Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: Welcome

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: home. Merchants and Institutions Committee. We're back this afternoon. Today is Thursday, January I'm having a really hard time coming the members down. I'm a little excited to see if you know for some It's just because we're seeing two good friends. Know we're

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: the Candy Bowl's going away.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we are working on House Bill five fifty nine, which deals with some updates to the parole board. It could be in terms of parole board membership, whether or not there are term limits, and trainings as well. And the other piece I'm going to because we have the chair of the PRO board with us, Dean George, who's a former member the house in Middlebury. I just want to put this so you can think about it. The parole board, the money for the parole board in the state budget, it is under DOC. And so the money for the parole board is funneled through DOC, but DOC does not control the parole board, you're a quasi judicial board. And we are wondering and thinking, would it be worth our while to have in the state budget a separate line item for the parole board and not be affiliated with DOC? There will be some extra cost to that because you do get some services, administrative services from DOC that you would have to include in your budget and hire someone. But just kind of think that through because we're kind of processing that a little So bit for folks have settled in. And Dean, just I know that there's been work in the past on the parole board. I know Mary Jane has been in and testified twice so far this year, three times, just to talk about the function of the parole board and the makeup and some challenges that the board is starting to see. There's been some folks who have served on the board for many, many years. They are moving off the board, so we are going to lose a lot of institutional knowledge. How do we reconfigure the board if we do? How do we update the training for members? And how can we be supportive of the function of the program?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Boy, there's a lot of questions in there.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: There's a lot of questions. So Dean, I'm turning it over to you if you could identify yourself for the record and weigh in on that piece of legislation.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Great. Thank you. Dean George from Middlebury, Chair of the Parole Board. And thank you for letting us comment on the bill. I looked over the bill, Mary Jane and I have talked about different aspects of that recently, and we've also been having discussions about the budget issue, too. So it's very timely for us to be able to talk with you about that as well. As I'm sure you probably are aware, this will be my last year on the Board. I'm going to be, my term is up at the February, unless they haven't found a replacement, and by statute, I would continue until they do. So that's presumably in the works with the governor's office. We did have a gentleman that was selected a couple of months ago, and I was excited to be able to start working with him and be able to help make a smooth transition, but he has decided that it's a little more than he thought it was going to be, and he's not prepared to do this. So they're back to the drawing board, so to speak. So I think the overall issue is, having done this now for twenty years and been through quite a few iterations of where we began to where we are today, a lot of things have changed, including statutes that apply to the Pro Board and case law. And so our policy and procedure manual is one that is a document that we established more than twenty years ago with the help of the AG's office and a consultant, and have modified it as things change through the years, which has been an excellent document for us to work from. The H559 bill that's been introduced is an attempt to update, at least in my view, 28,403, which is the statute that governs most of the topics in that bill, and it hasn't been looked at in more than twenty years. So there's a handful of things I'd be happy to comment on that I have thoughts on and hope that the board would, or the committee would consider before it gets passed out. Happy to chat about the responsibilities of the parole board and what's happened in the last few years. I think Mary Jane has probably explained that we've had new board members come on in the last couple of years, replacing some longstanding members. And in our effort to try to get a more diverse group and younger group, we have three young women on the board now who are all three employed full time by either family business or their own business or counseling. And so it's great to have them on board with the other three board members who bring along a lot of different experiences. The challenge for me is I do the schedule each month, and we have 10 hearings a month that we schedule three board members for, and then a staff meeting, is that with the three folks that are working full time, getting to work around their schedules so they can be an active participant on the board can be challenging at times. And one of our new board members from time to time has conflicts because she is a substance use disorder counselor in the southern part of the state. And some of her clients are people that we see for hearings. So those are challenges that are presented to us, we working hard to keep them involved and on the schedule as much as possible, and I think it's a great thing to have their input into our hearing decision making. Over the last couple of years, we've adopted the structured decision making framework as a guide for making decisions, which help us in our goal to make sure that our decisions are evidence based, and we're not relying on gut feelings or media sensationalism, things of that nature, that we look at the evidence based on the case and what's best for everybody involved, and try to involve to the extent we can any victim testimony and include them in the process as well, which has been a strong goal. What's changed a lot is the complexity of a lot of our hearings, particularly the violation hearings. Many of them involve offenders with new criminal charges and the confrontation of witnesses where witnesses are obligated under the due process part of the law to be available for confrontation by the defense attorney makes it challenging for us to schedule all of that. And then in conjunction with the fact that these cases are pending in the criminal courts and not trying to interfere with that process at the same time makes it a challenge. In the last couple of years, the Department of Corrections staff, which are the parole officers and case workers, have had the assistance of an attorney from the Attorney General's office in helping present their cases at violation hearings, which in my view has been very helpful. And I know that they're struggling and there's going to be a change coming up very shortly that starts sometime this month where they're not going to be available anymore for DOC staffing at violation hearings. So it presents a challenge because the parole officers and caseworkers are not attorneys and neither are we. And having attorneys help them through this process has been very beneficial for us. So we're waiting to see where this is going to take us, but it does add to the complexity. It's not unusual for us to have a number of witnesses that have to testify at the evidentiary part of a violation hearing and for us to make decisions on whether the evidence is sufficient enough to find them in violation or not, and then how to treat that evidence and then to make a decision on whether to revoke parole, continue on parole, make adjustments to the parole agreement or give them some sort of a incarcerative sanction. So there's a lot that goes into that and training is a critical component of what the board does. Over the years, we've been able to take advantage of our association with APAI, which is the Association of Parling Authorities International. It involves all of the states that have parole boards in Canada, and we have a lot of training that comes from that that's funded federally, which changes from administration to administration, obviously. And we take advantage of all of those that we can, and we've been fortunate enough to have a number of instructors come to Vermont over the years to provide us with training for the whole board here in Vermont. And that's, that's been great. Right now, we're hoping that that will continue or start up again, but you never know where that's going to go. In the meantime, it's really important to have training ongoing for all the board members and training that's applicable to what we do. So I'd be happy to venture into the bill if you wish or answer any other questions first or however you want me to proceed.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, I got a lot of questions. Just I think the one that kind of I'd like you to get into the bill. But I want to have more understanding of what's involved in your training and more understanding of who actually does it. And also, I understand the complexity of the person that's coming before you, either for their initial parole, and also if there's been a violation of a condition of parole, the complexities there, but am I understanding that PMP would be present at those, particularly if there is a violation of conditions

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: of parole? The supervising parole officer is the individual that brings forward the violation and charges the offender with violating whatever conditions of the parole agreement they have evidence to charge them with.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's not a new crime, correct?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: No, it could be either a new crime, it could be a violation of a technical condition, like not showing up for hearings or meetings that have been assigned to them, not participating in treatment that they've been obligated to do, violating a curfew that they've been imposed on them, a host of things. Having contact with the victim where we specifically said they can have no contact, things of that nature.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So did I understand that they had the PMP, the probation officer, parole officer had representation from the attorney general's office. They had legal backup and that is now going away. So therefore, PMP is not gonna be present. Did I understand that correctly?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: No, you didn't. And I apologize if I made it confusing. What's happened in the last couple of years is the attorney general's office has been able to assign one of their staff attorneys to work with the parole officer in presenting the evidence in a violation hearing, helping them with the disposition part of it for the department's representation. And that's been a big help for those parole officers and caseworkers who are not attorneys, who are not used to presenting evidence in a judicial situation, and helping them define what needs to be said, how to interview a witness that's under oath, and that sort of thing. So there, we're going to be going back, as I understand, again, to the old way of doing things, which is that the parole officer and case worker will be presenting their own cases, but they won't have the assistance of an attorney with them, which will be fine. I'm sure we'll get through it, but it will bring some other challenges that up until now has been great having attorneys on both sides.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And who is the attorney on the on your board? Who's the attorney that

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: We don't have an attorney. This is the attorneys I'm speaking about are the prisoners rights office attorney representing the offenders. Yep. And the AG's office attorney representing the Department of Correction. The board

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And the parole board does not have an attorney at your side.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: And it's not necessary that we do. We're essentially the judicial folks making the decisions. So we first look at the evidence presented to us for the violation of the conditions, and then we make a decision as to whether that is sufficient to find that they did violate it. And if we did, then we move on to the disposition part of the hearing where we discuss their parole status, and what is in the decision of the Board in that regard. And that consists of typically three things. One, revoking their parole, continuing them on parole, or amending their conditions and giving them an incarcerative sanction of up to thirty days, and then making our decision on that. That doesn't mean they won't be seen again, but if we revoke parole, then they go back to the Department of Corrections custody, and we then would see them annually at the time of their minimum again if they aren't being presented back to us before then to review their case.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So, that's a situation where the parole board, just want to have the committee be really clear on this. That would be a situation where the parole board has set conditions of their parole. And then there are violations of those conditions, and those are called technical violations.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: No, no.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No, they're not called they are within DOC's world, but within your world.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: There's a combination of things. It could be a technical violation. It could be a criminal violation. It doesn't all of the conditions are contained together. So a technical violation is one where they failed to meet with their PO on a scheduled appointment. A non technical violation, one is where they picked up a new criminal charge for a burglary or something of that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So if they picked up a new criminal charge

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Both violations of conditions.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So it's a new crime. Mhmm. How is that treated? When does that get into the court's The

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: last violation, an alleged violation of condition one. Not showing up for your appointment with your PO is a con is an alleged violation of condition three. So if somebody had absconded and not shown up for their hearings for a long period of time, they would charge them with violating that condition. If they also committed a new crime, they would charge them also with violating condition one. So when we see them at the violation hearing, they may have one, two, three, six, seven violations of conditions, separate conditions, and we would have to evaluate the evidence on each one of those. And then we would make the determination based on our interview at the violation hearing and our decision on the evidence as to whether to continue the montage role or revoke their parole.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And what if they committed a new crime? When does that end the courts? Because that's a new, that would be a new charge.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Because that's a violation of condition one. So that's a violation of Condition one of their parole agreement. And there could be another violation of their parole agreement, say Condition seven, where they were in possession of a firearm. Or condition eight, they went out of state without getting permission. Things of that nature. So all of the conditions that they violated are listed in the violation hearing.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I know, but if they committed a brand new crime. What I'm asking for. How does, when does that get into the courts? Because it's a new crime. It's not DOC that's adjudicating. Sometimes

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: we see them before they've even been arraigned, but they've been charged with a crime.

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

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: So we get the information from the officer who made the arrest. We get the police affidavit, and if confrontation is being challenged by the defense attorney, then we require the officer to be a witness. We interview the officer as well, and then we make a decision as to whether that new crime is a violation of condition one, if there's enough evidence. And they may not have been to court yet. Most of the time they've at least been arraigned, but sometimes they haven't.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Troy, and then I'm going go to Mary Jane.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: So what's your threshold of the evidence, especially on that condition, one? And then two, I guess I have a three part question. What's your threshold of evidence? Is training sufficient for the parole board on evaluating according to that threshold? Three, what happens if down the road they become acquitted, and you've already made a decision that they violated a brand new offense that they're not found guilty of?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: So first part of that question, the threshold for the parole board is a preponderance of evidence, which is essentially where a majority of people would find that that person violated that condition. It's not beyond a reasonable doubt, like in a criminal case, which is the entire threshold.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: It's more likely than not based on the evidence. It's more likely than not that it occurred, not a majority of the parole board determining that. Accurate?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: No. No. I'm sorry. I misunderstood your question then.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Preparance of the evidence is based on all the evidence available to you. It's more likely Preparance than of

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: an evidence for us, the threshold is if we find there is a preponderance of evidence, then we find them guilty of violating that condition. If we don't, then we find there is insufficient evidence to find that they violated that condition.

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: Right.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: But it's a different threshold than in the criminal courts where it's beyond a reasonable doubt. So if, for example, in your question, if we found somebody guilty of violating condition one for a new criminal offense, and they had not been convicted in criminal court yet, and we had violated their parole based on our preponderance of evidence condition, but they were found not guilty or the case was dismissed in criminal court, it has no bearing on the parole board's decision because it's a different threshold.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Gotcha. Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: One of Yeah. The

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: reasons try hard to make sure as much as possible that the criminal courts have dealt with this first. It makes it so much easier for us.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Mary Jane, did you want to weigh in?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: For the record, Mary Jane, our director of the poll board, I just didn't around your question around the criminal charges, I didn't know if I could just clarify that a little bit. We see so violations of condition one of not committing an act that violates the law. It doesn't mean that you may be charged with a new crime, you may not be charged with a new crime. It really depends. Most of the time individuals are charged with a new crime and they have been arrested, they have been cited, they may not have been for arraignment, or they may have been for arraignment and we get it later. It really depends. We see it in all, and we sometimes adjudicate our violations sometimes before the courts adjudicate the criminal charge, sometimes after the courts adjudicate the criminal charge. So I just wanted to just kind of show that we do that throughout the whole process. The processes are going in conjunction with one another and also around there are times if a criminal charge is dismissed, we may get a request to reconsider the board's decision because we do have a clause for reconsiderations as well. And the board would then look at

[Hillary (Legislative Counsel)]: that to see if they could

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Yeah. The important thing, think, in this is condition one says specifically that you shall not commit an act which is punishable by law. It doesn't say that you shall be charged, convicted, or arrested. So it's up to the parole officer for the Department of Corrections to provide the board with the evidence that they committed an act which is punishable by law.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Can't hold it. Any

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Any questions on this before we move into the actual language in the bill? Okay. So let's go to the actual language in the bill. So folks, fill out your bills.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: If I could start on page one,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: just wanted to address 403 on line 15.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay. So

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: again, this is from the current which hasn't been amended for, I think, twenty years. And Madam Chair, I'm sure you recall, and we're probably part of that process. Yes, When I at that time, the director of the parole board was an employee of the Department of Corrections, on staff for them. So where it says powers and responsibilities of the commissioner regarding parole, I think the commissioner should be changed to either the Secretary of Human Services or some other title, because it's not the Department of Corrections that oversees the responsibilities for parole and has it for twenty years. For example, on the annual performance evaluation for our director, Jane, that's done by me and submitted to the agency of human services and followed through to the secretary for approval and signature on it. It doesn't go to the Department of Corrections. So just a thought to think about maybe changing that direction. One of the things that's happened over the years, the legislature has made the determination that the parole board needs to be an independent entity and not part of one agency or department that has jurisdiction over what the acts that they're going to do following through on. So thought it was a good time to address that. I'm not sure that it makes a lot of difference, but it does in terms of who is being referenced and that sort of thing.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That brings me down, Dean. This is powers and responsibilities of the Secretary of the Agency of Human Services is what you're recommending.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Well, that's who are, you know, when I do the evaluation, that's who I submit it to now, is the Agency of Human Services, the Chief Operations Officer, and then it gets signed off by the secretary and comes back and then the board discusses it with Mary Jane.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So then on line seventeen and eighteen of the bill, right now as commissioner of DOC is charged with the following powers and responsibilities regarding the administration of role. So would it then be the Secretary of the Agency of Human Services that would be charged for that?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Well, that's what I'm thinking. If you want to continue to maintain the independence of the Board from There's never been any provision, while I've been on the Board, from the Commissioner's Office in Corrections. We do utilize a lot of their staff for training. Mary Jane is really good about getting folks from the Department of Corrections, for example, the people that do the risk assessment tools for the Department of Corrections, are great about coming in and providing training. And we need to do it again because we have new members that haven't been through that. They come in and discuss things about their policy and procedures as it affects parole, which are really helpful. But it's our director, Jane, that sets up these training opportunities for the board, and I would presume we'll continue to do that. As far as other training is concerned, when that's available through our association of paroling authorities, we try to take advantage of that whenever we can. We're lucky to have Mary Jane now as one of the vice presidents of the Board of Approlling Authorities International for the Northeast, and so we have a little Vermont representation in there. And whenever we can take advantage of those trainings, they're great. And you've got experts in the field that come in, take a look at Vermont's statutes, case law, and policies, and help us with trainings for a host of different things. They're not the only ones, but they are ones that provide some of the best suited training for us. For example, our framework that we use now comes from them.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: James, we have a question, Dean. Hang on.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Oh, I'm sorry.

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: James, since we're talking about training and it's not specific to the language, but how do you feel like you guys get enough training opportunities and the right quality? Or do you looking for more or like you hope for more?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: You know, what we get, we have to work to get, and I think we can always use more. Try to do as much as we can at our staff meetings. And one of the reasons that, you know, we want to have more opportunities is that it costs money for some of this training. And I think that's part of what Mary Jane is referencing when we talk about having our own budget. If we want to budget for training where we have to pay to have the instructors come here for all of us, they may not be in our budget. And so we have to go to DOC to see if there's funding for that available to us. If we know in advance we've got x amount of dollars to set aside for training, then the director can focus on getting that training that's appropriate and that's needed, particularly for new board members, but for all board members as we go forward.

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So right now, you look at the language in the bill and the law, right now, it's the commissioner of corrections who is responsible to provide the new language at the top of page two, to provide regular training to the parole board.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: That's in current statute, correct, yeah. And that hasn't changed since the director became someone independent of corrections twenty years ago.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So what's going through my mind in knowing this is a heavy lift.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: This is a real heavy lift. So knowing what came through twenty, twenty five years ago, what was coming through corrections, and what was coming through the parole board for folks to make decisions on whether or not folks should be paroled or not, We're very different issues than what's coming before the board now. Folks who are being incarcerated now have much, much different needs, different risks, levels, and different severity of crime. It's a much tougher it's situations where it's much more difficult to make a decision than where we were twenty, twenty five years ago.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Well, think in part, we have a lot more tools to work with now with our training. Have our decision making framework for those eligible for parole. We have our training that we've had come to Vermont and participate with all the board members, setting conditions, and looking at successes and failures throughout the country, and what works and what doesn't. And we've had a great deal of additional training. But it has to be ongoing. It can't happen one time and then not happen again, because then you fall back into that. At this time, too, twenty five years ago, and that was before my time, my understanding was, because I was part of the first group that got this going, was there was no policy and procedures.

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

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: So the direction of the board just came from the director, and pretty much, this is your gut feeling, and move on from there. Well, now there's a policy and procedure which includes all of the statutes and case law that apply to decision making and those sorts of things. And it's an evolving document that as things change, we update it and include all of those changes. So that's an important guidance tool for all of the parole board members. And training is a critical part of that because new board members typically don't have any experience in this. I was a career state police officer, and I had no experience in parole work before I came here. So it's important. And I think, you know, for the most part, you ask, do we get enough? I guess I would always say we never have enough because it's a changing scenario with respect to the board members. The new ones come on, we try to get some indoctrinary training, indoctrinary training to them. We try to bring them on board and get them up to speed with the other board members. We have them work with experienced board members, But it may be a year or two before they get some of the entry level training that we'd hoped that everyone would get. So, yeah, we're always looking for ways to increase training. And we have an opportunity to do that, I think we should take advantage of

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So right now, your process to get training is hopefully working with outside organizations that can provide that training free of charge or something. And if you do need money to actually pay for some training, then you have to work with DOC to see if they have any flexibility in their budget because it's not incorporated within your budget. Right.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: For example, every year there's a conference of all the authorities in the country that changes location each year. And so last year, there were myself, the director, and one other board member that got to go to the conference. And it's a three day conference, typically in different cities around the country. So to be able to send maybe four or five, as other states do, would be great to be able to do that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But you just don't have the financial capacity to do that. Yeah.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Question mark?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Kevin Winter? Because

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: the landscape is changing and laws are changing and this and that. Instead of having board members trained in all these areas, is it feasible that you bring in experts as needed? And as those experts are brought in, the board members certainly would be trained as they're receiving that support. So then you may or may not need to bring the same experts in over and over again as they see similar cases. Not advocating for that. I'm simply saying that is another alternative or not?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: It's similar to what has happened up until very recently where API has always had a new member training program. And it's typically for the last ten years or so been in Denver, Colorado. And when you get a new member, we apply for a slot and we typically send them and they have been paid for. That is on hold right now.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's And that's on hold

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: because

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: That's of on

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: hold now because of what?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Federal funding.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Did that get totally cut or is federal funding just on hold?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Well, that's a good question. I don't know. Mary Jane would probably know better than I because she's involved with API. But it's a program that has served us well when we've got new board members, we automatically send them to the next new board member training. So we're not having to provide that same basic training to everyone. And I think that was your point, which is excellent.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Both there's basic training I think everyone needs to go to, but I'm talking about specialized expertise in particular situations is what I'm talking about more than basic training. No, I think that basic training is necessary for a new board member. They need

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: to know how to operate.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: When you say specialized training, I think more than anything, experience on the board, being able to use our structured framework, which we now have a complete portfolio of instructions on how to use that, and then getting them on board, working through some scenarios and getting them up to speed. That served us well. Before that, we didn't have that and people would just sit down with a notepad and be on their own until we have a discussion. So we're in pretty good stead there. It's just ongoing training is so important. When we look at risk assessments now, the Department of Corrections uses a handful of different risk assessment tools. They're part of our parole summary policy. So when we get a parole summary for a hearing, we know what those risk assessments are for each of those categories. If they're a sex offender, they have a whole different risk assessment than someone who has been committing burglaries or is substance use only issues, that kind of thing. That's part of our process, but it's really important for new board members to meet with the corrections staff that do the training on their risk assessments to have us understand how they get to that assessment, which is ongoing for us. There's a lot of things we can do, and we do in house, and Mary Jane, because of her experience with corrections, is great at being able to put the right people in place for us to have that training.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we have another question, and then I want to get back to the language on top of page two. Conor?

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, Karen, I know we're going through the language, but I think like asking a bigger question kind of relates to the language here because, well, thanks so much for coming in, Dean. No, no problem. I'm a bit uncomfortable with the lack of autonomy you have as we go through this conversation. So the dependence on the department, the dependence on the AG, if you need a lawyer in the room there. It's And like, as I'm thinking about it, you're not just like a program under a department and state government. You're like a quasi judicial entity here. And I think we could almost write whatever we want in statute here as far as the trainings and expanding the board. But unless you do actually have autonomy, we know how this is going to go, right? The DOC is going get their budget instructions in October. It's going to say cut 3%. And the priorities are going to be the priorities. And it's almost unfair for them too, because they're going to be competing with other pressures they have that we see every day at this committee. So, as we're looking at expanding

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: give the board just for one second. Can give you an example of that. It was nearly twenty years ago, I think it was 2008, we lost one of our administrative positions through budget cuts. And it took us nearly ten years to get that position back. When you have a staff of three, losing one is a big deal.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Right, right. So, I just wondered, as we're going through this language, are we putting the cart before the horse? Sort of going into these details, but how are you gonna recruit more members if you don't even pay them anything compared to almost every other state in the country, right? I think we want to professionalize the parole board and again, give you some teeth there. I don't know, like as we go through everything costs money here almost, you know, and it's not you who's going to be making a decision of what you submit to the governor.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Well, it's important too. A lot of parole boards that obviously make a lot of money, and that's fine for those states. They're full time employees too, and I don't think we're ready for full time employees yet. I think you could make the case that maybe the chair would be the one position that could be a full time employee. I'm not advocating for that. I'm certainly, I wouldn't put myself out to say that that's necessary, but I spend an average of twenty to twenty five hours a week doing this. And I think one of the things that discouraged the replacement was how much time was going to be committed to this and the work involved in it. So that's something to think about. And I'm hoping that there's going to be a good follow-up with the next person that comes in to take this position. But where we go from there, at some point, that decision will have to be made.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, let's get back to the language before. So at the top of page two, which does deal with training and it lays out a list of topics. It provides regular training for the board at least once a year with topics that really help in terms of making the determination of person goes on parole, criminogenic behavior, mental health issues, substance use, trauma informed work with victims of the crime, and serious crime rehabilitation. Making that list, is that any different than what your current training

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: involves? I think that you could certainly say that you could include a host of other issues in there. But I think generally speaking, are covered in there that we would need. My comments on that, and I noted it in a couple of other places where I think it's important when you look at collaboration, the important thing is, right now, the collaboration between myself and Mary Jane in terms of getting things together, training, helping make decisions on where we want to be going is important. So to the extent that that includes the chair, so collaboration with the pro board director and the chair, I would suggest including that in those references. I made another one, think it was on page three, same type of thing online, if I can find it here, 16. Each member of the pro board shall attend training designated by the pro board director in collaboration with the chair. Because a lot of times, some of the training that comes in, the chair has to sign off on or participate in obtaining, and it's been great to have the two of us working on these things. Here's what we think is going to be best needed. Let's try to get the right people in here to do the training and work together. I don't believe either one of us would have a problem with this language, but in the future, if you have different strategies on this thing, I think it would be important to note it in the statute.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We do have our legal staff here and she has taken those notes.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Okay.

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

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Back on two, if I can. And this talks about the five to seven board members. And I know Madam Chair, I know we talked about this maybe ten years ago.

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: Yes.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: And the pushback was it right now it's set up with five regular members and two alternates and their terms are staggered and this would mess up everything. I said, fine, if it's a big deal, don't worry about it. As the chair, I treat everybody equally. When I do the schedule, I schedule regular members and alternate members to the same number of hearings each month. We all participate together in our trainings. So whether that can happen or not, I know there's been some discussion about whether that changes the number of board members that need to be at hearings, because right now it is a quorum of three. So if that changes that because the seven then makes a quorum four, then my suggestion might be that hearings are conducted by three board members, just a little bit of that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because you don't want an even number.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Don't want an even number, and a lot of times when we have new board members, we would invite them to sit in on hearings. They don't necessarily have to be making decisions, but we want them to sit in on hearings, participate in the discussion, and help us with that, so that gets them acclimated to it. So, it's great to have additional people available when that happens, But as far as the decision making goes, having three board members make the decisions at each end is perfect.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Do you have split decisions quite often? Or are they pretty much unanimous?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: We have occasional majority decisions. No split decisions because we always have an odd number. Right. So we have, this morning, had one majority decision. Occasionally they happen. And in our deliberations, we'll talk about that. And one board member may feel strongly that they're not ready to support the majority decision and that's okay. And we identify that it is a majority decision. And sometimes it sends a message to the offender if the majority decision, for example, is to parole them that there's still some concerns. So make sure that you do well when you're back in the community. So yeah, I don't if that answers your question, but there are occasional majority decisions, which is a good thing. Also on that, on line 12, no members shall serve more than two terms. I'm not sure of the genesis of that, but from my perspective with this board, I know two terms is six years and sometimes we get board members that only stay for one term, but that to me should be a decision that the administration, the governor's office makes. When you get somebody fully trained and they want to continue to participate and the director and the chair have no problems with that, then quite often what I've done is I've sent in letters of support when a board member's term is up as to whether or not I think the governor should reappoint them or not, and the governor certainly has decision to make on his or her own, but it's important, I think, for us to be able to say that we think they're doing a good job and they are interested in continuing on the Board and we support their reappointment. And if there are problems, then it's up to us to make sure we let folks know that there are issues and that's worked as well for us. So having specific term limits, I'm not sure solves anything, but may create some problems if we have a really good board member we don't want to lose, and we're forced to.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Questions? I know that we have Tom Giffen with us, and Tom is a member of the board. I do want to allow some time for us to talk with Tom on this to get that taped too. Mean, one's a dicey issue. You've had some members of your board who have been on there a long, long time.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: And And we've had two recent board members leave after one term.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And was that because of the workload? The time Or just it wasn't up their alley?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: One of them that was a problem. And one or the other.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. It's a tough role. It's a tough board to be on and you're carrying a lot of weight in these decisions. Okay, so let's move on.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Did you want to hear from Tom? Or wait?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And let's keep going with you and then we'll go to Tom.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: The last one I had was one I already spoke to, which was on page four, line 10, the collaboration with the commissioner. The rest of it is a good update to 28.403.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I just want to be clear on page four, line 10, where that should be in collaborative Is that going to be the one in collaboration with the chair of the board and the director or in collaboration with the agency of humans, the secretary of the agency of humans?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Can start by saying the director responsible for the overall functions of the board. And my thought is that should be in collaboration with the chair. Okay. Yeah. In our training over the years, we have never collaborated with the Department of Corrections on what training is necessary or needed. So, and I know that's been statute, but I think that, again, predates the dissolving of the employee being from the corrections as the director.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Anything else, Dean, on the language

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: of No, that's good. That's it. Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Questions from the committee? Thank you. So we're gonna shift to Tom. Tom, welcome. Long time no see.

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: Yeah. It's been a while, a year or two. Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It feels longer.

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: No, no, no, no. I've been up there a few times.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. If you could identify yourself for the record and you are a board member.

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: Yeah. Tom Gifford. I'm a member of the Vermont Parole Board. And thank you for the opportunity to speak to the institutions committee. I appreciate the opportunity.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you've heard some of the conversations, so feel free to weigh in.

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: Well, Dean's a tough act to follow. And first of all, as a member of the parole board, having, the director, M. J. And Dean, leading the leading the charge has been amazing. They do a great job, and I'm sorry Dean is feeling he has to leave, but he's done a wonderful job. And I've learned an awful lot from that in all the years I worked with human services. I did have a few things to mention. One thing I somebody who's been around a while, don't Dean's comment about younger people on the board, I prefer someone who's more seasoned than younger. So but the we should be our own entity when you don't know how what your budget is, You don't understand. When you don't know about how much money we have for training. I mean, my computer has a DOC that I'm using right now, a DOC sticker on it. We should it's the parole board should have should be its own line item. And I know how I don't know why he always had been, in correction. I just think it's one of those things that over the years that the that's how we do things, and we continue doing it that way because nobody complains and it works. But I do think that's something we should look at very closely as being an independent. So there's no illusion that we are independent. About term limits, I've served on many boards over the year and there's one board that had term limits and there was a woman on it that was a phenomenal fundraiser. She raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. So when her term was up, she had to go. Then they had me, who wasn't worth $0.10 And I said, I'll give up my term, let her go. I think that was a detriment to the organization to lose somebody who was so valuable. And I think the same with the board, I think the way it's set up now, we serve it well, the governor can make a change, you know, that they want to move somebody out. Certainly, some people can stay for a longer time, but I think that there is an opportunity. There's not a lot of people knocking down doors beyond the parole board. And we're paid a lot of money, you know, and also but the pool is not great. And I think you have somebody who's really outstanding on the board. It would not be beneficial to kick them off because your term is up. I think there's some natural movement, and sometimes you get people stay on for a while, sometimes you don't. But there's a process now that you can remove people who are not doing the job that you would like them to do. They talk about the experience about people being on the board. I mean, we're a small state, but people who come on the board should have some knowledge of the human service system. They should know what programs are available, the length of programs, the community outreach, the service providers, what is transitional housing, where is it located, some knowledge federal and state mandates. I mean, there's a lot to this. And to have somebody come in on a board who has never worked in human services, they won't even know what the acronyms are for a couple of years. So I mean, I think that's something that, I mean, as far as who you're looking for, I think that the knowledge base should be something that would be helpful to make sure that the decisions they made are based on some kind of a personal knowledge and understanding of the whole system. But again, other than that, I think, again, Dean covered an awful lot. The SDMF has been a great tool. I've learned a lot from that and I think a lot of board members have. I do agree with Dean. There's never enough training. I mean, I don't care if we have training like every week, there's always gonna be more room for more training and things change so quickly And funding is going to be a huge issue, as we all know. If you want, I think the parole board does an amazing job. I've watched it from both sides in my career and I'm very proud to be part of it. I think we have been working, what we have been working with, we've done an outstanding job and as due to leadership of MJ and Dean and the board members. That's what I have.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So for committee members as background of Tom, Tom was an employee of the Department of Corrections for years and years and years.

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: Well, nice. It's back to seasoned again.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Seasoned, yes.

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: Before that, I also worked with adjudicated youth and then I also worked with mental health and I also had worked, my first job was teaching at risk kids in the public schools. I've been in system for a long time. So I do have a little bit of understanding.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So on the flip side term limits, the thinking is that there would be new blood provided, new views provided to the board with the turnover. That was presented to us that it would be just healthy for the maturity of the board to have those new vision. And so I just want to put that on the table as well. I'm not saying one way or the other, wherever I go, but I just wanted to put that on the table so that people could noodle that and think that through, because that is the other reason. That is the reason for doing term limits for that, that there will be a constant change. On the other hand, what we're hearing from folks, those appointments are at will. They are currently three year terms. The governor makes all the appointments. Sometimes a term may be less than three years. So right now, there's built in flexibility. So that's a policy decision that the committee is going to have to take. I wanna make sure right now that you folks have had enough testimony on both sides to have an understanding of this. Kevin?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: With your seasoning ears, have you ever been without sufficient board members? Like two? You only had two?

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: During my tenure, no. Maybe with Dean.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Yes.

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: Always had a full board what I've been on.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: I've had several hearings, well, this is many years ago, where we had a board member who was ill and couldn't make it, and it was a last minute thing. And we were doing what we called our Turbo Hearings, where we had two boards, three at one site and three at another doing hearings. So we had no one else to call upon. So we had only two board members to do the hearings, and they were not violation hearings. So we conducted the hearings with two board members, and then before the decision was made, would pull in one of the other three when they were finished at the other site, review the case with them, and have them participate in the decision making. But that hasn't happened for years, because we don't do those turbos anymore, where we have two boards going at the same time. Rather, we have an overflow day, which Mary Jane has created, so that there's an extra day at the end of the month that we can use if we have days that are just too full for us to be able to get through them in one hearing day.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Shawn

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Tom, thanks. Both of you, thanks for joining us. Tom, you said there's never enough training, right? And then, you said, and the laws change or things change so quickly.

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: Mhmm.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: So it just you expound on that a little bit on what changes so quickly? And it it gives me pause about these term limits, because if it's changing so quickly and you're having a hard time keeping up with it, how can the new person keep up with it? Sounds like anyway, could

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: you just explain a little

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: bit more about that?

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: We can talk about how it would be I'll I'll give you a couple examples, like with the DLS laws that changed. And also now it was I was at eight now to become a criminal offense. And now they can go to diversion. They take care of it. The DUI, how they how they how they are interpreted, how they are go through the court system. I mean, different penalties come different ways. Some things were felonies out there. It's a it's and the society decides what what does it mean in the legislature, you what is gonna be a misdemeanor, what's gonna be a felony, what the what's the term gonna be, what's gonna be referred to restorative justice, what's gonna be referred referred to diversion, what's gonna go to the the criminal justice centers in different states. I mean, there's there's a whole hodgepodge of of rules and regulation and where where people can be referred to. We have drug court now. We never have drug court. So then you then you screw up in drug court. You then you go back to the court system. Then they come back to me, you see us and we had a case just recently, oh yeah, I failed drug court, that's why I'm here. And so it's just so many programs, so many things going on and so many balls in the air. You really have to be aware of it and luckily we've been pretty well informed when things change. Like I said, back in the day, you were drinking and it was a condition that you can't drink, you would automatically be violated on parole. Now that's not a condition we'd violate you for, depending on what it is. So there's so many things that are subject to change, as it were. After your session, there'll be more things that will be subject to change.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's true.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Thank you.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Conor?

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, sure. Tom, but maybe Dean too, it's, you know, I'm all for like a volunteer board and I'm sure like Zoom scheduling makes it a little more flexible. But I also think it's important to have like a big pool of applicants, especially for like doing limits and expanding it there. And I think it's also important to like reflect the diversity of the state of Vermont. That's one of my criticisms with the legislature, right? Like the guy shoveling gravel in the pit and Barry can't adapt to a schedule to run for the state legislature, right? So I guess the question is, is it conducive for somebody who works like a nine to five, forty hour a week schedule to serve on the parole board? The scheduling such? Do have that flexibility?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Well, I can tell you it from my perspective now, we have three board members that are both, and they're three young ladies that have been appointed in the last couple of years. And we're still able to get them in to the proper number of hearings. What I don't think would work is if we had all Board members working full time jobs. I recall not too long ago, interviewing a person who was interested in the Board and talking to them about participating and so forth. And the guy said, Well, is there any reason we can't meet at night? So I kind of reviewed with him, Well, it's not just us that are here. You have attorneys from both sides, you have staff, you have corrections. No, it doesn't work to have these hearings in mind. So it can be a problem, but I'm pleased to say with three board members working full time, we're able to make it work. Now, if we had six, that might be a problem.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: But are they using PTO to accommodate? Are they taking time off from work?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: No, what happens is, for example, I'm getting reports now for next month. I ask them all to send me their schedules for when they're available and when they're not. We know ahead of time what days they're going to have hearings. And so then I just plug it in and I give, I stay away from the days that they can't get time off from work, and they make arrangements to either take time off from work or change their schedules at work so they can do this. One of them, their employer is really good about helping them. Another one has their own business and works around that. And so we make it work.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: In other words, you're a good manager.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Don't want Right. To eat

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So Dean, you've given us some food for thought in terms of putting this under the secretary of the agency of human services instead of DOC and the commissioner. Seems like your testimony leans to and supports a separate line item in the budget, separate from the DOC budget. And if we decide to pursue that with the appropriations committee, we're gonna need to really have some conversations with you folks in terms of what that budget should be and what you need. Sooner than later. And what can we do to help the board function better and give you support, give the board support? What is really needed?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: I think probably the most priority issue for me, and I agree with your assessment that having the director be able to work on a budget for the Pro Board is really important. The work that the three people in that office are doing now is tremendous, but it also does not allow Mary Jane to work on a lot of the important issues that she should be working on for us, because she has to do a lot of the administrative work. We really need another position in the office. I don't think we're ready to have a full time parole board, but we do need to have that position in the office, particularly if this direction takes hold, where we're going to be looking at our own line item for setting up budgets for the board itself in some way. So I think that for me would be a plug that I would make that that full time staff position is really important.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Maybe a question for Mary Jane. How does the budget you submitted to the DOC compared to what you got in the governor's recommend that we saw this week?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: So I think I testified to this last week or the week before. Over the last seven years as I've been director, I am just recently being involved in the budget process. Our budget has just been a pretty much consistent line item every year and gets rolled over for the inflation factors or the change in wages, change in insurance for the payroll and the change in our travel over time. Have never, I'm just starting to get more involved in that budget process. So the budget you see, I did not have any input in that budget.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Okay, that's important to know. That

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: ties in to the five of you who are working

[Conor Casey (Member)]: on- Thank you to that chair.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: On the questions that we ask when we talk about the FY twenty seven general fund budget that really ties into what we're doing now, how is it working? And do we continue doing it this way? Or do we change some things up? I don't know how a board runs without knowing what their finances are, but that just is beyond. I thought they would say. Other thoughts from the committee? The thoughts from Dean and Tom and Mary. Mary Jane, I wanna allow you some time if you.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I could. Have a few things that I

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: can

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

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So come on up. It's a bit too hot lately. No. Yesterday. Yeah.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Again, Mary Jane Ainsworth, director of the poll board. Just a few things I wanted to touch upon as I've been listening to the testimony from Dean and Tom, and also a few things that I saw in the bill that I wanted to just make note. The one thing I wanted to just note regarding completely respect Chairman George's thoughts about 04/2003 in regards to responsibilities of the commissioner to change it to human services. However, I want to just put a note that I would caution that because the new section six is a brand new section. There's also one through five that is really duties that really are appropriate for the commissioner, which is around supervising individuals around parole detaining parole leaves in the facility, so I just want to note that there are. They're not on the bill. It's not at it's not its existing language that is really specific to what the Commissioner of Corrections is responsible for. So I just wanted to note that I can I respect and understand the training piece? Maybe, maybe not the Commissioner should be responsible for training, but I think it would be really helpful to have somewhere that about the collaboration because DOC really does have a lot of the experts in those fields. But I just wanted to just note that. And what section is of law was that again? Four zero three. Twenty eight four zero three.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I know, but where you were indicating that there are some specific One through five.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Those are really specific around, and it's not in the bill. Yeah. And we started written six. So it's four zero three one through five. Yes. Those are very specific to how the commissioner is gonna supervise individuals and so forth.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Okay. So I wonder, while DOC is under the Secretary of Human Services, I think that's something that we could vet. Yeah, no, absolutely.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I just wanted to throw it out there just

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: To know what existing law is. Think that's something we could vet. Mean, if we Absolutely. If the overarching powers and responsibility is with the secretary, DOC is part of that. And then we could delineate certain parts of DOC still providing supervision that would be needed. We can work with our elected council and figure that out. If we do, we'll probably have a new draft. We'll definitely have all your folks back for that.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I did have some feedback on page two, line two and three. I would recommend striking the words making determinations of parole. I feel that it's the board has its own decision making tool. I feel that if DOC is advising training the board and how to make their determinations, I think that could pose some conflict. So I would just recommend striking that part because we do have an evidence based decision making tool. However, the other areas I feel DOC has a lot of expertise in those areas. And if they would be willing to collaborate with the training, that would be very helpful.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I know we have DOC in the room. Were you prepared to testify on this at all? I think if you have any specific questions for us, we're happy to answer them. I didn't come prepared. Okay. Let's schedule some more testimony on this and it might be good to have the secretary of the agency in, as well as DOC as well. The board, of course.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: The other thing around the term limits, I I struck this. I had this conversation with the appointments member at the governor's office at one point who is no longer there. This kind of came from me. I stated previously in testimony that I'm kind of neutral on this. However, I agree to maybe too few and maybe more of a three or a four term. I am just I I struggle and I appreciate the testimony that has been stated, but being able to have diversity and have the ability to turn over the board, I think, is very beneficial. But I do agree that consecutive terms may be too little. That's a hard thing to grapple. It's hard to grapple with. The problem is that I've seen, in my tenure, I've seen board members be not reappointed, but I've also seen board members be reappointed due to just some philosophies of the governor. And I think the governor is responsible for the appointments. Of input into the appointments, and we've started to have a little bit more, which has been nice and be able to help vet out and narrow down the pool a little bit.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So it's been helpful for the board members to have some input in terms of what is needed when you're looking at appointing new members. These are the qualities we're looking for. This is the expertise we're looking for.

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

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: go back to training. Are you and your staff getting do you

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: have enough professional development opportunities and funding?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: So our staff, we have the I would say I lack a little bit in that professional development. I would love to have more experience in a lot of these areas to help educate the board. I think it would be very important to have some kind of training curriculum for the board members. Yes, we do have the structured decision making framework training. We do have some training, but it would be really nice to have a training curriculum that

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: You're talking for admin?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: The admin, I think, for the most part, I provide a lot of training to them. We also have the state training through the state, through the Center for Professional I can't remember. It's TAPs. I don't remember the acronym name. So we do have access to some of that training.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: What about federal APPI for you all?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I tend to have enough funding for me to go with the admin staff. It's more board level issues, not necessarily administrative level issues.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Which entity you said, Troy? APPI.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: APAI, Association of Paroling Authorities International.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Just did hear. Sorry. EAI. APAI. There's APPI, too.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: It's APPA, Association of Probation and Parole I don't remember. It's American. I've been to that conference before. That's a

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: But APAI.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: That's a helpful conference to have, to be able to have funding to have some exposure there.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: APAI, you're talking.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. So more fun.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I think that was the last thing that I have. I just wanted to point those couple of things up.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So, I'm wondering if the best way to proceed on this is for the We're gonna look at the work because we've had some suggestions today. I don't know where the committee is gonna fall on this. I think in order to understand where we're going to fall, we're going to need testimony on those specific recommends. And I would ask if we could have a draft done to incorporate some of what was stated today, some of the recommendations, and flag those changes for that. Does that make sense to you, Hillary? Sort of?

[Hillary (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. I will need to recommend the committee about which of the recommendations made today should be reflected in the event.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I can go through that. I think the big one is Secretary of the Agency of Human Services would be the big one.

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: Testimony there first.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, yeah. I think in order for us to figure out for testimony so people have something to respond to, can actually see a new draft

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: with

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: these proposed changes and have that flagged, that we have not made those decisions.

[Hillary (Legislative Counsel)]: So I think of the recommendations mentioned today, all except for that one are straightforward to implement for the same reason that in a draft, for the same reason that Mary Jane mentioned that the rest of Section four zero three discusses with the Department of Corrections. Implementing the change recommended by Chair George may be best done elsewhere. So we might need some time to figure out the best way to implement that change. Are

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: you including converting this to a line item?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's a conversation we need to have with Trevor. So I guess I

[Hillary (Legislative Counsel)]: would say the specific page and line recommendations made today are straightforward to make in the ground.

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: I have to

[Hillary (Legislative Counsel)]: be more precise. I believe the line item piece is there is some language for that in the Senate bill that I mentioned during the So that is something the committee could look at or use as a discussion point.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Do you do that as a side part for us in terms to know what's in the Senate and a discussion point? Not included in the new draft, but kind of have another

[Hillary (Legislative Counsel)]: can use the Senate draft and point to the committee where that is.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That would be helpful. So I'm thinking, what were some of the other recommendations that there was a collaboration between the chair of the board and the parole board director and Term limits. Term Term limits limits. Is a flag. Need to flag that to have a policy decision on that. One option that Mary Jane put in maybe it's long if we do do term limits, it might be longer than two consecutive terms.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: How do they become going to teeth?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, that's your line. That will be language. The Senate bill has some language for that.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: It does.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's what Hillary just mentioned. Do have a question? Mary Jane recommended on the top of page two, line two, As well that the board has, when they make their decisions, it's based on evidence based decisions and to have some outside entity making those determinations. Right? You do that more internally. And she recommended taking out the term making determinations. What else am I missing here?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Oh, Mary

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Jane also said she wants some agency to have in federal appointments. Right? And it's been, like, you know, second page, line eight, somewhere in there. Yeah. Is that true enough?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I think it would I struggle being that the governor appoints all board members. I don't know what is I haven't done enough research to know how other board members are appointed. I know that there's been application process. There's been, we've used an application process. I know there are some board members who are a full time state employee. So I know those get posted out on the job, on the employment website. I don't know what other boards do. Interested I'd to maybe look a little bit to see how much input. I know some other boards do have a little bit more specificity around input from the director or so forth, which I know is also difficult because I'm also appointed as well. So I think it's very helpful if the chair and the director have some input in that because they know that they're the subject matter experts. They are aware of the topic. They are aware of the schedule. They are aware of the commitment. We can brief a lot of that in some of those. Chairman George has done that when he has talked to individuals on the phone prior to us even submitting a name. We will do like a pseudo interview sometimes and just kind of lay it out for individuals.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Does the 5th Floor reach out to either one of you when there are openings to really find out the parameters of what they need to look at as well? Do they reach out to either one of you?

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Depends on the administration.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay. I get that. I get it. That's a good answer.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: My follow-up to that is we're very proactive. When we know we have a vacancy, we will get ahold of them. We're not going to wait for them to call us. And they've been good about giving us the list, so in the last couple of years, as M. J. Has had, prior to that, there have been a couple of years where we just get a name thrown at us and say, here's your new board member, and call them up and talk to them about what's expected and how we're going to proceed and so forth. And on at least one occasion, they decided, I don't want to do this.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I would say Tom is a perfect example of that. We didn't even know Tom was being considered as a board member. And the next thing we knew

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Lucky for Tom.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Here's your board member. And I'm like, oh, okay, I know Tom. Yeah. Right. I know. Well,

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: yeah, what bothered me on that was I assumed that the director and the chair were aware that, you know, I was being considered. And I was when they told me this, I thought I was Here

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: comes now.

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: I I was kinda shocked. I felt kinda bad in a way. So that's not what my intent was not to be appointed without some input from the board or the

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: chair. Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, this really lays out. It depends on the administration. Right? It really depends on they lay out, but we do need to have some broad structure in terms of the board having some input with the administration in terms of what skills are you looking for? What knowledge are you looking for in a new person? So it might be worth just to draft up some broad language for us to vet a

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: It's little good to understand that, as this committee does. But at the same time, as I said, we're not bashful because we know what it takes for someone to be prepared to do this. So we'll push our way into the conversation somehow if we But you thought But you were very lucky because we knew Tom. We worked with him for years when he was at the Marble Valley Correctional Center. So that was a great find for us. I had to convince him last year to apply for a second term. Yeah, Third that worked very

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: term. Year may not be Right. I was just gonna say the next chair or the next members may not be so

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: You're right.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I'm just looking ahead. There'll be different folks sitting in your seat. There'll be different folks in the administration. Now may be a really good time just to lay out in statute that the does have some input here or some way of relaying what knowledge is needed in skills of the new person on the board.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: I have some draft job descriptions, one that we use when we recruit board members, if you'd be interested in seeing those. I have one that I drafted for the chair that has not been utilized, but it does outline a little bit more of what some of those duties are, if you'd be interested in seeing those.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Would that be helpful, Hillary, or too much?

[Hillary (Legislative Counsel)]: Think we're happy to see any language that you'd like to share. I think I will be able to prepare a draft with some of these changes. Other changes will just be discussion points because at this stage, there's not enough to draft specific language from. But that way, the committee can take some specific language in the amendment and then the discussion points for their testimony.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: One really simple thing to look at would be the language for the appointment of the director. And it definitely includes that the governor shall appoint the director for a term of four years, but there's a clause in there that says, with consultation of the Board. So the Board, in my experience, we've done this three times now. Mary Jane is the third Director. The Board has interviewed, gone through the process of talking with applicants for the director's position, and then ultimately recommending to the governor who that person should be, and it's been supporting. And we've been lucky because some of the applicants, quite frankly, were either folks that were just looking for a political appointment, a place to park themselves for a little while, but had no interest in really doing what the director's position entails. I think the same thing could be said for the board members, if it included direction from, or support from the director, something along those lines. Just a simple phrase in there.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Me, that makes sense, but nothing is simple. But if we could at least vet this a little bit to do that. Anything else before we move on here? So, one of the big issues, and now that we have Trevor in the room with appropriations, one of the big issues that we're grappling is the parole board is under DOC, and the money for the parole board gets funneled through DOC. And they're a board that has some autonomy from DOC. And there is thinking that it might be better to have them have a separate line item. Money is not funneled through DOC, goes directly to the parole board. And the parole board can advocate for their board and the work that is needed directly with the 5th Floor. Because right now, with their budget, it's basically submitted to DOC, and it's up to DOC to figure out what their budget is. The flip side of that is they get some current administrative support from DOC, particularly Mary Jane's office. The chair of the parole board has recommended an additional staff member in Mary Jane's office in the administrative part. So, there's some pluses and minuses, but we're kind of vetting that a little bit.

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: That's a positive discussion. Right. I understand what you're trying to accomplish, and I can go ask the right questions to the right people and figure out what the options might be.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we just want

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (House Appropriations)]: to If you want to move forward.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, we want to put that on your radar because I have a feeling from the committee that they want to seriously look at this as having the parole board as a separate line item and not have the money funneled through DOC, will be connected through DOC. Folks, I'm not seeing anything.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: I'm not sure

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: if something's correct.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Think I heard that if that's the case, then another full time person to administrate it is gonna be required. That's right.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And they need that now, even now, regardless. Correct, Dean?

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. You need that now regardless because of the workload. Did you add something, Will?

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: Well, kind of with Kevin because that was originally what was said was that it would cost more money if we needed, you know, to make it a separate line.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But right now, the way their budget is put together, they really don't know. They don't have a say. It just basically is part of the DOC budget. If DOC is being told stay within a 1%, 2% increase, They look at everything and they just write their recommendation to the 5th Floor of October, and the throw board isn't even at the table to discuss what their needs are. So that's what So we're kind of looking at that. I don't know where we're gonna end up. Okay? Anything else from the parole board, we'll get a new draft. We'll send that out, have an opportunity for DOC to weigh in and the pro board, the secretary of the agency of human services and DOC on that. Anything else before we transition to the general fund BAA with the WellPath recommends? Anything else? Thank you, Dean.

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: Nice to everybody again.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Care. Mary Jane, thank you. Okay. Let's shift gears.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: For this.

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: it shift gears. So organized. Don't know what I did. Trevor, what have you found, if anything, that welfare, the staffing, the 3,100,000.0 yesterday, the conversation we had. Sure. Come on up.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: I have four minutes.

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: Get back in committee at two four.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Sorry. It's

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: Sorry. Are you looking for this? Did you circulate what I sent you?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No. Okay. Because we read it and didn't understand it.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (House Appropriations)]: Well, why don't I just give a couple minutes, and then you can actually ask me to come back and go over detail if you want me to.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: This is a 3,100,000.0 for the wealth management document. They had it yesterday.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Yeah. This?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, that one.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (House Appropriations)]: I some information to few folks here. They can share it with you at some point, and I can come back. There were two pieces of information. One is, as I mentioned yesterday, by the way, Trevor Swirld, patient representative of Swirler, that every department agency goes through a closeout at the end of fiscal year. And one of the documents that the Destiny Commissioner, Kristen Coller, sent to me was those items that were on the consult. And there's a whole list of them there, and you can look at those. And if people have questions, Jerry, you want me to come back in tomorrow for a few minutes? I can walk through that. For me, I can't do that in three or four minutes. But as far as the 3.1 for the invoicing and the shift in, it was essentially basically In some ways, opportunity, but they decided to move the invoice into twenty sixth to free up some general funds for payroll. Okay? When you look at it, I'm assuming that the number I got here was 100, their spend was almost $141,000,000 in personal services, which is mostly your payroll piece of it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's for all of DOC?

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (House Appropriations)]: Yeah, all of DOC. And from a budgetary standpoint in the FY 2025 budget, it was only 137,100,000.0. So you can see the delta there. So they didn't have enough money to cover. So what they did is, so they moved the invoice for WellPath or got moved because of so many other issues. It's not clear how that happened. But anyway, so it freed up that money. And so they used that money to cover the payroll costs, that differential, plus some invoices that they didn't wanna carry over debt by '26. So that's what happened. They verified it and the numbers are on the information I sent.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: On the information you sent. So they ended up, that's the balance that they ended up having to pay for the invoices, the Wellpad in FY '25, they moved it to the

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: FY '26. Yeah, because they still owed it. They still had to pay for it, so they had to add it to the budget for FY 'twenty six. That's why.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So when you were putting together the FY 'twenty six budget last year, you didn't know that was gonna happen? They didn't know that was gonna happen?

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: I didn't know because they didn't tell me that or they didn't know. I assume they didn't know. I mean, I don't know that, maybe Haley knows the answer to this question, but it's possible with the change in census across the system, that that's impacted payroll costs. And so that wouldn't have been anticipated necessarily.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: would make sense to me.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, that would make sense. But some of the real increase is gonna happen in the FY '26. We are halfway through the '26 budget.

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: Well, particularly the new health services. Are

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: people kind of clear on this? Yes.

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: And if anyone individually wants to catch me about the carry forward stuff, it's interesting to understand how these work outside of just policy.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, the budgeting is very, very different. And one thing that I'm gonna do with committee, John Duffy from Galfetti, he works with you folks. I heard he went into general and housing yesterday, the day before, and really had a good conversation about how budgeting works and the structure of it. And I wanna schedule him in next week here to really talk about that.

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: Right. Any questions?

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

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Thank you, Trevor. Appreciate I appreciate it. That was quick.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But now you know what we're thinking about the parole board.

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: I know what you're thinking, and I can ask questions. I'll be talking. Yes.

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

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: Alright. Thank you. Bye. Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Thank you. Key thing is he didn't say there's any money available. Can't hear you, miss. You said the key thing is he didn't say there was any money available.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: No. That's we know that. No. But you could change the governance so that at least they have a voice in future years.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Oh, I agree. Right?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: So if they're kind of a separate entity or a clearly separate entity, at least they can make their own appeals in subsequent years.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I'm calling out a day for the three. We're on the floor at three. We are probably going to be tied up on the floor for a while. Yep. We have well, you know, can we do the reports thing in ten minutes? We gotta get this to DevOps because if they don't do it to DevOps by tomorrow, they're gonna delete all of these. So this is a different This one is more appropriate to us. I didn't hear you.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: The sheet you had been using yesterday was underhanded to report to the PDF.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Anybody can think it's a little complicated.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: In fairness, it didn't say right on it. It was at the risk of the reader. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: let's quickly go through this. So agency and mental resources, orphan water system implementation. We fund some of this through the capital bill. Do we want to extend this? Do we want to repeal it? Or do we wanna retain it? Or do we wanna spend a little more time trying to find out a little bit more of it? It's expired. It's twenty seventh. May?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yeah. It expired.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So it was gone. Are you okay? It's gone.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: There's a pocket.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Every single one of these issues, they're all gone. Every one of them is expired.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's expired. No. It should be gone.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Well, Anadarko appears done.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: This is bizarre.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yep. Let's ex let's get rid of all those.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Unless they're still getting them. We're not

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yeah. And it's the same on the back page. Yeah. They're all expired.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: And they don't seem familiar.

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: I mean, I'm new here. Haven't seen but you guys have been here

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: a long time.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, remember some of these, but we've done this every year for the last two years, into the course.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: But I'm fairly certain that had I seen these particular reports last year, that the same comments would have been made by one of us.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, we're not that original.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: We don't have worry about temps and corrections anymore. That's a really Like I was working at BSEA when that came in.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So capital ten year program plan when submitting a budget. A plan due.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Okay. Try not doing it then. Tap as we mentioned. Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Please just talk.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Most of us.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Tucker about this. Has Tucker Anderson put this against

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: me? Organizing this

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: desk. Mhmm.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah. The other one looked more accurate, honestly. Somebody

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: Special last week. Long have been We have to tell Bubba, we can have it tomorrow.

[Tom Gifford (Member, Vermont Parole Board)]: If he was can come in tomorrow.

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: Gonna

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Quickly see if he can come in sometime tomorrow.

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: What? I was just gonna add. You've been here for

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: years? Forever. In this committee? Yeah. I

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: mean, I I obviously, half of us are new, and he's been here four years. I'm not sure. Did he look familiar? Yeah.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I mean, they don't look familiar to me because I

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They did to me because we fund storm water. We used to fund cell towers. Fund portable water and wastewater stuff.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Curates their approaches.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Shelters funded by capital. I think we did a few of those through the capital bill, the DHCB, a while back.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: The state curator I worded out. I mean, don't remember Zelman's approaches based on her tenure here.

[William “Will” Greer (Member)]: I have no historical knowledge of how long. Something

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: else. The only one I remember is the program plan. That's the only one I remember. I

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: don't even remember that.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Well, I other positive note. I saw David.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: He told me it's a gold standard replacement gloves

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Let's see if we can squeeze him in for fifteen minutes or something. Yeah. We're due on the floor. If we're done at a reasonable time, which I don't think we will be because we do have a full amendment to you, probably a few roll calls. Let's just play it by ear. Okay?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: This afternoon? Yes. K.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Because we have Hillary just to walk us through finish walking us through H 550. And we purposely scheduled lunch council in case we have to buckle. K? So keep an eye on us, John. Okay. Good. Go off of YouTube.

[Dean George (Chair, Vermont Parole Board)]: Yes.