Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Hi.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Welcome back, folks. This is House of Corrections and Institutions Committee, and it's Thursday, January 8. It's our 01:00 in the afternoon meeting. And we're going to be working on a bill that's been committed to our committee, H-five 59, that deals with the parole board and some recommended changes to the makeup of the board, the training, and just the responsibilities a little bit. So I'm not sure we have Mary Jane here from the parole board and Todd from the A. G. Office. Do you both want to come up and talk about this? Is there a way to do this?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I want leave.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay. And Todd, you can interject at any time. Just raise your hand.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Welcome again.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Long time.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. This is the other reason why I thought of doing this, the way that you really learn about the function, like how you're going learn about the function of the role on the parole board sometimes is working on a bill that changes its operation, and then you really start to understand a little bit more how it currently operates. That's part of my thinking. I don't know if it will work. So Mary Jane, just introduce yourself. Mary Jane Ainsworth,

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: the director of the poll board. Thank you, Madam Chair and committee, for having me back again today. So over just a little bit of history, over the last couple of years, myself and our Assistant Attorney General at the time were working together to really look at the parole board statutes and see how they could be modernized, because a lot of the statutes have not been looked at for many years. And really looking at some of the challenges we were facing and just really focusing on that modernisation.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Modernisation. Thank you. I'm a

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: little tongue tied after lunch today. It's been a long day already. So that is kind of a little bit of the history of the why and how we got here today. There's also been a lot of, I think, some of the language that came up in the bill around adding to the responsibilities of the Commissioner of Corrections around assisting the training, I think the partnership between corrections and the parole board has historically been a little bit strained. That is something that I have worked on over the years, just trying to rebuild that partnership. There are still moments, which with two entities, you're always going to have moments where you're going to have conflicts and you're going to try to work them out. And I try to keep that relationship strong. And I think adding some language around having the department, I don't know how the department feels on this language. I have not had a chance to, I've had brief conversations, but I have not had a chance to speak with the subject matter experts around that, would help boost because they are really the subject matter experts in a lot of these areas. They are the ones programming these individuals. They're the ones working with the victims of crimes and so forth. So having them be able to come in and work with the director to build those trainings and also have, we've started to integrate the Department of Corrections subject matter experts coming into our monthly staff meetings and just having conversations, whether it be directed at a certain topic or just a Q and A session. It's been really helpful, I think, for both parties to have those conversations. And it kind of lets out some of the questions that arise, because oftentimes questions do arise during hearings of why are you Why did you make the determination to program or not to program it? Why did you make the determination not to release this individual on furlough? Forth. Those are the kind of things. And really having those conversations is very helpful.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Can I just ask a question on that one? Of course. You can't answer for DOC. When we take If we work on this bill, we'll take a lot more testimony. We'll have DOC here as well. But with the Parole Board's budget being in the DOC budget, does that play in that the DOC thinks they may have more control of the parole board than they do? Or does that mean to sometimes you've had your relationship could be strained where DOC feels that with while the parole board is under DOC and not a separate entity. Is that playing in at all, do you think, or not? Because one conversation we had yesterday Yeah. Was the thinking, maybe, maybe of having a separate line item for the budget for the parole board and taking it out from the not having it included in the DOC budget. I'm just wondering how that would work.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: You know, that could be I can't say it's on the forefront as being part of the thinking, because I think both sides do a very good job really balancing the independence of the parole board. It comes up a lot of times in conversation. I'll have folks from DFC say, I cannot tell you what to do. However, this is our thoughts and this is our So I don't necessarily see that as part of it. I think it's just as two entities working together, and I don't it's always understood. I don't think each other understands each entity And understands each I think that's part of it. And I think that oftentimes the board doesn't understand DOC's thinking and the DOC doesn't understand the board's thinking. And I don't think either entity is always good at explaining their thinking, if that makes sense, to be honest.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We appreciate. James?

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: For either of you. Yep. I'm sure one of you knows the answer. Why is the borough board separate from people sitting?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: That predates me. And

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I don't know. I mean

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: a big pro. It could be a I don't know. I mean, it's always parole. When did the parole board get established? Do you know? Is it seventies?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Do you know? You used to be the board's attorney back in the day.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I'm in a day.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: For the record, Todd Delos from the attorney general's office. Thanks for having me I would in answer to the first question, the board is quasi judicial entity, so it's making determinations. Generally, like the Human Services Board, it sits separate and apart from the Department of Agency because they have tax, Because when there's a violation of parole, DOC is coming in to say so and so violated parole.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: As a plaintiff, basically. Yes, gotcha.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: Thank you. I don't know ones.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: That's good enough of an answer for me.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: Yeah. But to correct me, Richard, it's not actually the board's attorney

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Oh, to okay. Thank you.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: It would seem like there's an inherent conflict between DOC having oversight for whole board.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They don't have oversight.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Exactly. And that's why they

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The money comes through

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: to But the parole board is independent. There's a wall in the acquaintance.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Yes. That's why I was just clarifying.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: I think that's that would seem why. I I don't know. Right?

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Well, the answer made terrific sense about

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Well, and if I may, kind of going down this conflict road, something I didn't have time to touch upon yesterday is that our counsel who defends us is an assistant attorney general who is assigned to is generally the supervising attorney of the DOC litigation. So our attorney that's assigned to provide us with legal services and defend us also oversees the attorneys who defend the department as well. So a bit of a conflict. Yes. And so a few years ago, we were able to find $25,000 in the budget. We put out an RFP, a request for proposal for a conflict council. Nobody bid for it. And so that is another challenge. And there is another piece of legislation in our statute as well that is not in this bill that I can either touch upon today or next week when I come back, that also inhibits some of our training because it's around having the Defender General's office present during violation trainings that the board has. We're not allowed to speak with our attorney around parole violation hearings without giving the Defender General's office an opportunity to be present during that. So that kind of provides also a conflict because we can't have open conversations with our legal counsel because they also represent the department.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: That's weird.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: I guess I know what parole board members do as far as the hearings and everything. Are they part of the administrative decisions too? Like, do the parole board members set up for budget that then goes to the POC and then

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: So until recently, I have just been trying to get more involved in our budget. So this, the last few couple of months, DOC just kind of made our budget the same. It just got kind of the same every year. And we didn't really have a lot of input into that. And finally, as I'm starting to see some challenges around trainings and looking at potential of, we have an administrative load right now that we could really use another employee, and how do I make those requests, is when I got more of the history of how do I make those requests for budgets? I was informed that I'm to make them to the Commissioner of Corrections because that's who oversees the budget that we are.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: So like when the budget instructions come out October, November, saying that you need to cut 3%, you'd be subject to that too, despite being a separate entity?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I believe so.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: But you wouldn't even necessarily know. Generally,

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: alone leave because we are a low We're generally a low budgeting line item. However, if we were to be taken out of the department's budget, I believe that could increase some of our costs because right now I think our fee for space is absorbed into the department's budget. Our attorney coverage is absorbed into the department's. I think the department is absorbing a lot of our other fees, such as our budget at their accounting office to take care of the budget stuff. So we don't have those staff members.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Do you testify in front of the appropriations committees?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: No, I have never. I have not testified in front

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: of them.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: I think all exists. So where maybe

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Shawn was showing me something. So maybe you asked us on in here. Where where where are you housed specifically?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: So we are housed in Waterbury and in the Weeks Building.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: We

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: are housed in a wing that is with AHS Central Office divisions.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay. They're not even housed with DOC?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: No, we are not. There has been talk about us being housed with DOC, but it's never been anything because of the separation. We do not, we're not housed. We're

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: if so if if it ended up we Pearl board was a separate line item in the budget and not included in the state. There there would be additional costs incurred for you that DOC's absorbing. Yes.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I believe so.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Being in the same vicinity of DOC would be helpful?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I don't know if it'd be necessary. I think we're close enough now that if we need to have in person meetings with Microsoft Teams, we jump on Teams often. We communicate well. I think I communicate well with them. Don't think we need to

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: be Physically.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Physically together. Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But the issue is illegal representation. There's conflict there. You got the fox guard and the hen house.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Yes. And it gets complicated too when our previous attorney would sit in our staff meetings and she'd have both clients in the room having a conversation and she's trying to figure out which hat she needed to have on, whether she wanted to talk on behalf of the board or talk on behalf of the Department of Corrections because we were having those conversations.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So is that being addressed in this bill?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: No.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So could you give some background on all of you, Todd, what is the impetus behind the bill? There was a group folks working on this? So could you give us some background?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: So a lot of this is is language that I had been working on with our attorney at the time and really around just modernizing, especially the creation of the board, bringing the terminologies and the background experience just into more of the current terms that we're using, the current things that we're seeing, really looking at the majority of the people, the individuals coming before the board have extreme substance use disorders, they have mental health issues. They are hitting all the facts that things associated with criminogenic behavior and so forth. And just having that more detailed experience, which, like we were talking about yesterday, does provide challenges to recruit board members with some of these factors. And it also helps onboarding a board member if they have some background in these areas. Because if there's not a It takes a lot more time for somebody to come up to speed and get ready to serve on the hearings if they have some knowledge ahead before they come. The other thing that we were seeing, there is a piece of this around term limits. Our chair is very against term limits. So that was his only piece of feedback for this bill. I'm little bit more in favor of them potentially, but it could go either way. I think it's just hard to continue to keep a modern fresh board who is reviewing these issues if we could without having some turnover at the board. This language isn't saying that you can't serve on the board multiple times. It's just saying after so many years, take a break, then you can come back, possibly, that kind of thing. Shawn?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Just a quick question.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Would it

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: incentivize people if we paid them something more than like the $100 stipend to be, if they got $1,000 a month or if they got something that would be more appropriate, it seems like it's an important role to play in our society. And I think it being devalued to zero or close to it, do you think that that would be helpful?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I think it goes hand in hand. I think there's the monetary value. I think it is a little intimidating to be offered just $100 a hearing day. I think some of our board members are bringing home are making like $6,700 to $900 a month, generally. I think it is hard. I think it's also hard that the nature of the work, it's a lot. We have one board member who almost didn't reply for reappointment last year because he was a retired individual. When he took it, he didn't think it was as And much work as it then he like, these cases are difficult. There's a lot of preparation. He didn't know if he wanted to continue to do it. Our chair is retiring at the end of next month. He is not seeking reappointment. And to replace him, we were in conversations with somebody who potentially had interest and he's like, This is a full time job. You're asking me to do a full time job for $20,000 a year. And it's a lot of work.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You're dealing with someone's life and you're

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: dealing with

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: a community public safety.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yes.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Without having that specialized With a lot of specialized training.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Conor and then Will?

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, just piggyback, I'm looking at national averages and I know state to state, the nature of the work probably varies quite a bit and the salaries vary quite a bit, but almost every state pays, and usually it's over $100,000 right?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: For that job.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah. I'm not saying For

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the chair?

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: A member

[Conor Casey (Member)]: of a parole board. And I'm not saying we should pay that, but I think they do as much work as we do probably. You want to professionalize it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes. And there's a lot of weight on these decisions. There's an awful lot of weight in public scrutiny if something goes And

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: that was one thing I threw out a few years ago to just some of our policy folks is even just to look at it, look at how to modernize, how much it might cost to even reduce the number of board members and make them more full time, maybe not full time positions, but closer to full positions. Because sometimes I do see the difference between some, the board members are serving one day a week. They've got other lives. This is not the only thing they're thinking about all the time, where the Department of Corrections staff, that's all they're thinking about. And to take that break, come back on, not saying they're not doing a good job. So I want to be clear, they are doing a phenomenal job at what they're doing, but you can lose pieces of that when you're only on once a week. And

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I have more questions. Will, Mary, and Joe.

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: My question, kind of going back to a little bit more of the responsibilities differentiating the chair from other members. What's the difference in the workload between the chair and the members? Does the chair have certain responsibilities that they do that other members are not authorized to do?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: So that's a very good question, and that is something that's not really defined as-

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: This chair, I'll tell you.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: That's not necessarily defined in statute either, a little bit of what's even between the chair and the director. So just getting in a little bit later, too. But the chair oversees, they run the hearings. So either the chair or the vice chair, they're the ones in charge of that hearing day. So they are the one directing the questioning, directing how each hearing is going.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They have more prep work, I would assume, to really know what's

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: they have more prep work around Well, really, I say all of them have similar prep work around the cases, but they have more They need to have more knowledge of how to run a meeting and how to run a hearing, really the legal background of overseeing and making sure that we're meeting our legal obligations in their decision making. Also, chair has responsibility to working on assigning who's on each hearing day. They're answering potential legal requests, requests for information, requests from the press. The chair is the person that I back up against, and we are having the discussions of, okay, where should we go? What should we do? Do we need a policy change? That kind of thing. The chair also provides feedback to board members and has those conversations with board members and is kind of the overseer of the board in trying to keep the order and ensuring that everyone is meeting the mission of the board.

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: And then I guess my other question, going back to the term limits as well with no more than two consecutive terms, I feel like when you have a position like this that is highly specialized in the knowledge set that they're having to work with, how of I'm curious, one, what other states do, but I feel like rotating them off might not necessarily be the most beneficial for the continuity of the casework and the people that are coming for the parole.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Agreed. And I think that term limit of the two are, I was sitting kicking around two or three, because if you look at three, that's nine years, because each board member is appointed for three years. So I'm like, nine years is a good chunk of time. So that's why I was looking at the three. Then the two, I don't know. Got some requests out after I left yesterday. I put some requests out to my other directors, administrators throughout the country. So I'm trying to get some more information on what they're doing. I've been trying to do some research around. I'm not sure if term limits is the answer. I just think more modernization at the board, if we could do that, would be great as well.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I know there's a And then Kevin after Joe. But what are you seeing for the average length of time that someone is staying on? Because right now, terms may be less than three years. So what's the average length of time that you're seeing someone?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: So recently, it's been a little bit shorter. So right now, current longest serving board member is approximately five to twenty six years she has been on the board. Our current chair is in his twenty sixth year. No, twenty first year. He was appointed in 2005, I believe. We have another member who's been with the board for over ten years. I'm not sure exactly the year he was appointed. I don't And then the rest are newer because we've had We had three retirements Or two retirements and then one who was replaced.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: William, you have some more?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Mary, Joe, and Kevin.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I'm a little concerned in hearing that the chair is going to be off in about a month, you said?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: He is willing to stay until his replacement is needed.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That would be done. But is there a process that people, if they are stepping down, that they need to give you a timeframe so you can appropriately try to fill the position? I mean, I don't think it doesn't sound like they would.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: No, there isn't a process with our chairs. With our chair, he gave many months notice. We have been working with the governor's office since early fall, and we continue to work with them. We have instituted over the last few years where we put postings out on the state job site for a parole board member. So it lets folks know a little bit more detail than just a board seat of what it's going to entail, which then allows us to look at resumes and individuals' information and try to recruit that way as well.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Would the vice chair ever look to go up, or is that a process? Forgive me my allergies.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Oh, you're okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I mean, there any type of thing like that you've seen in the past? It doesn't sound

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: like that. So currently our vice chair is longest survey member, who I believe has no interest in being chair. I believe she is also, her term ends, I believe in 2027. And I believe she is not going to seek reappointment in 2027 as well.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: See if there's a process of people coming in and kind of graduating to the next step. If that

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: So that was some of our hope in some of our recruiting. We were looking at trying to target a little bit more in our recruiting to see potentially if we could look at folks who've stepped up, but there's been a lot of board members not interested in stepping up. We currently have a member who is learning to chair. She, over the last couple of months, chairs one hearing day a month and she is learning. She's one of our newer board members and she's learning how to learning to do it. She's been doing a phenomenal job. But she's also one that serves. She has a full time position outside of what she is doing on the board, and her position is allowing her to also serve on the board, which is wonderful. Joe and Kevin?

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: So first piece is just a comment. So the proposal was to go from five regular and two alternates to seven regular members. Correct?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Yes.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Seems so in rotation that that would make it less onerous a time thing for individual members, given that three members constitute a panel for a hearing.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It'd be four, wouldn't it? It would have to constitute

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: the language here.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Seven was seven? So we could

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: so this is in so what this

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: that's three.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: So what this so this is kind of what I was speaking about yesterday. We have for the statute, we have five members and two alternates. However, we treat them all the same.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: But page, page three one five.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. That

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: that three numbers is based on five. Oh, yes. Not adding the two alternates. This is true. So I was here when we up the. Yeah. We I was here when

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: we're

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: up with this.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Currently, we with We currently operate in boards of three, and we rotate all seven members. Board

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: makeup is five with two alternates to make Yes. Right. So if you go to seven members, you need four as a core.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Well, then maybe either that or change the language. And then regarding the proposed term limits, are there issues now with highly qualified people who want to serve, who may not, because there aren't openings?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Think the problem now is that we don't have a lot of interest in the board, and we really want to get those highly qualified individuals to be able to have a seat on the board or to have some diversity in the board. And that's been a challenge as well. For a while, we didn't have much diversity on the board because the board was fully made up of retired individuals, which it was not really giving a It feels like in this arena, you need a good spectrum of individuals because we're meeting with individuals of all different age, all different from backgrounds, nationalities, everything. And for a while, we did not have that makeup.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Based

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: on my prior experience on a couple boards, and it's not that they weren't statewide boards that instituted term limits, But there are pros and cons. You might wanna be careful because I've seen one board that was just destroyed because the the the highest functioning members got term limited out. And and typically, if somebody takes a year off, it

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: more often than not, they don't come back.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Makes sense.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: So, it's just something to ponder.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Then,

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: also on page three, line fifteen and sixteen, there's proposal for annual training. And would that training then be compensated like you're going

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: to it should be if you're telling someone

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes, absolutely.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: It doesn't state that anymore, though, I don't think.

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: No, that's it. Or

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: it's just statutory that it's compensations?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Yeah, we compensate. I believe that's in the I think it's working days. And so a training would constitute a working day.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Fair enough. Fair enough.

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: So it doesn't need to be explicit.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Yeah, I believe it's a I think it's as a working day and a training day. Because we compensate for our staff meetings right now, which are not actual hearings. Okay. And if and if a board member goes to a conference, we also compensate. We pay the the fees and the travel to go to the conference and also give the per diem for the day at the conference as well.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: Thank you. That's all I

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: had.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes. It

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: seems like in general, we're trying to make sure we have enough qualified board members. Correct. And to do that, you're wanting to make sure you have the right expertise for the particular person that you're reviewing. So my question is, do you have access to experts in the area that aren't necessarily parole board members? Or is maybe that's something we could help with so that you know who to go to and they have an impetus to join you when you need them so that the parole board is more of a process team rather than an expert team. So, they know what questions need to be asked. They assimilate the answers. They make a decision on that based on medical cycle. They get the expertise coming in when they need it rather than trying to get board members that know all the stuff.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Honestly, is one model I've been interested in looking into. It's similar model. I know other states do use models where they have, I think they may call them parole officers, but they're not supervising individuals, but they are the ones writing the reports for the board. They are like the investigate. Instead of having DOC write the reports, the parole board staff has their own individuals who are trained and go in and meet with the individual, review the case, write the report for the board to have.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right now, it's the OC that's doing that? Yes. And submits that report to the floor? Correct.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: So I think that's one model that other states do. I've been doing some more research in all of those models, but that would also become, that would be more staff for the board. More expense. Yes, because right now, currently the board, We have the seven members and then we only have three full time staff members, myself and two administrative staff members.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: So it sounds like there's a lot more preparation work before the board meets than I understood. It sounded, At first, I thought the board knew someone was coming in. They had a little bit of background. They had DOC record, but then they queried the individual and the other people and had to make a decision. It sounds like I had the wrong impression.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: So you a part of what happens at the hearing. So the board members do query the individual and stuff on the questions that they But there is that preparation work where they get a lot of the case information. And I think that's what makes our hearings quicker than other states, because other states can have one to two hour hearings for an individual, where ours are quicker because we have a lot of that preparation work and the board members are learning about the individual beforehand. And also, we keep all of our files and the board members have access to our files. So if they've seen the individual before, they may go back and review the entire hearing record from before to see what might have happened before and what has changed because you can see a lot about an individual from point A to point B as well.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I guess the point blank question is, are there experts out there that you could utilize? Would that be a way to help the board be more efficient and not be so dependent on expertise within the board?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I think the expertise would come in in the training. I think having the training resources and having the experts, having the ability to have some of these experts come in and do the trainings, the time and the resources to build these trainings for the board, a more in-depth training manual on substance use, on mental health, and really how that affects individuals. And because those more specialized topics, I think the board has a good grasp on the generalized pieces, but we're seeing a lot more on these specialized pieces.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Which are always changing. Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So a lot of that prep work is done on the board members' personal time. They're not reimbursed for that, or are they?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: No, we do reimburse for that. We reimburse one day of prep work.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Per month?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Per hearing. Per hearing.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: That's $100 Yes. For one day.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Wow. Well, we're looking at cutting costs across the state government. Then we want services. Yeah.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: That's right. But that would be $500 for four to five in preparation for each hearing

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: too then.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right? Do alternates get Yes. That as well, even though they may not be part of that hearing? Is it It's

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: four of their assigned hearing days.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So it's not all five? No. So it varies.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Whatever three are assigned. Like today, we had three members assigned. One was our chair and then two were members. The two members would each get $100 for today. They would get $100 for the prep work. The chair does not get a per diem on top of his yearly allotted amount.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the chair probably does a lot more prep work.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Yes. And we and we I think myself and somebody from the agency figured out at approximate just figuring out at, like, $20 twenty hours a week, it came out to be, like, 2 to $3 an hour.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Not even minimum wage. That's not by a long shot.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Talk about their wages, Troy. Even the $7 minimum wage.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I mean, they're getting paid more than the personal.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: I'm trying to release them.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: You are a bulldog. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the one thing, Mary Jane, is what's going through my mind. We have 600 folks on parole right now, you said, right?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Three years ago, how many people we have on parole? Do you remember? Three, four, five years ago.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: It was approximately the same. I don't know exactly. It might have been like 100 less. I don't have that data. It might have been We also had a bigger the population was bigger back then. The sentence population was bigger. So we might have had about the same number. I think the work has changed being that the board, the violation numbers have been going up and I'll have those numbers for you next week. Violations of their conditions? Yes. And I think that is what's taking up the more and needing the more expertise, the more time and really what to do with these individuals. I'm looking forward to going through that data because I think my hypothesis off the top is if there's not a new crime involved, it's generally substance use or housing are the reasons why the individual may speak And for the I wouldn't doubt if that's some of the reasons that are stemming to why they're committing additional crimes as well. And a lot of them will admit that on the record. You ask them why they're incarcerated. Even today in some of our parole hearings, that was some of the reasoning that came up was I was hived. I was on drugs at the time. That's why I committed the crime I committed.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: How many folks that you're seeing come through, this is maybe a two pronged question, initially coming through for their parole hearing that will be paroled, they're on the MAT program. And then for those folks who are on the MAT, I'm going to call it the MAT instead of MOUD program, how many of them that have been paroled that have been on the MAT program have been coming back with violations of their conditions. Do you have any data or gut feeling about that?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: It's funny, I could probably get, I don't know if I could get data on the first one, but I could get, I don't have a specific data

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: on

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: the one, but my gut feeling would say it's over ninety percent.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Over ninety percent of folks coming through for parole around MAT?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: About in the facility, I can't say in the facility, but about ninety percent who are coming back from violations, most individuals are on that program. So is it violations that you're seeing of drug abuse or is it violations of? I'd say it's drug abuse, it's housing, it's absconding. I'm trying to think those are our three big ones in not attending their program or not doing their program, whether it's their MAT program, I'll use that language as well, their M. A. T. Program or if it's their other programming that they have to do, they're not attending. Those are the big ones.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: So 80%, you say?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I would say there's I would say when I come back next week, my could prove my gut wrong, but that would be my gut.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I'm just kind of wondering, thinking that thinking of the expertise of board members that need to be there. And some of them have been there for over twenty years. Mhmm. Yep. And they have really seen a change in the offender population over that time frame. It used to be more alcohol. Yep. Younger folks. And more could be more domestic abuse. And now we're seeing something much more serious than that, I would assume. So it would be interesting to talk to those members of the board that have been there for a long period of time to see how the population that they're now having to make a decision on these folks, how that has population and needs have changed and the criminal behavior has changed. Which then leads into, you need folks who are serving on that board. If that have more experience in some of these

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Mhmm.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Topics. Because I I Shawn looked to see when the board originated. It was 1971 That's when the parole board came into being. Right?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yep. You

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: look back and who was incarcerated in the seventies and the eighties and even the nineties, it was people with drinking problems. It was high school dropouts. I mean, most of our 18 22 year olds that were incarcerated, about three quarters of them did not have a high school diploma. Now the population is very, very, very different. It's an older population, much more mental health. Mental health was not part of corrections until we deinstitutionalized back in the eighties and the nineties is when mental health started popping up in corrections. So that's what the parole board is now dealing with where before you were dealing with an alcoholic who had a DUI-one who was incarcerated. He was 20 years old.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: And now we're dealing with it when we do have the alcoholics, it's the DUI- And we do have those that we have these and we do have individuals that come before the board that we do still have some of those DUI cases that come before the board.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: John? Chair, if you wouldn't mind. Just to speak exactly So to in a previous role I had in state government,

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I worked more closely with

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: the role board. We had an issue where an individual had been violated for needing to attend treatment longer, substance use treatment longer than the original parole would allow. And so the board heard the case and violated the individual. They went back into corrections. And when it came across my desk, I was sort of like, it was exactly to your point. This is a different era that we're dealing with now. And the response to that was an ad hoc working with Director Ainsworth. Let's bring in the substance use folks from the Department of Health together with the corrections folks, and let's sit down with the parole board. I would defer to the director on this, but I think the board really appreciated that training. So it's a both and, I would say, to support your point exactly. It's both We're in a different era and we need some different expertise. That's what we're looking for on the board. And the board also, I think, could benefit and likely appreciate additional specific training. DOC, at least when I was more familiar with it, and I would defer to DOC on numbers, it was if you were in a given correctional facility, one out of every two people you walked by would be on MAT MOUV. So fifty percent of the population had some kind of treatment for likely opioid use disorder. Similarly, I think the number was even higher for folks who had some kind of mental health treatment going on in a correctional facility. And so if we're looking at rehabilitation, we're looking at ways of ensuring a more successful transition into the community for individuals, training and support for the parole board is a really important avenue. I would look to you, Director Ainsworth, on this. The numbers are maybe six times more folks are out here in rural than through It's a much bigger way of responding to a significant population and really allowing a citizen voice within that decision making

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: process. So thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, I really wondered about the numbers of folks with presumptive parole. We don't have I mean, furlough, we had a broader have broader areas of furlough that we covered and we condensed that. And then we went to presumptive role, which indicated more people were gonna be paroled than furloughed before we had high numbers of furloughees.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I think, so if I wanna be careful with this, I think with the presumptive parole, folks are not being presumptively paroled through the presumptive parole process because they're not meeting the criteria. I think in 2025, we had three individuals who went before the board for presumptive parole.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because they're not getting earned time.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: No, it's not just that. They're actually, they're not meeting the stringent criteria of most of them have been in the system and this is a subsequent crime that they have been sentenced for. A lot of individuals are coming before the board that have pending charges that still have detainers and pending charges still. We're seeing the court backlog trickle through, one case may get adjudicated, but there's still more cases still out there. And so we'll see them for their new minimum on the new case, but they won't get paroled because they still have other behaviors. We're also seeing a lot of folks that have been on parole before. The population is different now. The board has not seen a lot of people that they haven't seen before. They're seeing people that they've seen multiple times in the past. Also the major Doctor qualifier of the presumptive parole rules out individuals. But I would say the biggest one is people have been The people that the board has seen have been in the correction system for years. And they are picking up new crimes while they are serving their sentences is a good portion. Whether And or not they've been on parole is another piece because we are revoking parole more for new crimes than technical violations.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That was my question too. How many folks are in violation of their conditions Do you make the decision to reincarcerate them?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I do actually have those numbers. Last year, 63 individuals had their parole revoked last year at a hearing. Then additionally, another 41 decided to waive their parole violation hearing, which then resulted in revocation as well.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's one hundred out of six hundred folks.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: that's not talking about the ones that were continued on parole. We had another, let me get a different piece of paper and I won't have to do try to do math in front of everybody. Sorry,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I forgot I have

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: it right here with the totals. Last year we had just under 120 individuals who are continued on parole. So that's a significant amount of, we had over 200 potential

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: 200 potential

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: parole parole violation violation hearings. Hearings. Is that unique persons? Not necessarily. Because we do have people who come before the board multiple times in the same year. We have seen individuals who are continued on parole reappear later in the year for other violations. Because the board, depending, and the board is really trying to focus on the ones that, what we call technical violations of whether it be substance use or housing or treatment, we try to figure out what are those alternatives for the individual? How can we still continue to work with these individuals in the community? There have been cases where there have been struggles, and then there's a headline of a parolee who has allegedly committed a significant offense out there. That it's like, how could we intervene differently? And I think that's where the substance use resources, the mental health resources in the housing struggles that we are all facing.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So that leads into two things. When a situation like that happens and there's a headline, members of the board that did agree to a parole for that person just must be a gut punch. Number one. And number two, what are you seeing as a board in terms of our partners out in the community providing the services that's needed such as mental health slots or substance use treatment or housing or even employment, I mean, or a medical situation to house someone in a nursing home or something. How is the board? Are you seeing partners in the community stepping up to help folks or not?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I think the partners in the community are helping folks when the folks want to be helped. And I think that's the struggle too, is having the individuals want the help too. And I think that's, not to speak for DOC, but I think that's one of the frustrations we hear a lot in our, especially in our violation hearings of, I've exhausted everything. I've exhausted And then we also hear the lack of resources out there too. And I hear mental health agencies who are shutting down or, and losing, because one of our board members is a mental health clinician and her agency shut down And she went into a different field. And I think that's the challenges.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Why did that agency shut down?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I don't know. I did not get in-depth with her.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, I was just going to ask about the resources in our communities because I know each community is struggling. The staff, we've had them you know, and it's the whole enchilada across the board of issues, and it's not to find a problem. Those are the reality of another layer that prevents, you know, folks getting the services they need. That's why I'm always, when we have a legislation, I'll say, well, we are the resources in our community, because you even talked about the nursing homes. Now a lot of the nursing homes have closed that they don't even have where they can place people from the hospital for rehab and

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: anything else.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And then you're wanting to put a whole other layer of folks needing the assistance. It's just not happening.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: And I also, if I may, I think that stems to a little bit of the board doesn't always have a seat at the table. So we are not involved in some of these conversations around the resources. When you ask about do we know what resources out there? We don't often know what all the resources are or what the challenges are or the struggles. We're hearing about it from the boots on the ground individuals because we are not invited to the table most of the time.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And are those resources that you know of different in different parts of the state?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I believe different parts of the state have different resources. I know there's been programming clinician, mean, just in for a while, in DOC programming, our housing is different depending on where you live, and it's vastly different on what clinicians are in an area. I know your more populated areas, probably, you have more availability than you will in your more rural communities.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Am I correct in assuming that these services are state or federal funded more than paid for by the people they're providing services for?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I don't know the answer to that, but I would assume so. I would assume a lot of these agencies are dependent on funding. So,

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: that's drying up.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Yep, and same thing with insurance. And dependent on insurance to pay for these services.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: The insurance is going

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: to away. Yep, absolutely. The challenges we are facing as community members ourselves as well. And then to just add on all of the other hurdles that these individuals face.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Then the repeat offenders, and I say that with love because my heart breaks for them, but that's just creating more of a backlog. It's a self defeating purpose because they're not being rehabilitated or not doing a good job of rehabilitating is what the bottom line is.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And how do you do that? How to do that is the

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: $24,000 question, but we're turning the crank right now.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You wanna weigh in at all, Todd?

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: Yeah, I mean, if you're all set.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Yes, you want to see it.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Depressing.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: DANIELOS:

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: It's Vlad Daylose, director of policy for the attorney general's office. Thank you for having me in today. I think Director Ainsworth gave you, well, a lot. And I think it makes a very clear case for at least what the attorney general's office sees as a need for modernization of the parole board. And of course, as the discussion ended there, it touches upon all the major issues that are confronting Vermont right now housing affordability, the cost of health care, and increased accountability within the criminal justice system. And I think when we looked at this issue, and Director Ainsworth is a big, obviously, the major mover on this, it came from our corrections unit. And I want to just take a quick sidestep.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Corrections unit within AAGs?

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: That's exactly. So I'll give you a quick overview. The attorney general's office covers a lot of bases, and we do it in kind of a unique structure. About half of our AAGs, so roughly 50 assistant attorneys general, work for the attorney general's office. So they have position numbers that sit within the AGO. And then another roughly half sit within client agency. So maybe 30 or so sit within AHS, and four or five I can't remember exactly how many sit in the Department of Corrections. So it's an interesting structure. They're technically AHS employees, but they are assistant attorneys general under our office. And it enables a lot more coordination of legal services across the state. It's a very useful structure. That's how the parole board issue came to the AGO. We don't do a lot of parole. Our criminal unit, which is about six people, really deals with big felonies for the most part, homicides, a lot of child crimes, things like that. But we see this as a really important criminal reform issue. Because if we wanna look at the goals of justice reinvestment, we wanna look at a structure that is supportive of individuals who are suffering but setting them up for success as they transition out into the community. The parole board is a really important element there. And I think it's been fifty years since it was created. I think the last time the statute was touched was, we talked about this briefly, twenty years ago, I think that the chair's salary is set in 2005. We're not gonna make any recommendations on spending that's well outside our budget on this. But I think you've touched on a lot of the issues that are making it challenging to get qualified people on the board. And I think our hope is that by looking at different criteria from which board members are drawn with those different areas of expertise the chair sort of flagged as the emerging issues within criminal justice right now, That's gonna be an important step. I certainly think it's, and again, not part of our recommendation, but looking at how we support folks who are doing a lot of work.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yes.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: A lot of work. And and really important. I don't know where the magic money comes from on that one, but it's clearly important. These folks are holding a pretty important piece of a trust and doing a lot of work for it. As came up earlier in a much earlier incarnation, I was a civil attorney for the AG's office and defended the board in a couple of cases. And it's really it really struck me how hard they work. And at that point in time, they were traveling to each facility.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It was before COVID.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: Right. So it wasn't just how much time it takes to review all those files. You had to get the physical file. And then you had to go to St. Albans, Springfield, St. Jay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Out of state.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: Right, out of state as well. I forgot about that. So I'm happy to answer questions on it. I'm not going to offer more insight than Director Ainsworth did, except to say that we look at this the Department of Corrections has expertise in this area. And that's part of the reason that the draft bill the bill, I guess, suggests that corrections is the right folks to provide the training or measures of the training. I think Director Ainsworth had some thoughts on exactly what types of training get provided by corrections. And we don't have concerns on that. Your conversation on term limits, I think, is very valid. We don't hold hard and fast to that. I think there's a general view that term limits are healthy for organizations. But we don't want to do it in the face of injuring organizations. And especially, we don't want to end up with a parole board of four people. Just because of term limits.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: That doesn't sound like the fire we need

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: to be right now. Completely agreed. And I would say we'd love to be in a, I think we as Vermonters, not the Legion, would love to be in a situation where we had a lot of people who wanna be

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: on the

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: parole board. And I would say I have some hope that if the parole board moves in this direction with increased modernization and a real view towards how to assess folks for readiness for parole? Because I wanna be clear. This is not about we're gonna get more people on and just ship more people out on parole. Right? This is really we want people to succeed when they pass through that gate. We want them to be accountable for their behavior, and we want them to be successful as they transition. And so we'd love to be in a place where we had a lot of people knocking on the governor's door to be on the parole. That'd be terrific. And maybe that's the time to look at term. But we're not maybe we're not there yet. Beyond that, I think the bill is ledge counsel will certainly walk you through it. I wouldn't step into that space. I think it takes a few small and important steps. I'm sure there's more that can be done. But our hope is to really just take a few steps that focus on modernization and training in the near term.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I'm assuming the current parole board likes what has been written up.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: I'm gonna defer to Director Ainsworth on that.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Given the language to some board members, I have not received a lot of feedback. The current board chair was in favor of the board other than the term limits.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I'll move on to that.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yes. That's right.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: One question I have, well Joe had mentioned on line five on page three, which is the quorum, but really that doesn't necessarily need to be changed, right? Because the quorum is not a majority necessarily, but it has to be delineated in the statute or whatever in order for it to be less than So it still could be three, even if there's seven members of the board.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: I would agree with that. And I would say you likely want the panel to be an odd number. Whatever the intended number is.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Just to clarify that, because I

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: was looking that up.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: I'm like, I don't think it asked to be four.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: And in reviewing this, that was the thought process for us. Obviously, that's a policy decision for this body to make. But it made sense to have a bigger unit to operate from, but not necessarily change the folks who adjudicate each individual.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I realize that, sorry.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No, go ahead.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I realize that no matter what we do here, we're gonna be stressing one or the other, but it sorta just sounds like our education system, where if everybody passes, we're really not doing the kids a favor because they're gonna fail. I hope we're looking at the parole parameters so that more of them succeed when they are paroled. Cause if we're just seeing repeat, we're just generating more work and not success. I know it's expensive to have people in first wave, but it's more expensive if they're failing, I think, out there.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: Yeah, I would completely agree that we want to ensure folks are going to be successful. And I think helping, giving the parole board more resources and more training to recognize some of the challenges individuals are facing, both that get them into the criminal justice system and what hopefully helps them transition back in. Yeah, completely agree. The goal is not to open the gate wider. It's to help the gatekeepers understand who's going to be most successful on the outside. Because there's a huge public safety element within all of this that's that's vitally important for the pro board to hold on.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: At the same time, they can't find them jobs. They can't train them. They can't find housing. They can't provide snap you know, that's not their job.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: No. And and I would look to the director on this. I think part of what happens in the the report that DOC puts together is providing some measure of information around. And I I wouldn't wanna step into DOC's lane, but I would suggest the board is just assessing what the options and opportunities are and saying, we think this is going to work or we don't think

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: it's work. Right. Gotta have the resources of the community. They can't just be

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Housing, housing

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Same thing, but treatment. Same thing. Not only housing, but treatment. Education, possible charges.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: You just

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: gotta pay for it. You can fix that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So this bill doesn't address the legal representation and the possible conflict there. Is that something that should be looked at?

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: I would agree it is a concern. I think there is and I don't have it in front of me, but maybe you've got it in front of you, chair. The statute does suggest, as the director said, it recognized the inherent conflict. To back up to where I started on the structure of the AGO, we do have a unit within the attorney general's office, a division that is the general council division. So DLL sorry, Department of Labor and Lotteries, various other agencies get certain measures of representation. So we operate in a space where sometimes we counsel and sometimes we prosecute. In this instance, it's the DOC folks who it's hard to do both without providing the opportunity for the defender general to be there or to wear both hats, as the director suggested. That was part of the reason, again, in a former role, we pushed to get that 25 ks to see what's out there to try and get I think there was a private law firm that provided counsel maybe before your time.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I think it

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: was. It

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: hasn't been.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: Yeah. And unfortunately, no one took us up on it at the time. So I think it's worth looking at that. That is certainly an element of all this. And I would suggest maybe DOC would be able to speak to that with more clarity.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: So if you look at section four fifty six of chapter seven, that's where the piece comes in. When it talks about the pro board independence, that's where that piece around in a pending parole revocation hearing for shall not be counseled by the Assistant Attorney General and any attorney employed by the Department of Corrections. And then C then goes into if any attorney employed by the Department of Corrections or an Assistant Attorney General or the direct supervisor of an Assistant Attorney General who represents the Department of Corrections in parole revocation hearings provides training to the board members, the Defender General shall be notified of the training. So at one point, a few years back, we did try to have the Assistant Attorney General who was assigned to us provide training to the board. An attorney from the prisoner's rights office who's under the Defender General was also at that training and it became more of a co training that a team training by the two of them versus our attorney being able to train the board. And when you get into a situation like that, it's really difficult for a board member to want to speak openly and honest about what are my questions? If this arises, how do I deal with it kind of thing? Because you've got the defense there then trying to train your board member in the way that they want the board member to respond, not necessarily what might be the legal obligations of the board. That it was a really awkward training, which then led to the individual who was assigned to us to not want to put herself in that situation and hold other trainings with the board around those matters.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: But I guess that's why I'm going back to my concept that the board should be possibly familiar with the process, the rules, the regulations, but they're depending on outside experts that stay up to date with current law, current needs, and they supply the the detail around this particular person and the board then says, yes, we believe releasing them on parole makes sense or not. Rather than the board members being experts in all these areas. There's no way they can keep

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: up with it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I understand what you're saying, Kevin, but I don't think that those outside experts would know the offender at all. So then I go back to what Mary Jane was saying. That's where the training, having the outside experts come in and help the members in their training.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Mhmm.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because these these outside folks are clueless about the offender that's before the board.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And but but the board members need that background, be it mental health issues or substance issues or anxiety, whatever it might be. That's where your expertise from the outside can work with the board members. But those expertise from the outside have no clue who the offender is sitting in front of the board.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: No. And that's the role of the board member is to ask the right questions or provide that information

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And that's where the to training would help, right?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Well, that's where I'm saying it should be more cookie cutter because if we're looking at a drug related problem versus a kleptomaniac, I don't mean to be, I'm not trying

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: to be

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: light. There's, they're, they're gaining experiences to what they need to know about this person to know whether they've been rehabbed or not. And, and with the new drugs that come in, they may not be familiar with that, but the physiological and the psychological effects that are there, they know what to look for and then they can get the expert to say, yep, you're, we're, we agree or not. I, I'm not, I'm not saying I'm right. I'm just saying that's why I think maybe a change in thinking because we can't just keep seeing the same people over and over again. That's not helping anybody.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right, Jen.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: And I think also one other thing that I haven't really talked a lot about, but I think also having the resources with the board just to realize it just to right now we are limping along with our current resources of staff. Just looking at some of that model of even if we have resources for my position to be able to gain that information to create those trainings or have some kind of training coordinator that could work with the experts to get those trainings together for the board, I think would be helpful too. Because right now the two administrative staff are basically our docket clerks. They're doing all of our hearing preparation, our hearing scheduling, our hearing processing. I'm then facilitating our hearings while trying to juggle responsibilities of policy and procedures, trainings. It's a lot for three individuals to just do on a daily basis and then get these trainings into the board. So I think having some training resources and building a curriculum for the board would be having the resources to build that curriculum would be very important.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So this piece of legislation, so tiny, tiny, tiny little snippet of statute that pertains to parole. Tiny, tiny little, because it's titled 28, if people are interested, It's titled 28 that goes through everything that deals with parole as well as the parole board from section four zero one down to section five fifty four.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Chapter seven.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Chapter seven, deals with parole. And, you know, we haven't dealt at all in the committee much with parole. I don't know how much people wanna get into it. We could really get into it if people really wanted to. I can leave that up to the committee.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: It's interesting.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Or you could do a little snippet knowing there's a big, big picture out there that we're not even addressing. And do you have rules that you abide by to that you promulgate rules? Board?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Is only, I believe there's only one APA rule that we have on the books around medical parole and the rest is all in our internal policies and procedures manual.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: There's that layer too. It's not just statute, but it's how you carry out the statutes. For that. So I'd leave that up to the

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: committee if folks wanna spend more time on it. James? So it makes sense if your attorney is also representing DOC to have this requirement that the statute please have there. But what is the rationale? I'm sure it's very simple once I hear it up, I'm like, oh, no kidding. That's the case also if it's an assistant attorney general, even if that assistant hasn't dealt with DOC.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm trying to remind because I'm sitting here from who said this.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: So since 2015? Yeah. Was just before it was a few years before I came on.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And it was just I'm just trying Mary, I don't know if you were here at that point in '15. I remember talking about this.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: You don't know.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Just a

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: nerd, but I didn't memorize the committee speaking for us.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I asked our chairman. He was he was saying it was something that came up late in the session. It got added to a bill, and he couldn't remember exactly.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: And I'm happy to ask in our office. There's nothing that springs out at me because we do, in other ways, play those dual

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I think it was

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: council roles.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Right.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Maybe it was just cost, trying to save costs because

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: So I should be careful.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Why should the board go out and have their own attorney when we have them in the AG's office? I think it came down to that. Because they want to

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: But my question is, with the requirement to have the defendant Will general

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: they want to represent the client?

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: Looks like the training.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I'm wondering. One hypothesis I have, and I'm sure the defendant general probably remembers what

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You'll be coming in in ten minutes.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Is around, I think, the inherent conflict of receiving training from the Department of Corrections on how to respond to violations. I'm assuming that they wanted to be in the room in case the board was being counseled in areas that were more favorable to the department than-

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It was a balance. I do remember that. It's more of a balance because you do have the prosecution in in theory. Yes. And you've gotta have the defense counsel to represent the defendant. The defendant has a right for a voice and legal representation.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: And I think the goal in expanding training is not to touch on the determination piece, but much more, as you were saying, help the board understand the current context in which incarcerated individuals The foundations

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: in which you use to make the decisions.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: And that are constantly changing, right? I mean, that's what what you've really focused on today.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: And in this case, as opposed to a sentencing decision, both councils should be trying to figure out the best for the individual rather than win the case.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Unless in theory. Well, know it's in theory, but I mean,

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: if that's not the case, then I

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: mean, yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. But that's plea agreements. That's that's why we're hearing this physician. Each piece of this component of this of whatever we do or don't do has added to what we are now seeing. This is a real disconnect.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Mhmm.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And you really need to fix it if we're going to, you know, going to do it, but you've gotta have the resources on the outside. You've gotta be paying the people. The training is wonderful, but that's not gonna fix the problem if you don't have the other pieces in place going forward because you're setting up these folks coming back into the community for failure, and we've done that time and time again.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: And I would say to that, Rev Morrissey, that from our perspective, a couple slices of bread goes in a good direction even if we get the whole loaf. Right? I mean and and to us, this was a good couple I mean, if it helps this committee especially engage in it, that's fantastic. I think you'll bring a lot of important inquiry and and thought to it. And from where we sit, we just think this is a this is a straightforward piece of modernization that is maybe it's not the tip of the iceberg. Maybe it is a slice of bread, but it's a piece of

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: it. Yeah.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: No. Well, I think we need to go in eyes open on this. This isn't, like, one time cost we're asking for. It's ongoing costs and everything in here costs something, right? But I agree, we need to modernize it. And it's a quasi judicial entity. We need to give them the tools where they can do their job. And it's a really important job, especially for this committee. So I don't know, this could take a lot of work. I wonder if the front end is just having a chat with appropriations on the side and say, are you willing to even consider this? Because otherwise we could be spending weeks on it just to get a no thanks when we send it downstairs, you know?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What it says in statute, the parole board shall be an independent and impartial body. And in a pending parole revocation hearing, parole board shall not be counseled by the Assistant AG and any attorney employed by DOC. So that implies they have to go out for their own attorney.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: I think that harkens back to when there was an outside counsel who had a contract.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Then the defendant general wants to have a seat at the table with the training. Training.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Does do training.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: This is for revocation. But if the training and the revocation, the Dependents General wants to be on I couldn't let that one go. So I didn't know Matt walking me when I But the board is to be independent and impartial.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: Open that. Can you even get in I'm answer any other questions. Appreciate the time and focus on this. I recognize there's potentially a lot more here, and we would love to remain engaged on it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You were very welcome. So next week, our legal counsel, Michelle Childs, who drafted this, is gonna give us a walk through. We have a new legal counsel working on corrections too. So I don't know how to tell you it's gonna be in front of this or not. But we'll decide as a committee if we wanna work further. I think it would be really good, Who is our corrections liaison to do with Trevor? Cummings. Is it you, Shawn, or is it you, Ken? I can't remember. Who's our

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I was Kevin and I were talking to Trevor about that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Can you connect with Trevor to find out about the parole board, if he has any interest in separating that from the DOC budget, standalone Uh-huh. Its resources, like what Conor just talked about. Right, Conor?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yes. Thank

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: you all.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Thank you. So, no,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: indicates quite a bit. Thank you.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: And I think it just makes sense to do some work in the front end before we dig into it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Todd and Mary Jane, do you at all want to be in the loop when we had a drafts person walk us through on Strat, or at least be on Zoom maybe?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Happy to.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Same thing. They should. So let's take note for that because I don't know when we would be scheduling that next week. So if Kevin and Shawn can connect with Trevor

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: We will.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Find out. Well, I'll

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: hunt him down.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Hunt him down. I don't want to take a break because we're on the floor at three, and I want to give Matt enough time here. So we're gonna shift gears. We're gonna go back to that Chittenden County pilot project that's called the accountability. It's called the three Bs report. It's not the three Bs. We were dealing with it last year, but it's the number You of the

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: had to bring that back up.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. It's the number of the court that's being used. So, Matt, welcome. Yesterday, we had Jay Johnson from the administration. We had Tim Rutlander from State's Attorney as well as Judge Sonay to talk about the pilot project in Chittenden County, how it came about, who was participating and some of the results of that. I also want to give you time because you're also part of this and your office is being impacted on shore. And what we're seeing from the defense end in terms of this pilot project. And then we'll go from there.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Okay. So, Matt, welcome.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yeah. For your record, I'm Matt Valerio. I'm the defender general. And this priority docket in Chittenden County, obviously came upon us on pretty short notice and, without additional resources. The court did get additional resources, and I think that Agency of Human Services did dedicate, some amount of additional resources toward the project, particularly. I'm really here to You know, I can talk about some stuff, whatever you want. But I'm more interested in what questions you have about it, because I think I can answer them, number one. I did have a chance to look at some of the materials that were provided by the prior witnesses yesterday. And, you know, I'm not I'm not here to declare victory or not victory or, you know, it was a great success or not a great success, because I don't think we know. It all really depends on what you count. Right? Mhmm. One of the things that's pretty obvious is when you designate a particular docket and you put more resources toward it, and you are now going and if and if what you're accounting as a success is the resolution of dockets, then clearly it was a success. Because, you know, you put more resources on something, and you're going to get results. And that's what happened. And if the result is the resolution disposition of cases, that happened. Because those cases would not have been coming up if we had just been doing business as usual. That's why the whole thing started, right? So you had these multiple docket clients who either wanted to get their cases They themselves wanted to get them pled out, or they wanted to go to trial, or they needed to get competency evaluations and hearings, or the cases needed to be dismissed, or whatever it is. And if you look at all of the stats that were provided, all of those things happened because the court and the lawyers on both sides were available to do the work. Dedicated. Yeah, specifically.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Is it sustainable? So,

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: no. You know, one of the things I said, and I said this when I met with the governor, the other stakeholders at the meeting we had last fall, they asked First of all,

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I don't think that

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: it was really I don't think I said I don't think we need any extra resources from a lawyering standpoint to do this, because all of these people are already represented by lawyers. Miscalculation on my part regarding a piece of that. Probably 80% of those cases were represented It just happened that 80% of those cases were represented by the staff public defense office. But there were a good 20 to 25% of those cases that were represented by our conflict contractors. You know what I mean? You know the difference? No. Alright. So we have a staff public defender office up there, which are state employees and the like. These cases often have conflicts of interest relative to the lawyer. So you have codefendants or you have witnesses who are represented by the staff office when this other case comes in. So those have to go to our conflict contract lawyers. All right? Those people were like, I can say to my staff office, and they all kind of work for them. But the staff office is directly I can say, All right, Josh O'Hara, managing attorney Sandy Lee, experienced attorney. You guys, I'm designating you to deal with this priority docket that has been established. And they're gonna bring in a judge, and they're gonna bring in a prosecutor, and it's gonna run for three months, which is what we were told. And it starts you know, it started, like, literally on, like, ten days notice. It's actually remarkable, honestly, that all parties were able to pull this off and make it work as well as it did for the that kind of notice. People worked well together. They you know, we got our stuff together. They got the prosecutor. They found a retired judge, who, by the way, used to work for me, when I was first DG'ing twenty five years ago. And we did it. The problem area, you've maybe heard me in other testimony, either at Joint Justice Oversight or others, talk about, like, this shortage of lawyers that we have. Now I have people under contract in Chittenden County to do these conflict cases. But within the last two years, we used to have five primary conflict contractors. That's the level right outside of the staff office. Then we used to have three other lawyers backing them up for conflicts that they would have. And then I had five caseload relief contractors that handled the northern part of the state. And there's other stuff that goes with serious felony units that aren't really important for this. But right now, I have four Chittenden County primary contractors. I have no backups, and I have two less case load relief contractors. Those four are handling the work of all of what used to be, and I'm pulling caseload relief contractors up from the South to handle Chittenden and other northern cases. So here's where the rub was with all with all of this. We can easily I don't know about easily. We can handle we were able to handle for three months what was going on in the staff office. Alright? The bottom line is they were appearing in one court as opposed to another court. And the designation part of it just meant, and the court knew this, that they were unavailable to be in the other courts. Mhmm. Alright? So you worked on this particular docket, and you made your progress. The conflict contractors routinely they're not full time. They're they're not and they don't work hourly. They work based on a lawyer equivalent caseload analysis. It's not worth going into. Bottom line is they're effectively point 6.7 of, like, a full caseload. 60% to 70%. They are not typically designed they are not designed to go to court every single day. And this court was working every single day. This also would come at the expense of other cases that they were doing. Alright? So my failure here in kind of the analysis was and it wasn't was that those folks weren't getting any more money for doing more work. So they got pissed off. And I can't list. Yeah. And so I did go to the court, and we had a couple of blowups about it. So I did go to the court and say, you have to bend over backwards to accommodate these contractors or you're gonna lose them. And I'm already down to four with no backups. And along the way, one of them actually tendered a resignation, which would have made me down to three with no backups. And I went to judge zone A, and we got some stuff done kinda behind the scenes, and the resignation was retracted. But the bottom line was, we got plenty of these cases up in Chittenden County focused on the staff office. Don't be focusing on these contractors. And if we're going to extend this in the future, they gotta get paid. They can't be asked to do effectively more work and not get more money, because it's hard enough to keep them as it is. That having been said, this is, again, like, what do you count and does it work? And then the other question was, is it sustainable? We could do it for three months. And it's actually, as I understand it, the kind of seven day a week, six day a week, five day a week, whatever it is, full time, ends at the January. That's what I'm told. And they're planning to transition the cases back to Sarah George's office beginning the February. And then she'll have time to get up to speed on him. I'm told that the judiciary, the extra judge, Judge Mailey, is not going to be has anybody already told you all this stuff? Oh,

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: no. No.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Judge Mealy because I I don't wanna, like

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, we haven't heard this. No.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: You're not sending prior testimony.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Judge Mealy reported in a meeting to us that he's done at the January. Judge Patrick will have one of the four criminal judges that are there take over the docket with the idea of having the priority docket, once a week, not not five days. I'm it is unclear whether the folks who have been attending court, but will continue. What I'm told by the prosecutor, Zach or what we are told by the prosecutor, Zach Waite, is that their end date is January 31. My office reports that they don't know if there's any kind of plan for continued AHS support once the docket transitions back to Sarah George's office. The judge, I think, who's going to be assigned will be judge Catums, and he will do half a day for the staff public defenders and half a day for the contractors at the time when Sarah Jordan's office takes over, which supposedly January. But my guess is there's gonna be some light transition in February. My managing attorney reports that there is no confirmation of any additional support after that time frame from the Howard Center or from AHS. The I already talked to you about the management difficulties of the conflict contractors. And so I did wanna let you know that notwithstanding the fact that the defendant general's office didn't receive any additional money, I segregated 47,500 for a company called Therapeutic Works in Burlington that actually has contracts with DCF and other AHS entities, and does work for us and other agencies. But what they do is they're connectors. So you go to say you're one of these people who comes in, they got 12 dockets, they plead to something, and you're put on probation. And part of your probation is you need to get this screening, and then you need to go to this treatment, and that's in Williston, and you need to find housing and do these things you're ordered to do. That sounds right, right? Except they can't do it because they're transient, they're homeless, they're mentally ill, they have co occurring disorders with substance abuse. What Therapeutic Works does is connects those clients of ours to all of these things that they are ordered to do. Sometimes it's as simple as, I'm gonna drive you to Williston so you can make your appointment there. Other times, it's, We are going to validate your screening because they are licensed therapists and are fully qualified to do these risk screenings just as well as any of the AHS folks. And so if there is a discrepancy, we can address that. Like, if something was ordered by the court that is unnecessary, we can go back and say, Hey, look, the screening doesn't warrant what you've ordered, so these people can handle x amount of stuff, but they can't do You know, this is unnecessary, so don't load that on them. And we can deal with that type of thing. Therapeutic works, I put under contract until the February, from the beginning of this, so it was December, January, February, to be the connector from the screening that AHS did when they were brought in at the courthouse, whenever the court was awarded, and actually getting these people to the treatment. This is where we have the failure structurally, ultimately, in the system. We have multiple issues. Like, one of the things, we don't have any residential co occurring disorder treatment facilities in Vermont. When we deal with it, we have to send them in New Hampshire. And then we have to Therapeutic Works helps us do all of the things to get Medicaid to cover it and all of the things that you need to do to make sure it gets paid for. They're very helpful in that. Some of, like, the renowned people in Burlington who were causing problems on Church Street. Our office ultimately connected with these facilities in New Hampshire. And it's astounding, the results that they got once they got the right treatment that they needed. But they're really good at this. I'm sure there are other businesses and entities out there that might do the same kind of thing, but this business happens to be in Burlington. It's someone we had been using on a case by case basis before. But because all of this kind of got consolidated into one court, we were saying, All right, what is it gonna cost to do this? And I couldn't afford forty hours a week for them, but I think we're doing twenty something hours a week with them, so they didn't have to sit around the entire time. The other thing that they do for these clients is if they are homeless or they're transient, They have other grants that are unrelated to the Defender General's Office. But as a drop in center, that, like, if they don't have any place to go and it's 10 degrees outside, they can go there, warm up, they can get coffee, soup, something to eat, just a place to be so they're not hanging out on your doorstep on Church Street and annoying people. And so this kind of interim connection and it has all of the things, right? Transportation, housing, employment, childcare, health care, mental health screening, substance abuse treatment, where these things are some of these things are out there and available to them. Just the fact that a court orders it, and, then they can't get themselves to access this treatment. You know, I take some umbrage with the You've heard the term treatment resistant. Some of them are treatment resistant. And some of them can't get themselves from where they are to where they need to get their treatment. They just They don't People who are, like, relatively normal functioning like us, they're like, Why don't you just, like, walk over there? Or, Why don't you just take a bus to Williston? They can't do that. It's not Some of it's money and some of it's They just can't do it. If you say, hey, look, I'm gonna take you to that appointment, they'll get in their car, and you drive them there, and then they'll do it. And then once they get there, and they kind of figure out, okay, well, then we'll make sure you get there the next time too. You know? So it's this connector social work type service, but by people who are qualified from a therapeutic standpoint, to make sure that people get connected with the services, the results, like, skyrocket as far as how well they do. And you aren't gonna save them all, and you aren't gonna be able to have success with all of them. But it's a missing it was a missing link. And that, I swear to God, I got $200,000 worth of benefit out of $47,500 worth of money. Because they're very They are using other grant funds that they have to service these clients in addition to the money that the defendant general's office would pay to have them available to us immediately at the court. I can't do that indefinitely. Know, I've got them through the February at this point. You know, honestly, I'm using some money that because people quit, I had extra had extra money. So I'm using the quitter's money to pay for the

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Quitter's money fund.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yeah. To to pay the, you know, to to pay for the social work. I was worried that it was like I say, where there's a will, there's a way. I figured it out. And this is what we do all the time. This is not this isn't something special or or magic or anything. It's just like something presents itself, and then we figure out how to do it. So that's what we did. So, you know, the general question was, you know, did priority docket work? By many measures, I think it did. And I will whether it really ultimately works, because whether or not these multiple case clients end up coming back into the system. If we can get them into the actually make some of these services work. Now if if we saw even if we saw, like, a 25% reduction in the people coming back, huge win, huge win, you know, with this difficult clientele. And then if maybe the next time around, we do better and we're doing 25%. But if we keep doing 25%, we're gonna whittle this docket down and these people down to some of those that are, like, the real hardcore, difficult ones to deal with. And maybe we gotta do something different with them, but we'll figure that out along the way. Some of them, it doesn't take that much to just kinda push them over that edge and get them what they need to get them the hell out of our system, which is what we want completely. And so I would say, by the numbers, because we have dedicated resources to it, go figure, we've made those numbers work good. Right? And from a result standpoint, getting people into treatment, that has been facilitated by this connector. And then there's some who didn't need the connector too. I'm not saying, you know But we have now All of these agencies, AHS, Department of Mental Health, Short Corrections, we've all dedicated specific resources to address a particular problem. And so we've made progress. Without You know, everything's about resources somewhere, right? And I don't think that my office can do it indefinitely without more resources. But and I also wonder if, you know, going from five days a week down to one day a week, and I if were let's pretend I was running the court. What I would do is I would exclude the contractors the conflict contractors completed. I just say, this we're gonna focus on any of these multiple cases that are in, you know, are in this priority docket. We're focus on the ones that are in the staff office, because I know I got people there whenever you need them to deal with it. If somebody comes in, you could call the contractor and say, Can you come? If they're in the, you know, if they're scheduled You know, one of the things that really kind of set one of them off was a year ago, she'd registered that she was taking two weeks off over Christmas, and she was gonna be out of state, on vacation with her family and her young son, who's like two, three years old, whatever. And court was like, We don't care. You gotta come in. Shouldn't have said I quit. See

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: you. And,

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: you know, there's 600 other cases. I would just say, alright, well, we'll skip you. You've had this vacation time scheduled. We'll go to the next one. We got 600 other ones we can do. But for whatever reason, you know, it became a thing. Well, and then it became not a thing. But it was after, you know, you have to unravel a resignation to do it. It's stupid. The the the that's that's just like, you know, people just banging heads to bang heads. Nobody needs that. There's plenty of work to do. We don't need to do that. So I would figure out some way to be incredibly accommodating, if not, you know, if if one of their clients gets picked up, if it's a contractor, if they're not available, put them on the next day, whatever that is, immediately. Bring them in, you know, in a normal course like you would any other case. But we can given the number, the proportional difference, you get plenty of cases in the staff system without going to the contractors to deal with these courts. But now, if you're down to one day a week, I would use the whole day for the staff office and anybody, any contractor, think that if they if it worked out that they could do it that day when somebody got picked up on a warrant whatever, fine. I mean, this is down in the mud, you know? But the bottom line is, down to one day, you'll make some progress.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, but it won't be one

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: But it won't be the same as five days. And if A. H. S. Doesn't have its resources designated and the Howard Center doesn't have its resources designated, and I've run out of money for the therapeutic works to do what they do, then we don't have any extra court time. Don't have any extra resources. We're just saying, Here's a day. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's not gonna be exciting.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: So sustainable in the I think what we've shown is that with the right allocation of personnel, that it can work for this docket. I will also say, though, that I've heard some of the other testimony that I saw in also the news report in Digger. They really wanted to get ahead of this, apparently, before I said anything. But Chittenden County was a good place to do this, because you literally could fill every day with this docket. You can't do this in Lemoyle County. You can't do it in Addison. You can't you know? And I'm not sure, honestly, you could do it in any other county. You might be able to do it in some of the other bigger ones, you know, Rutland, Rattleboro, Bennington, you know, I'm thinking more Rutland. But some of the smaller ones, you know What

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: is it needed in those smaller ones?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I think you'd have to I'd have to look at the dockets, like how many you know? It's do you designate how you get into this court is, you know, what is it, five or six pending cases or more? There are a lot of people who have those. I mean, I I do all of the reassignments in the state for caseload relief and for Serious Felony Units are all murders. So I do all the murder assignments, and then I do the ones that are felonies where there's conflicts with every other contractor. Every one of those that comes through has more than five dockets. So, you know, very rare that you get, you know, one or two or whatever. So, you know, maybe that number has to change. But I think there's plenty of other, like, multiple docket cases that you could deal with. I think that I'd look at it maybe a little differently, where you have cases that come in and they got 10 dockets in the information that comes in. You might be like, Over a period of time, you know? You get 10 dockets in six months, as opposed to, You came in, and now we've got a five docket or six docket. It also depends on how the prosecutor in a particular county charges cases. Some will come in under one docket, and there'll be, like, eight counts. Others will file a separate docket for each count. So when you're counting them, it's just different. There's nothing wrong either way until you start doing stuff like this, where you're kind of classifying a group of them as going to a priority docket as opposed to not. And then it looks like they got a lot of dockets, but really what they have is a lot of counts. So it doesn't really This is details. This is really deep in the weeds. But bottom line is, I think that it with an appropriate allocation of resources, this can be very beneficial for these folks who have difficulty accessing services or just getting their case to trial. I mean, one of the great things about this, honestly, is a whole bunch of cases were dismissed because they didn't have the evidence. And then a whole bunch of other cases were set for trial. And then a whole bunch of other cases, people were found not competent to stand trial. We got them immediately into mental health system. And then you've got the rest of them, which is the majority. But all of the potential dispositions that you could have in these cases, where you couldn't bring them forward in a regular docket because the murders and the sex cases and the violent crimes were eating up all of that court time. Now being designated over here, we got to them when we wouldn't have been able to get to them before. So those numbers are good. And then I like, with the connection of services, with what the Therapeutic Works did, and then the availability with AHS and the Howard Center, I think the model has demonstrated itself to be something that is useful if it is resourced.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we're gonna have to be on the floor in a few minutes. But I know Troy had a question.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Just a quick one. Has the administration heard your thoughts on the necessity for continued resources?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Well, you know, no. I don't think so. I mean, I think they get it. You know, this isn't

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I mean, it's intuitive, certainly. Yeah. You know I just You out lay very convincingly.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: You know, and and, you know, we we get our budget numbers and that kind of stuff, and there's nothing particularly related to this. But that I wouldn't you know, there wasn't at the beginning either. I It is If it is going to continue as it was, that's something that It would be an initiative that the legislature really needs to look at. I am unaware. It's clearly not an initiative that is accounted for in my budget, and I would doubt that it is in anybody else's. But it was not just a folly that we did this. We actually learned something about how this could work. And, you know, in twenty five years that I've been doing this, those opportunities and those kind of clear results don't present themselves that often. So this was well worth the effort. Thank you for your help.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Thank you. Thank you. Natalie.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Thanks you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes. Making that happen.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: We're gonna And, you know, and honestly, everybody else too. You know, I I the You and the group. Yeah. Exactly.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Group. That's it. That summed it up. You and the group.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: It's a good Thank you, Matt. Good luck on

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: the floor. I'm sure there's something going on.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I'm on the

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: committee. We're on YouTube. We're on YouTube, folks. And we have things scheduled after the floor or not.

[Todd Daloz (Attorney General’s Office, Policy Director)]: Yes, we do with bill introductions from Troy

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Headrick and Bill. And

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: what?