Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: You're live.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Do you want Yeah. Welcome, folks. This is House Corrections and Institutions Committee. It is Friday, February 6. This is our 12:00 meeting. We're running a little late. We are working on House Bill two ninety four that deals with telecommunications and commissary, as well as wages within our Department of Corrections. We have with us some University of Vermont folks who are involved in the Vermont Legislative Research Service to give us testimony in terms of telecommunication, prison telecommunications, and some policy changes. So welcome. And you do have some documents.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yes. You very much.

[Skye Whalen (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Thank you

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: for having us. For the record, my name is Kevin McGreal. I'm Skye Whalen.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I'm Theodorest.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: And we are former student researchers for the UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service. Thank you so much for having us today. I know we're meeting during lunch hour. We're gonna try to be really fast. Some of the

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Fine. We're doing we took an early lunch.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Early lunch. Y'all are nice and sated. We're so Alright. Oh, we're gonna go deep into this. Some of this material you guys have already covered in previous committees, so we'll some of it will be a review, but some of the stuff, I think, we'll be able to help supplement the deliberation process on H294. So just for a little bit of background about the VLRS or the Vermont Legislative Research Service for anyone who is not aware, it was formed in 1998, and it was developed to give students an opportunity to grow their professional research skills. And also, it was seen as a way to meet the need of Vermont's citizen legislature for when you guys are short on staff, which we don't need to expound on too much, but I'm sure you're well aware of. And we offer various research services. We do things like state policy comparison. There's literature review on specific issues. Sometimes we do surveying, things like that. And it's a small group of students. We have to apply for it. We're selected. And then we go through a rigorous training on proper research methods. We work with reference librarians. We're looking at research databases, formatting citations, being consistent, stuff like that. And then trying to be aware of different biases that we might find from insources and in different advocacy organizations and stuff like that as well. This specific report Oh, so we put out a notice sent to all of y'all. I'm sure you saw it in your emails last September. And then we take in requests for research. This report was requested by representative Greer.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Gonna put a Oh,

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: like a little, like, cutout cardboard cutout. Beautiful.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I thought you gonna say electric dog fence. Yeah.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: So he requested a few different things. For the scope and time frame that we had to work with, we decided to focus on prison telecommunications. So I will just give a brief overview of what we'll go over, and then we'll get right into it. For the opening of it, we do a literature literature review of the issue, the science that kind of explains what they're finding in these populations with the issues of financial burdens, and then also access to family members of communications where the telecommunications comes in. There's a little bit of an overview of like the federal action in the beginning. We don't need to go on that today. And then we will also be going into some other specific state policies. I know you guys talked about Massachusetts a little bit and Connecticut. So we'll do a little review on that if we want. And then there's a few other states that we're looking at as well, those being Colorado, Minnesota, and California. And then we'll wrap up with a discussion on IC solutions and that the prison service provider, like private prison service provider sector in general. We did some research on some legal issues there that you might be interested in, and that will be a discussion at the end. Let's see. Any question? Oh, yeah. We talked about contracts a little bit. You guys went into contracts pretty deeply. So some of that, you might even have more up to date information. This report was finished in October. So some of the stuff we we did kinda look at some of the stuff, see if there's any new information, but just know that this information is from that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Do I have a question?

[Speaker 0]: Joe? No, no, I didn't have a question.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yeah, any questions before we get into the literature review part?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I don't think so. It's all yours.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: All right.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I have the document up on the screen.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yeah, so we have the document. There should be some hard copies if you want to So follow along as looking into the science of this, there was kind of two different angles looking at the issue of why

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Are you trying to get on the screen?

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Oh, no. Oh, okay. I don't know if you guys wanna pull it up. Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm not Okay.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yeah.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Which one

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: are you working on?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: They're both the same, actually.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They're both the same.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Oh, sorry. That one just has a cover letter with our contact information because that was not included in the one that we had that Yeah. The other one was from our website, the VLRS website.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They're exactly the same.

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

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: So the first issue is looking at the financial burden that incarcerated individuals experience. Looking at the financial burden that the incarcerated populations experience.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Could I interrupt you Joe, for a could you move into either Will's seat or that so this other gentleman can sit up with

[Speaker 0]: Happy to have the permission of the chair.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Oh, man. I just thought it we'd love to have you at the front of the

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Oh, thank you.

[Skye Whalen (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Thanks. I appreciate that.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Can do that.

[Skye Whalen (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Thank you, I appreciate it.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Thank you, everybody. I like it.

[Speaker 0]: Anything for you, Mary.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Thank you, I'll pay for it later.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Feels complete now. Welcome

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: back. Oh, all

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: right. Yeah, that's fine. Okay.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: All right. Yeah, no. Yeah, the first part of this was looking at why people find this as an important issue is the financial burdens that can accumulate for incarcerated individuals from, as you guys have been exploring many different sources, there's court fees, there's these commissions and markups and stuff on the commissary and the telecoms. And then there's post incarceration issues, not having, you know, like having their vehicles impounded, not having access to legal documents. And all of these things kind of compound together to make reintegration more difficult. So we were looking at different studies that look at kind of metrics on that, and then tried to include in the literature review studies that did their own sort of literature review as well. So if you're looking at any of these sources, these cover, if not just like a specific study, they're looking at a bunch of different studies to try to get a bigger picture of what's going on. So we have information on that. And then also looking at just highlighting that this is an issue that's specifically prevalent for lower income individuals, which is when you're looking at the incarcerated population. It's disproportionately people that make less money. So we have some studies on that. And then also I was, we didn't have like direct data on the Vermont incarcerated population, but I was listening back to, don't know, testimony yesterday or in April or May. I think you guys mentioned that it was like indigent. There was like, was it 20% or something like that of the Vermont population? So it's like, I think you're looking at a population that is experiencing similar levels of income disparity. So there's this financial end, and then the other end of the issue is looking at the social impact. And this was really interesting. So it's doing the research on this, doing social science research is really difficult because there's so many different factors. So a lot of these studies are qualitative. They're doing interviews with 6,100, but usually in that kind of less than 100. Then Oh, let's see. Let's see. So we have the qualitative interviews, and then the consensus that I found was there's a lot of gaps where information's missing. We need to get more. So the stuff that you guys are collecting that you're hearing from the prisons on the ground, all that information is gonna be very valuable for when you're making these decisions. But that being said, the studies that have been taking place are showing very clear evidence of how important this social connection is. And there's a lot of different metrics that we can look at. It's not just recidivism, which is, I think, maybe one of the more interesting ones to look at for in terms of the impact on the state and these investments, even though they're costing a certain amount to do this, how how do we measure the impact of having people not come back into the system? That's a pretty big deal. But it showed a lot of really clear evidence that this connection, this maintaining family contact is really important for reintegration and for just the overall well-being of these families, the children that have parents that are incarcerated, and then the incarcerated individuals themselves being able to reenter society and feel supported and have everything that they need. Let's see, we can get into specifics on some of these studies if you want. I don't know how much time you wanna take into that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I mean, just some specifics would be good.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Okay. So I think the one that looked more at recidivism, there was this Minnesota study that was looking at the importance of contact for people that were visited.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Is this a part of the document?

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: This is part of the document. This would be on page two of nine.

[Skye Whalen (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Research of effects in maintaining a protective family.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Tate, we're hoping by Tuesday, then Lori would send it to you, and then you can send it out to the partners. Sorry.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: No ontology, Gina. Page two.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Page

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: two. Research on the effects of maintaining contact with spam. So this was a Minnesota DOC, an in house study. And it's actually pretty interesting if you wanted to dig into it. It's linked in the sources. And they did a review of other state DOC studies as well. And then they also found that the contacts correlated with a 13% reduction in recidivism. Was between 2,003 and 2007. Another one that I actually really liked as well, if you're curious to dig into some of these, Let's see, was it Beric? I think it was Beric et al. That was a 2014. They did a meta analysis of a bunch of different studies. It was a lot of really interesting context on just, again, looking at these ties long term, how important they are. But that team also did look at specifically recidivism, and they found, again, that these contacts were important in reducing that. And what which I thought was really interesting in that study is they specifically mentioned the importance of phone communication contact, and that had gosh. Like, the correlation on that was or the coefficient on that was, like, twice as much as some of the other ones that they were looking at. But it was I thought maybe that was really interesting to know that the phones the phone contact had even that much more

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: of an impact. So I'm gonna ask a stupid question or a question you may not even know the answer to. So this is Minnesota, and they measured it as a 13% reduction in recidivism, and then the telephone contact had the greatest impact on the reduction. Do you know how they calculate or define recidivism?

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I do not know the answer to that actually.

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

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: curious how that gets interpreted or defined.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yeah. I'd have to To get a specific one, I'd have to

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: get back to you on that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Just don't know. Because the term recidivism is used pretty loosely.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yeah. Does Vermont have a specific definition?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We do, but it's being looked at to be So I think we use the term recidivism quite a bit, but could have different interpretations or definitions in different places. I'm just curious.

[Skye Whalen (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Understanding of this study was that it was physically being back into the facilities.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I think I recall, I'm looking at my notes, I think I recall maybe a new felony offense after release or something. I think it was pretty broad.

[Unknown Member (likely a committee member)]: A new felony within three years

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: of leaving supervision, probation, or supervisor release,

[Speaker 0]: and there's some other small That's us.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: No. This is

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Three years? Yes.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: And before any of you speak, please say your name.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So ours is three years too, that there is not a new crime in that three year window or violation. Ours is the same way. Similar release. I mean,

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: this isn't I could go deeper,

[Unknown Member (likely a committee member)]: but that's the basic was what it said to me.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: That's what I remember. Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's the same as you, the three year window. Probably Council of the Council of State Governance. Any

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: other questions? Okay.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yes, I wanted to highlight those two points that I found really interesting. Then, oh, I mean, I mentioned the parent child contact was pretty clear. And we have some numbers on the state population or the national distribution, or how many parents are in prison, are incarcerated. I'm not sure about the Vermont statistics on that. But yeah. Let's see. Oh, one thing. Okay. One thing that we had so we we try to keep these really concise, so some stuff ends up getting cut naturally. One thing that I was looking back for that I didn't see in here that you might be interested in was there was also, there was data showing a reduction in poor behavior while incarcerated as well. And it made me think of, I don't remember who was talking about as giving testimony in May, but they were mentioning about the actual culture of the prison. It's not just the incarcerated folks. It's also the people working there. So this has an impact on the entire community there. So I just wanted to bring your attention to that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So it's a for the staff of DOC, because they have to keep security in the facility, but it's a way of them to also manage the population. And it's a tool that can be used to help deescalate some tensions within that facility.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yeah, mean, sense, I guess it wasn't, I don't know, like as a tool, as in like you get time with your kids to improve behavior or like as a punishment, I didn't see anything like that. But I think more just like them having these connections and just being more emotionally well, they're less likely to act out.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: While they're incarcerated.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: While they're incarcerated. Yeah, and then obviously post incarceration, integration is better, recidivism is less, they're more likely to reintegrate healthily. So that's the literature review. Does anyone have any questions on any of those before? And we can go back to these areas as we go through as well, of course. But I think we'll move on to states, if you all are ready.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: We just read your two notes. I'm Theodore Stenberg. Thinking of Theodore. The LRS last fall. And yeah, for this report, I went just to the five other states whose legislature has passed a bail. That's like h two ninety four. Then just gone through and tried to calculate the cost for them as well as just the specifics of the different policies that they implemented. The first state that I looked at was California. The data is going back to 2022. Telecommunications in the California bill is defined as phone calls, electronic messages, and video calling. And the California bill also puts it under the California Public Utilities Commission so that they have the authority to review and maintain standards for the telecommunications within the incarceral system. To fully implement the no cost telecommunication, so it's for the first fiscal year, it's $32,000,000, which is about I believe the number is point o o 17% of their budget. And in there was as in all of the states have implemented this policy, there is obvious there's gonna be a increase in call volume. It rose from 1,400,000 in December 2022 to 3,500,000 by June 2023. We don't have more recent data than that as of the time the report was issued, but there we may be able to go in and get more up to date numbers on that.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Troy? I just wanna interject here, and perhaps this was coming from you all. Two things. One, our costs in Vermont are going be different than they are in California, clearly. Yesterday, met with a provider of telecommunications for incarcerated carceral facilities as a nonprofit. And she talked about that, the initial increase in call volume. But and we can talk in more detail about this that does plateau. There's an initial bump because we're filling needs that haven't been filled before. She also said that they're in a facility in Florida that has about 1,000 people incarcerated, and their contract with that facility is right around 250,000. So we're not going be talking about in the millions if we explore this in Vermont. They're going be back in likely less than 500,000. I mean, that's a big number for Vermont. Yes, I don't want the sticker shock to get in the way of a conversation here.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But I'm also looking at this in the it's allowed. They have a free fifteen minute phone call every two weeks. So it's once every two weeks they have a free call.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Oh, that was the that was the policy before this. This bill is made into law, because that's ridiculous.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Oh, that was with the telecommunication provider, Viatran. Okay. Yeah. Then they took it so when they took it over, that's when they developed it as a public utility. Yeah. So if and this would be a question you probably can't answer. But could we develop it as a public utility if we still contracted out the service? And another entity was providing it, but we'd have it reviewed by our PUC?

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I would I don't know.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I would have to go back and look at the California policy in terms of if like, what provider they moved forward with once it was moved into a public utility if it was still contracted out. But I believe that Again, this is I have to go back and check. But I think that it was still contracted out. Just in labeling it a public utility, it allowed more oversight to maintain quality. And

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: it's an independent It's a body that reviews, has the expertise to review utilities. So it's not in house. You have another body looking at it. And it's not the administration that has jurisdiction over the Department of Corrections reviewing it. It's a totally different entity that's separate. It's just a thought. Just a thought.

[Speaker 0]: I don't want to jump ahead, you looked at a number of states and at least the data for California, Minnesota, now. Program was introduced and then the next year it's more than doubled as people got used to it, liked it, it was helpful. Do you have a summary of what the other states you looked at, how those costs went up or down or plateaued? Do you have a summary of all the states you looked at, or is that not something you had a chance to do?

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I mean, we looked at five states, and the general trend is that there's a bump in the initial period after the LSU is introduced. I'd be more than willing to go back and look and see if it applies Just to

[Speaker 0]: wondering if you've done it already. Yeah. There was evidence of it plateauing and then staying, if you look for five years and after three years it plateaued.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I think they they were plateauing. I yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: At a lower level than the initial time?

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yeah. Oh,

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I'm not sure about that. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: It'd just be interesting to see what five states you sampled, what happened. That's all I'm asking. If you haven't, I'm not asking you to do it. You got plenty to do without my questions.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yeah, mean, just again, going through all the different states there, generally, it's a bump in the first few months. Sure. As Representative Heidrick talked about, it's a service that wasn't there for the incarcerated folks before, or filling a gap for something that wasn't there before.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yeah. Reading some of the releases and stuff on that, it sounded like that bump was an indication of needs all of a sudden being met for this population. Hence, it's this big rise, that it seems like it's staying at that more of a plateau of what that need is for that population.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It'd be interesting to compare that with Vermont to see what percentage of our incarcerated populations having regular contact through phones or their tablets with members. Is it 50%? Is it 70% right now? 80% or 90%? So that if you did transition over to a state operated state paid for, and it would be a no charge to our offenders, would we see that big bump or not? Because you gotta compare it to how many folks currently.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, that'd be interesting.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because maybe in Massachusetts or California, their whole prison population, there might've been this many that were contacting family. And then when it was available at no cost, of course it's gonna go up. But if you have this much and this many people are already accessing it, then you make it available at no cost. Your bump isn't as high.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yes. It's tricky because there's so many different components to the, like, you know, what the what the state contract I mean, we'll get into the the industry in a little bit, but there really are only, like, four big players. So the contracts are all probably kind of similar. But what they actually offered and then the population makeup and stuff, there would be a lot of different things to compare that.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: But, yeah, that would be interesting.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I mean, that's a comparison that would need to happen. We need to know here what percentage of our incarcerated population is currently able to stay connected, to kind of indicate. And in the California, and this is probably going much further than what you folks, do they have a system where they're just incarcerating folks who are sentenced? Or do they have a system where folks who are not sentenced are housed in a separate facility that's not brought by the state? Do you know any of that? Okay.

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

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: that I have it in, like, the notes for the more lengthy version of this document that I could find and send over to you, but I I don't have it off the top

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: of my head. I'm just curious because here in Vermont, we commingle those populations. So they're all in our state facility. We're in other states, just the sentence folks and those who are waiting for trial or either in a county system, some other system that's not affiliated with the state. And I just don't know if there's a difference in use between folks who are haven't been sentenced versus those folks who have been sentenced or if it's about the same. That's all.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Now just moving on to Connecticut, which is the actually, first state to introduce a bill like this. There was they set aside for 2025 and 2026, they set aside 9.5 this may be reviewed for you guys, but just going back into some of the information. They set aside $9,500,000 for free telecommunications. And then breaking that down, it's oh, and also for their bill, it's telecommunications is defined as phone calls and electronic messaging. They don't have video call defined under the telecommunications. It was $6,000,000 to telephone calls and 3,500,000.0 for electronic messaging, which was about 4,750,000.00 for the state to subsidize telecommunications annually, which is right within the projection that they had for the bill in 2021, five years later. And if you also look at the frequency of call, it's less steep of a bump than in Massachusetts or in California, even though there was an initial increase. So definitely worth looking into how that demographic looks different than California or Massachusetts in terms of people being able to stay in contact before the policy was implemented.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Do you know how many call Are they limited in terms of how many calls or electronic messaging per week or anything? Is there a limit? Or are they limited as well as to who they can contact? There's a contact list only.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: As far as I know for Connecticut and all the states except for Minnesota, there's not a call or messaging limit. Though I know in Massachusetts, there there is one that's there they've considered as of the when I was looking into this report back in October, but I would have to see how that's moved. Yeah, moving on to Colorado. It's actually only begun to cover 100% of incarcerated telecommunications as of this year. So the information that we have this fiscal year is maybe Yeah. We don't have as much information as we do for other states in terms of full coverage for telecommunications. But the estimate and the money allotted for the twenty twenty six fiscal year was $5,200,000 which is about 0.04% of the state budget, so slightly more than in California and Connecticut. Again, that may be due to a difference in That's another thing that we were talking about before coming in here, that getting just population data for the other states could be useful for your guys' deliberation, just in terms of comparing the populations compared to Vermont.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Population folks who are incarcerated?

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Because that's information that we didn't gather for this report, but we could go ahead and find. Moving on to Massachusetts, November 2023 and then begun in 2024. There was For telecommunications, they define it in the same way that California does, where it's phone calls, video calling and e messaging services. There was again, like the other states that we've reviewed, there's no set cap on the time incarcerated individuals may use the phones. So in the fiscal year 2024, there was was $20,000,000 allocated to pay for the program, which which is about point o 56% of the year budget. And then there was an increase in demand, as we've already talked about. So the governor requested more money for the 2025 program, but it was only allotted allotted allocated $10,000,000. And I know that there was some there were some conversations over whether that would be enough to fund the program going forward. But, again, I I would have to go back into more recent more recent information to see if what's what's happened in terms of that moving forward. Yeah. And then moving to the final state, but we looked at Minnesota. Shawn?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: So just back there quick. It's interesting. So they they set up a state trust to pay for it, meaning they put money aside that would pay for that into perpetuity type of thing. Yep.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you're binding future legislators legislatures.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: And that's not something we usually do as much?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's tough to bind the

[Speaker 0]: paper and

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: the legislature.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Right. Just interesting. It was just that that was

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I mean, it could be a special fund.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. It just you know? Not beautiful with that.

[Speaker 0]: I apologize. I I was distracted early on. Did you talk about in these states who's picking up the tab for the hardware? For the hardware? For the phones, the tablets. Who's buying these for the people who are getting the free service?

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Always the

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: provider. So a lot

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: of the I think you can talk to that. A lot of them are still using the providers like ViaPath, GlobalTel, Securus, and then paper pads.

[Speaker 0]: It's part of the contract.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Contract. It's just the states paying for contract instead of the user.

[Speaker 0]: Makes sense to men around today. Any of the states

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: completely dump any of their providers? Okay. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: I wasn't sure about that.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yeah. I think in all the states that I looked at, it was they just kept they renegotiated the contract with the provider and then, yeah, just continue to use software that was provided to that contract. And then, yeah, finally, moving from Minnesota, signed into law in 2023.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: that that contract was averaging $434 per incarcerated individual within the state, which totaled about $3,600,000 for the 2024 fiscal year. And then that was because of an increase in call volume, which we didn't have data for their call volume. It was the listed reason they they implemented a a fifteen minute wait period before making other calls so that other people could use the phone because there were some, I think, words that people were logging the phone Mhmm. So that other people couldn't.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: These are the only states that have implemented this kind of policy, correct?

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yeah, New York actually implemented, late last year, they also implemented a similar policy through the governor's executive order.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Oh yeah, was an executive, but that's why we didn't include that one.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Are there other states online to be coming forward with legislation like this?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I think there are. We'd have to look at that.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: We wanted to just get the ones that are more established so you guys can, if you wanted to use them as models or just as reference.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: No, that sucks. I just wasn't sure if you were aware of any.

[Skye Whalen (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yeah, and I'm Skye Whalen. So let's shift over to an overview of the contract. I know you guys, again, talked about it a little bit, so maybe we can get a

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: little bit more into the weeds.

[Skye Whalen (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Essentially, so we have some of the prices here. I think that some that might have changed because of the access that we had to the potential contract. But from the research we did, the in stake calls are around $0.28 or sorry, about $03 per minute. Interstate calls were about $6 per minute. International calls were about 6¢ a minute, rather. And remote video visitation costs about $0.16 per minute. And then streaming on the tablet costs about Now within this, we have basically these large corporations. But specifically, what Vermont has is this contract with IC Solutions. And IC Solutions is a direct subsidiary of Keith Group, which has been a subsidiary of TKC Holdings. So this company has a lot of different telecommunication companies and contracts within that. And what we found is that we have a lot of incarcerated people having complaints about this company's practices. And so there were several suits. There were, I would say, about over 100 complaints towards the company. However, because of the resources that incarcerated people have, a lot of those stayed complaints and weren't really able to go any further. However, ones that were, we have Richard versus Keith Commissary Group, and this is where the plaintiffs alleged that the subsidiaries engaged in unfair and deceptive practices, mostly with the released debit cards. So what released debit cards are is when someone is released from incarceration and they still have money in their account, the way that the company gets that money back to them is these lump of released debit cards. The problem that they were having with those is that that money wasn't being given back to them in an appropriate time period or at all. And so what happened with that case was they settled, and there are a bunch of other examples of this happening. Let's see what else. Yeah, again, they settled for a little under $1,000,000. And I know we're not exactly talking about the commissary, but within TKC subsidiaries, there's also been tensions like, for example, Oklahoma canceled its food services contract with the Trinity Group, which is a subsidiary, due to low quality and lack of nutritional deficiencies. And additionally, in 2024, incarcerated individuals in Wisconsin were experiencing things like switches and call drops. However, they weren't given the money back from these companies that they were supposed to be getting. Overall, just the relationship that these facilities have with specifically TKC Solutions as this broader subsidiary has been pretty shaky, and incarcerated people themselves are saying that these are unfair and disruptive practices. Are there any questions on that?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: The conclusion's great.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: There are a couple of things that I

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: can bring up that I can One

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: of the things I didn't mention that I think is important for context, looking at the financial the financial struggles was we're looking a little bit at at the commissary stuff and looking at you you guys were talking about a little bit some of the markup. But I think one of the one of the issues with this relates also back to wages as well was it's not that this stuff is, like, excessively more expensive, but it's also that their purchasing power parity is so much lower because they're only making $25 to $1 or whatever it is. So that's, I think, an important thing to just remember when you're looking at like, oh, what are they buying? These costs don't When you're looking at that issue, it's just important to remember that purchasing power parity issue.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I did some math last night. Uh-oh. It's a math

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No problem. I did some

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: math at 65¢ an hour, which is what was stated as the average wage that incarcerated for a matter they're making. Given that 65¢ an hour, a 15 We

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

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: A fifteen minute phone call costs about forty minutes of labor. A thirty minute video call costs more than seven hours of labor. Even sending 10 messages a week costs nearly four hours of labor. So if an incarcerated Romanor tries to maintain even a modest connection with their kids, let's say. Three short phone calls, one video call, and then a few messages. They're working more than thirteen hours a week just to stay connected to their family. Thirteen hours a week of labor.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: If they can get the job. Right. Right.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And that's everything. Right? That's thirteen hours labor just to to to stay connected. That's less money then that they have to go to the commissary to pay a rec staff member and maybe get a new basketball or whatever. To me is kind of we're just we're just draining them from all angles, and it doesn't feel good to me. And

[Skye Whalen (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: may I add, what we're seeing right now, as I'm sure you all know, an increase of ICE detainees within specifically, there's CRCF, which is the Chennai County Regional Facility, and a lot of those people don't speak English. And because they aren't able to get those jobs, they aren't able to then pay for any of those phone calls, and so they're completely isolated, essentially. Something to remember.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I then did the comparison on my current salary and what it cost me to stay in touch with my kids. I'm not going get into that right now.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: It's pretty much in

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: the vein for my unlimited usage of Verizon plan based on my salary.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yeah. I think I'll add just or kind of to tie everything up in a nice little bow. Doing the kind of the the whole the bigger scope background context, looking at the research and, like, these issues on some on a granular level and and a lot of them more on this broader level. And then also, like, looking at the work you guys are doing, it this this piece kinda it doesn't feel it feels like it's a part of a larger picture, like what you guys are doing with the supervisory fees and looking at reentry. This is all these are all components that kind of build towards these more intangible return on investment that is going to make your honestly make your job maybe a little harder. I mean, that's why I don't Anyway, yes. So this idea of this one component being a piece of this bigger picture that is looking at how do we rehabilitate and reintegrate people and create a community that healthy and sustainable. So that's kind of the bigger picture context I was getting doing this research and then looking at the testimony that you guys have already taken. So I just wanted to offer that

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: for you guys to consider.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: It's wonderful. You've been very thoughtful. Deliberation.

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

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Any closing questions, comments?

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: So when can we have your next chapter of information?

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Well, we did two other studies, if y'all are interested. The VLRS website is linked on that document that you have.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: You can just click on it

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: from there or just Google UVM VLRS.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: What

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: were two other investigations?

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Oh, did data privacy regulation, and then we were looking at weighing out investing in food banks versus SNAP benefits.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: So what class or what grades are you? I should say the grades. For

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: the record, we're all graduating.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: This year?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: This goes sky,

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I think next Yeah. Year,

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Now was this part of a class project you were doing?

[Skye Whalen (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: So the class itself is the legislative research. So we go in and we have our professors teach us how to do unbiased, adequate research, and then we go and produce those reports and respond to requests from Meanwhile.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Do you need anything for a picture of all of us together that you can I would love that? Would you be able to take a picture and we can send it to them?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Take a picture.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: And they're right on my wall.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Alice, you

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: have to. You to. Have to. Chair.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Down we go. Nice

[Unknown Member (likely a committee member)]: job, gentlemen. We'll stand by. We'll

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: use a still from the YouTube feed.

[Speaker 0]: Short guy's outside.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: The chair's chair. Oh my gosh.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Are you guys ready?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We're ready.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Two, three. All right.

[Unknown Member (likely a committee member)]: We should do another one. No, not rabbit ears.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Good. Good. Graduated in May. First

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: time testifying, yes. Oh, thank you very much. Thank you so much.

[Unknown Member (likely a committee member)]: After that grilling, Mary, they'll never come. And

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I am interning, yes. For who? Representative Cole.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Oh, that's why.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yeah. See me usually rocking the lavender.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Thank you. That's what political science is all about.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I've already learned. I've learned so much.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You were behind me in all the twine one day.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I was one day, yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So, yeah, because Thank

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: you all.

[Kevin McGreal (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Thank you guys very much.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Thank you so much.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Thank for doing the research.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I'm

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: intrigued by the Public Utilities Commission. We have a

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: bright future. If this is what our future is, we've got a bright.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Stay in Vermont.

[Skye Whalen (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I would just encourage you guys, if you haven't, to go down to CRCF and actually talk to the incarcerated populations.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Back when it was Four Seasons Show.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yeah, one of those late fees. Spent a couple of rough weekends there.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Did you know, were you part of the Southern Polity debate that won their competition? Was that Springfield that won the debate? Yes.

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

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: They won subcational service.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, they went down to Pennsylvania or something.

[Unknown Member (likely a committee member)]: Thank you, gentlemen.

[Speaker 0]: Well, I think

[Unknown Member (likely a committee member)]: you're trying to save the world. We needed it, right?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Well, been working on this.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Thank you. Sorry about that. Was hoping you don't like pictures, but I thought that might

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: be good for them. We've got only two of you. Where's Joe? Oh, he sounded burning. I got two of you. Is there anything that you folks, Mary and Kevin, need about? We need to schedule DOC and BGS to come in and talk about the budget. Now, I went through quickly, couldn't find the full budget, but I went through the document that was sent to us. There is some things I just wanna highlight for folks. There is a Department of Corrections data contract. I don't know what it's for. 300,000 reverts. It's like a reallocation, Kinda reverts back to the general fund. What was the total? It was the it's on if you go to the document that they have, it's on page 10. It has DOC data contract. It's reversions. And there's 300,000. I don't know if there's any cost at all in the $11.15 waiver for DOC, but there is there's no money that I saw, but just some language for the eleven fifteen waiver. I don't know if that has any impact on DOC. And then, of course, there's the 200,000 for seven permanent positions in probation and parole, and those are for the pretrial supervision. So that's what's there for changes in DOC. I didn't see anything for BGX. So I don't know where you two are or where Conor and Brian and Joe, if there's anything you need from us or direction in terms of what you folks have been you met yesterday. Is there anything that came to the top with this confusion or any clarity or anything?

[Speaker 0]: Well, it's always dangerous, but I'm assuming that wherever there's a change in the BAA for our committee, that we're gonna have specific testimony to those changes. Well, I'm talking about the appropriations bill. Okay. The general fund. Different way of going.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. You five. There was Conor and Mary. Right. And you and Joe and Brian kinda working on the general fund. Okay. Is there anything that's coming up that you five were talking about yesterday that you wanna more clarity from us or because I'd like you to we need to start bringing in just to start to because we have to make our recommendations. Within two weeks. By the February 20. So that leaves part of next week and the So I don't think there's gonna be much for changes. It's just, I think, getting a grasp of the full budget of EGS and what they do general fund and DOC. And I know Conor broke things down.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Are we and we added some questions to that to get a little deeper dive into, what the budgets are, what they're asking for.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So those are questions that you should relate to. I'd like to have a committee discussion with this so you can share with us what questions we all need to ask when they come before us.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Right. And we had a number of those written down. Okay. It's been to the panel. But I'd like to the five of us here to be able to do. Mhmm. I left my document.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: When do you think you would be ready to spend time with us as a committee to indicate? Would it be? Would you be done by Wednesday?

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: I was just going to say probably midweek of this coming week.

[Speaker 0]: See, that's an English something. Strategically, think it's helpful to provide those questions to the people who can come and testify.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But that's what Yeah, you're gonna share those questions with us. So we as a committee, when they come in and testify, can ask.

[Speaker 0]: I'm somewhat in advance of them

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Coming Right. One

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: of the things is in this process, you want to be able to ask any of these groups, matter who it would be, face to face looking you in the eye, just asking the question, what is this? And if we get this runaround and walkaround of not getting any information, you know they probably technically know themselves, and we're not in a gotcha moment, we just really want to know that they're running their agency or their departments to the fullest that they should be, and very conscious of the financial magnitude that goes along with it, as well as the responsibilities of what we're supposed to be delivering.

[Unknown Member (likely a committee member)]: To Mary's point, like so, because in theory, I like the idea of giving people stuff, but then you can prepare an advance to ask a specific thing and you go, wow, that's a great answer. And then it doesn't trigger us to ask another question. So it kind of stinks, but like that to Mary's

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Not point is

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: only that, a lot of times you get it done, not trying to pinpoint one department or another, but you'll get a lot of fluff and you don't even actually know if they're actually doing what they're telling you. So it's kind of to be able to, because I think the best testimony you get is when someone can sit down with you, face you face to face, look you in the eye, and tell you what they're actually doing, because you'll both get a good feeling from it if they're being honest with what they're doing. I'm just

[Speaker 0]: I'll follow your lead.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Someone must have been around for a while. Too long. You can read through the testimony. Get used to it. You start learning it. Takes time that you start learning it.

[Speaker 0]: Well, me, I've had to read the room for many years. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I just wanted to check-in, see if there's any flags, but we're we're really I wrote down this morning, if I can find a picture of her, which was on the schedule.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: I was gonna put that away. Uh-oh.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Now I put it on the schedule.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I gotta run down and say goodbye to the status.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. You're gonna.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I'll I'll be right back.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: I'm sorry they didn't

[Speaker 0]: You don't

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Sorry that you didn't bring them here to see

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I know. It was not my you know, it wasn't my show.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: It was along with the rides.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Nothing without

[Speaker 0]: Be right back. Bye.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Least I did an

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: agenda.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Papers disappear real fast sometimes.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: I mean, I take one once in a while.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, say could in here. I wrote down sort of the bills. I'm I'm concerned our time is really slipping away here. It's the February 27. It's the last day before our town meeting break. And when we come back the week after town meeting is crossover for the bills we've been working. So I don't wanna get in jam that week, and we come back after town meeting to work on all these bills because we've gotta work on the capital. So what we've been working on is we need to deal with the pretrial because judiciary committee's waiting for it, Driver's license because Senate Transportation is waiting for that language. I saw Richie says we're waiting for you to give the language to us. That's gonna take a couple of weeks to do. We've been working

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: on the parole board.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Mhmm. That's gonna take a little bit more work. That's a good more week to do at least. We've got this this telecom commissary. I don't know where we are on this. Supervisory fees. You talk to Trevor.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: What'd he say?

[Speaker 0]: He said as long as we don't impact the current

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: So So we put it next year, then it's Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: He doesn't have a problem

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: with that.

[Speaker 0]: Then we'll have him If o if he o c wants that. That's for them to figure out, but I will have an 11

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Privately, they're okay with it. I would say privately, but I don't know. I don't know.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: But if the if we change the date to next year, we'll have an 11 o o both waive.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So would people be comfortable scheduling the supervisory fee $6.35 for next week? Would possible vote?

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Yep. Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we can do that. And then I don't know where we are on the gender equity piece.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I would like to hear from because we haven't heard from DOC or WELPAP on what their current practice and protocols are in and around assignment of housing and medical care. I'd like to hear that.

[Speaker 0]: The first part? Something about housing? Housing. Current

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: protocols that DOC has for how they decide where they're going to house folks who identify as transgender. I also want to hear from WellPath about because the bill asks for very specific medical care and people who can provide that medical care. And I don't know where WellPath is on that right now.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we can schedule that, but that may not be next week. And maybe the following week. And then we have to get the general fund recommendations for them. The other thing that I wanna keep in mind for folks when we do the markup on the capital bill For the and we haven't received testimony yet on this from the agency of agriculture for the water quality section, the clean water section. There is for FY '27, 1,500,000.0 water quality grants. In the appropriations bill, there's also 11.8, almost 11,900,000.0 going to the same grants. So we need to balance that for that. K?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And we don't know current allotment

[Skye Whalen (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: or current status of projects. Correct.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. And I went through a little bit of the lists that we got yesterday that we kept asking for for municipal pollution grants and for the clean water and drinking water. Well, we got the links they had was the drinking water for federal fiscal year '25, which expires 09/30/2025.

[Speaker 0]: They

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: just gave the projects and the loan amount, but it doesn't tell you where in the scheme of things the project is in terms of construction.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: We don't live in the same place we were. Yeah. They're not to get there.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And then for the municipal pollute, they didn't give us anything but the clean water, results, and stuff. And then for the municipal pollution, they gave 2026 priority and planning list. So in the blue is continuing projects. You don't know where in the project, where they are. Are they going out to construction? Are they final design? And then they've got projects yet to be funded is in the gold, but there's no indication in terms of when the project are they in design or when the project is going for a bond vote in the community? Because it doesn't tell you when those dollars are gonna be available. They only tell you what the dollar is, but they don't what the dollar amount is, but they don't tell you when it will be when they're going to construction, but then tells you when you need the money.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Sounds like they're not revolving again. Revolving loan funds are not revolving. So I'm gonna have a

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: conversation with DC and see if we can get I don't know if the electronic system changed, that we don't get that inform we used to get that information automatically.

[Theodore Stenberg (UVM Vermont Legislative Research Service)]: Mhmm.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because you could tell if a if a town had a project and if they were going to vote for a Bonvoe in November, you knew that they would be out to construction by the spring in FY twenty seven. So you knew they needed money. If they go out to Bonvoe in March '27, they may not need the money until FY '28. So it helps with the cash flow when you're doing markup on the cap. Hoping to get that information. It's really frustrating because that's how we used to make the decision in terms of what those amounts were. So I'm gonna have a conversation with DC, see if we can get deeper information. Yeah. So that's my work for the week.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Okay. On one of this. Yeah. Yeah. That's

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: beautiful. That's what's. Anything else? I'll work with Tate because I think we got more scheduling to do. Right?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: We do.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: For the whole wing. K. So I'm done. Nobody else done? We can.