Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: See you back in here.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Here you live.

[Speaker 0]: I missed you. He's got that smile. Well, he may not have missed us. Welcome, folks. This is House Corrections and Institutions Committee. It is February the Thursday, February 26. We're going to be knocking with our council, John Gray, on a draft 1.1 on H294. And before we get started on that, John, I just wanna shift gears a little bit for the capital bill.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay.

[Speaker 0]: And I don't know what your time frame is. Sure. But we'll probably be getting into markup for the capital bill. And maybe a little bit on the week we come back. Not sure yet because we still have a lot of corrections things, but definitely the following week.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So

[Speaker 0]: whenever you have

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: On a draft.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. It might be good to start working on a draft because it's set up very different than the draft of

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And last

[Speaker 0]: I just don't want you to be caught at the last minute doing whatever. But I don't know how long we'll be spending in markup. I think we still have a lot of moving pieces to deal with on that.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sounds good.

[Speaker 0]: One thing, I know John has incorporated some language here based on our conversation yesterday. And also, I want to give Troy a chance to kind of lay the groundwork a little bit because Troy had some thoughts on how we could move forward with the telecom services and corrections. So you want to give

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: us an update on what you

[Speaker 0]: were thinking?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, let me just start with some sincere gratitude for the work that this committee has put into this topic. I know I come in with some pretty big ideas about corrections reform

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: And we love it.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: That are important to me. And I want to thank the committee for not just enduring me, but really digging in and wondering with me. So I truly have appreciated that. Think it became apparent to me, I don't know, at some point over the past eight weeks, that getting in this budget climate, getting anything that actually turned into a no cost calls or a real divestment from the prison profit industry was not going to happen, because it would have taken some cash, probably around $500,000 alone for a telecom. I started thinking about what a pivot would look like, where I could keep this topic alive and ready to tee off if I'm reelected and come back next year. So spoiler alert for those of us in this room.

[Speaker 0]: You're running again.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: No, I don't. For those who might be in this room again next year, I'm not letting it go. But I want to start with some real evaluative data and projections that might help this conversation for anybody who might want to consider it. I had given I'm sorry I wasn't here yesterday, because I know that was a rich and robust conversation. Opened another can of worms with this amendment that I'm doing across the hall. You have foes? No. Sorry, dad. So, yeah, I apologize for not being part of that conversation. But I had already drafted what a pivot would look like, what an evaluation would look like, an evaluation option to the telecom, especially. And I had given some of that language to Alice, and I gave it to John after your meeting last night. So to John's credit, I'm really glad he began with your testimony, because think that's a much better way to start this. So I'm new, a little fresh yet on reading the outcomes of what you all talked about yesterday that John turned into a new statute. And I'm still marrying that with my original thoughts on what an evaluation project would look like. So that's going to be spinning in my head as we do that. I'll be thinking and talking a lot at the same time. And that often doesn't work out well for me.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Is that what a whirling doerfish is?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. So, yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: So, John, I'm going to turn it over to you. So

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: John Gray, office of legislative counsel. Really helpful intro and very helpful material from representative Headrick. Just to state the obvious here, nothing about the differences in the language that you see here and in representative Headrick's proposal that he shared somewhat is a rejection of anything in representative Headrick's. Basically, process that I took to arrive at the language that you're going see today is I took the testimony that you guys provided yesterday, the tone of the discussion that I was hearing, tried to encapsulate the list of concerns that you guys had talked about, and then I leveraged the material that Representative Headrick provided to capture those things, basically. But it's just a starting place for discussion. And as we talked about yesterday, this isn't even in the form of an amendment. It's only addressing a single section of H two ninety four. It's just addressing the telecommunications piece. And as you know, there's additional pieces of that bill. So this is just concept for the DOC report evaluating telecommunications alternative models. And with that, screen share. You'll see a nice watermark on this just to confirm how drafty this is. Tried to make this as simple as possible while capturing yesterday's concerns. So this is a section law provision. It's creating a reporting requirement for the Department of Corrections to evaluate alternative telecommunication services and report to the committees of jurisdictions. So subsection A sets out the timeline. I chose an arbitrary date. Sets It out the relevant committees to which this report would be submitted on or before 12/01/2026. Just thinking you want this in advance of the next legislative session, but you could choose a different date here. DOC shall provide to House Committee on Corrections and Institutions and the Senate Committee on Institutions a written report evaluating options for providing no cost telecommunication services to inmates in state correctional facilities. That and then there's an enumerated set of directive that DOC would follow within this report, what needs to be contained here. There could be more, but you need to at least have these things. So first, the thinking here is if you're going to have a comparative aspect, you need to know what the existing structure is to determine any cost differences, any benefits that might accrue from doing an alternative. So the first section isn't about alternatives. It's just describe the current telecommunication service model, including usage rates, costs, and contract terms under the existing provider arrangements. So this would give you the base from which to make comparisons. Subdivision two, which is on line nine, is just identifying and describing what the alternatives would be. Describe alternative options for providing telecommunication services, including, and the two callouts that I recall from yesterday and in representing the Fedrick's material, is including through nonprofit providers, like the testimony you heard a few weeks ago, or as a regulated public utility. So one is describing current state of affairs. Two is saying, what are the alternatives? Subdivision three, analyze the cost to the state of each alternative and then include specific kinds of costs in this fiscal analysis that would need to be in the report. So one, subdivision A, startup and transition costs. B, ongoing operational and administrative costs. So what are your upfront, and then what do you have perpetually? C, cost comparisons to the current model, which would have been described in your first subdivision. D, the impacts on department budgets. E, if there are anticipated changes in service usage and volume. I think you've heard testimony that with free services, there's an uptick. Does that stabilize over time? And F, any anticipated benefits or savings? And in particular, this does include a call out from Representative Headrick's material, including reasonably, and I added the qualifier here, but including reasonably ascertainable societal or public safety impact. So if those could be readily determined, basically, beyond dollar figures, you could include those as well as a benefit of a particular alternative. So again, one is just calling out what's the current structure, two is what are the alternatives, three is cost analysis for each, four, this is a particular piece that had a good bit of airtime yesterday, evaluating the options for mitigating the costs associated with alternatives, including through limitations on usage. So there was a discussion around whether there should be unlimited free service or might you cap. As you can imagine, there would be different ways to cap. It might be a cap within a particular time period, over a particular time period. There's all kinds of ways that you could introduce limitations, so what should be considered there? Lastly, on page two, identify implementation, operational, and transition considerations for each alternative, including administrative, technological, and contractual requirements. What are the hurdles that are going to have to be jumped through to pursue any of these? What kinds of operational changes would be required? What kind of timeline? Any required statutory, regulatory, or policy updates? Before we get to B, the thing I did want to flag about the whole structure of this report is the sense I had from the tone yesterday is there was a question asked about outright recommendations or whether these are considerations being provided by the department. And the way I was reading the room is that there was an appetite for considerations as opposed to the DOC taking a particular position, but just know that that is the way that the report is structured is identifying considerations, giving a list essentially of options, telling what the cost would be, and then it'd be up to the legislature. I mean, it's always up to the legislature what to do, but in this case, it would be up to the legislature to sort among those options. But you could pursue a different structure where you actually outright ask for recommendations. Subsection B is the loosest part of that. I wasn't sure how built out to make this role, but I knew that there was an appetite to include justice oversight. So subsection B says A speaks to the report that's provided by a particular date, and B says DOC is to provide regular updates on that evaluation of alternative models to the Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee for their analysis and input. It doesn't mandate a particular amount of participation. The thing I was trying to balance in drafting this is keeping this housed within DOC. It's a DOC report, but how to include justice oversight. And so this just says regularly update and there will be analysis and input. As we know, justice oversight overlooks DOC in the first instance, so I don't know the extent to which they would be receiving reports on this in the first place. If we keep going down this path or depending on appetite, one way to approach this might be to think about the other kinds of updates that Justice Oversights receives on other programs ongoing and looking for the statutory language that backs those up, or if there's an informal agreement on those fronts, just thinking about how to integrate them into the process. That's the whole of the proposal here, but again, just a starting point for what I heard yesterday, essentially.

[Speaker 0]: I think it's a good starting point. There

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: is one small thing that came up yesterday, and I think Kelly concurred. And that is, if what's left in the discretionary rec fund, If the people making a decision on how that gets spent would be able to consider telecom, which I don't wouldn't I think it was your idea, John, actually. But that wouldn't cost anybody anything. If some folks want to direct and it's not a lot, but we might be able to direct some telecom availability over vis a vis the direct fund.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If you wanted to include something like this, you could include it in the cost analysis, although it might belong in subdivision five for implementation considerations. And it could essentially you could add a general call out of a new subdivision e that says something like methods of offsetting costs to the department, including and then use of rec funds or something along those lines.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: There are

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: folks who are on to. That's not a fantasy, and I know that's not the end goal of this bill. But in the interim, there might be some added telecom availability to some of the folks who are housing corrections. It would be up to them. So you'd say, hey. You know, I'm I'm paraphrasing, but, you know, do you guys wanna buy, you know, what, video game consoles, or would you like to direct some of that towards telecom for for others?

[Speaker 0]: How much is left over? Because it goes to pay for the rec directors and all the facilities.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Yeah. So How

[Speaker 0]: much is left over?

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: It it varies. It's broken down by by facility. And we have those numbers, but it's somewhere the actual discretionary, it's somewhere in the vicinity of $1,520,000 dollars per facility. I think it varies a little bit because obviously the facility don't have the same same counts.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah. How how would you divvy that up? Do you think, Joe? I'm just trying to think through that. Like, would it be like an equal amount on everybody's, you know, or is it a cap that you hit? I'm just thinking like the equity issue about some people making way more phone calls than others. Right?

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know and I think a key element there would be that the the there is some input from inmates on how that's spent and that that would have to be a decision that they would make and that's I'm not sure. Yeah. I'm not sure. But just just for it to be an options, I don't think it is an option for them right now. Maybe they would want that instead of a couple of volleyballs.

[Speaker 0]: It's something to look at. Doesn't

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: This is all something to look at. What do you think, Troy?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: That's that's a big question, Mary. Are some questions? What do you think, Troy? I'm going to get a little philosophical, and it's not anything that will surprise anybody. For me, this question is more than a fiscal question. It's a values based question. So this won't surprise anybody, but I think we overuse incarceration. And I think when a state determines that we're going to take away the liberty of somebody, that creates an obligation. And if we want to call incarceration rehabilitative, that's a very values based approach to incarceration. And it's not merely warehousing folks at the cheapest cost. I think that's abhorrent. So as I was kind of making this pivot, I think I really try to infuse a values based, how does Vermont do corrections? And one of the ways that Vermont might want to think about doing corrections is with a mind of how do we keep people connected to their circles of support. Telecommunications is one way we do that. So I think a findings and an intent section on this is going to be important. What is our intent for exploring telecommunications? We can collectively scratch our heads on that if you'd like. The information I gave to Alice and John now has some thoughts on that. But they're my thoughts. And there's a lot of privilege that associates with being the person who's doing the writing. So I want to acknowledge that. I think a deliberate stakeholder consultation, portion, so Department of Public Service. I am really I had not thought about the public utilities component of this until the chair brought it up. And I'd I'd like to know a little bit more about how do we regulate telecom within our correctional facilities, so the Department of Public Service, perhaps the state treasurer, joint fiscal. I think we have to consult with nonprofit telecom providers. I am very interested in ending our reliance on the for profit prison industry, very interested in that. I don't think we should be profiting when we decide to incarcerate people. I think we should consult with families and incarcerated Vermonters, people with lived experience. I think we should be talking to reentry orgs about how would a more robust commitment to keeping folks connected impact reentry. And I think our own Princeton Research Innovation Network folks are so accessible to us, and I think we underutilized that. So I think there is some room for stakeholder consultation in here. I want to see more reference to equity concerns, specifically the impacts on incarcerated individuals and families when we don't have their access to communications. I want to hear more about how did you frame it? More consult rather than recommendations. Yeah. Whether they're presenting considerations for the legislature to choose among alternatives or if the department's taking a particular position on this is the way to do it. We think this is the most feasible. It's hard for me to fall back to a study always. It's especially hard in this one because but again, pragmatically, I know a nonprofit, no cost calls, calls isn't leaving this committee room or this building any time during this session. So moving from analysis to more of an actual proposal. And then information I had given also included some wage impact evaluation that I don't think was included in a report that we were given in December. So I sweep that into my proposal as well, like a little reminder of, hey, we're still looking for this, too. So that's the big umbrella. I have details on all of this, as you can imagine. But I've been thinking about this pivot a lot longer than the committee has.

[Speaker 0]: Fox?

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Didn't sound unreasonable to incorporate some of that into the draft we have, Rich.

[Speaker 0]: Troy, do you want to I've got your email here. You want me to forward that to the committee so that they can

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's four and a half pages. So

[Speaker 0]: No, this I'm not

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, My it's little draft?

[Speaker 0]: Well, I'm looking what you

[Conor Casey (Member)]: did.

[Speaker 0]: It's interesting.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Do have any terms?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: He has he has defined terms. He's got defined terms.

[Speaker 0]: I'm looking at your your email.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I know account.

[Speaker 0]: Room here.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So that's what I was just reading from.

[Speaker 0]: That's what you were reading from.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm wondering if it

[Speaker 0]: would be worth sending to the committee so they know what your thoughts are.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You can send the actual document if you want, but that's Deserve judgment. I'll defer to the chair. The one thing I offer, if you go down the path of doing findings, is you will want to just back them up to ensure that you have the empirical backing, which just to note, it may require some time. It may not require much time, but just knowing that building out that kind of provision is different than other kinds of.

[Speaker 0]: But, you know, I'm just thinking if this to go I think it would be very helpful to bring it before the Justice Oversight Committee. I really do. I think you'd I think to do that would be by put a date in instead of regular updates. I would put something October 15 or something, and then or September 15, something like that. Because then it gives the committee time to possibly do more testimony on it, possibly make a recommendation.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep. And conceivably, under the deadline that's currently set, it's a deadline just for the due date of the report. So technically, DOC could wait until November to start doing it. And then the regular updates would be over the course of one month rather than

[Speaker 0]: I would do that. I think if we had I don't know if it'd be, I guess it would, would we have legislative intent instead of a finding to kind of encapsulate why we're looking at this? What are the underlying factors that are at play here? And what's the underlying goal that we're looking at? Because I'm on a Joint Justice Civil Site Committee, and this isn't in their house. This topic's not on their horizon. They're not aware of this at all. So that's why I'm thinking if there was an intent language or something to kind of phrase why we're looking at this will help gauge the conversation and can help folks focus. But I wouldn't go into a lot of detail.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Can't I think the intent gets at that value space sort of why question that's important to me.

[Speaker 0]: Kevin? Which

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: is where I was sort of going. I can think of at least two goals or motivations for doing something like this. You probably have a longer list than I do. The two that come to my mind is we want to reduce your citizenship, whatever the new definition is, and we want to reduce the risk of incarcerated population and or those who are managing them from conflict. There may be others. Right. But those goals have to be weighed against the cost of this added feature of incarceration. Because where I do wanna see rehabilitation as much as possible there's still a component of you made choices and you ended up where you are. It's not that we just chose to take your liberty away from you because we don't like you. You made choices. Now, you're living with the results of your choices. So, that's that's the balancing act that I think the public is going to expect us to do to rationalize half million, million dollars a year, the telephone services across state of Vermont. So, I guess bottom line is, I think we need to upfront understand what goals we are aiming for and how we can measure that through this pilot program. Or this, not pilot program,

[Speaker 0]: this analysis. Evaluation. Other folks?

[Brian Minier (Member)]: Yeah, should we just jump in or do want a handshake? What's your

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah,

[Speaker 0]: scope for it.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: I don't know. I'm thinking about that, Kevin. First of all, I do think there are

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: more than two, but in

[Brian Minier (Member)]: a way, who cares what the number is? But are going to be wider knock on effects, not just in jail when they're out of jail, but also to their families when they're in jail. How is their kid being brought up if they have one?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't think we're going to be

[Brian Minier (Member)]: able to quantify these things in a way that might feel satisfying. I'm just going be able to make a case. Well, yeah, there's something else I still got

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to work on. I'll leave that there for now.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: And I would agree with you that it'll be difficult. But if we can't rationalize why more money over the $114,000 per person is being spent.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: But I think we just have. I'm sorry? But I think we just have. I think you're using rationalize in a different way than I am perhaps.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: We have. And

[Brian Minier (Member)]: I guess then another question is, if we are to the degree that we're talking about numbers, is it more satisfying wherever you are to your position? What if we said phone calls are

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: free but not video calls? You know what I mean? Like, is

[Brian Minier (Member)]: that the kind of thing that you're looking for?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yeah, there's levels. No doubt about it. But if can't quantify the benefit of an additional expense, I don't think we're doing our job. I don't think we

[Brian Minier (Member)]: can quantify the benefit of recreation. I don't think we can quantify the benefit of recreation and say it's worth $1,000 or $1,000,000

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: and see you can pull that too.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: You can keep pulling things if you can't count the result. You know what I mean?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Now I'm going on a tangent. Right now, our education in Vermont is almost at the top of The United States Of America, but our results are not. Feels We like kept we've adding and adding and adding, and I'm just concerned that we might be doing that here. So, if we can't measure the effectiveness, then we're going to find ourselves in the same situation we are like we are with education as an example.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: Education is a very large ball

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: of wax that I've learned a fair

[Brian Minier (Member)]: bit about and I don't think we can solve this.

[Speaker 0]: You don't want to go here, Brian.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I'm simply using it as an example of why I think we need to be able to measure or at least project what we think the benefit is for the cost. That's all. Because individual cells could be a better use of money than giving us communication as an example.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: I fear that we may end up unsuccessfully measuring the wrong things in

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: the wrong way. I don't know how to do it. I'm just saying I think that needs to be our goal as legislators. Otherwise, we're just throwing money at feel good things. And I'm not saying this is just feel good. I'm just saying if we can't measure it, think it's gonna be hard to rationalize it to the voting public because the voting public is bleeding over taxes. We're losing population for many reasons, but that's a big one. And if population continues to decline in Vermont, we will never fix the problem or we'll simply be pulling in holes forever, which is not a good way to make progress.

[Speaker 0]: Gina and Beth Conor?

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: I don't think there's any way to quantify the impact of communication on a given population. There's just no way to quantify that. I think that you can definitely make a solid argument that people that maintain connections with their family and folks that are outside of the DOC has an immeasurable impact on folks being able to reintegrate. And I think that's one of those things that you just have to trust in that, in this situation. And I completely respect what you're saying, but you can't make the comparison to outcomes in education to something like this because you're talking about something that's just not quantifiable, but the impacts can be beyond anything that you could imagine. If you've got somebody that's coming back into the community, that's maintained relationships with people, their success rate, I just don't think it takes a lot of hard analysis to understand that those folks are going to do better when they're released, if they're able to maintain those relationships. And I totally agree. We have to be able to justify our costs a lot of things, but I just don't think that there's a way to get a metric for this. I think you just have to trust that folks are better off if they can maintain relationships with family and peers and other members of the community coming out of incarceration. And it's certainly willing to have conversation with you on many other things. Think we could cut DFC, but that's a different conversation. But I think that this one is something that really creates a continuity that you can't put a price tag on.

[Speaker 0]: Conor, then James?

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Can quantify it going from a different angle here, right? So, a household in America with an incarcerated loved one in it, on average loses about $22,000 a year, right? These are generally low income families. So, for me, it's very easy to quantify how much we're paying until it comes because it's not the inmate paying, it's generally their families. It's not a perfect sync up. But if they're paying another couple grand on that, we're putting a tax on the people who can least afford us. The people you're talking about, Kevin, right? Low income Vermonters are getting taxed by this status quo, and we can remedy that with this. So just from another angle, I'm taking the inmate out of it and taking other families.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: James? Okay, so on a quantifiable aspect, you can actually quantify it. There's probably nothing in human history that has not been studied, including this. I don't know if there's a ton, but there are studies about decisions and many other issues. You can go to different organizations. I mean, you guys can look

[Conor Casey (Member)]: it up, but you can

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: just type into Google. It's there. Whether or not we agree with an outcome or not, whether it's quantitative, qualitative, blah, blah, blah, go out through all the peer reviewed, etcetera. But there's a lot of research that's been done on this issue and every other. And what the information he tends to say is that the outside communication does in fact, and we heard this the other day, have a benefit as far as better behavior and outcomes. Whether that is actually true, I don't know, but that's what people found, and more than one. So that's my gibberish on that.

[Speaker 0]: So one thing that Kevin said that might resonate was a decrease in the risk of conflict. And one thing that I think is really important for folks who are living in an enclosed environment, because folks who are incarcerated are living in an enclosed environment. It's like us being on this floor twenty fourseven, three sixty five days a year with very little outside rep. That's what it's about. And you're living with people that get along with and people you don't get along with, but you're also being supervised by folks. And that's where all your conflicts can come in. And for folks who have limited access to the outside world, And they can keep connected through telephone, through video, whatever it may be, brings down the level of anxiety in that living situation. And it brings down the level of anxiety with our staff. So it's a real management tool for our correctional staff to ensure the security of the facility, as well as security of the folks who are incarcerated. If those folks who don't have access to the outside world know that at least they can connect with spouse, their partner, their kids, their parents, their grandparents will decrease that level of anxiety and conflict through the whole system. And I think we have to remember that. It can be used also as a management tool for DOC. Staff needs that. Troy?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I wanna wanna encourage a paradigm shift, and I wanna do it with the and I wasn't here for the conversation, so I I don't wanna misrepresent it. But I know the conversation and I haven't watched it. I know the conversation got into CAPS, right? Yeah, CAPS. CAPS,

[Speaker 0]: CAPS. CAPS,

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: yeah. And I want us to be deliberate about realizing that how we think of telecommunication access historically in corrections is typically a pay phone, a phone in a common area, and how telecommunications has changed in 2026. I pay a flat rate to Verizon. Myself, my wife, and still one of my kids get to make unlimited texts. So so when I wanna call my daughter, sometimes I call. Sometimes I FaceTime her. Sometimes I text her. Doesn't matter. I still pay the same amount of Verizon every month. The current telecommunications model is stuck in that old sort of it's going to cost you x amount of dollars for every minute you make contact with your loved one. Right? I'm gonna repeat something I've already said in this committee. At an average incarcerated hourly wage of 65¢ an hour, which is the average incarcerated wage for incarcerated Vermonters, A fifteen minute phone call costs nearly forty minutes of labor. A thirty minute video call based on our current contracts costs more than seven hours of labor. And sending 10 messages per week costs nearly four hours of labor. Thirteen hours of labor to maintain modest communications with the people who might be my circles of support. That's the old model. That's what we're locked into. When we look at this as an unearned benefit, which I think is erroneous, to the people we incarcerate versus a 2026 model of how everybody else in the world communicates based on a monthly feed of Verizon, that's where I want the paradigm shift. And again, back to the values place, how does Vermont want to do incarceration? I'm not saying let's get rid of incarceration. I'm happy to have that conversation if we want to do that. But how does Vermont do incarceration? What are the values that we attach to the process by which we decide to take the liberty away from somebody? That's where my head is when I'm talking about why these changes are so important.

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: You bring up a really excellent point.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I often do. The

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: fact of the matter is, I think it's fantastic that you're on board with privatizing telecommunications within I have a nonprofit option. Clearly, Verizon would be doing it better for your family. We should be able to put this out to bid and find somebody in the private sector that's able to bring the cost down on this across the board.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Happens to be a nonprofit provider as well.

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: Oh, and they're making money too, Troy. Don't kid yourself.

[Speaker 0]: So where are we headed here? Are folks

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: My thoughts are headed here.

[Speaker 0]: People supportive of some paragraph or so of intent language or not?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yes.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, sure. Sure. So what should be some of the language in that intent language? And that will help John draft something up. We have a lot of faith in you, John.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you. I don't know that I appreciate it, but Was it

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: If I may, just think we've, stating the obvious, we don't have unlimited funds for the DOC. So, our job is to figure out the best use of the funds that we're going to spend. And maybe one way to do that, as simple and maybe stupid as it is, is to say, okay, population, you could have air conditioning or you could have WiFi or you could have free telephones. We would like to give more, but we don't have unlimited funds. So, what is the most value to you? I mean, that's the kind of analysis I really think we need to do as opposed to, well, yes, of course, this is gonna be helpful. I'm not against telecommunication. I'm not against providing it at at at no cost. But I think our fundamental responsibility is to balance all of these good ways of spending money and come up with the best way because it's not unlimited funding. That's all I'm saying. Because I agree. There's great value in this. And although there's gonna be some families, they don't wanna talk to So their that's gonna be inequitable from

[Speaker 0]: some perspective. Still That was a personal decision.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, that's not Well, it's a personal decision

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: that put them into the incarcerated situation partly. I know there's other factors, but those were personal decisions they made, too. Because we don't incarcerate, won't go any further.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: May I offer that the legislative process is the exact method by which you guys do negotiate those different priorities? And this would just be an information gathering tool to inform that legislative process. It wouldn't prohibit any feeling differently among the options. You could choose not to do this.

[Speaker 0]: So for the intent language, would it be helpful to approach it in terms of what's our goal? What is our goal? Just brainstorm for us. What is our goal?

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Stating in contact with family members? So the contact can be made between families or those closest to children or those closest to the inmate.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I have to

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: try to sell.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: It's creating an environment that's conducive to rehabilitation, which is kind of a broad statement, but it is important. If you're a staffer, when I was representing some of these guys at VSEA there, they needed some tools to keep everybody, not lashing out on them and other inmates. And to me, this is a huge tool. I don't know if you say that explicitly, the findings, Personal but

[Speaker 0]: support is support of the staff, is support of the person who's incarcerated.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: One of my intents is to divest the Vermont correctional system from the for profit prison industry. That is

[Speaker 0]: really But not a one of my telecom industry.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I am asking us to explore nonprofit and public utility methods for providing telecommunications. I'm willing to look at socializing this.

[Speaker 0]: You're gonna get out. Okay. Let's get back. What's the intent, folks? Keep it simple. Let's keep it simple. What is it that we've talked about?

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: But we also wanna understand what the actual expense would be. Right? Because can't make an informed decision without without knowing it.

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

[Speaker 0]: So that's part of our intent. We wanna get more more information on how to what the financial implications would be, how to structure the program going forward, keeping families intact, keeping communication with their kids.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, that's huge.

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: Gina? I also feel like this in some ways is a two part conversation because there are all these benefits to bringing in WiFi and improving the WiFi structure in the prisons that have absolutely nothing to do with outside telecommunications. But that's kind of like one issue. But once that issue is solved, if indeed we do get the WiFi done, then the telecommunication things becomes much smaller number. If this infrastructure And I think that's the kind of the first thing we need to be tackling is what does that look like? How are we doing that? And that has so many other reasons to do it beyond outside telecommunications.

[Speaker 0]: Do you have enough there, John, to work with? Or do you need I have a list of things.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm likely to look at representative Headrick's intent language again. But obviously, through the filter of the discussions you've had, I will probably do some stylizing and making more robust to the extent that I can. But yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Does that seem fair to the committee?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yep. Mhmm. K.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And we can, of course, just like this draft, we can tweak it once you have something in front of you.

[Speaker 0]: We'll have more drafts. What else

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: in terms of

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The other update you had suggested was September 15 update to

[Speaker 0]: Say September 15.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Justice oversight.

[Speaker 0]: So, what they need to look at, they've got to evaluate options for providing no cost telecom services. And in doing that, you've got to describe currently what's happening. And then you describe alternative options, including through nonprofit providers. Whereas a regulated public utility, that one, I'm I'm interested in that one. Then you've gotta analyze the cost to each of these alternatives. And then it lists six items. Are those the correct items? That's three a through f. Those are the correct items.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I don't know if

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: we can do this, but this anticipated impact it's going to have on morale and I don't know how we've been talking about it. The

[Speaker 0]: Steady morale and

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, decreasing conflict. I don't know if that's in here or not. And reentry transitional stuff. But I don't know that that's what we're trying to do with this study. I think 3F is the place that would capture it if you're trying to But capture it does depend. It has a different feel, obviously, than a through e. Representative Gregoire had earlier pointed out the difference between quantitative and qualitative impacts here. So in F, you're straying into the can reasonably identify qualitative impacts. It's where it would fit, but if you only want numbers, it's not the sort of thing you would include, but that's, I think, societal or public You could boost it out with morale if that's one of the things. Although morale is almost captured to the extent that the committee is concerned with it in the public safety. Maybe you could be clear that public safety isn't just outside the walls of a facility, but it's safety within. So you could consider altering public safety reference there potentially because there's a way of reading 3F to say, oh, this is about the benefits that accrue outside of but you're talking about benefits that accrue within a facility. And something about the impact of incarcerated families, and especially on those who the disproportionate Financial impact. Financial impact. Some of what Conor was saying.

[Speaker 0]: But we have to be careful because POC may not have the capacity.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I know. The question I was gonna ask on that front is the extent to which that is an analyzable cost that differentiates different alternatives. It feels like that analysis is about just the difference between current model and any no cost model. So it's a more generic concern about just is there data to show that a no cost model reduces? You could ask in one, which is the description of the current telecommunication service model. I don't know if it's ascertainable, but where that cost is born. It says, describe the current telecommunication service model, including usage rates, costs, and contract terms under existing provider arrangement. You could say cost including to whom. But again, I don't know that that's something DOC can

[Speaker 0]: I don't know if they can do that? I don't think they can do that. So our goal was multifaceted, to ensure that folks who are incarcerated have access to phone service, to stay connected to their world on the outside of the wall, basically. That's one. The other concern was if we pick up the cost of telephone calls, would there be a spike in usage? What would the budget be? What would be the state cost for that? And should we continue with a for profit company, a not for profit company, if we choose to not have it paid for by the state? I think that's pretty much what we were looking at. Am I missing something?

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Sounds good to me. Those are

[Speaker 0]: really the four things we were looking at.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think they're captured. Here. Yep. Think that here.

[Speaker 0]: So then in four, would be evaluating those options for mitigating the costs. Limitation and usage, because we did talk about cap. Do folks still wanna look at that? That came up yesterday. And that was a way because we just didn't know what the cost would be. And we talked about that in the context if we went ahead and did it, do we put a cap on? And then we shifted to having having it evaluated. So do we still wanna mention that evaluation?

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Necessary right now. I mean, that that may percolate, if you will, you know, in conversations following the outcome of this study.

[Speaker 0]: Should it be part of the study? We're after the fact. Because we did talk about it before we entered into doing an evaluation.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's really less about the individual alternative or about what are ways the legislature would structure something if cost considerations were dampening the desire to pursue this. So, in some ways, is distinctive from the other kinds of considerations that you have here.

[Speaker 0]: Kevin? It

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: still comes down to where spending funding is more effective. Another alternative would be to expand the docket court more quickly so that those who are detained and are being, yeah, being detained, that population is minimized because they're processed more quickly. That may be a more effective way of using these dollars by changing the system or enhancing the system that they have to go through. That's all I'm saying is is is that's that's what we need to be analyzing. And I understand it may be difficult. But if we do do a pilot and we're monitoring the numbers of incidences of conflict and within and the recidivism on the way out, we should be able to get some data that says, what changed to make these improvements? I know we can't get it right now. It would strictly be projection. And we've got some projections. I'm sure he's got projections. But that's, I think, what the real question should be of this study, is where Why is this the best bang for the buck?

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: I just think this conversation is moot until we figure out the WiFi. I mean, because you just can't put, this is such a movie target of what startup and transition costs gonna be. Well, if we have WiFi, it's gonna be completely different than if we don't.

[Speaker 0]: So maybe that's one of the evaluations.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: You

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: know? We really need to solve that piece

[Speaker 0]: first before

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: we get into this.

[Speaker 0]: What would be the price evaluation? WiFi's gotta be expensive to get up.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Are you asking you know, three a start up in transition costs. Are you asking that they provide start up in transition costs considering all that you with and without WiFi. That'd

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: be a great way to get there.

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: Unless you've got to have that infrastructure to run it. Yeah, and maybe it's worth looking at what BGS projects its WiFi fit out was gonna cost versus having a private contractor that we do business with for telecommunications to do the WiFi fit out.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, that's getting beyond this stuff.

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: No, but I mean, we gotta solve that Wi Fi, whether it's private contractor that puts the Wi Fi into the facility, whether it's us that puts the Wi Fi capability into the facility, that's the sticking point.

[Speaker 0]: And that's what we'll be talking about when we do markup. Yeah. So I know there's interest from some members of the committee to try to find some money for the Wi Fi.

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: And Wi Fi has a lot of things that have nothing to do with this issue that we need it for. But maybe it's worth examining the cost of what a private contractor could put wifi into the facility for if they get the telecommunications contract versus what we can do it for. That's the only thing that I see

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You being used use universal Wi Fi, though.

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: Well, the contractor that had on Zoom said that when they bring in their equipment, when they're done, they leave it. And the hardware's still there. They have a cost they can pin down for them to put the infrastructure in. Can we beat that cost with our own infrastructure upgrade?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: That's paid for over the counter. Right.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. And similar to what we have now. Our telecom provider right now has hardware in the facilities that become the property of

[Speaker 0]: the contract.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Enough it's to provide Right.

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: No. That's why I'm saying

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: qualify that.

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: Is it worth looking at what a private contractor could build out the infrastructure for versus what we can build out the infrastructure for?

[Speaker 0]: They're kinda going.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. Yeah.

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: But it's back to the Wi Fi thing. We gotta solve that problem first before because this is just gonna be I mean, I just feel like this will be a waste of money to try to pin down all these costs when the Wi Fi is a moving target.

[Speaker 0]: We've got to start somewhere. We've got to start somewhere.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think the 3A inclusion is maybe the way to try to get to this. Because if you think about costs, they could be differentiated. Some are attributable to the Wi Fi piece. And if you happen to them to that area, just three a, I mean, the ongoing thoughts would be the same area. Okay. I think three a is the place to try to solve that.

[Speaker 0]: And we would just use with or without. So I'm gonna move this along because we do have some testimony set up to talk about those PMP positions and kinda get a little bit of employment labor perspective, a little bit in terms of what the process might be or might not be. It'd be very high level. So we're looking at intent language. And we've got down as far as four for capping the usage and the cost. Do we still want to keep that in?

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: I don't think we need to dive that deep yet. So let's

[Conor Casey (Member)]: make it a couple it come up on the cost

[Speaker 0]: of We made it shorter. And five is identifying implementation, operational and transition for each alternative. So what do we mean consideration for each alternative?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If there's different implementation requirements for the nonprofit provider as against

[Speaker 0]: Versus other

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: yeah. And it may be that many of them have shared quite similar trajectories, in which case could describe them at a general level.

[Speaker 0]: But does five make sense to folks?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Mhmm.

[Speaker 0]: Sure. And then on B, it's just putting in a September meeting, September 15 or something like that. So that gives you some direction. Right?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Yeah. That's okay.

[Speaker 0]: Does that work for folks? Yep.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm back with So excited.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Good to have you.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, thank you. Clearly am excited.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: You better know, though. Okay. Hello.

[Speaker 0]: No. You're welcome to come in here even when you need a refuge.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Keep the chocolate bowl over there.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: There's a drawer.

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: There's a drawer well. Okay.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Sorry, Shawn. We just told her the hiding.

[Speaker 0]: So whenever you can get that, just tape now. Sure. And, you know, we do have some time tomorrow.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. You wanna you wanna try to do it tomorrow is the goal? It's time.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. It's the problem. Get through the mornings. Not tied up until lunch in the morning. Maybe more awake.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Troy, you're looking sad.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Was the only

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Looking sad, are you okay?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm good. We wanted to send it to Ed today, if that helps. That's great.

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

[Brian Minier (Member)]: See you guys.

[Emily Hawes (Commissioner, Department of Corrections)]: Thank you. Bye.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, so we're going to shift gears again a little bit. We have a brand new to us legislative council person. Sophie, I'm not even going to try your last name.

[Sophie Zadatne (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: As it looks, but it does scare people.

[Speaker 0]: Yes. We have questions about what would be the implication of repealing the pretrial supervision program, Knowing that there is authority somewhere where we're trying to find that authority. Scott Moore is on this trying to find a hiring five folks for the pretrial supervision program. Our understanding is they are classified as probation and parole officers. So they're being used, brought someone on board in a field office. And then that particular person could be used for pretrial supervision. Or it frees up another PMP officer that may have more skills for pretrial supervision. It frees up that person's time because a new person could take over some of that person's caseload, which then frees them up. So we have five positions. We have three folks who have been hired. We are repealing the program. So then we want to hold those three positions, those three folks that were hired, we want to hold them harmless so that they don't lose their job. And then the two vacant positions will be built. So we need some information how the world of labor works in a situation like that. So we reached out to our legal counsel that deals with this part of statute, this part of law. So welcome, Sophie. If you could identify yourself for the record.

[Sophie Zadatne (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Good afternoon. Sophie Zadatne from the Office of Legislative Counsel. So, again, I just wanna be clear about what I can and can't do. So what I can do is just provide you with a general overview of, you know, labor law here in Vermont, just focused on sort of this issue. I did take a look at the contract between the state and the Department of Corrections, and I can highlight some things in that. I'm not intimately involved in that contract, so it has a lot of very complex things in it around bumping and other things that I really can't give you information on. If you want to do a deeper dive on that, would suggest that the Department of Human Resources or the DOC or the the SEA to come in and talk about that. But I can provide just some general overview. On the funding piece, Hillary Chittenden, I think, is gonna try and be here, but she's been trying to track that down. And it looks like that language is not wasn't provided in session more, but she's been working with Scott on that. So she can fill you in on that piece. So I'm gonna have a go at sharing my screen to go through a couple of resources with you.

[Speaker 0]: Hey. Do you have Yes.

[Sophie Zadatne (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Please please let me please let me in.

[Speaker 0]: Probably thanks for a bunch of old people. They belong. To do stuff. They're

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: not here.

[Sophie Zadatne (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's weird. Alright. So just to start with, just so you're aware, Vermont, so being a very small state, has a lot of collective bargaining laws. So we have seven of them, which is more than per capita than any other state in the country. The one that we'd be looking at here is the State Employees Labor Relations Act. And that's the one that often most of my labor and employment stuff is, to the extent it involves union stuff, tends to be under CELRA. So when I talk about CELRA, that's what I'm talking about, number two on the list.

[Speaker 0]: So did that, I had 1969 in parentheses, is that the year it became effective? So it's been that long.

[Sophie Zadatne (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. So private employers are covered by the National Labor Relations Act. So that's all governed at the federal level. The State Labor Relations Act, that first one, of scoops up anything that's explicitly excluded by the National Labor Relations Act. So that would be it used to include, like, domestic workers. And and well, that's the one now that recently, you just passed a a bill that allows last session or a couple of sessions ago, you passed a bill to allow domestic workers who work for if there are five or more of them to unionize, and that would be under number one. Number one is really very rarely used because almost all the public employees are gonna fall into one of those other statutes. So again, State Employee Labor Relations Act is the is the big player in these. But again, there's one for teachers and administrators, municipal employees, judiciary employees, and then there are these two odd ones, number six and seven, that are really just around the ability of direct support providers and early care and education providers to negotiate with the state collectively, because they're all spread out. So those aren't your typical labor relations statutes. So that's just to start with. So then under the State Labor Relations Act, parties negotiate contracts, collective bargaining. And then there are subjects that they're required to bargain over. And we have in Vermont a very expansive definition of bargaining. Some states, it's much more narrowly confined. But here, for example, things like working conditions. I mean, almost everything is going to become a working condition. Explicitly includes, as highlighted there, reduction in forced procedures. So if you're in a situation where the state is going to be laying someone off, how you do that is then negotiated at the bargaining table around what the procedures are going to be, you know, who's picked. If you've got to lay off three people, you've got 10 people in that position, which are the three that get laid off, etcetera. All that stuff gets negotiated at the table. So a lot of the answers to the questions you have are not gonna be in state statute because the statute just says you you, the parties, need to go and negotiate that. So that's then you have to look at the actual contract that's being negotiated. So the contract that is currently in place is, again, between the state and the State Employees Association. I'm just gonna there's a lot here, so I'm gonna I don't wanna make anyone ill, motion sick, going running through it. So management rights in a contract, you usually have what's called management rights, and that carves out, like, what management can do on their own without having to negotiate. But, again, understanding in Vermont, you pretty much are gonna have to negotiate almost anything that you do that that could arguably be a working condition. And the management rights in this particular contract, so this is the one with the Department of Corrections, explicitly provides that consistent with statutory authority, the state may contract at work, etcetera. They may discontinue services or programs in whole or in part. And as a result of such discontinuance, then a permanent status employee I'm assuming for purposes of this conversation that the individuals you're talking about are considered permanent employees within the state system, will have reduction in force rights. And then again, down here, the employer may determine that a reduction in force is necessary due to lack of work or otherwise pursuant to management rights. So again, if positions go away, that's a management right to decide we don't need these positions any longer. Or if the legislature says, you know, these positions aren't aren't good any longer, we don't need them, then the management has the right to make that determination. But then how you actually implement that then gets negotiated.

[Speaker 0]: So let me stop you there. So that would be a question for the committee to ask DOC, for those three folks that have been hired, by repealing pretrial supervision, would that result in the lack of work for those three folks? That would be a question we would need to ask and get an answer to. I don't know if you're ready to answer that or not, Emily. Well, I think we've

[Emily Hawes (Commissioner, Department of Corrections)]: spoken about this multiple times, which is that there is certainly other work for these staff members to do. It just wouldn't be in the realm of pretrial supervision. And whether that is taking from other people's caseloads or doing some sort of special project like the accountability port, we could certainly find full time employment for them.

[Speaker 0]: But those three folks, two are not going to be in the area where the accountability court will be. One in Burlington would be. So for those two, is there enough work in those offices to keep those folks on?

[Emily Hawes (Commissioner, Department of Corrections)]: I think the very simple answer is yes, there would certainly be work for them, whether it's, again, caseloads. We've recently implemented the eleven fifteen waiver, which has taken up a lot of time from our field staff too. So it would likely make other people's loads lighter and certainly enough to fill someone's day.

[Sophie Zadatne (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So let me just keep keep going here because I think this might help as well. So Oh, it's vanished. I hope no one's watching, and then they get

[Speaker 0]: a remote and sick. Alright.

[Sophie Zadatne (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So generally speaking and, again, this isn't talking about this specific contract. But generally speaking, if positions get eliminated, like, we don't need these positions or these positions are no longer funded, whatever it may be, the positions are eliminated. And then what happens is really you just that's the start of a process to then have a conversation with the union around what happens to those individuals. So those positions may be eliminated. But to me, the way you to think about it is that's the beginning of the conversation. So you may get to some of the the questions you were just raising as part of that conversation. The positions themselves may close, but then you get into reduction in force. So, again, once you've decided we're eliminating how many positions, let's say three positions, then you get into this part of the contract, which is how do we ensure an equitable and consistent treatment of classified employees when a reduction in force occurs. So again, I'm assuming these are permanent status employees and covered by the contract. And then there are different methods that you look at for how how you make the decision. But as a practical matter, the department would then be letting the the SEA know before they send out any notices. They would give them a heads up. You know, these three positions are being closed or or being you know, they we don't need them anymore. And then, again, as you see here in in subsection two, given the the VSEA is then given opportunity to discuss alternatives. So that could be, you know, instead of closing I mean, not in this necessary situation if these positions go up, they're going away. But sometimes it might be like, instead of these these positions going away, what about if we, you know, switched up and did that? Right? So, again, this is part of a conversation that then happens between management and the unions.

[Emily Hawes (Commissioner, Department of Corrections)]: We have a question here, Mary.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Yes. We talked yesterday about I think one of the folks that was hired was a long standing state employee and did switch over to this job to be a positive part of going forward. So my thing was I want to hold this person harmless, not to, you know, lose any of what the he or she, I'm not sure which, had worked all these years for, and then go kinda going back to a starting point of starting all over would not be especially where I would wanna go. I want them to be harmless.

[Sophie Zadatne (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the the contract has a lot of information in here around what happens with that. And there are there are bumping rights. There's all kinds of things.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: So

[Speaker 0]: That's if the position goes away. But what we're hearing, this is helpful, because I think what we're hearing is the title of that position was a probation and parole officer. So that position is not going away.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right.

[Speaker 0]: The role that that officer was going to do is going away. But that position title that they were hired for is not going away. The question is, is there going to be enough work for the person to do as a PMP officer? Once pretrial is repealed, is there gonna be enough work left for that person to do in the PMP field office? That's that's the the question.

[Sophie Zadatne (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I think under the contract, again, it's super detailed. I'm not gonna go through all of this. Again, I'm not familiar you know, don't have a a lot of familiarity with this particular contract. But, again, it has a lot of procedures in here that you would work through. So, again, if you're talking about three individuals that have the same job title as other people, then there may be, then you'd be looking at seniority, you might be looking at performance. You would then be looking at, again, if you had to eliminate three of those positions, who would the- Eliminating the positions. Right. But if you had So say you have three people whose pretrial work is going away, but they've got this other title and there's a bigger group of employees in that group, then you may be looking at who's the least senior, would, out of that whole group, who would lose their job. But again, this is all part of a discussion that would be had with the union in terms of following the contracts and making sure I mean, these are super detailed provisions to make sure, and they've been negotiated by the parties. And so essentially, you just work through the provisions to figure out how that would be. And again, this contract has bumping rights and other things in here. So again, that typically protects more senior people. So if they've switched And again, this is a very detailed contract that you would want to have somebody in that would really talk through for these particular individuals how they would be impacted. I just wanted to reassure you that there is a contract, there's extensive procedures if there's a shift around in positions, in terms of who lands up in which position. And again, there'll be some management right in terms of reallocation of workload. But that all gets negotiated with the unions. Again, you provide notice to the unions that these three positions in pre Torah, however you want to classify it, but these three positions are being impacted. And then there would be a conversation around how does that get worked out. But it sounds as if there's enough work, so it may just be a question of who gets moved

[Speaker 0]: where. James?

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Well, first, Conor, are you going to talk about this or not?

[Conor Casey (Member)]: No. I can maybe offer some things

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: on the contract later, but Okay. Because you might say more intelligent things than me. So I had the same understanding that these jobs aren't even viewed. They're classified as BMP jobs, so they're not even being reclassified. I'm gonna name them, my friend over there.

[Emily Hawes (Commissioner, Department of Corrections)]: What I'm really concerned about, Chair, is that the statute or somewhere in a statute authorized the five positions for the

[Speaker 0]: Which we're trying to find.

[Emily Hawes (Commissioner, Department of Corrections)]: So I just want to make sure that those positions don't go away. Right. In terms of whether there is workload for them or whether they can, assume the job title of probation parole officer instead of pretrial supervision officer, that's not a concern. I

[Speaker 0]: think we're pretty clear for those five positions. We wanna keep them.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Mhmm. Yes.

[Emily Hawes (Commissioner, Department of Corrections)]: And we appreciate that.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah. My guess is, not trying to speak for Haley, but if the department is gifted, gifted, playing positions, they're gonna wanna hang on for right? They

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: want the

[Speaker 0]: seven on top of that.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, but the workload issue is, it's very real. Yeah, I mean, the way I believe it would work, if they're all the equivalent position there, bumping rights would set in. So, If as an you riff somebody, bumping rights would kick But it wouldn't necessarily be the person who just got appointed to one of those positions, right? If you had to eliminate a position for lack of work or lack of funds, like in the case of Burlington, you had a long term employee switch into a P and P two position, I think it was, they would be okay. It would be somebody else's position who was eliminated, because they started state service at the earliest date there, I think.

[Sophie Zadatne (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Typically, the union contracts are gonna favor the more senior employees.

[Speaker 0]: But in this situation, is there gonna be bumping?

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Only if they riff somebody. But it doesn't sound like they're necessarily riffing somebody.

[Speaker 0]: Riff someone due to lack of work.

[Emily Hawes (Commissioner, Department of Corrections)]: I don't think

[Conor Casey (Member)]: And why are they getting rid of jobs? You know, I don't think that makes sense. The problem is, okay, if it's up in Newport, I bet the department might prefer in some cases to move a position down to Bennington. And that's where it gets a little sticky, right? Because the caseloads might be higher in Bennington. So now we've kind of saddled the department with excess positions in places they don't need it as much as other places.

[Speaker 0]: We do have two vacancies. We do. Yeah. Of the five, there's only three that have been filled. So those other two, one could go to Rowan, one could go to Bennington, one could go to another county down south.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: You can also move them, I believe, within a 35 mile radius, which like Saint Jay and Barry are exactly 35 miles. Without it being a geographic rift, I think.

[Speaker 0]: I just so how would we go about, and this may not be a question for you, Sophie, maybe more for DOC, how can we be assured we're not gonna lose those three folks that have been hired? That's our main concern.

[Emily Hawes (Commissioner, Department of Corrections)]: Yeah. I don't know who the correct person is to answer that question. I think we need to find the language, which I frankly, I'm very hard on finding, but maybe Galfetti will be more.

[Speaker 0]: Galfetti and Hillary are working on that. I mean, there had to be some authorization somewhere. Even if you went to the vac you're not going to the vacancy pool to get those, are you?

[Emily Hawes (Commissioner, Department of Corrections)]: Yeah. I think those positions were authorized.

[Speaker 0]: They were somewhere. They had

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to And

[Speaker 0]: that's what we're trying to find out so we can see the language.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Because you don't want to get rid of pre child language. Right. And that go with it without realigning. You've got to protect that line.

[Speaker 0]: But the testimony we've heard from commissioner as well as Gary Marlowe yesterday was they are classified as PMP officers. So that's a broad classification. That means they can do PMP officer work in that field office for anything. Did you have more, Sophie, that you wanted to

[Sophie Zadatne (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, I was just I mean, the other piece was just recall rights, but it sounds like that's I mean, again, my point is just that there are extensive provisions in here that if somebody, again, did get laid off, they would have recall rights and stuff. So it would really be governed by the the contract if if positions are actually getting lost. And I understand you want to hold on to everybody. And, again, I would I would really encourage having Hillary in to testify because she's been doing a deep dive on this. And she did send an email to me that has sort of that, basically, she hasn't found it anywhere in session law. So she's

[Speaker 0]: That'd be somewhere.

[Sophie Zadatne (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, I mean, I can tell you what she shared with me. She said section 10 of act one thirty eight authorized the joint legislative justice oversight committee to, quote, review and provide recommendations to the Department of Corrections for the most prudent use of any funds appropriated to the Department to operate the program. The Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee recommended DOC implement the pretrial supervision program in all Lyons And Essex Counties. And then she says she thinks the DOC relied on that authorisation to use funds to operate the program to hire those pre trial supervision officers. And then section e three thirty nine of Act 113 indicated an intent to reappropriate certain DOC funds, if left over, to the pretrial supervision program. But that was the only session, you'll reference, that she found relating to pretrial supervision.

[Speaker 0]: Right. And that one, I'm aware of, because we did that. But somehow, there's gotta be authorization to hire five people.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: I think HR with every position would have something. Where did they come from? But I wonder if it

[Speaker 0]: wasn't in the budget bill, but ended up as we worked when we did the pretrial supervision language, we were on a Senate bill. I don't know what bill, what the number was, but it was a Senate bill. And it went back to the Senate because we did so much. I'm wondering if that was the vehicle that the Senate used.

[Emily Hawes (Commissioner, Department of Corrections)]: I don't think it was because I had that bill up this morning.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I can't find it.

[Speaker 0]: Because all of that happened at the end of the session, and they were in conference committee with the appropriations. So the money was found.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Would it have last minute been slid onto the approps bill?

[Speaker 0]: It would have been in conference committee. It would have been in conference because Dick Sears found

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: the money while they were negotiating the budget and conference. But I've seen over the years, well, since something lands on the appropriations, it was never anywhere in Right, but

[Speaker 0]: it would be on that conference committee That would be the final version of the state budget for FY '25. Well, you have people on a mission.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: I swear they've got a sheet, what new positions were created in the last fiscal year and what what statute authorized that I bet they must. Yeah,

[Emily Hawes (Commissioner, Department of Corrections)]: we can go to HR.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I have not yet, but we'll do that.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: You'll have a whole week to do that.

[Speaker 0]: Any other questions on this before I shift gears a little bit to the parole board, before Another good

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: in with a new draft?

[Speaker 0]: Thank you, Sophie. I'm last minute for coming in.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Sophie.

[Speaker 0]: I think this is your first time in this It is.

[Sophie Zadatne (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. It's this session. I'm visiting a lot of places I haven't visited before, so it's really interesting. No, no, that's fine. Thank

[Speaker 0]: you. It was helpful. Okay. It's very helpful. If anything ends up in court and they wanna know what the intent is on these five positions, it's pretty clear. We want to not hurt those three people. Hillary's going to come in with new language about the budgeting, the 50,000. I think it works. But I just want to have a conversation with folks about the language in there that we talked about this morning about budgeting process. And I think Shawn brought up a point that with kids apart, we had language in there. It was vetoed that it would be part of the process, that something would be included in the budget process. It didn't mean the 5th Floor would put it into DOC's budget, but that there could be a request for money to be in the DOC budget and then go through the process, and the bill was vetoed. I'm trying to think how we resolved that. I think we just eliminated that section, didn't we, Shawn? We were silent on it because I looked up the law, you know, what we ended up passing and I think we just deleted that section.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Exactly. And, you know, I I I got it as well and it it it doesn't mention it just mentions that DOC will do it. Not, it doesn't get into how or what money or how much money, but just that they will support the kids apart program, and and it's as simple as that.

[Speaker 0]: So if you look at the draft, the 3.1 draft on h five fifty nine, what I wanna bounce off the committee.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You're looking at 3.1 or 4.1?

[Speaker 0]: Well, it's three point it's going to end up being 4.1.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We have one. It's on the website.

[Speaker 0]: Well, I'm not looking at the well, that's she's not present to us, but I'm looking at section six. Well, now it's section seven. In the old draft, it says section six. As part of the fiscal year 'twenty eight and 'twenty nine budget development process, the director would submit a proposed budget to DOC and secretary of the agency. It doesn't say where I think Kids Apart said it then goes to the governor, didn't it?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It said I mean, was a mandate to fund it. That's not what this

[Speaker 0]: That's not what this says. It just says that the director would submit a proposed budget.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Or it wasn't a mandate to fund it. It was a mandate to include it in the budget request.

[Speaker 0]: This is not different. This is This is just saying would submit a proposed budget. It doesn't say DOC has to include it.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Which of a different color?

[Speaker 0]: So that's an important distinction, I think. I think it's pretty clear this morning that this may be a point of contention, possibly on the floor.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I got on the floor. I was getting the buyer that

[Speaker 0]: Or they're going to fight it.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: We're not going

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to spend any money.

[Speaker 0]: Didn't I get that too.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. I don't want don't get the sense that this language is the issue. But I could be wrong.

[Speaker 0]: I think it's both. Because I got the feeling they don't want to spend any money on approval. I got that feeling too. Right?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, or $75,000 on a lawyer. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: From that and just a Yep. Administration. Shawn, did you have your hand up? The person that was sitting behind you in the corner.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: He's just stretching.

[Speaker 0]: No, I

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: was just saying that I felt like it was something more from the 5th Floor.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's all. Oh.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yeah, it's from the 5th Floor. I got the impression he just didn't wanna commit.

[Speaker 0]: So I think this, I mean, Shawn, you brought this up this morning about the language being similar to Kids Apart that was vetoed. That's why I wanted to spend some time with the committee right now to really clarify that, because if we agree with the language that Hillary is gonna present to us in terms of how we get the 50,000, I think if we're okay with submitting the proposed, that Mary Jane submits proposed budget to DOC and the agency, if we're comfortable with that language, and then we're comfortable with the language that Hillary is gonna present this afternoon about the 50,000, I think we're good to go to vote the bill

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: out. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Are people feeling that? Yes.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm picking up what you're putting down, chair. I'm picking up what you're putting down, chair. We're gonna vote.

[Speaker 0]: I wanna vote, but I wanna make sure we have that front cover.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: That is certification number.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Take your review.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: I

[Speaker 0]: don't wanna get caught with this going out like we did last year with kids apart with that budget language. Yeah. That's what I'm

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Well, and do you do are you looking at that old language?

[Speaker 0]: No. Bro, kids you apart?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Shoot. What what was the bill? I'll find it back.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: No. I've got it in front

[Conor Casey (Member)]: of me.

[Speaker 0]: Was $20.19.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Well, no. You gotta look at what passed. It was the last it was the last bill of the year, which is

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The judiciary, miscellaneous judiciary.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Number 64. Yeah. And it's it's and it's an accolating to miscellaneous. So it's the judiciary and it's way at the end. It was the last thing that passed last year.

[Speaker 0]: Page 64?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yep. And it's on page 28. Program support.

[Speaker 0]: It's not eight sixty four. It's a s Acts. It's in Acts 16 more.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yeah. Acts 64 and page 28. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: That's a little different then.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: What did I say?

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: H. Oh

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I'm sorry it was Acts 64 not H sorry.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And what page? 28

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: and look at six b which is about halfway down. And look how it's written, may support. It's not shall.

[Speaker 0]: Department of Corrections may support the operation of family support program through grants of financial assistance or contracts for services.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: That's very different from what we're looking at right now.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, it is very different. We're just talking about a process for Mary Jane to submit her budget. That's all I'm talking about.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I think, like, that's what they that's what legal came up with from the administration last year to get this through. And it got through. It's it's happening.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We were funding a program though, a very specific program. This is giving parole board more access to the budgeting process.

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: Right.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: That's what this is. Hello. Okay. Isn't the parole board just a program within DOC to some extent?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Way it's currently funded. They've been very clear that it's in

[Speaker 0]: Well, what we were also hearing this morning is in the agency of human services. It is in the agency of human services, but there's a little layer there in between. Okay. So if we're okay when Hillary comes in, she's due to come in at three.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: We can be prepared to book the bill out. Great. And Will, you're still comfortable? We're there to help you because this could take some different directions. The administration is not supportive of They're not supportive of 50,000 being added, but we'll have appropriate because it's got to go to the appropriations for that. Why don't we take a break? And why don't we come back here about five to three? Well, for Hillary to present the new language and then we'll vote. He's not voting on the brain.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Don't worry. Should be here.

[Speaker 0]: Know. Definitely.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: I'll message you.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: I'm definitely

[Speaker 0]: I'm gonna go down and see Trevor just to clarify with him.

[Emily Hawes (Commissioner, Department of Corrections)]: Thanks. Love it.