Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Welcome back, folks. This is House Corrections and Institutions Committee. It is Wednesday, February 25. And during the lunchtime, I got word from Senate Transportation, both under assistant committee assistant, well, chair of Senate Transportation that they did vote out the miscellaneous DMV bill that includes our language on page five forty nine, which is the non driver ID card as well as what DMV wanted for drivers by owners for folks who are incarcerated. They did not change our language. And so, we have gone through H549. We accepted that language just drafted last week. Draft 4.1 dated on February 19. So, I would entertain So moved. To vote out the bill favorably. It. Graph 4.1 it's a strike all amendment. So any further discussion. If not, Conor, please call the

[Conor Casey]: Hold on to your hands. Okay. Representative Casey, yes. Representative Galfetti?

[Speaker 0]: Yes.

[Conor Casey]: Representative Greer?

[William "Will" Greer]: Yes.

[Conor Casey]: Representative Gregoire? Yes. Representative Hedrick? Yes. Representative Luneau? Yes. Representative Minier? Yes. Representative Morrissey? Yes. Representative Sweeney, remotely? Yes. Representative Winter. Yes. Chair Alice M. Emmons. Yes. I go last.

[Speaker 0]: Yes. +1, 23. Forget James.

[Conor Casey]: No. He did be your honor. Kelly, +1 000. That was a post.

[Speaker 0]: 01100. Thank you, folks.

[Brian Minier]: Pretty good foundation.

[Speaker 0]: Joe is gonna be the reporter of

[Conor Casey]: the

[Speaker 0]: bill, and she could spend some time with Kate, and that has to be sent out. So strike column and include the draft 4.1, what you send down to the court. Have to include any vote. And that you're the reporters. I

[William "Will" Greer]: entertain a motion to impeach Sweeney from clerkship after that. So moved.

[Speaker 0]: I'm gonna veto that one.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Yeah. I'm on your side.

[Conor Casey]: That chair looks all cushy up there at the top. I need you right here.

[Speaker 0]: So I wanna get this in into the notice calendar for tomorrow. And then tomorrow, when it's on notice, it will be sent to ways and means because there is the word fee in there.

[William "Will" Greer]: And then how does that when I

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: Then you have to go and talk about the fee

[Speaker 0]: to ways and means. So you should talk to Nancy Prescott at DMV because they pay for this. It's been in the works since 02/1617. It's been a long time that they pick up the cost. It's $3.30 for each card or license. The fee in the you gotta gotta read the language, but the fee says zero in bill.

[William "Will" Greer]: Correct. And the actual extension of that expense is for the detainees over six months, which is a fairly small population. But it's also for the driver's license and learner's permit. There's no fee for that.

[Speaker 0]: So you may wanna have a conversation with Nancy, Russka, and DMV. See how that all

[William "Will" Greer]: works out. But I'll read it several times over.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Joe, I just sent you an email. You can just forward that to Nigel, and you are all set.

[William "Will" Greer]: I know it's a typo, but it's p a u n e s.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Oh, sorry.

[Kevin Winter]: It's okay.

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. I've gotta get this text out to the chair of Ways and Means. Thank you, Terry.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Yep. And, Joe, it's very likely that Nigel will email you back asking you to verify that it is a strikeout, but that's what he did with me. Just, in other words, just pay attention to your email for the next little bit.

[Speaker 0]: So we got that done. Thank you, judge, for having some patience with us. Just wanna get that done.

[Kevin Winter]: Okay.

[Speaker 0]: We're gonna shift gears and have a conversation about our most favorite subject that we're trying to figure out what to do with pretrial supervision. And yesterday, we spent some time discussing this, and we're trying to figure out the program itself, terms of how effective is it. Do we continue with pre trial supervision? Do we reconfigure it in some way? Or do we scrap it? And then it sort of has also opened up the conversation about the accountability docket and rolling out the accountability docket in other parts of the state and could staff at our field offices for our PNP folks be for them one day a week, in theory, that the accountability docket would be up in other courts outside of Chittenden County, could a PMP person be sitting there in the courtroom that day to help folks access services in the community? So we got a lot of moving pieces here, and I do want to take it step by step. But I do want to hear from Judge Zoning about the pretrial supervision program. We're trying to decide whether to keep it in place, reconfigure it, or scrap it. And then I'd like to have some conversation about the accountability docket from the judge to hear what the thinking is there. So welcome.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: Thank you. Tom Zone, Chief Superior Judge. As to the three choices, is a policy decision by the legislature.

[Speaker 0]: Thanks a lot. Give us some thoughts.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: The first thought I have is when you look at the data from how it was not utilized in the past, do you have a decision to make as to whether or not the financial outlay has a return on your investment? Or can the monies be used somewhere differently? I know that you're looking at it in some ways because now we have this pilot docket taking place in Chittenden and it goes in other counties. And so there's a natural tendency, I think, to look at the pretrial supervision and say, well, maybe it's being displaced by that. And that's true. I think that that's one way to look at it. But the other way to look at it is if we didn't have the pilot docket and you were looking at a program that costs several $100,000 and had such minimal utilization, do you believe as a committee and the legislature that this is the time to spend the money to expand that program? One of the things we're constantly asked is, well, what data do you have? Tell us about the results and performance measures. Well, you have performance measures from the years this has been brought on. I'm aware and I recall back when this came up, originally, Senator Sears, they were talking about Illinois. And so, I actually visited with the head of Illinois. Illinois is nothing compared to what we have. They have a judge who went full time to run the entire state program. It's a much different situation. It is millions upon millions of dollars, I believe, they've invested. So, they have something that, let's say, is like a bold standard in terms of how they do it. So, the idea that while other states have done this, we don't have the capacity to do that. And the legislature came up with a program that had an idea that we want to help certain individuals get the assistance they need and monitor them for public safety essentially, and to make sure they appear. Underutilized and you understand what it cost. And so now when we're looking at going forward, the question I have is, does the judiciary believe that it's been something that we've been able to use as a valuable tool in our toolbox? No, I have to acknowledge that. But I would contrast that with when we come in here and I say, Give us the tool back of work group. I say that because we were meeting on it yesterday. That we will let you know when something is missing that we really need. Do the state's attorneys believe this is critical for their position on public safety? Does the defense believe this is critical? If those entities are all saying something different, well, that's one thing. If they're all saying the same thing, that's different. And so, you're looking at it, I just suggest that we look at what's the goal of it. If the goal is that someone's going to be supervised and get assistance, and if they violate, they're going to jail because they've obviously not been able to get proper assistance, well, you know that's not the goal. That can be effectuated because someone doesn't go to jail just because they violate conditions of release. You go to jail because you're being held without bail under a statute that allows it or the constitutional protections that allow it, or you go to jail because you can't afford bail. And I've heard the chair say many times, bail is too a sure appearance to get rid of the risk of flight. And so you can't just say, well, they were on pretrial supervision and we're violating them, now they're going to jail. So if that's your expectation, that is not something that can be realized. The court has to impose the least restrictive conditions of release. Is this the least restrictive when the court's looking at what conditions are going to be imposed? And so, I say this because I have testified, I believe here and in other committees, that the idea of having someone monitor compliance of someone on conditions of release, that's a good idea. The idea of having someone help individuals who are on conditions of release to address their needs for treatment or other social services and to point them in the right direction, that's a good idea. The question becomes, do those two good ideas work in the structure that is here? And again, when you look back at what you've had the past couple years, it just doesn't seem as though that's been something that's proven to work. The pilot docket showed something a little different. It seemed to show that if you have someone who's available to meet with the defendants and point them in the direction of services, that's going to help. If you have a corrections officer who is actually at the courthouse, who's able to be there as a resource, that's going to help. And so those aspects of it are very helpful in the pilot docket. But the question is, do you need them in the form of the 7,555 statute? Different question, I think, for the supervision aspect. If the idea of supervision under the statute for DOC is to simply have someone call in and check-in every now and then, well, that's not the type of compliance that the court would think of. I'm looking more at if somebody has a curfew, if they have a curfew till 08:00, you stop over at 08:15, 09:00, whatever it is, you stop over and see, are they violating? Are they doing that? If you hear information that someone might have had contact with someone they're not supposed to, you go out and investigate that. Some law enforcement agencies have actually done that in the past. I can't speak to how that's been done in a while, but years ago, I know state police in Rutland and Rutland City police would do that sometimes. They'd go out and check curfews. And I know because I was the judge sitting there and we get violations of conditions coming in. But people learned. They're gonna check up on me. And so, again, I understand the dilemma. And I think this is not a situation where you're starting from scratch. You have a track record to look at. Even if you assume that the change in the qualifications, getting rid of the five plus or violations of conditions, again, you have to keep in mind, the court has to impose the least restrictive conditions. So for someone with that many conditions, I think you can see your way through to saying, yes, it makes sense. This is the least restrictive because they've not been successful in other aspects. But for someone who just comes in on their first appearance, that might not be as easy a step, if you will, for the court to make that conclusion. Okay, we're going to impose this right away.

[Mary A. Morrissey]: Bonnie?

[Conor Casey]: Thanks so much, judge. Part of the problem I'm seeing is like, I'm not hearing consensus with the parties who are weighing in on this. Some folks think it'll improve public safety, which are very well might in some cases. Others are looking more as a way to keep people out of prison and clear up the backlog and everything. So I think I'm struggling with that personally. The other thing we're hearing is a lot of people are saying pretrial supervision and accountability court in the same breath. And then the Commissioner of Corrections yesterday on a couple of occasions said we need to treat these very separately. Right? So I'm wondering how would you see the interconnectedness with the accountability court and pretrial supervision? Well, we

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: saw that in Burlington. It wasn't used.

[Speaker 0]: It wasn't used.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: It wasn't used. It was, one or two people, I believe. Wasn't utilized. That was the perfect opportunity to see how the structure of bringing more cases in under a pilot docket and the pretrial supervision program would work together. There's also an opportunity for the pretrial supervision program to be utilized in a way that with more defendants than we had up in the Northeast Kingdom and more resources available. It just wasn't utilized. So, we do know the answer that it wasn't utilized there. Now, to be fair, you could say, well, it wasn't utilized because there was this other structure. All right? Well, if the other structure of the pilot docket was something that met with some level of success, and we know the pretrial supervision didn't meet with a success when it was a standalone, what did we learn from that lesson? Which one do we get more, if you will, bang for your buck? The different views as to what the purpose is, I think that they're all correct. There are those who appropriately believe that the pretrial supervision provides for public safety. If you have an individual who is supposed to get substance abuse treatment or other type of mental health treatment, and they're getting that treatment and you're monitoring them and watching for compliance, well, that certainly may and should increase the potential that they're going to get the help they need and reduce their recidivist potential. So that's a good thing for the individual, for their lives, and for the public. It helps the individual show up. And I'm sure other witnesses have talked about the fact that a number of these people who are in the five plus and other categories, they just need a nudge to get to court, make sure you're gonna show up. Now, are there ones who you can nudge, you can cajole, you can try to work with who are gonna continue their behaviors? Yes. And they have to be dealt with different. But when you're looking at it, is a program that by its very language is designed to help people get resources, the pretrial supervision to connect people there and to monitor. And so again, I think each of those can be correct. Sure.

[Conor Casey]: Thanks so much.

[Speaker 0]: Other questions? So, I'm hearing pretty clearly from you, Judge. We heard pretty clearly from the Defender General yesterday that the pretrial supervision program we're really not getting for what we're investing in it. We're not getting the results that we really should.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: Well, believe that conclusion to the committee. I- That's what you're seeing. What I'm seeing is very low numbers. And whatever the cost is, you have to decide as a legislative body, is that something that we believe is a good investment? Again, the court isn't utilizing it that much. It's not something that I can say, for instance, with home detention. We've talked about home detention is not utilized much, but I can come in and tell you why I still think there's reasons why where I can point to and say, it does provide a benefit X, Y, and Z. This program, sure, it can provide a benefit, but the number of people who are in it, it's so low. And do we, if you're going to spend money on it, the question that you have to come up with the answer to is, are we going to get a return on our investment? What indicators are that we're going to actually benefit from this? And can the money be used somewhere else? Can you get similar results by having someone who is, again, DOC employee, instead of calling them a pretrial supervisor, having them show up to court during the days when we roll out in other counties and to work with people. We've seen that work.

[Conor Casey]: So, Judge, if the accountability court is working based on the pilot project, are there areas we need to invest in to bolster the further rollout of the accountability court? Where, as you're saying, we could get better bang for our buck if we've got $2,000,000 ongoing I at the

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: see over my shoulder, state's attorneys, defender general, I'm sure they have areas they would say, if you're gonna give, if there's gonna be monies invested, I know Mr. Valeria has spoken very highly of therapeutic works up in Burlington. My understanding is that when he was able to contract with them, that led to improved results. The state's attorneys and sheriff's office had taken significant steps with the governor's office to be able to assure that we would have transports. That was critical to moving the cases. Having the ability to have a judge focus the resources that are currently available for us to use a retired judge to be able to come in. If we're having another courtroom running, gonna need extra security for that oftentimes. And so we would need that. The mental health providers. Is it worth X amount of money to do a pretrial services program? Or is it worth X amount of money to sign on with mental health providers or substance abuse providers to provide the services that the people need? You can have someone referring somebody somewhere else, but if there's no service available and there's nobody getting paid to do it, that's not a lot of help. And so, those are the areas that the pilot docket focused on and was working on funding for. And so, we're rolling it out in Rutland. It's not going to look the same. It's not going to look the same in any two counties because of even as basic a question as, do you have a courtroom? And do you have extra staff available? Things like that. But we met with Rutland. The plan is to have that roll out, I believe March 9. And so the idea is that each county will come up with something that may work for that county. It might not be a pilot docket in such a way or a multiple account docket, a multiple charge docket that they meet every week, but maybe every other week. Whatever it is, it tries to focus on that need, identify a time in the docket where you can try to bring those cases in so that the community resources and the DOC employees know every other Thursday, I'm gonna be in this court. And I'm gonna be able to be with people and help people with any issues they may have that they can work with. And my understanding, and I'm sure Mr. Valerio can talk about this, but my understanding is that having a DOC at the table as they were in Chittenden was very helpful to the situation.

[Speaker 0]: Questions? So we need to make a decision on the pretrial supervision program in general, which then, if we decide to not continue it, we need to work with DOC because they have hired three pretrial supervision folks out of previous appropriations in FY $25. We need to figure out we got three folks. They've been allocated five positions. There's two two vacant. So I want the committee to hold that thought. But then I want to shift to the accountability docket. Is it going to continue in Chittenden County?

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: In Chittenden? Yes. Every Friday.

[Speaker 0]: Every Friday.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: It is on Fridays. Yes.

[Speaker 0]: And is that DOC person going to be in that courtroom every Friday?

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: My understanding was that they had worked with the stakeholders and there was commitments to go forward. I can't sit here and tell you that I'm 100% sure the DOC person had said they're gonna be there, but my understanding was that there was agreement that were gonna try to, everyone was gonna continue to try to work together as they had.

[Speaker 0]: So Gary, I hate to put you on the spot, but I'm going to, he's behind you. I'm just taking this step by step, Okay. So that's going to be occurring. The accountability docket one day a week in Chittenden County has, so there have been discussions with DOC about having a DOC PMP person there in the courtroom that one day a week?

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: Hi. Gary Marble, deputy director of field services. My understanding is the same as the judge's.

[Speaker 0]: And that's the plan that there would be?

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: Yeah. That's my understanding that that's the plan. I I don't think I don't know if we've committed to that, but that's my understanding is that that's what we're doing currently, and we have no reason to stop. So unless I'm given different direction, that that's what we're gonna keep doing as far as I know.

[Speaker 0]: Because we've heard that that's very, very fruitful and very helpful. The rollout judge and it's the same thinking. And I'm going to ask then, Gary, keep your ears open here. It's the same thinking that there would be a PMP person in that.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: Yes.

[Speaker 0]: Courtroom for that day.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: Yes.

[Speaker 0]: Is that your understanding as well, Gary? Have you heard that on DOC?

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: Yeah. Similarly, I I don't know if we've committed to it. I think it's gonna depend on, again, numbers and and things of that nature. But as far as I'm aware, the model that's worked in Burlington has has worked well, and we would we would try to replicate that. Now, things could change that would cause us to pivot. But again, as far as I'm aware, that's what we're doing. Going back to like what was mentioned about what the commissioner was saying, I think the emphasis he was placing was that, you know, pretrial is currently in statute. So we're obligated by statute to have a pretrial officer for the places where it's up and running, whereas accountability court isn't. So that's I think that's why he wants to be really clear that, you know, that's what we're definitely going to do. The accountability court is still sort of developing and how it's going to develop around the state is we've yet to get confirmation on that. So I don't think we want to commit to 100% what we're going to do there until we know clear what what that's going to look like from county to county and statewide.

[Speaker 0]: Yep. That makes sense. And we're trying to figure out ourselves the rollout of the accountability docket and how that plays in with your five positions in PMP at this point. Not even thinking of the seven that's being proposed in the budget.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: So so far, it's definitely made sense. I mean, it certainly made sense be because of the overlap. And, you know, I presume it will make sense if the model continues as it does as it has in Burlington.

[Speaker 0]: So judge, after Rutland, are there any plans for over the summer and fall of this calendar year to open up that accountability docket and other courts, other parts of the state?

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: Our plan is to try to expand it. Yes. Do we have a definitive we're going to X, Y, and Z? Not yet. And I say not yet because Mr. Valerio and myself, Luneau, Ms. McManus Executive Branch, we've been talking about where next? Because we wanna try to build on the momentum and address courts and address counties where we have the greatest potential, if you will, to meet with success. Chittenden had the most resources, availability. Rutland has similar resources in terms of our ability to capitalize on those. And so the next question is, where else do we have to try to build? And it also, the local bar and the local courts have a say in this too. It's what can you do? We can't go in and just tell the courts, okay, you're gonna do, the attorneys, you're gonna do X, Y, and Z. In different courts. They're doing a lot of different work. And so we have to recognize that our ability to move forward with a docket like this depends on a lot of moving parts and the collaboration because it takes a group to build it. It only takes one person to tear it down. So, we want to keep everyone on board.

[Speaker 0]: So, can you expand this accountability docket throughout the state without legislation? Can you just Yes. Expand

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: Absolutely.

[Speaker 0]: So your testimony has helped, at least for me, to clarify how to move forward. I don't know if it clarifies other folks in the committee in terms of how to move forward.

[William "Will" Greer]: I feel clarified as well.

[Speaker 0]: Feel very clarified, but I'm not gonna make the decision for the committee. James? I

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: I thought honestly, not that this isn't helpful to any degree, but like two weeks ago, we pretty much unanimously said we're gonna scrap this. And I don't think anybody's moved on that.

[Speaker 0]: Well, we've got to take the temperature.

[William "Will" Greer]: Yeah. I I I'm right there with you.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: My bigger concern is where we're going from here.

[Brian Minier]: What are we gonna

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: do at the accountability court? A docket.

[Conor Casey]: The the what do call it, Judge?

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: Accountability. Multiple charge docket, but I've gotten used to others calling it accountability court. But I can take on Well,

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: I get your point about accountability too, so I'm still gonna call it the wrong thing. But you know what I mean? Absolutely.

[Speaker 0]: So the key piece to rolling out the accountability docket for the most success, and that could be the most success for the workload within the courts, and the most success for the person, the defendant to be successful is that there is a DOC person in that courtroom when that docket is being taken off.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: For purposes of DOC's involvement, yes, that's a key piece. Obviously, key pieces are the resources to have people there who have the ability to Is there someone there from the mental health area, the substance abuse area, social services, whatever it may be? But DOC is an absolute key piece.

[Speaker 0]: And what specific role, particularly in the Chittenden pilot project, did DOC play? Did that DOC person play? What was the specific role that that person played?

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: My understanding was DOC had the ability not only to have connections for facilitating resources, they had information. And one of the other things that they had was if someone was going and receiving treatment, DOC had the ability to go back and say, Okay, this person might be pleading out. They're gonna come into DOC and here's what they're doing. Is that going to meet our needs for correctional supervision in DOC for treatment? Is this program okay? Is that okay? Because many times when an individual is gonna plead guilty and they're engaged in treatment, if they go into court, they don't know, Is DOC gonna accept my treatment provider? Or, this gonna work for DOC? DOC was able to give that kind of assurance and that information. I understand. And again, facilitate things in a way that having them there was helpful. What's the sentence going to look like? What does it look like for furloughs? Whatever it may be. Now, I have no doubt that Mr. Valerio or Ms. McManus would have additional specific areas that DOC benefited up there. But those were the ones that, when I was told, they kind of were highlighted to me.

[William "Will" Greer]: Shawn? Just to expand a little bit more on my question. So, I mean, I think that then we can straw poll, but the the most of the committee doesn't see the value in in in in this expanding staff for this pretrial supervision. And I I don't feel a personal responsibility to find some other expense because we identified this one as as having no value. I mean, that that's not something we need to do. We should say this isn't a great good idea. This the money

[Speaker 0]: can

[Mary A. Morrissey]: There's more

[William "Will" Greer]: go up here and approach, and they can figure something out for it.

[Speaker 0]: Well, we'll come in with some recommendations. So the question is, in terms of right now, there's five positions that have been approved for DOC for pretrial supervision. Okay. Three are filled, two are not. So you're saying the next accountability court that's gonna be rolled out is in Rutland, and it would be really helpful to have a DOC person there in

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: the courtroom. Yes.

[Speaker 0]: We all get that. Right. So the then let's take it a step further. The person is sitting there in the courtroom, the defendant is released with conditions. Okay? There's no supervision from DOC. Let's say we did away with the pretrial supervision. Okay? There's no supervision for that person basically out in the community. Is there a way and you may not be the person to ask this, it may be Gary, is there a way for the PMP person to still keep in contact with that defendant while the person is out in community on conditions? And it's not to enforce those conditions. It's not pretrial supervision. But is there anything there that the defendant can keep a relationship with that DOC person that was in that courtroom?

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: That's up to DOC. That would be no different than anyone else in the courtroom having a drawing connection and serving as a resource. That would be up to DOC felt that it was appropriate for its employees to continue to reach out and help facilitate contact? That works?

[Speaker 0]: Just thinking of putting a lot of stuff on the table.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: I will say that whatever we go forward on, wanting DOC at the table takes staff time.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Yes.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: And so the idea that if they have the extra positions, my suspicion is they will need them, those positions to continue so that DOC has the ability to meet that need of being there for these programs, which are extra from what they previously were doing.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Yeah. Kind of, I don't know who answers this question, but so it seems pretty unanimous that we don't see the value free trial, but so the accountability docket, do we, what I'm concerned about, so if the ELC has say three employees that are tied to this thing that we want to get rid of, how does that affect them if there's not a statute or something that not authorizes, but you know what I mean? Like there's no job for them if this program goes away. But do we need to do any kind of legislation that says, hey, by the way, we'd like you to do this instead? That was a very convoluted question, but

[Conor Casey]: you know Well,

[Speaker 0]: I think you got to figure out first. I asked the question, do you need any statute changes for the accountability docket to be rolled out? And I and I indicated that there wasn't. We I I don't know. Is house judiciary looking at anything in particular

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: I know.

[Speaker 0]: We're rolling out the docket.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: Not I'm unaware of anything specific. As we did in Chittenden, this these cases that are in the docket have to be heard anyway. And so at its most basic level, all we're doing is taking a certain day of the week, and instead of bringing cases, instead of bringing in, let's say, 100 cases over a five day period, we'll try to bring in 100 cases over a one day period, whatever. Put them all in one day, because by doing that, you're able to have more of a not going to use 100 in one day, but you're able to do more of a focus and have the resources available. And so internally

[Speaker 0]: for the court itself, there may not be an increased cost, but there may be. I don't know if there'd be an increased cost on the defense side or on the state's attorney's side.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: Well, there is an increased cost on the court. Absolutely. There is. That's we.

[Speaker 0]: Now is any of that calculated in the governor's FY twenty seven budget for the judiciary?

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: It is. I don't know that it's calculated in the governor's FY '27 for the judiciary. I know that there was the BAA request, and Mr. Blair, I'm looking to phone a friend on this one, Matt may know. There was the money in the BAA that was for this current time period. Some of that may not be utilized, and it can go over into the next fiscal year. I believe on one page of the governor's budget summary, it also said there was an additional 500 for the fiscal year 'twenty seven, but then I don't believe that that was what the plan was. Think it was more of a BAA adjustment this year and potentially next year, but the second aspect of that for '27, that's a question for the executive branch. I'm not exactly sure.

[Speaker 0]: What I'm trying to figure out is how we can work with DOC in making sure they have the staff when the accountability docket gets rolled out statewide. That's what I'm trying to connect. And I know what money we've got in a pretrial supervision piece, which is a lot for staff. We've got two vacancies right now out of five. Those two vacancies could be filled and one could be for Rutland County. And then the other one could be whenever the next accountability docket opens up. And then we would ensure we would do language that that physician would be to sit in on the accountability docket. But that's not going to take that person's full time.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: Yes, exactly. I want the committee to be very clear. Please don't hear me to be saying that anything being rolled out will be five days a week like Chittenden. That's probably the one thing I can tell you will not happen for sure. That in any of the new counties coming up, we will not have five days. Right now, Rutland is working on trying to add two a week, one and a half a week, something like that. So, the other counties will not be the full time like that. So, if there are individuals in DOC who are there for the pilot docket in court, there's gonna be an opportunity for them to go and do other work outside of it.

[Speaker 0]: And that's what we're trying to balance. And if we take that road, then we'll have to do language to indicate that.

[Conor Casey]: I think it's a question for Gary. Gary, I'm wondering what the five position titles are as it stands and if they're different from existing probation and parole officers. And I guess if you think you would have the flexibility within those job descriptions to move them around without necessarily having legislation dictating it. That's true. Lot of it. Just like it.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: Sure. So the positions are essentially classified as probation parole positions, but we're titling them as pretrial officers in the two counties where that's active. Part of the reason for that is so that we have some flexibility, and we didn't want to end up in a situation where somebody's moved to that position, they would lose there's all kinds of things that go along with classification, like bargaining unit and all that sort of stuff. So it gets very complicated if you have a separate position. Also, when the positions, the project for which that position is allocated is still on a pilot. But, you know, going to what what we were talking about, essentially, is like, we're going to do what it says in the statute we're obligated to do and, and what our, you know, executive branch has directed us to do. We were directed to engage in the accountability court. I know of no commitment that we've been told of that we would do that, but I could say if we're ordered to do it and if we are seeing a statute where accountability court is part of our obligations, we would of course follow that.

[Speaker 0]: So they're classified as P and P officers. They're not classified as pre trial supervision officers, That's done more internally on your end, designate the workload of your staff, but the person that got hired is classified as a DNP officer that could be used for other situations within the field office.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: Right. Yeah. You get into issues with I know that breaking that out was gonna cause all kinds of concerns about their what bargaining unit and all that sort of there's there's implications when you create a new position as far as RIF rights and all that. So we what we do sometimes is we'll have a working title, and that's that's what your job is, but how you're classified, it could be could be different. And that's that's my understanding of how we've done this one. That's what I've seen from the paperwork in HR.

[Kevin Winter]: So

[William "Will" Greer]: to this question, I'm on page six of five twenty nine, beginning line eight. This this gives us the ability to terminate the program because it's contingent on funding. Could we add something to the end of that section? So the end of line 12 that states termination of this program shall not result in the loss of any positions that were created to curb this program. Well,

[Speaker 0]: this is where we can let go. But if we're going to do away with the pretrial supervision program, you repeal that statute. Repeal it. And then you would structure those positions. So there's five positions right now. And then you would structure those positions. Like the one person they hired in Chittenden County is obvious that you could use that position to be in the courtroom that day, the week for the accountability doc. The question then is you got two people up on a Newport one in St. Jay that if we repeal the program, their duty will not be for pretrial supervision, but they would be incorporated. I would assume within the PMP office there for regular work. So that takes care of those three remaining two vacancies of the original five. One could, we could say should be for Rutland. And then the second one for the next county where the accountability docket opens up. That's how you take care in my simple world. That's how you would take care of those five positions. I don't know if that would be workable, but that's what you would do. James and then Joe.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: So that's my original question that Conor asked me better than I do. Do we have to do a legislation for that or does they take we do okay.

[Conor Casey]: That's

[Speaker 0]: all. Because they would they're there. The five positions, DOC's understanding, it's not in terms of their classification, in terms of the job classification. But in terms of DOC, knowing what those positions are to be used for, that would have to be designated somewhere.

[Conor Casey]: Thank you. Would the legislation just say this is the department's responsibility and it gives them lead way and flexibility of who they put in the court that day. Right.

[Speaker 0]: But those two positions that are vacant, the intent would be that they would be filled in the area where the next accountability docket is rolled out. So it's really where they're needed. That next position is needed in Rutland. We want them to sit in the court.

[William "Will" Greer]: But from an accounting perspective, if there was a one day a week accountability course in rural county, the allocation for that would be a fifth of the FTE or maybe a fourth. That's whole. It's too rigid.

[Speaker 0]: That's correct. And then that was my question in terms of is there other places that that person could be used in the P and P office? And that was what I was thinking. If there's conditions that the court placed on the person, is there a way to put that communication between the dependent and that that particular DOC person?

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: I think it's safe to say the focus of the court is to make sure we have someone there. And if DOC says that it is part of that team and it's going to be sending someone to wherever we are in the state, I I'm perfectly fine if DOC decides we're going to hire them wherever and we think we can handle this out of our Rutland office with what we already have. It to me the more important thing is the commitment and where DOC wants to put people, if they want to put someone in role, then great. But if not, what I wouldn't want to see happen is DOC hiring with an expectation that we're going do a pilot docket somewhere, and it doesn't work out quite as well as we'd hoped to go into a certain docket, we want to make sure that DOC is okay, we're going to work with you wherever we can in the state. And so, if they want to hire somebody in Rutland Gray, if they want to hire somebody in Windsor County who can hit St. Jay, go down to Brattleboro and come across to Rutland or up to Montpelier or Barry, that's up to them as far as they wanna do. But again, our focus is just the commitment to make sure someone's there if they can continue to do that.

[Speaker 0]: Right. And what we're trying I get that. And what we're trying to balance out is right now, we know in previous legislation when we set up the pretrial supervision, there were five slots that DLC could fill for pretrial support. Three of those have been filled, two are still vacant. The governor has proposed in FY twenty seven, seven more PMP officers to be spread out throughout all the rest of the field offices to implement pretrial supervision. So if we repeal pretrial supervision, do we need those seven other positions?

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: I will not weigh in on that.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: So what if you figure out?

[Mary A. Morrissey]: I think we heard Gary say yesterday that it would be difficult for different members of his team to be traveling an hour to the other sites to be really effective. And I hope I said that correctly as to what goes.

[Speaker 0]: That's correct if there was accountability courts or pretrial supervision, but we're not gonna have accountability courts in all 14 counties. Right. I understand. So that's where we get away. Where where the accountability court's gonna be rolled out if our goal is to staff have a DOC person in that courtroom during that accountability docket. That's how do you roll that out courtside and roll out the positions in DOC at the same time. Matt, you had your hand up.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: I think there are a couple of things going on here that where there maybe is a misapprehension about what DOC did in this docket in Burlington and what what was important about it. What was important about it is they were there as a resource to say, first of we got someone coming in, they're gonna they've agreed to sign the releases to do the debits that they wanna do. We wanna do whatever this sentence is. And the idea is that as long as this person is doing the treatment, this person's not gonna go to jail and they do their treatment successful. Maybe their case gets dismissed, maybe whatever it is. DOC was there to say, yeah. If you do that, that person's not gonna see a judge. They're not supervising anybody. They're there as a resource to talk about what how we structure these sentences and what's gonna happen next to this person so that you got the OC in the room, you got the defender in the room, got the prosecutor in the room. We all agree, and the defendant is there. And then we have the we had in Burlington the social worker and clinicians who were working for our office on behalf of those clients so that everybody was in the room to to have to know what was gonna happen to this person if we do this thing. It wasn't all about supervising anything.

[Speaker 0]: Coordinating. Right.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: It was just about understanding that this is the plan for this person. They go off and do it. Now if they fail out of their treatment or whatever, now they're back and we have whatever those consequences would be as contemplated by the original agreement. If they're successful, then that follows a different route. The bottom line is the DOC was a resource in the courtroom. To me and I, you know, I am not one of the court, right?

[William "Will" Greer]: But this

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: is almost a little bit like whack a mole, right? It's not like we're necessarily going to have all of the we're gonna do accountability boards, whatever you wanna call them. My people would tell me if they heard me say that. But we aren't gonna do that in every county all the time. We're gonna see issues where, hey. This county has a buildup of this docket of multi for now we're gonna deploy this resource in that place. Right? So that county, like Chittenden, has a fair number of people and the like doing the work that they do. They brought them to bear in Chittenden County. Rutland, don't know the answer to this. But Rutland may not need an extra B and P person to do this. They can pull them out of their office, and they're available on Fridays or whatever day they're gonna choose. And they're going to say, we all get together. We discuss these things, and the case of the result is gonna be but they're there, which is not typical. That's not what usually happens. Right? Some other county may be short, and then they have to deploy somebody there. The bottom line is that this is not akin to pretrial supervision. It's a different thing that deals with a similar clientele. Mhmm. In Chittenden County, nobody gave me a dime to do anything. And I dug out that money from our budget to make it work. And it was short term, you know, if it's the kind of thing that's gonna be ongoing and I've gotta, you know, do $50,000 every three months, that's a different ballgame. You know, to do it for a short period of time, doable. Other counties may not need, you know, for a day or so. By end of Rutland is gonna look a little different than Burlington did because I understand there was a grant available with the relevant mental health that was that our people are comfortable with and that would satisfy what I spent $50 on in Chittenden County. Now that may go away at some point, but for now, that's as it rolls out on March 9, that's what's gonna happen. Now that might be a totally different thing if we go to Bennington or Wyndham, which are some of the county other counties we're thinking of. Right? Correct. And and and so it's a little different. It's the ability to be flexible and deploy the resources that you need. I can see how the the court is gonna need security because they're gonna have extra judge. And they and, you know, if they have the space, it's really just the support people for the judge going in there. Rutland, I think you're gonna not try to you stopping when I'm wrong. But they're gonna pull in a judge from the Superior Court Civil Division to assist with what's going on in the criminal division. And so it's not really extra judge.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: Then we're backfilling the civil position with a retired judge. So we're not losing any days in the civil division. But

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: that's a little different than what we're doing in Chittenden County. The biggest difference, obviously, is not five days a week. So it's easier to kind of move these chess pieces.

[Speaker 0]: With rolling out the accountability docket statewide, is that going to be ongoing or is it just sort of for the time being for maybe a few years and then we'll move away from that? Or is it going to be something that becomes ingrained in how we

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: I think that the recognition that all the stakeholders now have of the importance of time, space, and resources, and the changes you can make in the docket, and the benefits you can bring to the defendants and the public by doing that are such that moving ahead, it might not look the same going forward forever and always, but I do think that those types of strategies are ones that I am hopeful will be ingrained in how we schedule and how we handle things in the future. Because if you look at case flow management and you're seeing something that seemed to work with case flow management and have results that were type you were seeking and even better than the results you might have been getting in the regular docket as something you want to put into your regular docket. And I do note I'm supposed to be down two doors down at two. So I.

[Speaker 0]: That was five. Yeah, just that mean, that's testimony is really, really helpful. What. I know in terms of dealing with the accountability docket, a rollout is really judiciary's world more than ours. But I think we have to have a real understanding of how it's going to operate and how it rolls out in order to know what the impact is in DOC. Because I really appreciate what I really appreciate in this conversation. And I've heard this over and over and over, it's a common thread. It's so important to have DOC at the table. They are in the court. And quite often DOC is never at the table until after the fact. And I think this is so important and people are recognizing the value of DOC. And I'm trying to figure out how we can move forward with DOC continuing to be at the table in the courtroom as a resource. And also I think it will help DOC in the long run because the person may eventually be under their supervision, either on probation or maybe on furlough or who knows what. And I'm just trying to figure out and it's more conversations with you, Gary and DOC, how we can accommodate this, how we can make it work in the DOC's part. I'm not convinced 12 positions is gonna do it, is the right number. I don't know if there's enough flexibility in some of the different field offices that they may not need to hire someone. And then some other field offices, they might need to hire.

[Conor Casey]: So that's what

[Speaker 0]: we're I trying to balance

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: can offer that also, you have to take into account the economies of scale that you have in Burlington that you don't have elsewhere. We've always had an attempt and pretty regularly a court liaison in Burlington. And part of that's because when you have such a large office, there's, there's flexibility in terms of, you know, so if you've got 30 POs in an office, getting someone down to the court to cover and answer questions is a little bit easier than when you have eight. Right. So I think we would have to really analyze that and see what the need is and what the demand for us would be and figure it out from there. But I don't think we could commit to that until knowing what the picture was.

[Speaker 0]: Well, and to know what the picture is, is to know where the accountability docket's gonna be opened up. Next, we know Rutland. So we know you gotta look at your Rutland field office and see if, can you absorb one person going into the courtroom one day every week and a half or every two weeks or not. If Bennington is the next county, you look at that field office and what can they absorb or Wyndham County or Windsor County or Washington County, whatever it may be. And what we need to do is figure out the flexibility or the number of new positions that DOC is going to need. It may not be the full 12. It may be you fill your two, and then give you another couple in the interim to see how many more courts open up between now and a year from now.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: So I will step away, one thought. If DOC, DOC should have, I would imagine, an idea of right now. If we said we're opening next week in Bennington, Windham, whatever other county, DOC would be able to possibly say that as he just pointed out, Mr. McGullish just pointed out, that, okay, we've got 30 here, eight here, it's more difficult. DOC wants to send me something that lets me know what counties it feels comfortable that it has the resource to have a day or two a week with somebody sitting in now. I can share that with the other stakeholders as we look and say, what is the next county we're going be going to? And we can take into account DOC's ability to move forward at this time with its current resources.

[Speaker 0]: Is that something you'd be amendable to doing, Gary, with your bosses?

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: I think we need a lot of information. I I think, you know, like, where, of course, to what extent, what would the hours be, what would the days that the commitment would be. I'm I'm sure we could come up with some sort of analysis, but we would need a clear picture of what that would look like, I think, to give you a good answer.

[Speaker 0]: Like a chicken and egg situation. Just

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: tell me how many days, if we just said we're gonna pick one day a week or two days a week in a certain county, If pick Bennington, Windsor, Windsor, Washington.

[Speaker 0]: So the ones?

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: Just pick those counties and say, if we were gonna be running it up there one day a week or two days a week, is it theoretically possible that you might be able to have somebody there?

[Speaker 0]: And that's the data we're gonna need, Gary, to figure out how

[Conor Casey]: to move forward.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: The other thing I'd have to look to the office for is too, is I'd wanna look at, you know, caseloads, like what's the commitment we're looking at? Like, I mean, to be frank, a short term commitment to a court is very different than an ongoing commitment. You know, if you're going to be planning on having accountability courts be part of the infrastructure, the court system forever, for the foreseeable future, it's different. You can sort of pitch it and have people cover for things for short term, but, you know, it would possibly weigh on us in a different way if it's something that we're going to be doing for for perpetually ever.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: Yeah, I don't think it's I don't think it's a perpetual You

[Speaker 0]: don't think it's perpetual.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: I've I've seen this as a byproduct of the backlog that came through the pandemic where these cases people were accumulating charges on their minor charges and they got pushed to the back of the docket because the more serious charges got pulled forward and the juvenile cases got pulled forward. And once we kind of get by that, isn't going to be I don't see this as a forever thing. I really don't. But I you know, it could be wrong. I just I don't see this as a this is something we need to do now, but I don't see it as forever. This is

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: an intense Right now, the way we're structuring this is intensive ninety day periods in the different counties. What we saw in Chittenden was when we stopped that, we went from five days a week to one. And so do I expect these other counties to go, do I expect Rutland to go from, let's say, one and a half or two days a week and keep that going forever? No, ninety days, we're gonna hopefully have some lesson where we can have some segment of the docket for scheduling to recognize the importance of maybe having the resources there, but it's not gonna be that type of commitment to an ongoing pilot docket, but it will be using some of the lessons to continue with things that we can continue with best practices. But I agree with Matt. This is not something that people should be looking at and saying that we're gonna be doing two days a week on an accountability or a pilot docket in Rutland for the next whatever years. That's not gonna happen.

[Speaker 0]: So you're seeing the rollout in Rutland be a 90 process, and then you reassess, then it might go down to one day every three weeks or something like that and then you'd roll it out to another county again at the ninety day.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: They've been in Chittenden. They're telling me now don't need five days a week.

[Speaker 0]: You need one day.

[Matthew Valerio, Defender General]: They got rid of a ton of documents in three months. And

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: the stakeholders have a seat at the table, not just as far as how much time is necessary, but what day of the week? That was a discussion in the Rutland meetings we've had this week about what day? What about this day? Well, these attorneys and so

[Speaker 0]: Is the OC at the table? Yes.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: They were, I believe. They're a partner. We include them.

[Speaker 0]: After 02:00, you've got a seat.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Thank you. You. He's good.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: If you have any additional questions, please don't hesitate to let me know.

[Speaker 0]: Well, you. Your testimony was very helpful. I appreciate it, judge.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Luck down there. Thank you. You

[Speaker 0]: gotta keep an eye on them. So, I think it's really important, Gary, to get some information for these folks in terms of trying to help us on how we move forward here. And I'm not, don't wanna speak for the committee at this. So the committee, please correct me if you don't feel this. But I think in order for us to figure out how we move ahead with positions that are being by the two vacancies got a potential of seven more. We need to know how you the department is planning on staffing the Rutland accountability docket for the next three months, three and a half months. If it's one day a week and then it dials back after that. And let's throw in Bennington and when county and see how that plays out. You might want to throw in Windsor County because you got two field offices once correct.

[Mary A. Morrissey]: How that

[Speaker 0]: plays out if they Bennington is the next one and it rolls out, who knows when they do or may that rolls out for the next ninety days. What does that do to your operations within?

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: Really depends on the office and it depends on the demand. The number of cases. Mean, for example, Bennington,

[Speaker 0]: That's what I'm trying to get at.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: Yeah. And I can't answer that right now. Like, for example, this morning I ran the caseload numbers and Bennington looks very high, which means they have a different profile in terms of their resources than Burlington.

[Speaker 0]: That's the information we need. So if you could do that over the next few days so that we could have that, some of that background to figure out what we do with these positions. Cause we don't want to cut you guys short. We want to make sure you have the resources, but we just don't want to give a carte blanche and say, okay, you get all of these positions. At least that's where I'm coming from. Want to target it to those offices that you really need it.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: I want to be clear that I don't know that we've made any commitments specifically to roll out positions for accountability. My understanding is that the positions that we've committed to, which are in statute for pretrial. So if we're talking about accountability courts and staffing those, it's a very different conversation. And I don't I don't know if I can answer that. I think that needs to be negotiated. And I think it's going to take longer to sort that out.

[Speaker 0]: And negotiated between negotiated.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: Well, I think we'd have to look at all the things I'm talking about. I think we need to look at what the ask actually is. I think we need to know what the caseload numbers currently are, what the number of staff we have are. I mean, there's a lot of details into that. But I also don't know that we've been given direction to do that for for the accountability courts divorce from pretrial. My understanding was that, what we did with Burlington was specific to Burlington for a few reasons. One, because pretrial was operating in Burlington, accountability court made sense for that office and that court to have that individual there. I I I don't know of any commitments that I can speak to about if we were pivoting to something totally different.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Barry, we're not asking you to make a commitment. What chair and the committee is asking is for if, for your feedback on what your capacity is if these things happen, AKA if the accountability court went to Bennington County, what is your ability to staff that if that was expected of the hypothetical, so we know whether or not we have to say, hey, they need more people or they can handle it. We're asking you for if these things happen, can we handle it? Not telling you to do anything, they're not saying the governor told you to do anything, none of that. We're like, if these things happen, would you be able to deal with them? Not right now either, we're asking you to look into it with your stations, what are they called, positions. Would you be able to do that if that order Are came

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: talking about a one day a week court? Talking about a ninety day obligation?

[Speaker 0]: What we talking I just asked the judge for those accountability dockets, like in Rutland right now, the plan is one day a week for ninety days, and it's gonna start March 9. So supposedly DOC was at the table when they talked about this. So if there's a DOC person in the courtroom from your field office, for the next ninety days from March until June, one day a week, what pressure does that put on your office for that? Then if they roll it out to Bennington, a few months from now, for ninety days there in Bennington, they may need two days a week for that. We don't know what would be the pressure on your office down in Bennington. That's the data. That's the information we need. And we're not seeing it with the pretrial supervision staff. We're gonna deal with that. We're gonna deal with that. That's something totally different. So that's why we need that information from you folks. That makes sense?

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: It does. I I I don't know how quickly we can get that, to be honest. I I don't know what we're gonna look at.

[Speaker 0]: You got some time. I mean, today's Wednesday. Next week, we're not here. I'm assuming by Tuesday when we come back after town meeting break, you'd have some information. Unless you can get it to us by Friday of this I you know, you've got some time to work through this, I would think.

[Conor Casey]: Your honor? I I worry we're being a little too prescriptive here because here's like, we don't know. Accountability court, pretrial supervision. At the end of the day, these are PNP positions. Right? Because the accountability court is, we just heard from both Defender General and the judge, it's only gonna go out for a finite period. These are not limited service positions. These are PNP positions. So part of me feels like we have to maybe direct POC to perform this function of working within the court system. But if we start getting into like Bennington case load numbers or something, we don't know what's gonna happen in two months or so. If But we could give a few positions and like Gary would say, okay, the numbers are really high in Bennington. We need another P and P officer down there. And once we get those caseloads down to a manageable level, then we'll be able to absorb the function of showing up one day in the court. But I think it's gonna be really hard for Gary to plan out, you know, just with so many question marks here.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: Yeah, I appreciate that representative. I think we're talking really hypothetical still. That's the challenge I'm having is figuring out exactly, like I like there's some different numbers being brought up and there's some kind of hypothetical situations of what the rollout would look like. I think we would need really clear picture to be able to answer that question with any certainty. And so that's the kind of thing I think we'd need in writing.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Brian?

[Brian Minier]: I've seen it so obvious I wasn't going to ask it, but there's no way that this works digitally, right? With somebody zooming into the courtroom, I assume they have to actually physically be there to do this work. And I'm talking now specifically about the accountability court, not the pretrial supervision.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: You're talking about, sorry, did you say you're talking about pretrial supervision?

[Brian Minier]: No, I'm sorry, I'm talking the wrong way of looking at you. No, the accountability port or whatever the heck we're calling it, it's been made clear that it's important to have DOC at the table. I assume that means physically at the table. I'm wondering, am I missing something? Is there any way that this works digitally by Zoom having that sort of presence there? I assume not.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: I think it's more of a time commitment and knowledge base and availability than the platform. But I can speak from personal experience that it can be really, I mean, actually the question I just asked you about, what would you say? I think it kind of illustrates it's really valuable to staff people in person, especially if you're talking to defendants who might have like verbal or developmental communication issues or something of that nature. I think I do think there's something valuable in having someone present for these sort of discussions.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Yep.

[Speaker 0]: So what is before us as a commission? We're only trying to get to the positions because we need to make a recommend for Five positions were already approved. Two are vacant. Governor's proposed an additional 200,000 to the 1,300,000.0 that's there for seven more positions. PMPs. We have to make a decision. Do we go forward and say, yes, we support seven more positions in our PMP offices to a tune of we don't know what the total number would be. It's the 1,500,000.0 and what? Or do we try to structure that as a rollout somehow and tie those positions to the temporary accountability docket knowing that it may not be that actual person that gets hired that sits in the courtroom, but you have the skills somewhere else currently on staff. But by hiring that new person, freeze that previous staff person time. I'm just trying to figure this out. Conor and then Mary and then Joe.

[Conor Casey]: Here's what I do.

[Speaker 0]: You've been involved

[Conor Casey]: in a Here's what I would do. Too many question marks right now, but I would keep the five positions. You might need some discussion with the VCA on what to do with them, but keep it flexible and define very clearly what we want BOC's role to be in the accountability court rollout. They're responsible for that. Buy positions to get them going, but if not, that's what budget adjustment's for. We've got another pot of money. I would recommend, and we're probably not the ones that decide it. You use that money to bolster the other functions of the accountability court. Maybe state's attorney need a position, maybe defendant general, maybe to help spring a retired judge off the bench, they beat up that way. But I think anything worth doing, worth doing right, you know? And we should do the accountability court right, if we're going scrap pretrial. That's where I'm going.

[Speaker 0]: Mary and John,

[Mary A. Morrissey]: that was going to be part of what I was saying, but I also think I heard Gary say yesterday that if they were only needed in the accountability courts, they could be used there, but then you could use them in your ear as being hired for, correct, the additional person being hired.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: Sorry, I couldn't hear what you're saying, ma'am.

[Mary A. Morrissey]: I thought yesterday you indicated in some testimony that depending upon if it was pretrial or the accountability courts, you could use that same person when they needed to do the accountability courts, they could do that, but then you would have work for them to do within your agency for P and P.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: Okay, yeah. So I'll be, I just, I wanna be very clear because it's super specific. That's what made sense in Burlington, that I don't know that we I I I don't think we can commit to that without seeing clearly what the picture would be ahead of time. I when I when I when I was alert when I was explaining yesterday was that, when we have a position for whatever task, say, for example, we had pretrial and we only end up with a few individuals on it, that person's going to be used for something that we feel to be a value or that we're obligated to do or both. So we're not gonna have one officer in an office with five people or however many, while others are, you know, monitoring 45. Right? So we would wanna make sure that that's equitably distributed.

[William "Will" Greer]: I agree with every syllable that Conor just uttered. Yes. Without that exception. But to go beyond the five existing positions, only three of which are filled currently, It's just a it's a solution looking for a problem. There's there's no need for it.

[Speaker 0]: That's why I kept asking, where are we going here? Because we have to make a recommend to approach social

[William "Will" Greer]: It's just be five.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: You just say And

[Speaker 0]: Kevin? No. She says keep the

[Mary A. Morrissey]: existing five.

[Kevin Winter]: Alright. Even in my short time experience, haven't we authorized or gone through appropriations, recommended to appropriations, five positions and they only fill three?

[Speaker 0]: Not a problem. If we

[Kevin Winter]: give them the authorization to fill the five but they only need the three and they only find three or four. As long as we've given them the authorization to the max then they manage that. No? Isn't that the way we can write legislation? Say, you can go up to five. You got two right now. You're looking for a third. As the accountability docket rolls out, you may get three, four, up to five, but

[Speaker 0]: The five is already there. It's already

[Kevin Winter]: Well, said 12, I thought.

[Speaker 0]: Well, the governor has proposed an additional seven on top of those five. That's where you get into the additional two. So, what I'm hearing is we keep it at the current five. And then we redirect the balance of that one point. Well, it's 1.5, but it's really 2.1 because there's a one time of 606,000 hasn't been expended yet. He redirects that to for the defendant. That's what I'm here.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Conor, I

[Speaker 0]: mean not Conor, James.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: I could call some problems for a change. Gary, please don't laugh at me. This is gonna sound like a very simplistic question. With five, you already have three of them on staff. Right? Two two and one coming on board out of the five?

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: We have yeah. We have two. Okay. We have one we have one in each office where where our pretrial is operational. The plan was to operationalize the pretrial in St. Johnsbury's, that's why we hired that position. We haven't done that yet.

[Speaker 0]: We may repeal pretrial supervision, so then what happens to those That's

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: the second part of my question. The part that might sound dumb, is, so we repeal pretrial, and you still have your five. Don't laugh at me, it's gonna get bad. Or you do have enough work for these people without having pretrial? There's there's legitimate caseloads, etcetera.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: Oh, yeah. We could absolutely find work like I was saying yesterday. I mean, the caseloads are creeping up. If we were to have those positions, we we could always we could always use positions. There's that we're never gonna say no to that. But right now those were meant for pretrial, I don't know what the pivot would be or the decision would be if pretrial got repealed. We'd have to figure that out.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Let me, obviously you can work through that part, but I just want to, as silly as the question seems, I just want to make sure that you do in fact have a need for these people. And I'm sure, I mean you asked fluff facility probably governor, I want to make sure there's legitimate work for them to do and we don't want you to be understaffed, that's for sure.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: Yeah, I mean, like you go back to

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: what I

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: was saying earlier about how I looked at the caseloads this morning, Some caseloads when I looked at are really high. Bennington is particularly high. I don't have an average yet, but it looks to me like we've surpassed the statutory cap in some areas and might need to move positions around. I'm not sure yet. But the trajectory is clear that we're getting more and more cases as these these bright pandemic era cases that have been on the docket for a long time are getting resolved. And the majority of them are getting resolved to community supervision. And of that majority, probation is the most represented.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, just

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: wanted to add something for the record of primary direct communications for GFC. If the accountability court moved to an area where we didn't have an officer dedicated for that court, caseloads would still go up quite dramatically. I know this idea at Burlington where there were a number of individuals who were moved to probation. And I

[Speaker 0]: don't have those numbers off the top

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: of my head, but I could find them. So it's still drawn resources considerably.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: That's right. It's a resolution.

[William "Will" Greer]: The resolution of the cases,

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: most of them resolved with us in the field services division. I think the vast minority of them were going into any kind of, I don't even actually, I don't even honestly know if any of them resulted in incarceration. Know that the majority of them resulted in some form of community supervision.

[Mary A. Morrissey]: Important having you to keep the decisions, because it's hard to hire someone saying this is only a short term whatever. But if you can funnel them in to the rest of the staff and what they need to do, that would be very important.

[Speaker 0]: So we're right back where we were. We have five positions that were already accounted for. Governor has proposed seven more. We have to weigh in on that. And we were saying keep it at five because we know we have two vacant The question, and I'm gonna go back to it, what do we do with those seven? If you bump it up to seven, regardless if it's pretrial supervision or not, you're still at 1.5 for those seven. So a

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: move for the governor can

[Kevin Winter]: tell us why he wanted seven more positions.

[Speaker 0]: Because they wanted to expand pretrial supervision.

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: It's in the statute. Right.

[Speaker 0]: That's That's should be statewide. Consent on funding. Consent on

[Kevin Winter]: a free trial, and then we're I think we're coming

[Speaker 0]: to the conclusion that we don't think that's where to continue. So But if the accountability docket gets rolled out in some counties, according to the testimony from DOC, they will need to have someone in the courtroom during that three month period or whatever. And then as a result of more cases being dealt with on court, it's gonna put pressure on their supervision left, get probation or furlough, and they have some of their levels of supervision, they have caseload ratios that they're already not meeting, that they're going over those ratios.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: In some areas, want to be clear I'm about sorry. That does not mean the average around the state is overcap. I'd have to analyze all of the offices to answer that question, we haven't done that yet.

[Speaker 0]: So then that's what we have to balance out. We stay with the five authorized physicians, no extra or do we say, okay, of those seven, maybe we have two more or three more of those seven.

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: That's what we're going to

[Mary A. Morrissey]: have to figure out. That'd be done in budget adjustment next year.

[Conor Casey]: Lot of the Chittenden stuff wasn't in statute or age.

[Speaker 0]: We don't want to keep operating that way.

[Mary A. Morrissey]: Oh, no, that's the way we should operate. I think it'll get us up to the five positions and then see how that goes. And I think Gary could probably tell us at that point what's working, what's not.

[Speaker 0]: Shawn?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Well, yeah, Mary, I think Mary hit what I was just talking about. But I guess my question is for Gary, and I don't know if he knows right now, but it seems to me twelves might might be too many, but five might be too little. So I I'm I'm trying to figure out or do we just start with five and then you come back to us next year and you're like, listen, these guys are overworked. We need three more people. I kinda feel like we don't know what we don't know because the accountability court only worked in Burlington, but we do wanna roll it out. So I guess just as a manpower or I'm sorry, human power thing. It just it it I lean into get two more people down in the Rutland, Bennington, Brattleboro area because you already have Burlington and St. Johnsbury covered. And if the people have to travel a little bit, I don't think that's the end of the world, but I don't really know that for your people. But that's I'm thinking, like, five, maybe a couple more, but I I'm just throwing that out there with what you just said, you know, Mary and Alice.

[Speaker 0]: Brian.

[Brian Minier]: It's sort of an inchoate mess of an idea, but

[Speaker 0]: Turn the quote.

[Brian Minier]: Yeah. But I was thinking about something that you pointed out, chair, which is there's a certain amount, whatever it is, 1.3, 1.5 of continuing base funding. And there's some sort of amount of leftover one time funding essentially, right? $600, whatever it is. What we've just heard from both the Defender General and Judge Zone is that this is going to be a ninety day surge or something like that in terms of the accountability for it. So is there a nexus between those two things? I assume there's no such thing as a temp probation officer. But is there such a thing as overtime? I don't know if anybody wants to do it anyway. They're probably already working too hard. But is there a way to use that one time money to talk about what we're now hearing is maybe a one time issue in the courts?

[Speaker 0]: For DOC or Yes. I don't know. I don't know. I I just don't know. The other option was what Conor was saying. You do provide Right. Frees up the rest of the money to be both the defender general, state's attorney, and the judge.

[William "Will" Greer]: That's really I thought that we were rallying

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: around this.

[Speaker 0]: But then you leave PMP at five, which means two people get hired. I don't know what you would do with those current folks up in Newport Saint Jay. They would just be part of your PNP operations up there because the thinking is we'd repeal free trial supervision. So their designation would not be free trial supervision because that program's going away.

[William "Will" Greer]: It never was pretrial supervision that are used that way.

[Speaker 0]: It was the intent when they hired St. John's Berry. That was the intent.

[William "Will" Greer]: It wasn't the practice as we've heard.

[Speaker 0]: That's correct. But if you heard what Gary said, the intent hiring a person in St. J was for pretrial supervision. So the question then becomes, what do we do with those two positions in Newport and St. J? Need to ask us, but is it needed within those two PMP? So we don't have the accountability docket there. And what we repeal pretrial supervision. The reason I hired them was as pre trials. I hate to ask this question with you. But two people you brought on, what do you do? How do you deal with

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: It's really hypothetical. I think we'd have to figure out operationally what made sense. Like, that would have to be something we would we would look at. I mean, it would depend on what exactly remains after its repeal that we're talking about a new statute that directs us to work in accountability court? Are we talking about simply having these positions, kind of be floating in the because we don't have pretrial anymore? If that's the case, I think we'd have to look at each office and figure out what makes sense operationally. But I I wanna be clear that we need we need to kind of see it in writing with the with the actual expectation is like we did with the statute for pretrial because we know based on that what that workload is going to look like. Like if you had, for example, if you had given us like the authority to go out and arrest people who are on who are violating conditions of release, that would be a very different profile in terms of the workload than what we ended up with. So, you know, and that's just a good example of how the ask is being specific for what we're expected to do in a court. That might be very different in Burlington versus Rutland versus Bennington. So without seeing it in writing, it's really hard to analyze exactly what we would need.

[Speaker 0]: And it's hard for us to put indefinite language what you're gonna in that accountability docket, because we're not the drivers there. It is the judiciary. We know that Rutland is where they're looking at. That's gonna open up that docket's gonna start on March 9. So I would hope that DOC with P and P knows what's gonna happen there and knows what your availability is from your field off there.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: We've we've been in communication with the district manager there and, we have, let him know this is coming and the expectation is that he would coordinate. That's the current direction.

[Speaker 0]: And we kind of know might go to Bennington and you know that there's a high level of cases there, so that's gonna put more pressure on your DMV office.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: And we haven't been directed to do anything with Bennington yet.

[Speaker 0]: And we haven't heard anything either. So we can't put any language per se. Kevin?

[Kevin Winter]: Is it reasonable to ask for physician description of what you've experienced in supporting the accountability docket and Yeah,

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: that's, I mean, we could.

[Kevin Winter]: I mean, isn't that what we're talking about? This is this is what the person's responsibilities would be doing and right now, Rutland's the next place. It may be one or two days but this is what the responsibility would be. And based on that, can we start sizing the unknown?

[William "Will" Greer]: I mean, it wouldn't be

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: hard for us to ask the probation officer that's been doing it to tell us what his workload is about. I think he could probably give us a pretty good assessment of how much time he spent doing what. I'd caution that that might not look the same in a different court because the courts operate very differently. I've seen that in the conventional supervision piece. So with a brand new court, new judge, could be very different sentencing, very different tempo, very different expectations. I think it'd be hard for us to say that that's a direct analog to what happened in Burlington.

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: Gary, I could be wrong about this too, as I haven't looked at the position description, but I'm pretty sure that what was the position description for that position at Burlington was pretrial supervision officer. So it didn't include anything about the accountability docket.

[Speaker 0]: So it was essentially

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: your reflection on their experience.

[Kevin Winter]: But it was successful with the person that was filling that role at the accountability docks. So it's a place to start is my point and start projecting if it's ninety days in Rutland and then another ninety days in Bennington, we've got some kind of a quasi plan that we can say, can we do it right now with the people we've got or do we need to add people? No? By oversimplifying, which is my problem.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: I can just offer that when these things are spoken of and when they actually play out is often very different. So I'm apprehensive about giving you a picture that might be inaccurate. I'd I'd really like to know what the court in Rutland is planning to do if it's gonna be a long term commitment. And and also, I'm not authorized to you know, as we've gone over to provide any commitment of that sort.

[Speaker 0]: But what we heard in testimony about the Rutland, it starts on March 9 will be one day a week for ninety days. And then the thinking is once they've cleared up a lot of those dockets, it may go to one day every three weeks after that for a little bit of time. That's all we know at this point of time. So that would give you some base in terms of the work that office.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: Well, maybe even that's very different from what we've experienced in Burlington, you know? So if I was asking the officer there to tell us how has it played out for him, he's gonna be able to give us a clear picture of how it's played out with the five days a week situation that we've been seeing. It would obviously be very different in Rutland right off the bat.

[Speaker 0]: Right. So that, you know, the difference right there. So at least you've got something to go by for Rutland and to see if your field office can absorb that for that short period of time. That's the other piece that's playing in my mind with these staff positions that, you know, they're not for thirty days or ninety days. I mean, this is a new person that's ongoing. And it's like, that's where I'm having a little bit of pause because the accountability courts are not long term. They're for a short period of time. So we're hiring a person for long term. James.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: But that's a very good point, but that's why I asked Gary twenty minutes ago, at least about whether or not there was enough work and cases, I know they do, I know the answer. But I asked that question on purpose because we know that they're not gonna be full time. But as we think about where we're gonna go, we need to know, there more cases and stuff to take the caseload for them to be working, the areas that there was. Now obviously I kind of more data of each facility, if you will, but it seems like we're beating a horse to death here, and I don't think we're gonna get any more answers out of DOC and I don't blame you by the way, I understand there's considerations and quite an allegiance. Conor gave us a great roadmap again a few minutes ago and I don't get this way very often, but I am honestly frustrated that we're continuing to go in circles on something we're not going to get any more answers on.

[Mary A. Morrissey]: Make a motion we go with Conor's plans. So

[Speaker 0]: I do want to take a break here and I do want to shift gears. I do want to talk about POC and ICE detainees with the VA with the VA and what the work that Troy and James and I did with trying to get to an MOU in that letter. We talked about that yesterday. So to help Gary a little bit, I wanna get a temperature check on the committee. Do we recommend repealing the pretrial supervision law?

[William "Will" Greer]: Yes.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Yes. So

[Speaker 0]: moved. Okay. So then you've got three employees that were hired under the pretrial supervision law as for pretrial supervision. So we repeal it. What happens to those three positions and the designation of that? Because they're only classified as a PMP officer. Conor asked that question way at the beginning. They were hired as a PMP officer. So they could be used for other functions. That's my understanding. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Conor Casey]: The problem would be if there was specific, it was a new position for pretrial, you can rip some of lack of work or lack of funds. So, it could go away if that was the case.

[Speaker 0]: The thing I would note

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: too, and I'm actually not familiar with the person who was hired in Newport, but the individual who assumed these responsibilities in Burlington is a long time employee of DOC and has worked in that office for many years, supervising individuals as a probation and parole officer. So, I just want to be cognizant of that shift. Yeah. Very significant shift of someone who stepped up to be in this position expecting that it was a commitment and something that would be longstanding, that feels very destabilizing and unfair.

[Speaker 0]: And that could be the could be the case in Newport and say, you know, I know who was hired. That's what I was I

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: do. And that that's the case there as well. The expectation was that this was gonna be a program that was gonna be expanding, not not repealing. So we'd have to figure that out.

[Conor Casey]: Are they currently I thought I saw vacancies recently in P and P and the office was the one, or how many vacancies are there? Just stay wide for

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: I don't know off the top of my head. There is one in Barrie, I know that. I don't know the number off the top my head.

[Speaker 0]: I don't know the number, but the

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: percentage is around 7%.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. But these are individuals who have

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: like worked in these offices for

[Speaker 0]: a while, so I don't think

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: they're gonna want to move to Barrie somewhere else.

[Conor Casey]: We would want to

[Mary A. Morrissey]: hold them harmless so they won't lose in all their years and what they've acquired, that they deserve.

[Speaker 0]: This is not an easy, you can say you want to repeal a statute to impact people's lives. And that's what I want to be subject to figure out how to work through there. Can you do some thinking, Gary, in terms of those folks? You've got the feel that we really do want to repeal the pretrial supervision program. There's more flexibility in the Burlington office, I think with the position, maybe not.

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: No? I mean, it's the same. So

[Speaker 0]: you got three people that you've hired that

[Mary A. Morrissey]: But, Alice, don't we have to repeal if we're going along with what Conor said? We'd have to repeal it. So this isn't a if, or and, or what. You'd have to repeal it.

[Speaker 0]: But they have to figure out how they're gonna I understand that.

[William "Will" Greer]: We have

[Speaker 0]: three individuals, particularly the two in Newport, one in St. Jay, they hired specifically for the free trial supervision.

[Mary A. Morrissey]: Right, but the other one that has long term employment with the TOC and a VSCA member, you've got to hold them harmless too, because they shifted into that position to do the right thing.

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: And it's not that we wouldn't have, to the vice chair's point, it's not that we wouldn't have the workload for them. But I know that those five positions were authorized in statute. So we'd really just have to do some more digging as to whether those would be lost or exactly what that

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: would look like.

[Speaker 0]: I got it. But we'd have to work with our lawyers also within within that. I can see that we would we would have to work with our legal counsel to figure that out. Yeah. There's there's steps to this. You don't just repeal the language for pretrial. There's some implication for that, James.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: And that's why I started the conversation an hour ago by asking very specifically if there was statute that we had to deal with. Because I think all of us, well not all of us, most of us, some of us, maybe only two of us, who knows, knows that there's gonna, we have to do something about that part, the statute part. But that's why I asked that way back, I don't know, I think we've been way off track. That's the biggest question. Repeal, I think everybody agrees, but right or wrong, I mean, we could be very wrong on this. Repeal, everybody agrees. How do we deal with these people in the statute from there? I realize that may be only my question, but it doesn't seem like it is. Well, you just mentioned it, Madam Chair.

[Mary A. Morrissey]: Well, I know a bunch

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: of us did, but so do you know, you've been here the longest, obviously. What do we need to do for statute in terms of these positions? Or are you saying we need to find out from them? We

[Speaker 0]: need to find

[Conor Casey]: We to

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: We've got

[Speaker 0]: to do

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: some research That's on way above my knowledge. I mean,

[Conor Casey]: I can't believe I'm though I'm saying this about people, but we can't preserve three positions just for we can't keep the program in place if it doesn't make sense to take the three positions, But we want to accommodate those three people in any way we can, right? Absolutely. Well, that's

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: my point though, that there's other work that they legitimately have, and how do we cover that statute? And that's why I was asking you guys, because you obviously were in The U. A. For one of them. Madam Chair has been here for a long time. And I didn't know the answer to that, but I want to know.

[Speaker 0]: That's true. And it may not even be Hillary, it would be folks who are used to working with labor contract.

[Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: The committee had to get there. So Gary, you've heard us go round and round and round. I think you have some idea of where we're in sit. We wanna work with you on this. We don't wanna throw a PMPO, wanna work with you. We also are very sensitive to the three folks that you hired to hold them harmless. That makes sense?

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: I didn't hear the last part, I'm sorry, what?

[Speaker 0]: Hold them harmless.

[Gary Marble, Deputy Director of Field Services (VT DOC)]: Oh, got it, yes.

[Speaker 0]: But we're gonna have to work, we're gonna have to do some work on our legal end, as well as working with you folks on how to best achieve that. So it's quarter three, we need a break. We need to come back. We'll be made some direction. We're going to be talking about this again, I would assume probably tomorrow. Who knows? Who knows? But I wanna get some of this in place before we leave for a week because we're not here next week, Gary. Now meeting, so the legislature is not in session. So I wanna get as much of this wrapped up in terms of what direction we're going in. Then maybe our legal staff can do some work during the week if they're here for that. And when you said we aren't here next week, I could see everyone's. So let's go off of YouTube. Let's take a quick five minute break. Thank you. Come back. We're gonna be talking about corrections, it's not gonna be dealing with

[Unidentified DOC staff (colleague of Gary Marble)]: you, Gary.