Senate Finance Committee chair lays out "chair's proposal" to balance FY27 budget

The Senate Finance Committee reviewed a chair's construct of the FY27 budget during a committee meeting in which Emily Gardner of the Joint Fiscal Office walked members through line-by-line changes and options for a contingency list.

Gardner said the document is "the chair's proposal" and stressed it is not a final budget but "my honest my efforts to get to a balanced budget. We lost a little bit of money there," language she used to describe efforts to close the gap while preserving priority items. She said the construct assumes alignment with the House on several miscellaneous tax-bill positions and therefore should be updated if conferees change those bills.

Why it matters: Gardner reported about $28.1 million of base funding would be available for one-time investments under the construct — a bit more than the House version but less than the governor's. Committee members were asked to review the spreadsheet and prepare for a straw vote to finalize a clean copy for the next meeting.

Key program and line-item changes: Gardner and the chair identified multiple specific deletions and reductions in the construct. Among the items noted:

- Positions and program funding removed: an additional mediator position and an added Ethics Commission position were not included in this construct; those lines were described as removed from the proposal.

- Vacancy-savings restorations moderated: where the House had restored vacancy savings fully for State's Attorneys, victim advocates and sheriffs, the chair's construct restores only 50% of those vacancy-savings for each entity, a correction Gardner said was needed because the House had already restored more than budgeted vacancy savings in some cases.

- Program funding adjustments: the construct does not add $100,000 for the Center for Crime Victim Services and reduces Vermont Access Network funding from $450,000 (House) to $350,000 in this version; a member suggested restoring $100,000 to public-access networks if additional funds remain.

- Natural-resources and fee authority: the proposal would allow Fish and Wildlife to charge an excess fee under certain technical changes, a point Gardner said was actively discussed "across the hall." Committee members questioned whether removing fee authority elsewhere would create a $50,000 shortfall for Fish and Wildlife; members agreed to keep the item open pending resolution of related tax-bill language.

- One-time and bill-level removals: Gardner flagged several one-time or bill-specific deletions, including elimination of additional funding for a legal-aid help line, reductions in vote-rec grants ($300,000 reduction to $200,000 additional), removal of a marketing appropriation for the Vermont prescription drug discount card program, and elimination of ready-response program additional funding. H.67 would not fund a new JFO accountability position for two years in this construct.

Contingency list approach: the chair's construct contemplates using a mixture of sources (for example, portions of tech-mod fund interest and transfers) to seed a contingency list. Gardner described an approach of taking $9.55 million from the tech-mod fund and placing items on a contingency list funded at an agreed percentage (for example, 50%), but she cautioned that April revenue data and income-tax receipts could change the general-fund outlook and therefore the ultimate availability of contingency funds.

Other policy notes: the construct moves a previously planned transfer to the community disaster relief fund into a one-time appropriation to the Agency of Transportation (a net-zero technical change), and proposes adding $2 million to the rural industrial development program on top of a prior $5 million appropriation made in earlier years.

Process and next steps: committee members agreed to review the spreadsheet, consider items for restoration or removal, and meet again to conduct a straw vote the next day so JFO can prepare a finalized clean copy for formal consideration. Several language items and sections of the AHS budget were deferred pending input from Senator Line.

No formal votes were recorded in the transcript; the meeting concluded with members agreeing to reconvene to finalize choices and hold a straw vote.