SmartTranscript of House Agriculture – 2025-02-26 – 2:00PM

[Chair David Durfee]: Alright. Commissioner Fitsko, welcome back. I'm not sure where we left off last week when we were looking at the the budget for FBR, the recommended budget. But, if you I don't know whether you wanna walk through quickly the first half of the presentation, or did you wanna pick up where you left off? [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: Okay. Thank you for having us back. For the record, Danielle Fitsko. I'm the Commissioner of Forest, Parks, and Recreation, and I have with us our director of business finance business administration. [Annalie Blimmer]: I'm Annalie Blimmer. Thanks for having me back. [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: So you're right. We did get to go through the whole presentation, but I certainly was a little speedy at the end. So happy to to do any follow-up. I think based on some of the questions that we received last time, Ainsley may have pulled together a few additional slides. Mhmm. [Chair David Durfee]: So I [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: think she's prepared to go through that, and I was just gonna pass it to Ainsley to sort of wrap up some of our budget pieces for FY twenty six proposed budget. [Annalie Blimmer]: Thanks, Danny. I do still have a little bit of a to do. I have all the data for a slide, but I wasn't able to quite pull it together for today. But I do plan on, picking back up where we left off last Friday with our budget development form, referred to as our ups and downs as it reflects all the changes, whether up or down from the previous fiscal year. So if that sounds okay, I'll start off there. I'm just gonna jump right on ahead. Okay. Great. So our our first appropriation is our administration appropriation. And we'll really quickly just point out how how I'm gonna go through each of these is that I'll go to each appropriation. We have five of them, and I'll go down by column, so by fund. And, hopefully, it's easy enough to follow. And please stop me if you have any questions. So for general fund for our administration appropriation, as Danny mentioned at the tail end of our testimony last week, we do have one new generally funded grants position. The position was recently transitioned from the four zero three division to administration. It was created to assist in managing our fifty million dollar federal grants portfolio, which I'd be remiss not to mention has doubled in the last five years. And then also plus some eighteen million in state funded awards. And it was really a critical move to meet the growing needs of the department, and you'll see that reflected in salary and benefits under general fund. And, Danny, I don't know if you wanna I know we talked about it really quickly at the end of the testimony, but if you have anything you wanna expand on with that one. [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: Yeah. This was a a really probably one of the hardest decisions I've actually may had to make in this position so far was to move a position from the forest economy program over to the business office. The way we operate within the administration is you you can move if you have a vacant position, and that just happened to be the one vacant position we had at that time. So it it did get moved to the business office, and it's reflected here in this budget. The administer administration division basically is our business office and then the commissioner's office. [Speaker 3 ]: So [Chair David Durfee]: either you, Ansley, or commissioner Fiscope, this is there now technically a vacancy in in the business development side or that could be filled, you know, a year from now or in how how might that work? [Speaker 3 ]: Or is [Chair David Durfee]: it temporary is it temporarily lost or permanently lost? [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: Yes. You have a certain number of positions that are assigned to your department. You can so that position that was vacant in first economy was that position number is now moved to the administration. So there's if you have that same number of positions. [Chair David Durfee]: Okay. [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: So there's not there is a there really isn't a vacant position there because it was moved. [Chair David Durfee]: But you won't be advertising and trying to fill that position in other words yet? [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: Right. The only way we can bring on additional positions is we we'd need the resources to be able to do that and justify the funding. [Chair David Durfee]: I think we have to Sorry. Just and just don't mean to belabor it, but wanna try and understand. How how was it that there was a vacant position there before that that wasn't funded? [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: Well, there was a we had a retirement in the forest economy program. We had a long term forest economy program lead, which is Paul Frederick. He was a giant in the program. He retired. We went to recruit his position, it was an internal recruitment. So Catherine Servideo took his position, and then it was Catherine's position that she previously held that was vacant that was moved to the business office. Okay. So those funds, they were the general funded position. The position number and those funds moved to the at administration. [Chair David Durfee]: Okay. Thank you. [Representative John O'Brien]: Representative O'Brien. So, Danny, like, I I guess, I'm trying to think when when there was a position that that was created because the legislature, you know, came up with resources slash funding for you. Like, was the climate forester like that or was that newly created? [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: So the Climate Forester was a position that, back when I was director of Forester, I wrote a grant to fund that position, the American Forester. And when you have grant money that comes in that's new, you request a limited service position. So it's not it's not a permanent position. It's limited service based on the grant dollars. So I was able to get a a limited service position for the Climate Forester. And now we have it has been extended because we brought in additional grant dollars to keep that position. So that is not a state funded position. It's all funded by federal grants. And we have a limited service to it based on when the grant dollars go away. [Representative John O'Brien]: Yep. Well, that's good [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: to know. But definitely, it's hugely important role. And I've that we were the first in the nation to have a climate forest in Vermont. Then they all used our petition description. So that's our that's our admin budget. Pretty heavily general funds really doesn't there's really no places to really bring in too much funding. Little bit of the special funds you see there is basically park special fund and some of the federal dollars, that we just hired on for land and water conservation fund position. [Annalie Blimmer]: Move on to the next. [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: This is [Annalie Blimmer]: our forestry appropriation. So general fund increased are largely due to upward pressures and increased benefits. We've also seen a large increase for some reason for transportation and travel related operating expenses, which is represented at the bottom of the the first column. And you also see an increase in our internal service funds here as well. For clean water, we do have a clinic additional clean water funds that Danny mentioned last week. Much of this will support BMPs and also SCIDR bridges, and you'll see that represented in the contracted expenses. And then for federal, again, as Danny mentioned Danny mentioned last week, we have several new federal awards expected in f y twenty six and twenty or twenty five and twenty six, and you'll see that mostly in increased contracted expenses. Our urban community forestry grants will be closed out this year, which is why you see a decrease in subrecipient grants. And then we also just got a one approval for four federal inflation reduction act IRA funded positions, which is where you'll see four hundred and forty six thousand in other personal services. However, since these are IRA, we have we are in a holding pattern right now on those positions. And the last thing I'll mention with this appropriation is an internal an an interdepartmental. We also touched on this last week, but we have the MOU with ACCD for recreational improvements to three access areas, and we're contracting out that work. So there's a one million dollar contract contract expenses line item in the budget. [Chair David Durfee]: Representative O'Brien, [Representative John O'Brien]: what what's IRA again? [Annalie Blimmer]: Inflation Reduction Act. [Representative John O'Brien]: Oh, okay. [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: And then, basically, the direction coming down from the federal government is they are looking there's a ninety day pause on those IRA grants, BIL grants, bilateral infrastructure law grants, and they're reviewing them one by one. But then if they have anything related to diversity, equity, inclusion, or a climate lens, those are the what they're looking for. They have started to release some grants. They have actually have pulled some back. We have not had had any direction on ours so far. [Chair David Durfee]: Okay. I think we're good. [Annalie Blimmer]: K. The next slide is our parks appropriation. Excuse me. And the general fund increase in parks is almost exclusively due to internal service funds. Property and commercial insurance went up almost five hundred thousand dollars. Additionally, I think you guys took testimony on this morning, so this should be new not not news to you, but the new BYCC serve, learn, earn program based funding was put into our f y twenty five budget as personal services. It should've been grants because it's a recipient. It's granted back out. So you'll see a decrease in personal services for five hundred thousand and then an increase in grants, and we're just moving things around so it's budgeted correctly. For the park special fund, also mentioned last week, we budgeted for the landing craft or the boat in f y twenty five, so that increased the budget by one point two million. So you'll see that now as a decrease. And then also, we did do a lot of, extensive exercises to review budget to actuals in the last few years. We did a lot of rightsizing and moving things around to more strategically budget. That said, since I have the opportunity to share it again, I'll just say that I wanna highlight that mostly due to inflation, Park's operating expenses have increased by thirty four percent over the last five years. So we're seeing a lot of upward pressure on that budget specifically. [Chair David Durfee]: Representative Nelson? [Representative Richard Nelson]: You you you've increased by thirty four percent over the last five years. Is that due to insurance and wages or inflation or all three combined? [Annalie Blimmer]: All of it. In insurance is hitting the general fund more than the park special fund, but salaries and and inflation absolutely are hitting the special fund. We also so it's now it's but it's gotten a little bit better, but there was supply chain issues for a couple of years. And then our energy cost just went through the roof right after COVID. So, again, there's that piece of it as well. But inflation has been kind of the steady increase over the last many years. [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: We have a an internal working group now just sort of looking at our opportunities for revenue, recognizing that our revenue is not keeping up with our expenses probably going forward. We'll have to make some tweaks. [Representative Richard Nelson]: Maybe not a question for you, Ainsley or or Danny or more is the state ever thought of self insured on their health care? I mean, the amount of money they must write out to Blue Cross, Blue Shield, or whoever versus the benefits received, you know, the uses. It you know, being such a large employer. I know some large employers self insure. [Chair David Durfee]: I just [Representative Richard Nelson]: observation. [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: Yeah. I think it's out of my level of understanding totally. I don't know if you [Representative Richard Nelson]: know figure it out though. I have faith in you. You could figure it out. [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: They can tell us how much to budget for. [Chair David Durfee]: I I actually wanted to ask about the the, the five hundred thousand that was moved down to the grant line. And I understand that's just really a clerical change. But did does the department have to dedicate some staff time to a grant like that? [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: Yes. And we and in this our relationship with v y c c, there we do retain some administrative funds to to do [Chair David Durfee]: that. Okay. Any other questions about this page? [Representative John O'Brien]: Just when you're talking about inflation, I just wondered if you've calculated the like, all the park fees and how much they've gone up just to stay at a state park, I bet it's not keeping up with inflation. [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: Right. Our our park our park prices, our admissions to get in, and, are all made through rule. So the last time we did a rule update was in August of twenty twenty two. So that's our opportunity to think ahead and start to right size, balance that sort of cost revenue and expenses, really. And I think it's a recognition that we've had great attendance despite two years of some difficult weather challenges where we had several parks closed. So we we stayed at just over a million visitors the past two years. So we're you know, we we had seen it steadily increase. We did see an increase last year, but it was after a dip because of twenty three was not only did we have extreme flooding, that was a really wet summer and and that our visitation just goes down. [Representative Richard Nelson]: Oh, no. I was Okay. [Speaker 3 ]: Leave it in here for a minute. [Chair David Durfee]: Thank you. K. I think we're good on that page. [Annalie Blimmer]: Okeydoke. The next is the division of lands administration and recreation. So we have two new grants program staff, and they're split across pretty much all the funding buckets. In general fund, our pressure is mostly due to increased benefits pressure. Our special fund increases are primarily due to planned land acquisitions. That's a little bit last week. And then our federal our federal increases are subrecipient awards for a land water conservation fund, which is an increase of two point two million dollars. And then we also have special fund a special fund subrecipient grant for BASC that's increased by about fifty fifty three thousand dollars, I believe. In interdepartmental, we do have a new MOU with DHCB. And, Dianna, if you wanna talk about some of that state lands work with DHCB. [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: Sure. This is exciting that we're partnering with well, we always partner with DHCB. But in in particular here, they're providing funding to help us with our state lands planning. When Jim Duncan was in, you heard that we're behind on some of our state lands planning. We were are bringing on a position that will help us do more plans, also some funds to help with data so we can work with GIS a little bit better. And I think also contracted so we can contract out some of our public engagement, which is so important when we're going out for public comment. So that's exciting to have that. You'll notice mostly with this division, it's a lot of money that we bring in that goes right out to communities and nonprofits [Chair David Durfee]: on the recreation side. Okay. [Annalie Blimmer]: And our last slide is our final appropriation, which is our parks and forest roads appropriation, which remains lovely level funded from f y twenty five. So no increases or decreases here. [Chair David Durfee]: Completely. That'll be [Annalie Blimmer]: bottom the final the totals for each of the different appropriations or funds. [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: And and this fund is, funding to help us maintain our state forest and parks access roads. So this is really helping us manage that six hundred miles of roads that we have. Not necessarily we have funding to clean water or help with, like, best practices where we know we have a pollution source. This is this regular maintenance of all those roads. [Chair David Durfee]: There's no there's no inflationary increase here. Has there been an increase in previous years, or has this been held flat for a while? [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: This has been held flat for a while. It used to be up to, like, seven hundred thousand. It was at one point. It has it took a hit, and it's made remained flat. We are fortunate to have the clean water funds that are allowing us to do some really good work on our roads, but that is limited to points of pollution. But we do have a request in for f y twenty six and f y twenty seven capital funds that would also help with roads. [Chair David Durfee]: Alright. Representative O'Brien. [Representative John O'Brien]: Just off off topic, but we heard earlier about changes to active fifty last year and and whatever act that was, and and roads came up. And I just wondered it I was thinking about state parks and all your roads and that, you know, you continue to build roads. Do ever do you ever have to go through act two fifty permitting to put in roads? [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: Yeah. So that so last year, you're right. They had the road rule that was passed that was is gonna go is planning through the LURB land use review board to go through some process of what that looks like. If we definitely go through act two fifty, most of our roads are established. It's if for us, it would be any new new acquisition for putting in a road or if it was an expansion. And mainly, it would be for our state parks, so probably the ones that we get review. But roads are exempt if they're for forestry access or recreation in act two fifty as well. So [Representative John O'Brien]: Oh, that's interesting. Thanks, Danny. [Chair David Durfee]: Okay. Hey. Any other questions? Alright. Did you have anything else on your end that you wanted to mention about either what we've just been through or any other part of the budget? [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: No. I think I think yeah. I appreciate you bringing us back to go a little bit more in detail so you understand our budget. This like we mentioned this year, this was just meeting sort of our base. Our increase was mostly at it was either general fund was just to meet our upward pressures and staffing and internal service of funds, and then also additional grants that we received. So it's pretty level. [Chair David Durfee]: Yep. I I may have asked this last week too, but just thinking again about vacancies, open positions across the across the department. How many, if if any, do you have at the moment? [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: A few. Not many. What typically happens is maybe somebody leaves and then we hire that, probably somebody from within. So there's, like, a little cascading of vacant positions, to be honest. So I would say on our classified positions, we go out for recruitment right away. We and we fill them. This is I think we're pretty fill full. We do have as as we mentioned, we did go after six new positions with federal funding. Five of them are tied to IRA dollars, so we're holding on those. And they are limited service positions. So while we have the position numbers, we don't wanna bring anybody on if we're gonna potentially at risk of losing them. So I would say we really don't have any. Right? Right? [Annalie Blimmer]: I don't think we have I don't think we have a single vacant position right now. Though we are hiring four hundred and fifty seasonal staff right at Thomas Parker. [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: Tell your family and friends. [Chair David Durfee]: Alright. We will. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you for, coming back in again. [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: Yeah. Thank you for having us. I appreciate the thought that you all put into your porting holes. Hope to have a good break. I don't think I'll see you the rest of the week. So have a good break, and we'll see when you get back. [Representative John O'Brien]: Okay. Thank you. [Annalie Blimmer]: K. Thanks so much. [Chair David Durfee]: Take care. [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: Bye, buddy. [Chair David Durfee]: Did anybody have any reactions or comments or anything that we need to reflect further on? [Representative John O'Brien]: Ricky? Yeah. That's good. Boy, like, with the carpet in a bag. Here and a [Representative Richard Nelson]: half ago, and I want to ask if what's going [Chair David Durfee]: to need you to send them back to bag [Speaker 3 ]: for a nice young man to work with. [Chair David Durfee]: Okay. So we have Can't really go ahead and have one. We have one final thing to do, I think, and that's to take a throttle on the letter to appropriations. So everyone had a chance to review the letter, make some changes. If you went to Pranav, got those changes in. Anybody feels that you wanna see the updated letter before we vote, we can print it out or we can just say with the changes that we discussed. Work with it that way. So if that's okay with everybody, then, representative Lipsky, if you'd wanna follow the role [Speaker 3 ]: It is go follow the role. So chairman has asked us to vote on this letter before it to the health of operations committee, and it's a out of jail. So I'm gonna start with chairman Dorothy. Yes. Yes. Vice chair Supernaugh. Yes. Representative Morgan, ranking member. Yes. Representative Lipsky? Yes. Representative O'Brien? Yes. Representative Burt is absent. Representative Nelson? Yes. Representative Bosler. [Chair David Durfee]: Yes. [Speaker 3 ]: The vote tally is seven yes, zero, no, one, abs. [Representative John O'Brien]: Sedona didn't vote. [Speaker 3 ]: Doesn't have a vote. Yeah. That's but I'm gonna not put a reporter because nothing's being reported. [Chair David Durfee]: Yeah. Good. Okay. So it's [Representative John O'Brien]: best to vote for straw polls. Like, you're great. You know? You didn't say I vote or text us? [Chair David Durfee]: Yeah. Is that good? That's a great question, and I wanted to get the answer to that question last week when we were voting on the other letter, and I didn't. I think it's a little bit [Representative John O'Brien]: Right. Right. Because I right. I had to leave, but I told you Yeah. Yes. Yep. [Speaker 3 ]: No. I I can't hear you. [Chair David Durfee]: Are different than the folks. [Speaker 3 ]: They're oh, yeah. [Chair David Durfee]: Now we do know that for a regular actual vote, you can vote remotely. Right. But you do have to yeah. Three times. Yeah. You have three days. But you do actually have to be on Zoom at the time. Right? And we're not allowed to say we'll check-in with you later. So it have the solution to that is if somebody can't be here, if we wanna get everybody's vote, which I would like to do every time, is schedule a vote for a time when people can hop on Zoom even if it's just for a minute. [Annalie Blimmer]: I mean, [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: today, Greg wasn't here to read the letter, so we couldn't really That's true. Like, we could call him and say, like, hey. What do you think? But he hasn't seen [Annalie Blimmer]: it yet. [Speaker 3 ]: Right. Yeah. And so, yeah, all the way these things we do, this particular vote is gonna change the world. [Representative Richard Nelson]: Not one absent. [Annalie Blimmer]: It might. You never know. [Speaker 3 ]: It'd be. I'm not I'm good playing. For the board. [Chair David Durfee]: Before we go offline and and get ready for the floors or anything else anybody has today. [Representative Richard Nelson]: Is universal school meals, like, I I know we didn't put it in our letter. Should that have been in there? [Annalie Blimmer]: It is in line. We did put it in. [Chair David Durfee]: There's a line. There is. Oh, okay. It's the The body place. Yeah. It's just really a passing rep. [Representative Richard Nelson]: Okay. Yeah. As previously communicated, yeah, yes. Does not support. Thank [Chair David Durfee]: you. Thank you. And thank you for mentioning that because otherwise, I wouldn't have thought to include it. So I think it's doing that. I just was when I had to step out, I was asked to go make sure to work down to ways and means to just testify on that letter and to answer questions that that they might have had. So [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: The letter about universal mail? Yes. I don't know. [Speaker 3 ]: And we had some proxies participating in that. Do you recall what the vote was on that? [Chair David Durfee]: That was a zero. Yeah. Zero. Yep. [Commissioner Danielle Fitsko]: May we got it unanimous. [Speaker 3 ]: Yeah. Wow. [Chair David Durfee]: Alright. Well, thank you everybody for your work on the budget letter for those requests. I you know, there's a lot that goes into that. So we will I think we can go offline then, and we'll be on the

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SmartTranscript of House Agriculture – 2025-02-26 – 2:00PM

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