Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Welcome, folks. This is House Corrections and Institutions Committee. It is Tuesday, January 13. And this is our afternoon meeting. And we're starting work on testimony about the victim notification system that we have in the state. There's two really distinct systems, one within the state's attorney's office and then one within DOC once a person is incarcerated and to notify the victim of the incarcerated person, the status of that person or changes in that person's status or when they're going to be released from a facility or possibly even changed to a facility. So we're going to hear an update in terms of where the task force is right now. And they're in place until the February. So we do have a room full of folks. What I'd like to do is start over here with Jennifer first. And if you could just go around the room and just identify what entity you're with would be a help.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: You, madam chair.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: I'm Jennifer Coleman. I am the executive director of the Motsen River Crime Victim Services and also was elected chair of the Victim Notification Task Force Group.

[Speaker 0]: Hello, everyone. I'm Gina Giles.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: I am representing the Department of State's attorneys and sheriffs.

[Speaker 0]: Hi, everyone. I'm Hannah Marble. I will give you my name since I'm a great new face to many of you. I'm the new Director of Communications and Legislative Affairs for DCF Family Services. DCF is new to us being here because we didn't hear from DCF when we were putting this together. It's actually here to monitor today, but it was just mentioned that there might be some YO questions that I'm happy to bring back to our team. Okay. I am Amy Farr, the director of victim services for the Vermont Staters. I'm not testifying, but I'm Charlotte. I'm here with Niti Digger.

[Charlie Gliserman (Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence)]: I'm Charlie Glisserman with the Vermont Network Against Messaging and Sexual Violence. Great to see you all.

[Speaker 0]: I'm Director of Victim Services for Department of Corrections. I'm a Cassidy Renfer from Field Operations with Windsor that supports service unit and community advocacy. Ashley Fisk, I'm a senior victim service specialist with DOC. Kelly Summer from DOC.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, VT Department of Corrections)]: John Murad, I'm the interim commissioner for the Department of Corrections.

[Speaker 0]: And then on Zoom, we have Kelsey Rice as well, who's a survivor from, Windup County. So welcome.

[Brittany Antunes (survivor) aka “Jane Doe” / “Gina Gale”]: And me as well. I'm a survivor. I'm Brittany Antunes, aka Gina Gale.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. Jane Doe. Right? Yes. Okay. Okay. So I'm gonna start with Jennifer, I think is the place to start as your chair of the task force. And let's just start with a real high level and then we'll go from there. I'd like to offer as much time to everyone here on the list to testify. I hope we get through to everyone. We have an hour and a half. Welcome, Jennifer. Thank you.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: For the record, Jennifer Pullman, Director of Supermont Center for Crime Victim Services, also the Chair, as I mentioned, of this group. I am mindful of the fact that I have spoken many times in this committee and also before Madam Chair on Joint Justice. And so I do wanna be mindful of leaving time for folks, especially the survivors, director of Vermont State Police, as well as Charlie Wisserman from the network to have space to testify. I'll go very briefly high level. And you have the report. You may not have had a chance to take a

[Speaker 0]: look at this. This the final report or is it an interim report?

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: That's the final report as of the date that we were asked to submit it. We are still working on some of the issues.

[Speaker 0]: This was kind of like a mid report.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: We met our deadline. We didn't agree on every piece, but this was where we we stood in terms of the deadline. And again, we are continuing to work. And our last meeting is on the eleventh. We are we cease to exist on the fifteenth as of right now. There's a recommendation, though, that there be an advisory group, and I'll speak about that moving forward. I do want to first say that this was a really active group, everybody, and I appreciate every member. It was pretty heavy conversations that were had. We all, I think, learned a lot, learned a lot together. Even though some of us have been doing this work for a while, there were always those moments where you're like, Oh my goodness, we did not know that. We did not know that. It was, again, I hate to say it's an onion because it doesn't have a good affiliation, but it was peeling back those layers. And we dug in and did a lot of that. And I'm really pleased with all the work that I think was done in terms of positive progress that took place. You asked us to think about trauma informed support for victims, plugging up some of the gaps, looking at some of these, the issues that we could do things in a better way. And I think a lot of the work speaks to the fact that we were able to do that. So I do want to highlight first some of the places where there was progress. One of the pieces that we all started, like a basic piece, fundamental piece. What is the life of the case in our criminal justice system? And DOC staff, with support from the state's attorneys and sheriffs and the network, actually provided that kind of a really fundamental rubric for people to look at. And that's in the appendix of this report. So hopefully it'll be a great tool for you all when you think about these pieces moving forward. Where do we intersect? Where are the responsibilities? And where maybe have we not identified what those are? That was an important critical piece because we came to this realizing that it wasn't entirely clear. And again, it sounds pretty basic, but it was essential and we thought it's a great tool for you moving forward. Another piece, and I know some of you are really concerned about the sort of the gaps when somebody is initially arrested and law enforcement involvement. And also what happens when somebody's booked and could be released on a weekend. And we really dove down to that. Kelsey Rice, who was on our group, and you heard from her and joint justice before, and also in a prior Digger Out article, what that looked like for her in terms of safety. And we did accomplish two important things. I'm so glad that Amy Farr is here, Director of Victim Services, to also talk about her role in that. One piece we realized is that under thirteenth BSA 5,314, law enforcement has certain obligations to notify and provide information to victims about their rights and information. For decades, we've provided tools in that regard. And by we, I mean the center in conjunction with stakeholders have provided tools in terms of, here's a form that you can provide for victims. It shares all that information that you have to provide pursuant to 5314. What we realized is that in that form, was no place that victims were given information about the offender locator system, about big notifications that victims could sign up for right away. So we modified that form that also is in the appendix. And we had Disability Rights Vermont look at it. Everybody looked at it, much more accessible, and made sure that information was included. We did identify on a consensus basis that that should also result in a modification or an amendment to 5,314. 14. And you'll see that in the recommendation section of the report to make sure that that also was included as an obligation. We're not looking to add to law enforcement responsibilities. And again, you have any bar who will be testifying from law enforcement from state schools, if you have any questions. What we're simply looking to do, because we provided the tool, the center had it translated into 12 different languages that are available to law enforcement at any point in time, to all providers at any point in time. What we're looking to do is just to simply have 5,314 reflect what we think is basic information that victims should be getting.

[Speaker 0]: So is this proposed change, and it's here in our report here, has that been introduced anywhere at all?

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: My understanding is that chair, Belong has, introduced that or is about to. It is definitely a short form placeholder for that.

[Speaker 0]: Just so that we know where in the process it's gonna be.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: So that was one area of progress. The other piece that, again, you'll hear more from Director Farr on this, is that we also realize that in the, basically the booking packet, and I'm speaking as a layperson and she can speak more, victim notification information is not readily available. So when that information is shared by law enforcement to the booking officer, that's not necessarily, it could be buried and it

[Speaker 0]: might not be there. So the booking officer, what you're talking about is when the person goes into a correctional facility as a detainee as well as as a sentence person. So the person, the DOC correctional officer who's in the booking room, who's doing the initial intake, that person right now is not getting the information about the victims from law enforcement.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: It's not easily ascertainable all the time. So what director Barr has done, and she's worked it up the chain, it down the chain, is to make that like that's a cover sheet now. The victim wants that information so that we can potentially minimize the risk that somebody's brought in on a Friday, released on a Saturday, and the victim does not know. So she can, again, I'll defer to her, but I wanted to highlight some of the areas of progress. Another piece that we talked about last session was that some of the feedback we had from survivors, the two survivors, was that the email communications did not feel trauma informed or victim centered.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Have read about those. From volley.

[Speaker 0]: Yes. Right? Yes. So that's a different system than what state's attorney's system is. That's Yes. It's important as a committee to keep that to understand that.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: And I apologize because it seems like a lot of this is post conviction focused and focused on what how Vine has been used because that was kind of our initial takeaway was that we needed to work with what we had and think about what the potentials were. So we had looked at those emails. And again, we had Disability Rights Vermont and the survivors as well in the group and came to a consensus on basically where we landed with notification. I think we're still trying to wrinkle, deal with the wrinkles with parole notification because that's a little more complicated, but there was consensus about that process. And we also looked at the text notifications because those were kind of truncated and DOC helped to work with the group's concern about having a link to the language that would be in an email versus it just ending at the text. The DOC has done, certainly followed up on that and embedding a link in that text. So we're really happy with the improvements to those notifications. We still have to figure out the phone notification piece. But as far as what's actually being sent out through Vahn, everybody was really working hard to try and get this right.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: So that's already been implemented?

[Speaker 0]: Yes. Questions before we move on? Just to make I want to make sure the committee's up to speed here. Shawn?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: When you say the phone notification, can you be more specific about that? Is it just be more specific about that. Is it just putting it out on a phone and we're

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: not Victims and I defer to the experts at DOC, but currently victims do have the ability to decide how they want to receive notifications. Didn't actually DOC did a great data poll to figure out how are most victims choosing to do so, but some do choose telephonic notification. And it's trying to understand, are there ways that we can improve the way?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Instead of written like a letter? Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Troy?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Do you have a timeline? Is that still on your agenda?

[Speaker 0]: My

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: understanding, telephonic is still on our agenda.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Do you anticipate getting it done before the passport is done?

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: Well, I hope so. But hopefully, these can be ongoing conversations. I do believe that everybody questions whether we need another work group. I'm one of those. But even though I put this out there, I think this I'm confident this is one that really has resulted in people coming together and having sometimes challenging conversations, and hopefully they'll continue. And

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: the telephonic, is that a live person making the call, or is that electronic?

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: Electronic. You'll probably hear from Director Pelkey for the TOC that certain cases, they are definitely making those notifications. But is the default often just an unlive person, so to speak. Recorded. But again, I defer to my many colleagues here from DSA.

[Speaker 0]: Is it then clarified with the victims that there's a different system once a person gets once a person's incarcerated? Has it been has the victim been notified that we're no longer working with the victim advocate office and the state's attorney's office that has now shifted to DOC? Are victims clear about Well,

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: I will jump right to a piece then that was another point of progress. And attorney McManus from the Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs will, I'm sure, elaborate on this, was developing an MOU. We spoke about this last session, concerns about communication, understanding of roles, a warm handoff. And Attorney McManus took the lead on herding the cats to create this document, which is a large part of why the report is so long. And we are just about there. But it really is a document that holds us all accountable, not just to victims and survivors, but to each other in terms of making things much more clear. So I'm really happy to see the progress that's been made. And I think, again, I defer to attorney McSpana to speak more on that.

[Speaker 0]: But this is a work in progress still. As

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: I understand that we are literally one or two conversations away. I know that most are part of that. Because that's the most important piece, is how do we hold each other accountable, both just to survivor both to survivors and victims, but also to

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: each

[Speaker 0]: other. That's at the end of our full packet that we got. It's not such

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: a scary packet. It's mostly appendix. One other piece I wanted to highlight as an improvement was that we heard from survivors that thirty days warning of the release of an offender from incarceration was not sufficient. And there was agreement that we would change that to sixty days. And from what I understand from Department of Corrections, they've implemented that change. So that felt really important to all of us, especially to the survivors on the group. And DOC has done a lot of work. Joseph Bordeaux is not here today, but in terms of looking at the codes that trigger certain notifications. And as I understand it, and you'll see reflected in the report, Mr. Bordeaux has done a lot of work to work with Vine, work with his team to look at how things are coded, because that is really one of the pieces that drives how the notifications go out. And I'm sure that Director Belky can speak more to that if you have questions. So the way it's coded is within your Vines system, right? Within the program. How DOC works to develop the codes. And then it's just about the training component. And again, don't want to speak longer than I need to because you have many people from DOC who could speak to them. But I do want to thank them for their work in this regard, because I think that will bring about significant improvement. So much appreciated. He's been doing a lot of work every other week with Vine and the vendor to try and improve that. So the areas of, I think, work concern that remain from my perspective, and I think from the majority's perspective. When I say majority in the report, it refers to the other members of the task force that are non DOC members. Language accessibility, that remains an ongoing issue. The cost to translate it's a one time cost, as I understand it. And again, I'll refer to DOC. It was about 2 and $80,000 to translate it into the 12 different language that the Center for Crime Victim Services paid for the law enforcement form. They are the languages that have been identified through independent research as the predominant languages in Vermont. Currently, only language available in terms of the written translation is Spanish. That is not a predominant non English language in Vermont.

[Speaker 0]: I wanna be clear how you introduce this, because I think this is really important for people to understand. The majority of the task force, excluding DOC, supports updating the language accessibility within the client system.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: Yes, absolutely. Giving victims a right without access to that right is not a right.

[Speaker 0]: DOC has concerns about this and you can talk about them when DOC comes up, but it's a cost to their department about 210,000 or thereabouts.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: I I understand it is cost prohibitive. Their budget was already in. I would certainly, as the director of the center, support any appropriation for them moving forward.

[Speaker 0]: Did you hear me?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: You said $210,000 for all two and

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: fifty I believe it's $280,000 versus the top 12 languages that, through independent research, have been identified. And again, I understand that their budget's already in. We all, as state agencies, have those constraints. But moving forward, I would certainly want to advocate for that to be a one time cost. And again, we can't give victims rights without access.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: If I understand you, how many languages are we dealing with right now, incarcerated?

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: Know that in terms of serving victims, we only have Spanish translation. English and Spanish. The interpretation is available 20 fourseven through Vine in all languages, for like two fifty languages. But in terms of what is being sent out in terms of translation, that's just Spanish or English.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I didn't ask my question. The victims, how many different languages are required for them to be notified?

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: The center provides all of its information to victims in 12 different identified languages, in writing.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: What do

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: mean, of the victims,

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: how many languages do they speak? 12. 12 are the main identified languages, and they are identified in the report, which languages they're translated into.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: So is every victim receiving the notifications in their language currently?

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: Every victim not currently through Vines, no.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: So how many languages do we not have available through Vine? Recommendation

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: of the majority of the committee was that we would bring it up to what has been reflected in multiple reports and add an additional 10 languages. Yes. There's two now

[Speaker 0]: of English and Spanish. And there's an additional 10 that we're seeing from the victims. They've been identified. Yes.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: And at any point in time, I do want to say Vine is available to provide that interpretation on the phone. So if a victim gets something, they can call Vine 20 But if it's being sent out, that's the difference. It's the translation piece that there's concern about. I think the other Well, I don't think. The other piece where there remains

[Amy Farr (Director of Victim Services, Vermont State Police)]: a level of,

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: let's say, level of hope that we can get to a better place on is the reinstitution of a menu for victims and survivors so that they can choose what notifications they want to receive. At this point in time, I don't believe that we have a consensus. Last understood, we had members of the task force who felt that this was remained incredibly important. We understood at one point that the Department of Corrections was concerned that under Title 28, they don't have any real wiggle room in terms of whether they have to provide it or not. They have to. And we understood that. And in looking at Title 13, when it relates to the state's attorneys, victim advocates, there is that opt in, opt out for anything entirely. It's right at the beginning of the title and right at the beginning of chapter one sixty five. Victims can opt in to any service, and they can opt out.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Chapter?

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: Chapter 13. We're title 13, chapter one sixty five.

[Speaker 0]: Title 13 is your criminal statutes. Title 28 is your DOC statute. So when we did earn time, we were very clear that we wanted the ability for the victims to opt in or opt out. And when we made that language change, we did that in Title 13. We did not do it in Title 28.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: In '28, you do have that opt in, opt out. For current time? Yes. And also parole has that as well. So there's still two We also did it in title 13. Might have, but '28 when we did this piece in '13 in '28 and also in the parole statute in '28. There are these areas where victims can opt in and or opt out. So there are still some optional notifications. The remaining ones that exist under '28, DOC is correct. They don't have any ability to not provide those. And some of us recommended that we would provide something in '28 that would give victims the ability to opt in or opt out. Are not Many of us are about giving victims agency and And certainly don't want to put more work on DOC if it's not necessary. Even with that recommendation, we understood from testimony in December that DOC still was not in support of instituting a menu and that the rationale that was offered in December was that it would be potentially too traumatizing for victims and survivors. I think the feeling of the rest of the group is that victims and survivors should decide what they want and what they don't want. So hopefully we can reach a better place. Hopefully we can reach a better place in that regard, because that still continues to be the position of the center and the position of the majority of the group. I do understand Anna from Nassett, who's a survivor who also works as the Vine consultant for Vermont directly with the vendor, that they had planned on bringing this back in 2026. So I don't understand what the issue is that remains, but that is an ongoing area of work.

[Speaker 0]: So I'm sure when DOC comes up, they can explain that a little bit more, I hope.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: I was surprised that we were in that place in December, but just want to reiterate what the concerns are then. We are still in that place.

[Speaker 0]: And the reason that we need to know where there is unanimity and where there is for us to continue doing work on this, possibly during the session to see if we need to work a little bit more on this with the respective parties, change some statute or work with some other committees in case if there's funding requests.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: Absolutely, I appreciate that there may be additional costs. Again, fully want to say that the center would be knocking down doors and testifying in for relevant appropriations committees to get support for DOC for any funding that is needed for any of these changes. The other piece, and this will resonate with some of the members of this committee, and then I will wrap up pretty quickly, as you see from the Digger article, DOC did eliminate a direct service position, and that position will now be working specifically on Vines, which is important. But this committee also mentioned many times last session that there was a concern that automation would replace personal connections. And we all agreed that nothing can replace connection and the skill that a victim services person can provide. Obviously, it's within DOC's purview to decide how they best how they want to spend and allocate their budget, it was jarring for the member other members of the committee to hear that information. And I just would be remiss if I didn't, as chair, reflect the concerns that you may hear from other members of the task force that that change happened. Again, we were all here last session testifying about we want to support direct service. And the elimination of the state position in that regard is kind of hard to get back, I think, as you all know. So as far as the recommendations, again, for legislative action, right now it's amending 5314. I know Chittenden has already put that in place. We did note, we would, the majority would recommend that we amend 28 in the same way that we just spoke about, that it would reflect that victims can choose to opt out to all the rights that they have on a '28. And then finally, amending the parole statutes, we found a discrepancy and that's in the report as well. And you'll see it laid out in the appendix that in Title 13. The right to notification about parole is an opt in if requested, whereas in Title 28, which really is the title that more squarely governs parole process, They shall be unless they opt out in writing. The recommendation of the group was that we would amend 13 to conform with 28, that we would want it to be a you get this unless you opt out and then opt out as in writing. You want 13 to be? Amended to reflect 28. Okay. And that is in the appendix has sort of a not a side by side, I guess a top and bottom comparison between the two.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Can you just I might be a little confused about something, because that to me feels contradictory to the agency that we're seeking in the other menu. I'm sure I'm just confused.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: I can say the reason that it was important to go with 28 was that victims are getting all sorts of information at post conviction. And so if the default is you get this, but you can opt out, That felt a little bit more important. And the survivors who are here can speak more to what that feels like when you're getting overwhelmed with all these different pieces.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I appreciate the clarification.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I'm still struggling. When an individual has been victimized, do they all get a personal notification of what information they can receive or opt out of? Or is that sometimes electronic?

[Speaker 0]: That's where you are in the process. Are you at state's attorney's level? Or is the person incarcerated? Because then it's fine. Depends where you are in the process. Because it's a different system operated differently with different folks if it's adjudication. That's through your state's attorney's office. If they've been adjudicated and are sentenced and are incarcerated, that then shifts to corrections through the blind system. So it depends where they are in the system.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Right. I guess where I'm going is all victims don't have access to electronics to receive electronic records. And I think I heard you say that right now we have victims that have got 10 different languages that we haven't even translated the status into. So, even if they had electronics, they couldn't read it. Did I understand that correct?

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: They're receiving it electronically, if they even have access, there are victims and survivors who would not be able to read those notifications. But

[Speaker 0]: I think you have to be clear. That's through the Vine system. What about through the state's attorney system? When they're working with the victim? I have attorney McVenus is here. So I simply

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: one person on this group. And you have so many people who are wealth of knowledge here that, again, I would defer to you to be speaking on those matters in terms of what it looks like on the ground. And again, Director Farr from the state police can speak about what that looks like. We work with what we had in front of us, but there's areas for change. And I do want to say we are focused on some future positive pieces. And I know that my colleague, Charlie Glisserman, will speak. Where are you, Charlie? There you About looking, we're looking at notification and civil protection orders. We're looking at notification for victims and survivors in mental health cases when that there's a criminal justice intercept. And we're also looking at useful offender matters because we're learning that they are not receiving notification necessarily from DCF or DOC. So there's other pieces that we're focused on. We're not going to solve all those problems, but we are finally starting to turn the corner in terms of thinking about other ways that we can make this better for victims and survivors?

[Speaker 0]: I think there's a little bit of confusion. There's different systems. So I really want to clarify what Kevin is asking about the language piece and getting it electronically. And it's DOC's Vine system that can only do two languages electronically. Word translation, not interpretation. Vine will if you if a victim survivor were to call Vine, person could get an interpretation in other languages.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: And I understand DOC and Director Pelkey can speak more to this, is working internally with a particular staff person who is focused on increasing accessibility in this area. So that's something that we've heard a little bit about, but don't really understand. That's DOC's piece.

[Speaker 0]: Now in terms of the language needs on the state's attorney's end, that's something separate. So I just want people to be clear on that.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: That would be and again, I can only speak to what the center does and what we do provide those all of our documents translated. We provide language line free for all of our sub grantees. We have over 60 sub grantees, including the network. And so just different pieces that we provide. I do believe that there are systems in place with the state, but that's really questions for them.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Seems like there's often disagreements between the state's attorneys and DOC on things like stamp allocation, who's paying for the system, how the system operates. Is there ever discussion in the task force about And I know it's different people they're contacting, bringing this under one roof where you could sort of allocate that, have one system, have everybody speaking the same language essentially, because it feels often like we're speaking different languages.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: I think that every state does it differently. I used to be the coordinator for the State's Choice Victim Advocate program from 2002 to 2009. I think there's a real value, even though it makes sense to centralize. There's also a real value to advocates being a part of the team. And I heard many times from advocates at the State Attorney's Office that we don't want to be perceived as not working for the State Attorney's Office because we don't feel we'd be as effective. But I don't want to speak for, obviously, the department, but I'm just speaking from my experience that there's a value to being considered a part of the team. So I don't know how to straddle that. I just know there's pros and cons. And, yeah, it seems very inefficient. I agree. But it also isn't as easy on its face as it would seem.

[Speaker 0]: So I want to move this along because I know you were chair of the task force. This gives a good review. I would encourage committee members to read the report recommendations for it. But I do want to transition with some of the other partners here.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: Happy to give up this year. You.

[Speaker 0]: I'm just going to go down. I'm going to go with state's attorneys, Kim. The state's attorney and sheriffs, Kim McManus. And then we'll go to Amy Parr from Department of Public Safety. And then we'll go to corrections. Does that seem fair? If we don't have enough time, we'll schedule more time.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: I will just make one note. Since I'm the scratcher of the MOU, it might make sense

[Speaker 0]: for me to go

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Tie it together? That have come up, we tried to tie together, excuse me, in the MOU. That might be helpful. I'm also happy to defer the survivors to go before me. I can be I don't mind Why

[Speaker 0]: don't we go to public safety and do you towards the end? And survivors, just hang on. So Amy. Yes. Amy Farr. If you could identify yourself for the record.

[Amy Farr (Director of Victim Services, Vermont State Police)]: Hi. My name is Amy Farr. I am the director of victim services for the Vermont State Police.

[Speaker 0]: So maybe you could give a little bit of a synopsis what the process is on the law enforcement piece for working with victims and then how that coordinates with the work with state's attorney that might coordinate with DOC. It's a whole system. We all have separate parts, but you're all working with the same victim at different points.

[Amy Farr (Director of Victim Services, Vermont State Police)]: We are. And I will just start by saying that I have worked in victim services since 1998. I worked for twenty years at the Attorney General's office. I'm very familiar with that aspect. I've never worked for corrections, and I have a lot of appreciation for that language. As you say, that is a different language. And I always defer to the people who know it better than I do, because I know what I know. So it is only in the recent past, I would say the last ten years, that there have been concentrated victim services in the law enforcement end. There have been parts in the state where you have advocates within police departments that have been helpful, and those positions are growing. At the state police, our victim services unit started with putting someone in the major crime unit, so to deal with or to work with families in homicides and major crimes. We have expanded. We now have three people. So we have a unit, and our victim services unit works with people at the time that a crime happens. And so that is kind of this law enforcement piece that is probably newer in the spectrum. It has shown up for thirty years in the CACs and the SIUs. It has long been recognized that the sooner you get advocacy for people, the better. We believe that or I believe that victims need safety, they need information, they need choice, and they need access. So the issue that is specific to this committee that I worked on within my agency is that for many, many years, there's always been this gap when someone is arrested after hours or on the weekend, brought into custody and booked at a facility. Typically, that happens, if it were to happen during the daytime, the state's attorney would be noticed, the advocate from the state's attorney's office would be able to communicate directly with the victim. But after hours, that structure does not exist. So what we were trying to do is create something that if someone is brought to a facility, because maybe they're going to stay there until Monday when their arraignment happens, or maybe someone's going to bail them out. As Jen said, they're brought in on Friday, maybe they're bailed out on Saturday, but even more concerning, they're brought in on Friday and they're released Friday night. So who is communicating that? And as someone with a deep root in victim services, and for those of you who have those same roots, you know that there are times where we change. And so the reason why that information is not so readily available was because there was a time where we thought we're going to protect that information so that it's not available to the offender. And so victim name and contact information was purposefully kept off of those documents. And I think we have evolved to a place where we now appreciate that we should be giving people that choice. And so what we created was a sheet that says, if someone is lodged, who is the victim? What is their contact information? And if they don't want their information there, who is someone else that we might be able to contact on their behalf if they are released?

[Speaker 0]: Who would do that contact upon their release? Would it be law enforcement? It would be corrections.

[Amy Farr (Director of Victim Services, Vermont State Police)]: And the reason why we did that is because if a trooper goes through all the booking, then let's say it's later that night or two days from then, that trooper might not be on shift. The sooner that we can notify people, the better. And so booking or corrections is going to know that information before anybody else.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: So let me just make sure I'm following you here. So when somebody is booked, you're talking about a system that has an option, a menu option, to list a victim or the designee, who would have that information? The arresting officer?

[Amy Farr (Director of Victim Services, Vermont State Police)]: Yes. And they would include that, if they have it, in the packet that is brought to DOC. So it would be a separate sheet. Right now, it's a draft form. It would say confidential so that it would not be a part of that file. So we could still protect that information. And just provide access so that if there is release at one of the facilities, they have the information to make that notification. We would also be talking about Vine and signing people up for Vine.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And is that standard practice already, that the arresting officer would have gathered that information? Or is

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: this going be new practice?

[Speaker 0]: It'll be a new practice. Has that been implemented yet?

[Amy Farr (Director of Victim Services, Vermont State Police)]: It hasn't been implemented. As Jen said, even something this simple needs to go through a lot of people. We at state police, we have a draft. Think we're just waiting to connect with corrections to see what they think if that works for them. And so we're in that phase of just trying to close that loop.

[Speaker 0]: We understand that.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Kevin? Two questions. Rough order of magnitude. How often does the victim not wanna know anything when the perpetrator is booked? Lots or little. I can't imagine that they wouldn't want to know if they've just been victimized what's going on with the perpetrator.

[Amy Farr (Director of Victim Services, Vermont State Police)]: I agree. I would say that more people are gonna wanna know than not. I just always leave it open that I never know what someone's going to want. No, I understand. They may want to Yes, that would be my assumption. I don't have numbers to tell you.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: But after hours, whatever that is, I can imagine that varies. Almost sounds like we don't have a system in place to notify the victims consistently. Am

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: I hearing

[Meredith Pelkey (Director of Victim Services, VT Department of Corrections)]: that right? I

[Amy Farr (Director of Victim Services, Vermont State Police)]: think there are people in place, but I would agree. We don't necessarily have that system. Okay.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: I would agree with that.

[Speaker 0]: It's just three different systems when you really look at. There's three different ones. You got the law enforcement piece.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I understand.

[Speaker 0]: How does that translate to, at times, DOC, if they go directly and then released? Or how does that go to the state's attorney's office to kick in with the victim advocate within that respective state's attorney's office in that county? And then if the person is sentenced or even detained, then it kicks it over to DOC. So you got three separate systems, but you're working with the same victim. Correct. I mean, that's the simple way of looking at it. They're all structured differently.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: There's continuous handoffs.

[Speaker 0]: And there's continuous handoffs back and forth.

[Amy Farr (Director of Victim Services, Vermont State Police)]: Mean, yeah.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: By the way, there may be victims that we don't even have someone who could speak their language? That's correct. Wow. No,

[Amy Farr (Director of Victim Services, Vermont State Police)]: it's not easy to be a victim in any way.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Okay. I just want to make sure I was understanding what I was hearing.

[Speaker 0]: Well, may have some perpetrators of crime that don't speak all languages either. That's correct. And they're due a fair trial, and they're due to be fair treated fairly in court, but there could be language barriers there. Yeah.

[Amy Farr (Director of Victim Services, Vermont State Police)]: And that has happened. That has happened.

[Speaker 0]: Anything else for law enforcement before we switch? I'm gonna go It would be right to corrections.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Thanks. And

[Speaker 0]: we'll finish up the MOU. Does that make sense? Everyone.

[Meredith Pelkey (Director of Victim Services, VT Department of Corrections)]: Meredith Pokke, Director of Victim Services for Department of Corrections. I'm happy to answer any questions and kind of just put out some clarifying information for everyone. I just want to be clear that Vine is an automated notification system. If there were a victim who needed translation services, they could call Vine at any time, like you said, you pointed out. If they needed other translation services, DOC, provide translation services as well. The only thing that's not provided right now is automated translation services. So email or text or telephone. But if they called the 800 number, they would get translation services. So, I just want to be clear that And if there was a victim who needed or wanted translation services, we wouldn't do automated notifications. We'd try to do that. We'd have an interpreter do those notifications for us. So there are services available. It's just not available through the automated buying system. So that's one point of clarification. Also, when we were here in December, we talked about the buying menu. And we would be in support of instituting the menu again if we didn't have necessarily all those statutory obligations. What our what our general counsel said is, as long as we have those statutory obligations, we can't have a menu that only will do one statutory obligation. We have to have a system that says all or nothing in that case. But if there was a statute change to reflect an opt out or opt, you know, in, we we would be willing to institute that menu again too and operationalize that.

[Speaker 0]: So one thing that might be helpful for the committee is if DOC could submit to us where all of those statutory requirements are so that we know. Because we're a little handicapped in terms of our legal counsel for this particular issue because we've hired somebody new. So this is reaching out to you folks to help us. So if you could indicate in statute where it impacts DOC in terms of all those statutory obligations that you have to fill. Yeah, happy to do that. I have those statutes in front of me, so I'm happy to send them to Tate and you. Yeah. And then also we can shift that over to our alleged counsel person as well for that, so that we know where in statute there are different requirements for notification of the victims within DOC's world.

[Meredith Pelkey (Director of Victim Services, VT Department of Corrections)]: Another point I just want to clarify is I think it's great that Amy and her team is really trying to figure out how we can fill this gap for victims during a really critical time. But I do want to point out that that's only VSP. We have a lot of local law enforcement agencies that aren't necessarily gonna use the booking form that Vermont State Police is gonna use. So that's something we should be thinking about and talking about as well moving forward. So that's another point of clarification.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: And I kind of wanted to Again,

[Speaker 0]: because I was focused on something else.

[Meredith Pelkey (Director of Victim Services, VT Department of Corrections)]: So BSP is doing the booking they're redoing their booking for it. And how is that gonna impact you folks? Well, I think that that's what we're going to meet about. We're going to try to figure out how we will make sure victims are notified. But my concern is other local law enforcement agencies that aren't going to have the same.

[Speaker 0]: You like your role, your state, your town? Yep. Many, from what you see in DOC, many folks that are arrested come through? Is it more with your local law enforcement or is it more with state police or is it about equal?

[Meredith Pelkey (Director of Victim Services, VT Department of Corrections)]: I don't know the answer to that.

[Speaker 0]: I think we'd have to pull that data if we can. My gut would tell me it'd be more from local. That's what my gut tells me. But I don't know.

[Amy Farr (Director of Victim Services, Vermont State Police)]: But I also think, you know, we start with this form. If it becomes acceptable with DOC, then we talk to the sheriffs and the municipals and the chiefs. We have to start somewhere. And I think once we get to a place that feels right, this might work, we can start the heat.

[Speaker 0]: Start small and then go from there.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: But the urgency though is spelt. If only 10% are covered right now, ninety percent of the victims are not in the system, that's pretty urgent in my mind. Right? What do you mean by ninety percent are? Well, only 10% of the offenses are handled by state Oh, I gotcha. And 90% are not using the form. That's alarming.

[Amy Farr (Director of Victim Services, Vermont State Police)]: Well, no one's using it right now. Right. But

[Speaker 0]: I think we did have

[Meredith Pelkey (Director of Victim Services, VT Department of Corrections)]: agreement on the form that all law enforcement will use, if I'm correct. And it will have the VINE information on it. So, I think that's a positive. So, if a victim wants to register for VINE, they'll have that information.

[Speaker 0]: I think that's Front end. Because now they can't register for vying until the person's actually incarcerated. Until they've booked into a facility. That's right.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: So, they could be a team. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Who notifies the victim? In DOC's world, who notifies the victim about lying?

[Meredith Pelkey (Director of Victim Services, VT Department of Corrections)]: Well, we notify them if we have victim contact information.

[Speaker 0]: And where do you get that victim contact information from?

[Meredith Pelkey (Director of Victim Services, VT Department of Corrections)]: States attorneys.

[Speaker 0]: So the system yeah. Okay. And and that doesn't so is that a separate form that comes in to DOC, Or is that part of the offender package? So right now, there's no

[Meredith Pelkey (Director of Victim Services, VT Department of Corrections)]: process of how we get that information.

[Speaker 0]: So that's part of the program? That's part of the program.

[Meredith Pelkey (Director of Victim Services, VT Department of Corrections)]: But I'm hoping that that's what some of the MOU can resolve is how we get that contact information.

[Speaker 0]: So there's a lot of places in the continuum where it breaks down. Yes. And it's not always DOC. No. It could be state's attorneys. It could be law enforcement. It could be the victim. Would the perpetrator of the crime ever be involved in preventing any information going to the victim?

[Meredith Pelkey (Director of Victim Services, VT Department of Corrections)]: No. I mean, if we have the victim contact information, we will reach out to victims and ask them if they want to be notified and give them, you know, we want them to have agency and choice in what information they need.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: It's a typical turnaround application from when you become aware of a victim who you can contact to

[Speaker 0]: get You got a speak up, Troy.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I'm just looking at the typical turnaround time for getting the information to outreach. To victims? Yeah.

[Meredith Pelkey (Director of Victim Services, VT Department of Corrections)]: So if you're talking about automated notifications, our system sweeps every fifteen minutes.

[Speaker 0]: And a person has the opportunity to opt in and opt out from the Vyne system? Yes.

[Meredith Pelkey (Director of Victim Services, VT Department of Corrections)]: So, I wanted to leave time for any questions, too, if you have any.

[Speaker 0]: We've been doing that. What do

[Conor Casey (Member)]: you need from us to reduce breakdowns in the system? What legislative action could we take? Is it resources?

[Meredith Pelkey (Director of Victim Services, VT Department of Corrections)]: I think it's a lot of things. I think it's resources. I think it's communication. I think the MOU is going to be super important for us. And I think this task force has really made us come together as a group. And we've done some really great things, being able to have trauma informed language. I think that support from all of you has been great.

[Speaker 0]: So the question is, one of the things that Jennifer brought up, do we continue in some form for the task force to continue in some form?

[Meredith Pelkey (Director of Victim Services, VT Department of Corrections)]: Well, I mean, think that we should be, as victim services folks, we should be meeting regularly anyway. So I hope that having these relationships and making these relationships is really gonna keep that focus. Sometimes you need a little push from the outside. Because it wouldn't

[Speaker 0]: have happened if we didn't do anything last year.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Yeah, probably not.

[Speaker 0]: I just want folks to be clear about that. Troy?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Did the budget needs, especially that $2.80 ks, make it into your budget request?

[Speaker 0]: We have not presented our budget yet. We can't talk. We

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: can't Did speak to you make the request? What's the process called when you're telling the governor what your needs?

[Speaker 0]: We have not presented our budget yet, so we unfortunately can't speak to that. The word is mum. Everyone needs to be mum.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: We'd like you to. So

[Speaker 0]: let's transition to the MOU.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: We'll have you back. Okay. So, Kim, welcome.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: And Lots riding on this MOU right now.

[Speaker 0]: Meredith, feel free to weigh in too because this is part of you folks as well. Great.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Thank you. Yes. For the record, my name is Kim McManus. I'm a little turn. They turn down a little.

[Speaker 0]: People are getting hot.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I think it's just all

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: it's freezing.

[Speaker 0]: Well, not all the way.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: All the time.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: It's not gonna do anything anyway.

[Speaker 0]: Renault. Somehow

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: we'll see. You are, Brian.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. It's all yours.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Not at all. Kim McManus for the Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs. A few things I just want to clarify, then we'll move right into the MOU to keep you all on track time wise. The victim advocate program in the state's attorney's office, we do not have any automated system. There is no separate automation that in any ways competing with vines or working with vines. We have our victim advocates who, on average, have 600 cases. Not all have victims related. Many, most do. And they are communicating to the victims. The baseline is what the law provides as far as what needs to be communicated, and they're often going way above and beyond what is outlined in our statutes. What's really important for everyone to understand and the reason for the MOU is that victims' rights, as far as what they are entitled to, not just communication but restitution rights, right to appear at different hearings, those laws are spread out between four titles. And I did a quick count as, I believe, 16 different statutes. So even for those of us who practice in this, one of the first things that came up at one of the first task force meetings was wrapping our hands around all of that and putting it all in one place, which hadn't existed yet. And so Tim Luneau, the executive director of our department said, at whatever else we're going to do with this task group, let's create a memorandum of understanding that maps out not just, this isn't limited to Vines, it's not limited to what Vines communicates, but all communications with victims that were statutorily required from the moment of investigation and arrest all the way through to post conviction, which includes parole board hearings, post conviction relief, midpoint review, and map out what the rights are and then who's responsible for what. And by doing that exercise, it really has helped all of us just highlight the gaps that we knew they existed. But by putting them all out in paper and outlining it, really mapping out, Okay, here's the gap, how are we going to solve this? What's this handoff going to look like when somebody sentenced? What does the victim advocate need to send to DOC? And vice versa, when things occur over at DOC, when does the victim advocate need to know to be able to help with the communication when that's appropriate? Pause there. Sorry. One second.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yep. So when you guys did this roadmap of all the communications, you said from arrest to post conviction. Can you detail a little bit more about what gaps you guys found that would be good for us to notice or know that might be changing in the future, but also just in general so that I'm aware a little bit more of all the different moving pieces with communication?

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Absolutely. So you heard a little bit from Amy Barr about the front end gap, that is that weekend arrest with detention and then potentially being released. We are not involved at that point yet. The victim advocate does not get involved until the paperwork has come over to the state's attorney's office and we have filed paperwork with the court. We're bringing in the victim advocate who, best case scenario, is reaching out to the victim before arraignment. And in situations like a domestic violence case where it's a flash site, which means the citation's happening the very next day or within twenty four hours, that's quick scramble that morning of the victim advocate trying to reach out to the victim. And that moment, at arraignment, if this is just an interesting example. If the person is released from court, then statutorily, it's the prosecutor's office that bears the obligation to tell the victim that the person has been released, that they've been detained all weekend. Monday morning, they've been released from court. If that person is held, saying, can't make bail on that Monday, goes back to DOC, then makes bail later that day, then it's DOC's responsibility because they have been in DOC's custody. Now, at that point, the victim advocate on our office, again, it's not our statutory obligation, but we would more than likely also tell them because what often our advocates will do is they will sign up for Vines notification for their victim. So that's how we it's not our system, but we often will use it to gather information for ourselves. So the front end has that gap. The pending case, the primary communication is with our office and our victim advocate. But again, if the person's being held by DOC, then there's some parallel statutory obligations. Again, if that person is released at any point pending the case, makes bail three weeks later, that sort of thing. On the back end of the case, so to speak, once a person the case has been disposed of and the person has been sentenced, primarily the communication now has moved over to the Department of Corrections. There are some interesting things statutorily where we are pulled back in. One of them is mid review. Excuse me, that's probation. So I'll hold that to the side. It's got so confusing there. We'll put it over there. If there's a post conviction relief filing, so somebody has been sentenced, generally, they have a longer sentence, but not always, but they have an issue with the a legal issue with the underlying case, they may file a civil action called post conviction relief. That is on our office to communicate to the victim about those hearings, about those hearings coming up. So that's where there's sometimes some interesting overlaps or parallels.

[Speaker 0]: How would your office know about the post conviction relief?

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Well, fortunately, that one, once it's filed, the court gets that information to us. And I hear the committee not wanting to go into probation lands. But one important thing in the MOU that we discussed with Department of Corrections is for those midpoint reviews or a probation violation. So the person's not sentenced, they're out on probation. We have the obligation, the state's attorney's office, to communicate a probation violation being filed or a midpoint review being filed. What helps us greatly is knowing that information as soon as possible from the Department of Corrections. And that's a point that there's no statute stating that, but it's just an understanding that, of course, we'll do our job better if we hear about it sooner than later. And so that's one of the points we it's actually, I don't think, in the draft attached to the report. But it's in one of our latest versions that we've added that language of DOC communicating as soon as possible with the respective state's attorney's office.

[Speaker 0]: The violation of probation goes back to the courts. It does. Why won't the court notify the state's office where that happens if a person for post conviction relief, the court is notified and then notifies state's attorney's office. So for probation, it's a DOC person, field officer that has determined that the person has violated the conditions of probation and sends them back to court. So why should DOC be the one to notify the state's attorney's office when it's under the court that makes the determination on what happens to that person who's on probation?

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: And the court does tell us that when we have a victim involved, depending on the sensitivity of the case, the more notice we can give a victim of a pending action, the better. So if in a highly functional county, and I can harken back to when I was a DV prosecutor in Addison County, we had such a wonderful relationship with our probation and parole office. And particularly with my DV cases. I had one or two probation officers that I always worked with. If they knew they were going to file probation violation, even before it was filed, they were letting me know. They were like, hey, Kim, this happened. We are doing this. Just an FYI, I would be able to tell my victim advocate just to get her ready so that we could then coordinate how are we going to tell the victim this. Often the victims, in my cases, were involved likely in that probation violation, not always. But it was just really helpful not to wait because there's sometimes not sometimes there's a delay. Probation violation is filed with the court. Court schedules it for the initial hearing. There could be a few days before we get that piece of information. So again, this is where one of the absolute positives of this task force is that folks stopped pointing at each other and just really all collectively pointed at the problem. So this isn't something DOC has to do. But they agreed this is really helpful to victims. We understand that. And by putting it in this document for folks who come after us, who don't have the collective knowledge of the current work group, they will see this and it'll just become the culture that exists, which I think will really help in these gaps.

[Speaker 0]: Is

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: that mapping exercise a document? Is that something you can share with us?

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: I believe it's in the appendix of the report. Yes. So the MOU is that there's also a map, and it actually will hurt your brain a little bit when you first look at it, showing all the various ways of who is responsible for what in the life of a case. And it's in appendix, isn't it? Yes, it is. Yes,

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: the second document.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: And it's sort of a thing, I'd call it an outline. Oh, all right. The photo chart. Yes, and probably take your time looking at that.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yeah, you see, that's why I wanted you to walk through that, because this is very complex. And so my follow-up to that is how I mean, you obviously work with DOC, I'm sure, because there's so many moving pieces, and, of course, the state's attorney's office and the court system, the judiciary. But are you guys glad that you're in your own separate sphere, essentially, to be able to operate independently, or do you feel like you do work closely with some of these agencies and it makes sense to be more embedded with them? Don't know if that's the right term I'm using. Maybe you are embedded or you I do feel like you guys are more separate, and I don't know if that's so you can juggle all these different pieces or

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Well, the case is pending, we're lead on the vast majority of communication to the victim. And then that makes the most sense since it's the prosecutor working with the victim advocate communicating with the victim as the case moves its way through court. So I think we're very purposefully in our own lane there. It would not make any sense until a person is in the custody of DOC for DOC to be involved. What does just get a little thorny is that when folks are detained before conviction, they're in the custody of DOC. And so that's where that overlap occurs. And the biggest takeaway, of course, is that binds is a tool, and it's only as good as the information that's going into it. And that's something that I think has come out repeatedly in the task force is for all of us how to better improve the inputs into the system and then checking the system. Because I think one of the things that's come up is that as there's been system changes, that's what's caused some of the notifications that have caused problems for our victims, that they're just wrong. There's DOC, I know, have been working on various things to, I think, hold an audit, because that's probably too strong a word, but doing a system check with their provider. Now, I think I'm going to stretch the question a little bit that was just asked. Vines right now is with DOC, and then they hold the contract, it's for their communications. Is there a conversation about whether Vines There's other applications of Vines that can be used. And I know there's Carolyn Hansen with the Firearms Compliance Workgroup has a request wanting to see if vines could be part of notifying victims with protective orders when firearms are seized. So there are other applications to Vines that I think we all collectively could look at. But for the state's attorneys, our victim advocates will not be replaced by an automated system. An automated system could help in some instances, but we really have the person to person connection with our victims.

[Speaker 0]: Or you're helping the person going through the court proceedings. Yes. That's the real key. Kevin?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: There multiple Are databases that are being used by the multiple departments? So you can have some information here, but not over here. It could be correct. It could be wrong.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: And that's exactly one of the issues with that human input piece and then what's getting into Vines and something that we are working on. Our database is changing, fingers crossed, coming up in February. And we have already been discussing what can we do to have information be able to go over to DOC potentially from our database versus the manual by our victim advocate. So it's a piece that we're working on.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: But other than poor data going in or not getting in, is there any prohibition for the different departments seeing that information?

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: We have a lot of information on our end that is protected. So we would

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: You'd have to. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: We'd have to

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: be very careful. But

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: if you had one database that everybody could access, excluding information that's not available to Okay.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Wait, like if it was just victim information and all of that went into one pile,

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: that would be wonderful.

[Speaker 0]: Where would that pile be located?

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Right now, what we're working on is the communication between the systems, what's possible, and then again, what needs to be human made on.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: So I'm

[Speaker 0]: looking at the time. Can you just quickly go over any within the MOU? I know it's in our appendix. I also am looking at the time, and I'm willing to go over because I want to hear quickly from a couple of the victims. We're scheduled at 02:30. I'm willing to push that off by like ten minutes, fifteen minutes for folks. So if we could quickly go over the MOU, then I want to kick over to Kelsey and Jane Doe.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Okay. What I think would make sense is for me to outline the MOU. Could spend two hours of me just whacking you through this, but I don't think anyone wants that.

[Speaker 0]: And it's still a work in progress.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Still a work in progress. I was thinking this morning, it's like when you do a renovation on your house and the first 80% happens so quickly, and you're like, this will be done any minute, and the last 20% takes forever. We're in that punch list phase of renovation. So we don't have much more to do, but it's just careful work. But we're not far off. The first section outlines the parties to the agreement. One change is that we have spoken to the network, and the network supports the MOU, but they actually need to be a party to the MOU or signatory. They do not have any statutory obligations for communicating with victims. They do an amazing job at what they do, but they don't need to be in this MOU. So they have graciously agreed not to be a party. We have reached out to the attorney general's office because even though the victim advocate program is statutorily, we support that at the state's attorney's office, all of these victim groups do we write. The attorney general's criminal division victim advocate adheres to all of these as well. So we've reached out to the attorney general's office to see if they would like to sign on to this agreement. So we're just waiting to hear back from them. If they do agree to do that, one of the edits that's currently being done is just changing language to say prosecutor instead of state's attorney. So a simple change there, but that would encompass both sides. A section that you don't know about yet in your version is a definition section. During our last review of the MOU, we made some really careful decisions on language. And when we did that, we wanted to very much explain why we chose those words, particularly around the words victim and victim's case. And so there's a definition section that will be added, a purpose section. I think you all understand the purpose. The next part is very important, the victims' rights. We provide an outline.

[Speaker 0]: Hang on. We're running about fifteen minutes late. About to hold to about quarter off. See you shortly. Okay. Thank you. I was just going to give a note to you guys. Thank you.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Victims' rights section, this would be a top level overview of, again, this is not restricted to fines, but all of the victims' rights in a criminal case. And it correlates with the statute. So that connects for everyone. This will be really helpful for victims and, again, for anyone wanting to know all the different rights available to the victim. Then the part that we've been spending the most time on is the roles and responsibilities. So the first section is law enforcement, investigation and arrest. And again, we lay out in there statutorily what's required for law enforcement or what needs to be conveyed to victims. Then it moves on to the state's attorney's office or prosecutors, depending on the attorney general's decision. And we walk through the case. We try to do it as linearly as possible, and again, saying what we do when and the statutory site to that. Then comes the Department of Corrections role, and that's where there's, again, some back and forth. But in our section, we make sure to lay out what we need to do and when, And then the DOC section lays out what they need to do and when. And then we have the important section of the victim center for crime sorry, victim center for crime, victim services. Remote center. Yes, why? That's always tough for me. The restitution piece for victims and what the center provides there. And again, when victims need to be informed of their rights per the center. That is all laid out as well. And to the earlier resource question, we do have a piece at the very end, just financial provisions, Again, just noting that we will do all of these things as we're able to under our existing budgets. So being aware of that.

[Speaker 0]: So this is really the first look see in terms of where we are with the victim notification system, following up from where we were last May. I would encourage you to keep working for the task force. And I think these issues transcend other committees besides us. I know DOC is a real important piece of this, so I'm looking forward the DOC to submitting submit to us where the Vine menu limitations are, through this through statute. If we could get that, that would be very helpful as a starting point. I think to proceed on this, we really need to talk to our house judiciary committee. I think this really isn't a lot of it's their purview because it deals with the front end when it goes through the court system and law enforcement. And I'm just not sure. I mean, I'll have a conversation with the chair of that committee and see how we continue to move forward here. Fine?

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Does it test for sunset? Is that something we need to look February,

[Speaker 0]: the question is, does something continue going forward in a different form or not? And that's something we can also look through as well. But you folks need to keep working. We need to really as a committee, we need to spend some time really looking at this profit report at this point. Will you have a different report come February, or is this gonna be the only one? Don't think that was

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: in statute, but I defer it to the chair.

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: I think what would make sense, most sense, Madam Chair, but we have a meeting tomorrow, and I'd be happy to take it up with all the members, is maybe just to submit a brief

[Speaker 0]: A brief addendum. In terms

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: of future work that we've identified and where at.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah, because

[Speaker 0]: if you were required to present this in the November and then it was to the Joint Justice Committee and then it came, it was available for approval as well. I think this will be a memo

[Jennifer (Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services; Chair, Victim Notification Task Force)]: to the committee, but I'm happy to report for happy to speak with all the members tomorrow.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Happy to submit the final MOU when we get there. And if the committee ever wanted a very thorough walkthrough of the MOU, happy to do that when we are done. And what's accompanying flowcharts, Beck?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I don't know how to say this other than bluntly. If you can't come to an agreement, how does this MOU get resolved?

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: We will come to an agreement. The question will just be if some items don't make it into the agreement. That will just require further conversation, but we will come to some agreement. Again, the bulk of this is done, and then folks have agreed to where we are at this point. If suddenly this all fell apart, I imagine we would be back in here chatting

[Speaker 0]: with you.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yeah, I'm not suggesting it would all fall apart. It's just that you've got different pots of money that are being impacted by this MOU. And I could see where you could run into, well, you just can't make it happen because nobody's got the authority to divide the baby.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Well, the important thing to remember is that we are required to do these actions. These are all Department of Corrections, state's attorney's office, law enforcement. We have these requirements that we and the budget considerations are how difficult maybe it is for us to do this. The MOU is simply bringing this all together in a format to work out some of those little wrinkles that are not currently statutorily defined. So we really got into a tricky spot, again, we might be coming in here to ask for some help to iron out those sections, but I'm fairly confident right now that we can get this done.

[Speaker 0]: Issue isn't going away. You're gonna be assured that we'll be working on this Thank for a very much. Thank you. So I'd like to give a few minutes to each of the folks who had zoomed in. These folks have been victimized. We're gonna start with Kelsey and then we'll go over to Jane. And I do wanna, I know I'm cutting it really short for you folks, but that doesn't mean that we can't reschedule you at some point. I would like to finish a quarter off. So that's about five minutes per person. Sorry, but Kelsey, I'll start with you. So if you could identify yourself for the record.

[Kelsey Rice (survivor)]: Thank you so much, Kelsey Rice. I'm a survivor, resident of Wyndham County. Thank you for this opportunity. I, to adjust my plans, considering time, I'm going to do my best to maybe speak to some things that I heard in your discussion today from the survivor perspective, my lived experience perspective. And but I also want to start off by saying how grateful I am that this task force was formed. I truly feel that all the task force members and the Joint Justice have really listened to testimony from advocates and experts and survivors like myself. And that is massive. Thank you so much. I do want to say I heard conversation about a question about there are all these handoffs, multiple systems between both human contact, who's managing Vine, and how complicated that is. And there's so many breakdowns. Well, what that looks like for victims and survivors, we are quite often in the midst of a trauma response, whether that be immediately after a crime, or maybe later on, because a court hearing is coming up, or there's been a violation, whatever it may be across the continuum, we may be experiencing a trauma response, which means all of these shifts and handoffs, not only are there breakdowns going on on the professional management side of that, but for us, our ability at times to process and retain information when it's delivered, if we are experiencing trauma, that may be hindered, which means I can speak to myself, I have no recollection at certain points of when information was shared with me, right? Then down the road, it was shared with me again, I retained it, applied it and made different decisions. And so this is one piece that it is, it's very complex, even more complex for the survivors. And so this is an area that I know I've brought up, and it really makes sense what I've heard. And I do agree as a member of the task force, we need to start with how do we iron out the wrinkles in the system we already have. There are a lot of breakdowns. And I'm so grateful to hear the commitment to keep the work going forward, because there's more to do. And in terms of, you know, I really want to lift up DOC is repeatedly I've heard them say, we can't move forward with bringing back the opt in opt out options until there are changes to statutory obligations. So that is definitely a big stop stopping point I hear from victims and survivors and advocates regularly, we need to have options. So I encourage you all to listen to that. I really want to highlight how grateful I am to, I mean, everyone, but Amy Farr, Victim Services, Vermont State Police. This is an example of they heard loud and clear an area of we're going to stop pointing the finger at whose responsibility it is to deal with this gap. And we're going to look at what can we do? What can our agency do on our end? So moving to address the booking issue, the outside of day work hours and weekends, which is something I have directly been impacted by. And I highlighted that in my testimony to joint justice. I am so grateful for the movement in that direction. And I understand there are all kinds of pieces to come together around funding and staffing. And what would that look like for DOC? And I want to say that that's complex. All of these things are. But at the end of the day, victims and survivors are harmed. And it's if we recognize this as a gap, lives are at stake, then the people and systems and positions and ability to fix this, it just needs to be done. Something that I have brought up several times is the same question I heard Meredith bring up today is about municipal departments. In my testimony, I spoke most about an experience with Vermont State Police. But I also had significant issues with victim notification as a result of municipal law enforcement response. And also, I've had the opportunity over the years to observe a lot of law enforcement trainings going up to the academy. And I recognize all officers have huge amount of training put on them, huge amount of obligations to manage. And adding in any new step to an officer when making an arrest, that's a lot to ask. That's another piece they need to remember in this circumstance. I need to do this thing. However, it must be done. And that question and pointing out, it's simply not good enough if only VSP takes on this new step with booking. I agree. Amy's right. We need to start somewhere. Let's do this. If it works, if we iron out the kinks, then we need to roll it out in a larger mask. And I just want to encourage you all to yes. Yes and yes. And if you don't move forward with continuing a work group or an advisory group, I have great concern things lose momentum. And it is not good enough if only VSP takes on this new booking system. And intentional efforts from the network, the center and other entities on how they'll roll out that training trainings to everyone. It's really important. What else? I'm trying to go fast here, everybody. In terms of the process, I think I spoke to that. I was really grateful in always feeling that my voice was heard in the process. I will say there were times that I was a little, you know, confused in I think it's already been brought up that, you know, changes, surprising changes, big policy changes were made and the task force was not informed that felt counter to what we were moving towards. And the big one, the big concern for me is DOC shifting away from a victim services position and moving that to an IT position to help manage fine. I'm not going to rehash what we've already heard today. But as a survivor, I will say that, yes, Vine is a tool. Automated systems are a tool. However, we already do not have enough positions in victim services in any of these departments and entities. Already, I'm also a member of the Domestic Violence Fatality Review Commission. Already recommendations have been in the past. We need more victim services positions for the Vermont State Police. There have been many lots of testimony to different committees that the Vermont State's Attorney Victims Advocates need more staffing. We simply need more. And so taking away DOC victim services when already they don't have the capacity to engage with every victim. There are certain criterias of risk that then funnel in what victims are designated to have outreach. There simply isn't enough as it stands. So that is a big concern and was very disappointing that that decision was made. I do understand that funding is challenging. I'm sure there are a lot of reasons behind that decision that I'm not aware of. Again, at the end of the day, it's still inexcusable for victims and survivors when we are the ones that are harmed by these changes. I'm going to stop talking because I think I went over my five minutes. I'd love to open it up to questions, but I realize we don't have time. So thank you very much.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you. Thank you. Was very, very helpful. We'll have you back. I'm sure when we continue working on this. So I'm now gonna shift over to Jane Doe. So welcome.

[Brittany Antunes (survivor) aka “Jane Doe” / “Gina Gale”]: Thank you. I'm I'm okay with talking if we reschedule because I just we just don't have enough time to all say what we have to say. So I'd rather when we reschedule, I'm I'm okay with sharing my my thoughts then.

[Speaker 0]: Can you give just a quick high level? Just a really quick just a few bullets Just so I think

[Brittany Antunes (survivor) aka “Jane Doe” / “Gina Gale”]: well, Kelsey has really summed it up for survivors and victims. And Amy and Jen and and everybody is really it's really that weekend gap for me has impacted me personally with my abuser getting out on a Friday or, I mean, going in on a Friday, getting out on a Saturday. So not having a human person I was informed that he got released after he was already had abused me again, and I was in ICU. And it was a Saturday, I believe. So then I got the notification from Vine saying your abuser has been released, and it just wasn't in a timely manner. But, also, my victim advocate had reached out to me as well. I think it was on a Monday at that point and was like, I hope you got that notification that he was out. I know it's the weekend, and so that's a big gap that needs to be closed for sure. And, obviously, the translation part is a huge thing as well because how are you gonna get notifications that you don't understand? I know that's mostly, like, a funding thing. I'm assuming that's why it hasn't been done yet is because it's a a pretty big funding portion of that. But I just I'm very thankful to be involved and to be alive. And I think that everyone's doing really, really good in that task force and getting things done that really, really need to be done that are are harming people that are victims of very serious crimes, and I just want to thank everybody for doing everything they are doing. And I'm glad to be a part of it, but I just wanted to sum it up real quick. I feel like I can get more into detail if we reschedule or for when we reschedule.

[Speaker 0]: Yes. Well, I appreciate that. And if you could give Tate your contact information, you have it, Tate. These are committee assistants. So when we come back to this issue, I just don't know when that will be, but we will

[Brittany Antunes (survivor) aka “Jane Doe” / “Gina Gale”]: Jen has my information. My abuser just got released from prison, so I'm still kind of Right. Not releasing stuff.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Yep.

[Brittany Antunes (survivor) aka “Jane Doe” / “Gina Gale”]: That's fine. But, yeah, that's all my information.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yep.

[Speaker 0]: That's great. So I wanna thank everyone. All the usual suspects will be notified again when we take this up. But I do wanna have conversations with the chair of judiciary committee too, because this does overlap their jurisdiction, quite a few things as well. And we're concerned with the DOC part. So I wanna thank everyone here. I apologize for going over, but this took a little bit longer. So we will continue this conversation in some form. And Haley, you're gonna send us the statutes that pertain to vines. And then the MOU is continuing to be worked on and you can keep us posted on that as well. And then we'll go from there. So thank you all. So this particular part is closed and we're gonna shift really quick to VSEA talking about staffing, retention and recruitment. Thank you. Thank you. If you need, I do not wanna take a break because we are running a little late. So VSCA could come in. But if you need to take a personal break, take a personal break. But don't all leave at the same time, please.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Oh, there's a whole bunch of people gone.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. So if you see me SEA out there, tell them to come in. All right. I'll let them know. By

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: the fireplace. Sure.

[Speaker 0]: They need to come in.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Thank you, Amy. You.

[Speaker 0]: And we're still live, folks. And then we have Joe Asia coming in at 03:30, right? Give some updates?

[Brian Minier (Member)]: Not Joe Asia, it's

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: the stage ringer.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, the bonding. Oh, bonding. I didn't turn it over. Okay. Time to come in here. Let me

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: see if he's out there. That's Steve. Right?

[Speaker 0]: Steve and Vince and and who's the other? Tom.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: A good book. Tic Tacs and stay in the drawer.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I saw Steve at the end of the hallway. He's on the corner now.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: Sweeney?

[Speaker 0]: Probably, it's that we were taking a break.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: Would say when somebody reappears.

[Speaker 0]: Come on in. I'm gonna put you right in the hot seat. We're not taking a break.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: How many questions did representative Casey ask that last witness? I believe it. Must have been an interrogation.

[Speaker 0]: So we are live on YouTube. We're not taking we're not taking a break because we're running. So, Vince, if you could close the door. Joe, are we all now? I'm now. Yeah.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Great introduction.

[Speaker 0]: That was nice.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Should I do my regular preforma? I apologize for anything Vince might have said, will say, has done, or will do. To the people of Vermont.

[Speaker 0]: I'm used to it. So, Mona.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: You know the drill. Introduce yourself for the record.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Thank you very much. I've been

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: in this committee one or two times before. Just a little bit. Just a couple.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: My name is Steve Howard. I am the executive director of the Vermont State Employees Association. And we represent the frontline workers in the Department of Corrections, both in central office and P and P

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: and also in all of

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: the correction facilities state.

[Speaker 0]: Do you have a document to submit?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: We do.

[Speaker 0]: Submitted to tape.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: I believe it was.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yes. And he's taking

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: that coordinating. Sorry. I am bold.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: How's your mother doing? Better. Thank you. It's good. Okay. His mother and

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: I go way back.

[Speaker 0]: Did you serve when his grandfather was here? Were you in the house?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: No. No. I was not. All right. Well,

[Speaker 0]: What year? It was nineties?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: '85 to '89.

[Speaker 0]: '85 to '89. Okay. So? I was here. No. You came in the nineties.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Oh, yeah. Right. I came in '92. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. My grandfather

[Speaker 0]: He lives. His his grandfather. Yeah. Of course. Floyd?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Floyd Handy. Of course. Know Floyd. I wasn't here, but when I was the party chair, he was on the stake committee.

[Speaker 0]: You can't get away from it, Gina.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Alright. Well, I can

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: tell some random stories, we're behind. You wanna testify.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yeah. So your uncle was also on the on the state committee.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Larry?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Larry was also on the state committee. Yeah. They were. At the same time.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: But they were really they were Philhott guys.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yeah. Then we had a good time with them.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: They were great.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Ready? It's yours.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, members of the committee. Today, we're trying a different approach.

[Speaker 0]: Say, there'll be more effective numbers.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: We we we take advantage of the fact that Isaac is no longer available to the commissioner, we thought this was our moment to strike. And we're moving ahead with this new plan.

[Speaker 0]: So what number is this for new plans?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Well, this is my first attempt at PowerPointing with the committee. So we're gonna see how it goes. You're sort of my guinea pig in this process. I'll try to do my best and Tom has done a great job of putting this together. So I just wanted to start by talking a little bit about the stakes, which I know all of you understand. The life expectancy of a correctional officer is 59 years old. The rest of us, if we're lucky, will live into late to our late 70s.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: They have

[Speaker 0]: That's right around the corner.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: There you go. Little scary. It's not just the long and difficult shifts because in Vermont, we're still experiencing a huge amount of mandatory overtime that leads to sixteen hour shift after sixteen hour shift. And that in and of itself is a problem because what the science shows is that when you work in a setting that is as traumatic as a correctional facility and you go into a high pressure situation, your adrenaline starts pumping. And your adrenaline pumps for the entire time that you're there in the facility and it takes at least two hours after you leave. And that happening day after day after day, sixteen hours a day, has an effect on your physical health and on your mental health. Correctional officers have higher rates of PTSD than many returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. I think the rates are actually higher for correctional officers. Their suicide rates are twice as high as other professions combined. And that's been well documented in research. This particular data we pulled from Southern Illinois University study, and it's an experience that our members have every day. I mean, they are cognizant of this. They will tell you that their life expectancy is much shorter than the rest of many parts of society. They're aware of what the impact of the work is on them physically and mentally. We wanted to begin, I think, by trying to build a partnership with this committee and with the committee in the Senate and also with the government operations committees, because we think that you have an essential oversight role that will be important in keeping the administration on its toes and fulfilling its responsibility to end the staffing crisis that's now at least six, maybe seven years long. Often our members get, when we're talking with them, they have to remind them that the VSEA doesn't run the Department of Corrections, That ultimately it's the commissioner and it's the governor who's been hired to run the Department of Corrections. Our job is to hold the governor accountable and to point out to anybody who has an oversight role like this committee has, government operations has, when things are not going well. We certainly like to give them credit when things are going well, and we often will do that when things are moving in the right direction. But we're continuing to have a severe and pervasive staffing crisis. And we hope that this committee will work with us in its oversight capacity really to fulfill its responsibility to the public because this is a public safety issue. We heard this fall a big announcement by the governor, we're sending state police to Church Street. We're hiring a special prosecutor. We're gonna bring in a retired judge. What we didn't hear from the administration was a proposal about how we're going to fully staff the correctional facilities. Because if you convict someone who is a repeat offender in the new court, where do they go? They go to an overburdened correctional facility that has too few staff people who are walking around exhausted, who haven't seen their families, who haven't had the work life balance they were promised. And so that is a component of the public safety component, a program that the public demands and that we haven't really fully comprehended that we have to figure out how we're gonna staff the correctional facilities. We also wanna make sure that the incarcerated population gets the services that they need. I think pretty clear Vermonters expect the correctional facility to do exactly that, to correct. And to try to bring people to accountability for what they did, to have them accept accountability and responsibility for what they did and the harm they may have caused, but also to reform and to leave and to do better. Doesn't happen if you don't have staff. If the correctional facility is in lockdown and they're in lockdown an awful lot in Vermont, that means the incarcerated population is behind bars. No recreation, no education, no nothing. No job placement, no nothing happens because they don't have enough staff. Springfield, Newport, all across the state reports on a regular basis, partial lockdown, full lockdown. So that's an important thing to talk about. And then you've heard me talk about already in previous years, the just really inhumane way in which we're treating people. And we kind of feel a sense of urgency to address it because we see people's faces, we talk to their spouses. We don't feel that there is the same level of urgency. We don't experience the same level of urgency that we've seen from the governor in different crises that he's led the state through. COVID, floods, that's how bad it really is. And we need him. We're hoping that he can show that same kind of leadership to solve the staffing crisis, this public safety crisis that he's shown in previous crises. And we hope this committee will help us move that along. I hope I'm keeping up with Tom here. We'd like this committee, we'd ask this committee to hold weekly hearings on the staffing problem. This is like the whole show for corrections. This is the number one issue. It is the most pervasive issue. It is the only issue. And I don't think it's just for our members. Think you talk to managers, the superintendents, assistant superintendents, they all know this is the issue that is pervasive throughout all of corrections. So we would ask you to schedule weekly hearings to require regular in-depth data from the administration and to use your resources and legislative counsel and in the joint fiscal office to provide impartial data that can be verified outside of the department. Now we have a new commissioner. Met with this commissioner once or twice. Few months, I spent a ton of time in correctional facilities, run into him in those correctional facilities. We had a good meeting. I think there's a lot of promise there. Our members are excited about his law enforcement background. They are pleased that in Burlington, he stood up for the rank and file and took on the politicians. Now,

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: may not have had a

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: great experience doing that. It's not easy to do that. But that's what we're looking for in a commissioner, someone who will say to the governor, this is a serious problem. I know we have a tight budget, but in a $9,000,000,000 budget, we certainly can do better by these men and women. I hope that that's the role he'll choose to follow. But we also want to make sure that it's absolutely clear that the data that you receive has been vetted by your experts at the JFO. And so that's why we would encourage you to use them. The weekly hearings that we're asking this committee to consider and we'll certainly ask maybe it's with government operations and we'll ask them the Senate side as well. And we have testified in the Government Operations Committee on this issue.

[Speaker 0]: This year or pretty This year? This year. The House or the Senate?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: On the House and the Senate. Both House and the Senate. Opening day, we went to both. This was a major part of our testimony. We'd ask you to bring in the secretary of administration, the secretary of human services, the commissioner of DHR and the commissioner of corrections on a weekly basis so that they know there's no escaping the house corrections committee. That they know they're gonna have to answer to you as they look at the problem week to week to week. And I know that seems tedious, and I know that seems maybe crazy, but that will get them to focus on this problem in a way we think they're not focusing now. And it'll bring in the higher level folks. It'll bring in the secretaries. We've had some great conversations with the Secretary of Administration, Sarah, we like Sarah. We've had some good conversations with the Deputy Secretary of Human Services. Those have kind of stopped late for some reason, but our members spoke directly to them and explained to them what it's like to work in the Department of Corrections. And so those were very fruitful meetings. We hope that this committee would bring them in on a weekly basis to keep this issue alive and in front of them.

[Speaker 0]: So, Steve, when you went to both the government ops committees, did you have that same request for them as well?

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: I didn't because I didn't

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: have as much time. I think I did in the Senate bring that up, that they should be Senate ops. Senate gov ops. The House was sort of our quick run through. This is what the SEA does and what we're doing. But it's a good point, I should bring it up in the House. We also believe that this issue is so important to the success of the Department of Corrections. And we know that around the country, this has been a problem. Staffing correctional facilities has been a problem, but many States have taken many different approaches. And we would urge this committee with the resources you have in Legis Council, the NCSL, all these other resources to look at what's happening in other states and to see what they've done to solve the staffing crisis. And to really delve into that issue and to look nationally to see how faring. Here I see our legislative chair, Leona Watt, who's a rock star with the Department of Corrections.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Steve, have you done what you're recommending this committee do? Have you looked at other states and do mean, we can't get ahead of you.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: We have, yes. And I think there's some Coming forward to one. Yeah, I think there was some research that Oh, the research is not in here. Not in this presentation. Yeah. So we've done a comparison. We've looked at New England, looked at pay issues in particular in New England. We looked across the country. We haven't done as deep a dive into the staffing levels in those places, but that's something that maybe NCSL might have a broader reach and ability to get. We don't have those kind of resources to do that kind of research across it. We haven't other than to look at wages. And we will provide that wage data to you as well. We'd ask you to invite the VSEA in with the administration on a weekly basis to provide the perspective of the frontline workers in the discussion with the committee. And we certainly appreciate this time. We would be willing to come back and excited to come back every week. We have some ideas about data that we think would help you understand the problem in a deeper, more holistic way. We provided last year, I think the Joint Justice Oversight Committee with a list of questions to ask the administration for data to seek from the administration. And we have included that in our presentation, quarterly and annualized CO1 and CO2 turnover separated by jog bots. This I think is really critical for a couple of reasons. That is the entry level position. That is the position where we hire a lot of people, but we don't retain them. And I think we're gonna have to get at what we could do to retain them and bring in the Department of Human Resources and outside human resource experts and other folks to talk about retention. We would ask you to look at quarterlies and annualized CO1 and CO2 vacancy rates, that number of shifts in excess of twelve hours and break that down by facility. The number of shifts in which correctional officers were called in on their day off, both voluntary and involuntary. So someone who's on standby who's ordered in. Now, one thing that's really important to note that you wouldn't know unless you talk to correctional officers, people volunteer for overtime because they wanna pick their post. They know they're gonna be mandated. They can see the schedule. They know what's going to happen. And if they don't volunteer, they're going to be assigned a post, whether they want that post or not. So to get the post they want, they volunteer. And the reason I say that is because often you'll hear from management, well, everybody volunteers. Well, they don't. They volunteer to avoid being put in a post that they'd rather not be at. So just take that with a little bit of a grain of salt when you look at those numbers. That I already covered. Think I also would recommend that we look at the recruitment, quarterly and annual correctional officer recruitment numbers, the number of graduates who have completed the probationary period once they've gone through the academy, the number of graduates who have completed one year service, two years of service, five years of service. It's like something like $10,000 a pop to send someone to the Correctional Academy. And so it's not that the Correctional Academy doesn't do good work, but it costs the taxpayers a significant amount of money if people don't last, if we can't retain them in the CO1 position. Some of our members have suggested that we're actually considered a hybrid academy, a shorter academy where everybody is gathered in one place and more on the job training in the facilities where they're actually gonna work. And I think we've gone to a different model where it's more centralized. A lot of people really have said to us, a lot of our members have said to us, what they learned in the academy was really helpful, but not as useful as knowing what they face each and every day and who they're working with and how it works in their facilities. I've said to Commissioner Murad and I've said it to others, we think sometimes of this system as a correctional system with six facilities and 14 P and P offices, but it's really six different facilities. Every facility has its own culture. Every facility has its own sort of energy. It's six different facilities. And if you manage it as one system, you're missing all of those differences and all of those cultural aspects to it. So I urge the commissioner and urge the state to take a look at this as a facility by facility approach. And I've been visiting, I've just counted this year how many years I've been at the SEA, but I've been visiting correctional facilities, spending time there for thirteen years. And so it's a lot of new faces because people have moved on, but in my experience, that's been pretty consistent over thirteen years.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: What kind of differences are there? I'm not doubting you, but what kind of differences are there?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: They're all run differently. The style of leadership is different from each superintendent.

[Speaker 0]: Culture is different.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: The culture is different. The way they approach things is different. They're very different facilities anyway. You have smaller, larger, Southern has so many complexities with the infirmary and the mentally ill. You've got Newport, which has, you've got various levels of, I mean, sort of a mixed population, but a women's facility is certainly different than the rest of the facilities with unique problems there and challenges there. So it's not one system, it's really six different facilities. Certainly the P and P offices have the same kind of mix as well.

[Speaker 0]: So Steve, to go back to the training and the shorter time at the academy and more training actually in the facilities, would it be advantageous for those trainees to shift between facilities during the training to see how the different facilities feel?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: It's a good question. I don't know the answer, Madam Chair. I'd have to ask our members. The advantages of what our members have said to me is, first of all, if you do the shorter academy and maybe even you move some of the training to the facilities, you get people actually in the secure section faster. They're with experienced correctional officers that can tell you can help them. They get a sense of how it works. Feels like. Or what it feels like. And so it's maybe more realistic than the classroom setting. Not that there isn't a place for classroom setting, but it's more of they have some on the job training now. They have shadowing before they go to the academy and then they have on the job training afterwards. But some of these members have suggested that it would be advantageous to increase the amount of time they're actually in the facility they're going to work. I will ask them how they feel, whether there would be an advantage to try and

[Speaker 0]: Moving on. How long when someone is hired and you said they come in and they can shadow? How how long does that happen that they're actually in a facility shadowing officers before they get into the academy? Is it a few weeks? Is it a month? Is it six weeks?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: I think it depends on when the academy is Like when they're hired and when the is The next academy is scheduled. Some can be longer, some can be shorter, but I don't know that there's a standard I can find out for you if that's what our experience is or corrections could probably tell you. It depends, right?

[Speaker 0]: Yeah.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yeah. I think it depends on when and then afterwards, it's like two weeks or something. I think it's like two weeks after you've come to the Academy, but I might be wrong about the two weeks. I'll have to verify that. But

[Speaker 0]: So if they're shadowing and say they're in there for three weeks or a month, they can pick up some of the culture in that facility while they're there before they go into training. Does that impact them in any way? Because they've already been exposed and then they have a certain perspective.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Sure it must. I'm sure it must. It's before they actually go through the training. So I think that is likely to modify their view of it. But I think what our members have said to me is the sooner you can start doing the job, the better you're going to get at the job. Training. So how

[Speaker 0]: many folks do you have a number that are hired and then they shadow before they get into the academy?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: I think almost everybody. And leave before I the don't, but mean, Corrections I'm sure Corrections has that data. That's a good question. So shifting gears a little bit to PNP, which also has an increasingly challenging work environment. We've worked really closely with our members and we are working very closely with them on workplace safety issues. And what we're hearing from our PMP officers is an increased level of concern about the danger in the places that they are going to enforce court orders. They're not going. They're not going. Yeah. We've long sought to encourage the governor and the commissioner to allow for defensive weapons to be used for with trained E and P officers so that they can defend themselves when they're being shot at. They're going with pepper spray and bulletproof vests into homes that are well that are dangerous with very dangerous criminals and who they tell me it's not even just the offender who's the problem is you don't know who else is in that.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: And

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: that's what they're running into a lot of problems with. And so we're concerned about that. But I also think that we should look at because the staffing crisis is a predominant, has an effect on PMP. The number of hours that PMP officers are called in on their day off to go to hospital coverage. Hospital coverage used to be almost 100% done by correctional officers. It's now done by two groups. It's done by the PMP officers And also it's called the COS or COD group, which that group has helped. But there are a lot of issues with that group that What

[Speaker 0]: is the COD group?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: I call it It's used to be called the central office specialists. And now it's got a new fancy title. You probably know what it's called, but

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, the positions themselves are central operations specialists and the division is the central operations division.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yeah, so it's now a division and it's a team that is specially trained. They do hospital coverage, they do transports, they sometimes are deployed to facilities. They were most recently in Newport when they were Newport was at a five alarm fire crisis situation. They sent folks up there to cover shifts. There are some implementation issues with that and there's some resentment among our members about it because of the pay grade that they're at and the pay grade that our members in the facilities are at and the way it was being implemented. I think those things could be worked out, But still our PMP officers want to not be on standby on weekends and holidays. Standby means you have to be with an hour of reporting. You can't drink, you can't go to your kid's soccer game if it's more than an hour away. Don't mind doing hospital coverage during the day. They don't want to do it nights and weekends. And our hope was that COS or COD would supplement that and take care of the problematic times so that our probation and parole officers who also have very traumatic jobs could get a break and get the kind of time away from the issues that they face every day. So the PMP is a good important thing.

[Speaker 0]: Let's see if I can interrupt. So if a person inmates is hospitalized, how many corrections officers need to be there? Is it two?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Big issue. So depending on the local management often insists on too. Have had some recent

[Speaker 0]: Local management being the hospital itself or DOC?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: DOC. We have had some instances in which one PMP officer has been sent. In fact, we had an assault on a operation officer who was there by themselves. It's a tough situation because you would think like for instance, hospital security might give them a break if they had to use the restroom or something like that. Hospital security will not do that.

[Speaker 0]: So is that for a person who's in the emergency room or did that happen when a person was admitted to the hospital?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Admitted, I think in the emergency room. I don't know how it's handled. Emergency room, it all depends. COS, COD won't start until their next shift starts. I don't know if in the emergency room that may actually be still correctional officers because it's an emergency. Mostly we're talking about folks who have been admitted to the hospital. But it's a stressor because you want our probation and parole officers to be able to focus on the work that they're doing supervising individuals in your communities. But they also, like correctional officers, need time away from those from that environment and from those issues that are, you know, these are challenging issues. So we want to ask you to consider that in the metrics that were you are looking at, the numbers you're looking at. And then there's the effect on the incarcerated. We'd ask you to look at quarterly and annual lockdowns. How long does that happen? How often does that happen? How many times have educational opportunities been canceled because there's no correctional officers to be in the classroom? How many times has time in the rec yard been canceled? Because there's nobody to cover that post. The number of incidents resulting from missed bathroom breaks, which we have had many reports of or some reports of. And really, we think a good period of time to look at this to get a comprehensive look is really the last five years and get a sense of how it's gone, where we because these folks are If you make it to five years, you've made it to an important benchmark, but people should know like what these folks have been through in those first five years and why they may be leaving. I mean, number one issue people tell me is they can't handle the sixteen hour shifts. That's the number one issue. It's just killing them. That's too tired. It's too tiring, exhausting. It's not what they were told was going to be the case. Their family members put a lot of pressure on them, not trying to make their life worse, but they want them at the birthday party. They want them at the soccer game. They want them to raise their kids. So we think a five year look back is something that is warranted. And the other thing I would suggest, and it's something that I found somewhat helpful, I would recommend that this committee request that every day the JFO be sent the schedule for each facility. And the JFO look at those schedules and really understand the schedules are confusing. You have to understand what all the color codes are and what else. But it shows you who was called in, who stayed over, who came in on their day off, where the holes were, what posts were collapsed. I would urge the committee to take those daily schedules, have JFO do a report and analysis of those schedules so that you can see what's actually happening. The reason I recommend that is you recall in the last couple of years, you've had the commissioner and DOC say, Hey, this is what's happening. And then you've had members literally text me and say, this is what

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: the schedule looks like, and that's not what's happening.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: And so we thought this would be a good way to sort of bridge that gap and actually have the experts at JFO take a look at them and say, this is in our analysis, we think is really happening. And then finally, a couple of other things that I would recommend. If exit interviews exist and they can be provided anonymously to the committee, I would urge you to request those exit interviews and review what members, people who are departing say about what their experience was like, why they're leaving, and of course, any future exit interviews that might pop up. And the last thing I'll just repeat, you've heard me say it here before. I repeated it in my initial meeting with Commissioner Murad and I spoke, I think all the way back to I wanna go back all the way to Lisa Menard for this speech. But particularly right now, the taxpayers of Vermont have generously funded training for a number of managers that work in central office who come from facilities. And our members would like to see those managers picking up overtime shifts in the facilities because it would help alleviate and stabilize the schedule so that more people wouldn't quit. It would help the managers see what the actual practical implications are of the policies in central office. But it would really send the statement loudly and clearly, and it does not exist today, that all means all, that we're all in this together and that the management is running toward the fire. So we would urge this committee to adopt a resolution to the commissioner and to the governor, urging him to assign the trained managers in central office to the hotspots in the correctional facilities or even to do hospital coverage, which we have an abundance of and definitely could use help with. So with that, Madam Chair, that's my testimony on the for today.

[Speaker 0]: You're stick you're sticking to it. Yeah. Right? Joe oops. And Mary.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: Not a question. It's comments really, and and thank you for outlined concerns, especially within the facilities. Part of this is we're we're swimming against the current. So we're one of the oldest states in the country. We have a a diminishing labor pool by stagnant population. And that's nobody's fault here because everybody's problem. Then we have facilities that lack some amenities we'd all like for them to have. Frankly, it doesn't appear as though there are resources to affiliate that anytime in the near future. So how do you correct those things while at the same time not have this cost bomb explode in the budget? I don't know. It's it's the most tenuous position to be able to to correct all the all the agreements. I wouldn't wanna work a sixteen hour shift that that you've outlined within the existing delivery system, which are our facilities, you know, at some point, something something's gotta give because they're just not a that there's a there's a degree of just deliverable obsolescence there that needs to be recognized at some point. Otherwise, I don't think these conversations will end. I suspect it'll become more pronounced, if anything.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: You make such a

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: good point, and I would make two follow-up points. One is labor market is shrinking. The market available within that shrinking labor market of people willing to do this work is traumatic and takes shaves years off your life, Literally, it is even smaller. I tried very hard to get to my economics class at Boston College. It was 08:00 in the morning. Was tough for me to get there.

[Speaker 0]: I can't even get no easy. From

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: the night before.

[Speaker 0]: Don't tell us.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yeah, a little bit too much time at Mary A. Ann's and Cleveland Circle. But I got there and what I learned is that when a demand you like we have now, where there's few people willing to do this work and the specialized work, the wages and benefits that correspond to attract and maintain those people have to be higher than what we're willing to pay at this point. The comparison that Tom's gonna send you for the region, you look at New Hampshire and Massachusetts and New York, we're behind on the starting wage. And I'm not asking the legislature to pass any legislation on that, all a bargainable issue, but certainly the governor, we hope will understand that component of it and understand that what our members say to us is the pay is an issue. We've got to figure that out. Not asking the legislature to do anything. I don't want an unfair labor practice from the administration. I just want to make that clear. The other thing I would say, building on your great success of the investment in air conditioning and the administration's also gets credit for that. Springfield is supposed to be all fully air conditioned by April. It will make a huge difference and continue. And I was in Newport actually, part of my tour this fall when they were getting ready to have the very heavy equipment added to the roof for the air conditioning in Newport. So that's been sort of a joint effort. I think we've brought it to your attention. You responded pretty quickly, and we need to build on that air conditioning. I would urge you to also look at the physical plant of the facilities in some basic ways. The break rooms need all the break rooms need to be renovated. Northwest used to I actually was able to convince BGS, I think, replace the chairs in the break room because you'd sit in them and they were all the old office chairs that were broken and nearly take your life in your hands. They replaced them all, but the break room needs to be fixed. Southern state, they want to add another refrigerator. So people have another refrigerator for their food. You can't plug the refrigerator in because it blows the circuit. I would invest if I were in the institutions committee and trying to figure out how to spend very tight capital dollars, and I know you have a budget adjustment this year, I'd invest some money in upgrading the break rooms, making sure that at least while they're there, if we're gonna ask people to live at the facility and that's what we're asking people to do, the break rooms should be at least operable and should be as functional and as big a break from the tension of being in the secure section as possible. So I'd urge that. I urge the air conditioning. The physical environment, I think, important, but it also just comes down to, are we as competitive with New England and the rest of the country as we need to be given the very limited number of people willing to do this work?

[Speaker 0]: Mary and then Conor. The last part that you talked about, the administrative force that supposedly was going to help in when you have shortages of members not there. We've heard both sides of, yes, they've done it, some they haven't. Do you have any real facts on that as to if that has happened?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yeah, think it's sort of mixed from our members' perspective. They certainly have done their share. The members on the COS team, COD team, those are our members as well. So we applaud the work that they do, and we're not saying they aren't doing good work. The challenge, and I think Commissioner Murat has stated this as well, is that you probably need to really increase the size of that, except to do that, you often take people from the facility because it's a higher pay grade. It's a different kind of a job. If you're a supervisor, you're going to be at the same pay grade, but you're not going to supervise any. So it's created a little bit of a resentment among the folks that has to be ironed out and fixed, think. But the other thing is they need to have enough people to cover the shifts that are problematic, not the shifts that aren't problematic. Ones during the day are not as problematic as the nights, weekends and holidays. People want to be with their families, they want to be away from the job, they want a chance to rebuild their mental health and their physical health. Can't do it if you're on standby and being called in. It's not that they're I would say the concept is good. The folks who are doing the work are doing an excellent job. Probably need more of them. But we have to figure out We have to create an abundance of staff in the facilities so that we can pick people from the facility. You have to have some experience with the work before you really can go on the COD, COST. COD, cash on

[Speaker 0]: Cash on demand.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: That's how

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: I'm going to remember it now. Cash demand. The cash on demand division.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, I don't think we have time for it today. But I think a really valuable testimony would be, and maybe with DOC and BSEA, looking back at the six, seven years of what we call a crisis. What's been tested? What's worked? What hasn't? What have we not followed through on? So I'd love to get that on the agenda at some point. And I'm really interested in just talking more about the physical structures like you're talking about, as I'm researching. Seems like other states are having some success with wellness centers, housing. So if you have a long commute back and a sixteen hour shift and you go down to appropriations and there's often a sign that says things closed on the door. So it's limited what we can do without working with the other committees, which I think we need to do, gov ops and appropriations. But as far as the physical structures, I think there's more we could do there. And that's good to hear the air conditioning's gonna have

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: a big impact. That's rough.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yeah, it's coming. The less harsh the physical plant can be for the folks who work there, especially on their breaks. The other thing is like we seem to have a big problem. I talked to Commissioner Manoli about it. For the life of me, they can't seem to get the toilets to work in these facilities. Every time I go into one of these facilities, another toilet isn't working.

[Speaker 0]: Muffinator.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: At Springfield, there is there are two problematic bathrooms.

[Speaker 0]: Muffinator.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: One is a toilet

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: that has talking about.

[Speaker 0]: The muffinator. You know, each stuff that

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: gets flushed Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Toilet. It's 23. Sheets. That was when John's

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: the new media.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: There are two toilets that are famous in my mind. There's one in Northwest that has had plastic over it for years. There's one in Southern in the men's locker room that hasn't worked. There's a bathroom in a secure section that has no water running. So maybe that's been fixed since the last time I was there, but I did bring it to the commissioner's attention. But the break rooms, I've spent a ton of time in these break rooms. We gotta invest in those break rooms. We gotta make them more comfortable.

[Speaker 0]: I have a thought. Oh, I have a question, and I have a thought.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Okay.

[Speaker 0]: So in the Springfield facility, it was the honors unit or folks that were involved in the print project and all that. They came together, and they developed this one room as a coffee shop. And you've been in that room, I'm assuming.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: I've actually been to the coffee shop. I've heard about it.

[Speaker 0]: You should. Because you know what they did? They took a concrete block room, and just through painting it, it looks like you're actually walking into a coffee shop. Yeah. They painted I mean, it just it changes the whole environment the minute you walk in there.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Mhmm.

[Speaker 0]: And what they I don't know how many folks how many folks have seen it.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Haven't really heard about it. I haven't seen it.

[Speaker 0]: I mean, you go in there and just even what they painted on the wall looks real. Like, know, the clock, they painted some shelves, they painted what you would see in a coffee shop. And you actually feel like you're in a coffee shop. Could something like that be done in the break room with having the incarcerated folks actually doing the work?

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah, I don't know.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: That's a good question. That might be a question for DOC. I don't know the answer to that. But I know that anything we can do to make it a little bit less difficult to be there and away from your family, we should. Practical considerations like refrigeration, access to computers. There's like one computer in every break room. Make sure there's TVs that are working. I know in Northwest the TV wasn't working. And I take notes. I'm sitting there for a couple of hours usually at a time and I try to take notes of what people say to me like, oh, we get that TV to work or could we I can't fit my sandwich in this refrigerator. Then I figure out why they can't have another refrigerator. Like little things like that do matter and make a huge difference. So I think it's worth for this committee a chance to look at it. The number one issue for solving this, I think, years long crisis is the pay. And I think it's probably the culture and improving the culture, which is why I would suggest managers be sent to work in the facilities. Because I think that would help build relationships, repair relationships, fix policies that aren't working. It would give people a practical and it would send a message that there's not us and them, it's all of us. I haven't been successful in convincing any commissioner since Lisa Menard, and maybe it's the way I've tried to pitch it.

[Speaker 0]: You've toned it down.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: I

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: tried. I'm getting older, so it's, you know, harder to make too much try

[Speaker 0]: and lower.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yeah. Trying the new me in the new year, right? So I think it's such a big issue and it affects so many parts of corrections that it's worth a deep dive to use this term that chair uses quite frequently.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, well, just looking back to the other thing, I'm kind of visual. So I love just like a document that has all the ideas you could put on the table to do this. What's the committee of jurisdiction? To what degree have we tried this? And I think that could help formulate the conversation of joint committee meetings, if it makes sense. But where does better scheduling and workplace fit? Where does physical building fit? Mental health and support for these guys? And I am really worried about just the Chittenden facility can push back. Those folks are reading that it's gonna be another year probably, right? And we often talk about the conditions for the inmates of the facility, which is extremely valid, but stuff for the guards too.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: I was just there yesterday, 05:30 in the morning. It's good time to be there at shift change in the morning. And one thing I will say, and again, I just preface it. If I don't do this right, it's Vince's fault. So blame him. That's our standard M. O. At BSEA. So I'm not asking the legislature to pass legislation to do this. I don't want to ask you to do this, but I can state we're not in bargaining now. We will be soon. But what I do hear across the board is that when we had a side letter of agreement that included double time on your day off, double time if you're working, you're in the field, double time if you were a former correctional officer and now you're working in AOT, we didn't have that, but we could have that. That double time almost completely obliterated the mandatory overtime. We had so many people volunteering to come into work on their day off that it had people calling from facilities, one facility Northwest called and said, I'm not picking on Northwest because you guys are here, but we don't have enough overtime. I said, bite your tongue because that won't stay. That could go away. When the double time went away, the overtime just shot right back. And it's not something you can do, but it's definitely something the administration could do.

[Speaker 0]: Brian and then Joe and then Kevin. And we are scheduled with the treasurer's office five minutes ago. I just

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: You're saying I'm the warm up for Mike Pichak?

[Speaker 0]: So Brian, Joe, and then we're going to have to cut it off.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: I'm his advanced team.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: I don't know if I'm about to step in with the question. But a few times now, you've said this crisis, this staffing crisis goes six or seven years back, which is pretty precise. And so that doesn't dovetail with COVID. It doesn't dovetail with the financial crisis. Maybe I'm not thinking of something obvious. Why six or seven years ago?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: It's a good question. I mean, COVID exasperated it. The garbage bags and just the craziness of the whole situation did make it worse. I don't know what changed six years ago.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: The contractual thing, there wasn't a change in the commissioner. Was a real jerk. Again, I don't

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: mean to step up.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: But not really. I don't think so. The one thing I will say is when I started thirteen years ago, my first interaction with Dave Bellini, and I don't know if you've met Dave Bellini. You should meet Dave Bellini if you haven't. He's probably watching. Hi, Dave.

[Speaker 0]: Unforgettable.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: I'm sure he's watching this testimony right now. He was the president of the SEA, worked for forty two years for the Department of Corrections. Very plain spoken, very doesn't mince words. But his first, he was a unit chair. And his first words to me were, look, we got to do something about all these temporary employees that want to be correctional officers. We have so many temporary employees lining up to be correctional officers. This is a problem. And that is something I worked on in the first two years I worked at BSEA. That's not a problem anymore. And it could be the shrinking demographics, the number of retirements. The other thing is one of the reasons why I say this is pervasive everywhere and throughout the whole system. Every reform that you try to implement, every way you try to build a correctional system that you hope to have, the most important component of it is the number of years of experience that those correctional officers have. Because as they say, and as I said earlier, it's on the job, doing the job day in and day out that teaches you really how to do it. And those older correctional officers, I don't want to say older, but more seasoned experienced correctional officers mentor the younger ones and show them how to deescalate, what to watch out for, what to be careful about. We're losing a ton of that institutional knowledge as retirements build up. So it could be that the demo, I don't know this for a fact, but the demographic challenge that you were talking about might have started to hit around six years ago. And then, I also have to say that there's been increased scrutiny on law enforcement and public safety personnel. And I have heard, and this is not about any particular person, but if you don't feel supported, you're not going to stay in an environment like that. If you think they're going to turn on you or whatever split second decision you had to make, you might not want to be in that environment. Joe,

[Speaker 0]: and then Kevin?

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: The second piece you spoke about is defensive weapons being permitted for PNP Civ, which seems I'm sure

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: there's been push back

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: because that's why they don't exist now. Right?

[Speaker 0]: They've tried this. I asked before. Fifteen years ago.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: That's that's a matter of oh, that's not that's not as much a money thing.

[Speaker 0]: We've that's been an issue from the early nineties.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: That's been quite some time. 36 or 35 states now allow it. It would include a comprehensive training program at the department. It would be voluntary. Anyway, you couldn't use your weapon for any other reason except if you were being shot at.

[Speaker 0]: Cars coming towards you.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: I'll just say

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: There you go.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Heavy train law I mean, law enforcement officers, as you heard from them in the recent days, none of them step in front of a car.

[Speaker 0]: No, that issue has been since the early nineties.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yeah, it's a big issue.

[Speaker 0]: It's for us on institutions committee.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: I think that's

[Speaker 0]: Revolving around.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: It's always been danger associated with that job. It's what are we hearing from people is it's increasingly dangerous. And in fact, in Rutland where all good things come from Rutland, as I like to say, just to personally pat myself on the back here. We met with Senator Conor and a number of I think Vince was there as well. Who at that meeting? No. You weren't. You were in court. We met with a bunch of senators and E and P officers, and we talked about the defensive weapon situation and the environment in Rutland that the P and P officers were facing. And in a group that It was interesting that in that meeting, the Rutland City Police came and said, We wanted to be here to double down on how important this issue is. We go with weapons and sometimes we won't go in the buildings that these guys have to go into without it. And so I thought that was really something that was really telling. And so I wanted to make sure to mention it. It's something the governor would, I think, supports. The indication from the governor's office is that he supports it, and, hopefully, he will direct the commissioner to implement the program.

[Speaker 0]: And then we got a call off. We've got the treasure waiting out there. The treasure's not

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: saying here makes sense.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Is that the first time I've ever made What day was it?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: The risk of being sour grapes, but we can't get enough nurses, we can't get enough doctors, we can't get enough lawyers, we can't get enough teachers because of demographics.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yeah. We're bleeding.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yeah. Vermont is bleeding. So my question is, what's the fail safe situation? If all of a sudden, the correction officers are all sick, you can't just lock everybody down forever. So what's the backup?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: You mean if they were all sick at at one time? They would all they would go to lockdown.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: What what's the fail safe situation and whatever that is?

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yeah.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Is that a way to bring some relief? Because, if they're gonna sign up for double time

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yeah.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: They're still gonna have burnout and they're still not happy with their families, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah. Money helps for a while. But so what's the fail safe situation if all of a sudden you didn't have enough correctional officers, you've still got all these inmates.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: New Hampshire had this situation and what they did was they called in the National Guard. I think that's not ideal.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: No, it's not ideal. It's complicated

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: too about when you call the National Guard, who's actually in charge of the facility? Is the commissioner still in charge or does the National Guard just take over? I think that in some cases, we've gotten to some desperate, desperate situations in Newport and some other facilities where our members have said maybe it's time for the National Guard. I wouldn't encourage that as a first step, but maybe in an emergency. I do think like you mentioned nurses, we desperately need nurses. We all know that we need them in the state hospital. We need them at the veterans home. It's the highest rate of vacancy rate at stake. There have been huge efforts by this legislature and by the federal government and by states all over to do tuition reimbursement, to really build the infrastructure to train those nurses. We haven't seen that similar kind of an approach to correctional officers. And it may be something we should look at. It's again, going back to the whole idea that when you have a shrinking labor market and a shrinking number of people who will do this dangerous work, you've got to compensate them with higher benefits, with better benefits and higher wages. And it's hard to come to terms with that in light of what I think Representative Casey said is the bank is often closed. If the public is demanding public safety, and I think we all know they are, is one of the most is maybe the foundation of the public safety system. And so, it's one thing for a law enforcement officer. I'm a big supporter of law enforcement. We have a number of law enforcement officers in our union. It's one thing to arrest them, which is a dangerous situation, challenging, and then drop them off at a correctional facility where they're now going to spend twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. And so it's not that you compare one or the other, it's just that they're both equally challenging. And I think we need to look at whether we're competitive with pay, whether we're competitive with benefits. I have said since Lisa Menard, going back to poor Lisa Menard, to every commissioner I could get to listen that if we provide a childcare to these facilities or childcare in general to state employees, we wouldn't have vacancies. We'd have a line out the door. We'd have people quitting their jobs in the private sector to get. I'm not asking you to pass that because that would be Yes, tried. Yeah, I mean, it's a big issue. And we have a lot of single parents who do this work. A ton of single parents who do this work. And so if you ordered over or called in early, if you don't have family around you or some resource, you're in big trouble. We've had single parents who have had to really sort of decline in order and say, someone's got to pick up my kid at the bus stop.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: But that's happening across the board. Across the board. Rather than pitting doctors against correctional officers.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yeah, comprehensive solution.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: We need to figure out how because it's a critical situation. I mean, we're closing hospitals. We can't have babies in Springfield because they don't have doctors.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: Right.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I mean, that kind of stuff's across the board. So money, there's gotta be something other than money because we don't have the money.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Right. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how else to get around it without money, but-

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Well, that's why I'm putting up, what's the fail safe? We gotta start thinking about the fail safe. Yeah. And maybe that's a crutch to relieve some of these sixteen hour days because we can't afford for it to break.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yeah, it seems to be a pervasive problem in the 20 fourseven facilities. I will say just on a one note, I was

[Speaker 0]: I'll start tying this up because I'm looking at the time and we got people out there.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: I'll Yeah, just say this one last thing because I didn't in between my trips to correctional facilities, listen recently your testimony on the project in Chittenden County. And the one component besides the corrections aspect that we've left out of this program that the victim advocates and the administrative staff in Chittenden County are being overrun with work without additional resources and the same in the Chittenden County Courthouse. We've got to add, if we want to have a special project, we have. So, on that note, it will be shocking that you heard from the VSEA that we have to hire more staff, but I'll stand by that statement and end on that.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you, Steve.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Thank you so much.

[Speaker 0]: We appreciate it. I'm sorry we were running late.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: No worries. It's Vince's fault.

[Speaker 0]: If you see folks from the state treasurer's office, there should be two people out there to send them in. Okay. Committee members, please take a personal break if you need to, but don't walk out all at the same time. Please. You may. Sign out on the board. Whoever's in the hallway. There you go. I'm sorry. We're running late. We're just gonna put you right in the hot seat. Whoever is scheduled to go. This is just an update in terms. Jeremiah, Jeremy, that's you. And Scott, you're here. Running late. I apologize. It's been one thing after another. I've told committee members just to take

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Your copies.

[Speaker 0]: Great. Just to take personal breaks. You need to. We have to use some lenses electronically.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: It just got passed around. So

[Speaker 0]: this is the report of the debt affordability committee of sorts. It's just a summary of it. But in the fall, they came out with the committee. It's CDAC. We call it CDAC, Committee on Debt Affordability Committee. They look at all the moving pieces of the economy in the state, our credit rating, what our financial institutions that do the credit rating are looking at, also nationwide. And for our world, the Debt Affordability Committee makes a recommendation in terms of what bonding level we work in, in the two years. So last year, they made a recommendation of 50,000,000 for FY '26 and 50,000,000 for FY '27. They left a little open caveat to that, that they would revisit the FY '27 recommend to see if they should recommend adjusting that, either up or down. And their recommendation, I think, came out September, I believe, was that it stays at 59. So that's a quick summary in terms of us where the box that we're working in for our capital budget for FY '27 request was stay the same at 50. So I'm going to turn it over to you folks and give your presentation, and please be aware there may be a lot of questions or none at all.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Sounds good. So welcome.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Madam Chair, think you might be able to handle this testimony better than seem to have the information already. So for the record, mentioned, I am Jeremiah Breer. I'm the Chief Financial Officer of the State Treasury. And I'll try to keep this as brief as I can, give you

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: a quick overview of our

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: debt management practices and process and then open it up for any questions. So as mentioned, the first thing you should know is that there is the Capital Debt Affordability Advisory Committee or CEDAC. The treasurer is the chair of that committee. The secretary of administration is also a member. There is a representative from the bond bank. There are a couple of appointees from the governor and appointee from the treasurer. The state auditor is a nonvoting member of the committee. And also the state's legislative economist sits on that committee. The charge of the committee is to review the net tax supported debt of the state of Vermont. And they produce a report as mentioned each fall that has a recommendation for the amount of debt that is prudent. In practice or in statute, that recommendation is advisory. But in practice, it has always been adopted by the legislature and the governor. And the credit rating agencies look very favorably upon the fact that that recommendation is adopted. So the main criteria that the committee is looking at when they're evaluating debt levels would be the amount of debt per capita, the projected debt service as a percentage of revenues, and the projected debt outstanding as a percentage of state income. They also consider a couple other factors. So those three that I mentioned are sort of the main factors that the credit rating agencies look at. But as the committee is working through these, they're also looking at the amount of debt that we're projecting out into the future and looking at the ten year capital plan that the administration is putting out and looking at the projections for capital needs from GFO and the Agency of Transportation in particular. And they're also looking at the benchmarks of the state's debt levels against other states, particularly against AAA rated states. So, the state of Vermont is AA rated, which is the second highest rating that you can have. There are 17 states that are AAA rated, and usually when benchmarking, we're benchmarking against those top tier states. And you have a list on slide five of those top tier folks. When we look I can just I want to go back

[Speaker 0]: to the amount. You review the amount of bonds, notes and other obligations that the state has. And we have two different types of obligations. We have the moral obligation, which were morally required to back those bonds or notes. And then we have another type of obligation, which means you are going to cover that debt. In our capital bill, in our bonded amount for that, that's for the second one. Correct?

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: The capital bill is for the net tax supported debt.

[Speaker 0]: Right. And we're required to make sure we take care of that debt.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: That's a general obligation when we issue those bonds.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: Stop me.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yeah,

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: when we issue bonds, whatever's in the capital bill, we bond for those projects, those are general obligation bonds, which means basically any, both faith and credit of the status behind that, Any cash that we have, any money that we have, we're required to use that.

[Speaker 0]: So what are some of the examples of the moral obligation where we don't have the full faith and credit of the state behind us?

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: So the moral obligation is debt that is issued under instrumentalities of the state typically. So it's like there's a slide that gets into this in detail, but it's like VITA, VHFA, the bond bank. So those are situations where the payments of those bonds are being paid from the resources of those instrumentalities, but it's backed by the moral obligation of the state of Vermont. So if any of those folks were to get in trouble and not pay, then the state's resources would kick in secondarily.

[Speaker 0]: It's a moral obligation,

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: not full faith in credit. It is our full faith in credit, but it's sort of in this two tier system. So, the general obligation bonds is the full faith in credit. The moral odd is the situation where the state would have to not a direct claim on the state's assets, but it is understood that the state would step into, for lack of a better word, bail out those organizations if they were to get into financial trouble and not be able to pay those debts.

[Speaker 0]: I just want the committee to understand those differences. Because sometimes we end up because transportation sometimes could be involved in taking out some bonds or VHFA or something, and they have to come before us just so that we know because we have that whole obligation.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah, and transportation would typically be a I mean, it's not so much a general obligation because there are specific transportation bonds, but both of those pieces would be full faith and credit. So the moral odd would be your instrumentalities, your VIDAs, your bond bank, your BHFA. Transportation and general obligation bonds would be directly from the state of Vermont.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: And we did. In the past, we did issue transportation infrastructure bonds through CREs. Those are paid off now, but those were special obligation bonds. Those were revenue. Right, it was a tax, a gas tax associated with that. So those were only the gas tax that's pledged against that, it wasn't generalization of the state, but only in the proceeds from that tax.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: So on slide six, it's just showing you this debt per capita metric and benchmarking against these other AAA rated states. You can see the states are ranked there from highest to lowest, lowest obviously being the best because less amount per capita. And you can see that Vermont is in the top third if you're benchmarking against these AAA states. So while we don't have the highest debt levels in the country, we are a state that is in sort of the upper echelon when it comes to sort of debt burden by this metric. And similarly, next slide is debt as a percentage of personal income. And again, you're seeing that benchmarked as a percentage for these AAA rated states. And again, a lower amount means a lower debt burden, which is obviously financially more advantageous. We are in the top half or third of states in that by debt metric there. The next slide, slide eight. So, far we've been looking at benchmarking against AAA rated states. This graph shows our ranking over time benchmark against all 50 states. A higher number here is better. So you can see that we were in a slightly better shape back in 2011, 2012, and have declined in the rankings a little bit. And we're about middle of the pack of the 50 states when it comes to our total debt burden.

[Speaker 0]: Is that because of loss calculation?

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: That is somewhat of a factor. It is more so that So the state of Vermont has been issuing less debt than we have in the past, but the decline in the amount of debt being issued is even more steep in other states. And also, states have seen their economies recover much more rapidly. So when you're looking at it relative to the size of the economy, we have deteriorated a little bit.

[Speaker 0]: Vermont is always a lag, either in decreasing or increasing, whatever it may be. Like when we went through the two thousand and eight mini recession, it took a while for that to catch up to Vermont. And then the recovery happened a lot quicker in other states. And we were at a lag to recover. So we're always a couple of years behind either losing or gaining from the country.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yes. And unfortunately, that trend does continue. Even if you look at economic data, in New England, Maine and New Hampshire and Massachusetts have seen steeper recoveries. Vermont has recovered from 2020, which was a few years ago, but that recovery has been much more robust in some of our neighbors. Slide nine just shows you the distribution of credit ratings with all the states. So you can see far to your left there, those are the AAA rated states of the three different credit ratings. And that's kind of the largest bucket. There are plurality of states per se that have AAA ratings. And then Vermont is in the second most populous bucket of AA rated states. So that just shows you kind of how we compare the bell curve there. And then slide 10 gives you a breakdown of the factors that the credit rating agencies use when they evaluate Vermont. A couple ones to highlight for you. So there's that governance bullet. This is something where Vermont really shines. We get a lot of credit for our good governance practices. Those good governance practices include the SEED Act. They love that we have this committee that does these evaluations. They love that the recommendations are accepted by the legislature and the governor. They look very favorably upon the fact that we have a BAA, that there is a mid year adjustment to the budget, that there are balanced budgets is something that look very favorably upon. We get a lot of credit for our reserving practices. So those are all things that really help to prop up the credit rating. Things that are a bit of a challenge for Vermont and do weigh down the rating a little bit chiefly are our demographics, as you sort of had alluded to, Madam Chair. I don't have to explain to all of you that there are challenges in Vermont with aging population and declining population of younger people, and that has secondary effects on the economy. And so anything that can be done to improve that is a boon for the credit rating. Similarly, the long term liabilities, so the pension liabilities and the OPEB liabilities, we'll get into this in other slides, but Vermont has some of the larger amounts of pension and OPEB liabilities relative to its economy of other states. And that is something that the credit rating agencies have started to pay particular attention to in the last couple of years. So the treasurer's office and the legislature and the governor have done quite a lot of work to address that and made a lot of progress in paying down those liabilities. If those continue to improve over time, that could be of a great benefit to the trajectory of the state's credit rating.

[Speaker 0]: I know this is sort of a financial and retirement term, OPED, PED. What does that mean?

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Other post employment benefits. Can be a lot of things in a lot of different states, but what it breaks down to in Vermont is it's health insurance for retirees. So there is an OPEB plan for retired state employees and there is an OPEB plan for retired teachers. And a couple of years ago, those were converted into a pension like framework. So they used to be pay as you go where we would literally just pay the premiums as they went. But we started a couple of years ago with a pre funding situation where we were putting aside money and investing it, and those assets are growing. That has been a great way to work towards paying down that unfunded liability in the OPEB plan.

[Speaker 0]: So could you give some examples in terms of what those post employment benefits are?

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Health insurance. Just health insurance. I don't think this is offered in Vermont, but in other states, can also be dental and disability and life. Really any employment benefit that you get in retirement, in Vermont, it is just health insurance. So there's

[Speaker 0]: an addition to your pension.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yep. I'm not an expert in that piece of it, but depending on if you're a teacher or a state employee, you need a certain number of years in the pension system and then you can qualify for getting the health insurance in retirement. I know like in the state, the longer you work, the more the state pays out of your health insurance in retirement. And it's typically available for you and your spouse. So it's a great benefit.

[Speaker 0]: So for the state employees, does the treasurer's office get involved in their healthcare package, or is that just for teachers?

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yes. So the retirement division manages the health insurance benefits for both the teachers and the employees. So they actually just renegotiated the contract. They were gonna see some really impressive increases in the premium and did a lot of work to find another vendor that was able to still increase, I think a 16% increase.

[Speaker 0]: For state employees and features or just features?

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yes, both, I believe.

[Speaker 0]: They both shifted to the same provider?

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah, is that true with the both? Just the teachers, apologies.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: While we're on this topic, can I ask a question about the status of that health care contract and when do you expect it to be signed? Because I've had issues with teachers back home that were concerned about the contract not going on. I think there's networking adequacy or forget the exact term.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Sure. Data somewhere. Sure. This is a little bit out of my wheelhouse, and Tim Duggan would probably be the best person to talk about this. But I can tell you that I believe the contract is in place. I think that they are working on converting people over and educating people under the new system, but I believe it is in place at the moment.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I already said because your office did send me an email back in December, but they were in the process of, it sounded like trying to sign back to the union, but I just want make sure that was all set in place.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: I do believe it is in place. If there other questions, go really quickly over slide on 11. Slide 11 is just looking at some of these debt metrics that we talked about and our projections of where these metrics will go in the future. And in a nutshell, we project that all of these ratios will improve over the long term. So they will all decline, which is due our benefit. Slide 12, this gets to sort of your question earlier, Madam Chair. So this breaks down the different categories of the debt. So that first category, the net tax supported debt, that's the debt that's backed by the full faith and credit of the state. There's $663,000,000 currently outstanding. That breaks out into the largest piece of it being $550,000,000, which are general obligation bonds. There's also a 25,000,026 million dollars housing bond for BHFA and then $65,000,000 for leases. So leases per accounting standards are considered part of our debt. And then similarly, these technologies arrangements, these SPITAs, which are essentially software releases, essentially subscription agreements for different software, also per Gazby considered part of your debt. So that adds up to $663,000,000 And then the other piece, these moral obligation pieces that are taken out under the instrumentalities, there's another $890,000,000 there. But those, of course, are not directly on the state's liabilities. They're under those instrumentalities.

[Speaker 0]: So if we could go back to the $65,000,000 for debt, for various leases.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: For leases, yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Could you give some examples in terms of what that might be?

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: It's really like any long term lease. So it could be leases of equipment, vehicles, machinery, offices. The theory of it is that if you enter into a contract and you say, I'm going to pay you X amount of money for twenty years, is not You can call that a lease, that's typically how we refer to those things. But it fundamentally is the same as taking auto loans.

[Speaker 0]: So, if we lease out office space for state employees, that's considered part of that 65

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yep, it is.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Then on the next slide, so this is again a dashboard. It shows kind of in summary a lot of the numbers that we've been talking about so far. But one of the things I'll draw your attention to is this section that says rapidity of debt retirement. So one thing that the credit rating agencies give us a lot of credit for is the fact that our current practices are to pay down debt relatively quickly. So you can see, for example, of the debt we currently have on the books, 49% of it is scheduled to be paid off in the next five years. Of course, in the next five years, we won't have half the debt we have now in five years because in that time we will be issuing more debt. But the point of this is that we are not paying down debt over extended periods. We are prudently managing it and quickly paying it down. And that is something that the credit rating agencies very much so like to see. Slide 14 shows you a history of the debt authorizations over time. You can see that we hit a peak around 2014 and 2015, and then we're down to about $15,000,000 for 'twenty six and 'twenty seven. And that compares to, on slide 15, the amount of debt outstanding. So we have this phenomenon where debt will be authorized, but it may not actually get issued because it won't be issued until the money is spent on projects that are in the capital bill. And sometimes there is a delay in that spending due to the limited supply of contractors and the labor that needs to happen, etcetera. And so while the amount of authorizations has been steadily declining, there's a little bit more volatility in the amount outstanding just as it relates to the timing of the finishing of projects and actually spending the money.

[Speaker 0]: So if you look at this back in 2008, 2007, 2008, we were bonding. Our capital bills were 45,000,049 million dollars back then. And we had a one year budget. We didn't have two year budgets at that point. We didn't kick into a two year budget until 2012, fiscal year 'twelve-'thirteen. So, that's when we kicked into the two year budget. That is correct.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: And then the next slide shows you the general obligation debt outstanding adjusted for inflation, which is a really interesting dynamic. As it was increasing in the twenty teens, it was somewhat eroded by inflation. But you can see that it was sort of stable until about 2016, 2017. And then even on an inflation adjusted basis has been declining pretty steadily since about 2020. The slide after that slide 17 shows you that phenomenon that I was talking about where we have authorized and then we have issued and then we have unissued. We currently have 192,000,000 of authorized but unissued debt. And like I said, that represents the fact that there were projects in the capital bill that perhaps had been delayed or the funds just haven't been spent yet. The debt has not issued.

[Speaker 0]: Do you know how many budget cycles that's included that 192.5? How many?

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: It is cumulative. It's everything that has not been

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I don't know. We'd have

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: to look to see probably what the oldest amount, but it's the cumulative It's the all time has been issued and then not authorized and not issued.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yeah, for instance, we just did an issue in December this month, and this covered capital projects that weren't capital built back in 2017.

[Speaker 0]: Well, I would think that COVID had a big impact on that for about three years.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yeah, absolutely.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Certainly. Well, were two things that happened in COVID. There was a constraint in labor in this pent up demand. We also got a lot of federal money. And to some extent, on federal money has been prioritized over spending state money because there's a deadline on the federal money. So both of those factors have led to delays in spending capital funds. Slide 18 brings us back to the pension and OPEB liabilities. So this is looking at the state ranking as far as our OPEB and pension liabilities related to other states. Higher numbers are better here. So the lower numbers that we see on these metrics represent the fact that we are one of the more liability burden states in regard to this situation. And then slide 19 kind of breaks this down in a different way. It's showing you the percentage of these long term liabilities as a percentage of personal income and state GDP and comparing that to some of these other highly rated states. And you can see, for example, as a percentage of personal income, Vermont is 13% and these other AAA rated states are in the single digits, some of them around 1%. Or so. Slide 20, again, there's somewhat of a theme here. But so on slide 20, this graph shows the states and the various components of their liabilities. So it has their general obligation debt and their pension liabilities and stacks them all up. And you can see Vermont is sort of to the left there and again, kind of in the top third of states in regards to debt burden and as it relates to the size of our economy. And then finally, circling back to, as you had mentioned, Madam Chair, the recommendation for the CEDAC committee's recommendation. So the committee will project out ahead of time what it believes the recommendation is gonna be in future years. Projection for this biennium was 100,000,000 so $50,000,000 for 2026 and $50,000,000 for 2027. And then when the report was filed last fall, that recommendation was reaffirmed. And there was a lot of debate about whether that number should be higher or lower. And one of the reasons it's not higher is because what we're hearing from the administration is that they wouldn't be able to spend more money. Because of that phenomenon, have the capital projects that have not been spent so far. It doesn't really make sense for us to recommend higher debt levels because it can't be utilized at present.

[Speaker 0]: Can you give a reason why they wouldn't be able to spend higher level?

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: It is due to a couple of factors. I mean, really is due to the limited number of contractors just and delays in contracting and construction that we have seen post pandemic and then in the post pandemic pent up demand building boom that is happening. And then also, they need to spend all the federal money by the end of calendar '26. And so, there's also somewhat of a bottleneck in that to get the projects done requires labor from state employees and they can only handle so many projects. So, somewhat I think of an effort. I will not speak for the governor, but I think that there is an effort perhaps to prioritize projects that are using federal money so that that money can be spent and not have to be returned to federal government.

[Speaker 0]: Doesn't mean we don't have the projects out there. Just means they can't cut them out the door and obtain the most.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Kevin?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I'm really a novice of all of this, but the impression I'm getting is that we're doing okay, but we're nowhere near where we need to be. We've got a plan to get there. What are the factors that are assumptions in our plan that if they fail,

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: we need to be aware of? You mean things that would be like hazards to look out

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: for the state? We're assuming population's gonna go up 20%. Oh, yeah. Interest rates are gonna drop to four instead of staying at seven.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: That kind of stuff. What are we assuming in this plan to get better that we need to be aware of so that when we're making decisions, we're not adding to the problem?

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Gotcha. Yeah. I mean, I think the big things are the pension and OPEB liabilities. So those should continue to improve, right? So if the legislature continues to pass budgets that fully fund the 8X and the plus payments, then those liabilities should continue to improve over time. If that doesn't happen and those liabilities continue to grow, that is a hazard for the state's credit rating. The demographic piece is also huge. I wouldn't say that our plan assumes anything in particular about that. I think it just sort of looks at the current state of the demographics. There has been in the last couple of years, some modest, like the post COVID influx of folks moving to Vermont typically was people in their 20s and 30s and sort of like young professionals. And that did somewhat improve the demographic piece. But if the demographics go in the other direction, that is another major hazard. And then I would also say that there have been some discussions about changing reserve practices or budgets or whatever. And so continuing all of those governance practices, fully funding the reserves, passing balanced budgets, adopting the recommendations from the CDAC committee, those are all things that continue to also prop up the state's rating.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: So if we don't follow the rules, the conservative rules that we have been following, our credit ratings are gonna suffer even worse.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah, well, were upgraded a couple of years ago and the credit rating agencies have been affirming our rating. Our rating is stable. And I think if we keep doing what we've been doing, then it's quite possible it will improve. So there has been improvement in those pension liabilities. There's been modest improvement in the demographics. So we keep addressing those problems. Credit rating agencies don't typically change things quickly. It takes kind of years, but if we keep doing the good work to improve those issues, then there's no reason to say that in a few years we might not see an upgrade. I would definitely say we are in no immediate danger of a downgrade. The situation is definitely stable. But as you point out, there are some challenges, meaning notably the pension liabilities and the demographics. The state has also been issuing less general obligation debt. Interestingly though, pension to OPEB liabilities are quite larger than actual debt debt. So even though we're really managing that piece of all, that is where the attention comes from.

[Speaker 0]: Some of that's out of our hands, particularly in the health care arena. That's out of our hands.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah, there certainly are variables that we can't control. That having been said, if we pay the ADEC every year, then over time those liabilities will decrease because the ADEC contemplates that we are slowly paying off those liabilities.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: Joe? The last page of this presentation speaks to $9,400,000 of premiums over bond issuances from last month. Now last year, we were given premiums, available funds that was added to the capital bill. Are we going to have availability to some of these

[Speaker 0]: premiums

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: in the second year of this capital bill?

[Speaker 0]: I can't say. It

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: all depends on the market. A premium happens when It all has to do with the amount of interest rates and how things all sugar out. The way that we typically price our bonds such that it results in a premium, but there's no guarantee that that will happen.

[Speaker 0]: Sometimes it's only 2 or 3,000,000, sometimes it's 70.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: Well, it's on page 22.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: So this was from the issue that we just did in December. This is just a snapshot of the front page. So we issued two series of bonds. Series A was the new money bond, and you're correct, we issued just under 60,000,000 and we generated a $7,100,000 premium. So we, you're right. In the past, we have used that premium for additional projects in subsequent years.

[Speaker 0]: We don't know because it's up to the governor's budget.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: That's what's in the capital bill. The Series B was a refunding. That premium, so the refunding bonds are issued, it's kind of like refinancing your mortgage. We issue new bonds and pay off older higher rate bonds. I see. So that premium went to pay off.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: That's included. Understood. So retired, that's what covered it's not retired.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: The Series A. So it's

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: A that you would be looking at. Right. So we're talking about that's at 7.1.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: We don't know that because the bond premiums in the past were not very high. And they just go to general fund. We never saw them.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: We got some of that last year.

[Speaker 0]: But in the past, we never got them. They would go to general fund because they were smaller amounts. But then we had such a debt in our school construction. And there was a couple of years that the bond premium really increased. Instead of just getting 1,000,000, it went up quite a bit, like 5,000,000 or 6,000,000. And the administration at that point decided to move those bond premiums to the capital bill to pay off our school construction debt that we owed our communities. That was the beginning, moving that bond premium to the capital bill. Up to that point, bond premium stayed with the general fund. We never saw it. So that was probably back in 1617, we started seeing the bond premium in the capital bill. Think it was back Were you around back then?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yes.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Am I off base on that? It was

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yeah, well, so the way the premium So we only issued, let's round up to 60,000,000 to create 67,000,000 project proceeds. So 67,000,000 projects have been appropriated. We only issued 60,000,000. So that extra 7,000,000 in this case, in subsequent capital bills, you've appropriated projects because there's $7,000,000 So that premium did go to additional projects.

[Speaker 0]: Right, but in the past, we did not have those high bond premiums. So it would just stay in the general fund. But then it started increasing and we had a real backlog in what we owed for school construction projects. And we wanted to pay off that because our school districts and municipalities had completed the projects and they were paying the debt and they hadn't received the state share that they needed to. So then the policy was made that that bond premium would come into the capital bill to address our our debt of school construction.

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: And once we paid that all off after a couple of years, the practice has been to keep the bond premium in the capital. That's not to save the change. So that will be up to the governor's budget next week. Yeah.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: I think that's correct. Mean, I think what what happens to it is, you know, part of the governor's budget, and then the amount of premium that is generated is a market. I mean, it is an interplay between the coupon that we publish and what the interest rates actually come in on the bonds.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: I think part of the explanation we got last year is that Vermont issuances in several seven states are small. So even though we might not be triple a rated, we get a

[Steve Howard (Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association)]: Yes.

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: Little higher premium because it's cool.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: There's that

[Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: for diversification purposes.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: There's there's a robust demand for maple palms. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Anything else before we finish it?

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Nothing for me, unless you have any other question.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Thank

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: you. You

[Speaker 0]: for your patience, because we are running a little late today.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah, anytime.

[Speaker 0]: And the committee, you hung in there. So we're back tomorrow before we go off of YouTube. We're still on YouTube folks. Back here 09:00, and we have a joint meeting all morning for the House Commerce Committee.

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Have We're downstairs.

[Speaker 0]: What room are we in?

[Jeremiah Breer (Chief Financial Officer, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Room 11.

[Speaker 0]: Room 11. And it's really talking about Department of Labor and Department of Corrections in terms of how we can bring all of that together along with Community College of Vermont. So we'll see you all at 09:00 tomorrow down in Room 11. If not, here first.