House committee hears JFO briefing on how Vermont pays for state IT, flags CIT fund shortfalls and tech‑modernization choices

Montpelier — The House Energy Digital Infrastructure Committee on April 2 heard a Joint Fiscal Office briefing on how Vermont pays for state information technology and the choices the Legislature faces to fund large IT modernization projects.

JFO staff told the committee that most executive‑branch IT operations are paid through an internal service pool called the Communications and Information Technology Fund (CIT Fund), which creates duplicated appropriations on the budget and has produced recurring shortfalls that the administration and the Legislature have been addressing. Emily Byrne, deputy fiscal officer at the Joint Fiscal Office, said, “The House just passed the ’26 FY 26 budget. That was $9,060,000,000 of unduplicated funds,” and JFO noted a larger duplicated total of $11,620,000,000 appears in some budget tables because of how internal service funding flows.

Why it matters: State IT underpins core services — from taxes and unemployment benefits to courts and parks reservations — and the committee was told that decisions about how to pay for both routine IT operations and one‑time modernization projects affect program budgets across agencies.

Key points from the briefing

• Internal service fund model and duplicate appropriations: JFO explained that many executive‑branch agencies receive appropriations for program work and then pay ADS (Agency of Digital Services) out of the CIT Fund for shared IT services. That structure means the same dollars are reflected in agency appropriations and again in ADS’s CIT Fund appropriation, which JFO characterized as a frequent source of confusion for budget watchers.

• Operating costs vs. modernization costs: JFO summarized a working distinction used in the briefing: operating costs are recurring…