Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: Good morning, this is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Tuesday, 02/03/2026. It's just after 11:15 a. M. And we're continuing our walk through the FY 2027 budget, and we now have with us the Criminal Justice Council. So welcome. Have you been into our meeting room before?

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: We haven't.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: Okay. So we won't do the introductions but you could introduce yourselves and us your presentation. Thank you.

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: Thank you very much. So for the record, Christopher Burkle, the executive director of the Vermont Criminal Justice Council. I have with me my director of administration, Lindsey Traverge. And joining us, who's familiar with everybody, is Jason. No introduction needed. Jason is who I call my money man, so he's the guy I refer to every time I need some real guidance. So starting out with our budget. We're fairly succinct in our budget, a smaller budget for everybody to have to work around. So looking at essentially a 1.6 to 8% increase on our general fund, which amounts to 71,443. Our IDT fund is an increase of 43,527.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: I'd like to stop you for a minute. I don't know where you are. We have this budget book, but we can maybe start with a

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: bigger picture here. I should apologize. You have our entire budget sheet. I put together just a very small sampling of what we were going to touch on, knowing that you had the entire sheet and had the ability to ask anything that you chose to do so.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: He is

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: We're on page 35.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: Thank you. I'm showing up on the large screen. Yeah, oh, that's helpful. Thank you. I need to be oriented here. Okay, so not a big increase in your general fund budget. Okay.

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: Let's see. Would it be helpful for me to identify the pages or can you see it on the screen?

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: Identify the pages, please. Yeah. Somebody's got I can't read that screen. So we're on page 35.

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: Okay. Right. We are a total of 16 employees, two exempt and 14 classified. And just for awareness sake, our 2025 vacancy saving rate was 10.7. And thus far this year, we are at 12.5%.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: So what is that in terms of numbers? Do you have one or two openings? We had two openings. Recently, and then we have another open that we're

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: actively recruiting. Are? Actively recruiting those two positions. One is a very difficult position because of the specificity to it, which is a canine head trainer. We did get, thanks to this committee last year, we But had that the trouble with that, it's a very specified type of job and there aren't many people that have that talent. And therefore, the few that do have that talent do contract rather than become employed because of the nature of the business of retiring and not being able to access our

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: jobs. So, I don't know if we knew that last year when we did this, but I seem to remember that you were sending people off to Pennsylvania or Ohio or something to get trained. This seemed to be a way to be more

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: We're still doing our in house training, but the state police were doing Connecticut. We're traveling to Connecticut. So we're actually on the cusp of, I think, that's going to be rejoined here. I'm hopeful by the end of this week that will be solidified.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: Good. Thank you.

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: I'll be moving on just to pages four and five just for your awareness.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: So

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: again, that $4,380,000, we're talking 16 staff, the 347,000 in IDT funds. And, basically, what that does is serve 82 state, local, and sheriff departments, and it keeps us where we're at right now, which is much better than we were last year at a 96% compliance rate with agencies, making sure that everybody is compliant. We've actually started to foster some of the recommendations that were made by the auditor's office in house that we're getting better at tracking where agencies should be. And in on page five, what I'm referring to is the cost per student to actually train people is $6,700 What we have with that is that fluctuation of numbers that we just never know until a class starts, how many people we're going to be training. So for instance, we started yesterday was the first day of our one hundred and twenty first basic recruit class. We started with registered 54 applicants, went through orientation prior to day one, which was yesterday, we were down to 46 applicants, one left before we actually started the day, which brought us down to 45, and we had two resignations as of this morning. So we're down to 43 right now.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: Is that the goal of what happens?

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: It's typically what happens. And it's not a bad thing. We spend a lot of time trying to preload recruits before they come to the academy with getting them ready physically, getting them ready mentally. We have an orientation three weeks ahead of time. And then our ease into is actually the first part of your day yesterday is a very slow getting them acclimated to how they structure themselves, how they line up, where they find different classrooms, what they're going to be doing. And then the second half is more of a stress induced model, which is very spelled out for them ahead of time, but to make sure that they understand that that's what you face in reality. And so it's very short term stress inoculation. And even after that, too, there's two that have decided it's just not the profession for them, Which is not a bad thing.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: Better to do it now before you spend all the money training them and getting them up and running. Somebody's thinking, you can hire somebody else. The one thing

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: that we're really good at is making sure that we connect with those recruits and their agencies that have hired them because they're just in our care, but they're an employee of somebody else. We make sure that they walk through. Are you thinking through this decision? You know that you're giving up your employment by leaving, you're giving up health insurance benefits, your family who's now depending upon this new, like, really try to encourage them to stay on and give it some time. But for those that just make that decision, it's a wise decision to make. So moving from there, that also impacts how many meals we serve. So, you know, we're twenty seven thousand five forty four. That fluctuates not just by the basic recruit class, but also to three level two classes during the year, which is what we used to refer to as the former part time class. And then in service training, where folks might stay overnight. There's also their breakfast or lunch meals, if they're staying overnight, that's a dinner meal. So any type of meal that's related to an initial certification, we are responsible by statute to fund that cost. We're looking at our level three training right now, which is seven zero five hours. We've got ten seventy level three certified officers currently and four fifty six of level two officers. The active cases that we refer to, 74 is the complaints that we receive around unprofessional conduct, which is also what we regulate at the council. That 74 complaints does not mean that there are 74 legitimate complaints. They're just the complaints that we receive, and some are ferreted out through that process. We've had 13 stipulated agreements and 101 council meetings. Even though we're required to meet quarterly, we actually meet bimonthly. We have a council meeting date, and then we have a hearing date scheduled for every month. It creates a

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: one meetings in a year?

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: No. No. That's what we've had so far between since '24. So the 101

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: is the council meetings as well as the committee meetings, which are subsets of the council. Over what time frame? Through the last fiscal year. Okay.

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: A lot of committee work that goes into what we're doing. I'm going to be moving from there to page 23.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: Just a question, and forgive me if this is the wrong area, you mentioned meetings. In the news today, there was something about high speed police chases. Was that your organization that made the decision not to change that? Who was that? Do know you what I'm talking about?

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: There has been some discussion. There was last year around a model policy statewide, and that initially was taken up by the Law Enforcement Advisory Board last year. I don't think they're following up on that yet this year. Are there there are other topics that they might be looking at?

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: The decision I heard on the news today was that they decided not to go forward with having any other policy, just leave it the way it was. So I didn't know if that was you all or somebody else.

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: No. That was the LEAB. Okay. Yes. So our new funding requests are fairly simple. This year, they're $30,000 one time funding.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: Page 28.

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: Page 20 On twenty eight and twenty nine is the actual explanation shown. But the 30,000 in one time is really for our appropriation that we're looking for for language access translation of policies and documents that we have. I don't know if this committee is aware, but we translated our fair and impartial policing policy and our statement to communities to 13 languages in an ASL video to make sure that the communities that are impacted by that policy can understand what law enforcement is responsible to. They can read it in their own language. The the request is simply because of the fact that we have statewide mandated policies and things like the use of force policy would also be important for other communities to understand that in their own language. And while we know that there is an appropriation through the Office of Racial Equity, we did utilize that funding through their office, but we were also made aware that other state agencies are also required to utilize them. And the one time, the one cost that we did take within the FIP policy was almost, I think it was $18,000 just for that work policy. So it's an expense. Thankfully, our help from the Office of Racial Equity had all of the vendors that were applicable and got the best pricing for us to do that. But that wouldn't be available to us on a regular basis, as we're told. So that's what the one time funding request is for. And then the other is the 300,000 budget adjustment that we were looking to finish the completion of our curriculum.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: That's already in the budget adjustment, so that's separate from the FY twenty seven budget. I'm I'll have the Senate about that one. That's where it is now.

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: So I will move from there just to highlight very briefly on the council's successes that we've now through on pages twenty three and twenty four. Happy to answer any questions that come along with these, but I'll go over them real briefly, just that we've updated our professional regulation procedures. That's to outline the process of how we handle professional conduct complaints of law enforcement officers. We've selected a written entrance test and how that's implemented so folks can come to us and still take a handwritten written test or they can do it online now. We've implemented the ACADIS RMS system, which is really helping us with scheduling online classes, tracking agencies. Agencies can sign up, get it import their own training records to us. So it helps both ways with agency access to us and training that we deliver, but also for us in our auditing of those agencies. We're still in the curriculum review and update. We're up to 21 topics now and over two twenty hours of content that has been redone. We did the IACP Women's Leadership Institute last fall in Burlington. It's really our effort to try to help law enforcement recruit and retain women into the profession in law enforcement. We hosted our very first last year, our naturalization ceremony with the federal court, which was really a tremendous feat to see and a lot of happy memories were made at that. Have, I think it's December this coming year scheduled. It's our next ceremony that we plan on doing. We we attended booths at Fairhaven High School Career Fair National Night Out and Fight Festivals this past year, hired a FIP instructor, Fair and Partial Policing instructor, and then provided mandatory FIP training to all law enforcement, including neurodivergence training that we've been offering regionally and sending our trainer out to do that. Hired an attorney. We've done two canine patrol and detection schools. We've completed the identity based policing, which was a contract that we were working on last year that's gonna be working in corporation with the Fair and Partial Policing. Translated the policy into the 14 languages to do not 13. And then continue to contract with O2X, which is really critical for us in officer wellness. It monitors their health, their diet, their sleeping patterns. But in addition to that, it gives us a support person that is on-site for the entire year and they work with the full time basic class. So we are really, from our perspective, we're minimizing potential recruit injuries and illnesses. And so we're actually reducing the costs of workman's comp claims and people missing time at work for the agencies that employ them. Is there a question? Yeah, waiting for you. What's neurodivergent in service training? It's training that's focused on really interacting with people that have other learning types of folks with autism, folks that process think and learn differently so that officers recognize that when they go and they start responding to people. So it's really understanding the more different learning methods and interacting with people so that we do it better. Our FIP trainer is really good at this training and it's been well accepted every place she's done it so far. Sure. The officer wellness pieces I was talking about is just something that we really hope to continue. We originally contracted two years ago. We couldn't afford it last year. And with the help from that company, they found a grant that cut that price in half. So we're able to continue it through the end of this year. So we're really hopeful that we can manage to keep that program going. It seems like it's a wellness program that would impact a lot of agencies statewide. So we'd like to try to keep moving forward with that. We've graduated 74 level three officers and 54 level two officers, and they are made it through the residential program. This past fall, we hosted legislators at the academy for a tour and an explanation of our program, which seemed to go really well by those that were able to attend that. There were a lot of things that they learned that they didn't understand how we did it. Or when you see it in action, it's a lot different than actually hearing somebody just talk about it. I think one of the things that they found interesting, especially this past year, was in our canine training and how that training actually takes place and seeing it where a canine will come out and a group of people and pay absolutely no attention to those people based on the training that they experience there. But also, I think legislators learned that there is no certification process that's required for K-nine in the state of the pond. So essentially, I could take my dog, put the vest on it, put it in the back of the car and pull out a police K-nine, and there's no sanctioning around that. So it's important that we get that right in the training that we're doing so far. We've had a NISA assessment for our highway safety program, which actually covers DRE training program, K ride, SFST training. So all the things that are alcohol related that was done by NHTSA. They came in and did an overall review of our program to see where the strengths and weaknesses were. We did a policy review with the entire council and the work of the Fair enough Harsh Policing Subcommittee of our last policy review to see if it needed any changes to it, any recommendations. That policy review takes a long time because we have a lot of stakeholders that want their voices heard. So we take the time to listen to those and make sure that we're taking all sides into account. We conducted a death investigation school, background investigation school, internal affairs and instructor training schools. We also had a staff member attend a de escalation training trainer program. That's part of a larger initiative we've applied for. We are very limited in what we can apply for for grants based on the nature of we are not an agency. So we did apply for a grant that was available for de escalation training, been awarded to us, but we haven't received approval yet for the state's approval process for us to accept grants. So until such time as we get that, we can't actually accept that grant. And we're already in an extension period now. So we're kind of waiting for that process to play through. We also went through an alternative pathway to subcommittee creation and brought in a lot of folks from the education field and law enforcement to decide what is a alternate path. How does that happen? How can it be funded? Is it does it make sense? And can it make sense? And so they've given us a lot of direction on really a blended kind of potential where folks could do some preloaded training off-site, but then come in for the psychomotor skills that they would need to learn the scenario based training, the stress inoculation to make sure that they're still learning the things that they need to do when they're interacting with people and not just in a classroom.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: So is this alternate pathways to becoming a law enforcement officer? Pathways to what?

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: It's been an outlying requirement in statute with no clear path to do it, more funding to do it with. And so we've been trying to find ways to create what that ultimate path looks like that makes sense that everybody can buy into. But that's we've gotten a we've gotten a model from them. We've had a lot of people that have been involved in that as well. That's also an ongoing committee. The council had voted on the annual training requirements, updated the canine standards. We've done that twice. Draft procedures for our section titled twenty twenty three fifty nine, which is our ability to limit access to academy services if an agency is not compliant with the statewide model policies that they're required to be or the fair and impartial policing policy. So it does outline that we have to have a procedure, but in conversation with counsel and our legal staff, we don't have a procedure yet. We're going through the Administrative Procedures Act to do that now. So in the meantime, we've voted for and adopted by council procedures that will help us follow that right now until such time as the council rule has been approved for that. And we're, as I said, lastly, just going through our update of council rules right now. We attempted to have a rules meeting yesterday, but we couldn't be quorum for that. But for the most part, that's a regularly standing meeting of folks involved in that. And then moving quickly to page 30, just kind of outline the future pressures that we're gonna be facing are to continue our wellness program. And as I mentioned earlier, when we started doing that, the cost of that is about $200,000 We're continuing it this year through a grant that the company O2X we work with, was able to find on our behalf. And then we were able to come up with the funds for the rest of that. The de escalation curriculum that we're gonna be looking to institute has been a lot of talk, I know that other committees have heard here of some of the tragedies that happen involving law enforcement when the escalation either doesn't happen or doesn't happen well. And even in the best of circumstances and for folks that are well trained, sometimes it it ends in tragedy. So we're trying to move forward with that initiative and make sure that we're giving the best escalation skills we can to folks. This is part of what I mentioned for the grant that was worth us that we haven't been able to accept yet, but that will certainly move us in that direction. Moving down to the IVR curriculum, we're really looking at incorporating the identity based curriculum into our fair and impartial policing, which we looked at will be a cost to us of about 100,000. And when I say identity based, we're not just talking racial differences, we're talking gender, culture, religious, all of those things that integrate but are not identified in our current fair and impartial state.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: What does the R stand for? I got identity based. It's responsiveness. Responsiveness. Okay. We have a question from Michael.

[Michael Nigro, Member, House Appropriations Committee]: Just to go back a little bit about training regards to the mental health crisis. Yes. I'm not sure if you're aware, but there's a bill in there to increase the level of training. Would that increase costs for you that would have to show up here?

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: It would. However, what I have seen both so far is really an hourly requirement, and we really push back against mandated hourly requirements because we want to be able to make sure that we're showing competency based learning objectives. And while we haven't been asked to testify yet, in our work that we're doing with iADALIST so far and what they have of our current curriculum, I had a conversation with them last week, and it would be great to be in those conversations because where we teach mental health crisis and de escalation tactics is woven into so many different classes that we teach and in scenarios that we also run recruits through. So for folks to hear how we do it now and know that we're actually already doing the work, we can always do it better and do more more time devoted to it. But we want to make sure that what we're doing is really competency based and not just an hourly number that's picked because that will then just increase costs. It will also increase time that the academy will have to stay open. It will increase time that officers will not be going out and getting their field training with an agency that's employed. I appreciate that, and given that I have constituents who lost a family member this summer, I'm not sure all

[Michael Nigro, Member, House Appropriations Committee]: of those rationales you put out there provide much more comfort for them. In regards to competencies, how are those evaluated? How do you measure if somebody has achieved the competency if you're not using hours?

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: Right. So some of those companies are based on the curriculum as it's written. And then when students are going through that training, participation within the class, classroom activities that are going on, and then scenario based training that's followed by that so that we make sure that the skills that they've been taught to deescalate are utilized not just in emerging situations or urgent situations, but in everyday use where they might respond to something, but it's not anything that they anticipate or it doesn't really require the escalation skill. They go in with that mindset thinking this might be something really bad, but it ends up not being and just the opposite as well. Sometimes. So it really puts them in the environment that they have to think quickly, use the skills that they've been given, and it gives us the ability to make sure that they're actually learning the objectives that they should be in that training. That makes sense. Thanks.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: Jim has a question. Go ahead. Yeah. So this is couches future pressures. I'm just wondering how imminent these pressures are. Are these costs that you will likely see in the budget adjustment? Or is this something that you're preparing us for in terms of next year's budget? Recreation for the future. I

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: was trying to make folks aware of a lot of the work that we're kind of already doing, but we're we're not really financially funded to do a lot of things. And unlike a lot of other agencies that can rely on vacancy savings to be able to run programs through, we have positions that need to be and we intend on filling them because as I know this committee is aware, you know, when you start talking 16 employees that run two full time basic seventeen week long classes and then three part time in between and in servicing between that. That's not that's a lot for 16 employees to handle. And we all still rely on the volunteer training and mentorship of agencies that are giving us their folks for nothing. And so it's a collaborative relationship with law enforcement officers that are already working in the field, people that have subject matter expertise that they can bring to us. But that's also a burden on them. So a lot of this is unfunded stuff that we do and that we rely on the good braces of agencies to help us accomplish. So, again, future future effort will be coming. And the last really is the legal services, which I don't think was really too well thought out when we moved from unprofessional conduct complaints, being able to be acted upon on a first offense and having them be public so that we're transparent with the public. So now the council can take action on a first offense of a category B, Category A and category C offenses were always actionable by the council, but now requires us to have additional hearings. So we're either going to have stipulated agreements that have to be approved by council and the officer involved, We're going to have a hearing and those are costly and sometimes they require expertise and folks that we have to rely on to bring us the information, the ability to testify on our behalf. So these are things that as we have more complaints that get to that end process of either a stipulated agreement or a hearing are costs that are going to be associated with it. Again, future pressures that we're going to we're going to work through this year and manage to make it happen. That's really all I wanted to present to the committee. I wanted to flip it to Jason for our ups and downs and for any questions or explanations that he might have for you that would clarify any of those, and then certainly be answered any other questions that you have.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: Not seeing other questions at the moment. Did we already What's the ups and downs? Is there anything of interest that's no programs have been caught I was trying to find the 30,000 for the language Is that in the governor's budget as a one time?

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: So we'd have to double check with finance on that.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: I think we saw it in the governor's budget as a one time to 30,000. It sounds familiar to me. It sounds familiar, but I expected to see it. Pretty sure it is. Okay. Any other questions? Everybody's got this one, so if we have questions, we'll funnel through you. And we thank you for your time. Have a good day.

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: Thank you

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you.

[Christopher Burkle, Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council]: I'm happy if there's other mental health crisis questions that you have, people reach out and have another discussion on factors. Thank you. Thank you.

[Robin Scheu, Chair, House Appropriations Committee]: So committee, we're back here at one to the attorney General's Office, and Marty will be running the committee. He's going to be in Senate Appropriations about budget adjustment, which was so last week, but here we go. And then we have judiciary and then a bill. So, let's pull the chapter