so good evening everyone thanks for coming up thank you very much so the two thousand and fifteen legislature has started and we have set up four of these meetings to chat answer questions have discussions whatever  and the the other the first five terms i was on the human services committee this year i have been assigned to the judiciary committee and i remember that first year  learning curve was about as steep as i thought anyone could ever do and it seems to have come back to do this but one of the reasons the speaker asked me to move to is because of the important issue of child protection and child protection is it is a topic that will be taken up both in the human services committee and you to sherry and it just so happened that due to dish area committee had many vacancies in fact i think there were only three returning people of them remember  so they you know that's always you don't fill it all with new people and you didn't want it all with people i had no experience in any of this and so the speaker did ask you if i would move  you know you can guarantee that you know when the speaker ask you to move you ought to have a very good reason not to do with you if your state know so so i did then you know it's this a great committee and i'll tell you so you know you always have to have some some real something you really look forward to and the chair of this committee brings in the most beautiful flowers every day on the sets on the table and these book pays are gorgeous that day work to keep kids from starting to smoke and other smoking related policies and also for my report and early childhood education so so i change is now the chair of the house health care this being my fourth term we've had three different chairs in the three previous sessions and there are a lot of legislature that seems to be a very quick way to find your way out of the legislature to chair the health care committee so but so i'm always means which is entirely as you know the language to learn around the tax world that there is care but it's much broader i mean really much virtually everything in the ways and means committee so i think it could be a really interesting year for i mean you know the number one problem forces going to be a know the ways and means committee is the tax committee there that the committee that that works on recollecting robin there were as the appropriations committee the committee that spends the money that creates the budget why i don't know why those names go that thirty seven difference here in southern vermont you know really becomes local factors and you know it seems clear to me that there is there is some issue here and i had a chat with the assistant attorney general for consumer affairs about this today because we're putting together a bill for this where if we pass this they will get information about market share  projection of how much extra money is coming in going to put in people's pockets because their projections are that you know it's going to stay down through the whole year so if you really is a significant benefit to vermont financially consumers so you know vermont does not control gas price may that i think we all knew that we always knew that with and it's always a debate of whether you want to control have the state controller  not a couple years ago this was really a big discussion of propane prices you know that were with up and down and spikes and whether they should be controlled by the state so what some legislators did along with the attorney general's office was to see if there was anything we could do legislatively to not control the price i mean that because we can't do that you know unless we would change that part of the law but but to have ways of helping understand or to tough i like what the wholesalers are doing because it is it is a pretty well thought thing that is the wholesalers that doing this and so besides what george just said about this bill there's they they will also the wholesale issue also report the wholesale price that they are selling the gas to retailers and that the  they're going to resign or they're going to have to report that every so often which i don't remember exactly so that was the that was the suggestions from the attorney general's office it was put into a bill that has been s going to be introduced that and along with that then on thursday thursday day after tomorrow from five to seven at the state house the commerce committee the house commerce committee is going to have a hearing on gas prices in northwestern vermont that's what they're calling northwest of vermont so this is a hearing means that you know the legislators are there and they invite you to come and make you know ask questions and make your statements and so anyone is open to anyone it's you know in the state house and the big meeting room on the first floor and you know sometimes this is covered by some of the television stations well the major television stations you know have clipped that sign up but i think so so that's it that's the other thing that that is reclassified so they couldn't go there and i'd love to see them just come by a station somewhere even central valley somewhere else and put competition in the neighborhood then the prices probably actually that's that's another thing in the building is that if  if they can't station sells that it has to be reported who bought it right you know so so you have an idea of if it's a major oil companies are buying up the small the small stations the legislative council is the one that actually draft bill the write some up and everything and so it was drafted chris pearson from burlington was that is the lead sponsor of it and after it got drafted up then he goes around and he tries to get other people to help support it to sign on to it now that doesn't mean that's the only people that support it but he goes around so he talked  chipping county house members and and some others and got them to sign on and then he he turns it and it comes to the floor for what's called first reading there's three readings of a bill to get it to pass in the house so first reading where they only read the name of the bill and the speaker signs it to a committee goes to the committe and the committee then it can choose to take it up meaning they discuss it and possibly vote on it or the term is leave it hanging on the wall because when the all the bills that come to a committee of put you you get a little slip of paper to put on the wall so you can see what bills are in your committee has been so the term is going to hang on the wall typically means that there's no chance of it getting  the final decision is with the committee chair and committee chairs work differently some take vote to a committee members to see which bills you know have the most interest others just choose whichever ones they want and there's a lot of other factors about which bills are going to be taken up so this this bill assuming that i have to assume is going to be taken up so let's just be civil it gets taken up so that he's very interested in this because he up he's also the one that's having this hearing on thursday night and he also he he reported today in our caucus meeting of the different prices that he watched week for multiple times people will or can contact him and and want to testify about the built to do it he will ask people you know you know there's all different kinds of things and so pros and cons and do it and eventually he got to a point in time where you feel you have taken as much testimony if you need to take to make a decision on the b now sometimes you know that two days sometimes that's three weeks sometimes it you know you know it depends on the type of bill of the number of people that want to testify and this and that so what happens then is the committee goes through the bill line by basically line by will line to make sure they understand it and to make sure that the way it is written is what they want and it and they didn't hear something from somebody else that changes their mind or something so a lot of it  word smithing a lot of it is saying no we don't want this or we want to add this server blah blah blah so so it's they call it markup because you're just going through this it can take anywhere from an hour to two or three days to do this when eventually you get to the point where everyone sort of an agreement that there's no more changes to put into the bill right then and and then a vote is called for and so then there's a a vote of the committee and if the majority of the committee members to vote vote in favor but then the bill goes to the full house which means that it comes back to the floor of the house for the second time for the second reading and that's when they read the bill and then there's all the major discussion on it somebody from the committee will will report it will talk about it explain everything about it house members have an opportunity to ask questions make comments know pros and cons and and all of this and that discussion you know sometimes it is zero sometimes it goes on for four and a half hours and so at some point when there is no more people that help raise their hands up to our stand up to talk you know the speakers say ready for the question and then you vote on it and you know it so anyway so if you if you vote in favor of it then that just means that you vote to send it to third reading which is the which is the second vote so it has to you vote on it twice in the chamber and if it passes that third reading then it goes to the senate and the process is repeated i'm sure george has to have no other name on it than yourself other times you feel that you want to get more names on it to show support for both you when it goes to the committee and when it comes back to the floor for voting and stuff but it's you know just because there's a lot of names on it doesn't mean that it's going to pass any more of that if you're not or you can be taken up you know i put in a bill today with no other names on need for anybody else this isn't the big political issue this is just you know sort of oversight the way it's set up so you know sometimes you have things like that sometimes you have stuff that you really you wan only gauge support for but you want to sort of raise awareness so coming in with those kind of bills you know you're trying is made people interested this you can get people to sign and there are people that want to sign on to show their support for this and so for example i have some in a lot of bill to deals with smoking and there are people that you know feel passionate about this that as i and they they want to sign on to it because as they just feel that way and you know this this is you know this has nothing to do with party affiliation in fact if you can get people from all three parties to sign onto it it you know it's that has a different look too but it still doesn't guarantee anything it's also what what chris wanted to do was he wanted to topped up all i think all chipping county in franklin county legislators to let them know he's introducing this and to see if they if they supported this type of effort for those people who are really interested in this particular bill how can the best go on the website you know they're there they're on the website for you to read and you can follow what's happening with them on the legislative website and then once they get it when they're in a committee that we're on the committees web page to most likely if they're doing anything with it you can always go and testify to the committee or if you just want to go and you know if they have a public hearing go and speak the or if you just are interested you know that the place is open you can go into the familiar with listen listen to the debates and people you know walk into work out constantly while we're talking in committee rooms you know  list of committees so if you're fine if you know what committee it's on this is a good place to start if you don't know what's committees on there's a search tool there by bills and you can just put in keywords so for like gas prices or something and it would take you to the build number and then that will take you to the committee and when you get to the committee page you can look up their agenda and see what day they are taking up this bill and any testimony when anyone comes in and testifies they know and they have a handout or you know written testimony or something they're required to print and soft copy and so that's all all of those things are on the website now so everything that the committee members see so you so you can do that from afar if you go to the state house and you go down the hall where the committee rooms are and it's during the time when committees are in session when we're not on the floor you'll see all the doors closed they're closed only for noise you can walk into any one of those and it's a ok you don't have to feel bad about it ever is happening all the time you open the door you walk in you find a seat you can sit down and stay for the whole you can stay for a minute you know it's just the this and it's an open thing the only reason for the door of being closed is because there's always in the hallway and so they are listening what they're taking ok so the test the way the testimony works is set up only people who have been put on the agenda can testify so in the way you get the w you can use the way you asked them to be able to testify is to well there's a variety of ways but the main way is to contact the committee chair and the committee assistant the best thing to do is to email the two of them the assistant is a person who like the secretary of the of the of the committee and ask them to testify the chair is the one that makes the decision but the assistant is the one who contacts you and tells you when it's going to happen you know and ask you does ten o'clock on thursday work for you that we have an opening between ten and eleven so that so that's why i put them both in because the chair will just say contact so and so whatever and in those all those addresses are right there on the on the website also the whole list the committee members of well you know the problem with the way the gasoline taxes now it's not x number of cents per gallon or something there's there's three or four different different parts to the gas tax and i only know this because i flipped it up the other night because somebody asked me and i had forgotten this and so there because somebody said it used to be on the pump you know accents federal tax accent state taxes so like that and that's not any more why i looked it up i can see why is it that the tax is divided up into different parts and part of the reason for this is because when the when the prices going up the if you have a percentage then you can collect more revenue when the price is going down if it's a percentage you collect less revenue so that's when you would like to fix price per gallon and so what they tried to do was do a combination of the two based on different criteria so that so that the funding stays more lovable then you know they spikes for when the price but but you know they pay for more roads this summer than ever ever been paved and they fixed more bridges in the last year than ever been fixed in vermont so you know if this is definitely improved substantially since you know for sales tax but the but the gas tax is pretty close to what we had estimated last year put into the budget so we so right now we're looking good for the fourteen fifteen budget you know of collecting enough money to do that now whether the budget was enough to repair all the roads us a different question but but it's not that is one t wording but at one time that was taken to mean that it could pay for things like state police cars or something something to do with the state police and that's where this whole thing came up about that the gas tax goes to pay for other things well it was paying because state police gasoline doesn't pay tax and so you know but but the car the state police cars use the road and so some of the gas tax money went went for that and that's where this whole thing about how it gets used for something else got going but the the law says that it can only be used in and i can't remember if we change that and tighten that wording up or not but anyway it was it was an interpretation and what's happened is is that the interpretation has been moved back to just for for you know that bridges and things like that so you know in terms of where the funds are you know update today the general fund primarily revenue from individual income taxes is down substantially  and and it's not entirely clear why but it's i guess it's it seems as though there were a number of onetime event with the with the personal income tax there are a small number of very high earners and depending on what happens with that you know it can really affect that small number of people having substantial change can really  affect of that you know that piece of the fund the same thing is true of the estate taxes you know last year have a lot of people with a lot of money died i guess but the state got thirty five million complex model who made those assumptions how how were they developed why not some other sort of stuff so we passed the act forty eight back when my second term i believe it was  the legislature said we think the sixth sense that you're talking let's this is something called actuarial value so across the whole population how much of how much of the cost of the health care are paid by that this is separate from premiums but how much of the cost of delivering the health care is paid by the insurance company and how much by the individual when we had kava my health that had an actuary value of eighty seven percent so fact forty eight in the house we put eighty seven percent in as had the floor for what the actuarial value could be on the senate side they got changed to two eighty seven was still there as our suggestion of what it this they were talking about a national or a value of ninety four percent but when you were so actuary about you raised if it's ninety four percent that means when you go for your health care the whole population not any one individual but when you go to get some services on average ninety four percent comes from the insurer the six percent comes with your co pays deductible is that of that so the actual variance how much it comes from the insurer and this has nothing to do with  eachers are in general and the state employees are in general it turns out in the a ca there are some things that people didn't really think about very much when they were developing this plan but it turns out we're not allowed to give people less than they already had to get or waiver to do single payer and the majority of people if we went eighty seven percent turns out we're going to get less than they already have to do that was it was pretty shocking i think everybody to see how good the coverage the majority vermonters in the private market actually is it's very good and so you're going to have more people getting less  them than the affordable care act would allow and so you know you could have done tiered things but for administrative simplicity that was going to be just a horrible headache and i think in the end they decided and illustratively it just made sense to go with the ninety four percent actually worry about on the premium side and on the cost side that becomes more expensive you know higher actuarial value the more cost to come that system but since the majority of people who were going to be in this from the you know the private insurance world that they couldn't step them down they were already in that ninety four to ninety five percent kind of range so it was it was  surprising to everybody when that information came to light so that's that's how that the sitting i think came to be that they would use that actuarial value of ninety four percent in there and then calculate the costs based on that once they calculate the cost based on that and additionally when they found that the federal government when going to give them near as much money as they had hoped for we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars was that that just made it too expensive the other piece was the administrative savings that they had originally predicted there was they had finally said this isn't going to be dark and we realize these savings which was pretty clear to any of us that really looked at the there is almost a religion for a group of people who are there have been there almost every day i've been in the state house for my seventh year now you know they are just determined that single payer is the answer despite the fact that we can't have a single payer system in vermont just literally cannot be better for them not so that it's really not about their own i don't know what they think about but but but i mean clearly they think that's outweighed by that the need was kind of a little bit to do they're going to work on first of all more better subsidies for people there's the you know there's a group of people who for whom compared to the previous programs if they were on topic of the have or catamount before there's a group of those folks who are eligible for medicaid but the other ones this has been much more expensive for them and you know there's a there's of income level at which people really took a hit with this and it's partly they just fall into the wrong place because you know things used to go stepwise in terms of cost and now it's a flat now it's a smooth line so if you're on this part of a step you did well but if you were on this part of the step you got them i'm so so you know their work on subsidies some more you know some of us are good really hard for better subsidies from the state when we last session but  leadership just refused to even hear it and the government now said well they were right last year we should have done that go to leg but the second thing that work on is this thing called the so you know medicaid which is you know publicly funded it's all taxpayer dollars in some federal and some state and but they typically pay hospitals on medicare medical folks they can get paid somewhere in the range of forty percent of what it cost to deliver the service medicare is supposed to be pegged at what it cost to deliver the service private insurers tend to pay medicare plus twenty to thirty percent so what's happening is everybody who buys private insurance is paying more to balance out the fact that the state in their medicaid program is so underpaid and sensually it's a hidden tax on just the companies and people who buy health insurance it's an you know that's that's what it is so the idea is to try to reduce that cost shifting and bring the medicaid payment rates up  the private insurance payment rates down in the green mountain care board will be tasked with making sure that if we raise the medicaid rates that the private insurance premiums come down and warm out so it was so that's the second thing that the health care committee will work on that's the the second next thing and then the third thing is something that a couple of us had proposed back before act forty eight before we went down to the root of the single parent thing and that was something called a public option where that there will be a public publicly financed insurance option available to anybody who is a vermont resident whether or not your company gives you will sure as you'll be able to compare the public program to to what else is available to you and what is available on otherwise on the exchange and and see what's a better deal for you so that  for how it's been going on for a decade now and that's you know that's one of those where they paid for quality in part in part for just the fees for service but then there are other things hospital global budgets and  if the pilot hasn't started the plan he has so i don't i don't think legislatively there's going to be much happening on that and that fro not down substantially with what they have asked for for a great request you know people have blue cross this year a very big chunk of your increase in your blue cross premiums this year had to do with the c we fought in the cloud last year and got a three percent three percent increase in medicaid payments and as soon as we were out of session the very first meeting of the joint fiscal committee they whacked it they took that out and that meant blue cross premiums have to go higher you know is that hidden tax thing so so yeah even if blue cross doesn't have the incentive to remount care board is the one who really tells them what they can and can't can't charge and look at it and great detail they have their own actuaries i mean and the nice thing about a premature were frankly it's just not clear you know i mean these kind of things trying to do these things legislatively are very hard it was a very wise thing to set up something that is not under the control of the administration or the legislature that they really are in the so if you start shifting the costs from medicare and profit private insurers are we want to also start shifting question was well will they also work on on changing this you know that the primary care folks did have a bump for these last few years from medicare compliments of senator leahy and that's going away now but but  something that that we're quite aware of and you know that's part of what the blueprint for health does the most every the vast majority of primary care prices are in the blueprint for health care what they do is give you money up front based on the quality of the of of your processes in the office you know and different amounts of money to better your money so yeah that you know that's there there's a great awareness of of that and it's not just the money that keeps kids from going into primary care you know coming out of med school they've got they've got a lot of debt and in the money's a piece of it but also lifestyle stuff i mean they're not you know not everybody wants to be you know the only doc in the community three hundred sixty five days a year seven days every week you know i mean it's so there's lifestyle issues too but you know that there's a whole program trying to recruit kids from the time they get into medical school into primary care we send every student out with a primary care doc from the university of vermont at school for a while and this is one of the rotations so so you want to change topics i was interested actual again so a little bit of movement there and that could be some extra tax says you know speaking as a nurse find that sort of moving public policy along by nature not expensive any thoughts on well i everyone does not agree with that we have seen that it has helped with with smoking and you know it's very well documented that if you raise the rate  of the tax on the pack of cigarettes by the dollar that the that the smoking rate decreases and we can go back three or four times that this has happened  in vermont and see each time the percentage is just about the same when you when we raise that a quarter once it made virtually no difference in the amount of usage so if you if you believe that's the right way to go then i think the same thing will happen sure sweetened beverages now the whole prop the the whole thing as far as i'm concerned here comes amongst those people who do not five dollars and sixty seven cents intact so pay good you can't govern that way and if you didn't get the message you november you get it get well that's true but the point still is that there's a difference of opinion there's two opinions on doing this your opinion this one george is opinion or something else and i'm not here to say one is right or one isn't right because there is no right way or wrong way because it is such a divisive point here but if you notice the fact is you're going after something here you're you're telling me as a so i would say that you know there are some things for which there is really good science and one of those is the effect of sugar sweetened beverages on obesity and for those who don't get it the old city it's going to be a much more expensive epidemic than even smoking was in terms of health care expenditure i mean you know we're talking millions and millions of dollars that's what we pay all of our other taxes to cover so in my mind it's an issue of you know a lot of health care dollars because of that should he have to pay for what i'm doing that's the question in my mind it's it is a personal responsibility tax because the science is there we understand it that sugary drinks are almost unique in terms of their contribution to obesity has to do with the society centers in the brain and you don't feel full from those calories so they turn out to be just extra calories and so in my mind it's a personal responsibility issue oh yeah you're going to use more health care if you drink a whole boatload of so it's going to cost somebody a bunch of money should you be contributing to that by paying the taxes and if we get the benefit of people drinking less here's the big thing we know that like with the cigarette taxes the price sensitive group is that young just the younger people the teenagers the folks exact folks you want to get to not be smoking and not be getting obese really wan but you know i will tell you the advocates are look i've been the number one advocate for this and in the state house there's no two ways about this is something that people really identify me with but the advocates don't want me to push a sales tax this year they really want to go further and excise tax because a sales tax you see at the counter it doesn't really show your behavior when you're looking at the shelf but if the sawdust cost a lot more of the shel yes just to wrap this up so there is no bill at this time but there is there's there's momentum for one just so we know what to watch i thought i have two versions of the bill in my bag and but the third one is still coming and it will be the third one that we will probably put in so that the bill this year is will be two cents per house on the sugar sweetened beverages there is another bill which addresses this which is in the health care comm but there is going to be another bill from another member of the ways and means committee which i'd win in to speak to go anywhere this year but to get the conversation started about literally taxing added sugar by the gram every product out there ok so one of the things here is is that we talked earlier about you know the process for the built well getting a bill introduced is very easy because all of a legislator has to do is to ask the  to write up a bill for x y and z and they will put it into a bill form and everything give it to you and you can carry it down in and submit it but as george was saying is that sometimes you you have a bill drafted and know you talk to people about it and you decide well this this doesn't really work or you get suggestions and you know sometimes just have that one change or you have another version so you can show people and so that that's why this is how the people get find out about these things because you're talking about it in the state house and so that's why it's is probably coming so you know i'm a george also told caucus today that he has itself which is an open meeting so mean the this is just public record he said if you want i mean he was right to say so and he has done this in the past the reason has been done is he's working with the report and what people what to put in the bill and how so since he's a senator it will be and i haven't heard anyone in the house and i don't think they'll be one in the house it will be introduced in the senate and the way you can tell that is that the build number has an s in front of a tip so if it's introduced in the senate  nature has introduced so if you hear somebody say h thirteen you know it's a house bill to look up so word that goes it is up to what do they call themselves a committee a committee committee on committees committee on committees  where you can suspend the rules and do the vote you know one after the other and send it right up to right up to the senate but this was not a charter change for culture esther was it i think i think it's called just or something that they need to get done before a town meeting ok year of the session is always slow or we have a major deadline in the house second year of the session are deadlines early in the senate's leader so you know this time of year people take more time to get signatures and maybe get a retracted the bill with some these other ones are you know in and out of the hundred pills there will be you know sixty of them for sure that you know will never get off the wall you know will be stuck there but you know remember  that the committee might have sixty built it up and they have time to to really take up maybe ten depending on what type of bill they are but so you know it's not that they don't you don't want to you have to prioritize of all of them and some bills are introduced this is george said to to sort of gauge support both amongst legislators and your constituents about it so it's not that you're introducing a bill and you expected these years there was always at least three bills to change the part of the positive law you know to add bottles of surprise by a lot of those things and that has slowed down all of a sudden i don't think there was in it last i'm would not interest paid a lot any money coming out of that this year that this is another thing that there's a difference of opinion on when to use rainy day funds when to use  what is term one time funds where you get you know you get something in that isn't going to come every year last year we got a i don't remember how many millions of dollars from a settlement some some case against the backup company for the way they advertised on their on their package or something i mean that this was the was five years ago or something you know that the suit started and we finally got this last year or so so what was the use is that it actually there were two of these funds and it totaled about ten million dollars so even though you know you have your revenues that have been agreed upon by the two sets of kind of must you then have two other sort of like two other sources you have these funds that you know are referred to as rainy day funds and you have this pot of this quote one time money money that has come in this year but you're not going to get the same money next year you know if you get a settlement at a soup and you get ten million dollars well next year you may get it again for something else that is certainly not going to get that so what has been used in the last few years to balance the budget is these one time funds and there's a disagreement about whether you should use one time funds to balance the budget that that's definitely a disagreement amongst amongst people but the same argument is used about rainy day funds because there is only so much money in such rainy day fund and should you use it this year to balance the budget or to to to work on the budget and so and for the last few years it has been chosen to use just one time money now one of the reasons is because there's been the one time money to be you don't get this all the time but we've been kind of fortunate the last three or four years to have caught up a pot of money that has come in from a variety of sources like this there you know and the other side of it is that you should use either of those two to do the bout you should take the revenue if you're coming in and set your budget at that amount you don't have reduced and that's basically when you say when when the report comes out that we have a ninety seven million dollar shortfall what that means is for last year's budget if you're going to start at last year's budget our projected revenues are ninety seven million dollars less than that the reason we were able to do it last year was partially because of one time funds and partially because revenues were a little bit higher  that it reduces the need for the state to be borrowing and it is critical to the bond ratings so that you know it will be a really bad situation before anybody gets into that because in essence it means paying higher rates for all the bonds of issue and and because our bond rating will drop and having to borrow money for cash flow is kind of a double conclusions as workman's compensation will say definition of employees that sort of thing it does not as currently proposed apply to individual self employed individuals i will say that it did not get a warm reception ways and means committee well remember now so the governor proposed a budget right so this is this is this is the starting point the budget comes to the house because of money i don't always start in the house and the house only the house appropriations committee only uses this as a starting point and you take testimony and everything about whether you agree with the governor's request for this line item or you don't agree with it yeah as you do this if you think that this line item needs to be raised you have to you know you keep track that you phrased it so much because some place you're going to have to lower it again if you're because the governor has balanced budget the governor's budget is balanced with the projected revenues so one thing is about this and he's proposed that to use for put into the health care resource fund which pays for a medic and all that sort of stuff and you know is his calculations were that in the first year which was only six months that it would raise forty one million dollars and that would pool down forty five million in federal dollars because with medicaid is partly state and partly federal but you've got to have the state money to get the federal money to match it and so you know but but the point is it doesn't matter exactly how the state raises that money only that are dedicated to medicaid the drug on the federal money so i think there'll be lots of other suggestions about other other other ways to maybe raise that money well it's just like any business you know there there are places where there are inefficiencies of stuff like that so something like that should be should be in any business that there should be you know people looking out for those and  in government a lot of times some of that happens because you tell your legislator and that next time and if it just happens to be in the right committee and you're talking the right person you know you've been out of the right person and it gets taken care or doesn't get taken care of but it raises but on a larger level when appropriation starts working on the budget they take the budget and they give it to the committees who are responsible for that part of government so for when i was in human services week outfall of human services budget you know which is we all know it is a major part each member then took a section of that and would sit down with members of the department member and go through line item for everything now obviously in the budget line item you don't see if two letters were done or not but you  do pick out things like that and and there are things that that definitely are can go and there are ups and downs in doing that and there you know it does look you looked at the legislative and you know it doesn't quite get looked at you know that that lowest level but again remember one thing about it is that the people that work for the state when when they're working with legislators they listen to government find the efficiencies it's you know it would have been a great program had they not bet on all the savings that had they seen the savings before you know before the budget that way or e mail us or something we're asking specific questions about happy to help you do this if if you're really interested in testifying on the bill contact us we can talk to the to the committee chair and ask them you know what the you know how many they plan on having at hand and submit your name you know it never hurts to have somebody else go to bat for  you for going down and testifying if there is a hearing you know everyone is invited to go there and usually they try to get everyone that wants to speak at an opportunity to speak t are pap when you don't think there's going to be so many people other times they're very sparse you know it is is is hard to tell you know and you know some people complain that they're usually in  well they lot of people try to get to have them elsewhere around the state but it doesn't matter if you're only going to have one or two hearings you can't have it every place in the state you know says summer the the commission on child protection action did go six or eight different places around the state to be able to hear it and if you ask any of the people on that how it went the first thing they will tell you i think everyone was tiring but you know it was a long drawn out and you know you hear a lot of the same thing over and over again but they did come out with some very good ideas you know on the flip side of it you read through this proposed bill and you say you know worst of what some of the some of the things that were suggested obviously cost money and so it will be an interesting procedure to listen to and that bill by the way i don't know if i told you that starting in the senate the child protection fill is something like that's not going it's a real low number and so the senate judiciary committee will take it up and the senate health and welfare committee will take it up and then it will come to the house of course assuming it passes for the same two committees but we have been meeting jointly the four committees have been meeting jointly to hear some of the to hear testimony that you know they're going to put in all the committees anyway to start ok thank you