Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Good

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: morning, folks. This is Thursday, February 12 the House Corrections and Institutions Committee. We going to are spend the next few hours with Department of Corrections going over the operating budget. It's going to be there's a lot of issues, a lot of items, a lot of programs and operations that DOC is responsible for. And we will do our best to understand those. And then we'll make our recommendation to our colleagues to ask for a patient's committee. So welcome, Commissioner. Good morning. All yours. You so much. Don't be too hard on you.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Well, I appreciate that, Madam Chair. Thank you all for having us today. I do appreciate that greatly because I am going to do my best to understand some of this as well. And and I I will plead a little bit of of freshness. Today was supposed to be handled by I would have been here as well, but our deputy commissioner, Kristen Calver, who is absolutely knowledgeable about every single line of the budget. She functioned for some time as our finance director, as well as our deputy commissioner. We are now, however, very fortunate to have a finance director. Marlene Vettenden is here and will be available and will join us, especially when we get to the line item sections of this. But there are a number of things at which, excuse me, in which D. C. Caliber is more versed than I. And so I want to be upfront in saying that there may be questions, not may, there will be questions that you have that I am going to have to plead, I don't know, but I will get back to you on that. None of this is a lack of transparency. It's simply a lack of full familiarity on my part. I am learning quite a bit and have been trying to keep abreast of all these things, but in no way can I touch the twenty plus year knowledge that other members of our staff have or somebody like DC Calvert?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: She had some family issues that came up.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: That is correct. And I think that in a department that really wants to prioritize wellness and health, not only for the people in our populations who we have in our custody or under our supervision, but also for our staff and team, you need to model that at the top. And so if somebody needs time to address issues, we try to give them time. It is, that's how you actually have a functioning, healthy workspace. So nevertheless, I am offering myself as an inadequate sort of substitute for DC caliber. I guess we can, with your permission, I'll ask Gina Galfetti to put up on the screen. It's behind me. Awesome. So the quick agenda that we'll run through here, and I know that although it's two hours, there's so much to go through, and I'll try to make this sort of intro part quick. We'll talk a little bit about our vision, mission, and values, and you can actually just go to that slide. These were designed under my predecessor, Commissioner Demel. They were really sourced from the entirety of the department, and therefore were a very consensus driven collaborative kind of product. And I think it speaks well of where we are with regard to the notion supporting change and serving our communities. Next, please. The next piece that we have is going to be a department overview and data. And so the quick overview that most of you know, and in fact, have been familiar with longer than I, is that we are a unified system, one of only five in the country that is a unified system, meaning that we not only house people who have been sentenced by the courts, are, I. E, in prison, but we also house people who would in other states be in jail, That is, they are pre sentenced. They've been usually arrested and arraigned and are now held for some period of time while awaiting trial or during their trials. Most states have sheriff's jails around throughout their states. We do not here in Vermont. Everybody goes into one of our six facilities, which are shown on this map. And then if they are not after being sentenced or even if prior to being sentenced, if they're not going to be housed in a facility, they are nevertheless under the supervision of our probation and parole offices. There are 12 of those. Those two are shown on this map, as well as the location of our Correctional Academy. And I don't think our central office is actually on it, but central office does operationally not the most important stuff, but it also creates the programs and the ideas that drive the operations. So in that way, it's incredibly important, and it's driven and filled by a lot of really dedicated, compassionate people. In Waterbury, right, John? That is correct. Thank you very much. In Waterbury.

[Rep. Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: That one is.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: It is up at the Waterbury State Office Complex. You can see our staff number, our allotted staff is just over 1,100, and we are not at that right now with regard to the number of people on staff. We do, however, work hard to try to get to those allotted staffing numbers, and we've had a good deal of success with regard to hiring. As you can see on the next slide, there were two fourteen new hires in 2025. It is the retention that is eluding us a little bit, and we're not seeing the kinds of retention that we want. The overall staff vacancy rate throughout the entire department is just under 13%, but that is more pronounced in the facilities where we see, as it's shown here, about 16%, but that's even a little bit worse if we narrow down the facilities to only focus on our CO1 and CO2 ranks, Correctional Officer one and Correctional Officer two. Those are the individuals who really do the sort of, you know, bulk of the core competency work in the facilities. That is, are guarding people who are in our custody. There are so many other things that happen in facilities from case management and education and food services, but certainly the ability to guard people who the courts have told us must be guarded is a core competency, and we are a little bit higher than that 16% in those ranks, probably closer to just under 20. This diminishment of headcount, well, it's not a diminishment because we've actually made strides at headcount. It was much worse a few years ago, as low as 35% down, and now, as I said, only just under 13% down. So we've made great strides, but we are still not where we want to be with regard to staffing, and that has coincided with a significant increase in our population over the past five years. So we have a much larger number of folks who are in our both incarcerated and supervised populations. Next please, staffing, department priorities. So our priorities in the coming year are that staffing piece, and making certain that we not only continue to hire as we are, but continue to keep people better than we are currently doing. A lot of that has to do with the fact that when we're understaffed as we are, we ask a lot of overtime. For some people that works well, it's lucrative. For others, it is exhausting. And for anyone, it is not long term tenable to work the kinds of hours that we're asking, and so we're in this sort of catch 22, which is that in order to diminish the overtime, we really need to bring more people aboard, but in order to bring people aboard and keep people aboard, we can't give them as much overtime. So working out that balance is the important piece. I'm happy to say that it looks like we're gonna be fully staffed at, well, we're getting very close to fully staffed at Southern. We've had some really good numbers of incoming recruits at a couple of different facilities. Northwest has a terrific social media presence and does really good work with hiring. There's some other facilities where we've struggled a bit, Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport being one.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, I have a question about the Springfield facility. Close to fully staffed, what number would that be? No? Putting you on those

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: No. No. You're

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: not at all.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Know where my glasses are.

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Think that's giving you, like

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Is that is that up to 100? Up to 110? Will let you know. Sorry?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Yeah, thank you very much. I didn't see it in front of me. Thank you. He didn't have

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: his glasses? I didn't have my glasses. Couldn't see them.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm feeling at home. I'm saying, where

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: are my

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: glasses? Where are you? No. I just wonder where we are for staff because Springfield Newport are the two facilities that have really not a lot of issues. And Springfield was never fully staffed even when it first opened.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yep.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And then it went down to about half of what was needed. So I'm just curious what the number is for

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: that. Do

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: you have it,

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Haley? Yeah, I do. It's

[Haley (DOC staff, data/analytics)]: Okay, so at Springfield, there are 94 staff currently. The total allocated positions are 114.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: There are 94.

[Haley (DOC staff, data/analytics)]: At Northern State, there are 71 staff members currently at the facility, and the allotted number is 106.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: That's 60

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: something. It's definitely low.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: In Springfield, at one point, we're down to 60.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Oh, shit.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What free you could possibly once changes when you're down to that level.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: It is a danger. Okay.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Is there, like up in Newport, I know in Stonfield, there's beauty, if you want to call it that way, you can draw from an area of New Hampshire and Vermont. You could even, if you had to, Northern part of Massachusetts, if you had to. You're more limited in Newport because you only got Newport, you go Vermont, New Hampshire. Is there ever any opportunity for Canadians to work there or is that an issue?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: My guess is right now, it's probably a more complicated picture, owing to just the potential for delay. I don't know for sure whether we have prohibitions on hiring people with either I know that we hire people with green cards, for example. Whether we would hire somebody who is a citizen of Canada and commuting, I don't know the answer to that.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because Newport, you don't have much geographic area to draw from.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: That is its challenge.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Vermont in the Northeast Kingdom. And then you got New Hampshire, which is not very populated up in Coloss County, so you don't have that geographic.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: That is definitely the challenge. The, our Northeast Correctional Complex in St. Johnsbury can draw from across the river in that part of New Hampshire. Our Northwest facility in Swanton absolutely can take from the far North of the Northeast part of New York State and does. There are people who come from there. We also have benefited because there have been some shocks to the New York State Correctional System around both strikes and around scandal, and it has caused some folks to leave the New York State Correctional Facility, excuse me, system and come over to ours. We obviously vet them carefully as we do all employees, but that has been we've gotten some good employees with a lot of experience out of that, but it is not feasible for them to commute from, say, you know, the the places North Of Plattsburgh over to Newport. It is possible to commute from places North Of Plattsburgh to Swanton.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes. So what is the bed count for the Springfield facility? And what is the bed count for Newport? I know Springfield was built for March, and Newport originally had been built for about March, 03/25, and I believe Newport's over 400 now.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Well, of course We've

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: added beds.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Right. And it depends on whether we're talking about the total capacity or the general population capacity.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Can you do both?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Yes, I absolutely can do both. The Newport, that is the Northern State Correctional Facility, its general population capacity is four zero two, and its total capacity is four thirty three.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And that is a When you say four zero two generally populated, is that not including booking and infirmary beds? Affirmative. Okay, so it's your regular it's not your dedicated beds like closed custody or booking or infirmary?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Anything that would go under special housing.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Okay. So you have a total of 430. Four thirty three.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay. Total beds. Okay.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: And then the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield, Vermont is a general population capacity of two fifty and a total capacity of three seventy eight. And that is because it has a much larger footprint of both infirmary and special housing.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So it was built three fifty.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Well, Mike, again, the three seventy eight, and my sense is that what we have there is a situation where more and more of those beds have been designated special housing in order to address people who have certain kinds of long term needs.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Geriatrics, mental

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: health, people who are in various kinds of segregation owing to behavior. Of course, you know, we know that there's an empty space at Springfield where a building was not built, but could be, and boy, would that help us in many ways.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: 150 beds.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: And if and 150 beds happens to be the exact number of people that we currently have out of state in Mississippi at our private contractor, CoreCivic. So to the extent that that is something that that Vermont has long wanted to do, is not have anyone out of state, that remains something that we could look at. But it's certainly not a component of this year's budget.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Have to work a lot with the town.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Yes. Our our agreement with the town has sunsetted, and so we're now in a we would be in a very new position having figured that out. I don't know if there's anyone on this committee who's familiar with that town or works closely with that town.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I do have a question, Kevin.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Totally different. When we're looking at an incarceratedsupervised population, I'm surprised, I guess, to see a 44% increase in female versus 13% increase in males. Now let's see why that's a real number.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Yes, that is a real number. It's huge difference. It is entirely driven, well not entirely, it is largely, vastly driven by detainees. The detainee population at Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility is 50%. So it is half and half detainees and sentenced persons. No other facility has that ratio. We have had we've seen increases in detainees across the system, and that anytime we say across the system, we're predominantly talking about males since, you know, of our 1,600 people in the system, only, you know, just under 200 of them are women. But the male detainee population has not risen by nearly that much. It's up about, I think, I wanna say 20% approximately. The female detainee population has risen much more, and again, now constitutes half of the people that are in that facility.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: I guess I Do you have some idea why the drastic change?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes. That's a

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: fair question to you probably, but

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: No, I'm happy to answer it based on what I've read and what I know from, there was a WCAX article in the fall that included interviews with me and interviews with the public defender and interviews with others. And public defender stated that this stems from an increase in punitive sentences, a sense in the general public and across the court system that accountability, as it has been used over the past several years, has not really worked for community safety. I wanna stress that the public defender was was saying this is what's out there. I don't know that he was agreeing with it or saying that it was a good thing or a bad thing, but he was stating that, you know, this is what we're seeing. We're seeing both prosecutors asking for more. We're seeing judges giving more with regard to sentences. I think there are people who perhaps would not have been held, say, eight years ago or certainly three years ago, who are now being held for some period of time as they await trial. And I do think that they're, from my previous position, I was the police chief in Burlington, Vermont before coming to this interim role as the commissioner of corrections, I definitely saw that there were individuals who would be, who have really parlous existence out in the public, and being in a stable environment for some period of time can in fact help. That is not a solution, and it is not an answer by any means for everybody, but there are small numbers of folks who were causing disproportionate amounts of discord and disruption in our communities and crimes that I think are at times, for some period of stabilization short, we hope, suited in prison than in the community if we're not able to fully supervise them or provide them what they need in the community so that they don't continue to commit those crimes. And instead, we saw people who were continuing to commit those crimes. And so I think the threshold dropped, and certainly that's what the public defender alluded to in that WCAX article.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: And everything you say makes sense. It's just the disparity between women and men. It would almost imply that the courts were being soft on the women, and now all of a sudden they're getting tough on the women along with the men. I don't wanna read too much. The disparity is huge. That's all.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: It certainly

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: is. That's not where you look at yourself. Thank you. Appreciate it.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Joe, and then Conor?

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Well, I I was gonna it's not it's not a question, but just the Hopefully, the overall sentence and detained numbers are vastly more men than there are women, even with that banquet, which strongly implies that women are nonetheless held to a different standard when facing similar charges. Men are eight or nine times more criminal than a woman is.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Wouldn't And the Senate's population would suggest that.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: I wouldn't caution that the similar charges phrase is important. They don't face similar charges for the most part. We do not have as many violent women as we have violent men. And so with regard to and in Vermont, the threshold for actually holding somebody, both pretrial and for sentencing somebody, tends to include violence. Certainly not all. We have people who have merely committed finance not merely, but have committed financial crimes alone. But for the most part in the state of Vermont, violence is gonna be a component of a sentence. So women are less likely to commit violence. That doesn't mean that we don't have violent female offenders, but it's less likely. Instead, I think that we've seen a lot of repetitive, low level, nonviolent behavior, and I do think that women probably constitute a disproportionate percentage of that relative to other kinds of crimes. There's the percentage.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And the difference too, is a lot of women, a lot of men have support systems around them, which are basically women. Could be siblings, could be sisters, could be mothers, could be girlfriends, could be wives. So it kind of helps them. But for the women, they don't have anybody. Quite often, they've burned all their bridges. And there could be repeat offenses over and over and over again. So that has played in.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Don't have data on that, but that's a poignant observation and it feels true. That's been

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: testified here over the years. And the other thing you have to remember is we only have one facility for the women. So right now we have what about 170, whatever, over half of that are the detainees. Yes. And for the male facilities, you know, we got 1,400 total folks, fourteen fifty. So you can spread out those detainee folks across five facilities

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Right.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Instead of Service. Instead of that one. And our detainee population is what? 550 today? Something like that? Because it's been going up.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: 653 today.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's the highest it's ever been. We used to be at about three thirty. Yeah. 653?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: This is data as of Tuesday.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And how many of those old. Okay. This is where I'm really gonna get people screwed up. How many of those are for the federal marshal beds?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: For the primary federal is there are let's break this down so I'm trying to get the numbers here right and do the math in my head as we're doing it together. 653, 566 of those are state detainers, meaning in state charges. Yep. 87 are primary federal.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: 87. Okay.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Five are home detention.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They have five folks on home detention. Good.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: And I think that adds up to six fifty three.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Are there any ICE detainees included?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: That's why I want to make certain that that what I gave you just now adds up to the six fifty three because there are 20 well, there were on the tenth. I think it's changed a little bit, but on the tenth, there were 20 immigration detainers, and I believe those are inside the 87 federal. And I just wanted to I wanna confirm that math first. So somebody who's in That's why I'm pulling out, if you don't mind, a calculator. Okay. Yeah.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: I'm not doing math.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Yeah. So the the five so so the 87 the of the numbers I just gave you, the 87 primary federal includes the 20 immigration detainers. Because we got 60 Meaning that there's 67 federal detentions of other types.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because part of your budget is we have a contract with federal marshal system

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: We do.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: To house federal detainees. Now those folks are like, I'm just gonna use an example. If there's a drug raid in your community, that usually involves the state police task force could involve the pets. Those are folks here in Vermont. You could have eight or 10 of them in a drug raid, and there'll be federal charges against them.

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Correct. They

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: are held through the federal system that the federal marshals come, we contract out with the federal marshals for those beds. So part of your budget, there is money that comes in from the federal marshals to pay for those beds. And I've forgot how much it, no, yes, They used to be.

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: It goes towards the state's general fund budget, not DOC's budget. So slight distinction.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: There's a big distinction there. How how many beds for federal marshals, not the ICE, but for federal detainees or federal crimes that are Are we obligated to hold? How many are we putting us that we get paid for?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: We only get paid when they're when they're used, but we're obligated to provide them 90, I believe. Is

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: it 90?

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: The cap was very slightly.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay. Because it used to be around 60. Yeah. And how much per day do they pay? Do you know? I can get that figure,

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: but I don't have it up here.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Yeah. I think it's just under $200.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. It used to be around a 150.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: It's like a 190 or 180 something. But I apologize for not having the exact figure.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's fine. That that's just one off the rails. But so when you look at the detainee number of 753, you have to

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: 653, ma'am.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Mean, 653. You have to weed out those numbers, what they really encompass.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Sure. Yes. Some some component of those, but let's but those are some of those are are crimes committed in Vermont. I mean, your your example of drug crimes, those are those are Vermont crimes. A a very high profile profile case case is is the murder of a CBP officer in Coventry, and a suspect of that, a female, is held in our custody. And so those are federal crimes, and they're being prosecuted federally, but they are nevertheless things that happened in our state.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I interrupted. There was a string of questions. Conor, Shawn, and then Kevin.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Not

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: me. Howard walked in anticipating my staffing questions here, but that's I did not. I did not. Can You see my phone up. It's Who's watching?

[Rep. James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Steve just

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: did it

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: with us. So, I think the new hire numbers are really encouraging, Commissioner. I'm wondering, what do you attribute that to? How do we keep them, do you think? How can we help you do this? And then I wondered, it's probably a phone a friend one. I'm just wondering what percentage of the overall staffing costs are overtime at this point? If that's moving the right direction too. Yes.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Okay. I don't I don't have the percentage cost of

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: That's okay.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Overtime or not. Marlene may have that.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No. I have the percentage.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Okay. The we know what we have is is overtime allotted in the budget. With regard to your first question, I think that the hiring is going well. There was the creation of a position at each facility that is dedicated to hiring and to the experience of staff, And some of the facilities are doing that really well. They're doing it well with regard to social media presence. They're doing it with regard to outreach to staff who are in our employ and making certain that people are feeling fulfilled and well served and how are they doing? And they're doing it with regard to outreach to prospective hires, and I think making a good case for the value of this work. This is an incredibly important job. It is an integral job to a safe and secure society. It has to be done not only with a sense of the importance of how we maintain custody in a secure and safe way, but also with compassion and the ability to change people's lives as you do this work. And I think therefore we have two distinct groups of people that we appeal to, and then the sort of Venn diagram of those two groups, which is larger than people think. It's almost an overlap entirely, which is people who, yeah, I believe in security and I believe in holding people accountable, and I believe in making certain that we do everything we can to make people better in the time that they're with us and make certain that they're prepared for success when they leave us. I think the pieces that we have with regard to hiring are being able to sell that and trying to work on selling that. We've done a little bit of work on that. Actually, I was about to talk to you today about the fact that we need to cut that audio for the overview that we had an intro voiceover for some of the work that we have on social media, etcetera, on trying to articulate and communicate this message. I do think that obviously there are things that we've done in order to make people's lives better in the midst of tough situations with regard to one of the budget items you'll see, it was part of our BAA, but it's part of the new budget as well, is hotel and making certain that for people, for example, who are working really inordinately long shifts, often back to back, we have mechanisms for them not to have to travel home if we're gonna be asking of them these sort of short turnovers and giving them places that they can be close to the workspace, making that available, doing things to try to mitigate some of the issues that we face with regard to our facilities and the fact that not all of our facilities are in the condition that we would want them to be. They are particularly that was difficult during the summer. We had some really hot stretches and we bought things, new uniforms, new things like ice makers and icy drink machines that we could put into the facilities for staff. All of that is important. There's a graduation tomorrow that I'll be attending of our most recent recruit group, and I will be telling them what I hope I met with them on their first day of the academy. I'll go see their graduation and and reiterate the importance that this job has. I think there are a lot of people out there who want a job that provides a sense of meaning and a sense of belonging and a sense of fulfillment, And this job has all of that, right? It is a job that you cannot say it doesn't matter. It is the quintessential example of an important job and one that we consider a core piece of our communities and our public safety posture. But the fact that we put it under AHS and make it something about human services matters too and can help us attract other kinds of people with regard to folks who want to be living unit supervisors, that's case managers, or people who want to move into probation and parole. So those are the kinds of things that we need to make certain we're articulating and sharing, and we're trying to do that in our work around. For example, we have a contract with WCAX to communicate some of these things, and experienced officers, who are the officers at each facility who really dedicate themselves to this, both recruitment and wellness of current employees, they understand that too and are trying to articulate that as well.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: How can we help you?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: That's a good question. I think that certainly any time that we can communicate the value of this work and dispel what some people's concerns are around there are many people who wish that we didn't need this at all, and I do too, but I don't think that that's where we are in reality. And so how do we and by this, I mean, that we wouldn't need prisons or jails at all, but we do. And so to the extent that we can push back on the notion that we don't need them and instead say, well, we do, and we need the right people to be employed in them, the more that that's socialized as a general opinion, the better. And I think that a body like this is is uniquely positioned to do that. That certainly can help. And certainly, anytime you meet a young person who is wondering what he or she should do with his or her career and how you know, this is an option for them, And it's a fair wage and good option. No. You know, may hear a little difference on the fair wage part. But I think that what we're offering is fair, and I think that we're offering a terrific opportunity for people to be to have a growth and a career. Thank you. Kevin?

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Should some committee, maybe our committee, be considering a change in legislation so that the reimbursement goes to DOC rather than the general fund? I mean, it's not that big, I guess, but

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, it's bigger than you think. Don't know what the number is, but then it puts more pressure on the general fund.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Oh, yeah. But the general question.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Do you know what the number is that goes? The total.

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Yeah. I get it.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah. Mean, that's the same conversation of pulling other parts of state government revenues that go to the general fund to pull it back like transportation, but then you leave a hole in the general fund.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Oh, I hear you.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So that has to be filled. We don't operate our general fund in the deficit. Never have, and we don't. And our general fund budget is balanced when we leave here. We don't operate in a deficit for our state budget. Joe?

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: That would be a net sum game anyway, because DOC is general fund funding.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: No, I understand it's net sum, but it's going to where the expense is being increased or decreased.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: It's just

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: a correlation. You will increase DOC's revenues coming in. Does that mean you're gonna decrease the same amount and keep the general fund whole? Hold them harmless. Because if you're pulling out that money and putting it in DOC, their budget revenues are gonna increase, which then means your general fund budget and what those dollars provide services for will have to be backfilled somewhere.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Yeah, I'm not advocating for that.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's how it works. You're gonna

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: No, that's what we do is try to figure out where to put the money. You've got a direct correlation that seems like the money ought to

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: go in direct correlation. So then the question will be, we have a $240,000,000 DOC budget. So if you pull back the federal marshals, which say you get 10,000,000 a year from the federal marshals, so your DOC budgets increased by 10,000,000. But you've decreased your general fund overall budget by 10,000,000. And that would that sit well with folks? Because what what are you

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: gonna have to cut in your general fund budget between the rest of state government? I could play devil's advocate. I could say that that additional funding should help us bring in more CEO officers with higher salaries. I mean, it's just that if the work's being done and somebody else is getting the revenue for it, that to me seems illogical. And that's what we do, think, is decide where the money should be spent to get the biggest bang for the bucks. So, all of a sudden, they're looking at 90 detainees instead of 20. That's a huge difference in that funding should follow the effort, in my opinion. But that's why I asked the question, should somebody be looking at it? I'm not advocating that, I'm just saying this logically speaking, that seems like the right kind of question.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Maureen Petty, the Executive Director of Finance or Department

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: of Corrections, you did ask for

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: a portion of that as a revenue loss this year for 1,500,000.0 and it was taken off the table. It was And you asked who? When we put it in our request to AHS because we have to go through our agency and then that gets at higher levels as well. So that was a request. Just wanted to make sure that we did. So you requested $1,500,000 and how much usually, do you know how much comes in on a year?

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: I would like to double check that. It seemed to me

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: that it was around 4.5. 4,500,000.0. So you asked for 1,500,000.0 of that just to go to the DOC budget. You ran that up the chain through the agency of human services. And then I'm not sure if they may have taped it to the next level of it, was determined that we weren't gonna utilize that. So was that determined within the agency of human services? I'm not sure, I think it might've been a higher level. I believe so. And I'm sure they have their reasons for it. Didn't ask. I needed the money for the general funds. Just thought once again, until we know that we did ask a portion of it. And we will double check on the total. It's good to know. Thank you. Other questions on staffing and the numbers? So the detainee population keeps increasing.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Yes. So if we could move through some of these slides, I think we'll see some visualizations of that. Thank you. So this shows us the average sentence detained and hold population for each fiscal Bless you. And both in state and out of state, And I think that it really indicates the fact that we've had, you know, there have been times where we had many more people in our system in whole, but we also had two additional facilities at that point. There have been two closures over the past since 2013, and so the I believe it's two. You're looking at me in a way. Windsor.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Is this the work camp?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: There was also another, there was a different women's facility in 2013, was there not?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No, no, 2015.

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: They

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: were in Northwest, yeah. The only facility that I'm aware of that has closed was 100 beds in Windsor.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Windsor.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And we don't have 13. We probably had a pretty full work camp. 13 we still had the work camp up in St. Johnsbury. There's a 100 beds in there.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: We still do use that. We have facility is is completely full.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm on

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: We also had almost 500 people out of state.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. We had a lot out of state.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: That was back in, like, 1314, Yes. That's right. And when you see those numbers of, you know, 27 of 2,100 people in this graphic Windsor in

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Windsor was operational then, and don't remember if that was women's back then or if that was as a work camp.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: The the graphic on the right shows, for example, that where there were 498 people out of state in 2013. So that was a significant piece of that.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: My '25 seems low,

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: only like at 130

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: from last year.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: 130 out of state, you mean, sir? No, I think we were lower than that. I think we were actually at 100 and ish. We were below 120.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: You're right. We were 150.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: And that's because of a group of approximately 25 to 30 that we sent out in October. That was the largest that was the largest transportation that we had done since the pandemic.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Detainee population. Your detainee population is putting pressure on our systems.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Yes.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's what's happening. The more detainees you have, the more it's gonna take up a bed, which means there's less beds for your general population.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Detainees are killing us.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Hold without bear?

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: It's a form

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: of detained, but yes.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's held without bail. That's gone up. So I think and I think the commissioner alluded to this if the public wants more accountability by locking people up instead they say, or a catch and release, the courts, prosecution are reacting to And then in the system, it's gonna pop out in corrections. That's where it's gonna pop out. It's not gonna go away. People aren't gonna go away. You can hold them without bail. You can hold them with high bail. The folks are not going away in the system. They're gonna pop up somewhere, and they're popping up in directions. So by doing that, they have a set number of beds, and those beds are now being taken up by detainees, which then puts pressure to ship more people out of state.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Yes. And, again, to you know, I've said this before, and all of you are familiar with this, but we don't control the number of people who are in our custody except in very marginal ways. The number of people in our custody are sent to us by the court, and it is then our job to determine how those people are best served within the confines of the court decision. If the court says this person must be with you for a minimum of two years, that person will be with us for two years. And then there are certain things that we can work on and control. Furlough is a component of that, but we have, under justice reinvestment, have drastically reduced furlough as an overall component of probation, parole, and furlough. Furlough has dropped, and probation and parole have risen. We don't control parole. Parole is controlled by the parole board. Probation is issued by the court. Furlough is a very small component of the totality of that. We do have more control over furlough than other things, but sentencing is not us, and people being sent to us as detainees is not us. And so we function in our role, which is to take good custody and care, compassionate custody and care of anybody sent to us by the courts. With regard, however, to the notion of it growing and growing, I'm not entirely certain that I believe that. I think that in fact, that a component of why it's so high right now is that there has been a time period in which there was less accountability. I think that the increase in accountability will actually decrease the total number of people eventually who are in our custody or sent to us. I think the notion of, for me, the notion of accountability of addressing things, particularly before they metastasize into crime, is a philosophy that says we stop little things before they become big, and that we also, by stopping things after they are big, we reduce the issue. The country, I've talked about this a little bit and sent you some things, sir, about the nation's overall crime trends over the last couple of years. They've gone drastically down. I believe Vermont is in store for something similar. I do know in Burlington alone, the terrible year that Burlington saw for murder in 2022 was not repeated because the, thankfully, very small numbers of people in our communities are willing to shoot at other people and try to murder other people. If you quickly arrest those individuals and hold those individuals and ultimately sentence those individuals, if you can prove that they did the thing that they have been arrested for, they are not doing those things, And that's a small number of people who are no longer in the community committing those acts, and those acts necessarily plummet. And that's what we've seen certainly with regard to homicide in that being a most extreme crime, an outlier crime. It's also very small crime, so the numbers are hard to tease out. But I think that that holds true for other kinds of things. And if we see people who are sent to us for some period of time owing to really repetitive offenses and then are held accountable, the nature of those repetitive offenses can be addressed, behavior can be changed, and then we can find other ways that are not carceral to address those folks once they're out of the incarceration. Instead say, No, now we are, We've baselined you again on proper behavior, on health, on access to services. How do we now stay on top of this and make sure that we don't end up with a situation again where our detainee population is so large? I believe that's in our grasp over the next summer, but a lot of that is outside of corrections control.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So our community partners. Mhmm.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Troy? Do you track how many of your detainees ultimately are sentenced versus how many are sent, well, time served versus unsentenced? I don't know

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: the answer to that. I'm certain that we do. I'm certain that that's something that we can tease out, but I don't know it off the top of my head. So in other words, how many of these detainees ultimately become sentenced persons? Obviously, it's going be less than 100%. There's gonna be numbers of these folks who either do, as you said, get time served. There can be numbers who are acquitted and who are determined not to have done the thing that they're being held for. That's why we have due process. But I don't know the percentages of that, sir.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We can

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: definitely get it.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And I don't,

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Haley says we can definitely get it.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I don't know what's

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I'm still working on what that means for the pressure that the SMEs are putting on your system. You know what I mean? Like, is there a problem to be found within that data that should be addressed? And it wouldn't be addressed by DOC, it'd probably be addressed by the sentencing process or the content, yeah, I don't know.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Having been a law enforcement practitioner, I would be leery of having DOC's issues be a component of whether or not we sent If we believe that DOC was an unhealthy environment, or if we believe that these places were terrible, then I think that would be a component of a sentence. But the notion of overcrowding alone, I don't think should be a component of a sentencing decision. I think it needs to be driven by the behavior of the individual accused in front of the court at that moment. That said, sir, I do think that we, you know, especially for example, our most pronounced capacity issues are at Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, and it is also the place where our detainee population is the most pronounced as a percentage of the whole, 50%. We can again, we can trans some percentage of those detainees will transition to sentenced people. But if the overall number of new detainees does not grow and we can then have the other detainees be moved into other kinds of either results, whether it's, again, as you said, time served for for what's happened already or a recognition that now that you've been sentenced, it's not time served, it's supervision. It's you know, there are other things that we can do. We could get that facility back to a place where it's less concerning with regard to capacity. We may have to do other things in the meantime, but it could be that if the summer is a cooler summer than it has been, and I don't mean that temperature wise, we can see these detention populations diminish.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Orange?

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: This is more, I suppose, in a similar vein about the capacity question. I'm still learning the history of the system, and so when people talk about what was available twelve years ago, I don't know that. It seems like we had several 100 more people in our facilities ten years ago, even though we're totally overcrowded now. And so I guess I'm wondering two things. One is the process by which it's decided to send more people out of state. What's the level? Because we've been hired before, would say. And the other one is and it's a knock on to the first is there not a number at which we would have to figure out something similar for our women's population?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: So the answer to the well, to address the first, yes, we obviously did have many, many more people out of state at various times. We also, as the chair mentioned, had an additional facility. So that right there is 600 additional beds on top of the if you look at the sixteen fifty that we have to well, take away the out of state. If you look at the fifteen fifty the 1,500 that we currently have here in state, and then you add 500 and then another 100 to that, that gets just basically to the numbers that you're seeing here. So the overall of, you know, the the overall crowding in many ways was probably lesser. The height that you can see in 2014 on these charts behind me is twenty one ten. Fifteen hundred plus five hundred plus 100 is 2,110. And so that would be where, in other words, that was with an additional facility, right, the 100, and that's with many more people out of state, the 500, but then the 1,500 that we currently have, it's basically the same place. I think the issue is that where, you know, that was a peak in Vermont that Vermont doesn't want to be at again, And yet we are at that number right now, but for different numbers out of state and the lack of a facility. So I think that should be something that sort of concerns us in that these absolute numbers are not the only way to look at the metrics.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Sure. But yeah, I think you've answered my question. Maybe I phrased it poorly. We are now then at the peak of in state routing or what was the historical peak?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: The peak, like you, I too am not familiar with the overall history of the department, and so I only know back to 2013 because that's the charts that I've seen. But yes, we are equal to where we were in 2014, absent those other pieces. Said, I think that our threshold for sending people out of state has changed a lot. I also think that our overall population has changed in ways that make sending people out of state more difficult. So it's a combination. The state does not want to send as many people out of state. By that, I mean our polity, our legislators, our administration, but the kinds of folks that we can send out of state are rarer in the system now. And by that, I mean people who have longer sentences, who are healthy, whose behavior is generally good. And if, for example, we were suddenly required to send another 100 people out of state, we would be hard pressed to find those numbers in our current population. What does required mean there? Why would it be required? One of our facilities suddenly went offline.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And that could happen.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: And our contract does allow for more, I believe 300 is the total number that our contract allows for. We don't pay for 300. We pay for only the number we have there, but we're 150 under the total contract capability. So God forbid, a facility suddenly went offline for some major reason and we needed to sort of find 150. I'm not entirely certain that we could under the standards that we're currently using. We would have to change our standards.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And those standards are within your policies and directives because it's not in statute.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: It is not in statute. I don't even know that it's in policy necessarily. It's what we work on with the provider, that is with CoreCivic. It is how we ensure that people that we think have either mental health or other health needs are closer to home and able to be addressed here and not someplace far away. Although CoreCivic works very well with us with regard to providing things like MOUD and other kinds of treatment. For folks who have really acute needs, we would rather have them in state. We have more people with acute needs than we have in the past.

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: There is a policy that determines eligibility that our staff will use in addition to coordinating with them.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: There's nothing in statute. Nothing in statute. So practice has evolved over time. Because we started sending folks out of state in the late '90s. And at one point, we had 700 out of state. That was in the late '90s.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: And did that ever include women, or was that always women?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No, always men. Always men. And that's why we worked with the Council of State Governments back around 02/2010, to really start looking at what the drivers were in our population increase. Because it was projected to go up over 2,300. That was the projection. So working with the Council of State Governments, they were saying that a lot of folks coming into our system were low level property crimes that did not include a person. And then that's when we put in a system very similar to the accountability court back then. And really helping the judge as well know what the other factors were in the person's behavior so that when the sentence was developed, it took all of those factors into account. So that's why you started seeing the population numbers going down. But that was a result of Justice Ring Passment one because we were projected to be up over 2,300.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: So the knock on question was, is there a number at which is there a protocol for what happens when the women reach a certain population?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: We do not have a bright line number. Right now, the number's actually ebbed a little bit. It was in the mid-170s for much of the past few months. It rose into the 180s at the end of the summer. Right now it's in the high 160s. That's a good thing. I don't know. I think that if we had a sustained period over 180, we would seriously have to think about other options. We have lists of options that we have been contemplating and thinking. The chair of Senate institutions asked me to contemplate sending women out of state if necessary, and in fact, reach out to other kinds of providers who might be able to house women out of state. That is something that we do not want to do, but I did as the chair directed and have explored that option in, you know, could we do that and etcetera. But we don't want to. And right now we're going in a direction that says we may not need to, but it's difficult to know if it's a sustained direction. Yes, fingers crossed, ma'am, you're right.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Alright then. Can

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: you just say a little more philosophically about why that hard line is there for you, for women, but not men?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: The hard line of population

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: We will not send women out of state.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: The the rationale for me is that we have not we have not done so. It and it's not a hard line. It is I I might I you know, if I

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: heard an emphasis

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Yes. In your voice.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: And that's there there's definitely an emphasis in my voice. It is not something that I would want to do. It would not be even close to the top of options, but I'm not foreclosing on the possibility depending on what we need to do.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: So why is that emphasis not there for the men that we ship out of state? Aside from the numbers. I'm I'm talking philosophically. How has that become an answer?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: I think because we have so many more services available for our women at Chittenden Regional that involve connection kids apart with Lund, the ability to have people visit that facility, the fact that the women there do maintain external relationships in ways that men don't as much. So that's a component of it.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Does that acknowledge the absence of such services for men?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: We absolutely know we want to build services like that for men. I mean, the Kids Apart program is being expanded to Northern because fathers are parents too. I strongly believe that. I'm one. But I also will acknowledge that fathers or parents, they're different parents than mothers.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: In part because of the safe the support systems that we do or do not provide to women as compared to men.

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

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: My point. I don't want to put those words here.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Thanks. I can

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: do none.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Mark? Yeah, sure. So Commissioner, I go on a tirade every year back, Corsten. I'm not going

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: to do

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: it today too much.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We get used to it.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, you get used to it. You just drown it out. I started lobbying twenty years ago and it was always the thought process. Well, it's just a necessity for the moment, but we're hoping to get out of the out of state prison business. And at some point, I just think it's like not going to happen, right? I don't think so. So is there some thought process that we just need to build capacity and state here at Hunter Springfield? Building right with the new women's prison here and trying to take care of it because the outcomes don't seem conducive to rehabilitation down there. What we heard last week in testimony, you can get high any day if you want. It's chill. You get a PlayStation when you get down there. They built it in the most impoverished areas. So the quality of the staff isn't necessarily as good. They just need a job, right? So I'm wondering, is the department thinking maybe we should just get out of this business and look at building more?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: It is certainly not a component of this budget, and it is I not a component of the have not spoken with the administration about this, but I do believe that we are currently not as much overcapacity as we are underbuilt for what we in Vermont may need at a given point. And if we don't want to send people out of state, then we need to do something to address that. I think that like schools, we build these things for high point populations, and then we acknowledge that there are going to be times at which they're not as full. And that causes changes and causes different kinds of challenges, staffing challenges, either up or down. Suddenly, have too many staff for the number of students that you have if you've built you have a large population glut and, you know, a spike in population. We need a new wing on on our school, and we also need to hire some additional teachers, etcetera. And then that ebbs because that's how population groups move. I think the same is probably true of of crime and prisoners, owing to the fact that they are, in fact, just another component of our overall demographics. And I think they're relatively consistent overall, but they move up and down with regard to moments of greater or lesser social disorder and criminality. But we build for what we as Vermont have had in the past and need, and then if we don't need them, then we shut a wing down. We've done that right now. Not right now. Right now, we do not have that. But even when I started, there was a wing in Springfield that was not being used because we didn't have staffing for it. We certainly had people, but we didn't population that is, people in our custody, but we didn't have staff. Once we got additional staff, we reopened it. The same would be true. You could shut wings down in facilities if we were to have, you know again, that that extra piece in Springfield, if you were to build that extra building, you'd have an additional number of beds, and you use it or you don't use it when you need it. I believe that the building, that the plans for the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility replacement for women needs to be designed for the number of women that we experienced at the end of this summer, not for the number that we had two years ago. I think that would be a mistake. It would get us, I mean, we'd end up in the same position we're in. Better to have more beds and not use them. And I do not agree with the notion that empty beds result in more people being sentenced. I don't

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: I was gonna ask you.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: That our beds are a component of the calculation on the part of the prosecutors and judges at all. And I think that's a good thing, and I know some, you know, may disagree, but I I there's a theory about highway development that when you build more lanes, you just end up with more cars and traffic somehow. It's I I I know that it exists. I don't know the math behind it. I don't think the same is true of beds. I think if we build extra beds, then we'll have beds that are empty, which is a good thing, and we can leave wings shuttered or or, you know, temporarily closed.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: If it was an issue, would the courts not be sending folks to corrections? Because right now we don't need the bids.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Right. If anything, would say that, yeah, I don't know. I just don't think that it's generally a component of the decision.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So let's move on. Let's ask one more

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: in And Haley, we heard, or I think I heard a statistic that 30% of the long term detainees were never charged.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They were charged. They weren't convicted. They weren't convicted. Yeah, that was from the prime research group. Would

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: you have data as to why they were released? Or is that That a different

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: would be a better question for the front end of the system.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: So I apologize to you then, Boris.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Because a light bulb went off when I heard time served might be a reason, because if they're a long time, then-

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Well, time served is a conviction. Time served is a sense that you have been adjudicated, but the term of the charges that you were answerable for is actually less than the time. Our drug rate, our, you know, let's not use the feds because their sentencing is stricter. A Vermont charge for, let's say, a misdemeanor assault and retail theft that results in a hold without because of the person's long history and the fact that a misdemeanor assault is violent, that person ends up being in our custody while awaiting trial for, let's say, thirteen months, and then gets convicted or pleas eventually, and the court says, we would have unlikely held you for thirteen months for these two crimes anyway, so time served. You are now you were released today. There isn't even a supervise there isn't even a supervision component to something like that, which can be unfortunate. Or there may be a supervision component, but it's still a release. In other words, time served, but now you are on probation.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: So they have been charged.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Convicted.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Well But

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: there are people who can be charged, held, charged and held, and then released because either acquittal or because the case falls apart before the trial is concluded. And the p and we just say, whoops. Our you know, the system says, nope. Release this person.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yeah. Okay. But you're not the right person. I still wanna find that out.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So so for a detainee so we have over 500 Vermont detainees. For every day that they are there as a detainee gets calculated as credit for time served. So if they end up going through, they have a trial or they plea and say they've been there for one year and their sentences for two years, they've already served one year of that two year sentence. So for every day a detainee is there, it gets calculated as credit towards their time served. So that's gonna be in the balance here when we have so many detainees. When they finally do go back to court to be sentenced, the number of days they're held as detainees will be calculated.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: That's correct.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Keep that in the back of your mind as well. And we're holding over five fifty people, 500 people, we are holding them and taking away their liberties. They have not been convicted.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: And if 30% of them are going to be not be convicted, that to me is an alarming

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They're shaken away people's freedoms and liberties.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: So I'd like to know why.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: I'd note, I would note that the ones who don't get, like, my guess is that of the six fifty people that are currently detained, many of those are not with us for very long. There's a constant churn at the top edge of that of people who are with us for a tiny handful of days. And many of the people who don't get convicted are going to be in that group. You were arrested under probable cause. You were held until arraignment over a weekend. You are a detainee in our calculation. You're only with us for three or four days, and then the probable cause existed, but the ability to get it beyond a reasonable doubt does not. And at arraignment, you are released. You are put under court conditions of some sort, and the case then dissipates or falls apart or cannot be pursued with more vigor because you can't get farther. Right. And I would say that the 30% comes predominantly from that group. That's my gut, but I don't know it for sure.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: To work with a prime research group more to see how they

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Different days.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because some detainees are there just a few days, and that gets calculated in the whole number. But there are a lot of folks, probably a good 300, four, I would say it's probably close to 400 or 500, pretty steady, that are held there for- Longer periods.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Three or

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: four days, so held there for quite a while.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: That's not the short term. So I was hearing long term detainees, 30% of them are not convicted and released, and I would be interested in knowing why.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That would be a conversation That

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: is totally a front end question for the courts.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It supports the prosecution and the defense.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Moving on to move on

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: to our, this is a picture of our field services and parole board. Think probation and parole sometimes gets, is not the forethought when we think of corrections. We think of the facilities are jailsprisons, but probation and parole numerically has more people under its supervision than we have in our custody. Sixteen fifty in our custody, 4,700 or so under our supervision. Really important work done by the men and women in our probation and parole offices, 12 around the state, in almost every major city in Vermont. And they do work like assessments, connecting people with services, ensuring that people are living up to the expectations of the court with regard to court order conditions. It's a very important piece and one that we are, I'm very proud of, and the work that these folks do. You'll see there you know, there too, our numbers have been rising since the pandemic, but we are not where we were at the start, at the outset of the pandemic.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Do you

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: know how many folks were on furlough? Because right between incarceration and folks who are on probation or parole, you're at about 5,850 folks who are under your supervision. Correct. For furlough, do you have a actual number? Because there's more people on

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Next chart, I think, shows that.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: It shows it as a percentage.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I want the numbers.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: 236 people were on furlough as of February 10, so this is Tuesday's data. Haley may have a more recent This one is 02/30 printed two today. February, and of those two, I'm looking at the two thirty six, but of the two thirty six, 194 are active, and then the others are absconders. We do have percentages of absconders in all of our categories of supervision, in probation, in parole, and in furlough.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And do we have the number of folks who are actually on parole? Because the 4,192 is both probation and parole.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: That's right. So the number I have actually for total community supervision population is different than this chart. I have, as of Tuesday, 04/1970 total community supervision population, and that includes a total of 3,888 who are on probation. Of those, three sixty one have absconded, and the other 3,500 are active. We have a total of five seventy on parole, the vast majority of whom are under supervision, relatively few absconders for that category, and then furlough total two thirty six, although as Haley said, it's two thirty two today, but two thirty six on Tuesday, and 194 of whom are actively on furlough, the others are at sconders.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Helpful, thank you.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Commissioner, could you give us a sense of what the caseloads are like in the field for different positions?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: I don't know the caseload per person. I think that I don't know the number.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Okay. Okay. No worries.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: I'll connect that to you. Thank you for finishing the phrase.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Very much.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: We will

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: get that for you.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So our PMP, our field offices, just for the committee, supervise folks who are on probation, folks who are on furlough, and folks who are on parole. Yes. There's a lot more work that our field officers are doing. Yes. They're supervising a lot more folks than our correctional officers in the facility.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: And as you see in this graphic too, you'll see that the furlough percentage has dropped a lot over the last couple of years, and that is a component of justice reinvestment, but it also means that that's the one valve that DOC has a certain amount of control is for law. That is largely by statute, the decision of the commissioner based on factors, and we use it much, much less.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And I think you just mentioned a very important part where DOC has some control over some valves and operate in their facilities. You need mechanisms and tools to manage the population. Correct? Yes, ma'am. I want the members to keep that.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: But I would like to point out that I think management of the population is not just whether or not they are in or out. I think management of the population, more importantly, is whether or not we are providing for them, know, first and foremost, it's a safe environment, and then it is access to supportive relationships, whether that's with family or whether that's with staff. Opportunities for growth is a huge one. Are we offering programming that provides real opportunities for growth? And that would include educational growth, intellectual growth, professional growth, and then finally, a sense of belonging. Frankly, those four things are also exactly what we need to provide for our staff, a safe environment, supportive relationships among other staff, professional growth, and finally, a sense of belonging. But if we provide those for our population, then we have, that's what management is.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That creates a safer environment?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Ultimately, all of those go back to that first one, a safe and secure environment. That's the scenic Wahgnog.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm gonna put that on the table for members to process through as we get deeper into DOC, Because they're housing folks that have very little hope and eternity seems forever. So sometimes just a little bit of incentive that they can see maybe one day in advance gives them better outlook and their behavior changes. And for us, that may not play in as much. But for many folks who have their freedom of mobility taken away from them. A month is an eternity for them. And if you can see some gains on a daily basis Yes. Means a lot.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Yes. The biggest challenge that we have and the worst thing that happens, I think, to the vast majority of the people in our custody is the boredom. It is a challenge, and it is, I'm glad to say it's the worst. I mean, there may be other systems or other times in our history where the worst thing was was violence or, you know, really dangerous, powerless conditions. But today, it is boredom, and and the majority of folks, that is what they face, and and there are things we should be able to do for that. But as we move through this slideshow, I think there's a slide that when we get to it, I'll sort of point out When we get to it. When we get to it. As we're going. So we can move forward. Our healthcare services are on the next one. And you can see there that there have been increases in all these categories, but of course, the population has increased during this time too. So in many ways, what we're seeing in FY twenty five is indicative of decreases overall as far as per capita, considering the population rose during that time period.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So is it fair to say that what DOC provides in healthcare is what we, in our regular lives, need for healthcare as well?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Secretary Samuelson of AHS 100% wants a community level of care in these facilities. And that's our metric and our goal. I think that for certain individuals, they probably get something that is better than the level of care they get in the community, owing to dissociation or not being able to access some of those things. That said, that's not a rationale for incarceration. And that said, there are those that perhaps might have, if somebody had the greatest health insurance in the world and a really productive job, but then committed a terrible, terrible crime, are we providing the exact same insight? We're working at it and trying to get there. The next slide shows some of what we do offer.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Just looking at the bar graph.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Okay, back to the bars.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The most healthcare services that are provided is receiving medication and chronic care. And receiving medication would be, and I'm not looking at the MOUD, that's totally different. But receiving medication would be what person on the outside would be receiving medication for?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Albuterol, cholesterol medications, heart medications. Ninety five percent of the people in our custody inside the facilities receive some kind of medication. And that is, it's not an Advil, that doesn't count, but other things do. And then the other pieces that we do, everybody in our facilities, irrespective of whether they are detained or sentenced, gets the same medical care. We cannot program the same for a detainee that we can for a sentenced person, not with regard to certain kinds of educational programs, other kinds of things like that, but we absolutely provide the same medical care.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And we need to remember that too for folks. And the folks who are coming in, their bodies tend to be older than their actual age.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: As Indiana Jones once said, it's not the years, it's the mileage. The

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: mileage has been rough miles. Yep.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: I'm trying to read this chart. Sick calls, $31.92 25. That's not the total. That's just No. If That's the total. That's That's the total. That is the total.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's the total, not sick calls.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Those other numbers are supposed to add up to $31.92.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: No, because they are A single sick call may result in any number of different kinds of treatment and or none. Can fill out a sick slip and then be assessed and No, you don't really need anything.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Okay. I

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: think I understand. Cip calls are always

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: high. That's high. The next- It

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: could be for a headache.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Sure. On the next slide, can see a metric of the severity of treatment is our ER visits. And our ER visits have gone up.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Is that because our population's getting older or what's, do you know what some of the drivers are there?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: A higher population is a driver. We've gone up thirteen percent over the last year. So from '24 to '25, there's a 13% increase in total number of people. So therefore you're gonna see some increase in the number of ER visits. Detainees may need more immediate care than people who've been in our custody for some time as an overall average in the sense that detainees often come in, especially if they're in for relatively lower level crimes. They may very well be in the throes of substance abuse and suffering from the symptoms and factors that are there, the not yet stabilized. But then at the other end of the incarcerated sentenced population, yes, we have people who are older, We have people who are experiencing end of life issues. And so they're a component of that as well.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Why did you single out December? Was that just a relatively high

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: The date is from December. So I think that's just the way it was presented.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Yeah. I think it's just that

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: But you have a total for '25 and a December for '25.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So calendar year '25 or

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: if The two lower numbers are calendar years. Calendar year '25, calendar year '24. I think this is a chart that updates this updates daily on our report, and it was just sort of pulled into the slideshow, and it happened to have been the December because it was a December 31 point in time chart.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: That's

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: right. It it's just that that's the total

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: for December. Nothing remarkable at all.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Don't know without looking at both previous Decembers and whether or not I don't know. I mean, 63 out of eight twenty five, is that a twelfth? I I don't I'm not sure. I can't do that.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I can't tell unless

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: you're not.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: It's less,

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: which would make sense. The summertime is probably a higher volume of influx.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So for those visits, that may not be a unique individual. That could be someone that's gone in four or five times.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Absolutely. There could be a person here who has who constituted 12 ER visits over the course of the year.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Commissioner, how much do you think the institutionalization and the lack of acute mental health beds of the state has just sort of shifted people from one institution to another, the other institution being corrections? I'd be interested just like from your law enforcement experience still on that.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: I don't data on that. But I do think that the of The fact that we have fewer and fewer beds for acute mental health issues has resulted in people whose behavior then turns into something that becomes criminal, and then they end up in instead a cell for a bit.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So between the psychotropic meds, mental health caseload and your SFI, are those like the mental health caseload, does that include folks around psychotropic meds as well as SFI? Or are they all separate categories with separate folks?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Well, they're not all all of these categories could potentially overlap. There could be one individual who's on MAT and SFI and has prescribed meds and is geriatric, etcetera, etcetera. So they all could overlap. I don't know the degree to which they do or don't. You know, I'm sure that the majority of people who are on psychotropic meds are also getting mental health assessments and help. Hopefully all of them, hopefully that forty two percent constitutes eighty percent of that fifty five percent.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay. So are you seeing more of an increase in your costs in terms of your contract with WellPath, more of an increase in costs being driven by mental health issues at all?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: I don't know that we break it out that way. We do we have seen an increase in our costs with WellPath. The budget adjust we both had to budget adjust for the year, and then we are also asking for more in the coming contract Excuse me, in the coming budget because Largely because of the the average daily population or the ADP and the increase there. But have we broken it out among these components? I don't know that we have. WellPath may have, but

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's a It's a classification specifically for DOC, for folks who are severely functionally impaired. Because it's class because those folks are classified as SFI, there is certain practices within DOC that they have their practices need to be different.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: It

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: used to be severe mental health illness. And then we've clarified that to SFI because as serious mental health illness correlates with what's out in the community. And but what's in corrections, it's a little different in terms of what services or policies need to reflect a person who is SFI. It's in statute, the definition's in law, and then there's policies around that. The next slide.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: These are our facility staff vacancies. So these are only the vacancies at the facilities, and you can see that there was that tremendous spike in 2022 leading into 2023. We've overcome half of that spike, which is laudable. I think Commissioner Demel is owed some credit for that, and I think that's great. Obviously, we have a ways to go. We would like to get back to this place where we are five to 10% down. I'd like to get to a place where we're 100% staffed. That's obviously the real goal. But in practicality, we look at previous numbers, it was different and better before, and we need to get back towards that. But we are working on that. Next, please. So this is a list of the key budget changes, and we'll we'll be discussing those at at greater length. And Marlene also, Director Petit, will help with that. Increases in salaries and benefits, increases in WellPath, increases in transitional housing under justice reinvestment, etcetera. If the next slide, please.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What is the second bullet? ISF and ADS? Pardon

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: me? The internal service fund and the DS allocated their service fund.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, the tech, yes, the fee for ADS.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: The next slide, please. Thank you. I like this slide. I like the fact that it puts in perspective and proportion what our monies go to. You'll see there that a significant amount is for health. The services part the bulk of what we do. Some of our facility fees are BGS, some of them are ours, it's facilities. It's definitely staff and salary and benefits. That's the biggest single component of that. It's also food. It is, you know, heating, etcetera. Certain kinds of equipment are gonna be in there, but the overall correctional services constitutes the bulk. The correctional services health breakout, I think is important to see it in relation to the other pieces and how much health really does cost us. And then the other pieces, our margins down there are really thin, but it's where when we talked about management and the ability to make an environment that does allow for, the safe environment part is in that correctional services section. That's the safe environment part, but the supportive relationships and the opportunities for growth and the sense of belonging, those are more likely in the education and the recreation and different kinds of administration costs. So how we take those other things and really make certain that we are able to fund them, that we can find space for them. So often, sometimes when we want a program to thrive, we don't have a place to put it. Where are you gonna put the extra college class that they want? And so all of that is something that we need to focus on, but it's a fractional component of the budget when you look at the overall costs.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So if you're out of state beds, you're at 4,100,000. How many beds are you anticipating? Is that four

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: point one hundred fifty. Not We currently anticipate sending another large group out of state at this point, partly because although we are over capacity with regard to our gen pop, and remember too, our general population goal, best practice is 80% of general population. By that metric, we are way over. But with regard to just overall capacity, male facilities are not in a dire place for us to need to send an additional 50 or 100 people out of state at this moment. So we do not anticipate requiring additional budget money for the out of state. The women is different, and as the representative noted, I am super reluctant to do that, but I cannot disclose on the cost

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: of money.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: What portion of the health contract for M. A. T.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: That MOUD? Oh, for MAT MOUD? Great question, and I don't know the answer to that. I don't know if we could break it out.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We can try and break that out, yes.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: John, I'm not sure I understand the overall cost.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Of the $44,000,000 how much is

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Okay. It's nice.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You've got to go back to the previous chart here to see your health data. Your health data fifty eight percent of the population is on an MOUD. Seventy eight percent of your population is chronic illness. Ninety five percent of your population is on prescribed meds. So you gotta look at what the drivers are because you've got chronic illness and you prescribed meds that it's not MOE

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: within I all

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: know, but the dollar amounts also would be good for those other ones as well.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: You mean you'd like to know, are you saying, madam chair, you'd like to know the dollar amounts for those other things? We can try to break essentially, A if you'd like

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: lot more people with chronic illness, 11 and 60 you've got on prescribed meds, fourteen ten. And then then you also have to throw in your ER visits that is not being calculated up in that health gap. Because your ER visits, you're paying for the visit, you're also paying out of Wellpass contract, you're paying for that ambulance service to the provider back in the community.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Yes. And then we, of course, absorb additional costs with regard to securing that individual at the hospital. Right.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because you've got two staff that you have today that are now either have to be back filled in the facility or we are

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: largely not back filled, thanks to the creation of the central operations division, which handles more than three quarters of the current hospital volume. So we've largely addressed that problem of the loss of staff at the facility level owing to hospitalization, but we have not completely addressed it. And you're right, it's a component. And even when it's not a loss at the facility, it's still a staff member for whom we are paying.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It might be also interesting to know, for those ER visits, how much is being paid back to our local community for the ambulance service? Do you have that broken out at all? That would be with WellPath. Yeah. I don't have that That's in the $44,000,000 for that. We can see if we can

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: get that cost right now.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because that's a cost to the ER visits, is we're paying our local community EMT folks to transport folks. And some of that may not be to your local hospital, maybe up to

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Some of it goes to Dartmouth or even Albany or even Boston.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And that's a cost to the WellPath contract, correct, I believe, for the ambulance service.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: I would have guessed. Yeah. I'm not certain where that ambulance gets billed, but we'll double check and we can find that.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Based on some local conversations. Think it's well path. I'm

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: I I'm I will I will give to your knowledge, ma'am.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But I so you gotta be careful when you compare trying to compare dollars because there's a lot more involved in that well path contract than what may appear on the surface. And that's what I want to bring out. I mean, they're taking care of the whole health care system within our facilities for our folks, as well as helping our local community pay for local services at our local communities. I just want to put that on the table. But that's part of the, what is it, 40? So

[Rep. James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: you said, so if an ambulance is called, then what you're saying is well backed base for that under the contract. Yeah. So is it the same, is that also true for the ER visit? They pay, the ER visit comes out of their contract? Or do we pay for that separately?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm not sure. I mean, gets complicated between Medicare

[Rep. James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: I was just curious.

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: I know we've testified about this before. I mean, we haven't been sure to explain it in a much better way.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I don't know when Medicare kicks in. There wouldn't be any private insurance because they lose any insurance coverage. And if they are hospitalized, I think it's well, would Medicaid even pay if they're hospitalized? Because they've been Yeah, I would need to check. Maybe on Art and Nickel.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, I'm just curious.

[Rep. James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: I do remember that they said something.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: I just can't remember what it was. It's the same question. I think it's the same question, but this chart here, could that be monetized and say, example, and I'm not recommending it, but we eliminated Matt from the contract with WellPath, how would that change our offline cost? I'm not suggesting it. I'm just saying can we turn those figures into what contract difference there would be if they weren't providing that service?

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: I think we could try to do it for MAT. I don't know if we could do it for the other

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you'd have to do it for all the components so there could be a comparison. I mean, it's part of the contract. Right. There's a lot of moving pieces in there.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: But they must be coding those specific drugs and professional interactions somehow. Yes. Because if they move, next year, they're gonna have to still be profitable. Yep. So, I would be interested in understanding how the total health care breaks down into those groups. Okay. Do you

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: have notes on that, sort

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: of? Yeah.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Can you reiterate what the actual request is? I'm just saying if we, out of the total wealth path

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: contract. Contract. So out of the 44,000,000 that go to correctional health How

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: much attributed to math? How much is from the geriatric? How much

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: is your project? Okay. That's what I would be That may not be possible, but I would think the doctor needs to code their We

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: may be able to find that. I think that the medication parts should be. I mean, they pay for certain numbers of pills, and therefore that we can figure that out.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The notion of, for example, chronic illness versus geriatric, may be a little more complicated to break out.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: And again, as we've already said, all of these things overlap, so we be able to take, for example, the big blue square on the other diagram that was for the total of correctional services, that rectangle, and then figure out how many rectangles in it are each of these things. But can we find numbers? We can ask LilPath about that.

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Yeah, I think in part the challenge is that the cost is calculated per member per month.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Oh, no, I know.

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: So I don't know how granular

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: it gets into this. But

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: they come up with what that monthly charge is per member, which is an average based on their experience of what they're gonna run into. So for example, if we had separate facilities for mental health patients versus those who do not have it,

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: we might figure out it makes a lot more sense to have two separate facilities. We might. We also may realize that that would require additional WellPath staff in order to be in both those facilities.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, but

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: yeah, right. It might. And it

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: would definitely require additional correctional staff.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yeah.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: But that is a possibility.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: For mental health caseload, it could include half the geriatric caseload and part of the chronic illness caseload.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: That's gonna be the complicating factor. There's probably very few individuals who are only one of any of these things. So if we were to create, for example, we want this wing to be for geriatrics and this wing to be for mental health, what do we do with the person who is I'm a geriatric with mental

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: not suggesting a solution. I'm just saying that that would allow us to figure out. Yeah. Well, can definitely ask you- We did it in the education. Understood. We had two basic ways of educating children. And then we said, Nope, we wanna incorporate everybody in the same. There was pros and cons. Think we're finding out it was the wrong way to go, but

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: I think it would be similar in our incarceration. We'll ask Well Pat what they can and can't

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: give us, and we'll push them on the stuff that they say they can't. The

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: next slide, please. And then I think it'll be time for This is sort of the end of my piece, and then I think we'll turn it over to Marlene. Essentially, there's a $244,000,000 budget, 95% of which is general fund. The general fund increases from FY26 to FY27 is about 4.3%. And that's in line with the governor and the secretary had very clear goals on keeping a tight budget for this fiscal year. As I mentioned in yesterday's testimony, the secretary pursued a really admirable and dynamic path towards making certain that AHS presented a unified budget where all of the departments of AHS worked together. DOC really contributed less to the cuts that had to necessarily be made than other parts because our margins were already so thin. Because really, as you see in that previous graphic, so much of it is just our core services and our healthcare. And all the things where there's room are very, very small. So I will now, for the line item piece, turn it over to, with your permission, Director of Finance, Marlene Petit.

[Rep. James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Or get your glasses.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: I I'm wearing them this time, so I do know where they are now. Thank goodness, Marlene. Those dates sitting on top of

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: your phones?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes. Gina Gennen knows too, but she was pretty good. And I'm probably used to telling you that anyway. So, Marlene Thank you. If you could just identify yourself for the way. Marlene Battie, executive director of finance for the Department of Corrections. This is your ups and downs, basically. And what we're going to need to spend more time in versus these ups and downs is really, as a committee, we're going to have to really talk about some of your and I'm looking at this here, really seeing where some of the moving parts, particularly the big piece of 171,000,000 in correctional services in terms of any recommendations we may make to approach that you need to look at this or you need to look at this. So it's not just your ups and downs. So as you said, so the first one is the roll up report, which comes off adaptive, and this is the actual report that goes into what they used to call the budget books. And then after that, so that's more of a summary roll up. Then when you get into the spreadsheet, that's when you actually come into the ups and downs. And the spreadsheet portion would be made it larger? You want me to go through What I would do is I'm looking at the time. Just trying to think what two steps to get this proof. See, I don't want you to why don't you continue? I can go either way. I can go I think one thing that would be interesting for folks is to go to this chart that deals with a offender work program. Would be important. I'm not sure how the grants would play in, and then we can do the ups and the ups and downs isn't gonna give us much information because we don't know what it was before. And we don't know what it's in the long run where the trends are. If you just look at the one year up and down. So if we could start with your roll up, the one that begins with corrections from unoffended program, It's this piece.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Page 18.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Page 18.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: It's

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's 18. Yeah, page 18.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Vermont Work Offender Program? Yep. Going back to

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because we've had some interest in that in the past. Okay. So the Vermont Offender Work Program covers anything the two staff in the facility as well as any non production items that have to do with the making of the license plates. So So is this just the license plate? That's that's what it's for. Any of the non production That's what these this chart is for is just for the license plates. Right. If we're looking at that at that page, the Vermont Offender Work Program B341. Minuscule. And then just as a side note, the Vermont the license plates themselves are the raw materials, the finished goods, and any other cost to do with production is something that we there's revenue generated from that, it covers the expenses, and then there's a small cash balance. And that's separate from this. So the only work program you have in the work offender work program is the making of license plates. It's the only one. That's the only industry of the ones that there used to be.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Between '26 and '27 that we add a position, is salaries and wages more than doubled?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No, I think what happens is sometimes depending upon who's in those positions, they they if there's no one in the position or if there's someone that is at a step that's lower and then the step changes, or if it was vacant and then it goes up the next year, we don't have the payroll piece of those numbers. We don't control that's the thing that's created within adaptive planning before that vantage. So it generates based on who's in the position at the time. And if there's a vacancy, then it generates the position as if it was pay step two. It just so it has some place to to place it.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: So on the '27 proposed, the the low for $515 of salaries and wages and fringes represents how many positions?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: My understanding is it's two, because I just checked on that.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Seems like a lot.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It includes your bennies. It includes your bennies.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Well, I get that. It's over $250 if it's two conditions.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's supposed to be two staff in the facilities, and I will double check that again. In the facility, is that just two people, or is it four? It would be two positions. That's what I'm being told. So they are only working in the facility during the day? I believe so.

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: They're not security folks. So yes, that's accurate.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So your license plate operation only operates morning and afternoon?

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: I don't know the exact times,

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: but it's not running yet. 20. Yeah. Is it running on weekends?

[Marlene Petit (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Pardon? Roughly Monday through Friday.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But I'll check.

[Rep. James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: James? I know based on your answers, not gonna be answered today, but to Joe's point, let's just say, so the salary was 127 and the fringe benefits is 115 for fiscal year '26. That's a pretty high fringe benefit percentage. They're usually nowhere near that high. So I was just curious. Then when you add, you go to next year, $2.75 and then $2.39 for fringe, That's the part. I

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: I'd like to have more Yes.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No, we'll get more clarification, but that was something I did actually check on this morning, but I will

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: get that for you. I may be envious.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: I may want to administer the plate holder.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Did you increase staff at all? Or was there, like, half a year maybe that it was just What I want what I wonder is if it was Yeah. I don't know. I'll have to check it out because I I'm not sure. And I and having not been here when that transition would have taken place, I'm not really sure. Transition of what? Well, I'm just saying because I've only been here a portion of the year. I'm not I don't know everybody that's in the facilities and who's worked you know, if they So I'm just wondering if one moved on and or if they had just one person or maybe one It could have been. And Yes. Then that one person had a step increase or Well, that's possible. That's what I was, trying to relay and probably didn't do well. But when the position is vacant, they bud the system will budget at a certain amount for everything, for everyone. You know? I mean, if whatever the the pay grade is, pay step two. If you get someone that comes in at a higher pay step, then they're going to be coming in. And so then then the next year, it will change. But I will double check that and see because I I that's a valid point, and I'll check into it. Thank you.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Okay. Anything

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: else on this? So, I've got a question. Why were these particular in this rollout? You have personnel services, you have the worker tender program, then you have grants. Why were these three highlighted? This is the actual report as it comes off the system, and this is the summary roll up report in adaptive. So I did not we don't create these. Actually, of Finance would create them. So for them, this is this is what they consider the summary, the top line. I'm not sure how that's determined because the section numbers actually, there's more there are more section numbers within the b point three than yeah. It's a bit than is actually than is actually represented. So the first piece, the first one, if you if the committee goes back to the first page, not the grants, not yet, that's talking about your overall personnel cert not the grants, but the overall corrections budget of your personal services. And that's where you're gonna see the 243,000. And then it breaks down the offender work program, which is only one license place. And then it breaks down whatever grants you might get in. Got it. So for grants, what you have coming in is about 676¢. Well, the bulk of the funding for corrections is through the general group. Right. Yes. So let's quickly go to the bigger chart, which again, is basically our ups and downs, which isn't gonna tell us much, because we don't know what was there before. So for folks to learn how to read this chart here, looks like the little ones here. The big bill is laid out, when we get the bill, is laid out by sections. So I'm gonna use this as an exam. This was BAA, and you have your section here, And then you have it broken down by the money piece for personal serve general fund, transportation funds, special funds, personal services, operating expenses. That's what you're gonna see when the appropriations committee votes out the big bill. That's what the bill's gonna look like. And for corrections, the section in that bill will be section b three three five. So when you get the big bill on our desk, you go to section B three thirty five, and that's gonna incorporate corrections. Good. Okay? So yesterday we were talking about line item. Right? So what's gonna be in that section, there'll be a line item for corrections administration. Then there's gonna be a line item for the parole board. Then there'll be a line item for correctional education. Did you follow that folks? So where the dark green line is, those are your line items within the Department of DOC's budget. So when we're talking about the parole board having their separate line item was having a separate section within the big bill. So it could be section three forty or three thirty five. It'd be a total separate section that is not under DS. But that's the distinctions yesterday when we were talking about line items. Well, that may have confused the committee even now. Yeah,

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: just looking at the spreadsheets. Is it true the legislature made no changes to the governor's record last year for all of corrections? I've just seen zeros everywhere with legislative changes.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But this is for FY

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: 2027.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We don't have FY 2026. There's nothing to

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: to. Enough coffee today.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's the ups and downs. So the only change, as you can see in the floor board, that 25,000 for legal advice, is not their eviction.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Gotcha.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And we know why. But if we hadn't been taking testimony on the parole board to look at this, we'd have no why. But we know why that 25,000 was taken. We don't know why it's less for the payroll for each benefits for the PERL board. That's a decrease of $852. And all of the the salary calculations are done by Adaptive, which we don't the budgeting tool. We don't we don't make changes to this. We're not allowed to make changes to the salaries, of course. And and it so it generates these numbers. So when it generates a number of $8.52, the only, you know, maybe somebody that they there was a change in someone yeah. Coverage or that type of thing. So we don't actually calculate those. It's locked down, so to speak. So if you look if you flip the page into correctional education, We don't have a basis in terms of what to compare to. Correctional services. What does correctional services mean? Correctional services covers, it covers the facilities, it covers probation and parole. It covers many of our staff that provide a service to many of the divisions that provide services to corrections, such as the operating operations unit and anything to do with that. It also covers hospital visits, hotels and mileage, fleet cars and food for the facilities, any of utilities, everything pretty much falls under correctional facility that has to do with, correction services that has to do with providing direct services either through probation and parole or through the correction facilities. And there's a number of contracts under there as well, and well path is under correction services.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: So much data and so little time. Do I dare ask a question about page four of six? No. Okay.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What? Where are you? He's spreadsheet. Yeah. What part of it?

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: That's pipeline sound human resource services. You'll see a deduction of 8,495

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: under FF. Any idea what that is? That is AHS AHS receives all these service fees and agreements with between, say, human resources and ADS and whatever other services we pay for, and then they'll allocate them to us. And so depending upon our usage, they have a Okay. That probation. Yeah.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Just do suggest

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Got it. Federal funds. And that may be I'm not sure why they why what the $8.04 $9.05 is for the the federal funds, what that Federal funds. Reduction is for GF is general fund. SF is special funds. I'd have to check with AHS fiscal and see how they move that out of there. So the bulk of and for DOC, their funding is general fund. That's why it stuck out. I'm going where But it's federal funds. They don't get much federal dollars.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yeah. That's why it stuck out. Just wondering what that was and how come all of a sudden there's

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: As because they're not getting federal knowledge. What happens sometimes with the federal funds is when A. J. Has to make, when they're making changes, it's kind of a placeholder. It may not actually go back to federal funds, but be based on what we have for mechanics. That's what I've seen in prior years where there's been a change and a shift. And and it it really isn't federal funds. It's something that they're tracking. And we'll make an adjustment on on their end. When you replace vehicles, I see a $313,000 Do you work through BGS at all? Because you have vans, security vans. And you've got perimeter vehicles. And you've got vehicles for your PNP officers. That is all on DOC sniffles.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: But they're all BGS vehicles? Yes.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But it's the department that pays for them.

[Rep. James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: So like your leasing base?

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yes.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Do you have your own fleet that you would rent out that you lease out to your employees, or do you go through the BGS fleet service? Go through BGS. So then if you go to the next page, you get Justice Reinvestment two. This is initiatives within the Justice Reinvestment. So you have a $100,000 decrease in the forensic assertive community treatment, FACT funds. Can you explain what that would be? That is something where we are providing, a $100,000 in funds to the Department of Mental Health. It was a request through AHS. The reason that it says net neutral is because it is cash on hand, and it's just a mechanism they have to run it through here to make those transactions between the two different targets. So it's DOC money that's going to damage health, mental health for the fact hope. Yeah. So

[Rep. Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: the all the red numbers, the negatives. So is that just money that that was there that's coming out or that they're cutting out? Well, some of it

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: so it is it's being it's a reduction. It is a reduction.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: From last up

[Rep. James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: or down.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: These are up or downs from last year. But it is a reduction from last year.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Okay.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So what was your budget last year? Here you're showing for general fund, 230,000. What was your general fund budget? I mean, 200 and What 30 was your general fund budget last year? It was about 2. It was about 02/20, '23, I believe it was 2024 or something. That effect. Two twenty four. And that's just your general fund? Yeah. Actually, as I have it on this page. That's what I was trying to find. The as passed general fund for '26 was 2 '21, $1.83. That was just your general fund. Yeah. And the total budget last year was $2.38 $77.00 $1.08, which is on page 15. Kinda jumped a little bit there. This year's forties? '44. 44.15. Well, I don't know if we've got a better gauge of what's going on with DOC's budget or not. We know that there's a lot of pieces. We know that we had folks in our committee that worked really hard to break down some of the budget to talk about this out. If folks work with their sheet here that our five folks worked on. We broke it down to correctional facility operations, community justice and reentry programs, which we hadn't touched on. Field operations, we kind of touched on that a little bit with our PMP. Administration and central office, we didn't really touch on. And then there's our contracts, WellPath, CoreCivic, as well as our reentering community contractors, which we didn't touch on. Communications, commissary, banking and tablets, which we're kind of looking at a little bit through our telecommunications bill. Electronic monitoring, we didn't even touch. And food services, we didn't even touch. So there's part of the budget that we hadn't even talked about, that our five members really did a lot of work doing correlate and synthesis. So we may have a few folks back next week to really go into those deeper for that. We need some committee time as well.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Can I get some votes?

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Go ahead, Brian. Yes, ma'am. I stepped on you. I apologize.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: I wasn't saying a thing. I think the commissioner was about Yeah. To say

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It might be helpful if we could give them a copy of this sheet.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Forgive me.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because they did a

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: lot of work.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And I know DOC is there's a lot of layers to DOC, and it might be really helpful to take look at that. You can have that, Josh. I mean, Brian? No, Kevin. It's okay.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: It's only fair. We're fine.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Did I hear you correctly that the numbers that are here are generated by a system as opposed to the actual numbers of individual salaries and

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the salaries, the salaries and benefits are all generated between our financial system, which is vision, and the budget planning tool, which is Adapt. Right. So what it does is the administration loads what the increases are to south, what the increases are going to be based on the contract and any benefit changes, like whatever the percent increases. And then it will generate based on each person's who's in there at that time. It's only get one given point in time. And then that generates the next year's figure. So those numbers are done within the budget module, but that information comes out of our financial system that we have. And then it generates these numbers and tells us what the ups and downs are going to be.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: If the assumptions within the system are true, but reality doesn't always reach.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: There are some We don't know what our contract is going to be for our correctional officers. There are some things that we don't know. It's only based on what you know at the time. Right.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: So depending on whether you have a full team or

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: not, this is assuming a full team. The vacancies are all vacancies are in this figure are in are in here. They're they're budgeted at, like I said, at a step two instead of a 20 or whatever, because they have to figure a point in time. So you may hire someone at a higher step. Right. And so then it yes. It's going to it's going to change what you actually have to pay. But that's done for the whole state. That that's the same process to the whole state.

[Rep. James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: If you have the vacancy savings list, you and stuff like that.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Don't have vacancies Right. You filled, you got $7,000,000 saved, but you don't have those spots filled. That's And that's balanced against the overtime too. So that when you see that, that's really a net. It should be a net figure.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: I try to understand.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Brian? To the degree we're passing out this sheet to the DOC and saying, here's what we've been working on, we want you to answer these questions. It feels like we've just had a presentation where we're going up about 5% ish year over year. It seems like most of that is dealing with a larger population and the things that go along with that and the fact that we're up staffing from a crisis level. So to me, feels almost unfair or disingenuous to ask, what's this new tact that we're doing? What are these new strategies we're trying? When in fact, all they're trying to do is I don't want put words in anybody's mouth staff up to the necessary level in substandard facilities with an increasing population. What other details are we looking at? Well stated.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: You're five. You are one of them. I know.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, Brian. I mean, that's what we If we come down to that as a committee, that would be our recommendation.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: But we're not really talking about there's suddenly going to be a different kind or more rehabilitation. We're doing the same stuff in terms of medicine. We're doing the same stuff in terms of rehab. We're doing the same stuff in terms of housing. We're trying to staff higher.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: And on top of that, the system's the one saying, this is what the projection is based on rates and assumed staff sizes and everything else.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: If I'm honest, Brian, I didn't fully understand that part. Correct. As long as you got it.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I mean, that's for the committee. We're gonna have committee discussion. I want it to be fair to corrections to really see what some of the questions were from a committee member. We don't have to go there. The committee is comfortable with what you heard today and gives us enough information to make a recommendation to appropriations. That's fine. But there were five members of this committee that did a lot of work, and I want to be respectful of the work, the questions that were developed.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: And I have personal opinions on what I'd like to see, but they're not the committee's opinions nor are they even subcommittees. Would be great to have better IT access. It would be great to have more educational opportunities. That would be great for our CEOs and for our inmates.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Sorry, stop.

[Rep. James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: I was just stopping. No, no, I stopped. I agree on the thing, but I don't think it's about us trying to figure out what we're changing as much as it is, especially, I mean, I learn something new every day, sometimes I don't. I'm more curious to get the more detailed explanation so I better understand how they came up with the numbers. And maybe it is more from curiosity and that we're not going to follow it. I don't think there's going be any gotchas, but I'm curious about how some of the numbers come about and how they relate to the past. And so I can understand going forward, just have that base knowledge. I also can understand that I don't know that there's anything here that I saw that I would be like, listen, I'm not gonna support this. I And the plate shop question is an interesting one.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: It's a relatively, it's a rounding error one.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, that's a question that Approbes has been very, very upfront clear about. It's for committees to ask what programs they have and what is working and what isn't working. And for those that aren't working, do we continue to do it? And we haven't gotten down to that granular level with DOC, but that's what our colleagues have asked the respective committees to look at. What programs are going on in your department or part of state government that you review and really get a handle? Are we just doing stuff that we've been doing for years and years that's really not accomplishing much. And then we can make a decision, let's not continue this particular program. We haven't gotten down to that level with DOC. DOC has a tremendous amount of programs. We understand that. And that's my concern that that's what a probes is gonna ask us. And I don't know if we're prepared to answer that for DOC or BGS. No way. No. But Kevin and then Shawn.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: But there's so much detail here. Joe's question about page 18, is that really two FTEs for $515,000 If that's what we're supposed to be doing for approves, there's no way we'll ever do this. So, either accept that this or system is full of it doesn't because it's all a projection anyway based on a model.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But the program is, do we continue producing license plates? That's the question. Do we continue producing license plates or not? Or does the state through the T Fund contract that out?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: That's certainly a question. And there are other moves afoot to change the number of license plates. Well, it's

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: not down that road. The roof plate and on

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: the front plate. There was some discussion around changing the kind of plate that is made. I think that one is current, that discussion is currently in advance. And you know, I see this number double and I too want to know, is that two employees And why did it double? It is on the one hand, a 100 No, it's $150,000 That is nothing to sneeze at, but it is a tiny portion of $244,000,000. But I wanna know. Most of the things that I've I've only looked at it very briefly at this sheet that you gave me. Thank you. Many of those are questions I myself would like to know as as a new person coming in and would like to check out. But I also agree with you, sir, that, you know, maybe a lot of this is just this is we're running pretty bare bare edge and and and I appreciate the way you phrased it. I wouldn't I couldn't have phrased it quite that way with regard to our facilities and our staffing needs and our population needs, etcetera. But I agree with it, and I appreciate it. And that is where we are. We also want to know where we can do more. Where we can do more with regard to programming. Where we can do more with regard to the things that we offer our population, the things that we offer our staff. Even little things, I was just speaking about with Steve here about whether or not every single part of our toilets are running in our facilities and whether or not we have, whether our break rooms are clean and new and look good for folks, which I've talked about with members of this committee. All of those are things we do wanna do, but our margins and our edges and where we are is very, very thin.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Shawn and then James?

[Rep. Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Well, I would say that we have, like, you know, the representative Headrick brought to us the, you know, getting rid of the supervisory fees. So that is something that That's we're

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: gonna hit them by 263,000.

[Rep. Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Right. You know? But I would suspect that's something that I think we are making a a positive change towards. It's taking some weight off them and letting them deal with the eleven fifteen waivers and all the other stuff that we're dumping on them. So I would suspect I would say that we are making some changes like that. I I'm not saying that we're not doing anything. And with all this programming and stuff, we know we're we all know that there's not enough space in these prisons for to have anything like that happen. They barely get what they can shove in there now. So it's tough to talk about that stuff when we all know that you're talking about an enormous investment.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: James, so then Kevin.

[Rep. James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Reset the conversation, I think I'd like to at least, is it's not whether or not we think anybody's doing anything wrong. It's not whether or not we think there's enough space. It's not that our job is that we get elected for, there's three branches of government, there's oversight. There's administration and there's judicial So and there's it isn't whether we think that something can be done better necessarily or that we believe anybody's lying. Our job is to understand the numbers, even if it's at the end going, cool beans. Or it might be to be like, I got real questions about this particular part and maybe in the future we can change it or today. Your key job is to understand what it is before you even get to that. So that's the idea of having them come back and giving maybe another hour of just specifically this and not the others, answering some of the questions that we provided to the commissioner. Is it gonna be, you know, like an audit, the people in Massachusetts want down there? The immediate? No. But it will still give us a better idea than we had before we started. And that's what our job is.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: So. Devil's advocate, forgive me. But my forty years of trying to survive, companies would say, I've got 10 employees, I rate those employees. I got the best and I got the worst. Do we need the worst? If we need the worst, what do we gotta do to train that employee so that they're somewhat higher? Do we do any of that?

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Yes, as a function of, I mean, unfortunately often that comes through disciplinary issues. We have disciplinary cases that make us aware of deficiencies in staff And then we provide investigations and then do process in order to address those. And sometimes that's one way that we end up saying, how can we improve a staff member? We also have evaluations and it's on supervisors to regularly evaluate and provide feedback to employees and make certain that it is known whether or not they're performing merely satisfactorily or whether they're from a, excuse me, in exemplary fashion.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: But my point, yes, and I believe that. But my point is, is we can't tell that from what we're looking at. And I'm not sure that We're not that's gonna supposed be able to,

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: no, not to get down to that level.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Right, so we've got a computer generated model based on assumptions, based on contracts, based on rates, all this stuff. The only thing we really can look at, like you're saying, is are there individual programs within this Ohio that should either be enhanced or reduced? We can't judge this, except for if we've got two employees that are with benefits get $515,000 I think we got a problem.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: I wanna know the answer to

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: that We're not looking. I mean, we can't look at all this and come up with those good questions. Too bad. Because we don't have the tools to do So, that's why I'm saying, I don't know what we say to appropriations, except these are the programs we looked at. We don't see any improvements or whatever.

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

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Since the can is opened. Oh, God. I'm actually to close it. But if we're going to be looking at the workers program that is now $500,000 And that seems to be catching people by surprise. I just want to also acknowledge that is a program that works because we underpay the labor by disastrous amounts.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you get paid $0.75 an hour.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: So that is a program that relies on embarrassingly low payment of the labor being provided. Just for the record, that's not a committed perspective necessarily. Oh, we've been sharing individual perspectives on that program for half an hour, statically, because So

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: there could be more than two employees that that is reflecting. And I think let's give DOC a chance. But I know we're focusing in on that particular number and that particular person. But there's a lot of programs out there. You do transitional housing. There's money that goes out to our community justice centers. Just yesterday, were talking about pretrial supervision. Seven new employees for our European P offices to roll out pretrial supervision. Do we do something like that? There's also, which I found out yesterday, which I wasn't aware of, there's half $1,000,000. And I'm assuming the between the judiciary and state's attorney and defense counsel to expand the accountability court. And how does that dovetail with the pretrial supervision program? That that's what we've gotta look at. So you folks have so many programs out there. You've got Community High School of Vermont. We haven't touched on that in this committee yet at all. And then that's more connected with vocational training, which we haven't talked about. Those are the programs that we need to see. What, you know, are they being effective? Do we continue them? Do we change them? Are there some things you've been offering in DOC for years and years and years? Because it's been history. But, jeez, maybe the outcome isn't that great. And maybe we don't need to continue putting money towards that program. I don't know that. But I know DOC has a lot of moving pieces. And we've only touched the very top of it. Unfortunately, there's laser beam on one particular thing, but I think there's a bigger ish you know, bigger overlaying programming needs out there.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Yeah. Our telephone repair shop probably is not as necessary as it once was. Yeah. Right.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But that that's what we need to look at, and we haven't really looked at that. And I think the committee needs a conversation and not get bogged down by, is it two staff or three staff from one program? Do we wanna get rid of the license plate program?

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: We do not.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That would be the issue. That would be the issue. But then then what is it gonna cost the rest of state government? Because you gotta produce them. So then then you gotta contract out. And I agree. You know, I accept what Troy is saying. Yeah. We're paying trade is pretty low. We contracted that out. You'd be paying a lot more as a state than what you're paying now.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: Setting aside the the the very valid question of why whether or not two people equal $500,000 which we will get to the bottom of. Setting aside that, I wanna note that, I mean, we do want this license plate program to continue. It is work for some number of our folks and not addressing representative Headrick's concerns around work. Work is a value in and of itself, irrespective of Work will set you free. Well, that's awful, sir. And I don't mean that at all. I know where that quote comes from, but I certainly don't mean that, sir. I think there's a value, not in that sense.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: There's a value in paying for it too. There's diminishing of dignity when we don't pay people for their labor.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So that's a conversation.

[Jon Murad (Interim Commissioner of Corrections)]: There's a diminishment in dignity when we don't allow them to labor as well.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we're not gonna get into this right now, because we do have a bill that we've worked on for telecommunication commissary and that whole bit. So that, we're not gonna get into the emotions of that on this. We've been working here since 08:30, two and a half hours. I think we need time as a committee to really figure out where we wanna go with DOC's budget and time for the commissioner to take a look at those questions. Five members of this committee spent a lot of time working on it. And I think they deserve, some of that deserves to be vetted and DOC needs to know what some of the concerns were from at least five members of our committee. And we may have to reschedule you folks back next week. We're supposed to make our recommendations to Appropriations Committee by next Friday, the twentieth. And I wanna respect that. Now, will we have all the information? No. We'll do the best we can. So I'm looking at the time. I'm looking at We've gotta deal with driver's license, and I've got pressure from Senate Transportation for the language. And we haven't even talked about that yet. And then we have Judge Zone at 12:00 to testify on pretrial supervision. That's the only time we could get them. I warned everybody yesterday and Tuesday that we don't our lunch is gonna be really late today. So I wanna finish this, take a quick five minute break, and then come back and shift to Doctor. Seuss. Okay? So thank you all. So let's go off of YouTube and then we'll come back

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: and