Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And welcome back, folks. This is the House Corrections and Institutions Committee. This Thursday, February 26, we're gonna be spending time with the Department of Corrections to go through their fiscal year twenty seven budget proposals. This is what Appropriations Committee is working on. And we, being a policy committee for DOC, we will be able to weigh in Appropriations Committee this particular budget. So welcome. Start out with the commissioner. You can introduce yourself, and then go from there. I hope you get settled.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Apologies. No. That's fine. Good morning, everyone. I am John Murad. I am the interim commissioner for the Vermont Department of Corrections, and I'm very grateful to be here.

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: I'm Marlene Baty. I'm the executive director of finance for the department of elections.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So what I know your documents right here are ups and downs, which that helps but doesn't help because we don't know what the base is in terms of what you're going up from and what you're going down. But you do have some additional sheets in the back, which is, I believe, a reflection of some of the questions that we asked in the work that five members of the committee came up with.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yes, that's true. I think most of this is a response to that document. We certainly didn't get to, it was a large document that you all prepared. We were grateful for it. It was also very, very wide ranging. It touched on a whole host of different parts of the DOC entity and enterprise, and so we've gotten to as many as we can. I'm certain that there are going to be missing pieces in this, and if you have missing pieces that are specifically important to you that were on that sheet, but that we failed to get to flag them, and we will do our best to get to them as well. But we did get to quite a few in this document. So I think we can start looking at them sort of as they sit. We went essentially through the document that you provided in order and question by question that was posed.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's great. So, why don't you just start with these ups and downs, and then we'll get into those questions.

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: Would you like me to go

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: through the payroll ups and downs as well? Quickly. Okay. Alright, so starting with B335, with 1,000 ending the ups and downs for that, subtotal of the increases is 692,712, which is all salary increases, benefit increases. Then the next section, which is the parole board.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: as you can see, most of it is the salaries, but there is a decrease for the fringe benefits is probably somebody that made a change, and so that just calculates automatically within the system. For Earl Ward, that $25,000 decrease was because we were not able to secure a private counsel. And so that's the $25,000 decrease.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I just want to be clear. The 25,000 that got zeroed out for FY 'twenty seven, the 25,000 for legal counsel is still in your FY '26.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yes.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So for the parole board, your yearly budget for FY '27 that you're proposing is 607,000. Any questions on this one from the committee? Okay.

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: The next section is b three three seven, and it's correctional education community high schools. That is a the subtotal of increases and decreases is three twenty eight five fifty one, which is due to salaries and benefits increases with the natural process. The next section is correctional services, which the salary benefits increases are listed here. There are some additional ups and downs that have to do with specific programs. The first one is pre trial supervision for statewide expansion of 200,000 after the salaries and benefits.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Say that again, because I was looking at something else.

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: That's true. The first

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: section is the salaries and benefits and any changes that are made. And then the next, 562,200 is pretrial supervision for statewide expansion is 200,000. That's the remaining 200,000 to build for the staffing that has been put in place.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Is that for current staff or this is expansion? So it's Without expansion?

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Well, when I say expansion, it's for those 11. 12 positions. So it's for those 12 positions. So from our financial CFO at AHS, what she told me, gave me for budget allocations to fill all the positions that we currently have out there that may not all be filled. Is FY '25, there were 660,000, 766,000, FY '26, there was 650,000. And then this year would be the last plugging of the hole for those positions, which would be 200,000. Those were the first two were base, and this last one would have, of course, been. And that was for those 12 positions because they did not fund them all upfront.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right. There's five positions currently that have been funded. And what is the cost for those five positions? Do you

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: have that?

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: I have one is $141,000 and the others most are budgeted at 118,000 only have some of these were vacant at the time too, so they were budgeted at 118,001 that was filled was 114.

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: The total, because I just did

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the math with the calculator,

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: it's always a good idea, is 610,462.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So 610,000 for the current three or for the five? So that comes out of the $6.60 from FY '25? Or does that come out of the six fifty that got added on in FY twenty six? Or the out of the total 1,300,000?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Well, all of those enrolled into the total 1.3, are they not?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They were hired in different years. So that's why I'm afraid.

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Right. As we can add full funding in those years, So that's

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So your initial funding was in FY twenty five for 660,000. And the authority was you could hire five, you had five positions. That was the beginning. So from, I'm starting to remember here, probably from the '24 through the year of '25, calendar year, you've hired three people for the pretrial supervision. You hired someone in Newport, you had the Burlington and the St. Johnsbury. So you've got three positions with Benning's. So how much is that right now? Do you know?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Think that's the amount that Haley quoted. Yeah.

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: $374,082.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: 375,000 for those three positions?

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

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So, just looking at cash flow here. So out of the 1,300,000, there's a million left, basically, 900 and some odd thousand left, because you've already expended 375,000. And out of that 950,000 that's left, round numbers of the 1.3, you can hire two more people that would come in at, what, 200,000?

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: 300? More than that, but roughly

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: $2.50.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Two with with fringe? Danny. Two individuals with fringe is a little over 200.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It would

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: be about $2.36. 36? That's good amount.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So that's your 660,000.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Well, $6.10 of it, right? Isn't that the number that I would break? The $6.10 is the three plus the two?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes. $6.10, right, for the five.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yes.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So out of the 1.3, it takes 6.610. So you've got 900,000 out of that 1.39 left, pretty much.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Seven, right? 1.3 minus

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: 1.3 minus six, seven. Never do math in Six

[Rep. Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: ninety closer to seven.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So 700,000 out of that. And then I'm just trying to follow the money here. So you got 700,000 left. And then you've got another 1,300,000.0 in your base for pretrial supervision. And then that 200,000 on top of that.

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: And this year's budget would be to add.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: FY twenty seventh. Right? So the 700,000 that you've got left of FY '25 and FY '26, you've got about 700,000. And then you've got an additional 1,300,000.0 in your budget for the pretrial supervision. And then there's an additional 200,000 on top of that. So you have 1,500,000 on top of those 700,000. And that would be to fund Yes.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: No. I don't believe that 200 is on top of that.

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: The 200. Okay. My my for pretrial, the positions themselves for all 12 were budgeted with the ones that were filled at time at 1,400,000.0. And so that's with the five, that would be the, as you said, the $6.10, and then you'd have 700,000 left of the 1.3 that we have been given for those positions over two years without the 200,000 request of this year. But there isn't an additional amount on top of that.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the 200,000 is within the 1.3?

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: No. It's in addition to? It's within

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's 1.5. Then you got 700,000 from previous approves that so you've got 1.5 plus seven is 2,200,000.0.

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: The the money from FY '25, that's no that went into Pay Act, correct? Yes. That's not money that's laying around.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: From FY '25? Yes. So 6. So how much did you have in f y '26?

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: That we received for pay for pay was 650,000.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Have you used any of that $6.50?

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Well, we've used whatever we have. For the

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: people that we've hired and the time with which they've been and the time that they've been with us. So, each of those individuals was hired at various points in the FY, and therefore, one of them actually may predated the FY. One of them may have been here in FY '25, but the others were hired during FY '26, and obviously still in and therefore looking at that money has been we're spending it on those people.

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Anything that's not that's best in is more likely calculated in vacancy savings when when that is calculated.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So of the 1,300,000.0 that you have in FY '26, because we're in FY '26 right now. Of the 1,300,000.0, how much is left of the 1,300,000.0?

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Well, what would be remaining would be anything we haven't spent for these positions that are vacant. And that's within the budget itself. It's within the 4,000 in this section. So all the payroll is in there. But yes, in answer to your question, out of the 1.3 by the end of the fiscal year, whatever we haven't spent for these positions is what we would have left, which we just went through.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It would get added on to the base that was 1,300,000.0 plus the 200,000 that's being requested here for the expansion. We would have sorry if I'm not following you properly. We would

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: have 700,000 left before the 200,000 addition.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right. But you also have that 200,000. My understanding is that what's in your base budget for pre trial supervision in FY twenty seven is your base at about 1.3. The $200,000 is on top of that. So you're at 1.5. And then whatever you have left over from FY 'twenty six, which could be about 600,700 thousand is on top of that 1.5. Well,

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: mechanically, how it would work is that anything that we have within that 4,000 is is also offsetting other costs in there as there's no restrictions around it unless there were restrictions put on that. Right? So if we were required to pull that forward, then we would need to know that so we could separate it and do it as a carry forward. That was what was required. But generally speaking, what happens is the any place you've underspent will offset a place where you've overstruck in the budget just so that you can, you know, have a

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you can move that money around to other

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Only within that section, that 4,000 correction services.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right. Only within this particular section. You could pull you could pull money out of the pretrial supervision to fund other items within this section.

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: We could really what it is is a matter of looking at the bottom line and seeing where you're at, unless there are restrictions on the money and where the fund difference would be going. Mhmm. So that would be what would for just offsetting other places in your budget in that section.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Questions?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Or is it clear as mud?

[Rep. Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: Well, 1.5 is clear. As far as the the balance through f y twenty six, that's not clear.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: It depends on when they were hired. Right, Joe? Because that one guy just got hired recently.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No. Saint John's Ferry.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Sorry. Saint Jude, you're correct.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Saint Jude. There's three that's been hired.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yes. The one just recently. So

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: for those folks that were hired for the pretrial supervision, do you know what their classification was? Is it just PMP officers?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: They are PPOs.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Which is probation Probation

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: and parole officers. I apologize. Yes.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And that's how they're classified. So they could be used for other functions within probate, between probation and parole office in your field offices, could be used for other functions besides the jury trial supervision?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: It would depend on their caseload, but it also, the people that we hired are not necessarily the individuals who are going to do the pretrial. Pretrial may be, as we've said, and I think as Deputy Director Marvel made clear, kinds of folks that would be good at this oftentimes are people with a little bit more mileage under their belt. And therefore, while the money is allocated in order to have We have a total universe of caseload at each P and P office, and the additional person is coming in because of the anticipated expansion of that total universe, adding a new function, that being pretrial. And therefore, who does that new function is somewhat fungible. The people are at least.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah, so Commissioner, we were worried about that yesterday, because if pretrial does disappear, we really don't want to leave people alert to have come on board here. And I think it makes me feel better that you said that they're PNP. It's not like a new position, pre trial supervisor that necessarily disappears. It sounds like you have enough work and you would have enough funds if we funded the five positions there. So that wouldn't necessarily result in a rift of those employees pretrial disappeared. Is that right?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: If a change there that maintained the amount of funding for the positions we've already hired, then we would not need to change those employees or move That those said, it continues to be the department's belief that there is a need for and a value in the pretrial rollout to all of our offices. And that is something that we still want to try to achieve.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We're trying to figure out, as you probably realize, between two committees here, we're trying to figure out how we go forward or not go forward with a pretrial supervision program for that. So that's right now, there's been no decisions made. So that's why we're asking questions. So we know how the money is flowing. And you need, you have authority right now to hire five folks. The 200,000 is in the governor's budget that's downstairs in Appropriations Committee with language to have the ability to hire seven more folks.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: And

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: the department is hopeful for those, that is the department's position as well as the governor's budget's position. That we want to make better progress than perhaps we have with regard to finalizing the five. So moving past the three that we have and getting to five, and then moving into the next seven in order to have a person dedicated to this work at each P and P office around the state, all 12 field offices. And we believe that there is work for those individuals in this realm that is pretrial supervision, and that we will see that expand. In other words, we will see more pretrial use the more it becomes available in other places. That's the goal. That is our goal.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Anything else? Okay, let's keep going.

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: So under correctional services, b three three eight. After the 200,000 is the sheriff's transports for extradition's increased cost and volume.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the share of transport for extradition, is that your typical share of transports from facility to court, or is that extraditions coming from other states in?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yes. The latter, ma'am. Other states. In other words, when when a sheriff needs to go and get somebody who's been held in custody in another state, is in one way or another either absconded from ours or is being sent to ours.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So is there a limit on where the sheriffs travel? Like someone's down in Pennsylvania and they're extradited back up here.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: The limit is nature of the extradition. So we bring people back when they're out of our custody, and they shouldn't be. But it's different than, for example, extradition charges, that is not about DOC, but is instead about policing, does have limits. It has delineated limits on the idea of, delineated limits is redundant, my apologies. There are delineations on, for example, if you are wanted for a retail theft in Williston and are arrested in California, nobody is flying to California to bring you back for that single retail theft that is an open warrant or a charge. An An incarcerated person who has absconded is different. Concerned, are you a custody? Affirmative.

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

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: The next item is well path staffing. This is the contract increases with the increased aggregated population, and then the Burlington project. And the justice reentry revenue is the 801,823 under Medicaid GCF.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You lost us on that one.

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Okay. So it's two things. Under GF is the additional cost of the increase in average daily population that went from twelve fifty and we to 15 the fifteen fifty is the the top, but we're doing it The rate's actually calculated at 1,500. And also the Burlington project, which is the substance

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: abuse project. Which is what we call enhanced treatment in order to be able to provide that as a means of additional service to people who were sent by the accountability court. It is not directly related to the accountability court. It is a service that DOC wants to expand to all of its facilities, but it began in CRCF and Northwest with the idea that it would serve people sent by the accountability court?

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

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, can I just get a little more clarification on that? I'm for it. Let me just start there. Given the testimony we've gotten from WellPath, the additional services in and around opioid use disorder, yeah, for it. Why is it called the Burlington Project? This is a tangent.

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

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: It's about the 14 it's about That the accountability court, the three b court, the Burlington 14 plan from the governor, there have been any number of names that's Yeah.

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

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Just happens to be the one that's in this parenthetical.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: How much of that 5.357 is going to the Burlington project? How far will that take you in the rollout of these enhanced this enhanced care? And then is there anything right now on paper that indicates this is our timeline for expanding that to everybody in our custody?

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: The amount is 1,200,000.0 out of that.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That comes in five. Yes. And three.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Do Haley, please correct me if I'm wrong or off on this, but we are providing this at Northwest and at CRCF, and it is now a component of our screening, and it is not limited to somebody who is referred to us by the accountability court. So in other words, I apologize that it says Burlington in this document because I believe that's a little bit misleading. If you are arrested in Williston or in Richmond and are sent to Northwest and are screened, this is something that now exists at Northwest. So it would be more accurate to call it a Northwest CRCF pilot project with regard to this enhanced treatment. And our goal, again, is ultimately to have it at all six facilities. Right. So how far will that 1.2 take us at CRCF and Northwest? And is there a timeline for rollout? It has taken us to Northwest and CRCF with regard to onboarding new clinicians, having WellPAC hire these new clinicians that are able to do this work that we had not previously been doing, at least not in any real volume. That's how far it gets us. It gets us that, and it gets us that within this current contract cycle. So this, like any amount of money that we would be asking for for any headcount, is something that eventually becomes permanent. Right? And I think a similar sort of picture is when we talk about the pretrial pieces, those are individuals that are hired in certain years and it's separate money while it's a pilot, but eventually it becomes a component of overall correction services and staffing amounts of This would become an overall piece of the WellPath contract and would no longer be a separate carve out. But as we roll it, we will be asking for more each time we ask WellPath to provide this service at a new facility. Gotcha.

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

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Or another facility rather of ours, a new facility because we don't have

[Rep. Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: any of those yet. So

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: are you delineating in this? I just want some clarity. In the St. Albans or the Chittenden facility. Is it available to anyone that's coming in and they are gone through the screening, there's substance use abuse that was determined, is this additional treatment available to anyone coming in through those two facilities?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I believe that to be the case.

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: Yeah, I would however just note that the person who is taking on this work was only hiring about a And or month so at the moment it's not yet scaled to the entire facility and that it's available to everyone. They're still kind of slowly ramping it up. However, it was not necessarily exclusive to that population that was coming in from the docket and brown White Hills stood up, nor was there that mechanism for the court to communicate to WILPAT, Hey, this person is coming your way. Please ensure that they get this assessment. There was some capacity through DOC for that, but it was somewhat not entirely driven.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: So, I mean, of the 79 people that went through the 3B Courtroom in Burlington, 61 of those ended up in DOC's custody or under DOC supervision. 22 of those are currently imprisoned, incarcerated. They have been sentenced. Their cases are now resolved. They've been sentenced.

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: I

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: don't know how many of those ultimately did or did not avail themselves of this service, but I also know that the service does not only exist for those 22 people. And that is our intention, and that is the agreement with Well Path. It was not something that said, we were never going to say, we have this thing that we believe is positive, is good, is moral, is a next stage in what Vermont wants to do with evolving and how we treat substance abuse, and we're only gonna provide it to people that come from this place.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I know we've tried to schedule DOC in to talk about this new initiative. I think you're scheduled the week after town meeting? Not officially, but that is resolved. Is not our work together. Trying to bring you folks in between your schedule and our schedule get a little crazy. We're going to be looking at this more in-depth after we come back from town meetings. Okay. I know you had a proposal for this commissioner, and it really involved the ports for this. Is that still where the department is?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I'm sorry, what do you mean by that, ma'am?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, the expansion of the substance use project. You gave me some documents for it, but it was really looking at the court sentencing these folks to this program. Is that still where you where the department's coming from?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: No. In fact, our sense right now is that it's actually not a court prerogative to sentence folks to this. It's DOC's prerogative to provide it, and we want to provide it to anybody who needs it. So it's not really, I believe that it becomes, I don't wanna get over my skis, as they say, I believe that it is a component of negotiations between prosecutors, defense, and possibly judges as well, to say what is available while we're making these determinations. When we're saying, what would one take for a plea? Or what is the best course of action here? But ultimately, it's not a component of a sentence. There is no sentence that says, you shall be remanded to the custody of the Vermont Department of Corrections for two years because of this domestic assault, and during those two years, you will get X and Y and Z. The X and Y and Z is the prerogative of the Department of Corrections, and we want to ensure that among the prerogatives we have are as many helpful, caring, and rehabilitative capacities as possible. This is one such capacity. And that's- But I believe some of the, those were draft documents that I've provided to you. And certainly we wanna be fully transparent about what we're thinking as we work through, but I don't think it's something that's a court prerogative.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the other question for the folks here that can do the substance use treatment programming, are they also on MOUD as well?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: In all likelihood, you have this need, I believe that this is something that would only be provided to somebody who also is getting MOUD. Although, let me actually go back on that. This kind of treatment is not merely for those with opioid use disorder. If you come into our facilities with a significant methamphetamine addiction and are flagged for this kind of treatment, I believe this treatment can apply to that as well, whereas MOUD is not going to ameliorate the symptoms of methamphetamine abuse disorder. So I don't think that it's just that, and I don't think that you automatically are on that if you are in this programming, but I would, for a definitive answer, I'd want to get that from WellPath.

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: No, that's accurate. It's not a component of the MOUD program. It is separate. However, it is likely that if someone is suffering from opioid use disorder and they elect for this type of treatment, they could be both on MOUD and receiving that enhanced services through WellPath.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So to receive the enhanced services, is there a requirement that it would be seen as medically necessary?

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: There is a screening that WellPath does. And ideally, once it's scaled up, it will be part of the intake process. And that is how WAPAP would determine whether an individual would be suitable for this type of treatment.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But to be suitable, would it have to be determined to be medically necessary? That might be a

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: better question for the doctor.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm just wondering if state statute might need to be changed a little bit for that terminology, because we do have a definition of medically necessary. So I don't know if there's some linkage there or not, and may not be able to take care of it this year because they're running a little late. But I think that may be something to check. Because we are very clear for anyone that would be on the MOUD program, it would need to be deemed by a medical provider, a licensed medical provider, that it would be medically necessary. We're very clear about that. It's a medical decision.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I don't believe I've read that or know the definition off the top of my head, but certainly from my perspective, that is what we want. We want to ensure that many medication or treatment we're providing is necessary to the person who's getting it. And in fact, at least with certain kinds of treatments, medication treatments, not therapeutic treatment, but certain kinds of medication treatments, if we are not acknowledging medical necessity, you can end up with issues around diversion.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So then could you also explain the justice reentry revenue, the BAA? I don't I'm trying to recall. Yes. So that

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: $8.00 $1.08 23, that's with the section eleven fifteen. That's my

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, that's the eleven fifteen.

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: So that's that's what was calculated and estimated for six months.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That would be our cost for that was, like, the IT with Diva?

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: This would be Medicaid money we receive to off to help offset.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, okay. Okay. Because that kicked in in January. Right? Well, so the way

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: that that works is January 1, that program started far as people receiving the services and and all that progress. But we would be we have to report it out. And the way it's reported is it's an apprehensive report, and then they report to vetigate at a very specific get deadlines. So we haven't reported anything, and we wouldn't be reporting anything. I'm talking about this year. Next year, we'll have it in place, but we haven't reported anything yet.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So was the committee following what she's saying? The eleven fifteen waiver? Eleven fifteen waiver, ninety days prior to someone reentering the community, her medical services that they're receiving while they're incarcerated is paid for by Medicaid. So that in some way frees up a little bit of DOC's budget, but it still has to be included in your whole well path medical piece. But Medicaid is picking up the health care costs of folks who are within ninety days that they're released. Prior to that, where it was on DOC's nickel.

[Rep. Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: Just to clarify, to reimburse it, so DOC still pays WAP ads, and any potential reimbursement would go to DOC, right, once Yes. That

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And your first report is marked?

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Our first report, it would be January through March, then we would collect this by quarter collect the data, then that that process would actually be AHS fiscal would then report that after we provide it in another format. They would report that in June. So it's yeah. Just that's when that's when the actual because it has to go through another system that actually generates what the correct amount is.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And have you forecast on what you anticipate?

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: The forecast is 08/00/1823 for '27, and that was done two years ago when they first did the the waiver. So it's an estimate at this point, and I I think it might be, you know, it it looking at that, the amount of, patients receiving services, the number could be higher. So I think they did a conservative estimate, but I don't know yet.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Do you, by any chance, know what the number of folks are? They're within ninety days of their release?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: No, I do not know that. We could try to figure that out. Obviously, it would have been used in the calculation that Marlene's discussing. It would have been just sort of a statistical average of how many people at any given moment are ninety days away from release, how many of them potentially would be Medicaid eligible, and how many of them are also, as we sort of take our average incarcerated person, X percent likely to be on medication, Y percent likely to be getting sort of treatment, Z percent likely to have to go to an ED during any ninety day timeframe. And then, well, I used X, Y, Z. Now, eight percent likely to be ninety days out.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So for folks, this is only for sentence folks.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's not detainees. It's only for those folks who are sentenced. You're not detainees. Okay. Anything else on this one?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I don't believe so. The other ups and downs, which are mostly downs, are we've discussed them before with the group. So, that brings us off the ups and downs then to the first of your questions.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Got a question on the 23 that's down.

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: For the meeting,

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: at least, yes.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Are you stopping those ads?

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: No, we're not stopping them. We just reduced some of the funds for them. So we have two separate campaigns, both of which are still going, one of which feels slightly reduced.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'll still see you. Our most recent, to add just one last thing. In the evening.

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: Hop on to WCX's website.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: All of a sudden, there's a voice coming out of the living room that I know. Let's keep going on our questions then. I really appreciate the work you've done on this, because I know that probably took a lot of time.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Thank you for that. Many of these were questions that I was happy to sort of see and learn as well. So thank you for honing them. The answers here are sort of where, you know, our total staffing costs just under $88,000,000 regular pay constitutes $70,000,000

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: of that

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: facility staffing regular pay is just over half of our total regular pay at 37,000,000. But then we get into some real changes, some discrepancies or disparities or places where the proportions go out of whack with regard to our total overtime costs being $17,500,000 and our facility overtime, again, facilities regular staffing is just over half of overall staffing, but our facility overtime is 90% of our total overtime costs, which makes sense. Our central office team is incredibly dedicated and works their tail off doing really impressive things. I think you all know the kinds of hours that Haley puts in, but not all of our central team gets overtime, and those who do, don't get it at nearly the rates at which, not rates as in pay, but rates of time that our facilities do. Mr. Howard left, but he would be the first to acknowledge how much our unionized teams at the facilities are doing over time. The vacancy rates are there and are sort of broken out by parts of the department. And then we have some information about travel costs, which was something that this body requested information on. 90% of those travel costs, I think, you know, travel sometimes sounds as if it's perks or training or, you know, did we send members of the team to that conveniently located conference in Honolulu? And that is not the case here. This is, our travel is for folks that are doing work, either filling in at facilities that are far flung or hospitalized prisoners and staying with them.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What do you mean facilities that are far flung?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Our COD team or central operations division, which is the hospital unit, sort of their primary role is to take over hospitalized prisoners so that staff from the facilities don't have to do that. But a secondary role is when a facility is specifically under an example would be our facility Northern. Northern State Correctional Facility had a real staffing crisis. It's not out of it entirely yet, but we were for periods of time detailing COD members who are called COSs, central operations specialists. We would send them to Northern to work. If that individual resides in Wyndham and we are asking that person to travel to Newport to do three ten hour shifts in a row, we're going to offer that person a hotel in Newport. And so that's what that means.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So for folks, I'm sure for anyone who has gone into any of our medical facilities for appointments, you sometimes run into folks who are incarcerated there with a couple officers. Sometimes they're just there for appointments. Other times, if someone is a patient in the hospital, do we have to staff that room with a couple of correctional officers or staff? Sometimes one, sometimes two. Depending. Often do we have folks who are incarcerated admitted into a hospital for a length of time?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: How often? I don't know that I can give you that number off the top of my I know that I cannot give it to you off the top of my head. Can give you some information about the rates at which we are sending people to the ED. Well, here, hospital coverage, actually, do have some of this. Hospital coverage for January 2026, there were twenty one hospitalizations. I don't Is that unique or equal or twenty one hospitalizations. That could be the same individual going 21 times over the course of the thirty one days, But doubt that's how many there were. I can't tell you how long each of those were, right? That could be 21 unique individuals being in the hospital for the entire month of January. I know that that was not the case, but that would be the outside case. Eighty six percent of those were covered by our central operations division and not by the facilities themselves, which is really terrific invention of the previous police, me, the previous corrections commissioner, and really the brainchild of our current chief of operations, Travis Denton. Do have median days was three and longest days was 13. So that gives us a sort of a range for those 21 hospitalizations. And that's The average monthly since 2023 is 19. So January 26 was a little bit above the average. So

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: with our aging population and our sicker population, this cost could be increased over time.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: This travel cost to me. We don't see it diminishing for the time being, owing again to the same The staffing problems that we saw in 'twenty five have not been, calendar 'twenty five, we hope to make inroads against them in calendar 'twenty six, and those staffing challenges would affect the

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

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: rate rate at at which which we we get use travelhotels for coverage on the floors. With regard to hospitals, no, I think that we probably are gonna continue to see our population age and potentially need hospitalization more often. That said, I also feel, as I've said before, I think we are going to see a shift in this calendar year with regard to the number of detainees that we have. And the detainees tend to be, have some illness issues as well, especially earlier in their stays with us.

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

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: You're coping with a shortage, roughly 12.8% in staffing. I mean, you're making it happen. Is this a normal amount of vacancies or is this up or down from recent past? Is there something we should be aware of or thinking about so that you can accomplish the tasks? I mean, that's what overtime comes in to fill the gap, this and that. Anything we should be thinking about with that vacancy rate?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: So from recent past, this is a drastic reduction. Overall, the department had gotten to the point where it was closing in about a third down at its worst point in recent past, and by recent, I mean the last three to four years. But this is worse than we were prior to the pandemic, where I think that, you know, 12.8 would have been, we were in the single digits overall for the department as a whole. And so we have been better in the past. We have been far worse in the more recent past. We've made great strides around that. And now the question for us is, how do we move past this? We've been sort of stable at this level for the better part of the previous calendar year. How do we continue to move in the right direction with regard to bringing people aboard? Components of that are, I think that the biggest thing that the department did was creating experienced officers at, that is their facility experienced officers who are in charge of working with not only our current folks to keep them retained, but also focusing on recruitment and how we hire. They run the social media at those facilities. They're there to promote various forms of wellness for our staff. Those positions are really important. Certainly we're happy about our work with WCAX. We did draw back on that a little bit. That's an austerity measure, but we still have that contract because they need it. Whether you wanna hear my voice coming from another room or some other piece, we do want that tool to be sure that we're getting out our message and finding new employees. You know, how we get past this and move so that we can, I would love to be back here talking about single digit deficit of staffing, and heck, I'd love us to get to a place where we're 100% staffed? I don't know that the agency or the department was ever 100% staffed, but we definitely want to continue to make progress on this. How, and I think the things that you already do as a committee are tremendously helpful to us, And among the biggest, I think, is a sense of support for the people that do this work. Like any people, they like to know that what they're doing matters and that what they're doing has been recognized for the importance that it carries. Because the word is acute, to me that says there's pain as opposed to normal. Whereas the staphychogne is most acute. Yes. Tells me you're in trouble as opposed to this is normal operating procedures and you're always, you're never gonna be 110%

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

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Well, word was your, I think that was the committee's word. What's that?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That was our question to them?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yeah, I know. That's right. Good. Thank you.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Anything else on the staffing issue? Okay. Go on.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: So the next set of questions that we attempted to answer for you had to do with WellPath and the scope, etcetera, those. What is in scope versus what is out of scope? And really, in scope is, we do a tremendous amount of care. It's really when the person needs a level of care that is equivalent to hospitalization, that's where we move out of WellPath into either an ED or, as we were just discussing, the potential for being hospitalized for some period of time.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I have a question. Is DOC ever asked to go into our healthcare committees to talk about what services they provide for WellPath? No. Because I was approached by some members of the health care committee here upstairs. And your budget for WellPath is how much, 40,000,000?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: 40 something million.

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: 44,000,000.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: 44,000,000. When they saw that number, they were stunned because they thought it was just providers. And they were concerned that we're paying providers within WellPath much more than the providers in the community. And I said, well, they're offering healthcare across the spectrum.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: They being these other entities or WellPath? WellPath.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So they're offering medication, they're offering MOUD, they're offering mental health, doing WellPath pays your local ambulance service to transport folks from the facility to the emergency rooms or to a hospital for inpatient care. They didn't realize any of that. They thought it was just paying doctors. They didn't realize that it really covers the scope of health care for the whole population that you're incarcerated. It was quite an eye opener for that. So I just asked them They've a

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: never asked us in, but I do believe some members on that committee are on joint justice oversight. So it's concerning that they may not have known that information, but we've had well happened many times.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, there's just a real disconnect in understanding the health care that's being provided in DOC. And I think there is also some folks of misconception in terms of our infirmary and what the infirmary really does. It can't do that type of thing. So WellPath and the cost, I know, is starting to raise some eyebrows in the building, be it in the health care committees, even in appropriations. When you ask for the increase in BAA, it was $8,000,000 for WellPath, basically. Was it $8,000,000 total?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yes. 6. Was 5.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: $5.06. And they were just stunned. So, well, it's health care. They don't realize how much health care is being provided in our health It's

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: healthcare and ADP. Was the average puppy, the daily population is what really drove But yeah, I mean, certainly we would be happy to be called. We are happy to answer the call from any committee and talk in front of any group at the people's house to answer questions that the people have a right to know.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm just giving you a little warning, because I think probably next year, because the costs will increase, there's gonna be a little more focus from other legislators on why is it costing so much.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: We certainly are interested in making certain that we're using taxpayer money to the best of its ability and not misusing any of it. That is our ultimate goal. It's the Governor's clear goal as well. So if we could find either a different provider or if we could tweak the provisions that we do have, we are very much interested in looking at that. We feel confident that what we're currently getting from WellPath, and the relationship that we have with them is a fair one, but there's always room for improvement and renegotiation. There's also a strong argument to be made by our partners that we're asking more and more of them, and we are asking things of them that other similar departments don't ask. And so that comes into play as well.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, and maybe more scrutiny in the upcoming years. Just wanna give you a heads up, because I think it's just a lack of understanding in terms of our population that's incarcerated and the needs and what you need to provide. Yep. Okay.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: The performance metrics are listed here around accreditation, around the notion of various kinds of ways that we can get money back if there are omissions or problems. Money that they save, and this is very important, money that they save goes back to us, not to them. So in other words, there is not a, what we wish to do is remove any sense that there is an incentive for failing to listen to an incarcerated person or detainee when that person says, I need a certain kind of care. I need to go to a hospital. And going to a hospital is additional cost for WellPath initially, the transport, etcetera. We want to ensure that our provider is never saying, You're fine with this, you know, Your stubbed toe is not broken because we don't want to deal with a higher level of care than we can provide here. And therefore, we're gonna save the money by not sending you to the hospital because that's good for our bottom line. That is not a component of the contractual relationship, and that's purposeful. Oversight through our central office and a dedicated team that works closely with WellPath and also is aware of what we are expecting from them in the contract. We also have an elaborate both medical slip process for people inside to make medical requests, and the grievance process when they don't get what they have asked for or are not satisfied. That's important too, because it's an additional layer of oversight through our legal department. Moving, oh.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, you're saying alternatives considered. You said they've considered alternative providers in bringing care in state. How long ago was all that done? Was that done recently?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I will have to beg that off and ask.

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: The last comprehensive analysis we made around bringing care to state was around 2024, which I think is the same year that we approached some providers in the community about the potential of partnering with them. The Well Path contract, they started either in 2023 or 2024. And obviously, the RFP process, I considered other providers.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And that's happened before. Gone out to the community and they just And we've even reached out to UBM and the medical school up there and they said no.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: There was no interest. Moving on then with your permission, ma'am, to the associated questions around electronic monitoring that were posed, sort of an overview of our monitoring. There's three kinds. There's GPS ankle bracelets. There are something called SCRMS, which actually monitor alcohol as well by the skin and can determine whether or not somebody is using that substance. And then there's just a field link, which is a much lower, it's essentially telelink and you call in. The total costs for GPS is about 1,200 a year. The total cost for SCRM is about 2,000 a year. And both of those can be compared to about 114,000 a year for incarceration in the state. So those are obviously, when we can use those tools, we want to be able to use those tools.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Can I jump? Sure. Can you give me a sense of how many folks are on GPS and how many folks are on screen?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I can find that for you.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And would those costs go up if we increased?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Is that a fixed cost or is that for It is fixed. It's based on the units. And so there's probably some nominal savings if we were to purchase a great number more units. There's actually a savings with the TeleLink. The Telenink service does decrease the more people we have in it, but it's a much, much smaller cost overall than SCRM or GPS. So the right now, it's a it's a relatively fixed cost owing to the units, and I can hypothesize that if we suddenly said, we don't need 300, we need a thousand units from you, we could probably renegotiate some slightly reduced cost. How is granite like this person? It's a bracelet. It too is a bracelet, and it reads your A person, when you drink alcohol, it comes off your skin. Brian?

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I was just curious about the annual figure that you cited. I believe you said $114 per person per year in our facilities. And I've heard different outfits quoting different numbers. And so this is current and this is for the Vermont facilities?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yeah. Later in this document, you'll see that we provide a piece of information that says it's 300 and I think $3, they're $3.13, that in state is 313.69 and times $3.65, it's approximately 114 ks. Thank you. The out of state is a third of that, it's 103, so that's 38 ks per year for the out of state. But I do want to note that our in state per person cost does not decrease with out of state. It actually technically goes up our in state cost is fixed by the number of facilities we have. There's some nominal decrease in food. There's some nominal decrease in ADP with regard to WellPath. We avoid penalties by having more people than we're supposed to have. But overall, the bulk of that cost is our staff who work the facilities and the infrastructure of the facilities themselves. And that does not change when we send a person out. So, we don't reduce the $3.13 per day by sending people to the place where it's only 103 per day.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And we're not and a lot of people like to compare those two numbers. Right. Say, well, it's so cheaper out of state. Why aren't we doing it? But you can't compare because so you're not comparing apples to apples.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: It is not. The cost of living is vastly different. The size of the facility is vastly different. The economies of scale that our partner CoreCivic realizes are vastly different. And then the other piece too, is that we do, the people who end up going out of state tend to be stable, healthy individuals. And that too has an effect on what we

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And you don't provide the programming down there as you do up here as much.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: As much, but we strive to try to make that as fulsome as possible. Not fulsome, as as full as possible. Right.

[Rep. Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: And, Joe? So I I I appreciate that distinction, commissioner. So the only way that that would you would actually be able to affect that three thirteen figures in part at one of the facilities in in part or whole of close. That would be that would be a systematic change.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I I yes. If we if we had fewer people, that is staff, if we had fewer staff and less overhead, that could change that rate, but it would also potentially increase it initially. There could be a real change in the per person, you know? So, yes, it's largely fixed by the costs that we have.

[Rep. Joseph “Joe” Luneau (Member)]: But short of something like that, your costs are likely fixed, I understand. Yes. By facilities and and staff and those facilities.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: And I just wanna make sure I heard right.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: So the annual cost in states, 114,000 per person? $3.03 $13.69 $3.13.69 times $3.65 is just under, I believe, it's approximately 114. Out of state is 38. Out of state is 103.59 per day. And again, times $3.65, that's approximately 38 ks per year. Yeah, slide 11, Kevin. I accidentally jumped.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Say again. I asked him that question too early.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yeah, is on page 11.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Thought I heard it. I just wanted to make sure I heard the right thing.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But you can't compare them because it's not apples to apples. That was what was just explained. I know it's very seductive to say, Oh, well, Ben, we can ship folks out of state and save a lot of money. But we're sending the healthier folks out there. They don't have as much programming. And there's a larger facility, so the cost is spread out.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Vendor versus staff portions back, I apologize, back to the questions about electronic monitoring on page seven. Vendor versus staff cost is difficult to sort of outline. Our staff costs are personnel and they do. The vendors are parts of contracts, and it's not an extra costs, the contract with the vendor for providing the tools. We provide the monitoring of the tools. And then how does it reduce facility use? Well, again, that's not a determination made by DOC, of course. This is a determination made generally by the parole board or by the court in the first place as a probation measure, so that they would say, We're not gonna incarcerate you at all. We're giving you probation, but it's a probation that involves either GPS or SCRAM, or the parole board says, We have determined that you can be out and about in the public, but you're not ready to be out there on your own yet, so here you go and you get monitoring. And then that becomes the burden of our probation and parole staff who are really good at this work. But it is a way to have fewer people in facilities.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But, and I don't wanna get into the weeds of electronic monitoring. There's active supervision of electronic monitoring and there's passive. That's correct. And the difference is active is those actual time that something may be happening, and there's a response there. Passive is you might find out the next day that they violated something. Yes. So that's the minutiae. We don't want to get into too much.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: With your permission moving on to food services and associated questions on page nine. Okay, wait, I'm sorry. There are some ups and downs on page eight. My apologies, moving through it. These are operating expenses. We did discuss these ups previously. And

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay. So some of this is, like I'm looking 2,200,000.0 for ADS, that's part of all your IT systems.

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Yeah, that's our chart, service level agreement.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Software licenses. While we're into software and IT and ADS, where are we in terms of your whole electronic system upgrade, your IT system upgrade? We tried to get your money through the broadband board.

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: So Wi Fi. Wi Fi. Yeah. It's a great question, Chair. We've set up meetings with ADS that are biweekly as a check-in on the project, and we're currently working with them on an updated cost estimate, which they believe should be relatively easier to do since they've already done a very comprehensive one that they just update from the pages of the last couple of years.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we were what dollar figure last year, 3,000,000?

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: Yes, around that. It's slightly higher now, 8%.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Only gonna go up. Yeah, that's true. That and your air conditioning. So your two biggest infrastructure upgrades. Then the women's facility. And the women's which we have talked about so far.

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Okay.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Anything else on this chart for the committee? Let's flip it to food service.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: The question was, do we does the Vermont EOC use an in house contract or hybrid? It's a hybrid model for our food services inside our facilities. We contract with Trinity Services Group, and that includes meal planning and recipes and training and inspections and dietitian services and making certain that caloric amounts are sufficient, making certain that we have, for example, food that is provided to people, it's Ramadan, and we need to make certain that we provide food both before and after fast in ways that are accessible for folks who are observing religiously. We also need to ensure that the caloric intake is good once the period of fast is over. So that's one example of religious diet that we work on and ensure we provide. We have two primary food vendors, Reinhart and PrimeSource, but we also have partnerships with local farms, food processors, orchards. We harvest from our facility gardens, and our facilities tend to have gardens, people can grow food that actually gets served to other members of the facility community. This is a place where we have found a little bit of common ground with the federal administration through the MAHA movement and the ideas about improved food and local grown food that was applicable, and I believe it was a component of the Rural Health Transformation Grant. We talked a little bit about that. As part of AHS, we contributed to the state's application to that grant. Obviously there are many places, especially with regard to things like vaccination, etcetera, where we don't agree with that movement, but people replace where we found common ground. With regard to performance standards, we have inspections, etcetera, through the services, and we have also that grievance process. And so I know I sign all those grievances once they're reviewed by our legal team, and a fair number of them have to do with things like, I did not get an extra serving, or I feel that I did not have enough of this or enough of that. And so we have a review and a process for assuring that we're meeting those standards as well. So that's, I think, the bulk of that page. Page 10 is another set of ups and downs specific to justice reinvestment, and then some out of state services, etcetera, and changes there. The big one that you see at first is the $100,000 of forensic, but that actually is sort of a wash, and it was moved just to

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: a different line. It's for mental health, it's Department of Mental Health. The

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: out of state amount, which is there in section B-three 39, that was increased because we did increase the number of people out of state. At the beginning of the calendar year, we had about 120 or so. And that is the number that it really, it had hovered at about that since the pandemic. Ten years prior to the pandemic, or not ten, but eight years prior to the pandemic, there were as many as almost 500 out of state, but we had gotten to a place where it was about 100 to 120 and had been for the better part of half a decade. This year, we sent the first very large transport that we had in the better part of half a decade and sent 30 people down. We currently have just 150 or just over 150 out of state, and that required additional funds. Our agreement, excuse me, our agreement with CoreCivic allows us to have a total of 300, but we don't pay them for people that aren't there. So we had to get additional funding owing to the fact that we did send 30 people out of state to increase the population down there from 120 to 150. If we were to send more, we would also have to find additional budget. It is not currently our intention to send more, but it is a valve that is available to us if we see population increase the way we did in calendar year 2025.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So this 4,000,000 is on top of what?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: That's it. That's that's it.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's it? Yes. So it's 4,000,000, and you're anticipating is that based on about a 150 beds? What's your anticipation?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yes. That is based on maintaining a a 150 beds out of state.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I'm gonna throw you a curveball. You know what's rattling around this building? It's a forensic unit. That would be in a wing in a correctional facility. We don't know what the numbers of folks would be.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: But how would you absorb those folks in a wing in a correctional facility? Would it put more pressure to move them out of state? Don't currently see it as absorbing additional people. The folks that are specifically addressed by the forensics bill are people who are already in our custody. So for example, in the past half decade, there have been nine really horrific murders in the state of Vermont, allegedly committed by six perpetrators, all of whom meet the definition described in the bill that's been proposed. Six individuals who've been accused of these very horrific crimes are currently not competent to stand trial, but they are in our custody. They are all being charged with crimes that are, for lack of a better term, capital. We don't have a death penalty in Vermont, but they are crimes that could result in a life imprisonment. They're in our custody. What we are not currently doing as we hold them in custody is attempting to restore that competency in any measurable or specific way. And what the forensics bill really envisions is a process by which that attempt at restoring competency is made. We would therefore have to contract with some provider. WellPath does provide similar services in other states, but that's not something that we've yet breached because the law is not yet made. There would have to be a mechanism whereby a failure to achieve competency were evaluated and then reevaluated? Is this something that could be indefinite? And there are situations where it might be. There are also other situations, such as people whose competency hinges on issues around TBIs, traumatic brain injuries, or competency hinges on issues around developmental delays that are not really things you can restore, and we're gonna have to sort of grapple with that. But insofar as the change to our population, we don't actually see it as one. What this will do is it will remove some of the current sort of yo yo effect of people who are charged with these horrible crimes, have not yet been convicted of these, and may never be convicted of these horrible crimes, but also are not currently competent to stand trial, the yo yo effect is that they sometimes are in our custody and then they can get moved out and then they can get moved back. This solidifies it and says, no, the place where they will stay when they're credibly accused of crimes of this nature is with the Department of Corrections. And the Department of Corrections will then participate in some mechanism of attempting to restore competency. It is not up to the department or should not be up to the department to evaluate that competency and determine it. That is a court determination, but providing the medical treatment, and by medical, I mean therapeutic and psychiatric, but by providing that kind of treatment in order to get a person to return to competency, that would be under our aegis. It's not a change. We don't anticipate there being new people and we don't anticipate using any kind of different facility. These are people who would be housed as they currently are, as again, all six of those individuals accused of those terrible nine murders in Vermont over the past half decade are in our custody now and don't require a specialized wing. We keep them in sometimes specialized unit in different kinds of housing, but not by themselves and not with other people that are accused or sentenced and who also have mental health issues. So I'm

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: gonna lay the groundwork because we'll be getting into that after the March. We are at work in April.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yes, ma'am. Well then moving to page 11, which we actually sort of already basically tackled, which is the out of state contract and the nature of I do want to note what's in that sort of smaller text next to the square inner bullet. Even with the contract, we are currently looking at 150% of gen pop beds in our male facilities and 130% of gen pop in our female facility, and that is really striking. That is not the same as saying that we're that far over total capacity, but it means that we are well past what the profession recommends, which is 80% of gen pop beds. That is what you want. You want to be at 80% of GenPOP. Right now, for example, at the facility in Mississippi, we are at 50% of our allocated beds. And that means that everybody there has a single cell. And that means that we are able to, what we don't count in that bed count, for example, is the fact that at any given moment, some of those individuals in Mississippi may have to be in specialized housing because they've committed disciplinary infractions, or in the infirmary because they have had a medical event that can be handled inside the facility. We don't wanna count those specialized beds as beds because we need them available for when these unique situations happen, disciplinary issue, health issue. That's why we really want to maintain 100% or less of our gen pop beds, and we are well past that in our facilities.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's why we ship folks out of state.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: It is, but even with that shipping, we are still where we are with regard to overcapacity or

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

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's creating the pressure on that is the high number of detainees.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: That is correct.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What's our number of detainees today? Ballpark. Oh, it's not a ballpark.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I can tell you the number.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: It's 653 total.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes. Thank you. It's going up, not by ten or fifteen, but by fifty and one hundred.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Well, on Friday, it was at 06:46, and today it's six fifty. So we are seeing an increase. The women's facility is back over 180 for total population, which is absolutely shocking and untenable. So, you know, Representative Headrick has asked this question before, sort of what is our line? We don't have a bright line, but I will say that if we spent the entirety of March at 180, we would have to drastically think about how to reduce that female population or move parts of that female population. Staying at 180 for any length of time is not acceptable with regard to what we want to provide insofar as safe, secure, and compassionate housing. Moving on to 12, some additional Well, actually, there's not a lot of activity on that one. I don't know if it's about the offender work program, if anybody wants to talk about it. The bullets on the following page 13 get at some of those questions, and we can talk a little bit about what we were We were not certain about the data that we provided you in the last meeting, but we are now.

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Well, the data so what we went for a new budgeting system in the state, and we think in the budget system that was used to be with Vantage and then the new ones adapted. There were two positions that in November, if you don't use your positions, they sweep them, and they take them back to the higher pool for the whole state. Two positions out of that four were taken in November. We think it just didn't make the cutoff for adaptive, so that's why the reporting was off and showing actually the amount for four. I checked with AHS fiscal, and our payroll system only shows two positions now, which it should because the two were swept away. So that's why the reporting for the payroll was off. We think it was between the the switch from one system to another and the fact that the sweep took place sometime in November, towards the November.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Those two vacant positions were pulled completely

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Pulled to the pool, and that's a standard process.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: For the vacancy pool?

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Yes. For the whole state.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the money still goes with them?

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: Well, it should go with them. Yes. So even though it it reports it at that amount, the reality is we don't have that because that's controlled by the department. That's calculated within your budget? It shows it in the budget, but because we don't have the positions, that means that the payroll, that money did slide over to To those those positions.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: And I think just sure. But the money's still there to spend if you had to, or it's been transferred to

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: It's been transferred. It just shows it in that report and in the budget. So it's really not correct.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: And that is you know, again, that did not get at every single question that was posed in that Did document.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I appreciate the work that you did. It was a lot of work.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: So I would ask, if there are things that we did not get to that you really do want to know, could you flag those for us?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yep. Yep. We can do that. I think folks are a little fried right now.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I blame them.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But this has been very helpful. I really do appreciate the work that you did to answer those questions.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I sort of need a remedial ignorance picture here. So those two positions and the money associated with them were swept in November to some level that I don't understand. So where are those two positions now listed or available or whatever?

[Marlene Baty (Executive Director of Finance, Vermont DOC)]: They go state level. So what the state does is any positions that sit vacant for any length of time, they take them, thinking that you don't need them. And then those positions and the monies go to the state pool. So when people ask for positions, if there's any available and and they decide that they're supposed to have it or whatever, they go through that process. But they're not ours. They were actually taken.

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

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Anything else? Because we're gonna break for lunch and then be back here at 01:00 talking about telephone communications within DOC. DOC's been living in our room here for a while.

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: But just a reminder, we're gonna be a house judiciary at that time. So I don't know where it's gonna sign here. Yeah.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And John's got a new draft that he's

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: going to

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, it's just that.

[Unidentified DOC staff (possibly “Haley”)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm luckiest John. No. Oh, our eagle Okay.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: No, you didn't even see. I was like, I don't know. I'm an eagle.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Same way. But he's our guy. You after You know, when we get back here in March, we'll have one week. The first week back is crossover. So any policy bills that we have, we have to get it out by the end of the week. After that, DOC won't be in here as much because we're going to shift gears to the capitol

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: bill. Then

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: will come away. And then once the bills get over to the Senate, you may end up spending more time over there, but we don't know for that. Chelsea. Chelsea. So let's break, and we'll be back.