Treasurer seeks $214.2M budget; proposes temporary unclaimed‑property tweak to sustain Vermont Saves

State Treasurer Mike Dietzak told the Senate Appropriations committee the treasurer’s office governor’s‑recommended FY27 budget is about $214.2 million and described several programmatic asks and operational pressures, including a sustainability gap for the Vermont Saves auto‑IRA program and rising unclaimed‑property workloads.

Dietzak said Vermont Saves, launched in March 2025, has about 5,400 accounts and roughly $5.2 million in assets; he emphasized strong participation among younger savers ("55% of savers are 40 years or younger," he said) and projections that the program could reach 20,000 accounts in five years. Dietzak described account‑level fees of about $26 annually (with roughly $4 retained for program administration) and low asset‑under‑management fees; he said current fee revenue will not cover program costs next year without additional support and estimated an additional roughly $700,000 is needed to reach sustainability based on current projections.

To bridge the shortfall, Dietzak proposed a temporary change to the unclaimed‑property transfer rule that moves the threshold from $100 to $150 for items over 10 years and directs the first dollars to Vermont Saves until the program becomes self‑sustaining; any excess would then flow to the Higher Education Trust Fund. Dietzak said the higher education fund received a recent estate‑tax windfall and that the change would be temporary and limited in scale.

Dietzak also outlined two one‑time and position requests tied to his omnibus bills: a $75,000 actuarial appropriation to support an amortization/pension task force to study pension amortization timelines (with the treasurer chairing the task force), and two unclaimed‑property positions (roughly $214,000 combined) to respond to a 66% year‑over‑year increase in claims (from ~19,000 to ~31,000 claims) and to bolster fraud prevention and recovery work. He said unclaimed‑property revenue turned over to state funds rose substantially (he cited a transfer of about $25,000,000 last year).

On pensions and liabilities, Dietzak reviewed improved funded ratios after reforms and conservative actuarial assumption changes, noted refinancing savings on bonds of about $2.2 million present value, and cautioned that approaching full funding dates (2038 for pensions, 2048 for OPEB) creates budgetary timing risks that warrant study.

Dietzak also described proposed legislation to join a pharmacy discount card program used in other states and asked for a $50,000 one‑time general‑fund appropriation for outreach and marketing if the program is established. He said there is no cost to individuals to sign up and that other states have recorded out‑of‑pocket savings for users.

Committee members asked technical questions about investments, vendor fees and program projections; Dietzak said vendors include State Street and BlackRock for target funds and described fee splits for account and asset fees. No votes were taken during the presentation.