Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Good afternoon.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: This is the House Appropriations Committee.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: It is Tuesday, 02/03/2026. It is about 02:10PM, and we are back with the FY27 budget, and we're delighted to have the judiciary branch with us today. So welcome. Sorry we have

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: a little bit of a thin crowd, but a couple more will be showing up. Trevor's your contact and he's here, so that's the

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: most important person. So if you two would like

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: to introduce yourselves and give

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: us your presentation, thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you. Terry Corso, I'm the State Court Administrator. I'm joined by Greg Mosley, who's our Chief of Finance and Administration.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: We also have our Finance Manager, Kelly Carbo, who's connecting remotely to us with us to answer whatever questions between the three of us, we're hoping to be able to answer whatever questions you might have. We really appreciate the opportunity to present the judiciary's fiscal year twenty seven proposed budget. And we've submitted a memorandum that provides some detail in advance electronically. I think Autumn was kind enough to also make copies. We have PowerPoint slides that kind of go along with that that we'll be referring to as we go through the presentation. The first part of the presentation will talk about the differences between the governor's recommend and our proposed budget. And then the second part will go into more detail with the proposed budget. In particular, there are several new components, and we thought we would provide detail on that. Otherwise, it's a continuation of the budget of the appropriated amount from fiscal year 'twenty six.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Okay. Yeah, so we don't need to talk about salaries and all the standard things unless something crazy thing happened to detail about, but any other big changes or highlights you want

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: to share from last year, that are happening, that's great. Thank you. So Greg, we'll start off.

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: Hi. I am just going to share my screen turn back in. It's up. Okay. There we go. Thank you, committee members. Happy to present the FY '27. Still doesn't roll off the tongue, but it should. FY '27 judicial budget. We have an appropriation of 78,499,456 from last year, this current year. There is a BAA request as part of that. And then the governor's recommended budget, you see here it's $81,000,000 which does not necessarily include all that we had submitted. As you probably know, the legislature excuse me, the judiciary admits the budget based on our needs. And what the governor has recommended here is just slightly different, so I'd like to go through exactly what the differences are here. What's notable in the governance recommend is that they increase the vacancy savings by 2 and $85,000 something that hadn't been done before. Usually, if we don't fit the guidelines of the 3% increase, they'll just not approve our increased requests. This time, they went back and changed vacancy savings a little bit, which is essentially a budget cut. And there's a fee for space shortfall of 218,000, which was really part of how the governor's office kind of made us fit into the square peg in a round hole kind of thing.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: So they shorted you by this amount of fee for space? Yes. And the vacancy savings is how many positions does that mean? What are the positions that don't happen that would be that vacancy savings? It's not that the position doesn't happen, it's

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: just that in the regular course of turnover, you create some vacancy savings, and so you look at on a percentage basis, we budget just slightly under $1,000,000 of vacancy savings. The governor's office moved that up to 1,200,000

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: They added 20% plus to your vacancy savings, but it doesn't suit turnover. And then or just holding a position open are you so you're not holding a position open we

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: don't have to hold positions open in order to generate this amount of vacancy savings it's usually just in the course of turnover that you can generate that amount. But if

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: you feel like you could generate the full amount for this year as well, the $1,285,000

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: We probably can. It's a little bit more of a stretch. Last year, we ended up without any surplus, and we did have our vacancy savings essentially was taken up by the health care increase in health care costs. So we might be able hit that number. It's a little bit more of a stretch than it would have been.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: In

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: addition to and the governor also recommended some IT increases for our current IT services. And so in the memo, you see that there are $357,000 for increased expenses. Remember, we are independent now from ADS, so we operate our own IT network. So our expenses, our IT expenses, will not be part of the ADS budget. And then there's a $190,000 expense for cyber security software, and those are both in the Governor's record.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: So is this IT of $3.57 money you're actually going to use or is that appropriate? Numbers are

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: Yeah, that's the increase to current services. So our existing contracts and software licenses are going up every year a little bit. That's what this number represents on an aggregate level. Before I get to our request and how that differs from the government's recommend, I wanted to show you this slide just to give you a very high level of what is in our budget, judicial budget. If our budget request is approved, it'll be $82,000,000 for the judiciary, for the entire system. We have about four twenty employees. We have 23 courthouses. And we operate obviously, the four divisions and then the statewide courts, that is environmental court and judicial bureau. And you can see here that 72% of our budget is salaries and benefits. We are very labor intensive. So that's the four twenty some odd employees. And then the other big expenses are places of the pie here, fee for space, which is what we pay for our state courthouses. We do operate courts in some county owned courthouses, and for that we do not rent the counties. So this fee for space of 9% is just for the state buildings.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: This pie chart has got your numbers on it, not the governor's numbers on it. Correct. So what would the governor's pie chart look like?

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: I think the salaries would be 71%. Instead of the $59,800,000 in salaries, I think it was $58,000,000 so it's just So I'm going to talk about some of the features here. We have a slide that identifies each one of these. The percentages don't change very much at all. Fee for space is still 9%. The difference really is in the fractions that they disappear when you round off to it. So security contracts will still be 6%. That's essentially the contract for all the sheriffs. We do have one contract for a private security firm. Our IT budget is 6% of our entire budget, and then everything else we do falls into a category of everything else, which is 7%. So that's only about $5,300,000, and that includes all the court programs that you might think of, like interpreters, guardian ad litems, mediators, and then all the other administrative pieces that everybody needs. So we have very little discretionary in our budget. We have just these four pieces that take up the vast majority of what we do. Questions?

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: Do you want to mention about the difference between the governor's representative from Delaware?

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: I think we have a

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: question too. I was going have questions on this chart before I go to the next slide, I guess, is what I should have said.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Okay,

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: the next slide is actually identifying some of the requests that are not in the governor's recommend. And you can see here that we have the additional help desk analysts, one physician, for $92,000 We have about 6,000 IT tickets, and we have two help desk staff, which means about 3,000 tickets per person, and the industry standard is about 2,000 tickets per person. So we're trying to right size our help desk. If you remember, we just went independent from ADS two years ago, and so we're still making adjustments a little bit to our independent network. Yes.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: And this is the new components to our fiscal year twenty seven budget that weren't part of in the past, basically identifying needs that have developed that we are recommending. Otherwise, did you want to indicate between the governor's recommending ours, it was about $1,000,000 difference?

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: Yeah, it's a $1,100,000 difference, which is partly the vacancy savings I previously mentioned, the fees of space difference, and then these positions

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: plus vacancy savings, plus fee for space. Right.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: So the one position is an additional help desk analyst, which we've determined they provide, if you will, the triage for all of the help desk requests that come in, not just from judiciary employees, but court users, stakeholders, etcetera, about 12,000 a year. And they triage what comes in either via email or over the phone. We try to provide immediate over the phone assistance because you might have, for example, a technology glitch that happens in the middle of a court hearing, and they need immediate assistance. So we really find it critical to make sure to provide immediate assistance when needed, whether it's from a judge, whether from its court staff, or if anybody was wanting to access the courts remotely, now that we have remote hearings as a common part of trial practice. And as Greg explained, it's just the number of the volume has shown that we really need additional assistance in order to provide the type of timely assistance that's needed for all these 23 courthouses operating daily. The next component is one that came about that we do annual surveys and time again, understandably, people are very desirous of excellent training. And typically, when a new staff member comes on board, it would be experienced staff member in that courthouse who's providing the training. But when they're providing the training, they're taking time away from their work. And another concern was consistency across the board. Because if you have an individual trainer, you know, and ideally, they're conversed with well practice, best practice that they are giving all the correct training. But to ensure consistency, an idea that developed was to have a statewide trainer, a judicial assistant trainer that would be able to train new staff coming on wherever in the state, somebody who would be expert in the docket, trained in best practices, and also providing consistency then across the state. Now that we have such remote learning capabilities, it's not something that would have been feasible in the past. It's providing them in person, if it's a statewide person, a position to go around the state wherever needed, or remotely. And the idea was to have four judicial assistance positions dedicated to training and training only. One would be for the criminal docket. And when we look at our number of personnel, there's most in the criminal docket. One for the family docket, family division, one combining civil and probate. When we look at our numbers, there's roughly the same number of civil and probate staff as there are criminal and our family. And then one for actually juvenile and mental health a specialty dockets. And the idea would be to have, again, these positions that would be dedicated to those training needs. When there's a new staff anywhere in the state, they would work with those trainers and get the up to date best practice training and also consistent training. And the idea too, we have manuals for each docket that are always being updated. If you we have rule changes, we have statutory changes, we want to need to make sure that those are up to date. It's that's a task that a trainer dedicated to the division, we think it would lend itself well to being responsible for that. And if there were ever situation where you say you didn't have a new staff person at the time in the family division, They would also serve a very useful purpose. We constantly are needing if somebody's out on leave, somebody who has a family emergency to be able to fill in and then assist whether it's remotely or in person. That would be another potential use for these positions that we think would be so helpful. Because otherwise, we're pretty much, you know, if everybody's, if nobody's sick, and nobody's on leave, we're fine. So when you have somebody out in your scrambling to try to cover. So we feel that these positions would also be so beneficial in that regard to be able to fill in, in addition to providing the training. So that was the idea that met with great response from staff. We do annual surveys and wanted to get input into ideas and this met with kind of universal support and appreciation if it were something that would be possible. And then the last position, this actually wouldn't be a permanent position. It would be to provide contract funding for our mental health and the courts project director. Some of you may be familiar with the Vermont Judiciary Commission on Mental Health in the Courts. It's a commission that was established in 2022 as a tribe branch effort involving legislative branch, the judicial branch, the executive branch working together to help persons that are court involved with mental health issues. You might have heard of the statewide summit that we do each September, where we bring people from all over the state to come together and collaborate. They also did the regional sequential intercept model workshops in the five regions. And part of it led to in the accountability court in the Chittenden unit that's been in the news a lot. The idea of bringing providers to the courthouses so that when somebody is arraigned, it might be a condition that they connect with a mental health or a substance use provider. It's done right at the courthouse versus giving them a card and they may or may not follow through. So that was a key component of the accountability court in Chittenden that the Mental Health and the Courts Project Director is directly involved in. That's being replicated now and kind of applied in all the different units as we speak. That project director was funded by a SCIP grant. I always forget the acronym for it, sorry. State Crisis Intervention Program, a SCIP grant, which is a federal grant. And the commission had applied for that at the beginning. It helped fund the project director, also some administrative help and expenses. It's one of the many federal grants that have been late in coming out with solicitations. The funding for this project director salary ends September 2026. Normally, the solicitation would have come out by now. It has not. So we're asking for the funds to cover that position for a year as a contractor in the hopes that we've been told that there should be skip grants coming out, but we just don't know when. And with his salary ending in September, we've included in the budget as a request so as not to lose the momentum that's come about with this Mental Health and Reports Commission, especially when we're trying to coordinate the idea of bringing providers to the courts, that's something that he's very much involved in. If the skip solicitation comes out, I'm not exactly sure how this works, but we would be applying GRID and assuming to get it. So I don't know if that means we wouldn't then need the money otherwise, but just to let you know exactly how it came about. That's the situation. So that's why we've included it as a request. We watch it every day in terms of helping, but it's been our experience with other grants that they're a number

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki, Member]: of months behind. So we just don't have it and we've asked but haven't received any indication as to when it might be expected. That's why we've included it. So going back onto the fee for space shortfall, do you have back and forth with the Governor's staff administration in order to have it back on about because obviously you get a certain amount of space and fee for it's pretty standard of item.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: Right. Instead of just an oversight, somehow?

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: An oversight. It was kind of how the process works now. We have a new software system, so things are a little bit different. And we put our budget in in a particular way where when the governor's office made it fit his guidelines, that's just where that shortfall came out. Usually in past years it wouldn't be in those indirect costs, it would be in some other request like the IT plus. So it's a little bit different from my perspective, but it was kind of a known piece that as we were developing the budget, we were interacting with the finance and management and figuring out exactly what the pieces were. You probably heard from others that there's a new budgeting system, and so we're all getting used to it. But it's essentially the same dynamic of in order to get our requests fit into their guidelines, that's where it came out.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: Fit in a new bolt into a new hole. Same thing, vacancy savings issues, just

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: That was again something that they adjusted that was not the budget that we submitted to them. They adjusted it to make it better fit the government's The guidelines, the three other thing on this slide that doesn't have a budget impact is converting limited service positions to permanent. A couple of years back, we were granted limited service positions, 26 of them. And the funding is in our base budget. And they're they're state benefits. So converting these to permanent wouldn't have a budget impact. The state's attorneys and sheriff's department also had nine positions as part of this, in addition to our 26. And last year, they converted those with your help to permit positions. So we were asking for that as part of the budget process. It does take an amendment in language, although it doesn't take an appropriation.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki, Member]: The term? Was there limited term five years, two or three years? So they're a little

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: bit different for the twenty sixth position, but they were four to five years. So we're halfway into most of those folks' term, and once you get to one year, people start looking, and you start losing the good people. And so it has impacted our turnover, as you hire somebody on a term basis, they're going to keep looking for more permanent solutions. And sometimes that's within the judiciary and sometimes it's not.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: But these are positions that you need for onboarding work. It's not as if this was for a contract where you had a three year project.

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: Yeah, actually two of these are our other help desk positions, the ones that we just started with, because before ABS was when our help desk worked. And then there's security positions, for which we are struggling. We'll talk about sheriff's positions in a second. And then a lot of judicial assistants that aren't related to any kind of pandemic backlog. They're just helping from the courts. And between that and the positions that we had COVID funding for, the one time funding that has run out now, all those positions are vacant. So our turnover rate is over 30% at all.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: So the COVID related ones are all gone?

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: Yeah, still have the position numbers, but there's no funding, so we don't have our positions swept back by the executive branch.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: So these 26 positions would have been more properly permanent positions from the beginning.

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: Yeah, temporary limited service positions, but they were permanent funding. And so it was a little odd when that happened, and so we sought counsel on exactly what that meant, and we posted and filled those positions based on a four year term.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: And it was suggested that we come back then before the end of that term to seek the conversion to permanent. The sheriffs states attorneys and sheriffs took it last year, and that's why we're it this year.

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: So these requests are ones that are not in the government's recommend. They add up to only $611,000 to add the vacancy savings and the fee for space issues. It adds up to about $1,100,000,000 difference between what the government's recommending or requesting. And that, I think, brings us to the sheriff's contract, which I don't know how far back to go in this history. We use the sheriffs as the backbone for our security force. We try and have armed law enforcement in every courthouse. And over the past few years, when I first started back pre COVID, we were paying an average of about $30 an hour, and it was a different rate for every county. And so what's happened since then is they've advocated very in a uniform way to bring their rates up to something that's more marketable. It jumped to 45. And in the memo, there's a history of what the rates have been for the last few years. Went up to $45 it's currently at $57 last year in our budget we had calculated $50 I think it was $53 an hour increase, and we were not able to get them under contract for less than $57 Even with that higher rate than expected, we have lost deputies in the process. So we started this year in July with 40 FTEs, 40 deputies. We're now down at 35. So here in Montpelier, there was a deputy at the Civil Building, retired. Sheriff informed us, can't fill it. Up in Orleans, there was a few deputies who left that department, and the sheriff had been unable to replace them. So we're filling in with staff security up in the Orleans courthouse, and one of those courthouses remains closed on most days because we don't have the security to screen at the front door.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: So this is all about security at the courthouses? Yes, it is.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: He's not the transport deputies? This is very

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: separate from transports. You let me know when I can ask you about the transport.

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: Okay. A great rule of thumb about court security is we don't need any vehicles. We're building focused. Our court security are in the building or around the premises, in the parking lots and sidewalks, but there's no vehicles necessary for court security. Very different than the transport. We also, in Barrie, one of our bigger courthouses, the Washington sheriff has not been able to provide deputies there for many years. We've had two other counties come over the border to help out, and one of those is experiencing a retirement and has given their notice. So they're losing two positions there, two deputies there as well. And the only recourse is for us to fill it with staff.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki, Member]: So that's what we're doing. Court security staff, not

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: Sorry, court security staff. So what's happening is those security positions that were given to us a few years ago, the limited service positions, are now doing court security in lieu of deputies. And we have been working with the sheriff's department for next year's contract, and they came in and are requesting $75 an hour, which is a 31% increase. It's probably why it's not in the government's recommended. It just doesn't fit in that budget. It doesn't look and feel like a current service increase. But the Sheriff's Association has made a good argument about why they think that our rate for court security should be the same as the executive branch, which is $75 an hour. Oh, it is? Yes.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: Any security incidents that happened that made worse or not properly contained because upload staff, bugs?

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: No, I wouldn't say that there's anything that's been made worse. We have incidences almost every day. We have 23 different courthouses, and we have hundreds of incidences over the course of the year. I can't say that I'm aware of anyone that has been made worse by staff rather than a deputy. Our staff are well trained. They are not armed, and they cannot arrest, so they are different.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: But they're trained in de escalation. They're trained specifically for courtroom security and courthouse security. They are not armed. So the sheriff deputies, I mean, for us, the biggest line of defense the screener at the door who's armed to prevent weapons from entering the courthouse. So these court security officers are trained, you know, things can get volatile in a courtroom, tensions run high. So they're trained with how to deal with that and how to, I guess, if you will, subdue someone while law enforcement then arrives. But they're very specially trained.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: But still your risk probably is somehow elevated because you don't have time to deal

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: with it. Right. One thing that's new this year is there's equipment that's non lethal that does allow you to, you know, have more tools if it's necessary to subdue somebody. So that's something that they are allowed to have, but only the sheriff deputies would be armed and the private security in a couple of the courthouses.

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki, Member]: Going back a few years when the sheriff's deputies provided all the security at the Windham County Courthouse, they were able to arrest. Or for instance, if a child was being brought into custody of a state, it needed to be a law enforcement officer to be there to do that, and the people who are at the courts. Are you saying people there now aren't

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: If it's a state court security officer, no. But I think in the Battleboro, they've always had at least one sheriff who wouldn't be able to arrest.

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: They haven't always had that. So the sheriff back in about 2016 said they can't afford to leave the court security. So that's when we went out and hired a private security firm. We have five private guards who are armed down in Windham, and at some point there was a new sheriff in town and we worked with the new sheriff to make sure that there's one law enforcement in Brattleboro. They went a number of years without any law enforcement. It's very difficult. Know, people would have warrants out for their arrest. They'd come to the courthouse to give themselves up and tell them to go down the street to the police department. We didn't have the arrest authority. So we now have a rover in the building, which is the minimum standard that we want in at least all of our courthouses, if it's one officer in case there's an arrest, in case you need a weapon. We are finding that the work done in the courtrooms, the court security officers, doesn't need to be armed and actually works very well when it's our employee because the knowledge of the judicial process is important when you're standing there next to the judge. You need to know what's about to happen and what forms and who's coming in next, and that works very well. But out at the front door, where you are most likely to engage with somebody with a weapon, or if you're a rover who is going to

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: be the first one to respond

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: to an emergency, really do want those law enforcement officers there.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: Did you have a question about transports?

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Oh, can I ask now? I didn't want to get So the transport deputies costs are increasing enormously in the last few years. And we've had the state sheriff's and attorneys come in and ask for multiple positions for multiple years. Have talked about the fact that, for example, deputies have to bring somebody from Newport to Bennington to the courts. And

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: I don't

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: know how often that happens, but that's the classic example of how far it is and it takes two deputies and it's overnight and it's just a lot of expense. So my question to you in the judiciary is how are you helping to minimize this and can we do more remote hearings so people don't have to show up in person in the courts, we don't have to spend all this money driving people all over the state when they could do it if we had better systems or something in place. And I'm told it's up to the judiciary. So that's why I'm asking.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: Okay. In terms of whether it's remote hearing or in person hearing? Yeah. Ultimately, the judge has discretion as to the hearing will be done or not. But say the judge calls for a remote hearing, either party has the ability to request an in person hearing instead. And it may well be that a criminal defense attorney would want to have the in person hearing for purposes for his clients due process rights. So there would be that kind of weighing of interest as well. From the court's perspective, we want to be able to accommodate if there is a request and the need for transport that there be the transports. My understanding of part of the reason why there is a request for an increase is other groups such as Department of Corrections used to do transports, but they do not. So, Not to fault them, but I guess I think that's why the state transports have had an increase because there's been less transporting from other directions. We support in all honesty, whatever the transport request is, because it's integral to us to be able to have court operations with if a person needs to be in person. In in the courts, you think of the criminal cases that they need to be there. But there are many inmates who have other cases, whether they're civil or probate or family. And my understanding is now they're not being transported. So there's a big question about, I guess, due process rights from their perspective, just because there simply isn't the resource to provide the transport.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: And, you know, this is maybe for judiciary and not me asking you this, but this is So for what due process aren't they getting by doing this remotely?

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: Well, for example, if they want to confront the witness against them in person, for example, and we feel in terms of remote versus in person, remote is great in terms of convenience and lots of different circumstances. But others, it's pretty much, I think, considered consensus that if you're presenting evidence, if you're confronting witnesses, the in person is integral. The other part that came about through the accountability court, the experience for the three month trial period sending this week in Chittenden is they brought people in person. There was much better chance for resolution, for them to interact with their attorneys, to have cases move more quickly.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: And they were all local cases. They didn't require transport all across the state.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: Some did, in which case part of the arrangement for that was the local Chittenden Sheriff transports had an arrangement with state agencies. And we were told by Governor Scott as part of the deal, they would transport if needed. It made a big difference.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: So maybe we need to change a few things here.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: Maybe we're looking to separate the green. I've heard that when you get transported to court, that sometimes it may be four, five, six, seven hours before the judge sees them. So it's a scheduling kind of thing and that's probably at the judge's discretion. But then could there be block scheduling?

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: That's a very good point and actually what has come about with Tim Luedersdemont, I don't know if he's been here to testify yet, but he, Lloyd Kenny, our Chief of Trial Court Operations Judge Zonay, have worked out a system in the hopes of making it as efficient as possible. So you don't have somebody transported and sitting there waiting. And I know Judge Zonay has worked closely with judges to make sure they're very mindful of that to avoid a situation where a transport officer is sitting and waiting. So there's a whole protocol now in effect that takes into consideration the distance. And there were examples of even like somebody being moved to a different facility and the word not getting to the court. Confusion. Now they've really taken a lot of steps to ensure that we take the maximum advantage.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Appropriations)]: So we're working on it.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: Yeah. And that's been a good thing that's come out of this because that's a big factor. You know, if you have a transport officer sitting here, so they definitely made steps and made sure that the judges are aware in court step, keep them aware somebody's in the holding cell, move them forward. So you have better efficiency. Well, that's basically our budget. It's shorter.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: So then, do you want to talk a little bit about what's improved over the last year? Mean, the accountability course sounds like it got some things through. Tell us some highlights of good things that happened or progress you feel like you're making on backlog, Well,

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: thank you. Well, sure. We feel that we're making very good, steady progress in reducing backlogs. Our clearance rates have been increased. What's been a big help is having full compliment of judges. Recall in some years we had a lot of vacancies. We just today now have a full compliment on our Supreme Court. There were two

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: Get voted through?

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: Yes. So there two Supreme Court vacancies. Actually, what they were doing, in an effort to be mindful of the budget, instead of bringing in retired justices where you need to pay, there's a cost associated with that, they would use specially assigned trial judges to cover the Supreme Court during the months that there have been those vacancies. And but that means that that trial court judge is not doing his or her regular work at the time. So there's always kind of like a juggling. But we've made good progress in terms of backlog. And we always try to have at least 100% clearance rates. We keep track of it month to month. And every unit has shown, you know, achieving that that standard, if not exceeding it. So we're definitely making inroads into reducing the backlogs. The accountability court is interesting because we had been focusing on, we call them the five plus cases where you have somebody who has five or more. We were starting to do that in any event, but certainly the Chittenden Court focus made it more apparent that this was something. And part of the strategies that were used there that are now being replicated in all the units, Judge Zona has asked each presiding judge in the criminal divisions to look at their dockets for those five plus cases and indicate what their plan will be to address them. For example, in Rutland, they have a half day every other week where it's just those dockets, and they bring them to court because you're going to find resolution much more readily when the state's attorney, public defender, judge are there. And also bringing the providers to the courts as well has made a big difference because they're more likely to follow-up, follow their conditions, less violations. So there's definitely tools and strategies that have come about that'll be replicated and already you can see they increase because you resolve it with somebody who has five plus or when you say five plus that have some with 10 or 15 or 20, you know, if you can resolve those, that drops the numbers much more rapidly than if you're talking about a single count. Otherwise, we, I'm trying to think of new, we've done a lot, I guess, just in terms of judicial assistance in courts, being responsive to their needs, the training needs, we've implemented new training techniques. We have a day in Montpelier where if you're new staff, you come and you meet everybody face to face, chance to meet others around the state. We have a monthly communication, new VT suggestions at vtcourts.gov. If somebody feels like they see something that can increase efficiencies in their court, they can submit it. We respond. So we're really trying to be understanding what challenges everybody in the courts is facing. It's a public service job. There's people in the most challenging days of their lives. We're working with them, wanting to provide support to our court staff who themselves are doing their best to help court users. So I think that people, things are going well. People are very appreciative of what the legislature has done in terms of the independent network, in terms of the new positions. I mean, I think people feel better that they're being listened to and really grateful for the support that the legislature has provided. So

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: think the budget adjustment, the governor proposed to be accepted, you know, another half 1,000,000 for future accountability for somewhere else outside of Chittenden County. For whom? To a willing party. It wasn't, you know, they have to

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: come to you or us or whoever, not, we're not going to say here it's gonna be this. Have you heard that whether there's interest around the state to participate in something like this? Well, as I said, each county is doing it anyway. They're looking at how can we best address that particular category of criminal cases. We don't, the biggest amount of the money that came to us during the trial was the retired judge, Judge But we don't really think it would be feasible to say, okay, we'll use money to bring in a trial, a retired judge for three months in this court. That would be kind of a stopgap measure. We think it's better, I say, Zonie would be the best person to respond to this, but to have a system with the existing criminal division judge to handle that and then to use the other judges to make sure that there's no loss in, you know, overall court time as a result. In terms of that money that's being offered, I personally feel geared to transports because that benefits all the courts statewide. If you can get people to court that need to be there, that's a big plus. It's a big advantage. I mean, we've had to cancel hearings at times when there just wasn't a transport available. And to cancel a hearing is kind of like biggest shame, because then you lose that time that's so precious.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: That's very helpful information. Thank you. Any other questions for fiduciary friends?

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki, Member]: No, I

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: think we got it. Trevor's your guy. As always, right? Thank you so much for all you're doing.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: Well, we really appreciate your interest in the courts. Oh, sure. You know, when you said how are things going, we're so grateful to all of you who are able to come. I know you've got so many demands on your time, but when you're able to come to the legislative days and then you can see what's happening in the courts and how hard everybody's working, that's to us the best way to I

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: love to come into that. And we had a special one in Addison County because we had somebody who got an award to save the life of somebody who was out playing pickleball. And we had a defibrillator. They were able to go and keep him alive until the EMTs came and saved his life.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: Right, between the court operations manager and the sheriff deputy, that's what they did.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: It was a really good news story for everybody.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: Yeah, and that's another example actually because Rob Shell, our Director of Security, made sure that each court has that, they have and it's part of a training too, where people have training on things like de escalation but also

[Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration (Judiciary)]: CPR, first aid, And all

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: you never know, I mean, it wasn't even in the courthouse, but they could see it outside where somebody came running.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: And her husband was an EMS and he heard it on their scanner and knew it was right next door to the courthouse. So he contacted his wife. She got it. Anyway, yes, exactly. That's all

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: communities and

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: yeah, 1,500. They got their commendation on legislators.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: You never know what's going to happen on

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: legislative day. Highly recommend Besides getting Terry's cookies,

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: we get to see what's really happening. So it's good thing. Great. Thank you for all you're doing.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: You all.

[Rep. Robin Scheu, Chair]: And we will see you again. Great, thank Thanks.

[Terry Corso, State Court Administrator]: So, really, we have a break until the