As part of a larger economic development package, Vermont lawmakers in 2022 enacted a one-time paid leave reimbursement program for businesses whose employees were out sick due to Covid-19. At the time, the newest variant, Omicron, was raging, and workers were maxing out their existing paid time off at a rapid clip.
A year later, Covid-19 cases are once again on the rise. But that grant program still hasn’t paid out a dime to businesses that requested reimbursements.
“Some of our employees seem to be in the third or fourth time of having Covid,” said Andrew Sambrook, who owns, alongside his wife Andrea Sambrook, two child care centers in Hinesburg and one in Underhill. The Sambrooks, whose centers care for about 150 children, applied for funding through the program on Dec. 5, 2022.
Soon after the Sambrooks applied, the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation, which is administering the program, closed the portal to new applications. On its website, the department posted that the program was “currently delayed due to technical issues with updates to the portal.” Months later, that’s still the message that greets businesses looking for an update.
“I think most folks have just given up on this program,” Andrew Sambrook said. “I don’t think any of us believe it’s ever going to get paid out.”
Problems with the program’s implementation were already on the Legislature’s radar when it convened this year. The House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development held a nearly two-hour hearing on the matter back in March, and lawmakers eventually slashed the program’s initial appropriation from $15 million to $5 million, hoping that would be a more manageable amount.
“It was highly unlikely that they’d be able to get the whole $15 million out,” said House Commerce chair Rep. Michael Marcotte, R-Coventry, adding that, based on how many businesses had applied in the program’s first phase, when applications were still open, the remaining funding should nevertheless cover outstanding need.
The Department of Financial Regulation did not make anyone available for an interview, but its director of policy, Emily Kisicki, wrote in an email that the department anticipated getting money out the door soon.
“We now have the functionality needed and are turning our attention to getting those original applications processed and paid as quickly as possible,” she said. “We are revising our application for a more simplified process following the changes made this past legislative session, and look forward to reopening the portal for the remaining qualifying time periods shortly.”
To explain the delays, state officials have argued that the program was unexpectedly complex to administer, and required an entirely new Salesforce portal to be built from scratch. Speridian Technologies, a New Mexico-based company, won a state contract to build it, and the state inked a contract with Speridian in September 2022. (The company did not reply to a request for comment.)
A portal did go live that October, and began taking applications for leave reimbursements covering July 1 to Sept. 30 of 2022. But there were technical glitches, and the portal needed further work to make it possible to review and approve submitted applications, according to Kisicki.
“Unfortunately, at that point, multiple technical delays were encountered that were unanticipated,” she wrote.
As of Wednesday, Vermont had not yet paid Speridian, although the company has sent the state an invoice for $106,200 — the first installment stipulated in its $366,200 contract. The original agreement anticipated the portal would be fully operational by this January, but the contract has been amended four times already, each time giving the company more time to complete its work. Asked when she anticipated the contractor to have a fully functional product in place, Agency of Digital Services Interim Secretary Denise Reilly-Hughes pointed to the latest amendment, signed earlier this month, which gives them until Oct. 14.
Meanwhile, in Chittenden County, Andrea Sambrook said she’s worried this could be a harbinger of bureaucratic problems to come — when the stakes will be so much higher.
State lawmakers this year passed another law, on a much larger scale, that will eventually inject over $120 million a year into the child care sector in hopes of stabilizing the teetering industry. But even before this latest headache, Vermont had already struggled to get funding out the door to child care centers.
“If we can’t fix this Covid problem a year later — how are we going to do something so much bigger, for so much more importance?” she said.
