Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Welcome

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: back, folks. This is House Corrections and Institutions Committee. It is Tuesday, January 27. We are shifting gears. We're going to have a discussion on the sheriff transports, particularly for folks who are going from a correctional facility to court. Could be from court back to a correctional facility. I'm going to term this as Sheriff Transport, Prison Transport one hundred one. There are members of the committee that have asked to have a better understanding of how these transports operate, how you may think it's very simple. It goes from one facility to the court, and it should be pretty easy to schedule. Should be pretty easy to transport folks back and forth. It's not. Some have been around this for of years. Trying to make it easy, but I'd like to have a lot more of the background and how the process really works. Guess I'm just going leave it at that. I don't know who would be the best person to start with on this in terms of giving a real overview. Would it be you, Tim?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Happy to kick off. Why don't you And the details of a day in the life sort of thing.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Day in the life.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Also, have chair of cooling here the in room as well. It's just

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: To be with us, our Capitol Police. Welcome back. I've been a transport officer for fifteen years. So And then you can talk about real life experience. Correct? Because that's what we really wanna know.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Yep. You can interrogate them if you like, not in jury.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Oh, no. I think

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Mark is interested this.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Mark is loving that.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Oh, yeah. You you gotta have fun.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: So, Tim, why don't you introduce yourself? Tim Leader is Dumont, executive director

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: of the Department of States Attorneys and Sheriffs. And I also brought some I know I'm not supposed to do this, but have some printouts, one page each.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Same card.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: One is an example of the amount of time it takes to get from Chittenden to different facilities in the state. You can inverse that. Right? If you're in Newport going to Chittenden, Sheriff Harlow is from Orleans County, where the Newport facility is, and Mark Coolen is in the county without a facility. Although I told him to reopen the backside of the building, but he refused. So but anyway, different types of dynamics. So this piece of paper will just show you the time it takes to get from different perspectives. It's on your website. There we go. Thank you, Tate. We're doing what do want? Second piece is buried in some data I sent you. And it's just a snapshot of the number of transports we did the last completed fiscal year, f y twenty five. And I'll start on this. Yep. So just a big big snapshot for the deposit states. Oh, yeah. Mhmm.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: So they don't go to court in the court that's nearest to the facility that they are housed in?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: It it will it will depend. It will depend on where DOC has located them. And oftentimes, it will depend also on things like medical and mental health needs, that sort of thing. Obviously, there's only one female facility. The daily DOC count that Jordan Pasha put out for the Department of Corrections that the DOC tells you the populations in each of the facilities. But just sort of stepping back for a second, why are state employees that work for our department working out of sheriff's offices at the county? We used to have county jails, and sheriff Norris from Franklin County is, I think, the last person to operate a county jail, male senator Norris. 2007, I think, is the last time, madam chair, that a sheriff was operating a jail facility or 2000 what's that? Addison. And Addison Sheriff Coons. So those were the last two, Addison County and Franklin. But now our detainees and our sentenced individuals are all in the same facilities together, meaning those who have been convicted and those who are presumed innocent are in the same spaces.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Let me stop you there. So the way corrections used to be set up until we went to a unified system in the seventies, so it was in the seventies, we had regional facilities. And they were owned by the county. And they were overseen by the sheriff. So sentence folks were not housed in those facilities. They were housed at the state facility that was in Windsor. So once they were sentenced, they would leave that county lockup to go to the state facility, which was in Windsor. So if a detainee was housed at the Chittenden facility or housed at the Rutland facility, not even the corrections, but if they were housed at the county jail in Chittenden County or the county jail in Windsor County or the county jail in Rutland County, the detainee, they weren't sentenced, they were being held, They were being held as a county owned facility that was overseen by the sheriff, which was usually pretty near the courthouse. So you didn't have to do a lot of traffic. When we unified the system, in theory, Chittenden Regional Facility was a male facility. St. Johnsbury was regional. And Rutland was regional. We had one in Woodstock that we leased from the state. That's where, in theory, we were going to hold the detainees. The sentence folks would go to Windsor and St. Lawrence. That was in theory. So, you're getting into some transports there, but they're more localized. And over time, we have now meshed detainees with sentence folks. So that our Rutland facility and our St. Johnsbury facility are they tend to be more regional. There may be some sentence folks there as well, but they tend to be more regional. The Chittenden facility holds regional and sentence. The St. Albans facility holds those detainees and sentence. The Newport facility holds detainees and sentenced. And the Springfield facility was purposely built to hold both because we didn't renew the lease in the Woodstock facility. So now we have a unified system. We don't have county government. We don't have county walk ups for detainees. So that's kind of the history there. And it all started about mid seventies, early to mid seventies.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Now I don't need to testify at all because it's No. No. Well, it's much of it. No. But it's

[Kevin Winter, Member]: all that. One of

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: the things I wanted just to to say because that history is sets us to the stage of where we're at today. And it really is important to know that the sheriffs right now are paying for vehicles, the guns, the restraints, the insurance of the cars, maintenance of those cars, detailing those cars. We are paying for state employees that do state transports out of this department, their salaries and benefits. But everything else gets paid for by the sheriffs, except for things like overtime, which is a huge issue right now for our department with respect to the transport program. We're at 75% for this fiscal year for overtime. And you can do the math about where we're at in the fiscal year. That's not good. That's why we have a BAA request. In terms of what the program does and our emphasis, the job duties are set by our department or the transport deputies. However, the judges and the courts are really dictating the daily lives, setting the schedules, who's gonna show up where at what court, and that's that back and forth. And that local relationship that our sheriffs and our transport teams have with court staff is the most important thing to the operation of our system. And both of these sheriffs are doing that work and the sheriff on screen as well in terms of that local relationship with the court staff, regardless of who the judge is, in terms of working things out. But the program moves in the opinion of statute and practice, the highest risk individuals in the state. Every person that the program transports is either held for a crime of violence, life offense, or with that held without bail, if you look in the daily count from DOC, or those who are a flight risk because they're being held on bail. Per se, the individuals that we're moving are not individuals where there's low risk involved. We have a pressure coming from the courts, the cases coming in. Nineteen thousand criminal cases, 22,000 total cases. The last detainee count from yesterday, I didn't look at today's count, but five seventy three state detainees. There's 25 FTEs, full time employees that do transports. Four vacancies right now in our department, which is also related to the overtime. If you do the math, 600 detainees, 21 people on the roads, that's a ton of work for those individuals to do when you're thinking about speedy trial, presumption of innocence, and their ability to get in front of a judge. And one of the huge pressures we face is the competing needs. So we have a scheduled sentencing three months out. DOC is working on the PSI, and it's a felony case the person's pleading out. They gotta get to that sentencing. It's their last it's their sentencing. Meanwhile, a drug bust happens, and we'll use Windsor as an example in White River Junction. Eight people get picked up. They need to be emergency arraigned the same day with the same number of staff. That turns into a huge competing pressure cooker of what are we gonna do. So then our department really gets involved, and the transport teams get involved. We're gonna have to take in terms of what each local team does. We're gonna have to get a Chittenden County transport to bring one of the women down to White River. We're gonna have to steal one of Mark's folks to go up to Saint Jay to grab somebody. So we work as a team. And then we always have to think about how are we prioritizing our work in the field. In my opinion, you all know there's civil and family divisions. The criminal division is the primary focus of our department, cases where people are presumed innocent and their liberty liberty interests are at stake. So I have had issues where judges have attempted to use our transport teams for civil and family cases. Those are cases that are important to our judicial system. But in terms of my emphasis and the job duties that I set at the department, people who are presumed innocent and detained who really interact with your jurisdiction are our primary focus. Some judges have not appreciated that I have informed them often through our local sheriffs that in that toss-up of civil case, family case, criminal case, the criminal case wins, in my opinion. It doesn't mean the other cases are not important. If you look at one of your sheets in terms of one of the major pressures to our system right now from a cost perspective, there's really two things. Sheet or you The between two facilities sheet, the one that from Chittenden to a different location. Exactly. If you have an 8AM hearing in Chittenden County and you need to go to Newport, that's a four hour situation. So you have to leave at 4AM if you're a transport deputy, which which will kick in for most folks over time. Let's say we had bad weather like we had Sunday, Monday. So all day Sunday, I'm on the phone with judge and Terry about what are we doing. Two hour delay, at least our folks are gonna be driving in daylight hours in bad weather instead of dark hours in bad weather. But we had a two hour delay, took a lot of logistics to get that done, we appreciate that coordination. But that is an overtime expense. We are also trying to move more cases more quickly through the system right now. Chittenden is an example. So we are trying to say no to almost no cases in the criminal division right now. Which means that we're saying yes to long days for our transport teams. And if you look at that schedule, and we have this for every county. If you wanna know how to get to and from your county, you have this sheet for every county. It's a fairly large document, so I use Chittenden as an example. And everyone has to go to Chittenden at some point because there's a female facility there. But that's a huge pressure. Over time, moving cases, that criminal court backlog, and a very limited number of state staff. And we do 99.9% of the criminal transports, probably 99.999%. There's maybe one that's happened from other agencies, but we are that. We are a resource to do that, but we don't have enough resources to do it all the time.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: So Tim, can I just interrupt? When a chair is doing a transport that's picked up from a facility, is it just one chair from the vehicle or is it two?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: It it sort of depends on the situation. Best practice would be two, but we are not resource for me to mandate two in every in every situation. Right now, Poulin is doing large number of transports, it's always doing the car from from Washington County. And sheriff Harlow can talk about the experience of what she's seen in talking with the other sheriffs as well. I have mandated that for female detainees, there needs to be two in the car. I did receive some pushback from that, but I based on what's happened at the facility in in Chittenden County, I I think that we owe it to folks to make sure there's a witness in the vehicles coming in and out of that facility and and not just one on one. Another huge pressure that's historic in a way, and all the sheriffs can talk about this in much more detail than me, the loss of per diem workforce. So we have our state transport deputies. Those are state employees that work for our department.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: And how many of those again?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: State transport deputies. We have 25 FTEs. 21 are filled right now. Is that correct? Also, should say Lauren Clemens is here, our director of operations and labor. And she will keep me honest with them, often need the numbers. But we have 25 FTEs, and we have some vacancies right now. The per diem workforce is what I call our peer county deputies. Oftentimes, historically, we're able to hire someone who still kept their law enforcement certification to come in and help when we had gaps. And just based on some numbers we ran, if you look at FY 2019, we used ten thousand hours per diem. This and the last completed fiscal year, we used 3,300. That means that we've lost 65 from our per diem workforce. That means there has been no additional bolstering up other than one unfunded position we received last year for the transport program. All of it has remained with that state employee workforce, meaning the there isn't a per diem group generally that's filling the gaps. Those per diem folks used to fill the gaps when we used to have a larger per diem workforce. And that could have been as simple as our transport team is on the road right now. The judge wants someone brought in on an emergency basis, and we would call the per diem folks to come in and make that transport happen. So that's a pressure on the system. And it also is added to our overtime as well because we have the same group of people doing more work. And we're dealing with 14 presiding judges in the 14 counties who set the tone, schedule and pace with their judicial staff. I wanted to say some good news. Despite a lot of pressures right now, is in about half of the courts, our sheriffs are either in discussion or have completed some discussions with block scheduling. If you look on the sheet, the Chittenden sheet, you'll see we provided recommendations. The only time we recommend an 8AM hearing is the Chittenden facility to the Chittenden Courthouse because it's not that far away. Probably say the same for Orleans as well to their facility. But other than that, it's better for the defendant and the system and the courts, everyone involved, to have certainty of basically 10AM to 2PM. That means you're not showing up shackled at 8AM after having been strip searched, having gotten out of your cell all day in the car, and waiting all day for your time. End of two provides certainty. Correct. Prevents unnecessary overtime. There's necessary overtime, but there's also unnecessary overtime. Prevents unnecessary overtime. And also the defendant knows, I'm gonna be seen between ten and two, and then I'm gonna go back. It also tells our our sheriffs and our transport deputies when their detention, their temporary jailer role is going to end and they can get back on the road and be available for the next emergency. So Wyndham County has come to an agreement, which is very helpful because it's the most trials in the state with a block scheduling program. What's exempt from block scheduling is the emergencies, the twenty four hour rules. Everyone twenty four hour rules when you say, don't want to get a rain today. I want to get a rain tomorrow. As well as trial events and pretrials. That means status conferences and motions and all that block schedule. That's when it should happen. And Judge Zone A and Terry Coursons have been helping us to beat the drum on that, but they are still deferential to local judges. And so we're working at the county level on that. And some places are higher need than others. For example, Washington County doesn't have a detention facility. So they are really urgently in process with that. Orleans does have a facility. So it's less important there in terms of best practice. But Wyndham County was a big county to do it. Bennington County is a big county to do it because there's not a close a facility close by. And there's other examples. Washington, obviously, being another. And then there's places that in bad weather, you just can't really get there. Like, Orange County is a pretty difficult courthouse to get to if there's bad weather during the floods. Took a couple hours to get there sometimes even from this part of the world. So we're we're trying our best on that front. We'll keep you abreast of the progress on block scheduling. And also at some point, Sheriff Cohen and Sheriff Carla can talk to you about some of the historical difficulties. We've got a judge who's willing to help us on this. And then that judge rotates out, and we start from scratch in terms of how to do things, which is a part of our our system. But judge Zone A, Terry Coursons, and I should mention Lori Canty as well, court operations, have been partners. Another piece of of good news for the future, when we have competing transport, I think I joked that I almost got held in contempt in a certain county because I told the judge that the criminal transports are more important. We've come up with a solution so that I don't find myself in that position as much. With administrative order 18, this is how we used to resolve lawyer conflicts. In too many courthouses at once, I need help. The judge needs to tell me where I I can go. We're gonna do the same for transports. So if we're if sheriff pool and sheriff Harlow are trying to figure out we got a PCR hearing, which I don't which I think should be handled by different agency, but I'll leave that for a different day. PCR Post conviction relief hearing. And we have a bunch of criminal transports and their competing needs on the same day. We now have the ability to send a note, a request to chief superior court judge to resolve which one gets priority. So they make the call, separation of powers remain intact, and they decide where the transport goes. We hope not to use that that much, and we actually hope that the order just put in place by the Supreme Court will send a message to judges and also internal actors, including in our department at times, that if we need to, we'll exercise that and get myself, the chief support court judge, the sheriff involved. But we hope not to exercise that a whole lot. It's a it's a stop gap in part because of limitation on resources and transport staff. But it's basically too many places to go at once. You tell us where to go because we don't have 50 transport deputies. Sheriff Anderson was downstairs last week and said we needed 56 state transport deputies. I agree. Right now, we have 25. So we we need to work with the the resources that we have. I also posted on your website a memo that I will kindly read. It's only a few paragraphs long concerning title 24. Title 24 lists a whole bunch of entities that can perform transports under section two ninety six title 24. It includes every law enforcement officer in the state. It includes constables even if they're not certified. And includes sheriffs even if they're not certified. It's only one of those right now. And it includes every deputy sheriff and the Department of Corrections. Right now, criminal transports are basically solely on us. But in every transport order that I've seen, it lists the whole list. And so when we are feeling pressure, if the state is not gonna provide more resources, more overtime, more state transport deputies, then that whole list needs to become involved. And this goes again to a solution base. In Chittenden County right now, we've engaged with the governor's office in Vermont Emergency Management. When our state transport deputies say they are too busy, we technically, right now, at least until February, in the accountability docket, which we hope extends in many ways. Vermont Emergency Management will send out a note, and other law enforcement agencies will respond with, I can help with that transport. That is potentially a path for the future across the state in terms of when we are at capacity, what we can do to have existing resources move people around. Because it is not fair to defendants for us to say no to their transports, but we are having to do that at times. It is also unfair to the system and to taxpayers for detained individuals to meet their attorneys for the first time in court after they've been detained for three weeks. Just not a huge problem. It does happen. That's also because of the workload on defense counsel as well, which I want to recognize. So it's not necessarily on those defense attorneys, but it is something that we observe that does happen occasionally. That's the first time they've met when we do the transport. And historically, 4,035 transports the last full calendar fiscal year May not seem like a lot for people that have been involved in the system actually for a long time, but when it's only being performed by state transport deputies, that's where a lot of my concern lies. And we hope to continue to have good interactions with with the courts on controlling some of the intangibles, schedule and that sort of thing. I was very encouraged, by the way, to talk with Stephanie Galvin on the way in, our budget analyst for the governor's office. And we said we're going in to talk about transports. She said, how's it going with block schedule? So first of all, that's a great budget analyst that understands pressure for us. But second, I think it's not just a financial measure for us. It's a good practice for defendants to know when they're gonna be seen by the judge. I've unfortunately witnessed people wait eight to nine hours in in detention at a courthouse and not be seen. It's not every instance, but every time we do that, it's not not okay. So that was really it for me. There's a lot of data I sent online, and I wanna emphasize we're at 75% of our overtime that we have budgeted this year. We have a BAA request that will help, and we hope that that that moves forward. And the overtime budget right now is sort of like a Pac Man eating the rest of our budget in terms of our ability to hire for our vacancies. If we can relieve some of that pressure in conversations with appropriations right now, that'll open up our ability to hire for those vacancies. Because if we have less people, the overtime budget only increases because we have less people doing more work.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Please know if you ever get arrested for contempt. They all come to this

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: vacancy It might need some bail.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: So, Tim, I'm looking at this chart, and the amount of time on the row is one block, and then the time for the hearings. But I got two questions. It takes longer than that for the sheriff doing the transport because they have to get to the facility. They have to work with booking. Right? So it's not like if again, chitening that the person has to go down and say to Rutland.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: It's These are best case scenarios.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: It's not just the three and a half hour block one way. That's one way. Because the sheriff has to get to the facility first. And how long do they usually stay at the facility?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: That will depend on what each individual facility does. And also, we have been surprised at times and not had the people at the facilities where we thought that they were, but we are working to improve some of those issues as well. And also, historically, and I should say this because I know Haley and I have talked about it a lot and as well as the prior and current commissioner, DOC used to move people because they had more capacity between facilities for an upcoming hearing. They need about two weeks notice now to do that, and sometimes we just

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: can't space. So then the person gets in the vehicle, then you have that drive time.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Now you've got the block scheduling, which you hope stays. What happens to that sheriff during that time? Do they leave?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: In most instances, they are the jailer at the courthouse. In Washington County, where I've practiced extensively, the two transport deputies for a person being held without bail, for example, would stay in the courtroom with the individual during their hearing and would essentially monitor them when they were in detention at the courthouse. But they're with the person the whole time. I mean, they figure out creative ways to use the facilities, etcetera, when they need to, Sheriff Poon and Harlow can detail. But they stay with people all day and they spend a lot of time together. And

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: then if they stay with the block scheduling, sometimes they don't. So then that goes later in the day, which they then get back to the facility later. How long do they have to stay at the facility to drop the person off? Does it just you open the door and let them in?

[Kevin Winter, Member]: No, there's a there's a

[Mark Pullen, Washington County Sheriff]: there's a hand.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: It's a hand. Yes.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Yeah. Hey.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Right over here. Here he is. Five. Guys.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: And we do have a great partnership with DOC in terms of how that exchange works. And a lot of our folks are really familiar with the DOC staff that help with those transfers. Another thing, right, clothing is sort of thing people ask this question all the time, but occasionally, defense attorneys and family members try to bring clothing for people at the courthouses because of the presumption of innocence at a trial, and you don't want the in the the jumpsuit. That all needs to happen at the DOC facility. So it's another good excuse to visit your client at a DOC facility to get them what they need for their upcoming trial. And DOC launders the clothes, make sure there's no paraphernalia. But occasionally someone shows up at the courthouse and is like to the transport deputy, Hey, I got some clothes. And I'm like, Yeah, no. Just the ins and outs. But I really want to make sure there's enough time for Oh, we have enough time. Yeah.

[Conor Casey, Member]: Tim, I'm always worried that we give you positions, but not the money to fill the positions necessarily.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: You did.

[Conor Casey, Member]: Yep. So just repeating what you said, the overtime is such that it's eating up enough budget that we're at risk of not filling. Is it one position or more than that? It's four positions.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Four positions? One of those four I should mention, I should have mentioned earlier, is an unfunded position that you helped us get last year. It's unfunded. But it's unfunded. But we did get an additional position last year unfunded. And so we're trying to get at least 50% of the funding for that in this year's BAA. That's a pending request and appropriations right now. But actually, unfunded position, three that are technically funded, but because of the overtime.

[Conor Casey, Member]: Right, that's gonna be Yes. Okay. Well, I guess with that, when you look at the governor's recommend budget going forward there, we're really worried. This committee is worried about the sustainability of the accountability court up there. It sounds like we're having some good wins on it, but it's only as good as we funded and put the resources into it. So when you look at the governor's recommended budget, what do we need to be recommending to appropriations to make sure everything's working?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: And we're still trying to figure out a little I mean, one of the things that's interesting is this is still a fairly affordable program for taxpayers because of the reasons I said with the subsidy that the sheriffs provide. They use their private contracts, let's say, Pike Industries, to pay for the cars that then the state of Vermont relies on to transport people. So it's still a pretty good it's a very good deal, but it's the things that we pay for. Salary, benefits, overtime, and some other incidentals like postage. But we really are I need to think a little bit more about what it is. Because if you just give us more positions and not enough overtime, I'll be right back to you. It needs to be both. When there's new positions and the cost of health care going up, I mean, when you look at hiring someone now, we're competing with municipal agencies that give large bonuses. And we are state government. That's not something that we do in the front end. I mean, we don't have the flexibility of a select boarder saying, hey, we need to hire a new experienced detective in this city. We don't have that ability. We're competing with other state law enforcement agencies, and we're competing with other types of jobs where they can use the skills. So that's hard. And we have to get people through the academy as well. Level two is only a few weeks. Level three, which is a more ideal situation, is much longer, seventeen, eighteen weeks. So by the time you've hired someone, you don't have them immediately if it's a recruit as well.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Joe and then Shawn. And I do wanna spend I do wanna make sure we have enough time for both sheriffs.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau, Member]: But is the the BAAs that existed earlier today at least had a $180,000 for this what does that cover besides that position? So it covers some money for that unfunded position, which we were told to do. We were told to come back for BAA last year. So we're not giving you the money to have a comeback, So we're doing that. About 50,000 per overtime and about 50,000 per per diem.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: And the per diem line is something that is slightly hopeful, but those dollars could be very helpful in terms of us with our existing situation get through this fiscal year in terms of the overtime. Thank you. Shawn? He answered it. Indeed.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Okay, so that's

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Next year is a different story, in terms of your question, Representative Casey, I need to talk a little bit more with my fiscal team on making our current workforce something that we can pay for, given that overtime is something that as much as I can put out policies and memos and transport policies and things like that to limit some of the pressures, it's still the judges can put out orders and say, we're going to see everyone at 8AM in the morning. So that pushes things out.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Anything else? Which sheriff wants to go first? Wanna come up on that, Heidi?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: I also mentioned, of Carla was both the president of the chair of the association and the chair of the executive committee, one of my bosses. That's why. The 28 elected bosses. Absolutely. It's a little paddle on the right side behind the

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Good bark. Oh, yes. Got it. Got it. Feel under Nice. It's pretty sturdy. Thank you, Madam Chair. If you could just identify yourself for the record.

[Jennifer Harlow, Sheriff of Orleans County; President, Vermont Sheriffs’ Association]: Yes, my name is Jennifer Harlow, I'm sheriff of Orleans County. And as Tim just said, I'm currently the president of the Vermont Sheriff's Association. I can, since there's so many new people to this, the transport thing, I'll really get down to the dirt. And then if it's too little, then just let me know. The judicial clerks and the judges will do the transport. So they'll do their schedule, transport comes out and it gets emailed to our offices. Then once that happens, my transport deputy will get it depending on when the date is, the time we put it on the schedule, depending on what facility. So judicial staff, the courts don't know where these people are. As you mentioned earlier, Madam Chair, these individuals could be at any correctional facility throughout the state. So we get on a system and the deputies see where they are. Once they're located, depending if they're So we have a facility in Newport. We're very lucky for that. But if they're in St. Johnsbury or Springfield, we may, especially if they're in Springfield, we may try to get them moved. That may or may not happen. But DOC in the past has worked really hard to make that happen and get them closer for us if that's what's needed. I think you did ask a question earlier in regards to if a person is incarcerated, do they go to that closest court? Maybe sometimes that's the instance, but for the most part, they're going go to where the county they were charged in. So depending on where they are, that's where they're going to get transported to, is that county that they were charged in. So once that happens, again, the judges and the judicial staff don't know where these people are. So then we have to find them, make sure we know where they are. And then the deputies may reach out to the other counties to see, especially if it's a female, they may see if Chittenden can do it. If not, then they have to rearrange and make sure that they can get out there and get that person to our courthouse in time. Luckily, as Tim had mentioned, it's really important to build those relationships within your court staffs. So when my transport deputies are not doing transports, one of them specifically spends a lot of time down at the court to listen to the hearings, listening to what's going on to see if there's going be a jury trial, that kind of thing, to see what's going be happening next. And then if there's scheduled transport, they actually talk and they're like, Do you have a transport? He's like, Yeah, I actually have a transport that day. Let me see if I can reach out to another agency, see if they can help out. They can't, and then they may move that hearing to another day to accommodate that so that we can all work together. So we're very lucky in our county. Not all counties have that good working relationship, but we try really hard to. As far as the block scheduling, very important for different agencies throughout our state to have that. Again, mine is not as necessary at this point in time because we're literally ten minutes down the road. But my guys do have to get up fairly early. They usually start at 07:30 if they need to be there at eight because they have to get there, make sure that then nothing's going on. Like you would ask, how long are they at the facility? That could really determine. Our facilities are really great. They know that these people are coming to get the transport, so they try to have them ready, try to have them up. But there's a lot of things that are unforeseen. Sometimes that individual may have had to go for a medical emergency, so they're not at the facility. Sometimes they're moved, which doesn't usually happen, but in some cases it has happened. So they go there and the person's not there. So and there could be an emergency in the in the facility and they may not be able to get that person out. That's very rare, but again, could happen. So I would say twenty minutes to half an hour there may be at the facility. That means getting all the leg irons on, all that kind of preparing them, getting them in and then out the door. So then going to the courthouse, you just heard that, again, depending on travel, some transport deputies are in the cars for long times with the individuals. We'd like to have two people for safety reasons, not only for the person being transported, but also for the deputies in the public. But again, once they're at the courthouses, we own them. They are in our custody. The deputies do not leave. They may take breaks off and on depending if they have to use the bathroom or go take a break real quick or something to that effect, but they're with that individual the entire time they're there. We do have some holding areas for individuals, but there's always somebody right there. So if that incarcerated person needs anything, somebody is right there with them, keeping an eye on them to make sure they don't need anything. But they also want to make sure that they're arriving at the courthouses earlier. As you heard Tim mention earlier, they want to make sure that they're meeting with their attorneys. They're filling out the proper paperwork. That may be the first time they're meeting with their attorneys. So they want to give them ample amount of time to do so. They're trying to arrive about a half an hour early, sometimes a little bit earlier, depending if it's a jury draw day, things of that nature. They may be requested to arrive a little bit earlier. I'm trying to figure out what other questions you guys had. But again, building those relationships is really important in the block scheduling so that we're not there all day long. I've witnessed where they've had an incarcerated person there since 08:00 in the morning. Other cases have gone forward and then they've actually broke for lunch. The people didn't our deputies didn't grab lunch for the incarcerated individual because their their schedule was at nine. And now we're waiting in another hour for everybody to go and have lunch and come back and then hopefully get to that individual. So if we the block scheduling is really imperative to have, depending on where you are around the state. Did you guys have any questions that might

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: So when you're there at the courthouse, there is a holding area in the court houses. Yes. They vary. They vary. Are there sometimes folks coming from another facility with other deputy transports? Yes. So you have more than just one facility. That is a fact courthouse. You could have two or three other facilities.

[Jennifer Harlow, Sheriff of Orleans County; President, Vermont Sheriffs’ Association]: That is a possibility, yes ma'am.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: And other sheriffs as well. They're responsible for that person. Correct. Kevin?

[Kevin Winter, Member]: You made the comment twice. We don't know where they are. That sort of blows my mind. I don't understand how we don't know where an individual's incarcerated is.

[Jennifer Harlow, Sheriff of Orleans County; President, Vermont Sheriffs’ Association]: I didn't mean it in that sense, sir, that we don't know where they are. I meant that the judicial staff and the judges do not know where they are located in the state.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: What facility they're What facility they're at.

[Jennifer Harlow, Sheriff of Orleans County; President, Vermont Sheriffs’ Association]: So then we get I understand that. Then we How

[Kevin Winter, Member]: would they not know that?

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: They would stop. They don't.

[Jennifer Harlow, Sheriff of Orleans County; President, Vermont Sheriffs’ Association]: It's not their worry to know to figure out where they are. It would be a lot easier if they did, right? Because if they're like, Oh, this person is in Springfield, so we don't want to have them in Newport at 08:00 in two days because that's going to be a huge And that's why the communication is so imperative between our transport deputies and our comms and our judicial staff.

[Kevin Winter, Member]: Once again, I just hung up on that we are so archaic that our systems don't literally know where these people are all the time. I would think that you should be able to

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: go in a key Our IT systems don't talk to

[Kevin Winter, Member]: each other. I understand. That's why I asked the question. Right.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Okay.

[Jennifer Harlow, Sheriff of Orleans County; President, Vermont Sheriffs’ Association]: And we have individuals That need to be moved because of things that are happening inside the facilities and they can't be with certain people, and that's where they may be with other in certain areas of the state, which also may make it difficult for DOC or us to move them closer, especially around trial times and things of that nature. So there's a

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: lot of moving

[Kevin Winter, Member]: parts. But someone has to authorize the movement of that person. Yes. So when that happens, in my mind, in a perfect world, the system would be told so that anybody that needs to know would know. That's why I understand. That's why I asked the question. Yes. So we don't know where they are. It just sort of blows my mind.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So where is the stumbling block? Why that information can't get to the courts?

[Jennifer Harlow, Sheriff of Orleans County; President, Vermont Sheriffs’ Association]: I cannot answer that for you, ma'am.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Well So I guess building off of those two questions, I would just be curious in your assessment. Why do the sheriffs facilitate the transport between the judiciary, the courthouses, and DOC? Why have you guys been selected or elected? I don't know which term I want to use. But why have you guys been chosen to take over that responsibility? Is that something that you foresee continuing in the future without problem?

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Did you

[Jennifer Harlow, Sheriff of Orleans County; President, Vermont Sheriffs’ Association]: want want to wait answer again.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Incredible physical force called inertia. Nobody

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: else will do it.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Well, I think it's once you create a system, even though the county jail system went away, you've got the history, first thing, who does it didn't 10 meters too much for the record. Didn't stop. And so if you were to create the system today and I'm saying this, pretend I'm not the executive director of this department if you were to create the system today, there would be law enforcement officers that work for the Department of Corrections that would go to and from the DOC and to the facilities. And or the sheriffs would have embedded people in the DOC facilities with offices there so they'd go to and from. But that's not the physical infrastructure or statutory infrastructure that we have right now.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: That makes too much sense.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah. Well, actually, it didn't make sense to me because I didn't really hear it. Could you repeat that again? Sorry.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: He's a young one in If

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: we were to create the transport system today, our facilities are DOC facilities. And so if we were to create that system, people would start and end their day in those facilities, and they would probably be DOC. Or we would have sheriff's deputies with spaces in our DOC facilities. There are days I know where the transport staff in our department don't even have the time to go to their sheriff's office. And yet because of the inertia of being the sheriff, Sheriff Poulin was a transport deputy for fifteen years, can tell you that seeing some of this stuff change over time, we still kept getting the orders even after the county jail system stopped, and so we'll continue to do what we're ordered to do by the courts. But if you were to create the system today and to pretend I'm not the executive director of this department, would tell you that some of it doesn't make sense. But it doesn't mean that we still don't take a huge amount of pride in the work that we're doing. It is sometimes square peg round hole. Judicial officers order our staff to and from, and they're going to and from DOC facilities at which we also don't have control or maintenance over. So we're kind of in the middle. The county government doesn't really exist in Vermont. That's why our department was sort of created in 1983.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Other questions?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That leads me to and just forgive my newness to all this. But in going to the unified system, Tim, or you know? Is that a better sis was was the sheriff system good, or was it not when they house people there? Or did we need to move away from that? It's been a good thing.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: You know? And I think individual sheriffs could talk more about what they experienced at the local level. One thing that I know we see in other states, going to and from the I mean, right in Washington County is an example. The facility is walkable to a courthouse here. So we don't have to worry a whole lot about And that was a lot of the historical system across The United States of having county jails and your county courthouses right there. It's all your infrastructure right there. So I can't say in every instance that it was good or bad, but I know that it made some sense because we still have county courthouses. And so that was more efficient in terms of detainees going to and from, and I think you described the history. If you were detained, you were in a jail. If you were incarcerated via a sentence, you were in a facility. Thank you.

[Kevin Winter, Member]: One more clarification, if I may. I thought I heard you say, Tim, that sometimes there's only one transport sheriff, but you mandated if it's a female, it needs to be two. Did I hear that right? Yes. So how often is it, Rutland or Mega, a single transport sheriff versus having to have two people?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: I would have to look. Okay.

[Kevin Winter, Member]: I mean, the time, less than half the time?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: That's correct. This is that, no, no, it would be sort of an exception that we would just have one in the car. They certainly all prefer to have two in the car, but it's on those busy days that I know I can't actually mandate two in every case because it's physically impossible to do every transport.

[Jennifer Harlow, Sheriff of Orleans County; President, Vermont Sheriffs’ Association]: So for an instance in my county, where they've transported a subject to the courthouse and maybe a hearing's going a little bit longer and they have another person that is scheduled, one may break away. And we also have other armed deputies in our courthouses for the most part. That one of the deputies may break away, go get that other individual, bring them back to the courthouse. And then by that time, that other individual has been done with their hearing. So then they may bring that individual back to the facility and then return to the courthouse to be that second person with that. That doesn't happen very often, but in some instances, those have been the circumstances that we've experienced.

[Kevin Winter, Member]: Yeah. I'm sorry, did say that one more. That's the situation, is there any possibility that you could literally have a different person rather than a sheriff doing the physical driving as long as there was a certified sheriff accompanying them. A lower cost driver. The only thing they're responsible for doing is driving from place to place but there's a sheriff there that takes care of all the other.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: I certainly wouldn't advise it. I think statutorily it is possible, but I would not advise it because of going through the academy, going through the driving that you need to do to be a police officer, and also what's in your car now is a fairly technical situation, and you wouldn't want a lay driver operating a car if you could avoid it. The statute provides that constables can technically perform transports, but if I were a constable, I would want one of these two people also in the car with me so that I was protected, because as stated earlier, because they're detained, they're either a flight risk because they have bail imposed, or they're a crime of violence or life offense, so these are not low risk situations. So I would not advise it. Liability reasons to state employees being in the car, I wouldn't advise that as well.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: So is that why you gave a whole list of folks who could do transports. Is that why they're not used? Because the training amount and the sophistication of the vehicles and the

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Yeah. I think most of that list is is is police officers, state police, municipal police, and sheriffs and deputy sheriffs. There are also folks that are in the custody of the Department of Corrections who have been sentenced. And those folks we don't interact with as much, But I know DOC does have to do to doctor's appointments and that sort of thing.

[Jennifer Harlow, Sheriff of Orleans County; President, Vermont Sheriffs’ Association]: And they're trained to also transport and

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: The DOC folks.

[Jennifer Harlow, Sheriff of Orleans County; President, Vermont Sheriffs’ Association]: That's two correctional officers. I can't answer that. I would believe so. Yes.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: But there's a list there in part in some of our communities where there's a police department head of facility, St. Jay, New Port, Rutland City. Sometimes it makes sense for a municipal police officer to assist with the transport because it's so close by. Marble Valley to Rutland is not a long trip.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Anything else before we bring another share? Thank you. Thank you. Letting me know. Welcome back.

[Mark Pullen, Washington County Sheriff]: Nice to see you.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Yeah. In a different uniform. Don't want your Capitol Police.

[Mark Pullen, Washington County Sheriff]: Well, I still am. Just very rarely. Just very rare.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Lots of keys.

[Mark Pullen, Washington County Sheriff]: They call me the janitor at times, but, you know

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: You could just identify some.

[Mark Pullen, Washington County Sheriff]: Absolutely. I'm Mark Pullen. I'm the Washington County sheriff. I was a transport deputy for approximately fifteen years, came from October PD before that, before I came to the Capitol Police for a couple years before becoming sheriff. And some of the reason I came here was the workload of being a state paid transport deputy. So with that being said, Jen covered it nicely, kinda how it works with the scheduling, but it's a little more complicated than she even made it seem. And this comes to a little bit what you were asking, Sarah, how do you know where they are? So court sends a transport order. They pay no attention because it's really not their job. Now my ex wife is one of the clerks at courts, and she knows how to access it, but they are so busy. She's like, that's your problem. It's not our problem. And so they just send it out, and it can say whatever. The minute it comes in, I would get it in my hands when I was the scheduling officer of first thing, go to the computer. Where is this person? Okay. They're in Saint Johnsburg. You know, we're in Montpelier. Okay? First call I would make would be to Caledonia County. That's where that facility is. Can you do it? Well, no. Our state team is busy or, oh, our state team is perfectly fine. Great. They're gonna do it. Okay. Our state team is busy. Can we use some per diems? Couple days later, they can call back. Okay. We get it covered with per diems, or they don't

[Kevin Winter, Member]: have it covered at all.

[Mark Pullen, Washington County Sheriff]: Okay. Then it goes to my team. Can we send my team there? Are they already tied up? Do they have another transport? Yes or no? And then, okay, do I have any per diems left? Yes or no? And it goes through this progression. So we work very, very closely with the state transport deputies. We all are our friends. We are all our coworkers. We coordinate heavily because we have to. Where it then come the day of the transport, we would call a couple days beforehand, call the facility. Hey. Is such and such still there? Because the computer system has some lag to it. So just last week, we were scheduled to pick someone up on Monday. He was coming out of Newport to come to Barry Court. We found out Friday at about 03:15 in the afternoon. They moved him to Saint Albans. So we have a weekend, and he's due in court Monday morning. So myself and my one state deputy, we're going because there isn't time to coordinate. Or you get to the facility. They're sick. They they've been moved the night before because they're gonna fight with somebody. There are so many things that can go off the rails. It's not even fun. I can't even begin to tell the stories of how things go off the rails and nothing happens. The flip side is a lot of times these hearings are scheduled. We do all this coordination, all this work, which can take hours or sometimes days. And then the day before the hearing, oh, it's been canceled. So all that work, all that time for nothing, and then they reschedule for three days later, and the whole process has to start over again. And that happens frequently of just wash, rinse, repeat. So it's very complex, and sometimes it's not very successful. But we do a very good job trying to coordinate as best we can. So something else that hasn't been mentioned, extraditions. So currently, the state transport deputies and the sheriffs are the only ones that do extraditions. Somebody is on probation. Somebody is charged with something. They run away to Florida. I've been to Florida a couple times on this. So they need they get picked up on the warrant. They need to be brought back. The only people that do that are sheriffs or sheriff's deputies, period. And there's all kinds of federal rules involved with flying while armed, about training and coordination of that. I've driven to every state in New England. The furthest I've driven was Illinois. I've been to Pennsylvania. That was a seventeen hour day. To drive to Pennsylvania and drive the guy back, to have him released the next day, that's a whole different discussion. But sheriff's deputies are the only ones who do that. And, unfortunately, in the current environment, we're doing a lot of extraditions as people are getting out for various reasons or on probation and boom, they're gone. So the workload for the the transports has gotten really crazy, and now the extraditions are on top of it. And those can be some silly long days. My team, went to New Orleans. So they had to get up at 04:00 in the morning, get all their stuff together, drive to Burlington, park the cruiser, board the plane, which flying well armed is a whole different procedure. Mhmm. Get themselves down to New Orleans, having to beforehand, how to coordinate with the sheriff's office down in in New Orleans about pickup and arrangements and transportation, and it's days and days of preparation. Get down there. Get a hotel room. Spend the night. Get your car. Drive to the facility the next morning. Pick them up. Go to the airport. Check-in with airport police and airport security because you have a prisoner. You're armed. You see how complex this gets. So we are the only ones that do that. Same rules apply when you're driving. Just you don't have to worry about the car, sometimes the hotels, everything else. So a lot of moving parts here. So with that being said, the workload for our our transport officers is immense. Now it was very common for me to our pay periods would be eighty hours in two weeks. I'd be in the 100 and twenties on a pretty regular basis. Now when you have young children, I miss most of my my kids growing up, school events, because I was stuck at court until 04:30, and then they joked to you, oh, have a nice night. I still have a two and a half hour turnaround at St. Johnsburg and back, so thanks for the thanks for the tip. So the workload is very, very heavy, which has made it difficult in recruiting and retention because people want a work life balance, and it's been a challenge for that. And that's a lot of the reason why I left and came to the Capital because, hey. Work 06:30 in the morning to 02:30 at night, five days a week. No problem. You didn't have these issues. So they do a very good job. We're very passionate about we do transporting prisoners because it's important, but it's a heavy, heavy workload. We need some more help. So the per diem when I I first started as the state deputy in 2007 when I left Montpelier PD, my department had 47 is what I think total deputies. So we were the go to county. We would we're in the middle. We would travel everywhere. We'd go to Chittenden. We'd go to Saint Jay. We'd go to Salmons. Wherever you need a team, we'd have three or four a day running. As of today, I have 16 deputies total. Of those, six are full time. And all the other ones, they had jobs during the day. So you can no longer pick up the phone and say, hey. Do you wanna come in for this last minute transport? Those people don't exist. So we used to be able to rely on that for the last minute things. People are entitled to vacation time, sick times, everything else. Coordinate as best we can, but there's only so much so many people, there's only so much time. So what we we haven't done block scheduling in my county. We just started about a month ago. We're doing it a little bit differently. So Bennington and us have kinda the biggest challenge. We've all kind of agreed that we don't have a facility. So at minimum, the closest facility is the Chittenden facility in Burlington. It's forty five minutes. So what we've done is say, okay, they have that same chart that we just gave all of you. We gave it to the court. We met with the court manager. We've met with some of the elite clerks and with the judge and said, okay. You have the chart. When you're doing your schedule, figure that this is the travel time. If you want them out of Chittenden, you need to give us at least an hour and a half. Don't schedule it before you know, our leave time is 07:00 because anytime before that, it kicks in the overtime on the front end. So don't, you know, don't schedule it any earlier than 08:30 because it won't kick in the front end overtime. Conversely, don't schedule it after 02:30 because it kicks in the back end over time. But we based it on the facility because Newport is a three hour turnaround. Marble Valley is a four hour turnaround. Trying to do it that way instead of the block schedule to give my staff some of that work life balance. And right now, personally, I'm struggling a little bit because I am authorized for three state transport deputies. We currently have one. One of them, we couldn't fill it due to the budgetary crunch. And the second one, I had the the longest serving transport deputy in the state, was my partner, and he retired January 1.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Oh, dear.

[Mark Pullen, Washington County Sheriff]: So we're down to one, which makes it hard to transport when you have to mandate. You have to have two. So I've been doing it a lot myself. I'm trying to make up the difference until we can figure this out. It's a lot.

[Kevin Winter, Member]: For DMs, individuals, retired sheriffs,

[Mark Pullen, Washington County Sheriff]: or what are qualifications? So they could could be retired officers from wherever as long as they are still certified. They're basically on call cops. So if they wanna come in, they can. If they don't want to, they don't. So some of them were retired from other agencies. Some of them were got into law enforcement on a part time basis. They want to dip their toes in. So they go to the It used to be called the part time academy. Now it's called the level two academy. It's much shorter and the training takes a lot longer, but they get certified. And it's usually for people getting into law enforcement or just that wanna dabble in it. The amount of people doing that is a lot less than it used to be. Years ago when I first started, the part time academy was one week. Now it's three weeks, and there's all kinds of additional trainings tacked onto that. So when it was one week, it was really easy for somebody that had a real job to take a week of vacation to go to the academy and then do their other training. Now that it's three weeks, that doesn't really happen because who has that kind of time? And is that additional training that they just tacked on two extra weeks even for a part time person? They've added to the curriculum over the years. It just as of January 1 went to three weeks. So beforehand, you used to have you know, it was two weeks, and then you had an additional week for use of force, and then you have DUI, all this other stuff. So that additional week they just tacked on has three days of use of force. So you don't have to go back. It's just part of the core, And then they added some driving into it and a little more range time. So it's been expanding. They've been taking the know, sheriff Anderson can speak more to this than I, but they've been taking some of the greatest liability problems and adding additional training around that, trying to flesh out the crookie.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: But in doing so, no one goes to it anymore, so you can't get any part time people. Part time

[Mark Pullen, Washington County Sheriff]: is kinda going away. When we get level two officers at this point, in my experience and talking with other chiefs and sheriffs, a lot of it is now somebody wants to get into the business, so we send them to the to the level two academy to make sure they're a good fit, that they can get through the training, they're good for the job, start preloading some of the field experience before we invest the seventeen weeks at the full time academy down the road. It's not uncommon for people to complete the full time academy seventeen weeks, get three, four weeks into the field training and go, no. I don't wanna do this. So

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: unless I heard you, Brian, did you say your department not that long ago has 48 or 45 whatever people announced like 16 or something? Correct.

[Mark Pullen, Washington County Sheriff]: When I started full time in 2007 as a state transport deputy, that was

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: And is that something that's relatively evenly replicated throughout the departments in the state, or is it

[Mark Pullen, Washington County Sheriff]: So our staff was comprised mostly of retired troopers, retired local officers, and all that kind of stuff. So as they started aging out, we just felt like a cliff. Orange County has had similar issues due to similar things. They had some other stuff going on. Chittenden County, I'm very good friends with sheriff Gamlin. He's kind of at the moment where we were a decade ago. He has a lot of staff, but they're all in their late fifties and sixties. So he's starting to head that direction. Jen could speak to her own department. Ours has been one of the worst. And like I said, we were the go to for transport statewide because we had so many people. It was not unusual for me to have four teams a day running around, and now you can barely make one.

[Jennifer Harlow, Sheriff of Orleans County; President, Vermont Sheriffs’ Association]: Sorry, just want make a quick comment. Regarding for dance and retired law enforcement, people now that are getting out of law enforcement have no desire to come back into it. So we're losing those very valuable skills, knowledge, everything.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: And that's because of culture, right?

[Kevin Winter, Member]: Because of culture or because of other things?

[Jennifer Harlow, Sheriff of Orleans County; President, Vermont Sheriffs’ Association]: I should say largely it

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: has to do with culture too. Yep. Just like the teaching profession, they don't wanna go back either. Sorry, Jennifer. Was like the teaching professions, they don't wanna go back either.

[Mark Pullen, Washington County Sheriff]: I can speak personally. My I have one more term that I plan on doing, and I will never put on another uniform in my life the day I retire. So Yep. The boots on the ground questions, that's what I I'm best suited to to answer to. So are there any more specifics of how the program works? I said, I did it for so long. I can tell you the horror stories of the good stories.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Thank you so much. I

[Mark Pullen, Washington County Sheriff]: just thought of one quick thing. Can I give an anecdotal story? This is outside of the sheriff's problem. So my sergeant and I left at 06:30 in the morning to go to Burlington to pick up a female for a 09:15 hearing, something like that. The weather was terrible. So we drive up there, we get there. She has 102 fever, and things are not going well for her. So court is not open yet. So we basically do you really wanna go? She's like, absolutely not. Please let me die. Okay. We'll call the court and take care of things. Again, 09:15 here, I think. So we we leave, get cell phones back on. I call the court manager and say, hey. She's not coming. Okay. Thanks for letting us know. At 11:30, I get a call from the court. Where's the prisoner? What do you mean? I'm not I'm not bagging on the on the court manager at all if he hadn't passed along the message. But nobody in the court had noticed that the person who's supposed to be there for a 09:15 hearing hadn't noticed for more than two hours that she wasn't even there first thing on a Monday morning. So our job is being driven largely by the judiciary. We have no control on what goes on in that building, and it's adversely affecting our budget because we are told to be here at this time, and we do so. And then our time is wasted.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: When you say wasted, do you get compensated for mileage and and per damn things when something like that happens?

[Mark Pullen, Washington County Sheriff]: So the staff, if it's a state deputy, their salary is covered by the state.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: It's a

[Mark Pullen, Washington County Sheriff]: podium deputy, we get a dollar figure per hour, which depending on which officer that is. If I send certain officers, that fee does not cover their their wages and benefits and everything because they make more than that. So it depends on their circumstances. The hard part is the vehicles. I just ordered two cruisers a couple weeks ago. Fully outfitted, they cost about $70 each. So the the 72¢ a mile we get to go back and forth to Saint Jay, and then it sits all day for eight hours doing nothing, and then the 72¢ a mile to go back and forth, it it's not financially It's a best interest of the sheriff's department to be doing.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Anything else? Because I wanna allow some time for Mark Anderson to weigh in if he would like. Anything else? Thank you.

[Mark Pullen, Washington County Sheriff]: Thank you for having me. I wasn't on the agenda.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Thank you. Very quiet. He's operating. Sheriff Anderson is from Wyndham County and used to be head of the Chiefs Association, the Sheriff's Association. So welcome. I know you weren't scheduled, but you were gonna be watching on YouTube, willing to offer some backup. Feel free. We've got a few more minutes. Feel free to offer any thoughts or insights. And if you could just identify yourself for the record.

[Mark Anderson, Sheriff of Windham County; Past President, Vermont Sheriffs’ Association]: Of course, thank you, Madam Chair Committee. My name is Mark Anderson. I am the sheriff of Wyndham County and I am the past president of the Vermont Sheriff's Association. I did not come today to present any testimony except if it was needed, which it sounds like you have heard quite a bit. I'm happy to respond to questions. I'll tell one story of my own just based off the questions I've heard already. Why would we transport with less than two? General rule of thumb, you do want to have a two to one ratio of transport officers to incarcerated individuals regardless of status. If it is a detainer versus a fugitive versus a sentenced individual, whatever. There's officer safety reasons, there's reasons for all that. And so why would we not do that? My county hosts the Brattleboro retreat where state incarcerated people with mental health illnesses, whatever, orders of non hospitalization, orders of hospitalization, a variety of things that have justice involved people who also have mental health treatment statuses undergoing. A person comes into my courthouse with my transport team, two deputies who has a mental illness, and they have a medical event. Now I need to send somebody with this incarcerated person to the Bradborough Memorial Hospital while we're also dealing with anybody who's also at the courthouse who also needs to see the court. So very quickly we go from having a transport team to having two transport deputies going in two different directions for things that just evolved. There's state law that indicates the responsibility of the sheriff and the transport team if a person attempts to escape and they allow it to happen. So there's civil liability. There's criminal liability for the sheriff saying we want to make sure we do this right and we do it the right way. So there's a variety of layers without getting into all the details that I'll say we want to have more. Tim mentioned that I said we should have 56 people. That would be four transport deputies per county. I'm not coming here to advocate like, yes, give us the positions. I know that problem as well. But what we're trying to navigate is the problem of how do we do more with less? And this is a problem that the legislature hears from a variety of different organizations on a variety of different issues. So we are doing the best that we can to navigate with the meager resources we have to do the best job that we can. That also comes with the relationships you heard from Sheriff Harlow, where we work with corrections and the judiciary to say, okay, my transport team expected the person to be at the Southern State Correctional Facility last night at 10PM. They were moved to Newport because the regional correctional system is able to support some issue or logistical need that the prisoner has at the Newport facility. It's common that people come to the Southern State Correctional Facility for medical treatment. It's common that people go to other facilities for other needs. So it's not uncommon that a person that at three in the afternoon was at the Southern State Correctional Facility got moved to Newport or St. Albans or Marble Valley or wherever they got moved because of an immediate need that the state has a duty to do something with or because of availability of bed space or whatever the things are that Corrections has to manage. We're operating a tricycle and all of our wheels are run by different administrations, different parts of the constitutional government, the judicial branch versus the executive branch versus the legislative branch. And so it's just, it's all of these things that start to collide with how do we make all of the magic happen and how do we do it efficiently. Tim made mention about having, if we were to build this today, what to do. I will shortcut the long version to say the reason we're not changing it today, it's usually cost. We've looked at other ways to try to come back and solve all of these things. There's a lot of sunk investments from the state. There's a lot of investments from the sheriffs, lot of investments from other parties where to undo all of those things and do what we will call the right way would then mean building new structures, both physical institutions, but also logical constructs of what these relationships look like and who's responsible for managing it. So it does become the million and billion dollar conversation when we start talking about what does reinventing some of these things look like. This committee along with other committees in the legislature have done a variety of studies over the years that I would refer you to if you wanted to consider any of those options. Madam Chair, I know you've been around for many of those. So, I won't bore anyone with it other than to say it's just they do exist. We've had these conversations. This system persists because all of the partners are very good at doing what they do and we've made it work in the cheapest way that we can. I know affordability is an issue that is the forefront of the legislature's mind right now. So, we are trying to do the best we can and our partners are also doing the best we can. I think that there will be opportunities for the different systems to come together to find ways. We are working with Department of Corrections and with the judiciary always. I know you heard from Judge Sweeney who also has a beard who also will be shaving soon. Mine's gone this Friday. But that said, we're working with them on things that are very, right now, problems that we can do without investing financial resources, but will help improve the commitment of the resources that we do have available. So we're constantly working with those partnerships to help make things better. The block scheduling, I just talked to Tim today about how we can start looking at data. We've been operating at my county for a month. We largely anticipate that there will be efficiencies, but we're already navigating some of the personality conflicts that that has created and what happens when, well, we'll do this one last hearing at 03:30, even though we were supposed to be gone at three. So we're still navigating some of those issues. And those are, again, discussions with our presiding judge to say we just were trying to control the resources that we've been given and do the right thing by the taxpayer. So I'll pause there or stop there early because I don't have any further testimony, but happy to answer any questions or respond to anything that's not clear.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Thank you so much, Mark.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Questions? Comments? Thoughts?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Appreciate it. It's all really helpful.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: It's very helpful. I want to thank you for weighing in and I want to thank the sheriffs for coming off your job today to come in. I know the committee members were interested in kind of knowing what the process was, and the best way to learn it is from folks who are actually doing it. So I wanna thank you all. Really appreciate it. Don't know where we're gonna go with this, but I'm sure it's gonna bring on some conversation among the members. Anything else from folks? Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you, Mark.

[Mark Anderson, Sheriff of Windham County; Past President, Vermont Sheriffs’ Association]: Thank you. Thank you, committee. Great to see you.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: So we're done with this for today. Our committee is done for today. And run 08:40. Ron's 08:30. Ron, what duty? 08:30. Ron, 08:30. I was just looking at the schedule. And the repo the repo group is meeting tomorrow morning, but we're here at 08:30. We've shifted to 08:30.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: I think we're Thursday, Sharon Repo.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: Is it Thursday? I believe so. So we're here Thursday tomorrow morning at 08:30. Also, we're on the floor at 03:30. That's better than

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I thought we were going to one. What's this 03:30?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: Okay. Very good.

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: They just didn't want it. Just felt it cuts in too much to commit a time.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs]: K. Okay.

[Kevin Winter, Member]: So

[Alice M. Emmons, Chair]: anyway, 08:30 tomorrow