Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Good morning. This is the House Probations Committee. It is Wednesday, 12/17/2025, and we are continuing our work through the Budget Adjustment Act or the FY '26 budget. And this morning, we're delighted to start off with the judiciary. And we have in person, Crisone, Official Title of State and Court Administrator, and Greg Moseley, Chief Finance and Administration with us remotely. So welcome to both of you. If you want to introduce yourself for the record and good morning, you'll be great.

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: Thank you, Madam Chair. Terry Corsohn, State Court Administrator. And as you can join us remotely is Greg Moseley, who's our Chief of Finance and Administration. And Greg submitted a memorandum that you should have a hard copy of in front of you. We'll be referring to it during our presentation. There are two requests for the Budget Adjustment Act. Greg was going to start off describing the first one, and I was going to describe the second. And then we also have a third, just kind of point of clarification we wanted to also review with you, if that was Okay.

[Greg Moseley (Chief of Finance & Administration, Judiciary)]: Well, you. Thank you, Cheryl. I'll take it here from here and talk about our first piece. But I wanted to just ask your staff if Kelly Carbo is in the waiting room. She's the finance manager from the judiciary and was planning to attend in case there's any questions.

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: Great.

[Greg Moseley (Chief of Finance & Administration, Judiciary)]: There she is. So thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, committee members. Love the opportunity to talk with you about our adjustment request. It's just a couple of items. The first one is the sheriff contract rate increase, which totals $558,566 That rate is increasing to $57 an hour. And this is negotiated rate, one rate for all the sheriffs, but it's negotiated and that's planned on to try to maintain the existing level of deputies in the courthouses. We didn't actually do that. There are now three counties that we don't contract with. Washington County became the third this year when they had a retirement and weren't able to recruit a new deputy to help out at the civil courthouse in Montpelier. So we're down one deputy and there's two other counties that continue to struggle to maintain the level of deputies that we're hoping to have in each courthouse. So it's been a struggle for them to recruit. And I would expect that that rate would go up in the budget request as well.

[Speaker 0]: So that is for half a year?

[Greg Moseley (Chief of Finance & Administration, Judiciary)]: That's to balance our budget for this year for FY26. So that represents the $3 an hour increase over what we had budgeted for.

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: For the whole year?

[Greg Moseley (Chief of Finance & Administration, Judiciary)]: Yes, for the whole

[Speaker 0]: year. Okay. Any questions on that?

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: No. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: In the Oh, second

[Greg Moseley (Chief of Finance & Administration, Judiciary)]: No, go ahead, Terry.

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: The second request and again, this is in the category of unexpected expenses has to do with what's been referred to a lot in the news as accountability courts. We're referring to it as a pilot docket. We feel that all of our courts are accountability courts, if you will. And it's actually a docket, a category of cases within the criminal division in the Chittenden County units. Right, right. And we learned of this in October when the government proposed it and convened a meeting of different people involved for project, a pilot project, if you will, where criminal defendants who have five or more cases are set aside, segregated from the rest of the criminal division, And a focus is placed on processing those cases. And this was a proposal that the governor made and consulted with the state's attorneys and sheriffs. A special prosecutor was named in the public defender's office. They kind of handled it more with some contract counsel and public defenders. Transports were involved. It was proposed for a three month period. It started then in November. It will end the February. And the resources that were involved on our end involved basically bringing in a retired judge. It wasn't something that we could take somebody from the criminal division to be dedicated to this and ensure case flow otherwise in the rest of the docket. So it was a retired judge, also a criminal courtroom operator, and then a security officer in the courtroom. And the total for that cost for the three months is $128,716 That wasn't in our budget in as much as it wasn't something that was on our radar when we proposed our budget. So that's the second component. So

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: how are you going to determine whether or not this is successful? And I assume that if it's successful, you're going want to carry on with this program in some form.

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: Well, do feel that, and I think in terms of the actual data, we're waiting until the end of the three months. But so far anyway, I think the consensus is that definitely it's achieved any time you can focus on a category of cases, especially in the criminal docket. It's beneficial and advantageous. It involves not just the judge seeing the people more regularly and consistently, but also providing service providers, connecting them so that if there's a handoff, if there's treatment involved in whatever the conditions are, that the person's right there at the courthouse. We'd actually, in judiciary, we had implemented different ways to focus on that particular category of cases around the state already. So we were really pleased to be able to have an opportunity to kind of test out in more intensity that approach. And my understanding is, and we've been in consultation with the state's attorneys and public defenders, We will and we hope to continue when the pilot ends in each docket a variation of that same approach where there might be, for example, a half day. In Costello, it would be a half day a week. In other courts, depending on how many categories of cases there are, might be a half day a month or a day a month, where those cases would be brought in so that they could be tended to and we'd have the same opportunity to connect them with providers. We have a mental health and the courts commission that did regional workshops around the state. And one of the outcomes of that was an effort to bring providers to the courthouse directly, rather than saying, hey, here's an effort to all connect with them. It's more successful when the person's right there, likelihood of follow through. So different aspects of it, we were working on anyway, and we certainly hope to be able to continue that. The one question, because face to face interaction is critical to this, would be the transport situation. Because right now, with so many challenges to transport persons from facilities to the courthouses, Part of the pilot project was including emergency other agencies to help provide transports. Whether that's feasible, I don't know. Hopefully, there'll be a proposal that will, this session, bring more resources to the transport scenario because that's also been critical. If the person's right there in person to be able to meet with their attorney, a lot more can get accomplished. There were a variety of factors, but I think the consensus is that it has gone well, and we definitely want to take advantage of what we've learned in the process. And part of the data will be how many of those cases have been disposed of, how many were able to be handled more quickly than they would have in the normal course.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: So it may help with the backlog?

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: Definitely, yes, because especially when you have multiple charges, if you have a global settlement, that's eight cases that are off your backlog list versus one.

[Speaker 0]: Any other questions on bad debts? Nope, okay, that's pretty clear, thanks.

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: And then the third we're bringing up here because it would come before your committee eventually. It doesn't have a budget impact. But in fiscal year 'twenty four, we received 26 positions. We'd requested 26 positions. They're kind of spelled out across the board. Some were in the tech, some were in judicial assistance, some were in the security personnel. And we received those positions. And then they were termed limited service, although more of a longer term limited service than, for example, the limited service positions that we had that were pandemic funded, that were typically two years, maybe three at the most. These were term limited service. The state's attorneys and sheriffs were part of the same kind of statutory section, and we were told that they're longer term, but they came out of general funds. They're part of our base appropriations, so we have position numbers for them, and they're already we're paying for them in the budget, but they we were told to come back later to, I guess, have whatever the next step is to have them considered permanent. The state's attorneys and sheriffs actually did that, accomplished that last session with their nine physicians. So we were coming, asking, begging for the same treatment this year so we can have some certainty for these physicians. Because we've definitely found if it's a limited service physician, people start looking and they're looking now. And we just amount of training that goes in her position and to have to worry then about somebody looking elsewhere because, in all honesty, the rate of pay is higher in most of the other branches. So that's the third, again, request or just to bring it up to say that this is something we very much are seeking.

[Speaker 0]: Did you bring that up with the administration? Is it part of your budget request for FY 'twenty seven?

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: We did, just in speaking with Adam, but because there's no budget impact, it wasn't something that was in the budget itself. Right.

[Speaker 0]: But they on the budget, they also do conversions. They do positions in the budget. So did you talk to him about putting that in the FY '27 budget?

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: Greg can I know he spoke directly with Adam? Yeah,

[Greg Moseley (Chief of Finance & Administration, Judiciary)]: we did talk to them about that. What Terry's responding to is it's not listed as an upward pressure. So it doesn't have a number associated in our budget request. But yes, we talked to finance and management about this need.

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: And and I think we pointed to what the state's attorneys and sheriffs had done. So they had suggested bringing it up as part of when we spoke with them.

[Speaker 0]: But it but it is gonna go through the administration. I mean, that's where it needs to start and hopefully I mean, because they will just do it in the budget. It doesn't have to be an upward pressure. Uh-huh. Although there are changes. I mean, there there's ultimately different money involved because of, benefits that people get if they're full time if they're permanent. Isn't that right?

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: They get the same benefits for their limited service, I think, but Greg would know for sure.

[Greg Moseley (Chief of Finance & Administration, Judiciary)]: Yes, they get the same benefits as a permanent position.

[Speaker 0]: So no additional costs by converting from any standpoint?

[Greg Moseley (Chief of Finance & Administration, Judiciary)]: No, it's really just an administrative switch. It changes the hiring letter from having an end date to just being a hiring date.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, go ahead.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: So correct me if I'm wrong, usually limited service positions are intended for short term projects or a limited duration of time. But these people here, you need us for long term staff.

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: Right. Their duties and responsibilities and the need for their services is permanent.

[Greg Moseley (Chief of Finance & Administration, Judiciary)]: And what I might want to point out just to help clarify this is that when the pandemic started, we did get 56 limited service positions that were funded with one time funds. It wasn't part of the ARPA project, but it was general fund. We called it pandemic funding, and we use those positions to help manage the courthouses in the backlog during the pandemic, but that funding has run out and those positions are now empty. We're not using them anymore. They're vacant. And when and those were really designed for kind of the difficulty of the pandemic, whereas these really are ongoing ongoing needs.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Essentially pandemic resulting in a big backlog. But then we have a lot more criminal activity it seems in the last subsequent to the pandemic than before. So those two are sort of intermixed. So if you could get rid of this backlog from the pandemic then you might not need to have permanent physicians. But you've had you got more than one factor that's influencing your long term need, don't you?

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: Yes, and to be honest, I mean we had a backlog before the pandemic. Yeah, was exacerbated.

[Speaker 0]: Right, exactly, Exactly. Wayne John?

[Rep. John Kascenska]: Wayne Chopin. It's okay.

[Unidentified committee member (brief aside)]: John Wayne, you know.

[Speaker 0]: I didn't say John Wayne, but It's

[Rep. John Kascenska]: about 10:00. What was the actual official end date of these limited service positions?

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: When we were told

[Rep. John Kascenska]: into this

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: We calendar had used 2028 because normally the limited service would be two years, for example, three at the most. So when we said, well, we were told we could treat them as longer term. And so we said, well, how long much of a longer term? And we ended up with five years. So 2028 was the date. And our concern is now we're coming up to 2026. And that's what we found basically people start looking.

[Rep. John Kascenska]: They start looking now.

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: And we've had a higher than average turnover for a variety of reasons. The biggest thing is the pay differential. So this is just very concerning because the training is intensive as well. It takes a lot of resources. So if you have somebody come and then leave after two years or one year, it's really challenging. So 2028, though, is the date that we were using for the end

[Speaker 0]: date. Thank you.

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Any other questions out there?

[Rep. John Kascenska]: I guess my understanding is that, like, an hour, you know, met not that long ago, you know, the courthouse, you know, there, but the backlog was still, like, there.

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: We're dealing with it. We're making progress for sure. Progress has not disappeared. No. No, and just realistically, I mean, you have so many hours in the day at the courthouse and so many cases, But everybody's working really hard, state's attorneys, public defenders, everybody, service providers. We're making progress, but it's not going to happen. It didn't come about overnight, and we're not able to resume it overnight, but it'll be a while for sure.

[Speaker 0]: So, I think in the budget adjustment, we're not dealing with the positions. That's just sort of a heads up that it may be coming into the FY twenty seventh budget request. Okay, is that everything you have to present? Think that was all you

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: had, wasn't it?

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: Yes, have budget adjustments. Anybody else have any questions?

[Speaker 0]: All right, thank you. Thank you very much and thank you as always for your cookie thought. So we're running ahead of schedule, which is just fine, but our next guests are here, so come on up. We have the state's attorneys and sheriffs, Tim Luterstumont and Annie Noonan.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: I'm going share my screen just because we didn't make copies. It's just the same document we submitted, just a one pager.

[Speaker 0]: Yes. I think we're done. One

[Rep. John Kascenska]: second.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: So

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: Share. Tim Ledonia, Department of State Attorneys and Sheriffs, Executive Director. And with me is Annie Noonan, we all know and I love. And last year, she did tell all of you that this is going to be her last session with the department. Here she is again. She's very helpful. And I also wanted to introduce

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: It's not like a bad penny. Just said No,

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: I want just say how helpful she has been during my transition of my first year as the executive director. Anything that has gone right in the department can be directly attributed to Annie over the past year. Anything that's gone wrong, I will own that. Also here is Annie's successor, Lauren Clemens, who comes with us twenty years of experience from the Social Security Administration. So the federal government's loss is our gain right here in Montpelier as well. So if anyone's been served by that office here in Montpelier, you think Lauren ran that office for two decades. So yeah, briefly, we have a very it's just one page for you. I know it's shocking coming from our department, just having a one pager. So I want to congratulate the new vice chair, Representative Feltis. And good to see you.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: If it's okay with you, Madam Chair, just

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: because there was a couple

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: of questions on the accountability docket, I can run through a little bit of data that's current from last week that's maybe helpful. It started with about 800 cases and about 100 people. It's always a fluid target because it's five or more dockets. So it's the second that someone picks up that fifth docket, you get put on a list. And then they will see you in the 3B courtroom, which is the accountability or pilot docket. We've moved about three fifty cases in a month in ten days. That's 10 of the total number of pending cases in Chittenden County, and obviously about half of the number of cases we started with. So it's very successful. And part of the reason it's been so successful is the speed and flexibility of that courtroom. So I'm going to use representative Laroche as an example because I've picked on him before. But if he picks up his fifth docket and he goes before Judge Maley, in this courtroom, you can say, I will see you in a week. Not I'm gonna see you in ninety days, thirty days, sixty days. I will see you in a week. And if they're coming to court, we don't need the transports. And most of these folks are in the community with pending cases. And if they come to court, we don't need transports. There's been about 20 lingering, of that 100, that are detained over the course of the first month and fifteen days. And they do need transports. And what every single Monday morning, our transport team, Sheriff Gamlin, with the special prosecutor meets with the courts, and they figure out priority, which is a model for the future, by the way. How to think about this issue isn't just with more resources, but with more efficient use of our resources. In terms of the other law enforcement agencies that have stuck up their hand, we've been very appreciative of that. There's only been one utilization of a non state sheriff transport deputy. And during the course of the pendency of that request from the court, it was canceled and made a remote here. But we were appreciative that the state trooper involved was willing to go up to new court in that case, but it was canceled. So every transport that is taking place for this program has been done by our state transport deputies. But we have a little bit of a communication stream to state police and to DMV police through remote emergency management, which is a really interesting model to think about. So it's not just on the transport team up there at capacity. We had a day with 21 transports, and that was a day that was very stressful with multiple courtrooms. So we're working through it. It's been a very helpful pilot. And every single Tuesday, myself and the special prosecutor and Sarah George and the governor's office, we meet as a group to talk about how things are going in this program. And just as a backup for those that don't know, we took a deputy state's attorney from Washington County, Zach Waite. We moved him with no change to salary and benefits under an interagency sharing agreement with the governor's office to work specifically on these cases in partnership with Sarah George. He is embedded in Sarah George's office using the victim advocate and administrative services of Sarah George's office. So very efficient, use of time, space, resources, and personnel. And we're very proud of what we've been able to do since October 20 till today. We did give the special prosecutor a few days off this week. So he's taken a little bit of time. But he was carrying a docket of 800 cases, which would be the highest docket in the state. And he's done that very, very well. The average is about 400. But one of the things that's fascinating, he wasn't dealing with homicides. Aggravated domestics with 15 tampering witnesses charges. It's been about our downtown community issues. But I just wanted to give you that context and some of the data. Right now, of last week, there was 20 people of the 100 or so who were being detained. And that's been pretty consistent. It feels like a number. One out of every five people are having an issue with appearing in court. And so arrest warrant gets issued. And then sometimes those get resolved. And then, yeah, we've also utilized as Annie is whispering to me diversion and treatment court. Some of these have gone through our regular channels of deflection. And treatment court in Chittenden County is very robust. And so I think we have between four to five treatment court referrals during the course of the first month and a half as well, but a huge amount of dispositions. And bringing these cases to an end is not just good for the defendant and our backlog, but for victims

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: of COVID.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: And a lot of these are retail thefts, unlawful mischief, and downtown activity. So we brought some resolution for a huge amount of victims as well. Just wanted to give that in context to the other piece. And there is an antique in detail in the context of our accountability docket. We did work with the governor's office on both of our BAA pieces here, their agreements with the governor's office. And we very much appreciate the collaboration that we've had and hopefully making your lives a little simpler as well that Andy can detail. But it's about 37,000 for the accountability docket that we've stipulated to be an agreement with the governor's office on.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: Good morning. Thank you for hearing us out today. As Tim mentioned, the amount of work that's getting done and the success of the project is, I think, be very, very evident to everyone as the statistics come out even more. And we were able to do this with only requests for assistance for any type of expense that our special prosecutor may incur. Zach Wade, our special prosecutor, traveling, mileage, those things. And we asked our administrative support staff at the Chittenden state's attorney's office if any of them would volunteer to take on some overtime hours. And the reason for that is the speed that Tim mentioned, the speed at which this court operates means that things have to be filed really quickly. So Zach might I'll say Zach Waite, who's our special prosecutor, might come in with a pile full of paper. This plea has to go. This discovery has to be done. So their regular work is sitting there, and Zach's like, we need to move this. I gotta get this plea agreement over to the defense counsel. So things are happening really quickly, and it's kind of piling onto our administrative staff during the day. So we asked, is anybody willing to we didn't want the backup at Chittenden office to be affected by the special courts. We asked if there were volunteers, and some of our employees said yes. And it's approximately support for about two to three hours of overtime a week. So they may stay an extra hour a day, three days a week to kind of catch up with what I would say their regular work. So it's a very efficient way of getting this done. We didn't hire any new staff. We didn't do anything, but we really couldn't let their regular workload pile up on their desks or they would be very discouraged. So we said, let's allow you to have a little bit of time to get that done. So they weren't forced, but people did volunteer so that I could do that. You know, personal situation, maybe they didn't have to deal with childcare at the end of the day, but four of our employees did say, four or five of them said, Yes, we'll do this. So that's what these costs are. When you see on the chart where it talks about personal services, salary and benefits, it's really only the overtime for administrative support staff. Then the operating expenses would be anything that Zach may have incurred in terms of mileage driving around doing this work. My best estimate is that we won't even spend this amount of money. I probably shouldn't say that out loud because I want to allow people to kind of do their catch up. But it would be nice for us to see that this might come in a few thousand dollars less, but I don't that's a guess.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: And we'll know more in in February when this wraps up. And I think when I say wraps up, I think it's in quotes a little bit because we hope that the lessons learned and the practices and even maybe the I'm looking at the administrative course elements. But even maybe the courtroom stays available for this type of space. And we hope that the lessons learned, it won't be one size fits all in other counties if it gets passed around the state. Gave the example of an imaginary county recently, so I don't pick on one county. But one county may only need this once a month as opposed to every single day, a smaller county. And other counties may need a drop in prosecutor as opposed to an old prosecutor. So not one size fits all. I just wanted to say that. But it's worked very well in Chittenden.

[Speaker 0]: That's great. And Mike had a question.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: Thanks for coming in. I know there are cases, then there are cases. We've had some in Windham County. Are there things other things that are putting pressures on new budgets that we should build out? Well, I think yes. I wanted in the context of today, the other piece on this document here is we're very happily, as you were, madam chair, very happily surprised and appreciative of the governor releasing the recommendations. And so on the transport side, we're deeply appreciative of the governor's recommend for 01/3521. It is an area for pressure that Annie can detail more in terms of the transport program. And then for a different day, so we won't detail too much today, but we have some major cases coming at us that are mental health related homicides, where huge amounts of expert witness dollars are being negotiated and on the table right now, including in Windham and Bennington County. So we're working through that, and we'll talk through that in the next year's budget cycle. But I appreciate that it's an incoming pressure, a bit of a cloud that I'm pretty worried about, to be honest. And also, have increases in extradition, increases in transcription, a whole bunch of other things. But for the context of just the BAA today, we thought that the narrow scope of our mutual agreement with the governor's office was most helpful. And Annie's pointing out, when we're talking about mental health, we're talking about the competency evaluation. And then if someone's found incompetent, we then need an expert to contest whether or not that's the case in a homicide. We may often do that, contesting whether or not someone is truly incompetent. And then at trial, sometimes people raise the insanity defense and need an expert for contesting the insanity of defense. So that's what that is. And it is a huge amount of money that we feel

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki]: we owe to our most serious cases. Can you say more to the Brattleboro case that we've gotten a lot of publicity in our area.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: Yeah, and what I'm going to try to do is not comment on an individual case, in part because they're pending, but I will say in both Bennington and Windham County, there are large amounts of homicide related mental health cases that are likely to go to trial in the next year so that the dollars will come to pass at that time. And just because I haven't checked with the state's attorney down there in Windham County, they want to cite a specific case.

[Speaker 0]: Jonathan, a question also.

[Rep. John Kascenska]: So thanks for sharing about the efficiency piece you're trying to work through across the state here. I'm sure that's really helpful for all the state's attorneys. You feel like the more of a broader question here, like distribution of state's attorneys we have across the state are working okay. Are there areas in the state that think it gives a little more help to kind of, you know, keep that backlog down to a reasonable number here? I'm in Essex County area there. The number of people that have there is just gonna be different, obviously, than to other parts of the state or down in Windsor County as well.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: Yes. And we actually just, our recent moving around of positions, we did appoint a deputy state attorney in Windham County to add to their attorney load and in Caledonia County, in part because of a pretty regular number of homicides pending on the 91 corridor of about starting in Windham County all the way up to The Kingdom, but about 30 or so pending homicides on that corridor at any given time, including about 10 on average in Orleans and Caledonia.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: May I also put a full time victim advocate, but who also serves for the Essex County State Attorney to bolster up the staffing in that office, because we saw that there were problems there. So, as Essex came in last year and talked to all of us and us and all of you, and we were able to determine that he was correct in terms of the pressures on his office. So we put a full time victim advocate at a half time in person, who's also backing up the office with, I would say, some legal assistant type work and administrative work. It needed it. It was a small office. Some of our offices are very, very minimally staffed, as you know.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: And the other thing I wanted to mention is December 10. People ask why December 10. It's because it's the first time we did it a number of years ago. We did a data poll from the judiciary. Feels like it's before the holidays, before the end

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: of the

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: year. We do an annual analysis, a snapshot analysis on December 10 of every year of caseload. We're going through that right now. It's 23,000 cases. And so we're going through caseload analysis, the types of cases. And so probably by the first of the year, we'll have a report that will be used publicly in prep for the session. And you're looking at the the data team here. We don't have specific staff for it, so we work through it as we can. But I will have a better idea of that deeper question by the time we do regular FY 2017 budget.

[Rep. John Kascenska]: Yeah, we look forward to seeing that. Yeah, we just had an unfortunate uptick in number of pretty serious situations happening here.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: That's correct. In a relatively short amount of time. Yes. Yeah. We've had a 30% increase in homicide filings over five years.

[Speaker 0]: Leland had a question.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: 130 pending right now.

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: Yeah, you've just been going through this whole thing with this emergency docket, whatever you want to call it, pilot docket. Transformation is the keyword for a lot of our institutions. Is this the beginning of a transformation for what you do with your state's attorneys and with the courts? It And sounds like you're sort of looking at this to look at it on a broader scale to spread it to more places. And second to that, there was an article about the lack of attorneys in the state of the art period everywhere. Public offenders. Mean, you're going to have to go through some kind of a formation or transformation to go and accommodate that. Where are you at that?

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: In terms of the spread of the accountability docket, as I stated earlier, it won't be one size fits all across the state. But I do think what we're doing right now is undergoing, is there underutilized spaces in our existing courtroom environments where we could have this accountability, rapid speed arraignment and rapid speed accountability? Getting before a judge is the most important thing for a defendant who's picking up multiple cases. There's nothing that speeds up the accountability process like getting in front of a judge quickly. In Washington County, I know that we could benefit from accountability and having a speedier system here. Bennington, Windham, about half the counties that have maybe high volume of cases. The ones that have smaller volume of cases, it's going be a different type of analysis. But finding that space in our core calendar and certainty as to the trial dates and certainty as to the next event, what is really hard is when you have someone pick up their fifth or sixth docket and you say to them, we don't know when your trial is gonna be. You say to the victim, we don't know when the trial is gonna be. We don't know when you're going to get restitution because we have too many pending serious cases. So what we're trying to do, transformation, we need to ensure that our violent cases are not competing with our repeat offender cases. That's what's happening right now. And that's why in Chittenden, we opened up time. Time is the most important part to transformation of our system. But it means judge time. It means judge staff time. It means the judicial assistance. And it means, can our prosecutor be in two courtrooms at once? In some counties, we could probably do a bit of that. But in Chittenden County, because they are so busy with 30 or so pending homicides, it was so helpful. And it was a partnership with Sarah George. She said, great, special prosecutor working embedded in my office. I believe that it will require more resources, but that is not gonna be a blanket across the state. It may be that we just need to figure out how to be more efficient in addition to some new resources as well. When there's transport issues that come up, sheriff can't do it. Title 24 allows for the entire slate

[Greg Moseley (Chief of Finance & Administration, Judiciary)]: of

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: police officers and the Department of Corrections to also assist with transports. How do we do a better job with our courts of saying, Okay, sheriffs are at capacity. Who's next on the list? Who's next on the list? Who's next on the list? We've to get these people to court. And many judges have been trying to bring more cases in person. We have a virtual setup. I think it still needs to be an option on the table to clear out cases. If someone's being held in Chittenden and they've got a case pending where representative Mrowicki is Brattleboro bringing down that female down to Brattleboro to plead out, can she plead out in Chittenden? Let's say she lives in Chittenden and she picked up a case down there. Let her out in the community where that person is from. We need to think like that. It's not just we need more transports, we do. It's not just we need to do more virtual hearings, we do. It's got to be a more systemic approach. But time is if I could leave just more time with the

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: cases. Follow-up to that. When they get finished with this accountability docket and you cleared five or six cases for somebody, what happens to the defendant?

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: It depends. And actually Did

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: they go to jail? Are we putting pressure on corrections? Or where do they go? What happens? Yes.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: So a lot of these cases, we're actually working on what the dispositions are. And we could get that for you. It's not just jail. It's probation. Sometimes it's treatment. Sometimes it's paying restitution back to the SOAR that they victimized, that sort of thing. Some of it is they were incarcerated during the pendency of their case because they were detained, and they're pleading for time served and then they're out at the time of sentencing. But it's not one type of solution. It's very catered. And the service providers are helping with that. This person, since their case started, got housing, they're no longer engaged in substance use, in treatment, or in mental health. Sometimes the actual conviction itself is the punishment. Thank you. A mix.

[Speaker 0]: So one of the things I'm liking about this is, and this is something I think we need to do more of, is is instead of just throwing more money at the same thing and trying to do more faster, to try and pilot projects and what we can learn from them, because there's often very There are similar things that we can do that don't always cost as much money, but are much more effective, and we don't always think that way. And I think with tightening budgets and revenue and things like that coming in, we need to be more creative in the way we do things. I think it doesn't have to be more complicated, can be a lot more efficient, which is what you're finding with the way these situations. Dave and then Tom.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: I was just going to say something almost just the opposite to what you said.

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: Oh, because I hope

[Rep. David Yacovone]: I can You made me think, and I don't want to be simplistic or come across as a cynic, but as I was sitting here, was thinking, it seems like we often call things, this is a pilot, this is transformation. And truth, it comes down to adequately staffing functions. If they were adequately staffed, you might not have backlogs. And folks testifying today could be from DCF, they could be from substance abuse and all where we're trying to process things, but that does come at a cost and perhaps, and I think your point made me think we really need to focus on how do we re engineer our processes.

[Speaker 0]: Exactly.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: So that they allow us to better do what we're doing.

[Rep. Marty Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Right, so in this case

[Rep. David Yacovone]: it's Thank not you for

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: offering worth it.

[Speaker 0]: Well, it's good a conversation because, you know, you're you you've extracted a certain kind of of case, and and if you can focus, I mean, we all know you can't really multitask. Your brain can only focus. And if you're jumping back and forth between things all the time, you're wasting time because it takes a lot of time for your brain to refocus on whatever the new thing is. So if all day you're focusing on the same kind of thing, you're just going to be more efficient because that's the way our brains work. So it's not going to work with everything, but where we can do these things and think more creatively. Anyway, that's my little soapbox, Tom.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: So it's a pilot. And this came out of the feeling that justice delayed is justice denied. We use that term in its strictest meaning in the court system. Absolutely. Of the issues that has people talk about out of just a sense of, oh my god, why is this taking so long, is the nature of staffing, I mean of course, but human nature there's like a snapback. So this is a question about potential abuse of this system that you're setting up. Will you be accused of rushing justice in certain cases? Will you be accused of trying to adjudicate, get things adjudicated when people haven't had their rights upheld and I'm just curious if that's part of your thinking when you're trying to create a low rounded policy is we all react, I mean human nature is to react whether they're lawyers for defendants or whether they're fix something. And I hear the good things about what's happening, but what are the bad things that you might anticipate coming from this that you have that you should be prepared perhaps to react to if something if you start seeing that this program is going sideways. Does that make sense? There's two pieces to

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: this one. I'm going to quote Representative Oliver, was a former transport deputy. He said and I believe this is true. This is how courts should be working in general. This program is how our programs in our court system should be working across the state. And so when we call an accountability doctor or a pilot doctor, he said, I wish this is how our courts were working in general. The major cases, the homicides, the aggravated domestics, the sex assault cases, those really should take time because the investigation continues. They are tremendous liability for the defendants. For a lot of these cases, we we live in a state where our Vermont judges are human beings who have lived on the streets of of our state, And they take a really balanced approach, in my opinion, in nonviolent cases. And so a lot of these cases are not going to be terms of incarceration. It's probation. It's treatment. It's parole. It's furlough. And so I hope that my opinion, what we were doing wasn't working. And so I do think that this is a great opportunity. We may see things, for example, the community expectation. Now Now that we're building an expectation that we can move more quickly, if we don't sustain that, people could become, hey, we had this pace going. Where's that pace? We appreciated that pace. The victims were getting, hey, the trial is going to be next week, the first hearing is. So that we're building an expectation in one county right now that we're able to move a little bit more quickly. That is a concern I have about hearing if this goes away, that we've built up some expectation, and for the police officers as well. There was a morale issue across the state with some of our police officers. I know you all represent communities, but you've probably heard that. I have heard that this is helping with aspects of that in Chittenden County. But it's also something that it may take resources and not a one size fits all way to continue this. But because these are not homicide cases, I have very little concern in the way of, I think we can only learn from this. And if there are things that we could do better, for example, you know, how do we, make sure that services are available? Chittenden County has a a collection of services and community organizations that are pretty available compared to the rest of the state in some regard. That's great. If we were to put this in Rutland or Washington, Windham, Bennington, etcetera, we need to ensure that there's that warm handoff service opportunities right there as well. And so that's a concern I have, whether or not we can replicate with service providers in the community. And I think getting to some of the other budget areas that we deal with. By the time we're involved, service providers have also been involved and having them there in Howard Center. Any often gets complaints, as does Lauren, about when something goes wrong in our system at central office, they're the front line with our staff there. They have not heard a single complaint about this program yet. But of course, now maybe they'll pour in. But I'm very positive on it right

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: now. And

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: Annie's been attending these meetings, so I think I'm missing.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: No, I mean, I think I understand what we're basically saying. But as Tim mentioned, what I would say the very serious cases, whether they're homicide, sex assaults, felony, domestic violence, that's not generally they're not coming through this court. You know, you're talking about the things that are creating problems for the retail community and for, basically, people's concern about public safety in the Burlington area. So there's a lot of, you know, it could be vandalism and all that stuff. I think people are, this is happening and people are being brought in and DCF is often there and treatment providers are there and housing advocates are there. I mean, everybody's talking at the same time. If I come through, they're saying, okay, what does Annie Noonan really need here? Is she repeating this because she is not getting her mental health service needs met? So there's what I want to call almost like a 03:60 review of the person, which I think is really critical. And that's what from when I look down the road, I think moving this type of a court system around or efficient court around, we would need to really take a look at what's available for the community services and how do we bring that support? Because it can't just be a prosecution issue. It's got to be prosecution, defense, and all the treatment providers have to be involved.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: And I think that speaks to what I'm afraid of, just, you know, this cartoonish view of somebody coming in and just going rubber stamping, you know, without having that opportunity, but to also just have the departments paired for any criticism that might be the case.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: The defender general has been pretty supportive of what's happening out there and the defense counsel staff that he employs and others. I think most of the people involved in this are feeling pretty upbeat about it. Thank you. John?

[Rep. John Kascenska]: Yeah, I'm not going get too deep into the weeds here today, but, you know, as you're kind of looking at the data here at some point in time here, you can come back and see us again here, you know, we have this sort of volume of like graffiti offenders. People see these people in the newspaper all the time here, and it's little stuff here and there, but it all kind of adds up to, at some point in time, really affecting, you know, the caseload buyout just doesn't really, it kind of sits accordion piece, all these folks are backing him here. And I don't know to what degree you're, I'm sure you're thinking about things in a global manner here well, but that's put a real strain

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: on a good system.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: Can I address something to represent Dickinson I was talking about? One of the things that would be really were encouraging are all of our offices do continue to have been doing it for years is to say to them, take a look at your docket. And to your point, if there's stuff on that, if you've got a caseload that includes DLSs from ten years ago, why is that still sitting out there? Is there a restitution judgment order against that person? Like, let's take a look at what you actually are telling us your caseload is, and if there's stuff on there that is just, you're never going to move on that case. Let's just get it off the docket. Some of the offices are really good about it. What we often hear is, I wish we had time to take a deep dive on our docket and take a look at that. And I kid with Tim, I say they should send me the docket. Let me look at it. But that's not my job. But I think I think, you know, really what we want to take a look at is, you know, why is it? Why is this person still on there? You know, is there is there a victim? If it's if it's no victim, there's no restitution order. Why aren't we just getting that thing gone? And that's what I really hope that Tim has talked about, a docket manager, which would be really an important role for somebody where we would basically say to the state's attorney, send us your docket, we wanna look at it. And I think that would be helpful. And that just points to, as Representative Dickinson was saying, the transformation and efficiency. What are you doing differently? And what stuff are we dealing with that maybe could go to an administrative court, like an administrative review and a fine? Are there things that we're putting in front of the judges that maybe we could put into an administrative role? I think that there are opportunities there. And maybe I'm a lone voice over it, but I really do believe it could happen.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: Time again, it's the time that we've adopted that.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Comment then Mike. I hate to ask this question.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: If properly constructed, there's lots of guardrails that would protect privacy and constitutional rights. Would AI be helpful in going over 23,000

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: cases? That's a good question.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: As long as a human being is still I mean, one of the reasons for our data the answer is yes. But one of the reasons that we don't just turn around the data we get from the courts and spit it back out to you is because of the confidentiality of so many of our cases. And so I would want a human being to vet all of that. And the other thing is when I look at a docket, because I've been traumatized by being a deputy state's attorney, I'm going to say, say, Okay, there's five counts in this case. The affidavit recommended eight. Being able to drive and sometimes when there's a person with repeat, us being able to look at why is in the made up county of Annie's County, Newnan County, why in Newnan County are we getting this same type of thing? And so part of the data analysis that AI can't do yet is that human approach as a prosecutor to look at the data, not just the data view, blah blah blah blah, but looking at it with a qualitative lens as to why do we keep getting this type of charge in this county. And I'm gonna tell you, we have lots of excessive speeding cases in Washington County because of Route 62, Route 63, and Route 64. They're like sledding hills off the highway, so people go a 100 miles per hour. That's the type of why are we getting excessive speeding cases in Washington County? Well, that's that's one of the reasons. Our offshoots of the highway are downhill. That's something that you can only extrapolate once you've been working as a prosecutor in a particular county. And so AI can't do that, but we definitely need to take advantage of any efficiency that is humane where we can have taking more time to us.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: That's great and it's happening. It finds those cases that are buried because a human being or several human beings can't go through 23,000 cases and keep them all straight. If you find the ten year old cases, then you can at least it shows up on a printout that then you can apply what you're just talking about too because that's that to me seems like if you're digging and you know if you're finding stuff on the shelf that's ten years old, absolutely that should be disposed of as know as quickly as possible.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: The most confidential issues we deal with are the juvenile cases. When I get an expert witness request across my desk from a juvenile case, I don't know who it is, it's all initials, I don't have any need to know, and I shouldn't know. So if we could separate out the juvenile cases, I think we could potentially do some sort of a sorting with potentially new technology. Just leave those off to the side, because they're so highly confidential.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, Mike.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: I just want to

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki]: quickly add, I think the benefit of having a venue to accelerate some things, it's not to accelerate, it's to catch up. And I'm just speaking anecdotally from my time working in child protection, that some of the people I worked with had five, ten, 15 outstanding charges going back two and three years, and they knew I can do whatever I want and act with impunity. Something about going for a judge, and they can sometimes and I saw it happen, that was the compelling reason they got into treatment. And even the threat of losing their child was not enough to compel them, but going in front of a judge and the prospect of going to jail was enough to say, better do something different here. So that we can expedite these cases would be helpful.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: And you may not hear this from me often, but I want to applaud Judge Maley specifically for managing the stock. It was an incredible pace and energy that I've observed. You're all welcome to watch the court, by the way, go up to Chittenden County and watch it with representatives for all in his district. But it's something to kind of watch when you see someone the judge is developing a relationship with these folks because he's seen them before. And you don't want to disappoint someone you're developing a relationship with. So when the judge says, when I see you next week, I really hope to see some improvement. I don't think people go relapse in treatment every day, and that's a part of the treatment process. But seeing improvement with accountability, we need accountability underneath all of it, I think is what we're going do.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: And retail theft, you think about people who are suffering from mental health issues. There is a lot of that in terms of what the retail community talks about. But it's also that there are actually organized retail theft groups out there sending people in, all of that. And that's really sad. And then, of course, we really worry about the whole issue with the kids that are being involved as sort of, I wanna say, like drug mules. That's a horrible situation. So some of what when you are able to get people in front of the judge, as you say, it really does make a difference for the judge to be able to sort through and the prosecutor and defense to know, there's a kid here that's being abused, or there's a situation here where this is not just somebody who's gone in and taken something off the shelf and walked out. This is somebody who's actually being paid by people who are engaged in this organized theft.

[Speaker 0]: Why don't we move on to the other right hand?

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: Which hopefully take as long, because I think

[Speaker 0]: Commissioner I think it would, but yes. It's all very interesting and helpful comments.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: Thank you. So the second piece, which Annie can detail a little bit more, is on our transport program. Just as a quick reminder, we are the first call for all the to and from court appearances from our incarcerated facilities. Our state employee transports are doing that. And they do a great job at responding to those. And we're working with multiple judges right now on block scheduling, where we try to have all of the cases for detainees happen between ten and one, ten and two, which will help with our overtime issues. But I'll hand it over to Annie, who's been really policing this issue aggressively for our department.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: Thank you. So the first thing is in state mileage transports. That's a transport team running around the state picking people up. And why is there a pressure on that piece that has been recommended for an additional 35,000? That is because you've probably heard me say this last year years ago, we were able to work with corrections to say, You've got somebody up at Newport. They need to be in Rutland tomorrow morning for their hearing. Can you manage getting them down the day before or whatever? Corrections doesn't have the staffing capacity right now to do much helping with us of moving people. And in fact, they are more or less saying, we just are so understaffed. We can't take time to take somebody out of a unit. Just got to get two people and move them around down to wherever they need to be. So the flip of that is that then our folks have to get up or moving around. So our mileage has gone up. So what used to be sort of a shared mileage burden with corrections doing some of that transport, they don't have capacity. So that's why our mileage has gone up. So it's basically, it's a cost for all of state government, but it's really now it's more on us. The $35,000 we're running over in that line, we estimated and shared with Commissioner Gresham and our budget analyst, Stephanie Goldman, we needed some money there. I think my projection is that will suit us, and that's what that's all about. Alright. Per diem staff. So let me tell you what so we have the state transport deputies, and as you know that the sheriff's departments have their own employees. So we have state employees, but then a sheriff can have their own employees. For lack of a better term, they're deputies for the sheriff. We call them per diems, only because in our head, that's how we pay them. So that's what we call them. I don't necessarily think the sheriff calls them per diems. The sheriff calls them their deputy, but we call them per diems. So we have five counties where we generally wind up having to pay out per diem staff because they either don't have a transport deputy and they are primarily doing the service themselves. Grand Isle, Essex, Orange, Addison, and Franklin. So Chittenden County, Sheriff Gamblyn, is supporting Franklin and Addison. So he's got three counties he's supporting. It's a lot of courts to manage. So what we find is that sometimes we will call Sheriff Elmore, Addison and say, Mike, can you handle the transport? Or he'll just do it because he knows he'll talk to Sheriff Gamblyn. So we pay per diem when it's not a state transport deputy doing it. And so our per diem budget for that, basically have asked for an additional amount of money. Some of that is, as Tim said, because things are ramping up, the ports are moving very quickly, we've a lot of transports, and we have to have that money available to support the sheriffs when they have to use their own person. We're always grateful that the sheriff is willing to take one of their persons off of a detail or a contract and give them to us for the day. We only pay $50. We pay $50 an hour. Sometimes the sheriff can get a lot more money on a private contract. For Pike Industries or someone, they're getting more money, but they know that supporting the courts is an important role for them as a sheriff, so they give us the perdue. But we need more money to pay the perdue. Overtime for transport deputies. Again, they're running around the state, and they're starting really early in the morning, and we just have a tremendous amount of overtime happening now. Tim mentioned that one of the things we're trying to do with the courts is ask the courts to try to get our folks in a window. So don't ask us to get them there at 08:00 in the morning. A lot of times when there at eight in the morning, they're not seen at 08:00 in the morning. They're sitting there till eleven, one, two. The problem is when they have to come in really early, it's really ramping up our overtime budget. Our overtime budget is, frankly, just exploded. And so we have talked to Judge Sone and Court Administrator Corsons to ask them if they would try to get the judges to give us a break and basically get us so that we're in this window because they have to be transported, either picked up and gotten there or brought back. So we really need that help because our overtime budget is way over, and it it concerns me so much that I'm worried that as we come through the end of the year, you know, we're we're going to be back at Stephanie and at commissioner Gresham saying, like, oh my god. We ran out of money. I think they know that that's our fear, but we have this money, should help us with that. I asked I was running numbers yesterday projecting out and the 50,000 hopefully will take us My projection was, if all goes well and nothing else breaks, I came up with $48,550 that's presuming that other costs don't go up. So I think that's a good number.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Go ahead.

[Speaker 0]: Thomas, a question.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Just to be clear about overtime and the burdens that you're under, so if you have using your example of someone who gets to the courtroom and has to wait for filing. First of all, a transport requires two people

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: right by law. Not by law, but my best practice.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Best practice. There's two people that are accruing over time. They are on duty from the time they pick up the prisoner, if you will, or the

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: They leave to head that way.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: And then they are not going to get back to Newport from Rutland until five p. M. That's all overtime. Correct. Okay, so it's overtime for two people because they have to wait, they don't drop off, go in the coffee shop, hang out.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: No, they're staying with the person, no, their role is that they have to be with the defendant the whole time, whether it's in the sally court or even if they're, even generally wherever they're being held in there. So they cannot leave, I mean, they can run out and go to the bathroom, but they need to be in visual contact at all times with the people that they're in charge of. And that's for everybody's protection, the defendant's protection, the protection of the judges. And in court, as you've seen, they have to be available. They're supposed to be watching at all times to make sure that somebody's not jumping across the bench to attack a judge or

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: Yeah, they're temporary jailers, for lack of

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: a better term, during the day. And so what was the transition back to this full time in terms of instead of using online or virtual hearings?

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: So this has definitely been many judges have wanted to bring more people back to their courtrooms, being a few years past COVID. Although we still experience COVID. And so this has been one of the byproducts of that. More people in court or more hearings and a historic backlog with a high number of pending individuals with serious cases, As you know from other hearings, corrections is at twenty nineteen levels right now, which is not shocking. We have a major homicide issue in the state right now, 130 just homicide cases. And it includes the whole spectrum of attempted conspiracy, etcetera. But those people are detained for the most part, in addition to aggravated domestic cases, sex assault cases, and ag assault cases, which can sometimes be charged as attempted murder. So by the time you're looking at it, you're looking at 500 or so detainees in the state. You have not that many transport deputies. And so each day is just a sprint. And if we are going to be in person more for those serious cases, it's going be a lot of our time. Now for the less serious cases, like the one I mentioned, where is it worth it to drive someone down the Windham who lives in Burlington who can plead out from the Chittenden facility? My answer is no. It's not worth the time and energy to do that. Sometimes and not picking on a particular account, sometimes a judge wants a person who's got three retail thefts who's detained to go to the courthouse to meet with their attorney for the first time. I think that's unacceptable. I don't think it's hard to find your client when they're incarcerated. Say that as, you know, I grew up in a house with two public defenders. If they're incarcerated, you know where they are. It's not a huge issue, but we shouldn't be the reason that they're meeting with their clients. And again, it's not a huge issue, but it does happen. Are judges taking that feedback from a transport deputy is something we're improving with our relationships with the courts, but having the ability to say, we've got a weight of the evidence hearing in this homicide case. You want us to bring down Bob for the retail theft. What's more important to you? So we're working on an administrative fix with the courts about prioritization when we're having these crunches, knowing that we're not going to have 200 transport deputies running around the state. We'd have to do more things more efficiently. The virtual hearings still need to be a part of the equation.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: Absolutely. Status conference, bringing people down for a status conference. The defendants, if you think about the pressure, the defendants sometimes brought down, they could be sitting in for hours on end for a status conference, and it puts pressure on the corrections people because they've got to get the person ready to transport. Every person is sitting down there, you know, and, you know, our staff is going out and buying, getting, bringing them some lunch because they have, you know, sometimes corrections will send a lunch, but sometimes they don't expect them to be down there that long, and they, yeah, they are, for a status conference. And then when you get them back, corrections has to deal with all of the special stuff that they have to do to bring somebody back into population. So there are times when a remote hearing makes so much sense. From what we hear, the defendants would rather just get online and do that. And I think you'll hear from corrections that they had their own challenges in terms of their technology and all of that. But there are hearings that people are being dragged down to court for a five minute status conference, and they've waited five and a half, six hours, and were in a car for two and a half hours. I mean, it's not right.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, so we could keep going on this because it's really beyond our purview. We understand you have a new position. That was what we approved last year. I'm looking in the language of the budget, the governor that Adam presented yesterday, and this B207 is all in there, but B205 with the state's attorneys is not.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: It's in it's in I think it's under a miscellaneous

[Speaker 0]: okay fine oh because it's one time but you put it on yours as B205 but it's really not a b number because that would be the base in your memory oh yes right thanks so that's why okay

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: Trevor will have

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: all That's correct.

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: Okay. It's one time. All right.

[Speaker 0]: Great. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We'll see you for our White Friday.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Good. Thank

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: will. Thank you. Thanks very much everybody. Happy holidays.

[Speaker 0]: You

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: too. Congratulations Marty. So

[Speaker 0]: I've had a couple of ways to go but I see that Andrew is here from the tax department and you're willing to come up with it's early to take advantage and we can go with you and we'll break a little

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: bit earlier and then we'll

[Speaker 0]: have Emily talk about more stuff instead of jumping back and forth. Are you ready to take a stand? Is anybody joining you on Zoom or are you?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: No, I'm in. It's getting me today.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. And did we get anything from you? I'm not seeing I

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: didn't send anything. I was just going to walk you all through our three BAA items. And then if you all have requests for additional information, I'm happy to pull that together.

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: Okay. Great.

[Speaker 0]: So welcome. Introduce yourself for the record.

[Rep. John Kascenska]: Thank you. Thank you.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Andrew Stein. I'm the chief operating officer at the Department of Taxes, and I'm here to chat about three budget adjustment act requests that we have. So I'm gonna start with the homeowner rebate, the renter rebate. Actually, I'm gonna start with the renter credit because that's that's the up. Then I'll go to the homeowner rebate, also known. It's part of the property property tax credit program. And then I'm going to go to a pilot request.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. So these were in the spreadsheet we got yesterday from Adam. So it's B137138First.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: Transaction is.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: And then B1100C2. Okay. So I'm gonna start with the renter credit. That's B138. So our current year amount is 9 and a half million, and we're requesting a one and a half million dollar up, bringing it to 11,000,000. And the reason the renter credit is increasing is because the program is indexed for inflation. And when our analysts were forecasting this for this year, they were in touch with the Vermont State Housing Authority, and up to 1,000 renting households will be losing their subsidies between now and the 2025, which is gonna put pressure on the program. The other element here is in the last legislative session, the administration and the legislature supported an expansion of the renter credit eligibility thresholds, and that aimed to grow participation in the program to hit the intended level of aggregate tax relief, which for a number of years was 9 and

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki]: a half million.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: That's that's what was budgeted. And so what was happening is following a reform to the renter credit for and that was in fiscal year twenty one, that reform to the renter credit. Was It intended to be revenue neutral, but the program was consistently coming in under budget by nearly 2,000,000. So that meant that that was a negative outcome for low income renters who the program was aimed at assisting. And so in the first season of credits after that eligibility expansion, the appropriation of 9 and a half million came in a bit short by about 750,000. And so between the change in those eligibility thresholds and then some of some of these other changes we're talking about adjusting for inflation and some federal subsidies for renters going away, we're looking at we're looking at a 1 and a half million dollar up. And so when when we were looking at that as part of the BAA, realizing last year, we had to do some administrative gymnastics working with finance and management, taking from appropriations here and there to be able to continue to issue renter credits through the end of the year, which we appreciated their support, and we appreciated all of your support in creating mechanisms like that so that we could shift $50,000 from this appropriation, $50,000 from that appropriation to keep things moving along. And those are appropriations that fortunately had money at the end of the year. We knew we were we were gonna have we were we were gonna have a BAA request. And while we were looking at that, I was also getting the budget numbers for next fiscal year, which we'll talk about next month, for the homeowner rebate. And I was seeing that the estimate for that was coming down. And so I asked our policy team to reforecast this year's, and it was it was roughly it it was pretty much the same. It was, like, a 1 and a half million dollar up for the renter credit, a 1 and a half million dollar down for the homeowner rebate. And my thinking was we should include this here because this helps everybody figure out where the money's gonna come from for this up in the middle in the middle of a budget year. And so this this homeowner rebate appropriation b one thirty seven, what this represents is the appropriation that goes to municipalities to make them whole as part of the property tax credit program, as part of income sensitivity. You have households earning less than $47,000. We call this the circuit breaker. Those households with income less than $47,000 get income sensitivity for their municipal taxes. So they get property tax assistance their municipal taxes. And so what this appropriation does from the general fund, and it makes the municipalities whole as though they were getting the full amount of property tax. And the cost of the appropriation is going down because fewer households are eligible each year because the income cut off for the program has remained fixed at $47,000 for a while and with inflations. What's that? Quite a while. Quite a while. Yes. I don't know. It's true. I I don't know. Definitely at least a decade. Because when I was an analyst, it was it was 47,000. Yep. And the program's internal tax rate brackets are also not adjusted for inflation. So the credits shrink as incomes rise.

[Speaker 0]: Talk about that yesterday. And Marty reminded us, because she knows, in Act 73, the Ed bill, this is scheduled to change under that. So Wayne?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: During your regular budget process, can't or don't forecast the inflation portion of this?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: So the $47,000 is fixed, so it doesn't adjust. The thresholds don't adjust for inflation.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: But the parts that do adjust for inflation, can't forecast

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: that. Well, we will forecast. So for example, if incomes are if it you know, we've we we do forecast incomes growing based on past numbers, based on forecasted economic trends. Our office for this one, our office or our policy team works with the joint fiscal office to come up with a consensus estimate. And they have a model which accounts for inflation, which accounts for income changes, things of that nature.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: You understand why I'm asking. I'm just asking because of front loading it into the big bill and into the budget or doing it through budget adjustment. Maybe it's apples and oranges, maybe it doesn't matter.

[Rep. Marty Feltus (Vice Chair)]: I think you're referring to the renter credit. Right. Because renter credit as opposed to the homeowner rebate. Right. The renter credit is adjusted for inflation.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: The renter credit is adjusted for inflation.

[Rep. Marty Feltus (Vice Chair)]: So the question is why can't we calculate that?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Why can't we forecast that ahead of time so it's in the budget rather than have to deal with it.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yeah. So that's

[Speaker 0]: There's always going to be some true up in the budget adjustment. We just aren't going to get the perfect and inflation can be wacky sometimes.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: It can be. The other element of this is we only have one full tax year under this new policy for the renter credit. So everything was forecasted based on, you know, what is this policy gonna look like? And it's always easier to forecast when you have data based on existing policies. That that's an element of this as well. Limited data. Yeah. So we knew that we anticipated that this would grow over time with inflation, but we didn't anticipate the 1,000 households that would be losing subsidies. We our our team didn't anticipate you know, the aim was to hit the 9 and a half million dollar mark, but didn't anticipate coming a bit over that 9 and a half million mark.

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: I'm getting confused. We have the renters plan, and that's got that's invest. Yes. And you say you were you've got more people now eligible because

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: There was a policy change.

[Speaker 0]: Is that a couple of years ago?

[Rep. John Kascenska]: Yeah.

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: But it went into effect. Yeah. Okay. Now you've got the HOPFED thing, which has a threshold of 47,000.

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: And that is not an income sensitivity for the Ed fund. That also includes municipal funds.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yeah. So if you're a household earning less than $47,000 the property tax credits cover your municipal municipal taxes as well. Yes. And that's what this

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: is discounts.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. To make them whole for this program. And that's what this appropriation is. When you see homeowner rebate here, it's not the full cost. It's not like foregone revenues to the Ed Fund. This is a general fund appropriation to municipalities to make them whole for the lost revenues Yes. Associated Municipal loss.

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: So the Ed Fund has already calculated in

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Not in this appropriation. This is just a general fund appropriation. It's just general fund. Yep. So

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: the It makes sense that

[Speaker 0]: it's going down because how many people who have income less than $47,000 on it? Yes. But there aren't a lot of people who do that.

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: Yes. So it goes down. So we were talking yesterday, and Marty talked about a change in the ways and means thing, and I don't know what the act was, but it used to be a rebate for low income people that they got maybe four or five. This is pre Act 60. They paid their tax, they got the tax. Let's say they owe the $1,000 on her. Grandma owned a social security on spouse's dollars. And then they filled out that form, which we still have. They got a rebate on the red fund, on the red money. But it came many months later, and they did not necessarily recognize that that was offsetting their property tax. You were saying yesterday something about there's now something that's more immediate. Is that was the solution to that?

[Rep. Marty Feltus (Vice Chair)]: That was supposed that was the solution to that awkward year lag in recognizing the homeowner rebate because it, I don't think now that you don't get an actual check-in the mail it's calculated by the tax clerk but it's based on your last year's income and it makes it rather cumbersome and awkward and it makes it difficult for the homeowner to figure out how much of a discount am I going to get

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: because it's based on

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: last year's. They don't pay it anyway.

[Rep. Marty Feltus (Vice Chair)]: They don't pay it anyway, it gets calculated out. But they have to pay

[Speaker 0]: the difference between what they're getting and what they're and they don't know what that's going to be.

[Rep. Marty Feltus (Vice Chair)]: They don't know what that's going to be immediately. But the new system which we put in April Act 73 and I can't remember when it's supposed to take effect was an exemption system as opposed to a rebate going back we're lowering the amount on which one pays based upon what their income is, different discounts for different.

[Speaker 0]: So it's going to change assuming that Act 73 or enough parts of it go. And so we don't need to worry about that yet. We will there's a whole lot that's going to happen with act 73 it's not going to stay the same

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: the homeowners declined because that's going to go into effect and fewer people are going to have to

[Rep. David Yacovone]: This

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: decline is for this fiscal year, and it's just based on an updated forecast that incomes are growing at a rate that was higher than was forecasted a year ago.

[Speaker 0]: Because it's been a fixed number for fifteen years or twenty years or whatever it's been. 47,000 made a lot of

[Rep. Marty Feltus (Vice Chair)]: sense at the time, but it was never indexed. But again, this refers only to the so called circuit breaker for the really, really low income. So that it makes up your municipal tax, not the education tax. But it makes the town whole so they can still do the streets and the water and that kind of thing. Okay,

[Rep. David Yacovone]: so Dave. I apologize when I heard a thousand people losing their rental subsidies, my ability to track became a little impaired. Could you help me just connect the dots? How does that thousand people impact this request?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: At all? It impacts the renter credit request because when there are federal subsidies involved, that impacts the renter credit calculation. So if you're getting a bunch of subsidies from the federal government, that gets accounted for.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: So And when it goes away,

[Rep. John Kascenska]: I get a bigger credit?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yes. Or you can enter into if you're like on the verge, you can enter into that eligibility threshold.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: Okay, yep. Now, I know this isn't perhaps germane, but sometimes when there's a natural disaster, Vermont steps in and tries to help with resources appropriation, I think. But when there's a man made disaster for a thousand people who lose their tax subsidy, who steps forward?

[Speaker 0]: Is this section eight you're talking about?

[Rep. David Yacovone]: I don't know. I'm just referring Andy said a thousand people were losing their tax subsidy. That's that's

[Speaker 0]: Is that the federal tax subsidy?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yeah. And I can get more information on that. I'm not that familiar with all the specifics of that subsidy. It was just part of the explanation.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: Yeah, I'd at least like to

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: know what I feel

[Rep. David Yacovone]: of responsibility and an obligation to respond if I can, if it's appropriate. Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: So, Andy, you'll get us some more information. Yeah,

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: no problem. No problem.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yeah. Our senior fiscal analyst worked with the Vermont State Housing Authority on that component. That's where that information came from. So I'll get some more information on exactly what that is for you.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Because as we've learned, there are nine public housing authorities, and the Vermont State Housing Authority is not the umbrella organization. Okay.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Do all probably know more than

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: I do about it. They do administer a lot of the

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: vouchers for those other programs. So

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: do operate not there's not an umbrella organization, but they do operate administratively so that they have not control, but they keep track or different

[Speaker 0]: For some of them, yeah. Okay, we good on that for now?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yeah, and I can say, for example, during the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic, there were a number of federal subsidy renters. Initially, because the change in the renter credit took effect for FY21, There was a thought early on that we weren't hitting the $9,500,000 appropriation mark because those subsidies were helping people out of that threshold, if you will. And so the thought was, when some of those subsidies went away, that renters would then fall back into the eligibility threshold. And we saw that to an extent, but we still had like $2.02 and a half million dollars in that appropriation. Right? So then the last one I have is b 1,100 c two.

[Speaker 0]: One time.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yep. Miscellaneous fiscal year 2026 one time appropriations. And this is an interesting one. And the BAA Yeah. In in the BAA last year, and I realized it was then folded into the budget bill, we had language about shifting shifting dates related to a policy change where the telephone personal property tax would sunset and telecommunications property. And and this really includes all sorts of telecommunications property. It's an it's it's an update of some of that language. That would then fall in the grand lists that would then be assessed by property tax. And so municipalities benefit from this as well. So the state and municipalities benefit from this change. And also, do away with a miscellaneous a smaller miscellaneous tax type and just bring there's there's administrative gains there in the long run too. So this was noncontroversial as far as I'm aware. And what ultimately ended up happening is the session before last, or I'm really doing it as so it wouldn't have been f y twenty five. It would have been in f y twenty four. This change passed, and we were given a timeline to implement this change by April '25. And we realized soon after this passed, we we needed to contract out for these services. We need to there there was no complete inventory of all telecommunications property in the state of Vermont for one. Plus, there's all sorts of calculations associated with assessing this and then growing, accounting for appreciation or depreciation of assets over time, that type of thing. That needed to be figured out because we weren't going to just assess every bit of this property every year. So we needed to work with a vendor on this.

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: And

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: we went out to bid soon after, I want to say it was probably August or September of last fiscal year. And we got a number of great bids, and it took a bit to get through, and we selected a bidder. And by that point, it was like January or February. It was clear we weren't gonna meet that April deadline. And then even based on those bids, it was clear. They were all based on like a two, three, five, six year timeline to do this. And ultimately, we selected bidder that could get it done in a roughly one to two year timeline initially, but then there's other work to help adjust those calculations and grow that methodology. So it's like a three year three year deliverable cycle, but we can make the transition in the first year and a half, essentially. And so there's a bunch of upcoming deadlines this month and next month related to this that I'm told we're on track with. And so when when we when we did that, we had a $150,000 from pilot. We did not ask to move it forward because we thought we already have the appropriation. If it's still there, we we can ask for excess receipts. But, ultimately, when we submitted that request and credit to commissioner Gresham, he's like, you know, this is a a little bit of an awkward one because it's the pilot fund. I think it would be best to go before the legislature and just do this via the PAA. So we said, sounds great. You know, appreciate the transparency. And then when we were looking at this, our budget director for finance and management, Aaron Bergdor, was asking more questions about this. And he was like, instead of you going back year after year asking for this, we think you should they suggested asking for the money that we needed for this upfront. And so we're asking for $500,000. The deliverables for this agreement over three years, 375,000. But we have hourly rates based on additional work for various consulting services. If there's appeals of any of these properties by any of the telecommunications companies, for example, would need to retain the services of this vendor to defend those values, things of that nature. So we're looking at about 500,000 And this came out of pilot initially because it benefits the municipalities as well. It's going to add

[Speaker 0]: We had enough money in there after giving them 100% back. So does this 500,000 include the original $1.50?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: It does. Yeah. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: So it's not an addition too.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: That's right. Yeah. And that 150 because it's on it it ended last fiscal year, and we didn't move it forward to to the next fiscal year. It's in there.

[Speaker 0]: So that's what it's Cleaner thing, all the

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: way around.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Quickly. So this is going to take care of

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: all the

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: evaluation of the properties. I've always been a little skeptical of this shift to this program. I'm just curious, is this going to be an ongoing process? Obviously, they're be putting in new equipment and things are going to change. And is it shifting any kind of burden onto the community? I have a local telephone company in my town, region. So how much is this shifting any burden on them, additional costs on them by doing this?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: The question is, is it shifting cost onto the municipality?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: No. Yeah. No. Onto the provider. It's a

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: good question.

[Rep. John Kascenska]: I

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: don't know the answer to that because it hasn't been inventoried, so it's not clear to me where there might be ups and downs. I'm willing to bet there's going be some winners and losers here. Some companies will be paying less. Some companies will be paying more. I don't There's millions of pieces of equipment. Yes, there's a lot of equipment. For example, cell phone towers, things of that nature.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Yeah. You're not gonna go down to the nut mold

[Timothy C. Lueders-Dumont (Executive Director, Department of State’s Attorneys & Sheriffs)]: Mhmm.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Level, you are?

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Well, I don't I frankly, I'm not an expert in valuing and and and valuing telecommunications property. So I I could I have I have some information here about, like, where we are in the process, the identification of the property classes that exist in the state and the creation of valuation classes for use in the model. They're working on sorting of that data by location, owner, and class of property to get a grasp of the scale of the model and the information that needs to be requested specific to Vermont, review of the unique requirements that are going to be necessary to value the different geographical areas in the state, the identification and separation of ownership of all the wireless communication sites and companies that are located in the state, and the identification and vetting of the companies and company ownership mergers in the state to contact and to send the information request to and try and consolidate what information to ask for and who to ask for it from.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: I understand you're not gonna answer that. You know, you don't have an answer now, and I didn't expect one. I only brought it up as a red flag because I'm concerned in the long run whether or not this is gonna be a good thing.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki]: This

[Speaker 0]: will affect, as you say, the wireless and as well as the wired. Right?

[Rep. Marty Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Yes. All the new broadband that we're

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: trying get in? Yep. Yeah. And I have a note here, 10,000 items have already been inventoried.

[Rep. John Kascenska]: So if we don't have an inventory, it's it's gonna be a huge It has to begin with Right. You have to have more of what they may have to go back to.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Have to have an inventory You have it.

[Rep. John Kascenska]: Assess it.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Yeah. Problem becomes It's all equipment.

[Rep. John Kascenska]: They're gonna be looking at, replacement at some stage of the game. Sure. Yep, I'd imagine.

[Speaker 0]: So those are your three things.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Those are our three things.

[Speaker 0]: Yes. One is from the pilot fund, so it's not general fund. One affects general fund. It's the other offset. They're not They're offset. So no general fund.

[Teri Corsones (State Court Administrator)]: Thank you.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yeah. And when we were looking into next fiscal year working on our fiscal year twenty seven budget, I saw that the homeowner rebate was down around this. I remember the exact figure, but it was down around this, which then led to Welford asking for this BAA to increase. And last year, that appropriation ended up somewhere between 16 and 17,000,000, the homeowner rebate. So and we budgeted 19,000,000 for it. So it's pretty pretty confident that that was gonna be lower if we reforecast it. So try to be a good team player.

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: You. Lynn? Yeah, I vaguely remember this bill on the floor. We had a representative who had worked for the telephone company for forty years who was growing the presenter of the bill. I think this is the bill that was about. One of the questions that I think was discussed, and I guess I'm going to ask you, if we're going to go with there's a lot of stuff that goes into this property tax, this miscellaneous telecom.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Yeah, bringing telecommunications property into the property tax rather than having a separate tax.

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: And there was a logic behind it. What will this do to the consumer if all of these telecom companies or wireless companies or broadband companies or all of these people have to pay property tax after we spend the second million dollars to go in inventory and figure out what it's going to cost? What will the companies do with their rates, which do have to go some of them have to go to PUC, some of them don't.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Well, would defer to them on that. Right now, it's not clear exactly what's you know, this is still in the process of being set up. Depending on what municipal tax rates are, depending on what education tax rates are, that will influence how much how much they're paying, whether it's more or less compared to the telecommunications property tax. Does that make sense?

[Rep. Leland Morgan]: Yeah, but it obviously gets passed on to the consumer. Because we're trying to go and make it available to people, but at the same time, we're going to go. And I don't remember how they counted it before, but there was something that was But it was a change, but I can't remember what the impact was. Seemed like there was a It wasn't without controversy.

[Speaker 0]: There was a lot of controversy.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Well, there's an existing tax already in place. So I would defer to our policy team. I'm happy to circle back, as I'm sure there's a fiscal note on this. Yeah. You know, the governor doesn't support increases in in taxes, so this one would have been we would have kicked the tires on this pretty hard in in the policy office of our department. So I can circle back on what the forecast was there. Thank very

[Speaker 0]: much for coming in. We appreciate it. We'll see you again next month, boarded up next year's budget.

[Andrew Stein (Chief Operating Officer, Department of Taxes)]: Most certainly. Thank you, everyone. Happy holidays. Be well. Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: So we're going take a short break. Emma's going to actually come talk to us about a few more things than what we originally thought we were going to talk about. So let's be back here. We're going to start promptly at ten of eleven. Okay, so that'll give you