Committee corrects record on Healthcare Advocate funding and flags HIT fund one-time use

At the Feb. 18 session, the committee corrected a funding attribution and clarified several budget items. The chair said a line (V306 VIVA personal services, VLAPHCA) "is not for the office of the healthcare advocate. That's just Vermont Legal Aid. It's a Medicare advocacy project contract that they're canceling," distinguishing that contract from the Office of the Healthcare Advocate's separate appropriation.

Speaker 3 described a funding request to the committee: "They'd ask you for a $450,000 increase. That's about $203,000 line in general fund," and staff discussed how the ask would be split among board, AHS and other sources, with some items not including DFR funding.

Separately, the chair proposed using a one-time surplus in the state's HIT fund to support an EPIC/IT integration request: the governor's recommend showed reduced hours in the base budget and a separate ask for integration. The chair said the committee could approve the reduction and use HIT surplus as one-time money to fund the integration work, but noted these would be two separate decisions.

Next steps: staff will verify line-item details and reflect corrections in the committee's submission to appropriations.