Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay, welcome, folks. This is House Corrections and Institutions Committee. It's our afternoon meeting. We are running a little late. It is Thursday, January 29. We have with us Damian Leonard from Legislative Council to go over with us what is being proposed in the Senate bill for, it's a miscellaneous Department of Motor Vehicle bill. And this came at the recommendation of the Department of Motor Vehicles that pertains to non driver ID for folks who are incarcerated, as well as folks who are incarcerated having access to driver's licenses. This, we are also working on a bill in our committee, H549, that also deals with the same section of law in one place. So, I really ask the committee members to have out with them the bill, age five forty nine, and it's on page seven, and it begins at line four. So, Damian, it's all yours.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Great. Thank you. For the record, I'm Damian Leonard from the Office of Legislative Counsel. So this issue first came to my attention. So as I think those of you who know me know, I'm not someone who works in the corrections area.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Take care of that. In need of home.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so when I drafted the miscellaneous motor vehicle bill, I innocently made some tweaks to the Department of Motor Vehicles language, thinking I was just cleaning things up and making them read more smoothly, only to find out from your chair and then the Department of Corrections that I had inadvertently made the policy decision to sweep in both individuals who have been sentenced and individuals who are being detained in our correctional facilities. And so the the language in front of you has been updated since then to make it consistent with the existing language in the nondriver identification section. And so what this would do is so currently, if you are an individual who's been sentenced and is serving your sentence and it's at least six months, you can get a non driver ID for no cost. As your when your sentence is coming to its conclusion, the Department of Corrections and Department of Motor Vehicles will work together for the individual to get them a nondriver ID for when they're released from prison. This would do something similar in section two, which is for the replacement driver's license or operator's license. Yep.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Okay. I don't wanna jump too much to section two until you go over the first section.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Of the miscellaneous motor vehicle bill.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Which is page four, line seven. Because that is amending current law for their ID, non driver's ID, and it's different than what we are looking at in H549.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's the first step. Got the

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: wrong document here. Let me pull that section up. Course, when I print out sections two and three, I close-up that document. But here we go. So

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: prior to section two.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep. Immediately prior. Yeah. That language there, what this is doing is it's requiring the submission of documentation required for either a non real ID or real ID identification card. So when you get a non driver ID, there are two types of non driver IDs, and they are what are known as real ID and non real ID. And I find this to be a confusing term because they're both lowercase real IDs, But the federal law, the acronym is REAL. And so it's called the REAL ID Act. And it basically requires for a real ID, you have to have certain documentation related to your citizenship or right to be in the country, legal right to be in the country. It doesn't necessarily mean you are a citizen. You can be a citizen of The United States and choose not to submit the documentation or not have the documentation available and get a non real ID, but it doesn't meet the requirements of the federal real ID act, which is necessary for, for example, entering a federal building. TSA is now going to charge people if they come with a non REAL ID to the airport. But you can get a state issued ID even if you don't have all of the necessary documentation to meet the federal REAL ID requirements. So this clarification here is or was intended, as I understand it, as a clarification that you need to submit the documentation for the non REAL ID or the REAL ID. And if you already have a REAL ID, non driver identification card, there's very little documentation you have to submit to renew that. If you have a non Real ID card, you would need to submit additional documentation to upgrade to the REAL ID. And for those of you who maybe haven't followed this too much, if your driver's license has a star on it, means you have a REAL ID. It means that you've provided your passport or some other documentation to meet the federal law requirements.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And what

[Brian Minier (Member)]: if you've been incarcerated and your REAL ID has expired?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you have to resubmit all of that documentation? So as I'm reading this here and I would turn to the DMV to see how they handle this. But I see there's no language here related to whether it's expired or not. So I think it would be treated the same way as if you were not incarcerated and your ID expired, and you'd have to submit new documentation, I as I understand it. But we do have Nancy Prescott here from the DMV who may be able to provide more insight into their process.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Nancy, could you just identify yourself for the record?

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: For the record, I am Nancy Prescott, director of operations at DMV. And that's a question of if the real ID is expired and we have already collected the necessary documents and scanned and can see in our record, we will not ask for the documents to be provided again when expired.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I have a question on the language here. So on line nine, it says for a person who's incarcerated, sentenced. This is just for sentenced folks.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: Yep.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Who is eligible for a non driver ID card under this section.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: Yep.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So what's being added is when they apply and there needs to be submission of documents that would be required for a non real ID or a real ID identification card. So by saying non driver ID card in line nine and then in line 11 saying non real ID, are they one and the same?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. So they're for each type of identification that the so if you think non driver ID and operator's license, there is a non real ID variant and a real ID variant. They look essentially identical on the outside except for a star logo on the Real ID variant. And the difference is, did you meet the federal requirements to get a REAL ID, which can then be used, like I said, to fly at federal buildings and for a few other purposes that are escaping me at the moment. But they are essentially one and the same, just two subsection or two subsets of the non real ID or the non driver identification card. I'm tripping myself off.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No. So that's what non driver ID, you can get a regular one, or you can get a real ID, non driver identification. That is correct. There are two versions. And if we don't signify on line nine, which one it is, we're just saying non driver ID. Does that cover both of them? Or do we have to be explicit and say non real ID and real ID? Go ahead, Nancy. It should

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: be noted that a non real ID states as well on the credential, not for identification purposes. So we always should and want and desire in this piece here regarding the inmates being released to have the highest ability of the

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: credential to be released with. So that would be the real ID?

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: That's correct. Identification card. Is not always the case, but that's where Department of Physicians and us, DMV work in collaboration to try to get what is needed to get them the best of the highest, if you would.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So if they don't have, if the person who's incarcerated sentence and they don't have those documents to prove, could be their birth certificate, they're not gonna have a passport. Reality, they're not gonna have a passport. Birth certificates, security number, some documentation of where they're gonna live. If they don't have that, the fallback for an ID card would be the non real ID. That's correct.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Okay. Troy? I think I have two questions. First one, just to clarify, the default is a Real ID, if the material is present?

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: It's not a default. It's whichever material that we have to support, we will try to get you a Real ID. But if you don't have

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: it's going to be the nod.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: But the material is all there, necessary for a REAL ID, then they're going to get a REAL ID. Two, we started, I think, basically very briefly discussing the fact that, no, this is federal, never mind. I was going to say, we know who these people are because they've been with the Department of Corrections for X number of years, But that's not going to match federal requirements for a real ID.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So you may have an instance of someone who was sentenced and became incarcerated before the Real ID Act took effect, although that is getting and Vermont was one of the early adopters.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: 2014.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. So the further you go down the line, the less likely it is that you have folks who were incarcerated before the real ID law took effect and before Vermont started issuing the IDs. But, you know, it's gonna be probably decades before that's true for for everyone.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So do we need to clarify at all what on lines nine, what non driver ID? Do we have to clarify that at all, or is that more made clear in lines ten and eleven?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I I don't think you need to clarify that at all. The the language in there, we refer to within the the DMV world, a non driver identification card has one meeting. And then just like Nancy said, there are two versions of that non driver identification card, real ID and non real ID. And there are other subsections that are not shown in this bill and I don't think are shown in H five forty nine that cover documentation requirements for non real ID or real ID and what needs to appear on the non real ID and so forth. And we've adopted all of those requirements so that we can be in compliance with the federal law requirements. And so that's all set out elsewhere. So if you read the full section, which is pages, you'll see that, oh, okay, these non driver identification cards have these things called real IDs and these things called non real IDs, which are for Vermont residents who cannot prove that they're in the country lawfully or choose not to. So that is an instance where someone may choose not to provide the documentation necessary to prove that. And then they get this other ID, which is still a state ID, but it cannot be used for federal identification or official purposes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So, Nancy, I know when you were here, while we looked at our bill, DMV absorbs the cost of these ID cards.

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: That's correct.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Is that going to change? It was like $3.3 per card. Is that going to change at all with including the language on line ten and eleven, which means non real ID or real ID cards? No cost change. No cost change. So the other piece that we're looking at, Damian, which is beyond your purview, but is in the bill, is to allow detainees as well who have served six months or more to have access to these ID cards. So that's a change that we're looking at as a committee.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. And that is something I definitely understand. I don't understand the ins and outs of that area of the law. But what I would say is that if that H five forty nine moves forward and then this language moves forward in the miscellaneous motor vehicle bill, that we'll either need to do a true up when the miscellaneous motor vehicle bill comes over to the house or provide some way to true them up. The other thing is Hillary and I can work together too to make sure that we don't inadvertently draft language that interferes with each other because we do have the option, although it's not preferred, when we get to the statutory revision process where it's put in in the green books. We add an editor's note to say, amended this law twice in the same year. The amendments don't interfere. So what we've done is made both amendments to the same section to reflect the intent of the legislature, and then we put both in. But that's never ideal because it's there's always a chance that you inadvertently have something that conflicts.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So Senator Westman and I spoke yesterday, and our thinking is they're gonna take testimony on this with you, you folks. We're gonna take testimony. And the goal is whatever language we come up with on our end gets carried through on the DMV. So the language is the same in both of those. That's what we're looking at.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And it's worth noting that your counterparts in senate institutions are also taking the same issue up tomorrow so that they can be briefed on it and brought up to date on the issue. And so they're they're aware of that, and this was brought up today. We went through all of the sort of open items on the

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: bill. So With transportation?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: With senate transportation. So for those of you who don't know, they have a the way the senate rules work, they have to introduce any committee bills by the January. So the committees don't have enough time to finish their work on the bill. So what happens is they introduce the bill and refer it back to the same committee. So they had to vote the bill out this morning. So as part of that process, they went through section by section and highlighted all of the outstanding items. For sections two and three one, the outstanding items where that there is this pending bill, H549, and there's also the need to run updated language by DOC and DMV to make sure that it works and reflects their current program. And then if H549 moves forward to make sure that we're staying consistent with whatever the intent of the legislature is on the issue of providing IDs and other credentials to detainees.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So for this proposed change, lines ten, eleven, I know it came from DMV. So you would be supportive of this

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: language? Of ours from your DMV miscellaneous, yes. What

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: about DOC? Have you weighed in on this at all?

[Haley (Vermont DOC staff, exact title not stated)]: We have no concerns about the language on lines ten and eleven.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: On lines ten and eleven. It clarifies more what we mean for the non driver ID. Yes. So then the question is, if we go down the road of allowing this for detainees who have served six or more months, we have discussed that because they could leave facility soon, DOC won't get any notice. We've discussed putting in language that once they hit that six month, the detainee has hit that six month, the DOC gathers those documents that are needed, and then DOC has it. And then when they are released, it would be sent to DMV or sent to DMV first, then DMV has all that information in hand. That's what we talked about. We haven't agreed to that as a committee. That's the path that we talked about when we heard testimony on the bill. Are we still there for that kind of thinking with DOC and DMV? Yes. This

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: is definitely obtainable, not necessarily in the manner that you just kind of roughed out, but we certainly have had those conversations of how it could happen. There would be a financial impact to DMV as I mentioned during testimony not knowing what the detainee number is, but it's going to increase it. And it's a big question mark of what that could look like. So that would have an impact of support or not. It will need to be understood, But the process itself works. Got a process that we've discussed that's kind of already in place and what we would be able to possibly pivot in order to make that happen.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: DOC, I think you were going to try

[Haley (Vermont DOC staff, exact title not stated)]: to get some data. Unfortunately, I'm still waiting on that information. I think we're having some issues

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: with our offender management system right now, but it's

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: on the list.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: See how many offenders are over that six And some of those offenders who are detainees, they also have a sentence. So that would be carved out. Right? You gotta have the true detainees.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: But sometimes it's time served as a detainee. Does that matter?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No. Because the credit credit for time serve kicks in once they're sentenced. So they could be a detainee for ten months, but once they hit that six month, then DOC could gather the documents that will be needed and send that to AOT, to DMV. Then they hold it until the person is released.

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: We roughly spoke, Monique and Haley and I spoke about what that possibly could look like and it sounded more like DOC would give the detainee similar and they would give them what they needed while they were there and get it to them. The individual would then bring it into DMV themselves. Yes.

[Haley (Vermont DOC staff, exact title not stated)]: I think there's still some flexibility for the mechanics. We haven't gone through it in-depth yet, but it is possible.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So, for Hillary's sake, is this something that the committee would support in terms of our version for a detainee? Once they hit six months, DOC would gather that information that the person gives them so that they have it in hand. Then the question is, does DOC then ship that to DMV? Or does it hold it for when the detainee is released and then the detainee brings it to DMV. So we need some clarity here.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, I'm worried about what gets lost, especially in those instances where, and DOC has provided testimony time and time again about sometimes they leave our facility, have a court date, and they don't come back. So I would much rather know that that person knows they can just go to DMV with a voucher, whether that's an actual voucher or not. The DMV already has the indignation as of the six month mark to reduce any barriers of getting those people who fall through the cracks between when they're released and whether or not they even go back to the department, to the facility. That's my worry.

[Haley (Vermont DOC staff, exact title not stated)]: Yeah, that's understandable. I'm not on the ground every day, so I'm not the person who's sending those documents to DMV. But I

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: think we can hopefully try

[Haley (Vermont DOC staff, exact title not stated)]: and work it out so that it's that option.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I don't want to make the decision now, but we need some clarity at some point for Hillary to draft. So let's see what you can find out through the number of true detainees. I'm looking at the time, and we gotta move it on here.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I think we're okay with lines ten and eleven as a committee. Is Yeah. That all Yes.

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

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the next two sections, and this is what is in the shortened document that Tate got for you, is this is essentially expanding the current program with respect to non driver IDs for incarcerated sentenced individuals to replacement driver's licenses and replacement learner's permits. So as Nancy mentioned earlier, the goal that DMV has expressed is to give them the highest possible credential that they were previously previously had or could obtain. And so what this would provide is with respect to replacement licenses, same as in the existing law, an individual sentenced to serve a period of imprisonment of six months or more committed to the custody of the commissioner of corrections who holds an unexpired license issued in Vermont or held a Vermont operator's license that expired not more than three years prior would be eligible to apply for a replacement license and upon proper application and submission of the documentation required for a real ID or non real ID, be able to be provided with her the replacement operator's license for no fee.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So this is this is if they currently if they have a current valid license that's not expired

[Unidentified committee member]: Or

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: or it's been expired, but not more than three years.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's correct.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So they would not have to pay.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's right.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And the law right now is if they're going for a driver's license, they want to have a driver's license while they're incarcerated. They can do that, but they would have to pay. So that's kind of in conflict. No. Right now our law states

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: that we're going to give the inmates at Palm Release a non driver ID. We gave them the authority if they wanted a license. And now They would do that, but they would have to pay for it. Correct. So now we're saying upon release, if you're an inmate for six months or more, if you had a license or not expired, or excuse me, yes, not expired for more than three years, we will then give you a driver's license instead of a non driver ID.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: If they already have.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But I'm wondering how that tracks with what we have in place for them if they want a driver's license.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Think Scott Borne can make comments on that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No, but it's in the law.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Did that. The law right now doesn't specify folks who had an ID or an expired ID for three years or less. The law just states if people have been incarcerated and they want a driver's ID, they have to pay for it. That's what the current law states. This is talking about people who let's say they went in, they got incarcerated with a driver's license, and it expired while they were incarcerated. This test, this is saying they would get a driver's license even without asking for it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I want to see the language, because we did this two years ago. We knew some folks had a license in there that they would want to renew. We wanted to make sure that the person paid for it, that it wasn't like the non driver ID cards, that it was true license, and they would have you paid for it. I'm trying to find the language where it says that. I don't know if Hillary can find it. This is what we see in 549 is just for Not driver identification. Right. So we made we did talk about, and we made sure this this may not have been Mary, was this two or three years ago that we did this? It's been something three. Yeah. It wasn't we were very clear that persons have been sentenced, and they wanted a driver's license. Regardless of how long they've been with one or without one, they could also get that, but they would have to pay for it.

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: And that very well could be, but they would do it separate to our MOU that we currently have with BMD. Correct.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So Correct. But it was done at the same time that we talked about the non driver's ID. And we allowed folks who are sentenced to apply for a driver's license.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So this may be something that Hillary and I can dig into more and get back to you on. So if it was a couple of years ago, I'm guessing it was in one of the corrections bills from a few years ago and not the miscellaneous motor vehicle.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Wasn't Yeah. It's coming out of our committee.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. We can dig into that and find out.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Section of that.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Because if if that's the case, it it means that we probably wanna true that up with whatever moves in the miscellaneous motor vehicle law so we don't have conflicting law. So and I'll work with Hillary to to find that, and then we can identify that, and either one of us can come back and brief you on what we find.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I flagged that.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So that it's a good flag for us on the miscellaneous motor vehicle bill too because that's gonna be something that they'll wanna know and be aware of.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Please keep going through.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the let me just finish this note. As you keep going through the section here, the next subdivision provides that they would need to provide proof of Vermont residence and their mailing address upon release from custody. So basically, what we don't want to be doing is issuing a license to someone who's going to be relocating to a different state where they need to get a license for that state. And I should say this is my understanding of the intent behind that. And as part of the reentry planning, this would require DOC to inquire with the individuals whether they would like, if they're eligible, to obtain the replacement license and then provide them with information regarding required documentation and any associated costs. So the license itself is at no charge. So I imagine the associated costs would be related to other documentation they may need to acquire to get that. And then subdivision four provides that if they would like to obtain the license and they're eligible, the Department of Corrections would coordinate with DMV to provide them with that license at the time they're released from custody. And that goes back to the MOU that they already have and that I understand they would be expanding if this law passes. So that's replacement licenses. The replacement learner's permit language tracks that with one difference, and that's in terms of the requirement that so just like with the replacement licenses, you have to be sentenced for a period of six months or more. And then you can either have an unexpired learner's permit or a learner's permit that expired not more than two years prior instead of the three years for a license in order to get their replacement learner's permit. Otherwise, the remainder of that language tracks the replacement operator's license language.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I'm looking at the time, and we have I've got a lot of questions I wanna ask DOC about it, because I have a hunch it might be a little problematic.

[Haley (Vermont DOC staff, exact title not stated)]: Associated cost piece raised some concerns.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We need to really track this with current law, make sure that it tracks. I'm assuming, and I'm just putting this on the table. This is only for sentence folks in terms of replacement licenses, or it's been expired for not more than three years, then that leads the question of what happens to our underlying law that we've allowed folks, regardless of the time, regardless that they could apply for a driver's license at their cost. The inmate would have to. So we need policy decision around those two different ways of looking at it. And the underlying bill that we're working on only addresses non driver ID.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's right.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And we've we the bill proposes to open that up to detainees who have served who have been there for six months, not restricted to just sentence.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. And if if you move forward with that and wanted to true have everything track on the issue of providing an ID, whether it's an operator's license or learner's permit or non driver ID to detainee, then we would have to do additional updates to the language and potentially look at other other factors with with learner's permits and operator's licenses as to whether, you know and I I would defer to the DMV there as to potential logistics and administrative questions that may may or may not arise. And I just I don't know the ins and outs.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: There could be a detainee in there for three years and came up with a valid driver's license. But we're only sending sentence folks. So I don't know. That's where we need the data. We need to find out how many detainees we're dealing with over that six month period.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So just to reiterate, the current version of the senate draft has left out detainees understanding that you're working on that issue.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Only deals with senate folks with a replacement driver's license and a replacement price. How many folks come in? The learner's department. Right.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I was looking at some. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: we're gonna schedule more testimony on this with DMV and DOC, and we'll work with Hillary, I'm assuming. And then you can coordinate with Damian or if Damian's avail it's really working more I

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: feel like coming here.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the capital move like you did before.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I I wish that I had the time to do the capital bill. I really enjoyed it the one year I got to do it. So

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: And you came in.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: It almost looked honest.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It almost honest. I

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: genuinely enjoyed it. So I know we had some tough moments in here, but I genuinely enjoyed working on them.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we had a steep learning curve.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. I like these little nitty gritty government

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: bills. This one's really good.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I mean, I learned so much about state buildings on that bill. Is

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: More than anything else. State governments.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So anyway

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We have a question here, Damon.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: This is more for Haley. Okay.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yeah. Do you help? Like, you know What do you do?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: People Social

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Security numbers and stuff. Because, like, you're assumption is they're coming into prison with all this stuff. They're coming into prison with nothing. Yeah. Right?

[Haley (Vermont DOC staff, exact title not stated)]: Yes. We do. But we don't pay for it, which is why that is a it's getting

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: So there is a there's a there's they can access, like, their Social Security number somehow.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I believe. Yeah. Go for it.

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: The answer is yes for social security, and they do a great job with reaching out when it is an individual that is born in Vermont, because that's where the certified birth certificate comes into

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: show When

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: the associated fees come into play is when we have an individual that has been incarcerated here in Vermont and is going to become a release but stay in Vermont, be a resident of Vermont, to get them the REAL ID documents is where the additional fees come into play potentially in order to get them the REAL ID credential.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Who's paying for that right now?

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: Nobody is because that's not something we offer.

[Unidentified committee member]: Gotcha.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Only for folks who come from Vermont and they enter into Vermont who have that access. I

[Haley (Vermont DOC staff, exact title not stated)]: believe that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: If they're born out of state, it's a different story.

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: Unless they're a mom or somebody happens to have it, then we will send all the documents that we can. But as they were sharing with us, nobody has anything.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Right? Yeah. Okay. Thanks. I mean, I will

[Brian Minier (Member)]: probably get into this more.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And to be clear, the motor vehicle language only provides the credential at no cost. It does not provide this documentation that you may need to get out of state at no cost.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So that would be what?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The operator's license or learner's permit or non driver ID. So the credential that DMV issues is provided at no cost. If there are things that you would need to get out of state that have a cost associated with them, the current language says that DOC would make them aware of those associated costs, but not that they would pay them.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Make the offender aware.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Make the offender aware of the associated costs. And again, this is fairly new language that had very, very that DOC only had a few like, two minutes, one minute to speak to it. So they're still waiting for testimony from them And on some of they understanding, too, that you would be looking into this and weighing in and that their colleagues who handle corrections would also do the same. Thank you. Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we'll schedule some time next week on this. It's gonna be a good hour to hour and a half just presenting the indication.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm happy to come back if I'm available or to let Hillary take that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm always from 05:49. 05:40 on your Yeah. I'd take counsel. Great. Thank

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you. Thank you.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Cute thing.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Always fun

[Brian Minier (Member)]: to be Exactly.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Thank you. So Hillary, probably around quarter after three or something, maybe. Yeah. Throw something out. I'm all bored for the whole board. We'd like the way you guys said.

[Unidentified committee member]: I will.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Didn't come out right.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Jay Johnson.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Today, we have Jay at

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: three Okay. And

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: then we have Duffy tomorrow at 12:15. Chase coming in. Okay. Okay. So we are going to switch gears a little bit. We're going to talk with DOC. We had a few weeks ago folks in here talking about the issue ICE detainees being held in our correctional facilities in terms of there are a couple of layers to it. Access to them, there was testimony that was given, like sometimes they were denied access to them, sometimes they were denied access to come into the facility. This would be for folks which provide legal representation to folks who are ICE detainees. There was concern about language interpreters, that there wasn't enough of that. It was a hindrance the legal presentation. There was also concern about language interpretation in terms of the detainees accessing health care I that was being think those were the three biggest parts. I don't know if there's other parts that I missed. Did you mention the space for them to meet? The space for them to meet privately with their legal representation was an issue as well. Then you combine that with language interpretation. It was really difficult. So it was disturbing testimony. And we want to offer time to the Department of Corrections, because you are the folks that are housing these folks. And we do wanna allow time for you folks to come forward. So commissioner, I think you're the one on the hot seat.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Let's hope it doesn't get too hot.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: And thank you so much. I I also hope to be joined by our general counsel, Laurie Fisher, who's here, and sort of I don't know that what we have to say is necessarily one finishes and the other begins. So I don't know if it's possible for both of us to be seen here. Yeah. We got, like, another space. Another space is tight.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. I'm holding chair. Sorry. I don't think it's a chair

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: behind. Oh, yep. Front line, Zach. Thank you so much.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Welcome, and if you both would identify yourselves as well before you begin. Yes, of course.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: Thank you, Madam Chair, for having us. My name is John Murad. I am the interim commissioner for the Vermont Department of Corrections.

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: Thank you as well. My name's Laurie Fisher. I'm the general counsel for the Department of Corrections. So

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: we're really grateful for the opportunity to be here. And I noted your pointed pause at the end of that testimony, which I watched with great interest and disappointment when you stated that you would definitely have to make certain that the Department of Corrections was able to come in and speak as well. Obviously, this is an incredibly fraught topic. It has only grown more fraught in the past few weeks, as we've seen really troubling things happen in other parts of the country involving this topic, not specifically the detention in correctional facilities of immigration arrestees, but the operations of the people that are making those arrests. And that obviously creates an additional amount of pressure and an additional amount of concern, and it's completely understandable. I think many, many Vermonters are troubled by this, and that is utterly unsurprising. I do want to point out that both the ACLU and the representatives from the Vermont Assignance Assistance Program spoke about the need to continue the relationship that Vermont DOC currently has with immigration, owing to the ability of our state to provide certain services and certain access to due process that we are not confident will be provided elsewhere. And those were said sort of quietly in the testimony, but I think they are relevant, and I think it's important. It's certainly important to us to know that what we're doing still receives the support of both our administration, but also of the folks who are advocates for the people who are in detention. And that was the case. The issues brought up had to do with medication and language access and attorney meeting space and the facility's ability to promote remote hearings. I want to say unequivocally that we treat all individuals in our custody the same. All individuals get the same medical access, the same food, the same access to the tablets, the same hygiene. We do not turn people visiting those folks away at the door with any difference. We do sometimes have to turn people away at the door if we are on lockdown, if we have space access issues, and space at our facilities is a tremendously overused resource. We do not have sufficient space in our facilities for any number of things, whether it's programming like education, whether it's access to the ability to meet with family. We've talked about the challenges at CRCF, which is one of the two facilities that currently has immigration detainees. And the challenges there, not to do with immigration detainees, but to do with just programs like our Kids Apart program, where we try to maintain family relationships between incarcerated women and the families that are on the outside. Space is a challenge for us, but we don't turn people away owing to the status of the individual. There are times where we're not able to let folks in. We don't believe that has happened very often with this particular population, however, and we've done all that we can to facilitate access, in fact. We, on a daily basis, we send a list of all immigration detainees to the Vermont Assignments Assistant Program, VAP. And we don't do that for any other population. So in some ways, what I started by saying that we treat all of our folks in our custody equally is not entirely true. We're doing a little bit more in that case because we believe that it's important to ensure that these individuals do have access to an attorney and access to due process. When an individual is arrested in a town in Vermont for disorderly conduct, and you are arrested in Bristol, Vermont on a Friday night for disorderly conduct, and you are held because perhaps this is repetitive behavior, or there was an element of danger to it, and you are brought to a facility. You will stay at that facility as the arrestee until arraignment on Monday, at which point you'll have an attorney. We don't tell attorneys across the state that this individual has been arrested, or we don't give a list of everybody who is currently without an attorney, but is in detention to anybody. We do in the instance of this particular population. And the reason for that is to ensure access. This was something that we worked out with VAP after a long period of conversations, of routine communication. And I think that we were surprised by the testimony in the sense that it did not represent what we believe the relationship has been insofar as regular communication, working with, as facilitating visits to the best of our ability, given our resources. Language access, we began a review of this upon hearing that testimony, which as I said, was troubling to us too. Our chief of operations, Travis Denton, undertook an in person review of the intake process and then the language access facilities at both CRCF, where our women are housed, and Northwest in Swanton, Vermont, where male immigration detainees are housed. He found that the language access, particularly at Northwest, is actually very strong at the intake level. There are signages available that allow people to identify the language that they speak. There is access to language lines through a company called Propio, which offers nearly 100 languages on its hard and on its translation or interpreter line. Are challenges, however, with language access inside the facilities once you're out of intake. There's strong language access in the infirmaries when medical is being provided. That's certainly important to us. But inside the facilities, the ability to get access to some of these language lines or these language apps is challenging owing to, we don't have phones in the general pop bays, and we also do not have easy cellular access. The WiFi at our facilities is a challenge for us and has been and remains, and we would like to overcome it. Are working to that we are To make sure that we have a consistent appearance of language access at both facilities. We found that CRCF was a little bit less clear on language access at intake than Northwest. It was slightly less consistent, and there was a variation in the staff's knowledge of interpreter services. We found very strong staff knowledge at Northwest. In both cases, as I said, the living unit, once you're out of intake and into the living unit, that becomes a little more complicated. But at Northwest, there is plentiful signage in the living unit where most of the immigration detainees are housed. And that includes signage that is from US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, where they have signs with multiple languages, signs that have lines that allow individuals to report human trafficking, if they themselves have been trafficked or if they know of it. And there are grievance processes and reporting processes, both through the federal immigration and customs enforcement and through our own grievance processes that people have access to if they have issues with anything, whether it's care or not. The superintendent at Northwest, I directed him to watch that testimony as well. He did and offered a number of observations. He noted that VAP had previously been visiting for about once a month for four hours, but that they have gone back, excuse me, that they're currently visiting once a month, but previously they were visiting two times a month for four hours. And he doesn't know why that changed. There had only been two visits in the last two months that he had noted at Northwest. He admits that he only has two rooms and he can't make more space. And that is a frustration for our superintendents across the board, not just with regard to immigration enforcement, It's a frustration with regard to remote court. It's a frustration with regard to space available for programming, etcetera. His head count has not exceeded 20. So when the representative from VAP stated between ten and thirty, that's simply not the case. At Northwest, it has never exceeded 20. The representative from VAP also referred to CRCF numbers as two to 20. We don't believe it's ever been close to 20 there. It's currently 16 as of today. There was also some discussion about the length of stay. There was a statement that there was allegedly a thirty day average. That is not the case. We currently have an average right now of a median stay of, there's a median stay historically of four days over the course of our interaction with immigration enforcement in this new phase since the new presidential administration. But right now, there's actually an average of nineteen days among the people who are currently being detained. And that is because of VAP's success at getting people held here longer. The fact of the matter is that the increase in days is actually something that ostensibly, I think we want to see in the sense that these are folks who are being, holds are being issued on them, habeas writs are being issued for them to stay in Vermont so that they can get the court appearances and due processes that they need here. And that has elongated the stay, but not to the thirty days that were mentioned in the testimony to an average of nineteen days right now. But again, the historical median was four days. Are ensuring that we have strong medical screening, medical booking intake, etcetera, all of which are done with interpreter services. With regard to the specific relationship, and also with regard to, for example, the ACLU's statement around a freedom of information request or a public records request, I'll turn that over to General Counsel Fisher. But I do wanna just say that we worked very hard to maintain this relationship to ensure that they were getting access that we don't provide for other detainees, but that we felt was necessary in this moment and with this particular situation to go a little bit beyond what we normally do. Overall, however, it is my goal to ensure that we treat everybody inside who is in our custody the same. And that may at times mean that we are not giving as much as a given advocacy group or attorney would want for a specific client or specific groups of clients. And the rationale for that simply is that ultimately it's going to be an equality of treatment that carries us forward to make certain that we are not inadvertently creating precedents for how we handle one group that may apply to a different group in the future after this very fraught and very troubling and very emotionally laden moment is, I hope, over.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So before we transition to the public records request, I know as committee members probably have some questions here, James, and

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: then No, Troy, sorry. Oh, I thought you did me. Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Troy? So

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: there's a pretty significant gap between your testimony and the testimony we've heard from both ACLU and Veth. And I don't make my policy decisions around who I believe more. I make my policy decisions on, hopefully, evidence. And I have a sincere interest in closing that gap and figuring out where reality is right now. Last year, members of this committee, myself included, were incredibly concerned when we were talking about whether or not the governor should extend the contract for DOC's involvement with STTNs. Adamantly I was against it. ACLU of Vermont both changed my mind. So they were the strongest advocates in the room as to why it might be beneficial to extend that contract. And to to some of the points you've made, keep people in Vermont because we do it better. The governor has said that. Right? The governor has stated number of times that we can do it better. I don't know if you said best in the nation, but that was certainly implied. It is time to prove that. We are in a moment where we have to prove that. And we are getting testimony, credible testimony, I'm going to call it, from both ACLU and VAP, that that's not currently the case. I can appreciate your perspective on the matter, but your perspectives don't line up. So there's a communications concern at the very least that we have to figure out. I'm concerned any time somebody is not having their constitutional due process rights being met, whether that's a Vermont detainee or an ICE detainee. To date, we haven't heard anybody advocating that Vermonters who are being detained are having threats to their constitutional rights. That's just not happening. We're not getting that complaint. We are getting that complaint from ICE detainees, the representation for ICE detainees. And I need to pay attention to that, especially if we're going to do this as well as the governor states that we could can. And I want to be very careful about creating any sort of narrative, and we're dancing around it right now, that we're treating ICE detainees better than we're treating Vermont detainees. This is not extra rights. This is not above and beyond. We're talking about fundamental due process rights in a national environment right now where those are very much at question on a very daily basis. And we are not far. We're seeing it happen in Minneapolis. We're seeing it happen in Portland, where those constitutional rights violations are going to and have been impacting American citizens. So there is a tremendous difference in perspectives about whether or not we're doing it right right now. And that worries me. So I and I I hear you say that I don't think you don't think that that's the case. You spent a lot of time talking about Northwest, didn't spend a lot of time talking about CRCF. And that's one of the complaints, is that there's a pretty significant disparity between the institutions. So one of the things I'm going to need to hear from you is whether or not there is a departmental approach to this and how much leeway your superintendents have in interpreting that approach, and what happens when superintendents are not meeting the stated expectations about how we're going to be treating ICE detainees. So are you aware? And we haven't even touched on language access yet. I want to know how the Vermont network has access to language programs when they're in the facilities. I have thoughts on space, and I wanna know if you'd be open to this committee discussing temporary space, such as a trailer of some sort or modular things like that that we can get in place so that you have enough space anybody who needs it for for giving access to this. And I don't know what to do about this disparity between feeling turned away and we're not doing that. I don't know what to do with that, because the testimony from the providers of these legal services are saying we're not having the access that is due to these people who are are having significant constitutional crises impact them. So do you have any formal written statewide policy governing legal access specifically for ICE detainees? Are you confident that your superintendents know what that policy is? Are there ramifications for superintendents who are not meeting those? I'm I'm especially concerned between what I'm see hearing happening at Northwestern versus CRCF. Block scheduling was brought up. You know, it is it and to me, that feels like it would be a really quick fix if if we're providing block scheduling on x number of days per week, per month, I don't know. That to me feels like it would be much more easier to manage for frontline staff. We'd probably have to support that block access. So I'm I'm curious your thoughts on that. I'll leave it there for now. There's a lot here. There's a lot in that gap that needs to be resolved. And my final question of the day will be, are you open to creating a working group of some sort with DOC, with ACLU, with VAP, perhaps with members of this committee to make sure that we're moving forward in ways that close that gap? I'm sorry that was a word vomit. I gave you a lot there, and there were a lot of questions in there. It's grounded in a fundamental concern that due process rights are being significantly impacted.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: apologize. I'm the attorney in the room for the department that has the evidence that you're seeking. I was hoping to deliver that to you before your questions. So I appreciate that more than I can say to you right now. And I just want to be clear, I've been the general counsel for the department since October. But prior to that, I was the director of the DOC litigation unit for the attorney general's office that's embedded with the department. So I have defended the department for all of the claims, anything all and above, including lane access, including conditions of confinement for the past five years. So my request to work for the DOC team was purely out of my observation on the daily and the defense of the department in courts on the daily, that the employees that work for the department are Vermonters. They have the same thoughts and high standards that I hear often coming out of this room and the legislature. And Vermonters that we live with, they work very hard to identify that while keeping people safe and secure. And I think it's very important that the disappointment in the testimony that we've heard from the ACLU and the BAP constituents were, in fact, contrary to a number of reports that they gave to us. I have specifically, I can refer to an email last October from Ms. Martin Diaz, Attorney Martin Diaz, that indicates working with Superintendent Turek at CRCF, very excited about the progress. Safety and security measures make a lot of sense when we explained why. And I can get back to security with your suggestion that we modular rooms for access. And we were working really hard with them because we don't have the WiFi and the cellular access in the facilities to figure out alternatives to offer in that situation.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Can you just tell me the date of that memo?

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: I absolutely can. 10/10/2025. And there's a number of back and forth. In the email string it also, Attorney Martin Diaz, thank you so much for reaching out with welcome and appreciated offer. It was an offer from Superintendent Turdick to coordinate the group meetings. VAP would be delighted to be conducting regular legal orientation and screening visits at CRCF. We hope to scale up the service to go bimonthly, which in fact did happen until they, for reasons I can't answer to, stopped that practice. And so that was specific. So as you might imagine, that gap was also concerning to us. I also have emails from attorney Peltier, who was one of the attorneys for the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project. When I started in October, day one, I had a reach out call with the VAC team talking about their visits. The call was based in the fact that the group of one or two attorneys and one or two administrative staff or interpreters was going to be increased trifle or quadrupled at that point in time. That's a logistics problem to have five or six detained individuals with security levels that require supervision all in one room with a number of attorneys and legal staff is a logistical issue, a spacing issue, as we discussed, and provides a lot of communication issues. So we were able to coordinate one of those bigger group visits. We gave them at that point in time a cellular phone access for one meeting space until we could get the landline up for them. And they were able use their interpretive services. The service that they use, that they disclose to us they use, does in fact have a cellular component, or a landline, I'm sorry, component to it. So they were able to get an interpreter on the line and have the conversations. Received a letter back from VAP, Attorney Peltzer, Thank you for the time and meeting with us. I'm getting back from CRC at visit. I'm pleased to report that the ladies we spoke to today had no complaints regarding the conditions of their detention. He goes on to say, All around, very pleased with how things went. It seems as though your arrival at the DOC had brought positive changes, increased access to counsel for those, and is resulting in increased access to counsel for those detained in our state, something we should all be proud of. I think we look forward to working with you all in the future.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Can I get a date on that?

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: That is 10/17/2025. And there was a follow-up, a larger visit. Obviously the larger population, the male population is at Northwest. And there was another visit with a larger group that that had. And the correspondence I got back was that it went well, minus the fact that one line wasn't sufficient for what their needs are, because they needed quantity at that point.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Date on that?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Was 10/28/2025. That was two and a

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: half months ago. Things could change. The information that was provided and there was a reference to the Human Rights Commission suit on this issue, All

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: of that

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: is stale. It's very old. It's prior to this time that I'm just referring to in October. There's no dispute that when the administration change happened and activity started to change in federal policy and practice, at the time probably you were discussing signing on the agreement, representative, things were in chaos and the department is required to stand something up in a very short amount of time. And we weren't great at it. A lot of the complaints that, and I believe Attorney Martin Diaz said in her complaint, her reference base was last spring. And the ACLU testimony was based on complaints, which I will get you more evidence on, in relation to the habeas cases that are filed in the federal courts, which are filed nearly on the daily at this point in time. That I believe is the due process part that you're referring to and the actual underlying detention of the individual. We don't get involved in that. When people arrive at our doorstep in whatever way they do, whether it's a state court or a federal entity, only for contracted, they have to prove to us, they have the underlying documents for us to hold that individual. And when they do, we verify that we've got the right person and we take care of them in the meantime. We do not question, file in, or otherwise counsel the individuals as to the underlying reason for their detention, which is, I just wanna be clear that there's a difference in that due process that the individual receives in our parent custody. The individuals have an opportunity and the VAP attorneys you heard from and the ACLU folks that you heard from provide legal counsel to them in order to file habeas petitions in the US District Court in Burlington. And those petitions in part, some of them have had claims of conditions of confinement, including the medical care situation and access to language services, which I will also get to. And in those court opinions, brought a couple with me. These are the individuals that VAC has determined that they are going to represent and file in, which they do not on all the individuals we have. And I understand there's a number of logistic reasons and resource reasons for them as well, where they choose their clients. They file those habeas, and then if there's any portion of that, we are named, the superintendents are named in those petitions because they have to be by law, because we have the keys to the front door. And so there is a component where the attorney general's office reaches out and says, Hey, there's conditions and confinement complaints in here. Can you help us explain? And we have done that on a couple of occasions. And the judges, would just wanna refer to and get my hands on the actual court decision. I just wanna read to you some language on those initial claims that align with the claims that were made to you by these individuals to help you reconcile the difference. Here is one order, and I can give you the docket number of the federal court. These documents are PACER documents available on the public access electronic records that the federal court maintains. In this petition, the individual, the court cannot find likelihood of success on merits of petitioner's claims regarding conditions of confinement. And that particular petition had some claims that there wasn't access to medical care. And we were able to show medical records, intake records, and the like that that was not in fact the case. The court And we found that conditions of confinement were not in place.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Can get a date on that?

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: Yes, sir. That came in 10/29/2025.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I just want to move this along a little bit too, because I'm sure there's other questions. So, when there is a detainee, regardless, I mean, they're not an ICE detainee. A detainee space is an issue and their lawyer shows up at the door. What happens?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Without an appointment?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: They show up? Facilitated if possible. Yes, they do show up without appointments, and they show up with appointments.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Would the

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: staff show up on an appointment or without a?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: I think it's been in both. Think even some of the anecdotes that were related in the testimony seemed to be sort of appearances without notice.

[Unidentified committee member]: They did talk about

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: some appointments that they set up. So what happens in a situation that's not an iced tea dingy, and their lawyer comes to visit them. Either they have an appointment or they don't, and they don't and you're in lockdown, and you don't have the space. What happens in that scenario?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: If it's a space issue, the person might be told to wait until the space clear up, or it would be explained. Space may be available. We can't tell how long the current An attorney is with a client already, meeting with that client. We don't know how long that will go. But in general, we don't do And you would not have multiple detainees and multiple attorneys in the same space having private meetings. It's not conducive to attorney client privilege. And it's no different for these detainees. They are not a monolith, although they've all been brought in by the same entity and are detained under the same basic charges. They're not a monolith. They're individual cases and need individual space and individual time with attorneys. And that becomes a space issue for us, too.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm just wondering how it's treated with a Vermont detainee who's not a nice detainee, and the lawyer shows up, and you're in lockdown, or there's lack of space. So if you're in lockdown, what happens? I guess I

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: don't know in what context that would happen in the situation. I I was just at Southern State last week and the prisoner's rights attorneys were walking in the door with me unannounced.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I'm going to the original testimony that sometimes the facility is closed due to lockdown or lack of space. So I'm trying to figure out if there's a Vermont detainee, it's not a nice person, there's a Vermont detainee, the lawyer comes, the lawyer has an appointment and you're in lockdown. What happens?

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: Well, if they have an appointment, we would reach out to them and let them know that there's a lockdown status in advance.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So would you do that with that? Absolutely.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yes They an appointment.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So if a lawyer doesn't show up at the facility, some of the lawyers, a person, detainee could be up in Newport and the lawyer's down in Windham County or Bennington County, and they're not gonna drive up. Is there a way for them to access their client in that facility?

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: They have to drive up and see them.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: If it's an in person access, if you mean, I mean, there's also, the tablets allow for access, phone access. Attorneys of record are categorized in the phone, so in the tablets, so that those calls are not recorded, that they are free as well and can be made. So there is tele access that is available.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And is that dedicated? Is that a dedicated line for the legal access to go to a detainee? Yes. And it would be through their tablet, or is it a specific landline? There's both.

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: And the attorneys are issued a PIN number, a security number, so they would follow the attorney line. You can call it the attorney line, identify themselves, give the PIN number. Once gain control clears them, the line is a secured line, not recorded, and it goes right to the, depending on the facility setup, but it'll go right to the pod where the individual is housed to speak to them.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: And that access is identical for a Vermont immigration detainee who has a attorney of record.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So is that the key? It needs an attorney of record, and the act would need to go through a process for attorney of record?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: That is why we provide the list each morning to them. They can become an attorney of record if they take those additional next steps. That's something outside of DOC's purview. And that, of course, is not necessarily true at intake. And so that happens the next morning after an intake. A group of people, two or three immigration detainees are brought in. They may have been detained any place. And for the most, in many cases, they're no longer being detained in Vermont. They're being detained elsewhere. And they are brought in, and there's no effort whatsoever to deny them knowledge of where they are. There is no, that is a component of the intake. The intake correctional officer will tell them where they are and where, and they are given- Understand the language. They are able to, there's signage in each of the facilities that has a list of all the languages available through the Propio translator line. And there are one version of the sign has 88, one version of the sign has 99 languages written in the language, and then whatever script, if the script is different, and then the person can point to the language that he or she uses. And then the translation line, the interpreter line, actually provides that. And we did find, and to your point, representative Headrick, yes, we found in the review conducted by chief of operations Denton, we found that there is a greater degree of inconsistency on staff knowledge and signage posting, etcetera, at CRCF than Northwest. And one thing that we are going to address in the short term from Now, Chief Denton is in charge of all facility and field operations. That is why he is the Chief of Operations. And his report, forgive me, Immediate recommendations from that report are standardization of signage and interpreter service guidance at the intake, medical and living unit areas at CRCF to match Northwest standards. An implementation of a standard operating procedure reminder for staff on interpreter access and documentation procedures, and an immediate exploration in the availability of language translation apps for the ICS tablets. It is possible that the tablets themselves could become apps for individuals to interact with both staff and for that matter, with other incarcerated individuals. Those are immediate takeaways from director, excuse me, from Chief Denton's review. And so those are absolutely things that we are conducting, mean, putting into motion already.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Was that a result of the testimony that came before us a few weeks ago?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: Yes, was Chief Denton's review happened, I think, a week ago, owing to our review of that testimony and the knowledge that you had invited us to appear here.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So without that testimony, for CRCF, you weren't aware that it was different in terms of what was happening versus St. Albans for the interpreter?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: Not in this pointed way, no. CRCF has undergone a number of issues that Northwest has fortunately escaped, including issues about crowding, issues around transition of supervisors, issues around construction that has exacerbated those crowding issues. They've had some lockdowns owing to a COVID outbreak and some other illnesses, flu. And so frankly, CRCF, we have been dealing with some other issues at CRCF. And so, no, we were not as pointedly aware of this as we are now. And to that extent, we're grateful for the opportunity to take an internal review and make improvements.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I have a few more questions. You had your

[Unidentified committee member]: hand up. Well, last question,

[Unidentified committee member]: and I think an answer would be to get some specific testimony about individuals who have been offended to find out whether there is in fact an offense. And in particular, I keep hearing that we're not providing or one thing that we're saying their their their constitutional rights are being offended. And I that's a general term. General terms are helpful. But we need specific terms of which rights are being offended, which constitutional rights are being offended for this person. I haven't heard specifics. And

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: once we get specifics and we have both parties explain why they think it's happening or not happening, then we can learn something. But if we just hear generalities, we'll- But when we welcome those specifics, because everything we attach to the person, I can tell you if they've made agreements, if they've been denied access, that's why the incidents, when we say there's been no denial of access, those get recorded. If someone is turned away, we know about that. And we weren't able to find any. I was specific to those cases on habeas, so I could give you real life complaints that are fourth amendment measurement complaints as to the detention themselves, which is not DOC. And so I appreciate that, and we would be happy to respond to any of the specifics in that way. I would say since last spring, I just wanna be clear that there are over 44 forms that have been translated into Spanish, including our use of library policy, our phone policy, the ICE handbook, religious accommodations, which I believe is another problem that came up in testimony, which is highly litigated, and we're very sensitive to that issue at the department, and conditions of release. So those are in Spanish. We have over 40 French and over 20 Nepalese. And there are the ICE handbook itself that tells you about all the due process rights, how to access your attorney, and all those items is now translated into 20 different languages. And the language access policy has been in development for the past several months, and that is set to be released soon too, which updates and addresses a lot of the issues. There's no denial there's much more progress that can be made in this issue for all of our population. I understand the sensitivity to this specific population now, but all of the people that are in our care and custody deserve that attention. And we respect that very much. So our language access folks are constantly in my office talking about the different options. We've also been exploring, can we use a self contained program? There's a self contained, most of the self contained language interpreter services require wifi or cellular. So we're back to that problem. Can we use a self contained model that stays on a cellular phone device that we can hand to the attorneys when they come in that we can maintain access to that would provide them, here's the phone and it's got the model on it that allows them that interpretation. Any suggestions we've had in talks before, they weren't comfortable with that yet, but that was something we've been looking at. It was not comfortable? When I was speaking with the VAP folks, they were And again, I can appreciate from the attorney's perspective, you wanna make sure the interpretation is reliable and it is consistent that you know your client is also understanding what you're asking. So we've been consistently looking at and trying to figure out ideas. The Wi Fi and cellular is our biggest hurdle. And that I know is an ongoing discussion all the time. But we do continue to work on these and the progress on the language access documents itself, which are our due process. And we talk due process to me, that means do they know how to complain if they're not getting medical attention? Do they know where to go and talk to you if they're not being able to call their attorney? How do they use the phone? How do they communicate with people? We have caseworkers who have to do workarounds to try to get out of country access for folks and make that happen so they can speak to family that is outside of the country. There's extraordinary efforts that go into working with this population on the daily. And I wanna be clear, we will address any specifics that are brought to our attention and certainly monitor those. I think an additional difference on CRCF and the population numbers of this population is much smaller at CRCF. Their occasion to engage with this population runs, it's been running four to six in the last few weeks. Last few months. Well, in general, the ladies don't tend to be much past five on the daily. It's been much lower the last, like the commissioner says. 16, right?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: 16 total. That's men and women. Oh, same total? Yes.

[Unidentified committee member]: Yes. Okay. Yeah, I misunderstood.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: My apologies. Yeah.

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: I'm the one who sends the list to VAP every day. I can tell you exactly the division of the two.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: So you're sending that list to VAP every day?

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

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: Every morning I send that to them.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We have a few more questions here.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Can I just do one quick question from the list?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Real quick, and then we're going to go to Conor.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: That has all the identifying information they would need, the A numbers, that kind of stuff?

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: No, We don't have the A numbers all the time. We do on some. I'm often tracking down A numbers so I can look into the immigration proceedings. But we don't always have the A numbers. Information that goes to them is a full legal first and last name and their location. There are 11 male

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: detainees today and five female detainees today. ICE. And that is immigration detainees. 11 males and five females. And that is pretty consistent with what it has been over the last couple of months. We put a cap on CRCF owing to the construction issues and owing to basically what we have told immigration is that if we are at 170 or higher for absolute population, we will not take new detainees. And unfortunately, we have been over 170 for quite some time. Sometimes in the course of a day, if court arraignments for Vermont detainees arrested on Vermont criminal charges, they get moved out, then we may drop suddenly to 168, and sometimes immigration is waiting right there with, oh, we can take two, we'll give you two. But for the most part, we're relatively static at CRCF right now, owing to our concerns. And similarly, Superintendent Hale at Northwest has turned people away in the past when he feels that they have crowding issues or capacity issues. And he has felt both authorized and supported in doing that and I has done do wanna know, did you send Which materials did you send to the committee?

[Haley (Vermont DOC staff, exact title not stated)]: Yeah, I sent a variety

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: of all of these. One of

[Haley (Vermont DOC staff, exact title not stated)]: the posters around language access and then a language access guide that we provide to staff.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: What staff are supposed to know, and again, the SOP re familiarization will be making certain that that document is known by anybody working intake at these two facilities. But it also includes what you asked for representative, which was the policy on court access. That's among the documents that Haley provided. I have here some photos that can sort of be moved around. That is a version of a sign on the wall that is propio, that is our intake sign that people can point to during intake to explain which language they use. The next one that you're holding is an example of a sign that is actually posted in the living area. That is an Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal sign that includes a line for them. It's got eight languages on it and is available in eight languages for them to be able to say if they have concerns, etcetera. Is the fuller version of the Propio sign, and that is available on a paper copy at intake to be able to give to somebody and say, which one of these? And here is a poster of, excuse me, a photo of the signage that's available at the Medline to ensure that the medical distribution is, that's only in Spanish, not in any other languages, but that is the most common language that we experience with people brought in for immigration. The assertions that had to do with constitutional violations had to do with due process and language. And I believe that we are meeting our language obligations. Can we do better? We want to. And we are working, as I said, to ensure that we are consistent across both facilities and that we are re familiarizing staff with things that they are already aware of and have tools for. But we also, with regard to due process, the whole point of keeping people in the state is that we are in fact providing it. And so those were troubling for us. And we were surprised based on the relationship that we had worked to build and the access that we were trying to provide. And the Fifth Amendment,

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: right to legal counsel. The right to

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: legal counsel is provided as

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: well. A question

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: right now.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: Yes, it is. But it is the degree to which we facilitate it for them is, in fact, greater than we would for other attorneys. And it's certainly no lesser.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And that's the gap. The gap of these reports.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: Yes, and that's why we are surprised by those gaps.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I'm going to move on because we have some more questions here. Conor and then Will? You got one. Okay, Shawn.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Thanks for coming in. We went into it last time you were here. The last couple of weeks have just been horrific. Right? And I feel sick working with this entity. And it's not just a DOC contract. We all own it, right? We vote on the floor for budgets. So I feel a real responsibility to do the right thing. I came in this session thinking I'm going to have a lot of amendments to get rid of this contract. This is horrible. We're complicit working with them. I think the comfort I get is from ACLU, the other activists and the administration seem to be aligned. That the reason we have this contract is to help people. Not because we have an obligation to have this contract. We're trying to help people. And if that's a motivation, we got to help people then. And I'm just like, I'm seeing so many barriers and ICE is just this like shadowy entity. They should be in the seats right now. Right. But they would tell us where to go if we invited them. Bet. Right. So I'm trying to get a sense of like, what is the communication between DOC and ICE? And how are we showing that we're in the driver's seat on this? And we can cut this contract anytime we want based on the way it's written here, right? So we lack staff, we lack space. Are we on the phone? First of all, who's talking to who specifically, right? Who's talking to them and us? How regularly is it happening? And are we saying things like, hey, ICE, we need a trailer because we don't have enough space for people to meet. That's on you. That's not on us, right? These aren't even Vermonters for the most part we have these days. It's fewer and fewer. Hey, ICE, we need better translation services. So I'd love to know just what the communication channels are there. And a more specific question I have, like, we asked Wealth Pass and they didn't seem too jazzed with the information they're getting from facility to facility when people are transferred. Which is another thing I think we should be talking to them about. But the big question, are we even asking for a warrant when they come into our facilities? Functionally, we are participating in a federal civil detention. It almost feels like we can be liable for that. Are we at least asking for a warrant to make sure these people have the right to be placing them there? So I'm throwing a lot at you. Communication channels mostly. Is there a warrant? And what leverage are we doing? And are we flexing that? We could cut this anytime if you

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: don't play ball. Superintendent Hale should be answering these questions. He flexes it on the regular.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Is that St. Albans? Yeah, he's

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: in the Northwest. He flexes it quite often. We have constant communication. Both our classification director and the superintendents have ongoing communication with the ICE regional manager. Some folks in St. Albans, the gentleman we deal with is higher up in Boston. And so absolutely there is pushback. There's refusal to take people that there are people that are brought to us that are very ill. There are people brought to us that are very broken. And there are occasions where we have to say, we cannot care for these individuals in this state. Which puts us in that quandary too, about when they go out of our So line of that's a real issue for us. So there is pushback. And as the commissioner said at CRCF, the pushback is spacing. I mean, our goal is to not have ladies on beds, on floor boats. That is not anything that we shoot And so when we approach that capacity, we definitely push back and say no. So there is pushback. There absolutely is. Also, it's very clear historically and was made very clear, as I understood it in the negotiation on this contract, that Vermont law will prevail. We're required to take over ICE standards and ICE detention standards as they will, but we've made it very clear these are Vermont facilities. They're gonna be run by Vermont. And there was some pushback from them to be transparent about our congressional representative visiting the facility. And the suggestion to us was that we needed to get clearance of their chain before that was allowed. We said-

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: At our own facility.

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: Yes, ma'am. So yes, there's absolutely pushback. We push back all the time. Superintendent Hale is a poster child for that. And so I think that also gets back to your question about consequences. Superintendent Riley is brand new at Chittenden. So our chief of ops and our director of ops have been spending a lot of time there with her recently to get that conversion and to make sure this is clear. But there's certainly many opportunities that we've exercised that flex in the last several months.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Have we asked for trailers or anything? So there's appropriate meeting space for people to meet with their attorneys?

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: No, because that kind of gets into our facility, our buildings and grounds for modern property. And then I don't know that I'd wanna come to all of you and ask about putting ice trailers on our property. No.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We believe it would be for the Boire space. That's that's Yeah.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: I think we I don't it. Yeah. If they don't

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: want to get interpreted out, they were looking for more space for holding ICE TV.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Right. No. Exactly.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Allowing It an overflow ability for when legal representation has an appointment with a nice detainee and you don't have enough space. How can that person access their fund? That's question

[Haley (Vermont DOC staff, exact title not stated)]: there for

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: And I and I don't wanna speak over the commissioner or our operations folks, but the intel consistently given to me, we're open to all ideas to that. What we would have to understand and vet is the security protocols that involve that. That's a large group of individuals to come in and then have, there's keep aparts, there's a number of reasons why security protocols are put in place. So those would have to be analyzed. Is this population safe to be in a trailer with these individuals together? Do we have to separate that? There's a lot of logistics with that that we would work out, but I haven't heard anyone in our conversations at any point in time not be willing to consider something like that.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Just on the warrants too. Do we ask for a warrant before we help people?

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: Absolutely, because they don't have the right documentation and Everybody the paperwork has a warrant? And they come in with the proper documentation. If we don't see that, then no, thank you.

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

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's part of your due process and your constitutional rights.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: But it could be a civil detainer. It's, I mean-

[Conor Casey (Member)]: No, sure, yeah, yeah.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: It's different than an arrest warrant from a Vermont police officer.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, that's right. No, I know.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: We absolutely ascertain that they have the requisite paperwork, at least that they're presenting it to us. Okay. Whether or not, obviously there have been many claims made in public and in various venues about whether or not these are fair or whether these apprehensions are happening properly or not, we can't ascertain that. But we can take a look at the paperwork that's given and say, yes, this is the proper paperwork that we've received for years and years in the past, and that it's present. We do not merely take them because a person shows up from the FBI or ATF or ICE and says, Take this person. There has to be paperwork. That's part of the due process. That's part of due process, it's part of, yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Change my lines. Will, and then Shawn. I guess,

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: from my question, just segueing from what we were just speaking about around the meeting spaces, one of the things that you touched on about, I guess, some disagreement or just issues with the testimony from ACLU and VAP was remote hearings. Did I hear that correctly when you said that the ability to conduct remote hearings was a point of attention or discretion?

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: It is a point of intent. That is, again, when the commissioner talks about across the board, we do not facilitate So the judiciary, the remote carrying equipment that is in our facility is owned by the Vermont judiciary. And that is assigned accordingly for Vermont proceedings. And then those proceedings are also outlined. There are certain proceedings that should not be held remotely, and I think we would all agree to that. So there's a very limited, and it's in, I think, the documents that Ms. Summer provided to you all that outline the hearings that we do provide remote access to. The civil detention hearings, the immigration hearings that everyone's referring to, we do not facilitate those. How those occur is that the transport deputies from ICE come and get the individual to bring them to Burlington for their hearings and then bring them back to us. We do not facilitate that or maintain that, and we do not provide. And I would say it's not good practice or fitting of the constitutional rights to put an individual who you're already arguing, maybe doesn't understand the language, and then putting them on a remote device to try to understand their rights remotely over a computer camera. So we do not facilitate those, not because they're ICE hearings, because there's a number. We don't do family proceedings except for termination of parental rights. We do criminal proceedings. And again, there's a list of the hearings that we do facilitate in coordination with Vermont judiciary over their equipment.

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: It is. So because these civil detention cases, I'm assuming federal, is that why we can't facilitate those remotely because of the fact that states judiciary outside? Well,

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: I don't want to argue on their behalf. They probably would say they let them use the equipment, but that's the primary reason. Secondary reason, or maybe should be the primary reason, is these individuals should have access to their attorneys live and in person, in present, in front of a judge.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: And it's also, it is a resource issue. In a certain way, we are running 14 courts in all six facilities, in the sense that we have usually one space, sometimes two, that has telecommunications equipment there. It belongs to the court, but it doesn't belong to the court in that county. There are people in Rutland at Marble Valley who need to see the Windsor Court or even need to see the Essex Court. And there are people at CRCF that need to see the Bennington court and that need to see the Caledonia court. And as a result, each of these facilities is running essentially 14 courts. There are sort of access and space issues with that, we facilitate them as best as we can. And none of them is to say that we treat the detainees who are there under immigration homes differently.

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: And I wanted to supplement before I forget that next Friday, right now, we've created a dashboard, our folks in our analytics division in concert with the VAP individuals and a number of different constituents around the state have created this dashboard that will be available to the public where you can see the population numbers, you can see the average day of stay. There's an FAQ section that answers, do we have charging documents and what that looks like. It'll have answers to a lot of your questions available in real time. Does that go live next Friday? Next Friday. The dashboard?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: Yes, yes. And Attorney Martin Diaz brought it up, and Attorney Martin Diaz brought it up in the context of admitting that some of the numbers being offered might not have been entirely accurate, but the dashboard has been awaiting. It is true. This dashboard was something that we had hoped to have out much, much earlier really towards the end of the '5, so about four or five months ago. We have tried, however, in the meantime, to make certain that as many stakeholders were offered the opportunity to weigh into it as possible, which included reporters and legislators, and we're now very excited for it to go live. I think it may clear up some of these issues. Among them is the absolute volume of folks who are in custody for these, under these circumstances, which is not tremendous. That is not to minimize what's happening to individuals. It's not to minimize the nature of this situation, but it is to say that it's not as if there are dozens of people each awaiting time with an attorney and each awaiting court time, etcetera. And as the holds continue to occur, and we end up with people who are in our custody for longer and longer periods of time owing to those holds, the truth is that then it slows down quite a bit and the need for regular, which may be a rationale for why Superintendent Hale, for example, indicates that he has seen far fewer visits from immigration attorneys over the past few months. It may simply be that that volume has slowed down because we're holding onto the same individuals for longer periods of time.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We got a couple more questions, three o'clock. Jay Johnson is due to come in to talk to us about the administration's proposal for the pretrial supervision program, dollars 4. So I do want to start tying this up because we have to be on the floor at 03:30. Shawn and then Brian.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: As much as I appreciate that and the ACLU and what they're doing. I also appreciate you looking at your your you know, the problems you were you you thought you had, especially at CRCF, and looking at those and trying to make them better. I appreciate that. I have a question about so when you do turn these people away that can't go into the facilities at Northwest and CRCF The detainees. The detainees from ICE. Mhmm. Where do they go?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Who knows?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: We do not know.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Do not know. Uh-huh. That's the question. We don't know. Okay. Hopefully, if they're not in good shape, it's even worse. Not a good situation all around. It's tough. It's tough on feeling empathy for folks as a human being. It's not how we treat people. Brian?

[Brian Minier (Member)]: A two parter, I guess. The first part of which goes back to sort of the beginning of Greg Headrick's line of questioning. But there's inherent in that, I think, the question of policy versus practice. And it sounds like, I think, I've been hearing, and we've a couple of the policies up that I had a chance

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: to look at yet. You feel like

[Brian Minier (Member)]: you have the right policies in place, but perhaps you have some turnover or something at CRCF with the problem of practice. I think that's the one distinction. And the other is to go back to Rutland Casey's line of questioning, which is, if we are doing it better here, if there's a reason to go along with this here, is there something that you could be doing better in practice if legal representation gets turned away, if there's a problem with space? So yeah, is the right policy in place? And where practice is broken, what are going do? How could it be better?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: Well, I refer you again to the recommendations in Chief Denton's report, standardization of signage and interpreter servants guidance at the intake, medical, and living unit areas, an implementation of standard operating procedure reminder for folks, which includes the document that you do have there, and ensuring that anybody who's doing intake in these facilities is familiar with that process. Even just taking the signage that currently exists and making certain that it's more prominent and that it's clear to anybody. This is where the sign is that you need to show to a person going through intake. These are the numbers that you would use, and here's how you use the line. That would be a component of it. And then last but not least, we are going to determine whether or not the tablets that we currently allow every single person in our custody to access, irrespective of whether they're an immigration detainee or a state detainee or an independent evangelical instance individual, we're going to try to determine whether or not there are language apps that are available on those.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: But then, so not just the language question. There's this access question. So to the degree that there has been problems getting access for legal to these folks, is that a practice problem as opposed to a policy problem? Is there a way to make that better through training? Could we be doing more to help

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: fix that when it does go wrong?

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: Yeah, no, that's a fair question. And what I employed when I got into the mix here was that those problems immediately there to contact. If there's someone at the door and there's a reason we're not letting them in and they're going to see any population, then there's an alert to me so that my team can assess it immediately and either triage the situation and get the person access, or otherwise create an alternate situation for them to access their client. I get that on the regular. I'm on the phone and on emails all day long with prisoners' rights. And I was working very effectively, I thought, with VAP for quite a number of months. And that's what they would do. They'd reach out and say, Hey, we see this as a problem, and we would troubleshoot it on the spot. So I think we were working to vet out the practice, because the practice procedures don't tend to be the COs or the intake people. It tends to be making sure with the consistent care that people know where to go with questions. And maybe that is in fact a practice and make sure that everybody knows, keep checking in to make sure that they know if they have any questions. But I felt confident that we're moving in the right direction for that communication. I think communication is key. What are you seeing? What are you doing? Me an opportunity to fix it. There's nothing worse than as an attorney in particular being told that there's a problem without either a solution offered or an opportunity for me to find a solution for that. So that's why we had opened up the communication pretty openly to go back and forth and try to troubleshoot on the spot. And the superintendents both, and superintendent interim Turk, who's been handling it during this division, was very quick to call me and Director Jacobs, and we would work through these issues on the spot.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So, Commissioner, the document you just referred to, was that part of the packet, the in incentives? Is that public that could be No.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: It is not. It's a pre deliberative internal report that we're working on.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you're working on it when it becomes complete, is it then? Does it stay

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: on We can certainly make certain that you know the pieces of it that we're going to be implementing and looking at.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That would be helpful.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: Yeah, to say we are doing, here's what we're gonna, here's the training that we've planned in order to ensure standard operating procedures are being effectively and consistently communicated. Is

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: that available now, or is that gonna be later on?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: That's something that we're in the process of doing, and we'll inform you when we do and share it with you, yeah. But I'll tell you that it's going to be the document of which you're already in possession, which is the language access piece and how we do it. It's just gonna be sort of sending that out and then roll calls or at other training opportunities saying, everybody here needs to know this, and then making maybe perhaps a laminated copy available, just leaving and making certain that it's there in intake to be reviewed and familiarized.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'll give the committee an update on how roll call works. But I must admit, I chuckled when I saw the interpreter sheets go out. If you need an interpreter, it says in English, please point to the proper language. So as if they can understand the English, to tell them to point. I mean, I chuckle. I'm sure.

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: I mean, I will say that English is a second language for the population that have made the habeas claims. And we've established pretty quickly that they're able to

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Point, to interpret, to understand that, to release point.

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: Right, and point. And I have to say that, I think as the report from Chief of Office Denton, Northwest in particular, it's almost like they've created their own communication and have done a really good job with that.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: There's also anecdotal evidence that English proficiency improves when the immigration enforcement departs.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Troy, and then we have to tie it up because Jay's waiting.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: As promised, I'm gonna reiterate my final question. Are you willing to put together a working group with somebody from DOC, somebody from ACLU, somebody from VAP, and then anybody else as needed to keep the conversation going about the fixes,

[Brian Minier (Member)]: the solutions, the practice, the revenue.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: We had a de facto version of that for several months that we thought We was working can certainly, yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Absolutely. Absolutely. We could do a letter of intent. We could send a letter of intent to all the parties and tell them to report back to us by a certain date in terms of when it was formed. We could do something like It's it doesn't have to be a legislative something in a bill. But I'm just thinking how we could expedite this and do it quickly. I don't know. Let's just put that on the table as a thought.

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: We would be willing to do that. Absolutely.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Thank you. So we need to tie this up, because Jay is out in the hallway to talk about the administration's proposal. I wanna thank you. I don't think it was too hard on either one of you.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: No, I was grateful.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: And again, I was grateful for the note at the end of that testimony about the necessity for this one. So thank you. Thank you for your dedication. And

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I also wanna do a shout out. We have a lot of folks at Middlebury College. It's kind of thinned out a little bit, but I think the topic probably interested quite a few folks when they saw it on the agenda and said, oh, boy, we're coming in.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: My family and I went down for the J Term musical. Was Urinetown. It was great. It was

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: a lot of fun. That's so cool. Classmates the treat. Jim is here.

[Haley (Vermont DOC staff, exact title not stated)]: Thank you so much for

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: your time. Yeah, no problem. I hope it was informative and gave you some impression of how the legislative body for DESL.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: We work. It's when we get things in common.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Exactly. Takes time, but all of a sudden it comes together. Thank you so much. Thank you.

[Nancy Prescott (DMV Director of Operations)]: Remind me.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Not a.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: Not a roll call vote. Roll call

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: vote. No. It's not roll call vote. It's a roll call. Hi, Jade. Why are we acting twice a night? I know. Two weeks since You

[Jay Pershing Johnson (Governor Scott’s Legal Counsel)]: can lift your seat up if you too short now?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You can figure out where the lever time I do it,

[Jay Pershing Johnson (Governor Scott’s Legal Counsel)]: it'll be half night.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Commissioner of corrections was sitting in there, so that's his problem. Jay, I want to thank you. I know it was short notice for coming in. We've just heard rumblings that there might be an extension of the pretrial supervision program. The governor alluded to it in his budget address. A member of our committee mentioned there's about 200,000 that's in the FY twenty seven general fund budget. The pretrial supervision law came about from the work that this committee did a couple of years ago. So we'd like to have you in just to give us an understanding what the governor's proposal is for the expansion of the pretrial supervision and explanation of the 200,000. So welcome. So if you identify yourself for the record. Okay. Thank you.

[Jay Pershing Johnson (Governor Scott’s Legal Counsel)]: Thanks, Madam Chair. Jay Pershing Johnson, Governor Scott's legal counsel. So anyway, and the chair did a little bit of table setting there, so I just did wanna sort of expand on that a little bit. The context for the pretrial supervision program was in act 138 of 2024, which was enacted an act relating to how to how a defendant's criminal record is considered in imposing conditions of release. So the intent of that of our proposal at the time, the governor's bill, was to modify existing law to address the continued practice of the release of the routine release of low level, high impact, service resistant, repeat offenders in our community. So again, this is you know, for several years, we have tried to address this issue of repeat offenders. Again, low level crimes, high impact crimes. We discussed that a little bit in the context of the accountability court. But this bill, it included a rollback of bail reform, which had capped bail for misdemeanors at $200 regardless of the number of reoffenses. It made so and what we did there was for reoffenses, remove the cap.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It made That's a bill that

[Jay Pershing Johnson (Governor Scott’s Legal Counsel)]: we passed. Yeah, 138, yes. It made clear that when determining bail for repeat misdemeanors, a judge is to consider whether at the time of arrest, the defendant was released on conditions or other release pending trial, and whether the defendant was compliant with court orders or had failed to appear. It made clear courts were to consider, among other release options, pretrial supervision and home detention. It clarified that home detention could be used for defendants who violate conditions of release, because I'm sure as you all know, detention is also not widely used. Fourth, section four of the bill was to create the pre trial supervision program. So in my recollection, the concept was introduced by Senator Sears and Senate Judiciary in response to our proposals, which he believed would result in more pre pretrial detentions of repeat offenders, which actually has been the case to a certain extent. His proposal has roots in the federal pretrial program, which is operated and staffed by the federal courts. So the federal government has a pretrial supervision program. I think it's widely regarded as largely successful, but it's operated by the court system and not by the federal correction system. So from the statute, the purpose of pretrial supervision is to assist eligible people through the use of evidence based strategies to improve pretrial compliance with conditions of release, to coordinate and support the provision of pretrial services when appropriate, to ensure attendance at court, and to decrease the potential to recidivate while awaiting trial. That was the whole goal. It was consistent with our goals. While it wasn't our proposal, it was a good idea. So the governor was happy to sign the bill. It creates a statewide program in law, but expressly provided it only operates to the extent funds are appropriated. It technically wasn't a pilot, but the Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee has been hands on in terms of reviewing the pretrial supervision program. So it also, I think, to Senator Sears' point, and I think to address some of the concerns this committee has expressed with respect to detentions, it does have the potential for controlling the size of the detainee population. If people are in the community, but supervised, their chances of succeeding in the community arguably are better, their chances of appearing in court arguably are better. But we do know that there are utilization problems with the program. The governor's proposal actually adds $200,000 to the base budget in DOC's budget. So DOC continues the program in its base regardless of the $200, but 200,000, but staffs up the program to statewide operational capacity.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I have a question on that. Yep. So when we funded it originally two years ago, there was 600,000 put in there. Do you know if that was base?

[Jay Pershing Johnson (Governor Scott’s Legal Counsel)]: Yes, it was base. I believe it was I mean, actually, I can't answer your question. I don't know the answer

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: to all

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: the Well,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: it would have been We did it in a session of '24 Yes. Which would have been available in f y twenty five. Yes. As it was in the '24 that it opened up in Essex in Orleans County.

[Jay Pershing Johnson (Governor Scott’s Legal Counsel)]: Yeah. In in '25, I believe.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I'd like to know how much is

[Jay Pershing Johnson (Governor Scott’s Legal Counsel)]: left of that 600,000. And I actually think that it it there is there was additional money last year as well.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'd to find out because I think the money was put in for f y twenty five, not '24. We this is during the session of '24. Right. So twenty f y Because senator Sears passed away in '24. Yeah.

[Jay Pershing Johnson (Governor Scott’s Legal Counsel)]: F y twenty five, then f y twenty six, and now we're going into f y twenty seven.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right. Right. So was there anything in f y twenty six? I don't believe so. I think that 600,000 was there to get the program started. It started in Six Orleans. There was nothing last year to put it in any other county. So I don't know if there was any additional funding put in there last year. So it was

[Jay Pershing Johnson (Governor Scott’s Legal Counsel)]: my understanding there was, but it but I would again, I would urge you to get the information you need to confirm that. So I've I thought that it was 600,000. I thought last year there was an addition, And this year, there is further appropriation in order to make the program whole, so to speak, in terms of statewide operations. But I could be absolutely incorrect, and that's easy enough to check.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So is the administration's goal to With this 200,000 that is added on to

[Jay Pershing Johnson (Governor Scott’s Legal Counsel)]: the base, which we have to find out. The base, is it 600? And it's a good question, how much is left?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Just for FY '25 or was there another 600 put in during this current fiscal year FY '26? And then how much has already been expended because we started the program up in Essex Orleans and then it got shifted over to Chittenden County for the accountability for it. I'd like to know how the money is moving, how much we have left. So the 200,000 that's being proposed for FY twenty seven is to go on top of the base. Yes. So then the intent is that this pretrial supervision program would be available statewide? Yes, that's the intent.

[Jay Pershing Johnson (Governor Scott’s Legal Counsel)]: But we do know that the program is underutilized. And so I urge you, I think in this respect, and I can get you the numbers information, and I'm sorry I don't have that, to hear from DOC on their experience in Orleans and in Chittenden. I think that it did not work. I mean, was not utilized in Orleans. I think they thought it would be utilized in Chittenden, it really wasn't, although I think the prosecution moved to use it. And then I urge you to hear from public defenders, prosecutors, and the judiciary on why it remains unused. Because at a very basic level, DOC can't control the utilization of this program anymore than it controls the number of detainees or the numbers of sentenced incarceration. So the courts are authorized to impose pretrial supervision as a release tool. And that may be philosophically where it falls apart. And again, I urge you to speak with them, is because it's in DOC, it may not be viewed as a release tool so much as something that's pre incarceral. And may suggest to some that there is some implication with respect to guilt or innocence. I I don't know how the judges are viewing that. Many may feel that conditions of release are sufficient, but the real problem is with a thirty, sixty, ninety day hearing schedule, it's not sufficient, it's clearly not sufficient. If you were turning cases around quickly, you may not need this program, or we're not turning cases around quickly. So in the accountability court in Chittenden, where you had weekly hearings, the prosecutor was asking for pretrial supervision, but not getting it from the judge. It may have been that the judge felt that the weekly hearing schedule was sufficient. It's not clear, and you'd have to hear from her judge or the judiciary as to why exactly it wasn't used as a tool. But the very intent, I think, of the legislature at the time and our continued intent as part of our larger attempt to get at the root causes and the process with respect to repeat offenses is connecting people with services, helping them remain connected during the however long it takes to get back into court, and to ensure that they get to court. Because very often it isn't that people are just malingering, sometimes they are, but sometimes they're not. They just don't have homes, they don't have phones, They don't have a calendar that they're keeping regularly. And there's no way to actually I don't believe that the court sends out notices to defendants. They may send them to their attorneys. The attorneys aren't always in contact with their clients. It's just one of those. It's not a system that works well for people who are vulnerable in the community. But it could if, say, DOC and an option for DOC in the statute is telephonic, but also in person. So DOC could do some field work presumably with a staffed up program. So I think there's potential for the program, it just isn't used. We also hear that the defense bar routinely objects to the use of the tool. You would have to talk to them about why. Be concerns It with the amount of information that may need to be gathered about the risk of the defendant and how in order to assess their supervision level. But I think there are some changes to statute that we could make that maybe would address some of those concerns.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Did the administration propose any

[Jay Pershing Johnson (Governor Scott’s Legal Counsel)]: of those changes? We proposed we didn't propose, I don't believe, in our omnibus bill. We didn't propose changes to the provision with respect to what But I believe it's a DOC policy. I don't think it's in the statute as to what's required in order to make the assessment. DOC has to make the assessment, but I think they use the ORAS. And I think that that's not necessarily You have a lot of information on the record and in the affidavit about an offender who has committed five or more offenses in the community that DOC could maybe work with when you're doing misdemeanor offenders. So I have to dive a little bit into where the assessment comes in. And that does the assessment. They definitely do the assessment. I don't think it's required of the statute. So I think for purposes of DOC's assessment, they could actually maybe think differently about how to do that. But again, that's a conversation with DOC and the committee. Because I think the Joint Justice Oversight Committee initially reviewed the DOC. They're not rules, they're policies. And maybe that's where a change could be made. So again, DOC supervision is often passive, and phone contact may not be appropriate for a lot of this population. You may need more active supervision when it comes to this population. The one statutory change that we did put in our package as soon as you get there, actually, is allowing supervision officers to notify the court directly of violations of conditions. The court is the entity that issues the warrant. So the process Right now, DOC is required to contact the prosecutor who is then to contact the court in order to get the warrant. You could have a supervision officer report directly to the court.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What's the counsel of state governments recommend?

[Jay Pershing Johnson (Governor Scott’s Legal Counsel)]: That would have made more sense than the way we did it. And there there may be statutory changes. I believe that at least in house judiciary, I think there's gonna be a joint hearing, and I don't know if this committee is involved, on sort of the accountability court with the participants coming up in the February. And in that testimony, there should be additional ideas generated about how to fix the program. But at the end of the day, I think we agree and support that the program is a good idea. It's got, I think, a tremendous amount of potential to the extent it's viewed as a tool that facilitates release and effectively keeps our communities safer. It's just that

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the courts aren't using it. We need to figure out why. You had your hand up.

[Unidentified committee member]: Oh, yeah. It's good to point. We did hear from DOC last week. I don't

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: know what day, but one day last week,

[Unidentified committee member]: there was one person and three child. One. Yeah. So until such

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: time I'm sorry? And checked in.

[Unidentified committee member]: Correct. This is where the program's been moved from. Until such time, the judiciary could figure that out, be it the court itself, or believe that the prosecutor's asking for it, I don't know where the public offenders are.

[Jay Pershing Johnson (Governor Scott’s Legal Counsel)]: They don't like it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's for us to ask those questions. Well,

[Unidentified committee member]: I really think it's the judiciary. Unless there's people striving to the program, I don't really understand kind what of putting the cart in front of the horse, I think.

[Jay Pershing Johnson (Governor Scott’s Legal Counsel)]: Yeah. And I hate to, I wouldn't say again, from my experience in accountability court, there's never just one entity that is the problem, I guess I would say. While it may appear that the courts are authorized to Basically, the courts have the authority to impose the tool as a release tool, they aren't, but understanding why may have to do with things that aren't related to the court. So I think that's important to understand. I just don't believe that the way that our systems work, that it's ever one thing. Although the various stakeholders will always point to the other stakeholders and say, they are the problem. So I think making it work together better is often the way to think about it. And I believe that DOC in its own policies and practices could contribute to the solution.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, this is helpful because I was hearing, we're expanding pretrial supervision, but I wasn't seeing anything. And then it was 200,000. And my question is that a one time, is that 600,000 a one time? Is it base? Was it in FY twenty five and twenty six? So if you could find that out, that would be a tremendous help.

[Jay Pershing Johnson (Governor Scott’s Legal Counsel)]: Yes. I will definitely do that and get that back to

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: you. I know. Yep.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont DOC)]: Anything else? Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: On the floor. Thank you. Thank you, Jake, for coming in on short notice. No. Thank you so much. Thank you. I wasn't too hard on you this time.

[Laurie Fisher (General Counsel, Vermont DOC)]: I know. I appreciate that chair.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you just get along. Thank you. So we are, I believe, done for the day. We're on the floor at 03:30 with a budget adjustment on the floor, resolution. So we will be back here tomorrow's Friday, again, in the macro. We will be back here after the floor tomorrow. Okay. Okay?