Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Welcome back to the House Environment Committee. We are this morning joined by the Fish and Wildlife Department to start off with the board and service budget structure. We're doing this in the morning because everyone will be awake.

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: Thank you. Welcome.

[Jason Batchelder, Fish & Wildlife Commissioner]: Thank you so much for having us here. My name is Jason Batchelter. I'm the Fish and Wildlife Commissioner, and I'm joined by colonel Steadman, the director of the warden service, our our business manager, Elizabeth Strattenden, and also Steve Gomez with secretary's office. I have a bit of an intro, and and then I'll I'll turn it over to the slideshow and the colonel and but I'll stay. I have a a little bit of a history. Hopefully hopefully, it could be helpful with the department. But I I think I'll I'll start with just a a little bit of a a short history. It looks long on my page, but I I'll go through it pretty quickly. So the earliest fishing game law in Vermont passed in 1779 protected deer from June 10 excuse me, from January 10 to June 10. When these first laws arrived, the the enforcers were called Dear Reeves, and and I'm sure you've heard of Shire Reeves. These were Dear Reeves. Enforcing these laws and a a Reeve being defined as a as a local official charged with the enforcement of specific regulations. These officials were chosen on a town basis to enforce this very narrow scope of laws, but were not selected in all areas and they had little power and it led to a very inconsistent regulation. Fish and game populations, as you may know, were at an all time low, with deer nearly extirpated, and the native fish populations depleted. Early settlers had relied on these resources for food and had a great disdain for fish and game laws and the people who enforce them. As a result, laws were not enforced in many instances, and as a result, by the early eighteen hundreds with Deer nearly gone, the office of Deer Reeve shortly followed and disappeared as well. Things would not change for about a century. A gentleman named George Perkins Marsh was the first man to hold the title of fish commissioner in Vermont. Fish commissioner was the next iteration of state game warden. In his report to the governor, was Rylan Fletcher, on 10/10/1857, he had this to say, the habits of our people, meaning Vermonters, are so averse to the restraints of game laws, which have been found peculiar I'm having trouble with that one, peculiarly obnoxious in all counties that have adopted them that any general legislation of this character would probably be found an inadequate safeguard. In many European countries where restrictive and prohibitory laws of all sorts are much more rigidly enforced than with us, the preservation of the land in aquatic game has been an object of legislation for centuries, but none of these systems has ever been attended with with general success. And the possessors of great forest and fisheries, whether royal or private, everywhere depend rather upon guards and enclosures than upon the terror of law for the protection of the objects of the chase and of the fishery. Fish wardens were fish focused at this time, deer being almost gone. And among other duties, they were to require of all persons, I'm gonna quote here from the regulation, fishing nets to show under which license they were fishing and examining nets and other devices, etcetera, etcetera, like we do now. Unlike then or excuse me. Unlike now, fish wardens could fine and sell what they confiscated. Two thirds of the sale going to said warden as well as one half of all the fines imposed of of the sale. Now even with these sound budgetary principles in place, fish ward didn't last long either. And on December '4, almost done, the legislature passed public act number one eighteen. It was an act to establish a fish and game commissioner and fish and game wardens to appropriate a sum of money for the protection of fish and game. This established the state game warden as we now know it. 19 o four is on the badge and was the beginning of our current warden service. This act authorized the commissioner to appoint with the consent of the senate not less than one or more than two wardens per county. Wardens would receive $2 per day and expenses paid by the state while officially employed. Now as you know and and you'll further see in our PowerPoint that even adjusted for inflation, today's state game warden is worth more than that. And I hope that some of this, will explain the nuances of their day to day and and how they're funded. I I believe, and I and I didn't have the conversation directly that that the secretary wanted us to to expose this budget as one that is that is very tight, that is very responsible, that is very non malleable, I guess, would be either word. We we are appropriated our fund each year. The colonel buys enough trucks and flashlights and batteries, and then the rest of the money goes to paying people. The wardens are extraordinary individuals from their from their upbringing to their to their education. And I and I think we'll maybe even get into a little bit

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: of that

[Jason Batchelder, Fish & Wildlife Commissioner]: too. But I I would love to to get into the the PowerPoint a little bit and and start from there. Realizing I did not bring that up on my end. That's right.

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: So it's okay. Let's pull it up here. Sure. While the commissioner is doing that, just for the record, Justin Steadman, director of the warden service. So as you can see in the the overview, there's some highlights there. But, basically, state game wardens, all state law or all law enforcement in the state, are entrusted to enforce all the laws of the state. We all collectively bear responsibility, although we have our areas of expertise. Obviously we concentrate primarily on hunting, fishing and trapping, boating, snowmobile and ATV. Those are the principal areas. That said though, we respond to outside of just law enforcement, wildlife conflict, injured wildlife. We also respond to all sorts of calls related to general violations of law in support of other law enforcement. One of our wardens was significantly injured last year in the incident in the islands where the individual had killed his parents. He was actually struck by the fleeing individual as he attempted to apprehend himself. The wardens are routinely involved in things that have nothing to do with fishing wildlife. I think we can go to the next slide if you don't mind. So this is the overview of the budget and basically out of an approximate little over $9,000,000 budget, 86% of that goes to salary and benefits, and 14% goes to all of the other stuff I need or we need. And when you figure, especially after COVID, the cost increases of things, trucks went from $28,000 to $55,000 overnight and haven't really come down, that $1,100,000 does not go very far. And we routinely have to move money from one place to another to try and address various issues that arise. You can see some of the breakdown there, the larger expenditures in operating communications, which is that's what we pay for our radios and the functionality we get out of those gas is obviously something that fluctuates. Equipment and replacement, vehicle repairs and vehicles, those are the big things, and then the remaining, and that's just a sort of literally $337,000 is everything else. That's the cut money it costs to hire and move people around the state during their training phase, equipment, uniforms, all that sort of stuff. Most of it is salary benefits. If want to go to the next slide. This is the, again, high view of revenue. Basically 52% of our budget comes from license funds, 45% comes from general funds, and then there's a small bit there that comes from a few other places. The motor fuel tax, I just think it's kind of comical, so I'll point it out that we get 76% of 3 eighths of 1¢. I just I would love to have been in the room when whoever figured that calculation out and why they went to that extent. It's just I mean, I don't even know what that is for a number, you know? Like, what what does that even mean? So, anyways, so that that's the calculation out of a gas motor fuel tax that we get. Obviously that with changing patterns in Vermonters use of electric vehicles and just a general, I think maybe reliance on public transportation and stuff that came out of COVID, that number has ticked downwards since about 2020. I don't want to go too fast, and we can certainly go back to anything, that's basically it in a nutshell. I think we have maybe one or two more slides. And this is just, so we do a report out to the legislature every year, and this is one of the sort of the reporting metrics for the awarding service. And you can see there at the top of those are the calls per year from '21 to '25. And then the lower numbers, we have real quick, one of our wardens is very passionate about trying to get food to, I shouldn't say one, actually I'll mention another one, but many of the wardens are passionate about getting food to Vermonters who are in need. So she started what she calls Medicine for Vermonters program. And it is a collaborative where wardens, some just by the wardens, some in collaboration with meat cutters and meat processors around the state process either illegally harvested animals or roadkill animals, and that's the pounds of processed meat that have been donated. So you can see in '21 they were able to donate 3,500 pounds of processed meat to food shelves, we do it around the state. The one issue we have is that demand has rapidly outpaced our capacity to provide it because there are so many Vermonters in need, but there's several of them that spent a tremendous amount of time on it, and then the other ones will take the animals to places, the usable animals, take them to places that will donate them or get them to the wardens that will devote themselves. So those are the metrics that we report out. And then the last thing I want say, then I just wanted to basically give as much time to questions that you all may have. So that slide you saw about the funding and where salaries, so that salary the salaries piece there that's 42 positions 40 of those are sworn two are civilian. We have six command staff. We're actually adding one, two, and when I say adding, I mean for taking from the field, but we're moving one position to the command staff because we're capacity is just, we just can't do what we're doing. And in searching some of the documents, I found a write up from 2012 that suggested the need for additional capacity in headquarters. So we're finally we're finally making moves. So we'll have seven command staff. That would be three in Montpelier here, and then one district supervisor for the four supervisory districts. We have two detectives and then 31 field positions. Currently we have four vacancies, so that means 27 wardens are covering the entire state. Out of those 27 wardens, two are trainees so they're not doing anything. You got 25 wardens who are covering the entire state of Vermont. Out of those 25 wardens we have three coaches, three military members, two officers, one enlisted, one of whom is deploying in over a month and a half per year. So we'll be down another one. Three AMTs, three community committee members, one foster parent, one PhD. So I just wanted to read this bit about I thought this was interesting. This came in a roundabout way. The warden was embarrassed when I got it. The warden had arrested a poacher on three different occasions, and on the last occasion he found him homeless living in a car in a local forest. And so the warden took it upon himself to bring him bags of groceries and clothing in hopes that the individual would stop poaching deer because he would have enough food and wouldn't need to. On another occasion took bags of groceries to a homeless woman with mental health issues in one of his local towns and he wrote, This is nothing special. I'm sure most of the wards do this kind of stuff. They really do care about homeowners and I think that's the part that when you look at our budget and it's like how does that much money go to salaries? Wardens are not cheap, they're really good people and they really do care. And that's the point I want to drive home. So with that, happy to ask any question or answer any question. Not asking. Answer any question you may have. And if there's specific stuff about the budget, that's what Elizabeth and Steve are here for because I freely admit that I turn to them about certain things because I just don't know. So

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Okay. Wow. Think I saw representative Morris and Labor and Tagliavia and Austin. So we'll go Morris.

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for your presentation. I noticed that you only have one FTE that's a vacancy savings. So are you actively recruiting for those other three sponsors?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: I appreciate that question. We do. So the process by which we hire is very long. So we will start the process in another month to hire for 2027 because we, so there's a couple of things here. One, it is an extremely long process because we want good people. We just, we're hiring, he's actually a warden in Florida right now. We sent our detective to Florida for a week to go talk to anybody and everybody because we don't want bad people, but the process is long because we weed a lot of people out and it takes time. So at any rate, where I'm going with that is we send people to the academy in February, So we have one in the academy now, but we were just not in a position to hire more because we don't have capacity to anticipate retirements. Like I know one of the wardens is retiring in December, but we pre fill positions if we're anywhere near full. We've been full twice in my career, but for about eight months combined. And it's an issue of there's not room to anticipate vacancies, but we're not saving. It's just a process of which we have to go through. From the day you start the process to the time you're actually wearing a uniform takes nine months, and then it's another year before you were even into a district. So we're talking about two years to get someone into a district. It's what it takes us. And so it just in that time people retire, things happen, and it just that's where we lose numbers. Thank you.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: And labor.

[Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: Thank you, madam chair. Given the difficulty in recruiting and only 27 wardens remaining to cover the state, has there been any leaning towards training wardens of interest because they're not certainly, I'll want to do this, but looking at drones with cameras and infrared sensors to help them in their investigations of poaching, etcetera.

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: We actually just submitted a a request to the federal government. There's a a a Welch has a I don't I'm not gonna get anyways, there's a a funding mechanism, and we've asked for a couple of drones. I will just say on that point, so when the Commissioner and I applied to the wardens, there were 1,300 applicants for one position. Thankfully, they took more than that because neither he nor I were number one.

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: We

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: don't get those numbers now, but we still have. So when we advertised last year for one position, we had almost 200 applicants, which compared to other law enforcement disaster. I mean state police have days nobody even shows up and that's not just them. Mean it's across all law enforcement. It's very challenging. The uniqueness of our job still brings people who are maybe less law enforcement minded and more just passionate about the outdoors and will tolerate the law enforcement part of it. And so we have a lot of people who I mean we have one warden who is doing a thesis on tick transmitted diseases and like, you know came here from no law enforcement sort of perspective. But so at any rate we are working on the drone piece to answer a specific question I just wanted to highlight we still do have, knock on wood, relatively good or high interest in positions for the warden service so we count ourselves lucky in that respect.

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: Thank you.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Two

[Mike Tagliavia (Member)]: questions on the hiring what's biggest barrier you see to being able to hire?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: Honestly us. Out of the nearly 200, we brought 30 to interviews and out of that 30 we were willing to entertain 10 and it's just we're very selective and part of that is we still have the ability to be selective and I'm not trying to say that we're better than other law enforcement in the sense in our selection process but we have the capacity to say that's like lukewarm and I'm not doing lukewarm. If we wanted to we could certainly hire a lot more people just to have people, we don't want to do that. Maybe you're talking financially as well. Oh do you mean as far

[Mike Tagliavia (Member)]: as Whatever the top barrier is.

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: Yeah. I I I mean and are you and maybe I'm missing the butchers. I don't wanna interject.

[Jason Batchelder, Fish & Wildlife Commissioner]: I I thought the representative may have meant if we if we wanted if we wanted a 100, there there's not funding for that. Right? If we wanted 50, there probably isn't funding for that unless we

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: unless we all did foot patrol because we

[Jason Batchelder, Fish & Wildlife Commissioner]: don't have enough trucks. We couldn't afford trucks. I think in in that instance, the the barrier is is balancing the the work against the revenue, against the against the the ability for us to manage that many people and and what is essentially on on well, essentially a police it's a police force. Right? It it so colonel is the director of the warrant service, but he's a chief of police as well and second biggest state police force in Vermont. So I think looking at looking at could we or or or should we, I I think the the budget is is the is the big key and and and the demographics also. Right? I mean, there are certain times of the year where I think the colonel would say that he had a warden in every town, they would still be too busy. But on on March 18, you know, it's a good time to do paperwork in some districts. Right? If we don't have snowmobiling, we don't have fishing, no hunting is really going on. And so it it's it's it would be difficult to justify 75 wardens today. November 15, we could we could use a 100.

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: But yeah.

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: And to that point, have said and I mean, if you told me today you were giving me 10 more wardens, we're at 52. I can tell you right now exactly what every one of them is gonna do. They will not be twiddling their thumbs. There's more than enough work from that perspective. So if I missed where you're going with that, I apologize.

[Mike Tagliavia (Member)]: What's the average age of the applicants that you get?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: It varies dramatically. Currently there's a nickname that the wardens have already given them and I think they're calling them the gray hair club because the three most recent wardens we hired are all in their mid to late 30s. Hair club. They're the We have several wardens that were born after 2000, so it's a little scary. But yeah. It varies. It really does vary. The three current wardens that are being hired will be significantly older than some of the wardens that were hired five, six, seven years ahead of them, ten years ahead of them.

[Mike Tagliavia (Member)]: It looks like the number of pounds of deer or moose or bear meat that was donated has dropped significantly. What do you attribute that to?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: Part of its capacity. That is one of the things. Everything takes time and resources, and we have so one of the main people who does a significant amount of work in that program is in a district right now that is down three wardens and has been down a number of wardens for a while just because we haven't had capacity to replace them, and so doesn't have as much time to do it as she did, and that's why she's trying to add, she just added two new meat processors that are independent to do some of

[Mike Tagliavia (Member)]: the work to help distribute it. So this is processed, this is not, oh guess what we've got this.

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: Oh no, this is cut. It's all hamburger. Well all burger.

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: Sorry, don't

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: mean hamburger. But it's all processed, packaged, and delivered in I think it's two pound packages. So it's literally ready to pop in a frying pan and cook. Thank you. Yep,

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: few questions. Just, I noticed the invasive species grant was $15,000 and I know the Lake Champlain Advisory Council is, that's one of their highest of their four recommendations. Just another source that I talked to, I'm just wondering, are there other funding sources that are dealing with invasive species?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: No, so that money was specifically assigned or given to us from DEC to pay for overtime work at access areas and talking to people in our wardens we're actually quite frankly this year I don't think we're taking the money just because wardens are doing it anyways. Part of what they do. One of the issues though, and this is what we get, we get requests often for wardens to do various activities patrolling the Lemoyal Valley Rail Trail for ATVs, or patrolling the Green Mountain National Forest for get all these asks, and so we're usually very happy to try and accommodate, but the warden has to prioritize what they're doing. One of the ways we concentrated their efforts to the specific ask was to say, look if you want us to do this we need money to pay overtime so that when they're doing that that's the only thing they're doing. And what we found was while that was certainly beneficial and directed, during the summer, most of the warden work is around the water, and they're doing it anyways. So, basically, we said to the DMV, like, we'll keep doing work. And if you find it's a significant difference, can go back. But so at any rate, was that.

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: Okay, great. Thank you. And do you have a budget for biologists?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: The department does, but that does not come out of

[Mike Tagliavia (Member)]: the law enforcement budget. Okay.

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: And what is the path to becoming a game warden? I'm wondering if our tech centers or university, you know, the university, state universities, do they have a track that kids can pick up from high school?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: They do. Actually, of our wardens is on the, I apologize, whatever the committee it is that oversees the college program, but it's a conservation law enforcement program. There's college programs specifically designed to conservation law enforcement. Vermont is unique in that we, so many or I should say probably most state fish and wildlife law enforcement agencies require an environmental degree. Vermont will accept environmental degree, law enforcement degree, military, or we actually changed to say basically four years of consistent employment, you know, in one place. The reason we did that is because oftentimes, and I guarantee you the commissioner will start nodding, is we'll run into people that want to be a game warden. What happened? Oh, well, you know, ended up having kids and life got in the way, and I've been working that, you know, driving truck for Casella for the last twelve years. It's like, what says they wouldn't possibly be a good game owner? So we changed our process. I will say we got a lot of interest, but one of the things that's required is that we have a very, very extensive personal history questionnaire that delves deeply into criminality and drug use and all that sort of stuff, and I think a lot of people who end up taking a different path in life don't always consider the ramifications or even the possibility that it'll come around again, and that has been a challenge with some of those individuals. It's just they made choices that we can't accept at this point.

[Jason Batchelder, Fish & Wildlife Commissioner]: I think in fairness though, I think you've gone a long way from the days of what was prohibited. Agreed. Yes.

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: Absolutely. No doubt. Yep.

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: And the the last question is, about five years ago, heard that processing game, butchers or whatever you call them, was really that we had a very small

[Jason Batchelder, Fish & Wildlife Commissioner]: amount

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: still.

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: Yes.

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: Can it help meet capacity or?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: Yeah, certainly. I mean, more butchers we have the better. I think that a without delving too far off of the topic, as a general statement, it's a labor intensive job that is not glamorous. I mean, it's cold because you're working in a place that's cold. It's messy. It's a lot of things that people don't wanna put up with, and and there are fewer, yeah, fewer younger people coming into it than there are older people going out of it. So as with a lot of things Yeah. Not just that. So but there are there are not a lot of butchers. That is certainly a consideration. Great.

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: Thank you so much.

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: You're

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: welcome. Representative Pritchard.

[Christopher “Chris” Pritchard (Member)]: Yeah. So I guess the the one thing that I want to say is how appreciative I am of what your department does. I don't think people realize all the things that you are attached to do. And I and I feel that times there's an under appreciation for that. And and it's a department that quite frankly, I felt for years that has been under unfunded. It's a department that gets the crumbs after everybody else gets served. So, you know, I just wanna say that, you know, I really appreciate your mission statement and what you folks do. And I know I've been involved, you know, through the Hunter Safety Program and other programs, but I see what happens, and I see the care that the people have for what they do. And thank you. Thank you. So one of the, I only have one question and it's more to clarify because I may have been wrong. We had a discussion in committee a while ago and it came up about the powers of the the legal powers of gang passed. And it's my understanding that they're the most vast in the state is that I mean, are there there's things that you can enforce that not that the state police can't enforce? Is that So Can you just explain that?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: We so the short answer is no. Everybody has the same amount of authority. The issue is most people don't have the knowledge. When I say most people, I mean most law enforcement. They just don't do what we do, so they don't understand how to do it. So they simply call us and say help because it's not something that they deal with. Technically, they this a state trooper could write you a ticket for jacking a deer, and a game warden can arrest you for DUI. We all have statewide authority to enforce everything. Municipal officer, a sheriff, everybody has statewide authority to enforce all the laws of the state. It's not unique to any one entity. We then all focus on our areas and fish and wildlife. Well, I don't need to tell this committee, look when we tried to explain like the points and the penalties and like it's confusing and complicated. There are so many nuances to fish and wildlife law that many we do have some law enforcement, local law enforcement or troopers who are avid hunters or fishers or trappers who are really into it, and so they get it, and they'll do stuff independent of of the wardens because they can, but most just don't understand it. So they're like, help.

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: What do we do?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: Here you go, found it, all yours, that sort of stuff. But yeah, but everybody has the same authority in the state. I stand corrected.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Satcowitz, and then I have a couple, and then Yeah. Representative.

[Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. For your for your wardens that are in the field, how much of their activity is driven sort of complaint driven, how much of it is sort of regular patrols and other duties that are independent of somebody calling in and saying something's going on?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: That's a great question. I'm so glad you

[Jason Batchelder, Fish & Wildlife Commissioner]: asked it. That's part of

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: the reason why we're so selective because, as you all, I mean most of our victims don't call because they can't. Right? I mean quite frankly, I I know this committee hears from very passionate people, but these people just they don't care enough to call. They see something, they're like, and they don't do anything. So if the wardens aren't out looking, they don't find it. And so we want people who are self motivated, who want to get up and go do what needs to be done because if they sit and wait for the calls, there's not a whole lot that's gonna happen. I will say from the days that he and I were in the field to now though, things have changed dramatically in the sense that a lot of the calls are not fish and wildlife related. It's animal cruelty. It's, I mean wardens are of staffing. Mean wardens are going to domestics, they're going to neighbor disputes, they're going to accidents, they're going to fights in progress, they're going to all this other sort of stuff because there's no other resources to send. Our mutual assist calls, they more than quadrupled in the span of like two or two years. I mean it went from like 120 to 500 or 600 calls because and it's just a byproduct of the staffing issues across the state and other entities. Need a warm body who they can count on to secure a scene or stop people from doing whatever it is that they're doing. So a majority of the calls that were on there, of those 9,000 calls, I would still say a majority are generated by the wardens themselves. Because again you know just no poacher is going to call and say hey I just did this and you know what I mean? People we get this all the time, oh I heard a shot last night at 02:00 but I didn't want to bother you. It's like that's what I get paid for, like bother me. But people want to be kind and polite and not many. If we're not out there we don't know about it. Hopefully that answers your question.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: That might also get to my question, but I'll say what other work is going undone? You said you could double the force and they wouldn't be idle. Maybe just a little more on what work's not getting done.

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: Sure. Well, and that's a great question, Madam Chair. I think the some stuff that is not getting done is the protection of species that get far less attention. One of those that we were here last year on about reptiles and amphibians. There is a tremendous amount of work in the area of illegal animal trade that I would love to dedicate more resources to that I don't have the resources to dedicate. I know wardens have seized some very freaky poisonous things that have come through, we had somebody show up with kangaroos and alligators and something else at a fair last year. There's so much of that illegal movement of animals, both native species leaving the state and species we don't want coming into the state that we simply, we just don't have the capacity to deal with because it is incredibly labor and time intensive to get into stuff. Lot of this, you can research this worldwide, I think next to the drug trade, the illegal animal trade is sort of like the next big moneymaker. It's in the billions of dollars in terms of movement of animals and parts of animals and things of that nature. And so a lot of this is tied to organized crime and things of that nature. We don't, we just, there's 42 of us. We can only do so much. So that's one of the big areas. But then just in terms of that, you had asked a question ma'am about you know response times. We got wardens covering 14 towns because we don't have enough wardens to reduce. I'd love to get to six to eight towns per ward, but we don't have capacity for that. I'd love to, you know, the span of control of supervisors, they say that typically to be effective you want between four to six direct reports. We don't have a lieutenant that has less than eight because we don't have it just it's again it's a capacity issue. So there's and then lastly, frankly, the animal cruelty stuff, I'd love to detail some people to take that off the warden's plate so they can get back out to patrolling because one of our wardens I would wager he's well it might be the horse case down in wherever that was Tonguebridge? No, wasn't Tonguebridge. Wherever was down south. The Phreesians of Majesty. I mean he has hundreds of hours in that case just sitting typing. I mean he's got one affidavit that's forty two pages long and it's insane. Takes so much time.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: So do you have someone detailed to the illegal animal trade?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: We have one person. Well I apologize, just added a second person, but that's not the only thing that they do. It's one of their responsibilities, but they're also he was the gentleman who was in Florida. He's also responsible for traveling for all of our backgrounds. We now have two of them that we can tap into, but they do all the backgrounds for our hunter ed instructors, our camp counselors. They do all kinds of work beyond just that. They do a lot of warrants around preservation warrants around technical data, preserving data on cell phones and all that sort of stuff which are fairly complicated and time consuming and very unique in how they have to be written. They do a lot of that for the field wardens. So they have many roles, but that's one of the roles that they work on.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Particularly since you said there's sort of, I think there's new and younger wardens out there, how do you advise them to prioritize their work?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: So it's not as direct as that. They four spend months at the police academy and then they spend eight months traveling around the state in field training observing from other wards. There are very few districts, even side by side districts that have the same demands or the same geography, topography, whatever word you want to use. Some have a lot more water, some have a lot less water, some have taller mountains, some have no mountains, and so a lot of it we can trust that they're going to figure out the needs of their district and how to best work it, and that's partly again ties back to the selective nature with which our hiring process operates because there is certainly capacity for someone who doesn't want to do anything to not do anything and we can't afford to have that. So certainly sort of use the hierarchy of basically time ingrate and letting wardens that are more senior or spend time sort of counsel the younger wards on hey this is a good place to be this time of year. And that happened, I guarantee it happened to the commissioner too. Your neighboring wards be like, oh look, you want to be in this place at this time because this is usually going on here. This is a really big fishing place in the spring. You want to watch this. Then of course also you get the family you want to watch for, that family, that sort of stuff. And so that's typically how that works, but it's not as direct as we do have sort of, if you will, expectations of certain times of the year, and so obviously fall you're concentrating on typically on hunting, summers, boating and fishing, that sort stuff, but it's not direct.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Does that answer your question? Thanks. Representative Labor?

[Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: Thank you, Chittenden. Given the shortage of actual recruitments, is your department accused of poaching other agents?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: I am very happy to say that in my tenure we have taken one. So

[Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: pay grades are pretty near equal?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: They are. Think one of the metrics I left out, I'll just say. So one of the unique things about game wardens is that you can find a game warden's phone number on the Internet. You cannot Google any other law enforcement officer in the state and find their cell phone number. Wardens, just the field wardens, had over 49,000 incoming phone calls last year. That's a lot of phone calls. Thousands.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: But you did tell us to call more.

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: Absolutely. We do want that, and that's the irony. We want that. We want people to call them. But I just want to highlight that I guarantee you there isn't another the state police don't have that many incoming calls to state issued cell phones. And it's not disparaging them. You can't find any law enforcement officer. So, there are pitfalls to our job that do negate the pay to your point, and there are some that just rely on not doing that, but one the things and one of the reasons we don't post very often is that we have relatively strict, we have just recently relaxed them due to the situation in Norwalk. We had up until this year a requirement that you had to live in your patrol district. We have expanded that to say that you can live in your patrol district or neighboring town, or if there's a time to the center of the district that we allow, that gives a little more flexibility just because housing is so challenging to find. Starting salary for Wharton, I think, is maybe 45,050 thousand dollars out of the gate, maybe. And so that doesn't go very far right now. So we had to do something to I don't know if

[Jason Batchelder, Fish & Wildlife Commissioner]: you have the starting number. I'm way off there.

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: Thought I don't think I'm that far off, but please don't hold me exactly to that number. It's not enough to buy a house in the current market. So we had to relax the requirements a little bit, but that prevented us from poaching people because most of the folks that are established don't want to move, and they're not willing to move to go work for us.

[Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: Second part of the question. During high density, the search Do you you when I was hunting quite actively, I would run into a deputy. Do you still employ deputy wards? One. So the part of

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: the issue is that the requirements for deputy wardens have changed at the state level, which has nothing to do with us. So in the old days well even wardens themselves in the old days literally you'd show up to hand you a badge and a gun and be like welcome to work and you went to work and that was it. Now it's the academy, it's all the other stuff, and there's some fantastic, some of the old warden stories are just absolutely fantastic for how they started work with literally being handed a badge and a gun and then told to go do the job and it was like that was it. But the deputies now, they have to go to the police academy for three weeks, they have to obtain one hundred and twenty hours of training, they have to pass the PT test, the polygraph, the psychological background, they have to do all that sort of stuff, and it's not really conducive to a job that pays $10 an hour once a year because they get paid once a year.

[Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: Do any of your wardens that are retiring or have retired volunteer as a deputy ward? Thank you.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Austin? Yeah. Just what would

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: be your two top priorities in terms of or what are your two top priorities in terms of if you could get additional funding for sub fund.

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: If I could get additional funding. So one of the things we have so we don't have enough money to buy trucks. So we're continually underfunded on trucks, which creates a problem because two I don't know. Two years ago, we were down to the point where if a truck broke, were unable to send wardens in some districts and we had nothing left. We had nothing left with wheels, they would run. So we're always struggling there. And quite frankly I mean the wardens they're hard on their equipment because the job demands it. Know they're on these back roads and quite frankly the stuff just isn't built to what the standard it used to be, and so we don't get as much out of it as we used So that's one area, and then quite frankly the other area would be personnel. Could really realistically, like I said, we could use 10 people, but if we got three or four people we could put them to work and make a dent. The other side effect of where we're at now is that a lot of the wardens do feel exceedingly taxed. Mean they are just there's when the commissioner and I were wardens the joke was you worked awful hard September to December and then you could take a break and they don't get a break anymore. They're on the point of things most of the time now. Mud season's about the only real slow time now because I mean that varies on how long that lasts, but there are people out on the landscape and they're out looking for them all the time and certainly the increased focus on recreational enforcement has made them busy year round.

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: Thank you,

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: Rob Austin, asking that last question about the answer for vehicles. I noticed your vehicle repairs and vehicle replacement is about

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: 476,000 in this budget.

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: Does that include you mentioned trucks. But does that include snowmobiles, boats? Is that all?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: No. So all of that snowmobiles, ATVs, all of it comes out of that overall number there, the 300 sorry, the 337,000. The snowmobiles, ATVs, some of the smaller boats and stuff all comes out

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: of that.

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: I mean, literally, is everything. Everything that a Wharton comes with comes out of that 337,000. The $3.61 is specifically for trucks, but I need, like, 550. Right.

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: Yeah. The reason I asked the question is I'm on the select board in my town and capital equipment, and you mentioned the cost of replacement vehicles now compared to what they used to be just five years ago is just astronomical. And I can I'm just looking at that, and I'm perplexed that I can see with that that's not enough. Oh, no. And that's what what is your retention on vehicles?

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: It's about five years.

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: Five years? Is that because they all exceed mileage? Because they're covering a

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: lot of districts. Yeah. So the wardens on average about 25,000 to 30,000 miles a year is on about average for a warden. And what it is, is it just after the five year mark, the cost to keep them on the road far exceeds their value basically. So yeah that's where we keep the five year mark. So on average we need about eight trucks a year to get to that replacement at five years, and we have the money for about six.

[Christopher “Chris” Pritchard (Member)]: Part of that is because they have to drive Dodges.

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: But

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: but thanks for that question, because we're we're we're dealing with those same issues on that. You've got the person you've got personnel, and you arguably need more, and you need the equipment for them to do their job. If you don't have the equipment, then it's difficult to do their job. Was just I was surprised to see what appears to

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: be how little that is. We are getting which were the funds for that big boat?

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Oh, capital.

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: Capital funds. So we do have capital funds. So we are purchasing a very nice boat for Lake Champlain, which I'm a little jealous because I to be honest, but that's coming from Capital Fund, and that's replacing two of our boats that are 22 years old apiece, 22 or 23 years old. One we got the year I got hired, so 2004, and the one came the year after that. And they're just they're fiberglass and they're very tired. But this it'll be a huge asset for us. I'm assuming that's a more expensive

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: to get home. Oh, I

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: think it's a that's why it's under capital. But Again, that sort of stuff, prices after COVID just mean obviously you can go buy anything. Especially the more large scale items, they did not come back down after COVID.

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: Thank you

[Justin Stedman, Director of the Warden Service]: much. Thank you. Really appreciate the committee listening. I appreciate it so much. You. Thank you so much for Members, coming

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: we'll take