Attorney General explains modest inflation-based fee increases added to budget bill

The attorney general's office and Joint Fiscal Office staff told a legislative committee on May 13 that three existing fees in the fiscal 2026 budget were increased to reflect inflation, producing an estimated $42,000 in additional revenue to a miscellaneous special revenue fund.

Todd Daylows, a representative of the Vermont Attorney General's Office, told the committee the office inadvertently did not notify the committee earlier about the fee proposals and apologized. “That is our mistake, and I apologize for that,” Daylows said. He said the changes update fees that had not been adjusted since 2009 or 2013 and are intended to align the office's fee revenue with the governor's budget request.

The fee adjustments include: raising the prescribed-products disclosure fee (the reporting tied to manufacturers of products that may be given to providers) from $500 (set in 2009) to $765, a 53% increase; increasing the annual registration fee for paid fundraisers from $500 (set in 2013) to $675, a 35% increase; and increasing the per-campaign notice/registration fee for paid fundraisers from $200 to $270. Chris Froop of the Joint Fiscal Office summarized that those three changes are included in the senate budget language at E 200.1 and E 200.2 and estimated the total additional revenue at “roughly $42,000” for FY26.

Why it matters: the adjustments affect regulated entities and the special revenue fund that supports enforcement and oversight. Daylows said the prescribed-products disclosure requirement stems from what he described as the state’s earlier “gift ban” reporting for manufacturers, which focuses on manufacturers and companies that provide products to prescribers rather than the individual providers themselves. He said the paid-fundraiser rules apply to external firms hired to do solicitation work and that, historically, those firms sometimes retained large shares of donations, which is why states regulate them.

Details and counts: Froop told the committee the Joint Fiscal Office’s data show about 16 annual paid-fundraiser registrations and roughly 100 annual notice-of-solicitation filings, and about 20 prescribed-product disclosure filings annually. The budget language with the numeric changes is posted (the attorney general's office noted it appears on page 65 of the budget document), and Froop said the JFO will post a one-page summary to the committee web page under his name for the date of the meeting.

Discussion, process and next steps: Daylows said the attorney general’s office submitted fee data through the standard fee-report process but regretted that the committee had not seen the recommendation earlier in the cycle. Committee members and staff discussed the improved annual fee-reporting process between the administration and JFO and noted that many agencies now submit data each year; the committee did not take a formal vote on the fee language during this hearing. Froop noted the language was added on the senate side; conferees and committee staff will continue to review the provisions as part of conference committee work.

The presenters characterized the changes as modest updates based on inflation and noted that, if fees had been adjusted annually, the increases would have been smaller each year but would have reached similar levels over time. No formal committee action was recorded at this session.