In the year before or in past years, the CBA, I believe it was the year before, the two years before, the CBA was not completed. So we did not include it in our budget. But I think this year we did set aside money. It wasn't a line item, but we had money set aside in our expenditure projections that would have paid for that collective bargaining agreement. We didn't put it in the budget because the pay act itself had not been negotiated. And the pay act itself had not passed. But typically, most years, we know the bargaining agreement will cost, and we account for that in our revenue projections and expenditure projections. This summer, we will put in the full Q1 budget what the pay act calls for. And for quarters two through four, when we come back to consider the rest of the year's spending. Right. I mean, this summer, we're anticipating to do a four quarter full year budget, and we will put in there what is called for in the pay act. OK. Thank you. Jim, any other questions? All right. I'm guessing that's enough. All right. That's Ian, back to you. All right. Let's just revisit that section three at the top of page three. Remember, this is defining what that phrase total rate of adjustment available to classified employees under the collective bargaining agreement means in two statutes, 32VSA 1003B and 1020B. Well, section four actually shows that first one, the 32VSA 1020. So you'll see where that phrase is used. But the first thing that's going on here in subsection A, I've just drafted as a technical correction. Just to look at the structure of this statute, you can see how current law reads compensation to be paid any officer or employee within the executive branch of state government other than an employee in the classified service, a member of the Uniform State Police within DPS or any or an officer employee whose compensation is specifically fixed by statute. And it goes on to say, shall be determined at the time the officer or employee is hired by the governor or such person as the governor shall designate subject to any applicable statutory limits. Well, that's just not how we set up statute. We don't usually let a sentence trail on through subdivisions. So subsection A is merely a technical correction to move up that language that's currently on 19 through 21 that's struck just moving it up verbatim the lines 12 to 14 to have it conform to our normal statutory structure. So thank you for humoring me on helping us clean up our statutes there. But then you'll actually see on page four the subsection B where that phrase is used total rate of adjustment. So this statute is specifically in regard to here in subsection B, it's in regard to exempt employees who are deputies or executive assistants to department heads or are deputies or executive assistants to agency secretaries. And this language is saying annually subject to any applicable statutory salary limits, the governor may grant to these employees salary adjustments that are not to exceed the average of the total rate of adjustment available to classified employees under the collective bargaining agreement then in effect. The first thing that's going on here on page four, line five, is just what Harold and I believe is a technical correction. Harold has requested in another section that that language average of the be removed because it doesn't make sense from his fiscal reading. Really, we're just talking about what is the total rate of adjustment available to classified employees under the collective bargaining agreement. That term is defined in section three to mean 4.15% in FY22 only. So this is saying that these deputies or executive assistants are able to get an annual salary adjustment not to exceed 4.15% in FY22. So that's their standard salary adjustment, but you can see the statute just to point out does go on to say in addition to that annual salary adjustment, the governor is able to grant a special salary increase or bonus to any of those deputies or executive assistants whose contributions to the state in the preceding year are deemed especially significant and those special salary increases or bonuses shall not exceed. There's that term again, the total rate of adjustment available to classified employees under the CBA then in effect. Section three defines that as 4.15% in FY22 only. And then the rest of this in subsection C is just cleaning up some language, the witch to that capitalizing governor. We move on to page five and this is where the bill starts to actually amend statutory salaries. And we start out with our statewide elected officers. So you can see here, this provides our statewide officers with their annual salary. And what is going on here is only providing these officers with an increase for FY22, because remember the suggestion is to only allow exempts and executives, executive branch officers to obtain increases in FY22. So for these annual salaries, it's just that 4.15% increase from what they are currently making under that middle column. So that was subsection A, then this subsection B goes into salary increases available to department commissioners and agency secretaries and other heads of departments. So this intro language says that the governor may appoint each officer of the executive branch listed in this subsection B at a starting salary ranging from the base salary that's stated that does not exceed the maximum salary unless authorized. And it goes on to say the maximum salary for each a point of officer shall be 50% above base salary. Because as you'll see as we scroll down, this statute provides what the base salary is for these officers, not their annual salary, not exactly what their salary is, but they're just their base salary. So this language goes on to say that the governor annually may grant to each of those officers an annual salary adjustment subject to the maximum salary and the annual salary adjustment granted to these officers, there's that term again, shall not exceed the total rate of adjustment available to classified employees under the collected bargaining agreement in effect. That's the defined phrase in section three to mean 4.15% in FY22. It goes on to say in addition to that annual salary adjustment that's provided, the governor can also grant to them special salary increases subject to the maximum salary or a bonus. If their job duties have changed, significantly increased, their contributions to the state have were deemed especially significant, but those special salary increases or bonuses shall not exceed that defined phrase, total rate of adjustment available to classified employees. That's the 4.15% in FY22 only. So then you see the bill goes on to actually list what the base salary is for each of these listed officers. It's the base salary because they can have adjustments on top of that. So what this is doing for the column listed base salary as of July 4, 2021 is providing them with that 4.15% increase at the beginning of FY22 only. And thank you to Harold for double checking my numbers here. So you'll just adding that 4.15% to all of these statutory salaries for all of these officers that are listed here. Betsy Ann, Jim has a question. Yeah, Betsy Ann, on these exempt salaries, I just wanna make sure I understand it. Let's assume you have an exempt position that pays the base salary and statutes $100,000. And that they currently, it sounds like they can, the governor can increase that by 50%. So the range really is of the position is 100 to 150, is that correct? So that is the, I think that that intro language in B is their starting salary, that the starting salary can range from the base salary up to the maximum. And the maximum is 50% from the base. So that's your starting salary. And then there's the adjustments that can be provided on top of that. Okay, so just for my simple math, if it was 100,000, the governor can pay up to 150,000 for that position if the hundred is the base. For their starting salary, yes. Okay, so if this coming year, where we're not in this bill changing any of those base salaries, if a commissioner, for example, was making 120,000 for that example, the base is 100, the governor could still give that commissioner a raise. No, I don't believe so. I see the commissioner agreeing with me. And that's because this language on page six, starting on line three, says that the annual salary adjustment granted to officers under this section shall not exceed the total rate of adjustment available to classified employees under the CBA then in effect. And that term is defined to be the 4.15% and FY 22 only. Commissioner, do you agree with my, what I just stated? Okay, I see you're saying yes. Okay, so the governor cannot increase the salary of an exempt employee at all during fiscal year 21? None of these employees, no. Okay, what if the governor had to hire a new commissioner? That commissioner could be hired anywhere between the base and 150%. So for my job, the salary listed here is 104,097. If he hired a new commissioner of human resources, that would be the low end of the salary and the highest end of the salary could be around 150,000 plus. Most of these salaries are around, I would say around 125% of base. Okay, so if you were bringing in somebody new, you could pay more than what the current commissioner. Yes. But the current commissioner cannot get a raise this coming fiscal year then, is that? Yes. Interesting, okay, thank you. Alrighty. Jim, are you looking for a new job? No. Yeah, thank you. Okay, thank you. So there's those base salaries that are adjusted FY22 with a 4.15% increase. So I'm just gonna scroll through. Here I'll just point out we're at page eight, line 19. This is just, it seems to be a quirk in the law. You can see it says the secretary of administration may include the director of OPR in any pay plans that are established under the authority of 1020C, which we saw up above in section four. And then it says provided the minimum hiring rate does not fall below a base salary that is as of this current fiscal year. You can see the current 80,041. And then adding on the 4.15% in FY22 to read as of July 4, 2021, 83, 363. So that's a 4.15% increase for FY22, like all other exempts for the director of OPR. Just here on page nine, line 14, just a technical correction. We use shall not instead of may not when we say that something cannot happen. So you can see the current law is that the commissioner of health shall not exceed a maximum salary of 150,000 FYI, but that was just a technical correction of the language. Then on page nine, line 16, we get into the judicial statutory salaries. And again, this is only amending them so that they have increases beginning in FY22 with that 4.15% increase. So it starts with the annual salaries, the actual salaries of these listed judicial officers as of the beginning of the first FY22 pay period, adding on to those annual salaries, the 4.15% increase consistent with the other statutory officers only getting an increase of 4.15% in FY22. On page 10 and section seven, this provides the daily rate for our assistant judges. And again, it's just an increase in that daily rate beginning in FY22 of that 4.15% increase. Section eight gets into the probate judges, same thing. Annual salary, it would get adjusted in FY22 of that 4.15%. And you can see probate judges have different salaries. I believe it was back in the 2011, if I'm correct in my notes, no, it was a 2012 pay act. Ask for a caseload study for probate judges. And so I think there were some of the tweaks to the salaries there for probate judges that was based on their caseload. And so you'll see differences in their statutory salaries. On page 13 and section nine, we get to the salaries of sheriffs. This is actually the elected 14 county sheriffs. And so as you've already discussed, there's a difference between the Chittenden County Sheriff compared to the other ones. But regardless, it's just that 4.15% increase beginning in FY22. And we get into the state's attorneys. And again, this means the elected state's attorneys of the 14 counties and likewise, like everyone else of the statutory salaries, they would get a 4.15% increase at the beginning of FY22, no increase there for FY21. And that's the actual annual salary. All right, page 14 at the bottom in section 11, we get into amending the legislative pay statutes. There are two of them. The first one is for the speaker in Pro Tem because they get an annual salary and in addition, the weekly payments. And so the first thing that is happening here is just updating these statutes to reflect what the pay actually will be at the beginning of the 21 biennium. But this is without any compensation increases. If you look at the current law language of what the legislative pay statutes provide, it's the same for the all legislators. You'll see the non-speaker in Pro Tem legislative statute as the next one. But you can see right now on page 15 starting on line five that it says that the compensation shall be adjusted annually by the cost of living adjustment negotiated for state employees under the most recent collective bargaining agreement. This is where legislators are not on equal footing with the other constitutional officers because other constitutional officers normally get both the COLA, which is across the board increase and the step equivalent. Legislators have not been getting that. So every time that there's increases provided for the constitutional officers, legislators are losing ground. So this would say instead that, all right, you have to take your salary that will exist at the beginning of the 21 biennium. There is no increase provided to it because by statute, even though you get what's in the COLA, that's in the CBA, for FY21, there is no COLA. There's just the lump sum payment. So legislators will not receive an increase for FY21. But this language would change that at the beginning of FY22 with the language that online force says provided that beginning on July 1, 2021, beginning of FY22 and annually thereafter on January 1, the annual compensation shall be adjusted consistent with the compensation increases provided to other constitutional officers. So this language would put legislators on equal footing. If, by chance, you decide in FY22 not to give the other constitutional officers an increase, this would mean legislators don't get an increase. So you would be on all equal footing. So Betsy, and for folks who are watching this, they may not be as familiar with fiscal year versus session and how legislative pay works. So I'm just going to lay this out as I understand it, and I know you'll correct me if I'm wrong. But a potential pay increase starting in fiscal year FY22 means that in the second half of the next biennium. So we're all running for reelection now. The next legislature will come into session for the first year of that biennium. They will get no pay increase because we're not offering the exempts a pay increase for fiscal 21. And then for the second year of the next biennium, there would be that small pay increase. Am I correct on that? Yes. Yes. Yes. And just for our friends who are following along from home, the legislature only gets paid for the weeks that we are in session. So January through in a typical year, May, but here we are June and still plugging along because of all of the COVID response we've had to do. So I think what I'd like to do is jump over to Steve Klein right now because he's done a little bit of work on helping us understand what this actually looks like. So Steve, can you help us? I believe that you created a chart. A chart, yes. And I think it's sent to your website, but I don't know your committee procedure. You can put it up on the screen or do you tend to prefer to just have people go to your site and look? Most people have a second device that they're looking at the bill line. Okay, great. So let me just talk about it for a minute and Betsy Ann can chime in if she thinks I got the year wrong. But what happened was up until 2005, there was nothing in the statute about legislative pay. So every year when you did a pay act, there would be this discussion and should we give legislators raises? And the answer was, no, no, we're not going to take a raise. So then in 2005, there was a study an outside group came in and looked at legislative pay and made a number of recommendations, some of which were implemented, such as paying you the expense amounts you get, things like that. Half of the pay increase was implemented. They just said, we'll give them the COLA but not the staff equivalent. And so that was in 2005. What I put up on the web was a five year, look back on just five years, just so you can sort of see how the trend works. And I don't know if people have that in front of them. And what I did is I assumed that you, and because I think as you mentioned, legislators only get paid for 18 weeks. So the dollar figure here is 12 grand or something like that. You get a year or whatever the number is depending on well, each legislature is a little different and each year is different. But if you take a dollar and what I did is I took a dollar that a legislator gets and a dollar that the exempts, the treasurer, the auditor, the clinic governor, AG and Secretary of State get. And then you watch what happens in 2016. And this is rounded, so into the nearest penny. So everybody got, you got a 2.5% increase and we, and they got a 3.3% increase. So you ended up, right now it's 103, 103. The next year, a 2% increase and a 3.7 was brought up to 105, 107. And then 2.25, 395. And you can see how it's happening here. 1.35 and 2.69. And by the time you get to 2020, it's a dollar 10, the legislative $1 is going to $1.10. The, the exempts and all the other constitutional officers is going to 117 for each hour, each dollar you earn.  But what I, the reason I didn't go back 10 years because there's lots of intervening insanity and goes on like one year there was a 5% cut and legislators had more of a cut than other people did because you were very anonymous about what you were going to get paid. And there's all types of changes that occur. But the concept is here that we sort of institutionalize something that will constantly reduce your relative pay compared to the other constitutional officers. So as I understand this proposal, it just says whatever constitutional officers get, you will be tied for that amount. And so for the example you're using, let's say next year they get nothing because you end up giving them nothing because if you add that language and next year comes around and it's a terrible year and you want to do it, then you would track them. This language just says, track what you do for other constitutional officers. So I understand the concept. So that's sort of the history in a nutshell. Great, thank you. I appreciate that. Mike Marwicki's raising his hand. Go ahead, Mike. I hope this is a good time to share a little bit about what happens with the low rate of pay we get. My district mate will be leaving after one term. We talk about wanting to bring younger people to Vermont, younger people to the legislature. And here we are, a dedicated 30-year-old who really enjoys and is doing some good work here in the legislature. And he just can't afford to do it. He's the father of a young child. He's looking to get married and start another addition to his family. And he just can't do it on what we get paid as legislators. I know there's a lot of talk about what we do and what we don't get. And I'm sure we've all heard from constituents saying, I want your salary and benefits. And I say, no, you don't. But I hope we can continue to look at this. And I know we're in a tough situation that's gonna get tougher looking ahead, but most especially as we look to the future, to people like Representative Hashim. If we're gonna keep people like this, we need to make sure they can at least pay their bills with what we get here. Thanks, Mike. I've got another committee member who wants to ask a question, but kind of along those lines, I recall when I was first elected, I was probably 34 or 35 when I was walking through the house chamber when most committees were in session and there was a tour group going on. And one of the tour guides was explaining to this group of school students that most people who served in this grand body, in this grand room, are either retired or independently wealthy because those are the only people who can afford to serve in, because of the pay being only for the ones that were in and no salary the rest of the year and the difficulty of patching together, family on that kind of a salary. And I remember feeling kind of frustrated because at that moment, I was thinking, boy, it would be great if the House of Representatives had more young parents with children in school kind of dealing with the normal challenges of life in Vermont serving in our legislature and expressing the needs and the concerns and the desires of people with young children.  So it's sad to see that he has to move on to find employment that gives him a more consistent and higher salary.  My apologies for making you wait. No, not at all. I have my hand up a lot, Madam Chair. So I appreciate, first of all, your comments and I appreciate the comments of the member from Putney. But I want to go back to Betsy Ann in this subject. And again, this is only my second pay act, but we do the COLA plus the step. Where is it written that we have to do both each year? It's not written that you have to do both each year for the constitutional officers and the exempts. It's a policy decision each time. So as I had put in the pay act summary, when we first started to discuss this, the General Assembly usually provides the same increases to exempts and statutory officers that are provided to the employees covered by CBA, but you don't have to. But it has been standard practice in normal fiscal years to do so. Okay, no, that's helpful. I guess I come at this. We should decide what the appropriate base salaries and we can certainly have a good discussion about legislative base pay for some of the reasons that were just mentioned. And we should have a discussion about what the governor's salary should be, what the secretary of state salary, what the sheriff's salary, et cetera. But once you establish that, given something unusual, then they should be adjusted by COLA. And I just never understood.  But you could get elected governor this November and be one year on the job or no years on the job and you would get a step increase. And it just never made sense to me. And it's just something, maybe we can't fix it all here, but we should consider that. Additionally on this line, what happens if there are some elected officials that we go beyond step increases or COLA because we learned that they're out of sync for the job? What happens then? Do we average them? In other words, just to say, we increased the governor's salary by 50%. I don't think we're going to, but if we did, what would that mean? Would legislators get a 50% increase? I don't think so. If there were some sort of tweak to the other constitutional officer's statutory salaries, and that became a question, you know, if for example, if you decided to do extra increase for the governor, that might be a chance to define what compensation increases provided to other constitutional officers means. Similar to how that section three operates. If just if there is a question about, well, one constitutional officer got this increase, but the other constitutional officers got this increase. So I think that would be an opportunity to define this phrase here on page 15, line eight in the other places, just for clarity purposes. Okay, thank you. Steve Klein, do you have anything you want to add to that? No, I think that's, I would agree with Betsy Ann. It's actually an interesting point that we need to probably think about it. The intent clearly wasn't to do that, to have it go up by anything other than just to reflect what happens in the pay act equivalent. So I think we, Betsy Ann, could look at that language and see if there's something we need to do. You know, the interesting thing about the, and this is obviously an interesting point you're raising about the COLA and the treatment of the steps. For all exempt employees who don't have steps, there's no sort of automatic increase. They do build in a step equivalent and it's about 1.9%. The way it works with the classified employees is they get more than that in the early years and then they get less than that in the later years. So it's actually over the initial years, the 1.9 sort of understates what people are receiving and when you get to be 15 or 20 years in, you'll probably, classified people don't get raises every year for a step. So it's a fair question and we didn't get to that issue. I think if you end up deciding down the road that all constitutional officers should not get the step increase, the way this is drafted and the concept here as legislators would not get it either.  Marsha Gardner has a question. Just something I'd like to add and the commissioner of human resources can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that when classified employees receive a step increase, they're normally reviewed also at that time and their supervisor does not necessarily have to approve the entire step increase or one at all. So in a sense, it is a way to make sure that people are reviewed on a regular basis. But like I said, Beth can correct me if I'm not correct on this. Thank you. Go ahead, Beth. I'm going to talk and then I'm going to ask the director of labor relations to correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the only time you wouldn't give a classified employee their step increase was if their performance was unsatisfactory. That's correct. And step increases are not necessarily tied to a length of service or the service date or the annual review date, because they can change when people change jobs, whereas our classified service review dates don't change if you maintain continuous employment. And for the most part, employees do get their steps severe. The vast majority of our employees are performing a satisfactory or above manner. I think Bob Hooper has his hand up. Well, but you are supposed to be reviewed annually, so there is that opportunity. Whether it happens or not is a whole another ball of wax. Correct, but it's not tied necessarily to somebody's step date or receiving a step date. Yeah. Any other questions along this line? All right, back to Betsy Ann for language. All right, so we were on page 15. The subsection A was in regard to the annual salary of the speaker and pro tem. Then you see on page 15, starting on line 11, that they also get their weekly salary and same concept that's going on here. It would show exactly what that salary would be at the beginning of the 21 biennium, but that does not include any increases from what they're making now, just updating the statutory figures, but then providing that that weekly salary would get adjusted at the beginning of the FY22 fiscal year, consistent with the compensation increases provided to other constitutional officers. Then we move over to page 16 and section 12. And this amends the statute governing the pay for all other legislators. And it's the same concept going on here, providing on line 12 what the pay will actually be at the start of the 21 biennium without any compensation increases, but saying that the beginning of the FY22 fiscal year and annually thereafter on January 1, that weekly compensation for legislators would be adjusted consistent with compensation increases provided to other constitutional officers. Then we get to page 17 and look at those pay act appropriations. You've already heard some testimony on that from our fiscal officers, but it starts out with the executive branch. And so this language is saying that the two-year agreements between the state and the VSEA, and then it lists the bargaining eugenics. So for the defender general, non-management, supervisory and corrections bargaining units. And then we added a language here and for the purpose of appropriation, the state's attorney's offices bargaining unit. And that was from speaking with John to who described how the state's attorney's office employees are not technically executive branch, but their appropriation amounts are included in this executive branch appropriation section.  Also including the collective bargaining agreement with the troopers association for that two-year period. And then it goes on to say, online 12 and salary increases for employees in the executive branch not covered by CBA are funded as follows since the non-CBA employees would get an increase in FY22. So this is saying in FY21, there's that amount appropriated from the general fund. It's 11 234 950 from the general fund to the secretary of administration for distribution to departments to fund the FY21 collective bargaining agreements and the requirements of this act. There's the amount coming from the transportation fund, the 3,868 451 from the T fund to the secretary of administration to go to AOT and DPS for to fund the increases for FY21. And then there's the other fund language on the 14,017,000 from special fund, federal fund and other sources. And then there's language online, nine about the ability for other funds in fiscal year 21, the secretary of administration can transfer from various appropriations and funds and from receipts of the liquor control board, the sums, the secretary determines to be necessary to carry out the purposes of the act of funding the collective bargaining agreements. This is standard pay act language, each of these subdivisions A through D about the sources of these funds. Same thing going on for FY22, this would fund not only the CBAs, but also the exempts and statutory officers increases for the executive branch. There's that 13,686,924 from the general fund to the secretary of administration for fiscal year 22 from the T fund, 4,764,116 and from other funds estimated amounts on page 19, line seven or 15,870,870,170. And there's again that transfer language. Then on line 15, there's that language, this section shall include sufficient funding to ensure administration of exempt pay plans authorized under 32VSA 1020C, that's the statute that's set forth up above in section four of the act, I believe. And that would include, there's that one-off oddity of the director of OPR being included in there, but that's just language to support those pay raises. For the judicial branch, this is allowing the chief justice to extend the judiciary CBA provisions to judiciary employees who are not covered by it, but then it provides the appropriations to do so on page 20 at the top, it's saying that the two-year agreements for the collective bargaining agreements for the two fiscal years and the salary increases for judicial branch employees not covered by CBA are covered as follows for the two fiscal years for FY21 872,330 from the general fund to the judiciary and in FY22, it's the 1,258,759 from general fund. And then legislative branch, Stephen Stephanie already addressed the 241,000 from general fund to legislative branch for 21 and then the 397,000 from general fund to legislative branch for FY22, then that would include the new legislative pay adjustment that's anticipated. And the effective date would be July 1, 2020, would be July 1, 2020, except that the two legislative pay statutes take effect on January 1, 2021 because it shows what the salaries will be at the beginning of the 21 biennium, but remember within the actual statute for those legislative pay statutes, it says specifically what your pay actually will be in January of 21, that doesn't have any sort of increase, but then in July of that year, at the beginning of FY22, you would get compensation increases consistent with other constitutional officers. That's it, Madam Chair. I need to come back with you with that session law section regarding the ability of the legislature to further revise the non-CBA funds as necessary depending on the fiscal outlook. And I'll come up with some language, hopefully to meet the committee's intent on that. Great, your pacing is impeccable. It is 1230 on the dot. Bob Hooper has a question. Less a question than a point of curiosity. On page 16 in the subsection 1052, where they refer to expenses, is 1052 a reference back to administrative bulletin 2.4 or something like that? Nope. Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. No, no, no, go ahead. You can see 1052 right below there. So what you're looking at on page 16, what you're looking at there is the salaries for the Speaker and Pro Tem. And so what that language is saying that in addition to their salaries, the Speaker and Pro Tem can get mileage, meals and lodging expenses provided to the other members of the General Assembly under section 2052B. And then you can actually take a look down at 1052B. Have I shown the language? Oh, sorry, it's blanked out by those three asterisks on page 17, line three. But that shows the allow... Let me interrupt you then. What's the guideline for setting reasonable expenses for the legislature? I mean, what do we shadow? Is there something by statute or we shadow something by choice? Oopsie. Let me see if I have the authority quickly to share screen. Oh, I don't have share screen authority. It's okay, send me an email. So yeah, I can send it to you. It just provides in statute your mileage reimbursement and that mileage reimbursement is at the rate per mile determined by the Federal Office of Governmentwide Policy publishing the Federal Register. You're able to get your meals and lodging allowance and that's you're used to all these expenses if you getting your meal and lodging allowances here through with your normal expense, expenses that you get for your legislative service. Thank you. Don Gannon has a question. Thank you. Following up on Representative Hooper's question some way, would this be an opportunity to clear up the language around expenses and that you actually have to drive your own car to get the mileage? That is a policy decision. Actually, Andrea gave me share screen so I can just show you if you want real quick. There's the statute. So this is the legislative pay statute for the legislators aside from Speaker and Pro Tem. This subsection B is in regard to the expenses you can receive and it's interesting. There's the mileage reimbursement in B-1 and then there's the meals and lodging allowance different term. So if you wanted to pursue that, you could do that here. That's a policy decision for you to make whether you want to address that in the pay act. Thank you. That's definitely a good section of the statute to call our attention to John because I've always been troubled by the fact that that seems to encourage more people to drive to the state house in their own vehicle as opposed to carpooling or taking public transit where they have access to it. Thank you Betsy Ann for that committee. Any other questions for Betsy Ann before we finish this topic? Okay, so I will put a very specific ask out to committee members which is to please contact me between now and the end of the day tomorrow and let me know who else you would like to have back in front of the committee with respect to the pay act. If there are other perspectives that you believe we need to hear from, if there are previous witnesses who you have additional questions for, if there are people you would like to have present when we come back into committee and have committee discussion about the pay act, I wanna make sure that we invite them. This is not as simple as if we were in person at the state house where we could simply take a five minute break and walk down to the cafeteria and find commissioner Festigy and ask her to come and join us. So we need to be a little more intentional with this and my goal will be to have the folks that we need invited by Zoom so that they can be with us for our next committee discussion on this which I expect will be on Tuesday.  So I'm gonna rely on committee members to tell me who you feel you need to have a part of the next committee discussion. Does that make sense to folks? Great. So that I believe ends our conversation about pay act but there's one other thing that I wanted to talk about. Well, two other things I wanted to talk about. One is that we have added an additional committee time this week because the Senate has sent us a bill on elections. The bill that they're sending us resolves the issue that was created when we asked the governor to give approval to the secretary of state for election adjustments and election planning. Governor doesn't care to be required to give his approval on that and the Senate is sending us a bill that takes the governor out of that. So we will be taking that up in committee tomorrow morning at 830 so I apologize for the off cycle committee time and really ask you to do everything you can to be with us tomorrow morning from 830 till about 10 so that we can look at, I think it's Senate Bill 348. Is that correct, Betsy Ann? Okay, so Betsy Ann can help us take a peek at what the Senate has done. We'll hear a couple of different perspectives on that so that we can be ready to move that along. This is something that is of a timely nature. Bob Hooper has a question. Madam Chair, can we vote by absentee on that? That's what I want to say. Well, that's funny. The only way we can do that is if I get to sign your cast. So Representative Hooper let me know that he has a little doctor's appointment that he needs to go to tomorrow morning so he may only be able to listen in for parts of what we're doing tomorrow if at all. So we'll see if we can get you in on what we're doing, Bob. Earbuds and Zoom by cell phone is how I've taken quite a few meetings in the last couple of weeks. The last thing that I want to say to the committee is I want to give you a heads up about a memo that the speaker sent to all committee chairs and vice chairs, and this is related to COVID relief fund appropriations. The speaker and the pro tem really feel strongly that we should be looking at the COVID relief fund money that has come from the federal government in a couple of different buckets. And that our goal should be to try to prioritize what our immediate COVID relief projects that we can get money out into Vermont's hands, getting Vermonters back to work, filling holes that are created by COVID, responding to this emergency in the short term and that we should aim to be getting that money out ASAP. And I believe, John Gannon, you can correct me if you know differently. I believe that the appropriations committee is hoping to hear back from committees by next Wednesday or that sort of short term. Yeah, okay. Alexa is nodding, yes. So next Wednesday, the appropriations committee would like to hear from committees about what I think are sort of the first round, how do we get relief out into the hands of Vermonters and out into our communities ASAP. The second bucket though, the speaker and the pro tem feel it's wise for us to take a deep breath and a pause and also to wait and see if there's any change in the restrictions that the federal government has put on that COVID relief money. Because as you know right now, the money is not supposed to be used to the backfill lost revenue due to COVID. So for instance, rooms and meals tax went through the toilet and sales tax. Likewise, we can't take COVID relief money and use it to plug in lost revenue right now. But there's a possibility that you know over the course of the next several months as most states in our country are looking at massive losses in revenue. There's a possibility that we will be given some more flexibility in being able to use that to backfill lost revenue. And so the idea is that we will divide the COVID relief fund money into two pots. One that we aim to get out quickly right now, get in the hands of Vermonters and get it helping right now. And that will hold on to some more of that money for our August, September timeframe to see whether there are other flexibilities that are granted in how we will pay for that or how we will use that money. John or anyone else have anything to add to that or do you have any questions for me about the framing of that? All right, nobody's diving for their button. So the speaker has given us each of the committees sort of a ballpark in terms of what she would like us to be thinking about. For most committees, or for many committees, I should say the pots of money are larger on the front end to, you know, let's get money out into our communities and out helping Vermonters right away. But for us, because our committee has a kind of a different jurisdiction, she's actually given us sort of the okay to think bigger for that second pot of money than for that first pot of money. So the targets that she's asked us to look at would be, you know, are there $10 million of projects that we could see in the short term and are there $50 million worth of investments that we could see for the longer term? So maybe, you know, thinking about the longer term projects that may have been on our minds that we could think about funding later on. So I know that this is all a little bit last minute and short timeframe, but I want to throw out to the committee this concept that we can be thinking of ways of offering relief to our communities in the near term and in the longer term. Jim Harrison. Yeah, I just want to raise a question relating to this and just tell me if I'm on the wrong path or the right path. And I'm not suggesting that this would be a priority, but obviously one of the things we've learned with COVID and the isolation and stay home were the issue of public records at town halls. And many had to do it by, one of the things we worked on last year, for example, was trying to provide some help with the fees to getting them electronic. And I think we'd probably most agree that in an ideal world, all those records would be electronic and available online. Could, if we chose, allocate some money to help with that effort. And again, I'm not, I'm just asking, is that the type of project that would be applicable if we wanted to go down that path? I, in my mind, you're on the right path. And I don't know the scope of that project and what that entails. I know that the state archivist has been convening a working group who have been thinking about those things and would welcome you to reach out and get some more information about that and see if that's something, to me, that's probably something that is, that doesn't fall into the first bucket of like, this is stuff that we wanna get out into the community immediately, but might fall into that longer term, okay, you know, let's plan this out. Yeah, and I'm not even suggesting it would be the priority right now. All I'm trying to ask is for an example, would that be the type of thing that we might look at? Yeah, thank you. I know that the judiciary in general has been, has been embarking in a process of, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know how terminology works, but some form of electronic filing of motions and actions and things. And you know, it has occurred to me that we should check in with the Judiciary Committee as well as with the Judiciary to see if there are lessons learned from the stay home, stay safe order that would enable them to invest in ways of, ways of being able to continue to do their work in an electronic fashion to the greatest extent possible. We also heard from the Commissioner of Public Safety earlier on in session about the electronic ticketing system that they're talking about wanting to deploy for both the state police and for all of our local law enforcement agencies. And maybe that's an investment that would make sense. So at any rate, we're given freedom to think a little bit about that. And so I would welcome you to mull over short-term let's get money out into our community's investments and longer-term COVID response lessons that we might want to make a recommendation on. So any other questions from committee? Sorry to go a little bit over. I know some of you are needing to get going on to other things. All right, thank you so much for staying for an extra 15 minutes or so. And I look forward to seeing you all at our meeting tomorrow morning.


Now a 77-year-old man, Adeni Ejola, who as well as a banker, Ayala Khan Wesley, and four others have testified that violence and other voting marked the March 18th Governorship election in their respective polling units in Ogum State. At the tribunal where the Governorship candidate of the People's Democratic Party, Ladiya Dibutu, has petitioned that Gov. Dakbua, a building of the All Progressives Congress, did not win majority of the lawful votes cast at the polls. At the resumed seat in the council to the petition, Gov. Uche called six more witnesses, including the 77-year-old man who vehemently insisted that violence ravaged the process at his polling unit at Ward 8 Unit 7 in Shagamo, local government area of the state. He explained that the election started at his polling unit, but was cancelled after three gunmen invaded the place, chased out voters and sent ballot papers, and as well as ballot boxes ablaze. Speaking at the sideline of the tribunal, cancelled to the electoral empire, Remy Olatibora expressed pleasure with the process of the tribunal so far. I'm satisfied as council to INEC. INEC is like a neutral party in this litigation, but we are also primarily a defender because the petitioners should order, respondent and INEC jointly and separately. So we have to define the petition as a respondent. We are putting in our best, in our cross-examination processes as we should do, and we thank God for good and listening tribunals. They are very patient people. The proceeding has been very smooth and very fine. Today we took additional six witnesses that's before the break of today. As of yesterday we were taking 35, so that's 41 now, not already. When we come back this evening, we have remaining four, that means 45. We are coming again tomorrow and we are coming like that the next week. We are bringing all the witnesses to prove the case we have made against the APC and its candidate. So I will say everything is moving very well. Are you satisfied with the process so far? That's what I'm saying, the process I'm satisfied and I'm satisfied too that at the end there will be victory. No cause for alarm. They have called six witnesses today and they will still call six in the afternoon session. But on our own side there's no cause for alarm. It's going according to what you plan. So our strategy is working. No cause for alarm. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.