Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You're live. Hey, welcome folks. This is Jess Gretchen Institutions. It's Wednesday, April 15. It's text day. A lot of people are getting their text files. We're going to spend part of this morning S-one hundred ninety three with the Commissioner of Health. We can also just do a background of what the department does deal with, how you structure over the agency. Human services, I'm gonna say human resources. Human services.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: We partner with them too. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm gonna turn it over to you, Commissioner, if you could just identify yourself.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Sure. Good morning. My name is Emily Hawes, and I'm the Commissioner for the Department of Mental Health. Thanks for having me here today. I'll start by giving a little bit of background of how I got into this role and my professional experience delivering services both within a correctional facility and within the communities working with adults with serious mental illness, youth with criminal justice involvement, and then also leading a psychiatric hospital. So I've been in the commissioner role here in the state of Vermont for the past five years. I came into this role after leading the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital for about four years. Previous to that, I oversaw our care management team within the Department of Mental Health. And later on in testimony, you'll be introduced to Ally Nierenberg here, who now runs and oversees the care management team. Previous to that, I facilitated treatment groups within the facilities, the prison facilities here in Vermont, including Southern State, Northwest, the St. Jay campus, and at times up in the St. Ault Swan. So I'm very familiar with our facilities, both from a Department of Corrections lens and a mental health lens. So for the Department of Mental Health, as it relates to individuals with mental illness who've been involved with the criminal justice system, we oversee the competency contract for the state of Vermont currently. And so when an individual is initially arrested and it is determined that a competency evaluation is indicated, the court system reaches out to the Department of Mental Health to arrange for that evaluation to happen. And that evaluation can occur either in a hospital setting, if that person meets the medical necessity to be in a hospital setting, Or it can happen in the outpatient setting, which is community corrections is considered outpatient. So sometimes those evaluations may happen at the courthouse depending on the particular arrangements. So I will let Ally Nierenberg talk a little bit more about what happens after those evaluations are completed and the process that some individuals may experience going through our competency process, specifically individuals who are looking at a life sentence based on the crimes that they've been charged with. And that's the gap that one hundred ninety three is attempting to close, is those individuals who have been charged with a crime, in most cases, whose competency is under question. And that competency is related to individuals who may have a mental health condition, individuals who may have a developmental disability, individuals who may also have substance use disorder with medical complications and or other types of qualifying conditions like traumatic brain injury, dementia, so on and so forth. DMH specifically, though, works directly for the care and custody of those individuals with mental health conditions. And so those conditions, for example, are persons who may be diagnosed with some sort of psychosis, whether that be maybe schizophrenia or some other psychotic disorder or mood disorder. So we're specifically charged with individuals who fit into the mental illness diagnostic criteria. This bill with 193 looks to support the folks who are coming into the competency conversation with a broader diagnostic challenge. And from a system perspective, it won't change for individuals who need hospital level care for their psychiatric illness. Those individuals will still have access to hospital level of care, which they have access to that currently, and they would have access to that should one hundred ninety three continue to move forward. It doesn't disrupt that. What S-one 193 looks to close the gap on is folks who are no longer in their acute phase of the illness or challenges that they're experiencing that is impacting their competency. They're no longer in that acute phase. So they've stabilized either on medication or some other, approach to clearing, but they still present a significant public safety issue. Even though their mental health conditions are treated, even though perhaps they are no longer impacted by current substance use, they're still presenting in a way that causes a public safety issue. So what I will do next is pause. I know that General Counsel Barber has some information to go through, including our current MOU that DMH holds with the Department of Corrections. We'll talk about the interactions we have on a daily, sometimes multiple times a day with the corrections staff related to folks in a correctional institution. I can also briefly mention, because I know that Doctor. Bowen talked a little bit about this yesterday in her testimony, in that all of the commissioners are part of the executive leadership team at the Agency of Human Services. And having the Department of Corrections a part of that group of leaders is a rarity nationally. And although that has produced some pretty helpful conversations about the lenses that we're looking at somebody's behavior and the different assessments that folks are utilizing to determine risk, The executive leadership team has a strong awareness, not into the weeds. Nobody's going to know case by case, but I know most of the cases that are coming in contact with the Department of Mental Health, because I think I probably over micromanage a little bit because I was in those positions before the commissioner's office. But the executive leadership team does function at a high level, And we want all of the folks who are interacting with the agency of human services to be served well and to be served safely in an environment that meets their needs.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So before we transition, I'm sure there's a lot of questions here for you. We do have a couple.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Thanks. Yeah. I guess I was hoping you

[Brian Minier (Member)]: could expound upon a couple of things. One is the time that you spent working in corrections with these groups that you described. And the other, I guess, is sort of your, I'm learning about this population. I'm learning about these issues. And I'm given to understand that the folks who are not guilty by reason of insanity is vanishingly small. I think these are both small groups. There's a slightly larger, very small group that is incompetent to stand trial

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: and restore their competence. And so it doesn't sound

[Brian Minier (Member)]: like there's much opportunity to interact with them. I know Commissioner Murad a little bit.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: I know his predecessor, Commissioner Demo, a little bit. I understand something about them. I'm learning a

[Brian Minier (Member)]: lot about the animation about

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: the paralegal. So can you tell me more

[Brian Minier (Member)]: about that work and about that population? Yeah.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: About twenty years ago, I moved to the state of Vermont from the state of Kansas. And I began work at the Claire Martin Center out of the Randolph office. In my work there, which I was there for about ten years, functioned as, I at the end of my career there, functioned as the director of the criminal justice and substance use services. And we responded to requests for proposals from the Department of Corrections. We won those proposals and we implemented criminal justice programs within the correctional setting and with the probation and parole offices. So examples of those treatment programs that I would facilitate and oversee were specifically for individuals who've been charged and convicted with sex offense, those individuals who, have been charged and convicted of violent crimes, as well as, individuals who had been charged and convicted, with domestic violence.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: And I guess, yeah, before moving on to the

[Brian Minier (Member)]: second one then, how was that work, if at all, by your surroundings

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: when you

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: were doing it there?

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Yeah, that's a great question. So for example, at the time at the Northern facility in Newport, they had a treatment unit, and I believe they still have that treatment unit. The individuals there had their own key for their cells. The cells were open, and we facilitated those groups in a treatment room that's very similar to the treatment rooms that you would facilitate in a probation parole office, as well as at a local designated agency. Soft chairs, soft lighting, the environmental changes may feel more appropriate for those conversations. I will also say that

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: one of

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: the more impactful is the relationship that the individuals have with the provider delivering the care. And so if the individuals receiving care have a strong connection with their provider, then you're going to see better outcomes regardless of what color the paint is on the wall or the soft surfaces. I oversaw the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital, which is and should be touted as an incredibly innovative and forward thinking therapeutic environment. And I saw staff get incredibly injured because of chair rails on the walls because their backs would get thrust up in an interaction with a person who's hospitalized, and they would get injured that way. So I do think that environment, of course, plays a role. It's not the only component that is therapeutic in these spaces.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, sure. Thanks for coming in, Commissioner.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Yes, thanks for having me.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: I'm trying to get a sense of last biennium, the plan changed from housing this up at the Vermont Psychiatric Hospital was the original plan to where we are today. And I understand some of the IMD issues and if it's Medicaid dollars, but I'm just going to have an honest conversation. Like how much is this about money and how much of this is about prison being the best place to house these individuals, right?

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Yeah. So I can talk a little bit about that proposal because that was my proposal. And we worked really closely in this committee and with BGS at the time. And the short answer is this proposal isn't about money. When we explored the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital, we would be required to separate sight and sound from a CMS perspective, from the other hospitalized individuals. And what that meant is we would have to take resources offline in order to fully separate the persons who are hospitalized with the forensic. And we can't take those resources offline, not for the folks who are hospitalized and then not also for the folks who are there for a forensic. So I would say it was a little bit of both. We would have to have separate libraries, separate activity yards, separate courtyard, and that's not how the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital was designed or implemented. But we did pursue that because we've been trying to solve this challenge for a really long time. I'd also say that the staff there aren't particularly trained in working with individuals with dementia or TBI or significant substance use with medical complications. But they are really good at serving individuals with a severe mental illness. So that brings us to 193, a very narrow, and I know that that's been discussed a lot, a very narrow group of folks whose primary issue at that time for needing the forensic facility is their risk to public safety. They still get an opportunity to have higher levels of care, therapeutic care, if they need it. That process still exists. And Department of Corrections are the folks who are experts in safety from that perspective. And can certainly, the Department of Corrections can talk more about what their philosophical ideas are on how to serve, how to operationalize one hundred ninety three. I know we've talked about concerns of one hundred ninety three being about, well, they're just already there. And that's, I think, an oversimplification. They are there. They're there for a reason. And they're there for a reason because their competency is under question and they pose a public safety risk.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I just want to ask a question about the hospital. Just so members can understand what the hospital structure, the psychiatric hospital in Berlin is. People can come and go as they please, right? The public can come in and out as a regular hospital?

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: No, it is a locked facility. So it's not a

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: public space. So it is locked?

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Yes. Is it secured? So two locked doors get you in. Wait, yep. Two locked doors get you into a lobby. In order to get into the lobby, you need to be screened. You need to turn in your keys. You need to be wandered. I'm sure that's a very similar experience that's entering a correctional facility. The units are all locked. Every door in the building is locked, including getting out to the activity yards, getting out to the courtyards. The individuals who are hospitalized there go through a safety assessment to determine if they're safe in the library or the recovery spaces. If they are not, they don't leave the unit. They are assessed by nursing around violence every day, and they're assessed for suicidality every day. And we make changes based on those components on how we determine somebody's access to the rest of the facility. And no one is ever without a staff member or two.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's a locked secured facility and the patients as well as staff, as well as possibly any visitors, are monitored in terms of the movement through the facility. There isn't a free range of movement through the facility per se from unit to unit or library or dining hall. Everything is structured and locked, and you need to unlock those doors to get into another section. That's correct. Just wanna lay that out for folks to understand what the structure of a state hospital is, because most people think a hospital is a regular hospital. Yes. And it is not.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: It is not.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I wanted the committee to be well aware it's a locked, secured building as well as staff secured.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: That's right. And folks who are admitted into the hospital, they go through a safety check. Items cannot be brought in. It's a very similar process to when you get booked into correctional facility.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: So to follow-up on your answer to Conor's question, you said resources would be taken offline. I believe I have ideas of what that means. But could you elaborate so we don't have to speculate on what that means?

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Yeah, great. And I alluded to it, but I didn't connect the two things together. So the library would need to be taken offline because that can't be shared by the two different populations. There's an activity room. There's a activity yard. There's also a courtroom. I'm sorry, courtyard. There is a courtroom as well. And all of those would need to be separated out and therefore taken offline for one population or the other.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Kevin, did you have anything?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Mine was a smoker. How many people are involved in this location?

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: From a staffing perspective

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Roughly.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Sure. So right now, VPCH can, admit

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: up

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: to 21 patients. It's currently at 25, but there is a budget proposal to decrease the beds from 25 to 21. And that is because of staffing challenges for that particular facility. So each unit, there's an eight bed unit, another eight bed unit and a four bed unit. And the two eight bed units are, staffed by nursing staff, mental health specialist staff, social workers, doctors, recovery services. There's a pharmacy there. The things that a regular hospital is required to have in place to operate are the same things that Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital is required to operate. So they have a pharmacy. They have a kitchen where they need to prep foods, dietitian. And so there are quite a few staff members there for various professional reasons. Okay. Thank you.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: I'm kind of back to the conversation that Conor and James sort of engaged. And I want to acknowledge that I yeah. We have people that are currently I've said this a number of times who are currently falling through this gap that f c n eighty two ninety three tries to close that should not be falling through those gaps. Right? And I have been through the medical hospital. Right? You were there with us when we toured it. I know what entering that building was like and how difficult it was not difficult, but how thorough it was to get from the entrance to a room where we could all sit and talk. I've also done that in two different correctional facilities, and I've seen the booking booking room at both of those facilities. So I I have an idea of what it would be like to to enter both facilities, all three facilities, comparatively. And if we were talking about S-one 193 finding a way to do this in the hospital setting, the hurdles that I have to, that I'm still looking at, that I haven't even begun to try and figure out how I'm going to jump over would not be there, right? Because I've seen the facility and I can picture, I can contemplate a forensics unit within a mental health hospital facility that I cannot contemplate within our correctional facilities. That's at the heart of my issue.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: I hear that. Can I answer?

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Yeah, I want to come back to central question. I'm setting the context alone. Do you want to answer first or do you want to put a pin in that?

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: I'll put put a a pin in it right here. But I sometimes have a memory of a goldfin.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: I've got mine written right here.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Oh, that's better than me. Well, hear from the environmental perspective. From a hospital perspective, we simply cannot admit individuals into a hospital who don't need hospital care.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: I get that. I'm well aware of that. And I wish we could come up with a way. I wish we had the building where we could house this population without calling in a hospital, because I'm just talking from the environment perspective. That to me, same with River Valley. If we could figure out how to use that facility as a locked, secure facility for forensics patients, I would feel much better. To the point where I'd be rubber stamping this bill. I'm not there in any remote way when I contemplate using our correctional facilities in that manner. And you said something that sort of clicked for me, that your staff don't have the expertise to deal with folks who are dealing with a TBI, dealing with dementia, and are facing charges that attach to life imprisonment.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Not at the acute stage, Right.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Neither do correctional officers. I would say neither does the Department of Corrections. This bill, as written, places the Department of Corrections at the helm and in the role of determining custody concerns, evaluation concerns, treatment concerns, overall control concerns. The bill does not require any sort of consultation with our clinical agencies. It's just not in the bill. A different structure would place our clinical departments, DMH, Dale, at the lead, at the helm, and then engage with the DOC for the areas that you identify and agree with that are their expertise, safety and security. So I don't know what my question is, but do you have I'm worried that the DOC is at the helm here. As as the agency that as the department out of the agency of health services that is in control of, I'll say them again, custody, evaluation, treatment, and overall control. That doesn't make sense to me. Sure.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: I know it wasn't necessarily a question, but I do have a response. Yeah. That's fine. When I opened, I talked a little bit about individuals who are in their acute state.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: And

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: so what this bill does is put those individuals where the experts are, and that expert is around public safety. And that is Department of Corrections. So the individuals who are here, their acute stage of whatever illness they have has been resolved. And they are still presenting with a significant public safety issue. Because humans can have mental health substance use, TBI, whatever, and also be very purposefully violent. All those things can exist at one And that's what this is trying to solve, is being able to appropriately serve those individuals whose symptoms or diagnostically are stable and they are still a risk to the community based on their threats. That threat of violence doesn't always subside just because somebody's mental health condition or substance use condition or dementia has resolved.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I would disagree with that. The issue is it's not all about a secure safe like a professional facility. The other piece to this is treatment and support systems. We're putting a lot of pressure on DOC staff and that is not what they're here for. That's the rub. So we keep saying oh yes, it's cured, cured, cured. They need us to do it. Well yeah they do. But the question is who the people that surround the person who is in one of those beds, do they have the skills to really deal with the person who's in a crisis, be it a mental health crisis, be it TBI, be it dementia, be it whatever it may be. Yeah, you got that hard surrounding. The hard surrounding doesn't provide the treatment. And the way the build is structured, it's up to the commissioner. They're under the custody of the commissioner for corrections, nobody else.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: And that

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: is a criminal justice issue and it's corrections that's gonna call the shots for someone that needs medical, more medical support systems that corrections isn't designed to deliver. That's where the road comes in.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: And right now they deliver that in collaboration with a contractor. And I know that WellPath will be here and it's WellPath right now. It might not be WellPath and some other expert in delivering those services within that correctional facility. And this is just the beginning, right? We haven't gone through a rule making yet for this. And I do think there's some opportunities to talk through more operationally on what 01/1993 looks like on the ground. And I know that DOC and WellPath will be here this afternoon, and so I won't answer on their behalf. Have had success with an MOU that is in place between the Department of Mental Health and the Department of Corrections. We can talk a little bit about the formal structure of that. I want to make sure my team has an opportunity to talk about the successes of, the MOU. We also interact with, the department department of corrections and give consultation to the team there. If, there's a use of force that is non emergent, so somebody puts their hands on somebody else and it wasn't an emergency situation, we'll consult with corrections on that and work on training with the corrections partners. So there is a lot of nuanced collaboration that does occur. And I think looking at the MOU might be something that the committee take under advisement.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: A lot more questions. I

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: missed all the jams. Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We're speaking. James, Shawn, Troy, Conor, and Brian.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: To your credit, you answered one of my questions after you answered Troy's question. So these are my more higher level kind of question. So there's an interpretation by some that this bill allows for these patients, if you will, these forensically involved individuals to be in the general population in the correctional facility rather than having a separate secured place just for them. I don't know if that's your interpretation, but also I'd like to know what you think about that if it is your interpretation or if it's not, but just as a professional. The other thing I'll just say it's not a question, is personally I would like to see something that's more formal in here that has like a joint custody type position role for DMH and DOC rather than MOUs and rule making. But the first part is where I would like a question or answer if you would, please.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Yeah, and I watched the testimony from yesterday and I saw that this question came up. Professionally, if I was running a forensic unit, I would want to have the flexibility that if there's an individual who can safely interact with the broader general population and have access to the things that that general population has access to, then I would want an assessment that paves the way for them to engage in that. Because one concern I have is there's an opportunity for some isolation while somebody's court case is going through the process. So do I think they maybe are housed in one particular unit but have access, I think that would be more operational from the DOC perspective. But if somebody is safe and not vulnerable to being victimized by other inmates and not vulnerable to victimizing other inmates or other persons incarcerated, then I would want them to be interacting with the peer group, I guess, within a correctional facility. They're there. So that's how I would look at it professionally. And I would want to have the flexibility to do that based on the needs of the individual and the milieu setting.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Shawn?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Emily, thank you for everything. So my first quick question is, so you think this can happen successfully? We'd be here if we didn't think it could happen successfully. And do do you feel that is is it gonna I think one of the one of the problems we're all having is this whole DOC being the is there any way like, do you do you do you see that there could be some flexibility with getting DMH to be the inner to to be there, to at least be represented with one person, or at least somebody there during the day who is more specialized in this? Because I think that we're struggling with guards having, and we know that they're trying really hard and they're doing their thing, but we're seeing you all having that skillset that we're seeing, oh, like, boy, these guys would be in there and they're not gonna have that level of care that we all feel like they need. Is that something that could happen with this MOU?

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: I mean, I certainly think that that's worth exploring further, and I would broaden it to our partners at the Department of Health, and Dale, of course, because like I said, individuals in our facilities, regardless if it's a forensic facility or interacting with most of the AHS departments. And so I do think that that's worth exploring, whether it's somebody there every day to kind of monitor things. Don't, I would want to know DOC's perspective on that a little bit more. Know what I would say.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: If you were DOC, you wouldn't want you got

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: some I would. If I was running a contract for the services in my facility, I'm going to want to sure have input and consultation. But just like I wouldn't want DOC or VDH to be running my contracts at the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital, which is almost all contracted out except for most of our nursing is contracted out. We do have permanent nursing staff there. But those are the mix for a really challenging contract management when there's a lot of entities coming in and giving oversight to them. But MOU, I do think there is some It's worth exploring further and thinking about those roles in interacting with folks in the facility.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: But you've been at this a long time.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: And you've been on the ground and you've

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: been in these facilities and you're telling us you feel like that they have

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: the capability of doing this?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I do. Okay, thanks. Troy Conor Brown.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: It's growing. Those lists.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: I don't This isn't a typical contract. It's not. And I get that we use contracts across the state for various providers. This is very different. And this gets at the conflict of interest concerns that I have brought up. And I remain surprised and frustrated that it is so quickly dismissed, the conflict of interest components of this contract with WellPath right now. Gosh, I don't know where I'm gonna go with this. I might end up without a question again.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: You know what? I do that too. I don't mean to be dismissive of this.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Feel free to No, please be dismissive.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: I feel like you get a little I feel like they just miss you.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Endure me.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: That's not my intent.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: No, I'm not getting that. Don't worry about it.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: This is real testimony here. When

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: we privatize anything with regard to when we create a profit system in and around incarceration, that's incredibly problematic for me. That's not going to surprise anybody in this room. And that goes to our out of state contract, that goes to our telecom contract, and in this case, our healthcare contract. It is a captive audience in a different way than the folks that you house at the hospital. WellPath gets their funding from HTI Capital, who anticipates and expects a return on that investment. And when we set up our contracts as locked tight as we want them to be with regard to the services that we expect from this agency, that return on investment expectation does not disappear. And they're gonna find that return on investment at the margins. Sometimes that is shouldered on the staff, right? You're gonna be expected to do far more with far fewer people. That's how we save money. Sometimes that is in the very care that we provide. And there are mountains of concerning data about deaths in our facilities that result from improper care. The general can bring that to the table if we need him to. And ultimately, with this question of S-one 193, we are asking WellPath, who has a very definite and obvious financial interest in keeping this population in place, because that's how they make their money per cost, per day, per individual. So we asked WellPath, as we were setting up another bill, gender affirming care, within our correctional facilities for incarcerated folks who identify as trans, And we wanted them to be involved with the evaluation of folks who are seeking different housing based on their identity. And they said that's a conflict of interest for us. We can't weigh in on whether or not somebody should be housed because we might have to provide treatment for them down the road, and that might create a sticky situation. I can't remember how similar here. We're asking WellPath to determine whether or not an individual is going to become incarcerated for life in the facility where they provide health care with an expectation of return on investment because it's privatized. So when we start talking about these contracts, I don't want to dismiss that. I don't want to dismiss how different this contract is and this relationship is with a private provider for mental health services. It's incredibly different and it's laden with issues for me that have been dismissed so far as, don't worry about it. We've got

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Can I respond?

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: I'm good.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: So first, I immediately thought back to when I viewed the Netflix documentary, The thirteenth. ProFound changed me. Everything started to click. So I certainly understand what you're talking about on the for profit. With 193, outside of that, the individual, it's not just the well path contractor, DOC, determining when somebody's ready to get out. It's the courts. It's the courts. It's also the individual with their attorney petitioning that they're ready to get out. And so there are tabs out of the forensic facilities outside of the contractor. The court can be petitioned, and then that can go through the court and that determination can be made.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Conor, Brian, and then Kevin.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Probably feels like we're grilling you a bit, Commissioner, but it's Oh, I think you're

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: going to for it.

[Unidentified DMH staffer (possibly Ally Nierenberg, Care Management)]: £3,000 of comrade, no.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: It should at least be flattering that many of us think the budget's done with you, you know? And we are facing you.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: But I also do want you to hear from the DMH team because they are far more prepared to answer, I think, questions than I am. I can't see their eyes, so I don't know actually how I'm doing.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, they're fucking everything. Okay. Great.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: I agree with Troy, you know, with the for profit component of it. For me, it just doesn't pass a straight face test that will pass can do a better job of its population than your department can. You know, if you read sort of the national stuff about these big contractors, a lot of them would coach somebody to get ready for competency rather than go to some of the underlining. Get them long term stabilization that they need. It's more a temporary thing. I want to look back to the safety component of it, because in another life, I represented correctional officers and psyched to x rays. And to me, it was a bit counterintuitive because when I went to the Waterbury State Hospital or more recently up the hill in Berlin, I felt the tension in there more than a correctional facility with folks who were acutely mentally ill, maybe awaiting that period before involuntary medication, with the sky high worker comp rates for psych techs. And I always thought this is a more dangerous environment than a prison, because by definition, many folks are in there just because they're a danger to other people, right? So I'm really worried about the staffing situation in a prison where you would have a CO sort of round the clock with a contractor like Wellpath being called in, as opposed to a psych tech who's fluent in, no pain take down and a more nurturing sort of philosophy than a CEO has there. And I guess if you could just respond to that. And do you see a situation where maybe it could be psych techs embedded in the situation rather than CEOs? Because I think it's a very different job.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: And I think it's probably a mixture of both, right? The positions and WellPath can talk a little bit about this. There are similar positions within those behavioral health contracts or health contracts that Department of Corrections has with their contractor, similar to mental health specialists and psych techs.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: It feels like they're called in rather And than in the

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: so from an operational perspective, I think as this goes through, if it continues to go through, I think those are some conversations that we have at implementation. I will say though that you're comparing folks in their acute psychosis hospital level waiting for medication. You're comparing those with individuals who are treated and who are not acute and who are stable and who are perhaps on a medication or a long acting medication. And so from a impulsive psychotic behavior perspective, you look different. And your risk of violence looks different when that risk of violence is directly tied to mental illness once you're stable. If your risk of violence is tied to you making the conscious decision that you're going to hit somebody because you want to hit them, not because you're in the midst of psychosis, that's a very different safety risk. And that's the risk that we are looking at from a 193 perspective. The individuals are not in acute psychosis when they are at the forensic facility. If they're in an acute psychosis and they need to be in a hospital, the process to hospitalize them can occur, go to BPCH or wherever and get treated, then they go back. Thanks.

[Unidentified DMH staffer (possibly Ally Nierenberg, Care Management)]: Karen,

[Karen Barber, General Counsel, Department of Mental Health]: the record, I would also just note that the rulemaking of the bill specifically requires us to look at stuff.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Thanks.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Brian?

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Oh,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: good. Now

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: I'll scoot back. All right.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Well, now it's awkward.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Yeah, it is awkward. That's okay. I have lots of

[Conor Casey (Member)]: I had a year and a half ago.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: I almost wore a flower tie to We

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: we talked ahead of time.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: So this goes back to it goes back to everything. It goes back to Troy's question about money. It goes back to Conor's question about staffing. And the context is I've heard and it's not for everybody, but it's common enough. Two straw men over the last couple of weeks since we've been talking about this. One is that it's not about money. It is about money. And I think that's fine. We're stewards of public dollars. It should be a part of the conversation. We can talk about whether it's first or second or fifth in the conversation, but it's there. It is about money. That's fine. The other one is this notion that anybody out there wants this facility not built, doesn't want to deal with this population. That's nonsense. The question is how to do it. How much does it cost?

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: And what does it look like? It's logistics. Those out of

[Brian Minier (Member)]: the way, the Commissioner of Corrections has been in here and has testified that to do this within corrections would require two, maybe three FTEs. His team has been on saying, I mean, we're dealing with these. It's a sexually binary system. You got the men, got the women. So automatically, you're doing it within two facilities. The notion that you could deal with this population, however small it is, with one FTD here and one here, and maybe you've got a flow, or maybe you could double up on this one because there are more men than women, to me is insane. I guess that's a loaded word. But what might appropriate staffing for this population within two facilities look like?

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: I wish that I could answer that, but I apologize. I would really need to consult with the folks at the Department of Corrections and and welfare. I'm not up to date on how the staffing patterns look like, but as General Counsel Barbara just indicated that that is part of the conversation with Rule Making.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: And I guess we can leave it there. I have a question whether DOC is the right entity to answer that question, whether the commissioner of DOC is the

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: right entity to answer that.

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

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I think most of my questions were answered, except how large is your team?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Which team? Under you as commissioner.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: You have reported to you and they have reported to them. I understand you subcontract much of the services.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Yeah. So the Department of Mental Health oversees the entire system of mental health. But direct reports to me include deputy commissioner, general counsel, finance director. It's an open position. But if that was filled, our policy director, operations director, I'm the governing body at the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital. And so I supervise the CEO there and attend regular meetings and staff meetings there as well. I have an executive assistant, admin assistant I supervise. So it's a lot. And then it goes down from there.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: From there, that's just the first layer.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: That's just the first layer. Yes. And like I said earlier, I also like to be in people's business, not in a micromanaging way, but because serving the system is a passion. So I know what's happening.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Right. And I'm gonna make a statement rather than a question because Troy is trying to educate me and Conor on not for profit or this or that. I would say in general, the quality of support any individual gives whether they are working for a profit, non profit, NGO, whatever, comes down to the integrity of the individual that's working. Yeah. Because certainly in government, we are squeezing blood out of the rock all the time. Sure. Just like profit squeezes blood out of the church. So, it's it's it's in my opinion, I don't see, I don't understand. I'll put it that way. The concern of the difference. It comes down to the individuals that are doing the work.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: I did say earlier that that relationship with the provider is the most profound in creating change for an individual.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Thanks. So, No, no. To Brian's question, so we're talking about how many FTEs, and you said you'd leave that to the OC. So maybe this isn't answerable, that's okay, but I'm gonna ask anyway. If these six individuals, let's pretend it's six, just because the number's bad to wrap a lot. If they were suddenly in your care, how many more people would you need

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: to

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: in your system to deal with this situation, to properly work with them? In a theoretical

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Challenging to answer because sometimes related to somebody's risk of violence, you may need more of a step. And depending on if the environment that you're serving them in has blind corners. Or for instance, a help desk. The help desk at VPCH was designed as a customer service desk where persons hospitalized can come up and get deodorant, get a comb, like a customer service oriented approach. Also one of the places where staff are most vulnerable. And so it would depend on the environment and what's the risk of violence that individual is posing. If you do an evidence based risk assessment and it shows that they're at a high level, then I'm probably going to have enough staff to respond if they need to respond. But then you don't want too many staff because that makes people more agitated at times. It can be quite nuanced. And so I would say that flexibility based on the needs of the individual is important regardless of where it is.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I know we're running short and we're gonna have to schedule some more time. There is a question percolated around the committee last week on Friday about if we have such small numbers of folks, four, five, six folks, and some of our neighboring states have parks and facilities either up and running or they need to come online, It would be possible to have an agreement with either New York or the Westchester Trust for them to have a small number of folks in their forensic facility.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Yes, I knew that that question had come up. My first response is, Oh, I don't know if I want to send folks out of state.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: We're already doing it.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: That's true for certain That's

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: what we hear about this. We're already doing it. I'm just being snarky and I apologize.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Individuals, the individuals that we're talking about oftentimes don't have a lot of family and, you know, sending folks out out of state, I think increases the, you know, the isolation. I would be, I would want to know what the rules are around, the statutes that govern that forensic facility, and once, and understand what the what the process is to bring somebody back. An example that we have from a state hospital perspective is we have an interstate compact where if somebody is in a state hospital setting in Vermont and is say from Connecticut and they want to go back to Connecticut and Allie oversees this compact for us, we can call the Connecticut state hospital. If there's somebody on the other end in Connecticut who will accept this person in the community, it's not a go there and come back. It's a go there and then live there because that's where they're originally from. And so setting up a situation like this, where it's a to contemplate sending somebody out of state and then back for forensic services, we would I think we would just need to really explore, what those opportunities are. If there's other states doing it, I wouldn't wanna recreate the wheel. And I think it, I do not think there are other states doing that. But I would look to Karen, who meets nationally with the forensic system, to educate us a little bit on that.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Those compacts do exist, though, for your world?

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: For state hospital. And I'll say in the duration that I have been at the department, one, and it was after discharge back to Connecticut. And he had already discharged back to Connecticut before the compact came into play. Because those states are going to want to serve their own state communities first before taking on out of state folks.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I ask that who's percolating the committee last week. So we have about ten more minutes. Let's put Karen on the conversation. We're going to have Bennington back. I'm going to be dealing with this. One thing, Karen, I think in the time remaining, it might be very helpful What's currently in place with the MOU that's in place, DMH, DOC came about a number of years ago. Identify yourself for the person.

[Karen Barber, General Counsel, Department of Mental Health]: Sure. Good morning, Karen Barber, General Counsel of the Department of Mental Health. Thanks for having me back. I did just want to touch on one thing first, if that's okay, which was the joint custody idea. And I wanted to kind of talk a little bit about why, from my perspective, that's not a great solution. So for one, there's already legal criteria about who can come into our custody. And unless you're going to totally rewrite DMH statutes, you can't just put someone under joint custody because they have to actually qualify to be in our custody. And again, we're talking about people more than just DMH.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you're talking about if there were under this bill, right now it's just under the custody of corrections. So the thinking was, could there be dual custody the damage, the health and DOC? So it's not under at all, just corrections, policies and directives. Right. So you'd have

[Karen Barber, General Counsel, Department of Mental Health]: to rewrite. You'd have to completely rewrite statute because you can't just do that because there's already statutory criteria about who can be under whose custody. So DMH has clear statutory guidelines as to who can come into our custody. Dale has clear statutory guidelines around who can come into their custody. And as you've heard from Commissioner Bowen yesterday, it's a very narrow group. And then Department of Health for Substance Use has no custody. So if that is something you're thinking about, that is a much bigger issue and would require a lot more statutory changes than just saying, we'll put them under the custody because there's criteria, because there's liability. And so you have to really think that through and make sure you're really understanding what you're doing. And it's just a much more complicated thing. So I just wanted to raise that because I've heard that a couple times in different committees, and I think it's important just to understand the statutory structure around that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What Jack I'm thinking, and this may not be in your purview, but for youthful offenders, there is something

[Karen Barber, General Counsel, Department of Mental Health]: Because they're youth. So children do have to have some sort of guardian. It's supervision. Right. DCF having custody of kids does make sense. Again, would defer to them on that, but we're only talking, this bill is very narrow, right? We're only talking about adults. So this would not apply to children. And so there wouldn't be that component.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But what I'm saying is already joint, I don't know if it's direct custody, but there is joint work that happens with DCF and DOC, the supervision of juveniles involved in the criminal justice system. Yes, I hear you. And what I'm saying that's different. Yeah. The number of years. I just want to put that on the table so members are aware that we already do have something. Sure.

[Karen Barber, General Counsel, Department of Mental Health]: And we certainly have, we have folks in DCF custody who are also in DMH custody, right? Children are different because they do need a parent or they need some sort of authority. So that also happens in the DMH world where we have co custody for children. So for the MOU, so there is a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Corrections that's been in place for several years. We did do edits several years ago as well, a couple of years ago. And so that kind of helps walk through different things. So one, we have individuals who may want to voluntarily seek treatment out of corrections. DMH does not manage voluntary individuals. We don't have access to their information. We don't have a right to their information, but we can help make connections with hospitals. And so there's a process where the care management team who is talking to DOC daily, and Alec can talk about that at some point when she comes back, to identify individuals who may want to go to the hospital. Part of that though, is like we've talked about, you have to qualify to go to the hospital. I think this question came up yesterday. Was listening to testimony about if someone thinks they're not getting the right level of services, can they just go to the hospital? Yes, if they meet criteria, right? So if they are saying I voluntarily want to go to the hospital and they meet criteria, then we will help DOC work with hospitals to get them admitted to hospitals. And that process is laid out in the MOU. However, again, just because you want to go to the hospitals, that mean you qualify to go to the hospital. So there's a whole process for folks that voluntarily want to seek services and we more assist in that because again, those aren't folks under our custody. We wouldn't necessarily have access to their information. That's more about helping with connections. For individuals who decompensate while they're in corrections. So sometimes we have folks that go into corrections to wait for evaluations, per se inpatient evaluation. So the court has decided they need a competency evaluation. They've had an assessment and it's determined that they do meet hospital level of care. So they're waiting in corrections until we get them a bed. So we are constantly working with DOC and finding available beds. VPCH, this is another thing that came up yesterday. So VPCH is only for involuntary individuals. That's by statute. But VPCH is not the only hospital that's available to individuals in this situation. Vermont has a decentralized system. We have several hospitals across the state. And so just because someone needs to go involuntarily to the hospital does not mean that they're going to go to BPCH. It could be more most likely it's either BPCH, Brack or Retreat or Rutland Regional. But we also have beds at UVM, there's beds at Springfield, the Wyndham Center, and then the VA has beds. So there's lots of options depending on what their needs. So we're working with them on that, and the MOU talks about that. There's also people who are already in corrections, whether they're detainees or whether they've already been sentenced and they're serving their term, that at some point might decompensate and need mental health services. DMH, the MOU also deals with that. Have worked to train individuals within corrections to be what we call qualified mental health professionals. And that's a term we use that are folks that are able to do the first part of the involuntary process. So basically make the initial assessment to say, do they think they're a person in need of treatment? And if they do, that kind of starts the process. And then within, after that, then a physician has to assess the person and decide whether or not they think they are also a person in need of treatment. And the third and final step, the second certification is a psychiatrist must do that. And so we have worked with DOC to have a process in place where if at any time, no matter the situation, someone either needs voluntary or involuntary treatment, We are working with DOC to make that happen. You heard about SFI yesterday. Again, SFI is not just about mental health, right? But if an individual does have mental health needs, those are conversations that the team is having with Ally to talk about if there are services that they are needed or if they're gonna discharge, what that could look like. So we are constantly in contact with DOC around those things.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I wanted just to make sure that the committee knew what's currently in place. So yesterday we had Katie come in and walk through what's the statute in terms of mental health for folks who are incarcerated with mental health issues. SFI is just defined and used within DOC. It's not out in the community. It's for use within DOC in terms of classification for the person for where they're housed within the facility it pertains to how long it's safe and all of that. And then we did work years ago to make sure that the DMH and the POC were working together, folks who have mental health issues in general. So that's the layout of the current structure.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Actually, not a question, just a thank you. If we didn't ask the question about joint custody, etcetera, or any question, we would never get answers, but I appreciate your answer. And we can't know everything, but now I know a little bit more.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Doesn't mean we can't do it.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: No, that's absolutely right.

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

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: In those instances where somebody in DOC custody does decompensate and hospitalization qualifies for hospitalization, what's the typical length of time between that determination and finding a vet?

[Karen Barber, General Counsel, Department of Mental Health]: It depends on the needs of the person. So we base placement on the acuity of the person, so not necessarily where they're coming from. So it really depends. That's person specific. We're not seeing long waits.

[Unidentified DMH staffer (possibly Ally Nierenberg, Care Management)]: Our average wait time for someone involuntarily needing hospital level treatment is about two days. Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What's that statewide average? About two days.

[Unidentified DMH staffer (possibly Ally Nierenberg, Care Management)]: Week to week it fluctuates, sometimes it's a little more, sometimes it's less,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: but that's about an average. Thank you. Kevin?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I don't wanna be cynical. If S 193 does not become LOF, how will that change the current environment?

[Karen Barber, General Counsel, Department of Mental Health]: So it change the current environment. And that's what we submit to you is the issue is that there is a gap. Individuals who need hospitalization are going to get hospitalization regardless. That's not the gap. It's not those individuals. It's the individuals who don't meet criteria to be in our system. There is no secure setting for them and they are public safety risks. We have seen bad outcomes. And I think frankly, we'll continue to see bad outcomes if we don't address the issue. This isn't a perfect solution. We're not coming to you saying this is the perfect thing, but we are saying we think this is a good solution right now. I think it's also remember that I know you guys have lots of questions and I think they're really great questions and we can't answer them just yet because what we're asking you is for the authority to understand what population you want us to serve. And then we will design a plan around it. If we had spent all summer coming up with a plan, it would have been not valid now because the bill has changed so much since we introduced it. And so we waited to do the bulk of the work until we know exactly what you wanted us to do and what we were going to be allowed to do. And so I think there's so much more time to come in front of you all with the particulars and answer your questions once we've had time as an agency to come up with these ideas and have a plan that the bill right now calls for a plan in October. It calls for rulemaking. Many of the things you guys are talking about are things we're going to need to address. And if we don't address them to your satisfaction, you can push out the bill. You can withdraw the bill. There's lots of options. What now what we're saying to you is we really do think this is a gap that needs to be addressed. We need for you to define to us what you want us to work on, and then we will design a plan to do that. But we can't do that until we know exactly what you want. But we do think that what we've put forward is a really viable option, and we think it's the best option right now.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's why we're grappling it. Because I think everyone wants to fill in this gap. Question is, once you open up that door to house folks at DOC, that door is not. And that's the real concern. That's what we're grabbing. It's not giving people support, filling, finding something to fill that gap. Questions, do you see the appropriate place? It's under the custody of the Commissioner of Corrections, where there's a whole gamut of policies, directives, the person might be under. So that's what we're about.

[Karen Barber, General Counsel, Department of Mental Health]: Yes, I wonder if I might That triggered a question you had had about the concern of conflict. And one of the things I wanted to clarify was that, one is I think as we talked about, ultimately it's a court decision. But just because WellPath is providing competency restoration services does not necessarily mean they will be the ones doing competency evaluations. All it says is they have to take place at the facility. So right now we have a contractor that does them. We talked about making it a statewide contractor. So just to say, I think that is a valid concern and that's not necessarily predetermined that that's the way it's gonna be. I think those are things we're flushing out. But right now, we already have a contractor who does these things.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we've been putting language directing. I mean, this is where we can tweak my voice and the forensic director. Does the forensic director have to be under Well Pack or is it under another entity? Because they're the ones that make That director makes the recommendation to the commissioner for the commissioner to make recommendations to the court.

[Karen Barber, General Counsel, Department of Mental Health]: You could. And I would say along the lines of what Mr. Bowen said yesterday is that I would urge you not to be too prescriptive before we've even had a chance to go back and think about what we think are best practices and make recommendations. You can certainly change them later. But the way the language is written now and we work with the Senate on, there's some flexibility in our ability to be making these decisions and putting forward recommendations that can later be changed by you. But if you are so strict on the front end that we don't have the opportunity to kind of think as an agency, what makes sense? I would say that's not the best case scenario because with really good intentions, you may be taking away options that we would think about. And so I think one of the things you're probably going to see in the House bill is that it says it's an A. H. S. Report and A. H. S. Is going to lead rulemaking to make it really clear. And that it is an agency wide approach. That is actually language we have put forward in the Senate, but they wanted to make sure all the departments were listed. To get to your point, it's going to be a joint project where everyone comes together and thinks about what are staffing needs, what are clinical needs in terms of licensure and all of those things. What's a structure for reporting and making sure all of those things are taken into consideration. So those are all things that we plan to do.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Being very prescriptive, we'll give you some guidelines to make sure it happens. We're gonna have to schedule you folks again. I guess we're gonna be so tied up tomorrow afternoon. Because there's gonna be more conversation. We're gonna start working on language too. And we're also working with our colleagues in house judiciary because they're looking at the front end and not understand maybe some language coming from them in the next day or so. And then we've also reached out to human services and health care committees for their take as well. So I'm sorry we ran out of time. We've got to shift gears here to build this up tomorrow. Thank you very much. We're going to reschedule you.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Thank you for coming for the very first time.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We're going to transition really fast. We need to take the first home break, but not all at once. So I'm gonna put we're gonna shift gears. I hope folks have language problem in the calendar yesterday of the amendment or was good say you're way ahead of us. This is a ways and means of health. So age nine fifty five, the PUC education bill. This deals with school construction and a proposed funding mechanism going forward. And part of that deals with bonding capacity. Could have some in terms of the capital budget and the amount that will be allowable to be bonded for our capital infrastructure projects. So I ask John, if he's willing to come forward and give us a brief of the proposed language.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Stop the language.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Wow, you're coming out of there anyway, so get up there. We missed you.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: She's activated her.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's not passing this too bad. Isn't that fun?

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: I just thought it would be fun to

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: There we

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: go. Use to do what I was supposed to do. I did just eat a doughnut.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Don't get

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: to do that whole. I do this in all committees. Don't worry. I express my feelings.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So did you watch the masters?

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: I sure did.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Awesome.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: I missed the very end, which is unfortunate because that's the main thing that you want to see. Oh, I'll finish this. Yes. But it was beautiful. I mean, weather conditions go crazy.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: I am John Gray with the Office of Legislative Council, and we have page nine fifty five for you. So this bill is quite large, and what we're looking at is the Ways and Means Amendment, not the underlying bill as well produced by the House Ed Committee. And you can see that the Ways and Means Amendment is itself over 100 pages. So this will be large bill and assembled. It's already a large bill. But I'm gonna speak to just a couple of specific sections related to a kind of plan for state aid for school construction just for orientation purposes. You'll know that the existing state aid programs moratorium commenced I think 2007, so almost twenty years now that it's been stopped during that period while the laws have remained on the books. And I think that some emergency aid has gone out. The process of regular standard state aid for school construction has not. So this is, you'll recall that Act 73 last year created a set of state aid for school construction sections. It was in Act 73 last year, and it provided for award of construction aid in the form of a debt service subsidy. So the idea is that currently school districts go out and bond for their school construction projects. In the absence of state aid, those costs count toward a district's education spending. And so the concept there was a debt service subsidy would basically take state money, and while the local districts would bond for the whole of the project costs, the state would provide a subsidy to cover principal and interest costs on an annual basis. In Act 73, those aid provisions were anywhere from 20 to 40% of the eligible debt service costs on a project. And what you're gonna see here is an attempt to supplement that debt service subsidy model with something that is like the old, where the state aid worked in a way, leveraging additional state bonding capacity. So that is what's proposed here. And I think that while I typically gloss over intent and finding sections in this case, think it's actually gonna be helpful for orientation purposes, but also important because much of this is advancing a vision and expressing intent as to what is to be done. But there are things to be resolved. So I am on page 74, starting with section 65. We may be able to skip over some of the sections in this whole section, but you'll see. You like to hear the maybe it is helpful to have the findings.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I think it's important for the intent language because towards the end of the

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: day, intent language is definitely helpful. The findings themselves just set out that in recent years, there has been a facilities assessment done. And you'll recall that there were school construction task force working group. There's been all sorts of work done on this front. And back in 2023, the estimate was this $6,000,000,000 figure in total needs over a twenty one year period with an average annual need of 300,000,000. And that's just to achieve replacement in kind. So that is not producing twenty first century educational facilities, it's not expanding facilities, that's just replacement in kind. The last line you see for this subdivision one is that these needs have only grown. It's trying to say the need is large, and it has only grown since this estimate has been calculated. The remainder of the findings explain some of what I just described to you as kind of a overview of how to think about this in our current system, and this is the really simple way to describe these subdivisions. School construction costs apply pressure to property taxes. That's the way that it currently works because they were part of a district's education spending. They determine a district's and all district's, homestead rates. They affect the per people spend in that district and raise that district's homestead rates. They also raise the, statewide rates, because as you know, all of our education funding is raised statewide. There's something about that impact on property taxes. Haven't yet been I'm so glad I said these things because I wasn't aware until I said them. Okay. One of the incentives that is noted in the findings is that while school construction decision making is controlled at the local level, it is the local voters who determine that the cost of that decision making are spread across all property taxpayers. More of that share may be reflected in the per pupil spend, but that's reflected in the local rate, but because they are raised statewide, local decision making affects all property taxpayers. The school budgeting process asked school districts to weigh operating expenditures against capital expenditures within the same budgetary constraints. This leads to some disincentives to construction. If you even think high level, and I think you've heard some of this at the Caucus of Whole yesterday, I believe it was describing that the purposes of these sections are for a move distance and up to necessary school construction. Lastly, in the findings, the foundation formula in act 73 didn't create additional capital investment for school construction, so that's just waiting to be resolved. Intent of the general assembly to create greater scale, increase the efficiency of the delivery of education services, and encourage the efficient use of funds by prioritizing school construction projects that align with the creation of new school governance structures. Just to back up a little bit, state aid is of course a discretionary thing, There's eligibility conditions, there's an application you have to submit. You can pursue a school construction project in the absence of state aid, but what this section is saying is try to prioritize school construction projects that align with the state's priorities as a whole and make available the limited state funds to just those projects. On page 76, address inequities and education funding across the state, remove those disincentives, the construction of necessary and education appropriate school facilities. It's been identified that school districts that have necessary school construction projects simply can't move forward. Recognize the urgency of the current situation. And then the main thing I already hit in the intent section, these subdivisions four, five, and six, and mainly four, in the short term, catalyze the state aid for school construction program by providing state aid in the form of up to an additional $50,000,000 annually in state bonding capacity to support the construction, organization of school facilities, to support the consolidation of school governance structures, and improve access to educational opportunities for public school students. The two pieces there, one is this is intent to provide up to an additional 50,000,000 annually in state bonding capacity. That's above the current state bonding capacity. That's why the word additional is used. It's not to supplant 50,000,000 of any recommended. It's to say an additional $50,000,000 annually in state bonding capacity. Obviously, you guys are quite familiar with state bonding capacity. This is the capital bill. The second piece is what is it for? It's to support specific kinds of construction. And the callouts that you see in lines 11 through 13 are kind of the generic way of summarizing, I think, what the act is encouraging. Consolidation of school governance structures, improve access to educational opportunities for public school students. But that's, in the short term, provide us additional 50,000,000 in state bonding capacity. In the long term

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Sorry, have a question. What does catalog speak in terms of the language here?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: I kickstart. I mean, is a loose term. It's a recognition that there is not an identified revenue source for the school construction program. It is identifying a potential source for funding the program and saying, let's get this thing started and let's use this immediately. And that's also taken in the short term.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So this may also be a question for the treasurer, but they're gonna be using an additional 50,000,000 on a yearly basis. So already, debt affordability committee has allocated up that bonding capacity, 50,000,000 for our capital bill for one year.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Annually, yep.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And then, so this is saying that we'll go out to bond annually up to another 50 on top of what's being recommended for us. That additional that new 50,000,000 in bonding does that, they're limiting this could be a question for the treasurer. Is there limitations in terms of how that those bonded dollars can be used? When you're talking about school construction, is it actually for construction? Or is it just a portion of that project cost? If it's a $100,000,000 project cost, is there anything delineated in terms of actual construction?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: This

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: This for the construction or is it for other items?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: The budget. Yep. The intent here would be for construction costs. There are limitations on what you do general obligation bonding for, and you'll know that any any request for support through state general obligation bonding would have to flow through a capital budget request. All of those by law need to be included in that capital budget request. This is not intended, I think, to try to address some of the concern. The idea is not that a school district would vote a bond for the full cost of a project, and that the state would simultaneously bond and provide aid essentially using bonding to cover bonding. That is not the proposal here, it's that the local bonding would be reduced to the extent that the state bonding is available, meaning that they both would be covering school construction costs, so capital expenditures.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So how is and you may be getting to this later on language. How are we accountable for our state bonded dollars to make sure it's going to actual construction costs And those construction costs are not exorbitant and over the top.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: The only thing I really have to offer on that front is that this is speaking exclusively to the state aid provisions, have a whole set of applications you follow, conditions that you have to meet to receive state aid in the first instance. So hopefully those are providing the check that you need. But of course, this is an annual award of aid. So the legislature is in its traditional position of being able to ask questions of what is happening with the construction.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So for that additional 50,000,000, would that have to go through our capital budget process for that? Or is that actually a certain amount of this committee and just be the waste needs and approves?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: We will get to that particular section. It will have to be in the capital budget request, but whether it flows through this committee is, I think, a separate question.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's more constructive.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: And we'll get to that.

[Rep. Charlie Kimball (House Ways and Means Committee)]: But just to

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: your question, Alice, page that section 66 on page 77 speaks to your

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: oversight concerns over there.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Sure. John, you might be getting to this too. I thought there was language, just correct me if I'm wrong, that these projects, the school projects would be subject to the same prevailing wage requirements that we have in the capital bill. That's right?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Correct.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Okay. So higher of the state requirement or the federal requirement for contracts for projects that are funded by state aid or inclusive. So that's your short term piece, that additional 50,000,000 annually. Subdivision five on line 14 in the long term, so exactly what we talked about at the beginning, and this is what was the AmEx 73 provides state aid in the form of a subsidy to school districts pursuing those full construction project under the program. And then one of the complicating pieces here is subdivision six, it's recognizing the possibility of two forms of aid award. Vermont's education transformation provides state aid through multiple funding streams until the burden on property taxpayers imposed full construction expenditures can be reduced and leverage the capacities of the Vermont Bond Bank to simplify bond issuances, increase financing opportunities, and protect the state's credit rating. I would say five, six, seven were implicit in Act 70 three's provisions, but the 50,000,000 additional in state bonding capacity is the new core proposal here and is also why I'm in this room talking about it. That last clause in section seven, and it's protect the state's credit rating, is at the heart of this committee's questions, I think. We are pushing the boundaries of credit rating question. CDAC recommends $50,000,000 a year for the capital project. We're certainly doubling that. And we are at the very end of the margins of what it means. And we're not even a triple a right now. We're double a plus. How do we protect that? How do we do that? How do we without dipping into the capital bill, without saying because now we're we're focusing on school construction, is necessary. Absolutely. We're not gonna we're not gonna get the capital bill as much. I'll come to a section shortly that was changed throughout Ways and Means' committee process to try to address this concern. I think you'll hear more from the treasurer's office on this front. The proposal here, as I understand it, is not to deviate from any CDAC recommendation, which will become clear in one of the later sections. But the idea is to operate within whatever those constraints are. So if the CDAC recommendations don't come back in a happy way to this proposal, don't know what you can do with this. Idea, as I understand it, is not to impact the state's credit rating, is to operate within that constraint without touching it. You could have a different proposal that says this is an emergency and we are gonna impact the state's credit rating and we don't care. That's not what this is. This isn't saying full steam ahead on $50,000,000 additionally, regardless of what the treasurer's office and CDEC come back and say. It's tasking in a later section, the treasurer's office in consultation with CDEC to come back annually with recommendations on what the annual date funding capacity should be. But yeah, that is the question that has dictated the whole shape of this conversation.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And I'm wondering in that if there's any consideration that should be given to the impact on our capital budget and our infrastructure needs, our state facilities, because that also impacts our credit rating if we don't keep up with investing in our state owned properties. I'm just wondering if that report back should also or the recommendations that come in from state treasurer in terms of that additional 50,000,000. There isn't also a qualifier that they have to look at the impact on our state capital

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: budget. I mean,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We're out of the loop on this, but we're gonna have the effect of this because it's gonna constrain the amount of bonding capacity for our capital infrastructure projects going forward, and we've got some big projects coming.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Right. I agreed. It is why the additional qualifiers used to not touch the capital budget piece. But to your point about this could supplant effectively or reduce the treasurer's recommendations, and I'm sure they'll speak to this in consultation with CDAC, would necessarily have to account for all of the state bonding capacity that is used. You wouldn't get a segment and just say, oh, well, for school construction, it's fine. But for this, it's a holistic assessment. So you need to know the aggregate figure as I understand it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It might be worth putting in mind specifically about capital budget because nobody thinks about this move here that we do. Nobody still thinks about this. We we are a money committee, and we put bonded dollars towards capital projects not only go just to state owned infrastructure to our municipalities and to our veterans home and to our military and to BHCV. We cover the gamut and if our bonding capacity for our capital world, our capital build world is squeezed, we're not gonna be able to meet some of these departments.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: I have a question on page 87. Should I wait? Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You're way ahead.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Mr. Reid, I had over there. But there's something we can go pretty quickly.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right. Some of it can stop there.

[Rep. Charlie Kimball (House Ways and Means Committee)]: Question about this.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Section 66, I'll just tell you what this does. I don't think AOE is meant to be standing up a school construction division. This is establishing four positions to try to fully staff that school construction division, which would be necessary for the program, and then requesting that AOE submit as part of its FY twenty eight budget appropriate funding levels to support those positions. On page 78, section 67 kind of continues the efforts to produce AOE rule making on school construction, provides a deadline, and then provides some priorities for the kinds of rule making that should be done. Section 68, I think this one is worth talking about in more detail than the ones I just touched. In Act 73, as part of that state aid program, a new entity was stood up called the State Aid for School Construction Advisory Board. This is meant to advise the AOE, essentially on the implementation of the program. Section 68 is a report request of this advisory board that they identify opportunities for school construction on or before December 1. So they would provide a written report to the general assembly that identifies opportunities for construction or renovation of school facilities and same call out to kind of the aims of the act, consolidation of school governance structures, improved educational access. Provide a full citing study for each of those identified school construction projects that includes cost, location, other factors they think relevant. And it would analyze the compatibility of each identified project with other projects, evaluate different statewide scenarios. In simple language, what this is saying is, advisory board, come back at the end of this year, identifying opportunities for school construction that align with the goals of this act, provide a citing study of each that can allow the general assembly to make a determination whether it's worth pursuing any of these particular projects, and then consider them in conjunction with each other. You could imagine you have, I don't know, 10 different opportunities across the state, but they wouldn't all fit together. You might have one school that's quite closely located next to another. So the subdivision three is saying, think about all the projects together and give different statewide scenarios for the general assembly to contemplate. In developing the board's report, this is subsection b, the board shall specifically consider how to achieve appropriate scale, given research on school size and travel times, how to achieve regional comprehensive high schools. I've included a lot of language that was sort of at different members' requests that are just specific language that they wanted, so I don't always have the answers as to why specific terminology is used. But this is a report at the end of this year, December 1, from the advisory board, which is part of the entity that is helping to kick off that state aid program that would identify opportunities for larger school construction projects. And the thinking, I think implicit in the bill is that you're catalyzing the program with additional funding, You're quickly identifying appropriate projects, and you're trying to prioritize those, assuming they align with the prioritization criteria in rulemaking for the program to which to apply state aid. That is the thinking. Section 69, I'll just hit relatively quickly. The changes are on page 80, and this is exactly what you would expect. The state aid chapter has a statement of policy that expresses intent language, it's what you would think it's the intent of this chapter to prioritize school construction projects that align with the creation of new school governance structures under h nine fifty five. That's what that long callout is on lines five through seven. It is the intent of the chapter to leverage additional state bonding capacity to support the construction of these projects while the state identifies the total school construction need to be supported by state aid offered under this chapter. Lest you think that the intent language is meaningless and has no legal effect, would note that certain other provisions of the state aid chapter require consideration of a statement policy. For instance, rulemaking is meant to incorporate the intent of the chapter. So it does provide some cabining of the rulemaking task that is assigned to AOE. They should be thinking about this in developing rules. Intent to prioritize school construction projects that align with the goals of h nine fifty five, intent of this chapter, the state aid chapter, to leverage additional state bonding capacity to support those projects while the state continues to identify the total need to be supported by state aid.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the intent would be that we would actually be using the bonding capacity prior to the time that the state identifies the total school construction need to be supported by state aid?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: I think that that is fair.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You're putting money out there first, bonded money out there before you identify the total school construction need that would be supported by state aid?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Well, it's not saying that more take the role and require additional state bonding capacity. It's saying, here's what we have available today. We have identified opportunities. Let's put it toward that. We know that other problems still exist that need to be identified. And until a regular funding stream can be reduced.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So for those projects that we know are bumping up, they're using school construction as a carrot to consolidate and to deal with their companies. That's the issue here. State money to incentivize districts to consolidate. So if we know that there's some districts who are willing to go forward with consolidation, are they gonna go through some preliminary approval?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: The agency event? None of this would be available unless they have gone through the application process, received preliminary approval, on a priority list, received final appropriation, voted a local bond, received an appropriation from there's been a budget request. This will all become implicit, and it will be obvious in the sections that we come to. But everyone has to go through the the state aid program. This is not a proposal to create a sidetrack for new projects that are outside the scope of the state aid program. It's use the state aid program and prioritize these kinds of projects, assuming they meet all of the eligibility. They still have to meet them. You're not getting through projects, at least as currently in the bill, that would not meet the eligibility conditions and be prioritized. Only certain projects are gonna meet this. So it is not a total opening of if that is the concern. And that will take time, and rulemaking will need to be complete right. You need a fully staffed school construction division. Even though these sections become effective 07/01/2026, it would be some time before you could actually start providing any kind of aid. I don't know realistically what that timeline is, but it's not this year. Section 70, I'll note the change here, but it is duplicated elsewhere. One of the AOE's responsibilities under the state aid program is to submit an annual school construction funding request. This is clarifying at the top of page 81 that that funding request should include those projects that are identified for funding through state bonding. Again, and to the chair's concern earlier, these would also necessarily be included in the capital budget request because they include state funding. Section 71, just some cleanup changes. This is that advisory board I noted. This is clarifying that the board, while it already has the administrative technical and legal assistance of AOE, should specifically have the assistance of the school construction division and that school construction program director. You might expect that to happen intuitively, but this is just making clear that that is the case. And then it is cleaning up subsection G, which contained a time limited provision that is now passed, so you no longer need that in those statutes. Page 82, we're getting into what I talk about as the I call this the core state aid section. This is the section 16 VSA thirty four forty five that went effective 07/01/2026 sets out the application process in the award of construction aid. You'll note that there's a there's a lot of non underlying text here that is just included for context so you can see what the application process is like itself. All of these conditions, which include specific considerations that have to be undertaken, the Secretary of Education's approval process and also eligibility conditions under subdivision B would have to be met for any project that is receiving state aid. But I will, okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So how much of that was changed in last year's H703? A

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: few things changed here, and I can call out what I do remember. Was the

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: current statute that was under the old system of What was changed last year in August?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: So I will, yeah, I'll do my best to recall what I remember. So subdivision B is setting up the eligibility conditions prior to act 73. And I'm just gonna highlight the things and then I'll come back and explain them. You didn't have this two on lines 11 through 14. This didn't exist before Act 73. And then this four and this five didn't exist before Act 73. So I'll talk about what those are. Before act 73, I'm just ignore the section that I talked about. The secretary may approve a preliminary application if you had this need requirement. The project fulfills a need, one of these needs, health or safety, inadequate to provide programs, excessive energy use, deterioration. You had to meet one of those need fulfillments to meet that eligibility condition. What was added in Act 73 as a measure to move for consolidation is that as an alternative to those need requirements, if the project resulted in the consolidation of two or more school buildings and serve the educational needs of a student in a more cost effective and educationally appropriate manner as compared to the individual projects, you could you could go under that alternate route and skip the needs conditions here in Roman at 1.1. So you didn't have to do this if you can meet this. It doesn't speak to any of the other eligibility conditions, which still exist for a project that goes under either of those routes. So two on lines 11 through 14 of page 83, act 73 added that alternative route, and you can see the or here. Right? Sorry, my cursor is not

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yep. We get it. The or

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: is providing an alternative path under Romanette's left. You still have to meet the need addressed by the project cannot reasonably be met by another means. That's old program and new program. You still have to meet proposed type, kind, quality, size, and estimated cost are suitable for proposed curriculum, meet all legal standards, old program, new program, maintain both of those. Newly added for MAC 73 are remnants four and five, and that's starting on line 20, that the applicant achieves the level of proficiency in the school district quality standards regarding facilities management adopted by the agency. I will just call out, and I'll also explain why there's new text added at the top of page 84. That is a self assessment that school districts do. So there's a rule in the district quality standards that sets out proper facilities management practice. I think it's actually relatively small set of sections. And each year, school districts are meant to certify that they are following that, if they meet that standard, basically. So it's a relatively low hurdle, I would say, is my understanding, but that was introduced to try to align with facilities management practices. The new language you see at the top of page 84 here in H95 is trying to recognize that you might not want to preclude accessing the program who was truly just newly formed and hasn't yet made that certification. So it's not intended to change any substantive effect, but it's trying to recognize the timeline for a newly formed district. So it says if the applicant is a newly formed school district, the applicant will achieve the level of proficiency in the school's quality standards regarding facilities management at its initial performance evaluation under the school district quality standards. So essentially, if they know they're gonna meet it, they would attest that they're going to do so, which if you think about the fact that it's already a self attestation, that sort of makes sense. Not trying to make any substantive change, just trying to recognize some of the timing difficulties. The other thing that ACT 73 added last year is this remnant five. Again, we're still in the eligibility conditions. You have to meet all five of these to receive preliminary approval, which is the first step you have to take. The applicant has completed a facility's master planning process that meets these particular conditions, engages robust community involvement, considers regional solutions, evaluates environmental contaminants, and produces a facility's master plan that unites vision statement, educational needs, enrollment projections, renovation needs, and construction projects. So the requirement for facilities master planning, the requirement to achieve proficiency in DQS facilities management, and the alternate route under Roman out one that you're achieving consolidation in an appropriate manner are all new pieces from x 73. Does that make sense? Okay. We're jumping next to a sequencing issue on page 84. So we just talked about the preliminary application process, and now we're jumping to the prioritization. You can imagine that certain projects make it through that initial eligibility check, but there's only a limited amount of state aid available, so you need to prioritize projects and have a list of those projects. That's what this subdivision is about. Those prioritization points would be things that are set out in rulemaking. And the legislature has given some direction to the AOE as to what those prioritization points should weigh most heavily, and they're tied to goals of this act. It's like create prioritization and bonus incentives that align with the consolidation of new school governance structures and improve educational access. So I'll read this with the struck language as if it's current law, and then I'll talk about why this language is struck. Following approval of that preliminary application and provided that the district has voted funds or authorized a bond for the total estimated cost of a project, the agency with the advice of this advisory board shall assign points to the project as prescribed by rule so that the project can be placed on priority list based on the number of points received. That's how you rise up, your district rises up on that list till you're in a position to receive state aid.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So they need to have a local vote.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Yes, under the current law. Exactly, under the current law. And that's the way the old program works as well. And you can think of sort of the intuitive reasons for this. The project is only coming to you at the point that some significant local decision making has happened, and it also means that other steps could potentially be taken if the vote will get to those pieces. But other

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: part is they authorize bonds for the total cost, estimated cost.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Exactly, exactly.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Not just the part of it.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Exactly, so you are ahead of me, or you're understanding why this had to be struck, which is that if you contemplate state aid in the form of state bonding, you can't know what to bond locally until you know what your state aid is, because you need to reduce the amount that you bond locally to reflect what the state aid would be if you're receiving any state bond and support. If you're exclusively receiving a debt service subsidy, you could bond for the total estimated cost of the project. But if you're receiving any state bonding, that needs to reduce the amount that you bond locally. Otherwise, you would be bonding to cover the costs of local bonding, which is not a permissive.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: This is where this rubbed in my brain, because I know the old system really well. And they believe the districts voted for the total project cost. So they went out for bonding for the full cost. Really, the state worked with that school district to really make sure that where our bonded dollars were going in that project was the actual construction

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: that

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: complied for the standards that we had in place. So they knew approximately how much of that total project cost, how much of that would be eligible for state aid from the state. And we would pay that amount. So they they wouldn't

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: have to

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: bond for the full amount but they received state loans to pay that off. But we were very clear that our state bonded dollars were going to actual nuts and bolts and concrete. It's going to the actual construction. I And it had to be eligible because construction may not be eligible if it went above the standard.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: So the eligibility piece still exists, and the idea is still the state bonding is exclusively for construction. So those are both intended to be maintained here, and you'll see the eligibility language later. You may recall, and we'll get to this, but that's something that's spelled out in rule. It's set out in the When we talk about the approved cost of a project, it's only certain elements received approval from aid, right? Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: As we go further, it says approved cost, what's approved?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: So what you see here is striking the language for voting funds or authorization of a bond in advance of preliminary approval because it would create an impossibility if you did remove this. You can't know what to bond locally until you have the state aid. So that is why that has struck, but you can imagine it might produce some just general practical difficulties. Think Subdivision 4 is responsive to one of your earlier questions about routing of the request through committees of jurisdiction. So this one's pretty important. The agency shall submit its annual school construction funding request. I've gone line 20 at the bottom of page 84. They'll submit its annual school construction funding request to the governor as part of its standard budget and shall clearly identify those projects contemplated under subsection thirty four forty b. That's the statement of policy intent language that spoke to that additional state funding capacity for the consolidation of school government structures in alignment with this bill. So identify those projects that are contemplated for funding from state bond. Following submission of the governor's recommended budget and submission of the governor's recommended capital budget, which would necessarily need to include any state bond support, the house committees on education and on ways and means, and the senate committees on education and on finance shall recommend a total school construction appropriation for the next fiscal year to the general assembly for inclusion in, and we'll talk about this piece. It's actually, we may not need to talk about it, but it's sort of an ignore line the additions to lines eight and nine. But the piece here is submit budget and capital budget, which would need to include any state funding support. And then the committee is called out here for recommending that appropriation, which of course, got to go approach. But the committees that are kind of first hitting that are adding ways and means and your Senate counterparts. So it does not include corrections institutions or the Senate Institutions Committee.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And it also does not include potential impact that that 50,000,000 extra bond investment could have on our capital budgets. I think that that's the crux of the issue for this particular committee that by using up that additional bonding capacity does not allow any flexibility or growth in our world for increased budget needs to keep up with our infrastructure. It really hamstrings, it really puts our hands behind our back for the capital budget. It keeps it at 50,000,000 going forward. The other part of this, and Joe brought this up last week, does this thing go on our debt service, this new additional 50,000,000? And if it does, then it plays into the formula in terms of how

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: much general

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: fund we get, which then could decrease the amount of general fund we get. And our hands are tied behind our back in terms of any growth that we would need for our capital budget for bonded dollars. That's the impact.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: That is a good point. The way the cash fund works, for instance, has that tie to is the 4% we've talked about. And then it's reduced.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: By the debt service.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Exactly. So you would be increasing debt service costs, which would reduce at least the statutory allocation of the cash fund.

[Rep. Charlie Kimball (House Ways and Means Committee)]: So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: it squeezes us even more. And I think people need to be aware of this. I mean, nobody pays any attention to capital, but some gas is gonna be here. But we're dependent on the bonding.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Huge projects coming up. We've a lot

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: of big projects, and this is gonna hamstrung us. No one, for what reason means, talked to us about this as a committee. It was sort of like, wow, Alice, we're doing the bonding capacity. And the treasurer said, oh, they put us extra money there. We brought in the treasurer last week, and this is when we started raising some.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: I hear you. Yep.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And maybe our committee needs to be more involved in this decision going forward. That has a direct impact

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: to us. Which is the way that the pre moratorium capital bill contained your school construction projects.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: If they were only at 8,000,000 a year. Yeah. Right. Couldn't keep up. We couldn't even keep up with that.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Right.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's why we were 80,000,000 to 90,000,000 in a hole. And that's why there was a moratorium because we didn't have the bonding capacity to keep up with it. That was the school construction. Now school construction isn't part of that. And we're limited right now from 50,000,000 a year for bonding. And we've got projects, if we do a correctional facility, we're talking $120,000,000 for one correctional facility about 100 and plus beds. I mean, that's what we've got looking down. I mean, we're trying to replace the juvenile facility and we're doing a design build possibly to take some fresh off the deck. We've got some big projects. Nobody reaches out to us at the beginning of any conversation. Say, how does this impact you? So, Joe, you need your hand up.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Well, I was

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I got on my soapbox. I'm sorry.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Well, no. That's fine. That's one of my two queries, but you you spoke with the cash fund. Don't and I I apologize if this was discussed in my absence. But does this language consider an existing bonds out there, aid in existing bonds, or is this only for new activity?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: This is for new products that would be approved under the program. If you're talking about local bonding for a school's interest in project, those are addressed later in the bill. There's a section about legacy debt aid, which is to provide aid for existing capital indebtedness for school districts as of the 2025. We can talk about that section too.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Okay. I'm sorry. No. You're

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: For the same sequencing regions, Subdivision 5 spells out the final approval, and you can submit for final approval sort of immediately following preliminary application, assuming you've done these steps. And so there's a set of conditions required for that final application approval. And one is obvious that you've received preliminary approval. Second, the district has voted funds or authorized the bond for the sequencing reasons we talked about, can't really have that there because you need to know the aid before you can do it. There will still be a requirement for voting those funds or authorizing a bond, it just has to come later before release of funds. Page 86, you can see that the other pieces that aren't changed, but may be complicated by the sequencing. But the district has made arrangements for project construction supervision. They provided for construction financing of the project during a period prescribed by the agency, otherwise not the department's of the chapter, and some special federal law pieces. But I wanted to call out these three and five just to note that practically I wonder how easy it will be for districts to make arrangement for project construction or provide for construction financing during a period prescribed by the agency if they haven't voted funds or authorized a bond at this point. So just noting that there's some complications within this section, but the new language that you see at the bottom of page 85 is removing that sequencing problem to ensure that you don't create a literally impossible situation in which a district could never receive aid. Okay. Page 87. This is a poor one. Hopefully, we transcribe it, but I won't Yeah.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: It's what I have questions about.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: So this is the award of construction aid sections. I'm gonna read through as if we have none of the updates here so you can see what was in x 73, explain that what what that does, and then I'll talk about what the new language does. So in subdivision a beginning in line two, the base of an amount of an award, and I'll be reading the structured language and not the underlined, The base amount of an award shall be 20% of the eligible debt service cost of a project. Projects are eligible for an additional for eligible excuse me. Additional bonus incentives as specified in rule for up to an additional 20% of the eligible debt service costs. So in Act 73, as we discussed at the outset, debt service subsidy model, the idea is that aid is available in the range of 20% base amount of eligible debt service cost, and there was a provision that talked about what eligible debt service cost is that was tied to approval, calculating the lifetime payments on a bond that's voted locally, taking a percentage of that. So you would get 20%, and you could get additional bonus incentives that would be spelled out in rule to bring you up to a maximum of 40% total age. So 20% base plus additional 20% age, 40% of eligible debt service costs. That's the Act 73, that's what's currently on the books to go effective July 1 year. The new language that the base amount of an award shall fund, and I can try to explain the technical reason this has to change, but it's related to the fact that you could have both a debt service subsidy and state bonding support. The base amount of awards shall fund 50% of the total approved cost of a project. So only those elements that are approved by the agency under rulemaking, much as it was done under the old provisions, you had to have approved elements of the project, only those were funded. But we can't call out the debt service piece anymore because if a component of your aid is state bonding and we said 50% of the debt service costs, taking 50% of the local voted amount, which would be reduced by the state bonding, you would create like an infinite You'd either create an infinitely recursive thing, or you would reduce the amount of aid below what people think they're providing to local districts.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You'll last me on that one. So if you use the bonded dollars, can you use bonded dollars to pay off debt service?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: No, And that's not what's being proposed here. And we'll come to that in B.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right. So this is not for the New York debt service. This is based on the award is 50% of the total approved cost of a project. So the total approved would be, when you go back to that preliminary award, they had to be one, two, three, four, five. Is this Senate saying the state is picking up percent of that cost, the total approved cost.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So before in the end of the days, we were picking up 30% of eligible project costs.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: this increases it to 50% of the total approved costs of the project, then it would be part of those funded dollars that would be used for that 50%.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: So the reason that fund is used and total approved is used is that, and this will be clear in B, so maybe it's helpful if I go ahead and read B and then come back to A. Construction aid shall be awarded as a debt service subsidy, as support through state bonding, or as a combination of both. So when we describe the award in A, we have to use sufficiently broad language to capture the possibility of both. But it could be a debt service subsidy, but it could also be state bonding support. So that's why

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So that 50% total approved cost of a project. So a project is 100,000,000. It's been approved. Approved costs of a project. So to say the total approved costs of one of the projects is 100,000,000. This language says we're gonna pick up 50,000,000 of that?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: That is correct.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So part of that 50,000,000 could be paid for by that bonding capacity, could be paid for by general fund to go pay the debt service subsidy?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: That is correct. The one complication I did wanna note is in your hypothetical, just to be clear, and I think you understand this, but the 100,000,000 may not be the total cost of the project. Correct. It still incorporates the eligibility conditions.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Correct. I mean, the total cost of the project could be at 200,000,000, but what is approved

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: is

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: eligible for

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: three could

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: be that 50,000,000. It's approved as 100,000,000 and we're gonna pick up 50% of that. So we're gonna pick up half of that, so $50,000,000 of that 100,000,000

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: And if you read three through five, eligible for additional bonus incentives as specified in rule to fund up to an additional 45% federal approved cost. So you could have a maximum of

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's not tank at stake.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Of 95% aid.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I went through this with only $8,000,000 and we got Yes. I'm sorry, but James and then Kevin. Kevin.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: You just said that, but so you're a lawyer, obviously. Established that. When you read that, right, it could be, you know, it's 50% of the approved cost, right? And then you say 45% of the total proof cost. So it could be 95%. Just saying that's what it means. But then, you know, the layman's brain goes, okay, so 45% of what's left after, you know, that's 75%, right? But that's one thing I think it's clear from what you said is 95%. But I do have a question for my friend over here, if Alice is permitting it, because I want to know like

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Who? What friend? Mr. Kimball.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Because I want to know where, why, like how did those numbers come, that's a lot of, that's a big change and it's a lot of state funding for a local project compared to twenty and thirty. So like what was the rationale, how did that happen, etcetera, is kind of what I'm curious about.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So could you just add that for yourself? Yeah,

[Rep. Charlie Kimball (House Ways and Means Committee)]: I represent Charlie Kimball, representing Woodstock, Reading and Plymouth, and I'm on the Ways and Means Committee. So there are a couple of things. One is we looked at a lot of different state aid for construction programs around country to figure out what could we do, and we have a very unique system, and the fact that we have a statewide education property tax which ends up paying for all school construction projects in the end. So we were trying to balance what is a local share and what is a total state share, and so what we looked at is also the Rhode Island model, which has a subsidy on the debt service payments, and that's what they do, but that's only on top of what the regional share is. We don't have a regional share in the current system, so we're trying to figure that out. As a way to incentivize these types of projects, we're looking at that 50% of the eligible costs, and it could be a combination of that, the $100,000,000 example. If it's $50,000,000 maybe 20,000,000 of that is from the capital bond and $30,000,000 is that annual appropriation for the debt service on that, so that could total $50,000,000 you know what I mean? So that's not an obligation of a local school district or the other funds. So we were really looking, before I move on, Rhode Island has even a model where it has up to 95% of aid for school construction projects and still these school districts decide not to move forward because they can't cover the balance owed on their school debt from one payment before they apply for reimbursement for the state. So we were looking to really where it makes total sense for the state to make this investment and consolidation of schools to provide adequate funding.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: May I offer something that would maybe be helpful to think about? But the idea here is that there is an annual amount available for state aid, and it is not an entitlement under the program that if you meet these conditions, you will be approved and receive aid in that year. What that means is the prioritization really matters. It's who has first access to funds. It doesn't mean that you're gonna have 20 projects that are suddenly requiring 300,000,000 a year. It means that maybe only one project or two project or three projects get through to meet that annual funding amount available. So the prioritization matters. So I get the intuitive reaction to making 95 percent available could tank, right? But the thinking is, if you provide 95% aid, you've actually reduced the amount of projects to which you provide aid. That's the way that it But

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: when do those dollars go out for that particular project? Is that spread out to an initial payment at the beginning of the projects and a final payment? Or do they get the money all upfront?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: These would be annual. These are annual amounts rather than upfront.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: John just said kind of highlights the reason I'm asking. So if that much money is going to one project, that increases the inequity of who gets, potentially of who gets it, if we're funding one project this much and nobody gets the money. But also, Charlie mentioned that we do have a system where everything kind of goes into the state block. For instance, so you can have a school budget, for example, that you kept at 1%, your taxes could go up 7% because other districts didn't. So to me, it brings up a whole other issue of maybe we,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I don't know,

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: maybe we need to rethink how we fund schools. But anyways, let's go further on.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, all right. So the amounts would be awarded annually? It would be annually on the state level. But when does the district receive that? Do they receive that?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: The debt service subsidy is also annual.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right. It's annual on our end. But when would the school district or consolidated school district, would they receive that full 95% of their total approved cost on one fiscal year? Or is that spread out over their own fiscal year?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: It is spread out over the, as I understand it, over the life of the because they have to bond no matter what. There's no situation in which the district isn't achieved 5%. They're receiving 95% aid and can somehow cover 5% of a project. Each school district would be bonding. They'd have this project covered over twenty, thirty years, whatever.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Would we be paying their debt service over?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: I think that's the idea.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And the part that would be coming from our bonded capacity, would that go out at once or would that go out over a twenty year period as well?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: I think the idea is to award these annually. So it's not an upfront, but I think maybe you're raising the question of what

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: would When that do they get the I'm trying to hear when it would hit, particularly the one with the debt service, because that's coming out of our general fund. When is that gonna hit our general That will hit the general fund for one school for a twenty year period possibly. And then you add on another school, then you add on another school. It's gonna increase in But the the part that you're paying that you're using that bonding capacity for, it's not debt service, it's for actual construction. When do those bonded dollars go out to the school district? Maybe the full amount upfront, or is that spread out over a couple of fiscal years?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: I understand it to be awarded annually, but I don't know if Representative Kimmel wants to jump in.

[Rep. Charlie Kimball (House Ways and Means Committee)]: Yeah, I think the concept was to use a combination of those two for at the construction project. Whatever's coming from state bonding authority, state bonding amount would come in as that construction project was completed.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: As it was completed?

[Rep. Charlie Kimball (House Ways and Means Committee)]: Yes. So in that example of $100,000,000 so if it's $20,000,000 that's coming from the state bonding, that would be really as the project is being built. If there's any additional subsidy awarded for that project, $30,000,000 could be, whatever it is, that would be an annual subsidy coming out of another funding source, either general fund or education fund.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the bonded amount would go out when the project is completed?

[Rep. Charlie Kimball (House Ways and Means Committee)]: Right, that was one of the concepts, yep.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And all the invoices have to be signed off? Who validates that the project's completed?

[Rep. Charlie Kimball (House Ways and Means Committee)]: Didn't spend time discussing those details, but that is generally in the rules established by the agency of education.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The current rules or the new rules?

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Those would be state board rules at this point, but they're being transferred to the agency July 1 of this So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: you're going to keep those particular rules that are currently in place.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: They're going to be updated as well. Like this.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right now, you get part of your payment when you put a shovel on the ground, then you get the remaining payment when the project has been signed off and all the invoices have been signed off. Then you get the remaining half for that. That's why I'm trying to figure out when your bonded dollars go out. Kevin, you're in your hands.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: We got an easy one. Line four, examples of what additional bonus incentives are.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Those will be set out in rule, but you can think of the base amount as providing this 50%, and then a bonus incentive would be like 5% more aid tied to a project meeting a specific condition. And that could be things like this achieves consolidation of school governance structures. We don't know yet what the bonus incentives will be, but if you look at, it's either section 67 or 68, it speaks to directives to the AOE in its rulemaking. And it says specifically adopt rules to create prioritization of bonus incentives that support the consolidation of school governance structures. So it could be the project achieves that or it contains a CTE, we don't know. They will be set out in rule. I would encourage the legislature to be specific as to what they would like those bonus incentives and prioritization to be. There's some step toward that here because that is the chance for the legislature to have its say in what projects receive most aid. Okay, so those are to be determined. Exactly.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: The concept is we run-in select price Exactly. Efficiencies, quality, but we haven't defined what that is yet.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: That's right. And Act 73 may have some additional language on this front, but I don't know

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: it off the top of my head.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: I also did wanna flag I'm have to run-in, like, eight minutes. So we've talked about sub B. It can be debt service subsidy, state bonding, or a combination of both, annually awarded, subject to annual appropriation, and released only once they voted funds or authorized the bond. That's that sequencing placement. You no longer need the call to eligible debt service costs because of the changes to six a. It's not that you wouldn't want to know what that is in administering the program, you just don't need it for the statute. And then sub c, this is a big one. I think this is maybe the core one that you guys wanted to see. When we talked about the intent language in the first section I spoke to, it was in the short term for the state to catalyze the program with an additional $50,000,000 in bonding capacity to support goals of this bill. What you see in subdivision C used to sound a lot like that language. It said shall provide state bonding support up to $50,000,000 additional annually, and shall provide annual debt service subsidy up to an unspecified cap. The final change that happened here was to make sure there is no divergence from the CDAC recommendation, the treasurer's recommendations, to limit any impacts on the credit rating. So what you see in C is the treasurer in consultation with the Capital Debt Affordability Advisory Committee, which is the group CDAC that puts out those biennial general objection bonding amounts shall recommend to the House Committees on Education on Ways and Means and their senate counterparts the annual total state bonding support available and the annual debt service subsidies to be awarded under this chapter. So it no longer specifies $50,000,000 additionally, like the intent language. It says, get a recommendation.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So this is where I'm wondering if that recommendation should also include languages to the impact on our capital budgets. And that we get this report as well. Because it impacts our budget. That's what I'm. People need to be very, very clear. We're going to use additional bonding capacity that's out there. That in the long term could really tie the capital budget. I don't know where the committee is. We could offer an amendment. Just buffer it. The way we should see that when they come back. Before it

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: is a good Also

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: indicate what the potential impact could be on the capital budget. And that we also just putting that out on the table for folks to think about. Gina?

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: I mean, quite frankly, feel like the whole session is premature until we figure out what the district consolidation is gonna be at some point since there's a study on the studies on the table in this bill for something down the road. We don't even know what schools could be in those districts or would need this money or if some school that wants to continue its existence goes out for a bond issue and it gets approved. I mean, there's so many what ifs out there before we start getting into tying up our bonding capacity invest. But

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: that's I don't, I mean, this is the treasurer's gonna come back after they consulted the CDAC. We get the CDAC report. In our world, we get the CDAC report. I think we need to be kind of in the loop here. This treasure comes back. You know.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: This is a comment that may not be intelligent, but obviously some people believe that the reconstruction or the increased educational building improvements is an emergency. And somehow we came up with 50,000,000 a year instead of 65 or 75. If the concern was we've got emergencies in our committee over the many years that have been being managed, maybe we should get 10,000,000 more and they should only get $40,000,000 I mean, that's the negotiation that we've really done. If we think the state can afford to bond twice as much as we have in recent past, maybe we divide the pot up because, and I'm not suggesting we bond more. I'm not suggesting we should, But if that's the consensus, then the way to solve it is you get from urgency to both.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: And just some background for the 50,000,000 where that came from, because I don't think we've actually talked about it yet. But that was testimony that the committee heard there is potentially a 50,000,000 additional available annually without reducing the other pieces. Right.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: We saw the presentation of 5,100, and 150, and we could theoretically stay solvent to a 50, and maybe even 100 to 150 tips it. So, that's subject to economics.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So, this is in a section of award of the construction Just I mean, see just it's the award it's in a section of the award of the construction in terms of when the church makes the recommendation. Seems like a plenty place put this, that's all.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Would you like me to suggest reasons why it is there?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah, I mean, that would be helpful.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: Okay. So one is that this is basically the subdivision that sets out the amount of construction aid that is available for the program. So it's saying we award these amounts subject to annual appropriation for these purposes. What is the amount? Sub c is saying you're gonna get a recommendation on what the amounts are.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Still technically need to be able look at that section. Brian, would you like to ask?

[Brian Minier (Member)]: Yeah. So I think there's a line of questioning or comments, I think it was from the vice chair, about the way that we're incentivizing. So a larger award going to a smaller number of projects. And I think Ledge Council has said that it's yet to be determined how exactly that's done. Is it permissible slash appropriate to ask rep Kimball about the intent of ways and means? Yeah. I mean, is the idea to put forward to incentivize the creation of larger scale, traditional high schools? Is that sort of the desire here by doing it that way?

[Rep. Charlie Kimball (House Ways and Means Committee)]: Yeah. Thank you for the question. The idea is to provide funding that will help achieve the acts of 73 and also age nine fifty five and the creation of those school facilities that will achieve some kind of scale and improve the delivery of education services on a larger basis, yes. Looking for prioritization of projects, not by us, but also recommended through the advisory board and the agency of education to come up with that list of prioritized projects. And quite frankly, if I may, just for a minute, Madam Chair, it's a question about if you're a manufacturer and have a lot of inventory on the floor, there's a question, do you take a list of that and figure out what you can build, or do figure out, hey, want to build this, do I have the inventory in order to do it? We kind of took both of those approaches to figure out what are the prioritized projects and how do we find the money to do it, or how much money do we have available and what can we afford to build. So it's kind of trying to triangulate and figure out how can we make these things happen, and this is really just trying to provide that structure.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: I need to run, but I do want to hit the question that Representative Casey had. On page 88, you'll see the wage requirements under on lines five through 11. So I just wanted to call that out. Yeah. Right

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: above that Yes. Lines one through four. Am I the read that? Is the secretary Education. Of education may grant up to $90,000,000 unilateral?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: 90,000,000?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: It's 30% of an eligible project up to a maximum eligible total project cost of $300,000,000. Thousand.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We put in

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Oh, it's 300,000.

[John Gray, Office of Legislative Council]: So $9,090,000.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We've Oh,

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: okay. I would've read that wrong. It would end up with Okay. That's different. Sorry. I did read that. Thank thank

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: In the capital budget, we put in 50,000 a year, but we haven't in the last couple of years. She has had expended it. But we put in 50,000 a year for the agency of Ed for emergency projects. And that 50,000 has divvied up, and we've only paid 30% of the eligible cost for their project. So we already fund some of this. Did not take away emergency aid when we put in the form. And then the remaining part on page 88, your legacy debt. And that would be your general fund dollars for that. Excellent

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: job,

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: I have a quick question I think that Charlie can help with.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: So Charlie, just financing big picture and things. So, you know, and I'm using the example of Burlington High School. So, officially, 89. Let's keep it simple, 200,000,000. Right? So are you would is this proposal look at it doing that.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: You would go out and give them like, if it was a twenty year bond, are we giving them 10,000,000 of this every year for twenty years to cover that 200,000,000 ish?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Maybe it's 8,000,000 because it's it's, you know, it's something quite 200,000,000.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Is that what this is gonna look at? And then that one project to build one high school is gonna take 20% of that fit, well, more than that. I guess it would be 20% of the 50,000,000 for twenty years. Is that kind of how it works or is it a little

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: different than that?

[Rep. Charlie Kimball (House Ways and Means Committee)]: And you're not thinking about looking retroactively at that particular high school, but if it was a brand new one somewhere else. Brand new high school. So let's say South Burlington, had a bond for $257,000,000 something like that, $275,000,002

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: $70.70 dollars Okay.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Let's say it was that, yeah, let's say it's up front.

[Rep. Charlie Kimball (House Ways and Means Committee)]: Brand new school. So there's three different things to be contemplated in this. One is, how is that achieving the goals of Act 73 is put in there? Is there, so that prioritization, does it meet those prioritization levels? Don't know. If you were say

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: this, but probably not.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What if it

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: did? What if

[Rep. Charlie Kimball (House Ways and Means Committee)]: it did? So it would be an eligible program. Then the eligible costs, what are the eligible costs and try and figure out what that is. If they're spending $300,000,000 but only 200,000,000 are eligible, then we're looking at that nut. And then from that, what percentage is then available under this concept? It's 50%, either as a capital grant almost, that's repaid in that capital bill, and then the other would be debt service subsidy. So from that, it's really hard to know. Is it going to rise to the top of the level? Don't know. I mean, I think about Lakes Region High School and North Country, which have some potential mergers and some PCB issues and that kind of stuff. That's probably going to rise faster to the top because of health and safety concerns and that kind of stuff and consolidation. So there's What we don't know is we thought about should we try to identify these projects ahead of time? Yeah. Don't know. And then the ongoing debt service, we weren't clear, Madam Chair, as to whether it's coming out of the Education Fund or the General Fund, ongoing debt support, because right now it would be coming out of the And Ed what we're trying to avoid is trying to overburden property taxpayers and trying to come up with a way that there's a mix of funding that results in new schools, but that doesn't overburden our taxpayers.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we have the state treasurer office here. Do you folks wanna weigh in after this walk through? I know you came in last Friday. Do you wanna weigh in?

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: So David Cheer, deputy state treasurer is online as well. David, are you there?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Are you there, David? Here you are.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I am here.

[David (Deputy State Treasurer)]: Good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning, committee. I think we're happy to be helpful in terms of questions that you have. I know that Scott, our director of debt management, Scott Baker's in the room there, had given some information about our financial consultants assessments of debt capacity, and we're happy to answer more questions about that. I will just note for the record, the treasurer has not yet taken a position on the bill as a whole or on pieces of the bill, but we have been happy to be helpful in terms of providing expert advice around debt and bonding capacity and using our resources and folks we work with when making those assessments to help out the committee. So happy to continue in that vein and happy to answer specific questions as the committee has them.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So if there's a report back, particularly with, I mean, there's a couple of places where I'm wondering the language to have it that either CDAC when they come back with a recommendation, the treasurer comes back with a recommendation on this 15,000,000 additional funding capacity, what that impact would be on our capital budget. I think we need some language to that effect. I don't know where the committee is for that.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, I would say it feels like other entities control the money, but the consequences are on us, you know? So we need to have some skin in the game here. If

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: we put in language to that, what would the treasurer, what are you thinking in terms of the office of the treasurer? That needs to be in the balance as well, the impact on the capital budget.

[David (Deputy State Treasurer)]: Yeah, Madam Chair, I certainly think that's the reasonable position. We're happy to be deferential to the committee and the legislature in terms of where, you know, how that reporting structure works and who weighs in on that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because we, you know, for our bonding capacity for what we do, we have a two year budget and the debt affordability committee makes that recommendation in the fall in terms of for the upcoming two fiscal years what our bonding capacity is and we've lived within that. And if it's going to be 50,000,000 because the other part of the bonding capacity is going to be used for school construction. We need to know that impact.

[Rep. Charlie Kimball (House Ways and Means Committee)]: Well I can't speak for the whole committee. I think we assumed that that would

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: be part of it so it would be

[Rep. Charlie Kimball (House Ways and Means Committee)]: amenable to the conclusion of the one.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We know what a so means. When there's no language, have a good hearing.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: And the other consideration to

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: be your example is that

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: 50,000,000 in the reality, if there's not staff or anybody to do some jobs, is we fall further and further behind on deferred maintenance and new projects, etcetera, already. So if our hands are cuffed even further, that's at the very least a scary proposition, Maybe not insurmountable, but it's definitely a question.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Anything else or questions for the state treasurer? We'll wait and see how it goes through the Kevin?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Dumb question. Obviously, education is an emergency. Does our emergencies, and I'm not trying to be petty, but we've got emergencies here. We've been working on things for years and years and years and haven't had the bonding. So, what other emergencies are on the list that this made the top to double our bonding, I guess, is what I'm trying to get a handle on. We all of a sudden decide this much bonding is appropriate and we know the costs are gonna go up for our taxpayers. One way or the other, we're gonna pay for it. So, help us. How come we didn't make the list? I guess is the way I'd say it. Women's prison. I guess I'm trying not to get a handle on how this is justified compared to all the other emergencies that we have.

[Rep. Charlie Kimball (House Ways and Means Committee)]: Madam Chair, if I may, I don't think the Treasurer wants to weigh in on the political question. This is not going to solve the $6,000,000,000 estimate of the school construction needs. It is a part of it. But you're right, there's always competing interests we have in the state, absolutely.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Maybe my question isn't a fair question. It's a real one.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Anything else? So maybe we'll reach out to John and then work through an amendment. I hope he'll be ready for a second reading or maybe third. The second reading is coming up tomorrow. Yep. If you could fill out your committee on that. I don't know where it would fall in to the structure of the bill.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Yeah.

[Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health]: Was scared just to do

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: an amendment to make this whole section.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I mean, that makes the most sense.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Select my apple. I'm sorry, Gina. I just Gina G. Throwing the bus.

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: Gets rid of this whole section. It's way premature when we don't even have any of the school districts figured out

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: yet.

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: And it's been setting us up for a potential money grab for certain schools that wanna try to manipulate the system, that we haven't even created yet. Makes no sense.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Especially if they have the infrastructure, if they've got the staff to figure out how to get a proposal in that meets the conditions, then Leopold, Vermont doesn't have that. It's just pure.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So instructions between you and system and set up for consolidation. Right. That's what's Big old care. So We'll have some up this conversation. We'll reach out to John see if he get an amendment drafted. Pass it by what he means. Thank you, folks. Sorry I got needed on my part, but aren't you now for state dollars? Yes. Sorry we're running late. We're the education bill. We've got a lot going on here all of a sudden. So thank you folks. I'm sure we're gonna have you back. So welcome commissioner. Hello, ma'am. Shift gears here. And I think we just want to have a conversation in terms of how you're seeing the role of corrections and we're seeing the role of folks who are incompetent to stand trial and trying to restore competency to stand trial, as well as those who have been found not guilty by recent civil assembly. They're under the custody of corrections. And what does that really mean? I think we need to really vet what does that really mean? How does that really play out? I will see some directives. How does that play out in terms of classification of folks where they're housed? And there's other questions, but that's kind of the broad scope you're looking at. I'm gonna turn it over to you, Commissioner. Okay. Introduce yourself and anyone else you brought with us on Zoom.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yes. Thank

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: you very much, Madam Chair. I'm John Murad. I am the Commissioner of Corrections for the State of Vermont. I'm joined today by our acting Chief of Operations, Matt Nault, who is there and is going to be able to provide much more expert and granular information than I about some of these questions that you asked about. I think I'll just sort of very quickly set the stage by affirming again what I've told this body before, which is that we are supportive of this at DOC, particularly with regard to individuals who are accused of crimes that carry a life sentence, who are potentially struggling with competency. The idea of housing those individuals while awaiting trial is something that we already do in a significant percentage of those kinds of cases, noting, of course, that the frequency of these cases is thankfully very, very small. Are talking about an incredibly small proportion of Vermont crime. Vermont is fortunate not to have a disproportionate amount of murder compared to other states, which is a good thing. Vermont also has a very small portion of that, already small number is applicable to this proposed bill. And so when we talk about individuals like that, a number of individuals like that either are or have been in our custody, people who are accused of a capital crime and are not currently competent. We are prepared to house those people as we currently do and as we have, and add something that has been lacking, which is a clinical process by which to attempt to restore competency if that can happen. And so insofar as that is concerned, it is a function that we already perform. It's a function that we are more than willing to continue to perform. And we think that having a default assumption that a person who is struggling with competency, but has been credibly accused of these really terrible crimes goes to corrections is a good thing for the state of Vermont. With regard to what happens afterwards, we can talk about both the housing aspect and also the idea of supervision in the field. If individuals who meet these criteria are competency restored, they meet due process, and then they are convicted, and then what happens in that case? We can talk about that as well. But I'd leave it at that, and then I'd ask for any specific questions if I did not touch on what you asked me.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I was just going to go through the field. I guess first question I have for the forensic facilities clinical services director, where would that person, that person, who would that person, not who would the person be, but how is that envisioned to be? And who would they answer to?

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: The person is, would in all likelihood be an employee of the healthcare provider. At this time, that is WellPath. But then there would also be an individual at our central office in our healthcare chain of command who would be responsible for making sure that that aspect of the engagement with the healthcare provider is being addressed, in the same way that we have people who are responsible for making sure that we have the aspects of our healthcare contract around MOUD or around other kinds of treatment are being addressed.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the clinical services director would be housed in the facility where the folks are being held?

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: I think it depends on what we envision as that. Is that a ground level position? In which case, yes, that person would be at the facility. Or is that a director level position employed directly by the state of Vermont who is overseeing that aspect of the WellPath engagement? And then that person would be instead a DOC employee, probably operating out of the central office in Waterbury, but in regular contact with WellPath about the, at any given time, three, four, half dozen persons in our custody who meet this standard.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So it's also quickly going through the bill, is the Commissioner of Corrections would notify the court, basically, the person has regained, has reached and restored, competency has been restored. Is that a proper role for the Commissioner of Corrections to make that request to the court that the person has restored cut. So you would be basing that in terms of your facility during. What what I just think it was the Commissioner of Corrections in a weird position because the Commissioner of Corrections is there for this security and taking care of people under your custody. This is of a different focus, what direction to it focuses.

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: Yeah, it is not something that we currently do. Obviously, we don't do competency restoration at all. My sense is that if competency restoration becomes a component of medical care for a person in our custody, that this is then, it would be not dissimilar from us informing the parole board about whether or not a person has completed sex offender programming, or whether a person, if it were, and I don't believe this happens, but if the court were to say that a person's participation in substance abuse treatment is a component of his or her sentence, which they, that really is, that's left up to DOC. So that is not a one where we would sort of say, here's an opportunity for the commissioner to inform the court that the individual has or has not successfully completed this component of the sentence. But if the law were changed to say that that was a case, then we would do that, and it would not be out of keeping for the commissioner to make that report. It's not something we do currently, and it's also not something that is currently in the purview of the court. It's in the purview of the Department of Corrections to determine, here's the programming we offer. Is the person gonna participate in that programming? That participation help the person when the person comes up for parole or for a minimum sentence. So we don't report out on that, but if we were required to do so, we would, and we do report out to the parole board about these things.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So, for day to day operations, and I'm just thinking of issues, directives, biases that you have, the segregation or where you are being immunized, might have someone or what facility you might even move someone for their own protection, for protection of others. How does that play in with folks who are being held, these four or five folks, how does that play in? If you've got a real issue in a facility or a living, maybe not just a living unit, but a facility, how are you going to address that without your current policies of directives?

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: Well, these persons are detained just as a person who is fully competent, who is credibly accused of murder, is going to be held without bail in the state of Vermont, and they're going to be held with us. And we are going to put that person in housing that is commensurate with his or her condition. And so some of them go into general population, some of them don't. Some of them held in, some of them have medical conditions or mental health conditions, and that may require a change in where we house them. Some of them may be facing trial in Chittenden County, and therefore Northwest would be the most sensible location for them to be housed, and yet they cannot be there for a variety of reasons. Perhaps there's other individuals with whom they have had altercations in the past, and we move them instead to Southern State or to Northern. So we already make these allowances with persons who are accused of life sentence crimes and are in

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: our custody, for that matter, accused of any kind

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: of crime if they're in

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: our custody, this population would have only one additional aspect, which is they are not currently believed to be competent to assist in their own defense or understand the charges against them, And therefore we are going to be providing them with an additional service that is an attempt to restore that ability to understand the charges against them or participate in their defense. And that would probably be only at Springfield initially. It would be something, again, it does I I don't believe that we would ever have the economy of scale to make this a service that we would provide at every single facility because, thankfully, I don't think we will ever have enough people who meet this standard of offense and of condition. And therefore, we'll be doing that at Springfield. And insofar as how we would house them at Springfield, I don't know if Chief of Operations Nalt wants to weigh in or give a little description about that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Sure. Go ahead, Matt. If you could just identify yourself for the record.

[Matt Nault, Acting Chief of Operations, Department of Corrections]: Sure. Matt Nault, acting chief of operations for the Department of Corrections. And, madam, it's good to see you again.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Matt Nault, Acting Chief of Operations, Department of Corrections]: So housing. We we have infrastructure already set up for folks at this level. If you look at Alpha Unit down in Springfield, that has been retrofitted, you know, and I think it was a couple years ago, and we also have the Bravo Unit down there. So there are, there is space for these folks, you know, if we have to have to deal with them. All the resources are down there to do this if we need to. Again, it's gonna, it probably will require us to add some WellPath, a WellPath clinician, as the Commissioner had said. We do have Colleen Nielsen, who's the Chief of Mental Health, who is, she's already in place here in central office. So that the resources are in place. And I, you know, it's, we're going to deal with the, I mean, like the Commissioner has said, we deal with these folks now. So don't think that we're going to divert too much from the things that we're doing at this time. We've got it all set.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: then can we please contemplate the scenario for those, for me, it has been determined that competency is not likely to be restored and that they do not meet the conditions for hospitalization. I don't see an end result for that scenario. How long are they going to be housed under the jurisdiction of DOC and what facility would those folks be held in?

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: They'd be held in an individual like that. The end, I don't know that it is in DOC's purview to say we've gone six months or three years of attempt at competency restoration and have not been successful. What happens next? That's not DOC's call. Whose is it? My assumption is that it goes back to the court at that. And I think that's what the I think that's what the the proposed legislation envisions. And we will proceed based on what the court at that point says.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: And right now, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know. I don't think there's a time limit in the bill right now. The bill doesn't state what that time is. Do you know if I see the nodding.

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

[Unidentified DMH staffer (possibly Ally Nierenberg, Care Management)]: I'm Chair McMahon of Department of State's Journeys in Sheriffs. The competency when restoration is not, when someone's not restorable, that section is a little muddled. The intent was that after someone was found, who's gone through two rounds, so six months and evaluation for competency, another six months evaluation competency at that point, either side could say, we need to look at whether this, you know, has someone raised that this person's not restorable? And then there's a hearing specific to that, the restorability. And then the question is, if they're not restorable, do they still pose a substantial risk to public safety? And then that's where there's, if they don't pose a substantial risk, they can be released at that time under conditions. And so that's in the bill, it's a little ruddled.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Yep, I'm remembering it now.

[Unidentified DMH staffer (possibly Ally Nierenberg, Care Management)]: And right now, just so you know, over in house judiciary, we sent language clearing that process up, making it much more clear, we think. And you're gonna see that, I think it's gonna be out either later today So or there's more process laid out clearly for this.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: So now that gives us two branches for those who have been found not likely to be restored. Do not pose a danger, do pose a danger. Do not pose a danger, at least possibly with conditions. Let's talk about who's monitoring those conditions because I think it remains DOC. So right now that envisions for me, the only solution is probation and parole. Let's also contemplate those who are found not likely to be restored competency do pose a danger. They remain in custody despite the fact that there's no likelihood that they're gonna receive their due process.

[Unidentified DMH staffer (possibly Ally Nierenberg, Care Management)]: Currently, bill began the amendment, yes. They are substantial risk of the topic, they would remain in the forensic facility. And then the question would turn to what do they need to lower that risk? And then there would be periodic reviews evaluating that with the idea that someone could eventually

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

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: not only the health, so for folks who have been deemed not likely to be restored competency remain endangered, right? Public safety concern. Yes, remanded to facility, the forensic facility, which by this bill is under the custody of DOC. So we have folks under the custody of DOC who have not had their due process and are not likely to have their due process because they've been determined not likely to have their competency restored. Does that feel accurate?

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: I don't know that not likely is necessarily a component of that. Think that No, that's what I'm saying

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: is the clarification. We do have scenarios where people are determined to not likely be restored to competency. That happens. Yes, it does. And this bill keeps them in a forensic facility, which is under the jurisdiction of DOC. And because they're not likely to have their competency restored, they're not gonna have their due process. And are a danger to others. And they're not gonna have their due process.

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: Think there continue to be efforts to achieve that due process.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: I don't see that in the bill. This is the heart of my worry. And we haven't even talked about NGRIs at this point yet either, who are found not guilty under the current system. Okay. I have my answer. Yeah. I'm not jumping over any hurdles yet. So, Okay, thank you.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Thanks, Commissioner. So much of the discussion is like, can a prison be a therapeutic environment that's conducive to restoring the competency? And I think when different people testify, some people are saying like, well, if you have certain enhancements in the units, if you have the certain staff ratio, the right oversight, it can be. Is the thought just from the department, if you're talking like Alpha Bravo unit down in Springfield, that that is currently a place that is conducive to restore the competency and might not need any physical enhancements to do the job that we're asking them to do?

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: Yes, that is correct. Our current position is that the therapeutic environment is created by the provision of therapy. The environment itself is an environment that is for persons who have been accused of crimes, these individuals have. And the lack of competency does not necessarily necessitate that we treat them automatically differently insofar as the security level that we provide. In fact, sometimes it could be a rationale for a greater level of security than members in Gen Pop owing to outbursts, etcetera. But there can also be instances, too, and let's speak you know, you could have a person who is who no one is making an argument that the person was not sane at the time of the crime and they were fully functional at the time of the crime and then becomes incompetent after the crime in one way or another. A person could become, for that matter, since competency is not merely a mental health condition, competency can also be, for example, traumatic brain injury or developmental delay. But you could get such a traumatic brain injury after the crime, and then now you're no longer competent. But there was no question about the danger that you posed, the intention of the act. Hasn't had its due process in court yet, although maybe it even had stages of that due process. It just didn't complete that due process yet. And now you have an individual who we're gonna have to work and determine whether or not competency can be restored. I just mean that to say that competency is not a monolith any more than insanity insanity at the time of an act is a monolith. There can be people whose competency waxes and wanes, people whose competency doesn't happen until after the crime occurred, people whose competency is a component of the argument about the crime. And because of that, we're talking about not only a very small population, but then individual cases within that very small population. But for most of those, those would be individuals who would be housed in a unit that is separate from general population, that is safe, And the therapeutic aspect of it is the provision of the therapy that includes training, working with them to restore competency. Thanks.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So in the bill, I don't know if this is part of a judiciary's amendment or not, but just even on the first page, I just want to question how do you see this playing out on admission to the forensic facility? The person would be evaluated for competency to stand trial. How does the OC envision this to play out? Where would that happen? How would it happen? What timeframe? How would you do that? Would you do that at opening? How would that play out? Think that it would

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: be a component of the same assessments that already occur under 28 VSA nine zero seven. 28 VSA nine zero seven, with regard to significant functional impairment, has a number of time standards for us, standards at which we screen, standards at which we offer treatment, standards at which we offer well, evaluation is not, there's not a specific timeframe for evaluation, but it's required that we give evaluation, then it's also required that we take the next step, which is a treatment plan. It's also required that we interact with Dale and DMH in the context of that. And I believe that a competency issue in these cases would be essentially a form of serious functional impairment, and would be treated in the same way. Think that's probably the best. I think there may be timelines that are already outlined in the proposed statute. I would recommend that those be altered to comport with 28 VSA nine zero seven, so that we can actually say, we're just gonna stick to this same standard. Twenty four hours to a screen, forty eight hours to early provision of treatment. That may or may not be the case here. I mean, treatment is different depending on what we're saying. A screening would be, you know, you might have a screening for a substance abuse disorder and treatment immediately provided in order to ameliorate symptoms. You could also have a screening that says mental health disorder and treatment within forty eight hours is, you know, do we need something right off the bat? Whether it might be a provision of a medication, might be provision of treatment. The next stage is then to go and say, we're going to work on an evaluation, a more elaborate evaluation, and then we're gonna work on a plan, a treatment plan. And competency would be the same. Would be flagged. This individual accused of a of a life sentence crime. Competency has been raised. We'll do a quick assessment. Does the person meet these things, understand where they are, able to show evidence of early ability to assist in defense or know his or her own environments? And then the next stage would be followed. Now we will start with some treatment. We'll start with a treatment plan, excuse me, an evaluation and then a treatment plan, and we will involve Dale and DMH as necessary.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So when a person comes into the facility, what you're saying is we should put in some language in terms of when the person's evaluated for the competency issue to kind of track what we do for the SFI population?

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: I think that's one method. I think the other method is that the court says upon remand that this person is potentially, that they're competency issues. I also don't know, for example, that competency is automatically a component of the first intake. Intake. A person arrested for a crime that we may all sort of assume that competency may become an issue. We also may assume that an insanity defense is likely to be pursued based on just the horribleness of the crime or things that we learn, but that isn't necessarily the case. That could be something that only comes into play after, let's say, a defender has met with a client a number of times and started to realize, I don't think she can actually assist in this defense. And I'd like to ask the court that we do a competency hearing. At that point, it wasn't a component of intake. All the other aspects of serious functional impairment were, all the other aspects of any intake were. But now we say, okay, court's gonna say there needs to be this hearing. They do an evaluation. The court orders these evaluations already for people who are in our custody that are not part of intake. The difference now is that once the court has done that and said, We've done this, we did it, we sent a clinician to, or did a video conference with the defendant, the clinician says, Yes, we think that there's competency at play here, and we should do a hearing. At that point, it would kick in that now we need to provide that and we will have to figure out how to work with our healthcare provider to work on that competency restoration.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Just kind of looking at the language, trying to figure it out. On page one, on nineteen and twenty, this is the competency restoration services within the forensic facility. So upon admission, so what are we talking about? On admission to the DOC facility or upon admission to the forensic facility. And we have a definition of a forensic facility, means a locked facility, replacement the DOC provides for secure evaluation treatment here versus. Well, I'm thinking, well, it was just discussed that down in the Springfield facility could be either Alpha or Bravo. So if it's one of those living units, is that going to be designated the forensic facility and not use the alpha or the bravo name? Is that going to be the forensic facility? This is not gonna be the whole unless you're saying all of our correctional facilities are forensic facilities. So you're gonna designate one living unit or one building or one floor of a living unit as the forensic facility. It's pretty clear by the language upon admission, the forensic facility don't cause a person to be evaluated. So where's that evaluation happen? In the booking of the whole facility?

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: I think

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: this Or in the wing or the floor that you're designating as a forensic piece. It's part of the correctional facility. So how does that all kind of track with what's been in language here?

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: I don't believe that we would designate a specific part of the facility. I think the facility becomes a forensic facility. Springfield, Springfield and CRCF.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Would be the forensic facility a whole three fifty bed unit?

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: Yes. It would be as this does not I don't believe this statute requires that it be a wing or that it be a separate facility. And frankly, that's not something that we envision being possible. And as a result, the idea is that the forensic is about the service that is provided, not a specific location within the site. And the service is provided throughout the entirety of the site. These individuals would also be eating with others in all likelihood. They would be afforded depending on their needs, they would be able to move throughout other parts of the facility. And here I would turn to Chief of Operations, Null, and ask individuals that are currently in Alpha and Bravo at Springfield, what are their rights of movement?

[Matt Nault, Acting Chief of Operations, Department of Corrections]: So it's inter unit. So Alpha stays in Alpha until they reach their step down, which is Bravo. Alpha being more the acute, somebody who's in acute stage would be in the alpha unit. Bravo is more of a general population, but it's for mentally ill, cohort. That's their unit. So they eat together, they wreck together, they do, you know, general movement together.

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: They don't I'm sorry, Matt. They don't stay in They don't eat in Bravo. They have to move to the cafeteria at Springfield in order to eat. And therefore, the cafeteria is now a component of the facility, but Echo is not. I do understand the notion of separating these things. And I also believe that, I believe there could be a condition in which we have somebody who is in this condition and is not, is eligible for, the if is the eligible for general population outside of alpha and bravo. I mean, I certainly wouldn't foreclose that. And I would also caution that when we separate individuals, we can run into situations. This recently happened with a juvenile female who, in demanding sight and sound separation for an 18 year old, we ended up with a situation in which that juvenile female was completely alone and was in de facto solitary confinement. And that isn't good for that individual. The rationale, of course, is we wish to separate an emerging adult, an 18 year old, not a full juvenile, but an emerging adult from other adults. We have reasons for that. There are many good ones. But we also end up with a situation where inadvertently we've created a worse situation. I wouldn't caution about over contemplating limits on these individuals because there could arise a situation in which the person is still not competent to assist in defense, but in all other ways is interactive and safe and shouldn't necessarily just be in alpha or bravo and couldn't be in general pot.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I'm just kind of looking at language on page ten and eleven, which is the definition of forensic facility. And on page 11, it says, a forensic facility well, before that, it says, Commissioner of Corrections shall establish and operate a locked, secure forensic facility for the evaluation, treatment and care of individuals. And the facility shall be designed and operated in a manner that supports a therapeutic recovery related to trauma informed environment.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Comparable to a community based residential. So,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm trying to figure out is Alphas gonna be the termed this forensic facility or is the whole two fifty bed facility a forensic facility? It's by the language, it looks like it's a section within a current facility. Would be the forensic facility. That's how I'm interpreting the language. So I'm just wondering how it would play out. That's contrary to what's the state of being a whole facility would be seen as a forensic facility, which if the whole facility is seen as a forensic facility, it needs to be therapeutic, be covered, or anything, and trauma informed.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: We believe that our

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: facilities are. Being trauma informed is a component of our training and our ethos. Again, with regard to therapeutic, if we are talking about therapeutic in the sense of a private hospital that is not custodial, no, that is not what we provide. But if therapeutic has to do with the therapy that is provided, we do that. We're actually working on improving what we offer with regard to substance abuse so that we get more therapeutic and not merely medicinal. But we already do provide therapy around mental health and around other kinds of conditions. We provide therapy for sex offenders. We provide therapy for people who are suffering from certain kinds of addictions through Al Anon and through AA and NA. And so therapy is the act of providing therapy. Again, if what you envision when you think therapy is the kind of cell in which Anders Brevek in Norway is imprisoned, that is not what we do.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But it's also not comparable to a community based residential treatment setting.

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: Custodial residential setting, it could be.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Disagree. Yes, I know. It's not the language you're saying. I don't even think the language you're saying in terms of how the facility would be designed. And I'm trying to figure out, the forensic facility gonna be a facility within the larger correctional facility or is it going to be the whole correctional facility at that site? Because the way the language reads, it appears as if it's going to be a specific living room or section within the bigger correction facility. Just trying to match what the language is saying to us.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: I'm changing gears a bit. I'm backtracking a bit. That's okay. I'm backtracking a bit unless people want to see how this works. I do want to go back to those folks who are determined not likely to have competency restored and then who do not pose a risk and do not meet the terms for hospitalization. So these are the folks who end up somewhere in the community with. I think you indicated that, well, we know that the bill suggests DOC remains responsible for ensuring the compliance to those conditions. Do you anticipate additional training needs to be? Because I'm seeing this, and correct me if you have a different vision, as landing on PMP officers to assure that compliance. This is a different set of needs, I would imagine. Yeah. So have you considered additional training needs for PMP officers who are gonna fill that role?

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: I'll give that question to chief of operations and all. But first, what I will say is that this is a This would be an expansion of what was already envisioned under the pretrial supervision model, because this would be pretrial supervision. This would be a person who has not yet been able to have his or her trial, who has conditions of release, and we would merely be monitoring those conditions of release. The additional abilities you're talking about would go beyond what pretrial envisions. Pretrial never envisioned us ensuring that a person was keeping up with treatment, for example. Although, if treatment is a component of a condition of release, then it is something that we monitor. So I'll turn it over to Chief of Operations, Nault, who was most recently the director of our field offices, and therefore is beyond familiar with how PNP operates and how it might accomplish a task like this.

[Matt Nault, Acting Chief of Operations, Department of Corrections]: Okay. Currently, have the program. It's the FACT program and the Forensic Assertive Community Treatment program, which it's grant funded at this point, but we run that program with pathways. They provide all the clinical services and clinical help. We supply the supervision just as we're we're kind of tasked with. So similar, it's it would be a similar case, but it I look at the folks that we're talking about as as a level up from this. So there would be some additional training for staff that would be needed, and there would also need to be a clinical component to this. Really need to look at what that would look like based on the individuals, but again, we are doing this now just in a different capacity.

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: We're doing it now with persons who have been sentenced and absent issues around mental health would have been incarcerated and still be incarcerated, but instead are put in an environment that is the least restrictive as we are required by statute, in a number of different statutes. And the difference of what we're talking about, what I think you were sort of articulating, is this person would not be sentenced, and therefore, we'd have to spell out some additional authorities in the context of this law for that kind of supervision. And it really is the authority already envisioned by the pretrial statute. Just it would carry with it some additional things. If there were a significant number of persons in this cohort, and I don't believe there will be, Perhaps we envision saying that in addition to clinicians based in the facilities to restore competency, we have to envision clinicians who would be available to do field visits with P and P officers. That's one aspect, although it could also be that the person is ultimately housed in something that is not a secure setting, but is nevertheless a clinical setting. And we just communicate because we have rights to do so, custodial rights to communicate with that entity and say, How is this person performing? So you're now living at, you know, you're living at Sunshine House, which is a name I'm making up, and

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: if there happens to be one,

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: I apologize. But you're living at Sunshine House, and you are, you know, you've been remanded there because we don't believe competency can be restored at this time. You're not a danger to the public, but you are required to be here, and you're required to visit with our CCOs once every other week or once a week, and the staff at Sunshine House is required to tell us how you are doing. Are you participating in this kind of therapy or that kind of therapy? Did you try to get out last night? Did you not return when you were supposed to return? Have you been violent with members of staff? And all those things would be a component of that. So those authorities would have to be ultimately added in, but they're not all that different than the authorities envisioned in the pretrial statute.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The pretrial statutes does have a list of how the person is monitored based a little bit on their risk, but it could be a call call once every other week. It could be maybe the person comes into the office, or the field person goes and visits the person. Is that what you're envisioning?

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: As I said, I don't think any of these There's no monolith, so there's no one way to define these. I think there could be individuals whose competency cannot be restored, but who have been determined not to be a risk to others who also can live on their own. And there could be individuals whose competency can be restored who aren't a risk to others, but cannot live on their own. And so both of those would require a different result, and both of those would require a different level of supervision.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: This is for folks who court has found could not be restored to competency, would not create a substantial risk to bodily injury. And they could or the court would order the release of that person. The structure of the bill is under So the way that it's structured, the bill, it's sort of structured. It's kind of this little section, app, that is in there in terms of competency restoration services within the forensic facility. And then it's like this app that the commissioner would actively monitor compliance with orders issued pursuant to 2B. Well, 2B is that the court finds the release of the person cannot be risked over to competency, but would not create a public risk. They could be ordered back into the permitting. And then it's up to the DOC to monitor them. And then it goes on to say that they could be immediately returned to the forensic facility if the permission of the Rutland's have reason to believe that the person was, again, incompetent. How would you find that out? How would you make that determination?

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: I don't quite understand that language because, of course, the person is incompetent. That's why they're not in the facility.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But it

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: it says is again incompetent? I don't understand that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What it says is, commissioner, actively monitor compliance

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: For court.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The orders that the court has given that the person, if you gotta go back, if the court finds that the release of a person who cannot be restored to competency, do not create a substantial risk. The court could order the release of the person, a prescribed regimen issues, and that the commissioner would actively monitor compliance with those orders and shall immediately return a person to the forensic facility if the commissioner has reason to believe that the person is again incompetent.

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: I that, that's what I, I don't believe that to be logical. Believe that to be redundant. The person was released by the court because they could not be restored to competency and is therefore incompetent. So for the commissioner at a later point to determine the person is again incompetent does not make sense. They're already incompetent. That's why they're in the public.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But I think it's part of a bigger section where the first part is, Michelle, immediately return the person to the forensic facility if, A, the person was previously restored to competency pursuant to this section and released from the facility. It's convoluted. This doesn't make any sense. The commissioner has reason to believe that the person is again incompetent and the person's continued release will create a substantial freeze. It seems a little convoluted when you all do this. Am I off base here?

[Unidentified DMH staffer (possibly Ally Nierenberg, Care Management)]: No, I'm not. And again, for the record, Galfetti, Chief Studies and Chairs, I think the amendment going to help some of them. I don't have it in front of me, but again, the restorability piece and how it was connecting with all these subsections was confusing. So when we offered some language to fix that, I think we addressed this issue that you're talking about because there is a scenario where somebody through competency restoration is healthy. If their risk factor is lower, they could be released pre trial to the community waiting for their trial. And then under that supervision, if there were indications that they had lost their competency, that they needed the services again, that they would then even meet the criteria of being able

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: to go into the front. So, is the DOC commissioner going to have reason to believe that the person is again incompetent? It's a new language still, putting that determination on the commissioner's corrections.

[Unidentified DMH staffer (possibly Ally Nierenberg, Care Management)]: At the moment, the language you're reading, yes, the idea would be

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: that There's a new language coming. That's what

[Unidentified DMH staffer (possibly Ally Nierenberg, Care Management)]: I would need to look at. Because I think anyone could raise, again, just like if we were starting at zero, anyone could raise an incompetency issue. So whether it was the officer providing the supervision might be seeing something and then who do they tell to then alert the court if there's a competency issue, that's what that's trying to address. But they wouldn't be the only ones that could raise

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: competency issues.

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: Not that this obviates the needs for clarity in the law, but I would hope that the instances in which a person who is deemed incompetent but not a risk to others, but credibly accused of a life sentence crime and is released owing to that incompetence that cannot be restored, who then restores to competence would not be left in the public. A person, that now means that you have a credibly accused murderer who is competent to stand trial and should be in a facility. No disagreement. Yeah.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yeah. So I, that I would

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: hope would be incredibly rare that there would be some, some combination of circumstance in which we say credibly accused of the murder, was incompetent, couldn't be restored, suddenly was restored, but is also still so little of a risk to the public that we're gonna leave you out. I find that to be a

[Unidentified committee member (likely Rep. Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: tremendously rare circumstance. That's what I'm worried about.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I think you gotta see the language coming from judiciary committee. My real question was, how does the Commissioner of Correction have recently believed that someone is incompetent? That was my question. Maybe they've addressed that quite for this property issue.

[Unidentified DMH staffer (possibly Ally Nierenberg, Care Management)]: When the draft comes out, you have a look and if not, I think it's a yeah, it's an important flag. And again, it wouldn't be that the

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: commission

[Unidentified DMH staffer (possibly Ally Nierenberg, Care Management)]: citing competency because that's a judicial decision, but raising the issue that someone has lost their public

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: position or to go back to

[Unidentified DMH staffer (possibly Ally Nierenberg, Care Management)]: the court? Judicial report and say, here's an update.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Giving you an awful lot of work, but you may not realize ahead of you. This bill is good.

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: That's fair. Although no commissioner is going to be making these determinations on his or her own, they're going to be taking it from the staff at Sunshine House.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, that also leads us to further conversations. It's been time since 08:30 this morning. Further conversations in terms of trying to bring in other partners here so it's not all on DOC. Maybe the forensic director is out of someone else not convinced. They can sort of to the agency of care services instead of DOC. Maybe there's more input for a person from DMH and the Department of Health. Maybe it's more coordinated to make sure all of their deal safe. We also need to look at what the facility's gonna look like. And is there gonna be renovations or anything? So I don't know if anyone's reached out to BGS. The facility is not supposed to be up and running until '28. But if it's gonna be therapeutic trauma informed and similar to a community based residential facility, it's not our graduate facilities, I don't care what it's going to need some more patients. If that's the standard we're going put out there. So those are the steps that you need to look at here on this. Quick questions? Before we kind of wrap up so much because we've been here since thirty this time. People are wired in. We'll have you back.

[John Murad, Commissioner of Corrections]: Yes, ma'am. I assumed you would

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What our schedule is gonna be because we're gonna be on the floor all afternoon tomorrow. Now we're gonna keep working on the bill this afternoon. We've got a government coming in this afternoon, which should help us a little bit. And I hope there's some DOC folks that could be at least around. So let's break for lunch here, folks. Sorry. We're being late. Have another issue that popped up. So I will be back. We're on the floor at one. We'll be back back to the floor. Think the floor is gonna go on too too long.