Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Alright. Welcome back, everyone. It is three on January 6. We're picking up committee work with the secretary of state's office. We are just checking in our friends from across the street and doing a little tee up on some of the work that we are looking at digging up this year. Yes, please, deputy secretary. Feel free to join.

[Lauren Hooper, Deputy Secretary of State]: Invite Jen Cohen up too. Is that okay? All that. Yeah. We're getting the band back together.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Totally. You want another chair? You could grab Reps

[Lauren Hooper, Deputy Secretary of State]: and bars.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Rep Hooper is actually not with us today, so that's a viable seat.

[Lauren Hooper, Deputy Secretary of State]: It's so nice to see you all. It's great to be back, and I hope that you all are enjoying your first day. For the record, I'm Lauren Hooper. I'm the Deputy Secretary of State, and I have with me Jennifer Cola. I'm the Director of the Office of Professional Regulation. You probably have noticed that her title changed. Thank so much. And we have our new general counsel here, Emily Parr. Emily, you may recognize from the Department of Corrections. She was with that agency for many years. But we are so happy to have her at OPR now as our general counsel. Yes, we've made some really exciting changes at OPR. And so as I understand that you want to hear about Secretary of State priorities, The majority of them are OPR priorities, which is why Jen is here. But in terms of Secretary of State priorities, we don't have a huge agenda, primarily because we don't want to make significant changes to election law this session because it is an election year. It's just not great for us to modify anything substantial. Or even if it seems not substantial, it can have huge ripple effects. We are aware that there are two bills that are possible, themes that are possible. One is the Voter Rights Act. We do support state implementation of the Federal Voter Rights Act. And the other is a campaign finance bill that we haven't seen the language of. So we don't know or bills, there could be multiple. But we know that there's been a lot of discussion about campaign finance. We need to look at the particulars of that to understand what impact would it have on this election cycle for candidates, for the public, for our office, for our systems. All of the things that you would anticipate we'd be concerned about, we need to see that. So we look forward to reviewing it, and we'll have a position once we understand that. We don't have a business services bill this year. I'm sure some issues will pop up because they always do. And we don't have a VESARA bill this year. We are working on we're gearing towards a bill next session. We'd really like to have a bill next session with the SARA and the town clerks. We're doing a comprehensive audit of all the statutes that mention town clerks and all of their duties. For instance, you may not know that town clerks are supposed to receive a certificate for logs that are floating down the river. You have to you have to file a certificate with the town clerk. But we don't float logs down the river anymore, And that's lingering statutes. Lumbering. Lumber, yep. It's a lumbering down the river? It does. But there's lots of statutes like that, and they cause a lot of confusion. We need a comprehensive statutory review and modernization for town clerks, over 700 times that town clerks are mentioned. So we're working with the SAARA and the Town Clerk Association, hopefully, to have a bill next session, not this session. Of course, we're watching any open meeting law issues that come up, any public records discussions that are coming up. We care a lot about those two issues. And in terms of money, we are very concerned about our lack of funding from the federal government around elections. For your knowledge, I'm sure I said this last year too. We typically have always received the small state minimum from the federal government, which has been a million dollars a year. This administration has changed that. It's now $275,000 And that's a really dramatic change for us. We have enough reserve, even after our IT implementation, to fund this election with the money that we have. But we do anticipate that we will be coming to this body if the federal funds do not resume with a general fund allocation ask that we have never made before. We have always made an ask for more funding during election years that has been granted. It's about $600,000 And so we are asking for that, which has been our previous ask. I just want to forecast for people what the financial reality is for us with elections. And as I was just saying downstairs, the requirements, the security requirements for California are the same as the security requirements for Vermont. We have the same foreign actors trying to get into our systems. Both of our states can see that happening. We're both aware of it. But we have a lot less financial resources than California, which is why that small

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: minimum is so important.

[Lauren Hooper, Deputy Secretary of State]: It's a great example of why the small state state minimum is so important. And the small state minimum has dramatically changed. So two thirds loss of revenue is a lot for us. And we are asking for a position within the Business Services Division. That is a division of six. One director, five reports to that director. The volume is great, which is awesome news for Vermont. That means that there's a lot of people wanting to operate businesses in Vermont. We've seen a growth of businesses in Vermont. But our ability to turn around those requests, know we can approve upon, and we want to do that. So we are asking for a position there. We also have a huge scanning project for that division of old records that need to be digitized. And that's work that right now we would either need to put out to a contract or have somebody really divert a ton of resources from their already overtaxed day. And then last year, this body helped us create a new position in our General Counsel Municipal Services Division. At the very end of the session, it became a limited services position. We are asking that that become a permanent position. We are very fortunate to have hired a former House member who has just really, really helped us transform our response time and our ability to process public records requests and get back to the public around municipal issues. And we need that position, and we'd like it to be permanent. So in terms of positions, it's those two asks, one new and one transformation from limited services to permanent. And that is, outside of OPR, our big priority. So relatively small. I should say that we are watching the school redistricting conversation very closely. We are responsible. The secretary is the chair of the ward working group. And so if school districts are created or if there appears to be a plan, that working group, we have had two meetings. We're going to have another meeting at the January. We're watching, we're waiting, we're ready. So if school districts start to formalize, we will be talking about the wards within those districts. And then there's a lot of election issues, as we talked about quite extensively last session. So we know that that is happening. We have tentative concepts of what would need to change. We obviously would really want to be part of that conversation of adding school board members to the general election. That's outside of OPR. OPR, we have three themes to OPR's work. It's in our final testimony. It's creating some new professional pathways. Some of them you've heard a lot about. Some are brand new this session. We want to remove unnecessary regulatory barriers wherever we can. That's always our goal, but it's a distinct theme in our OPR bill this year. And we want to strengthen public provision. There's a couple of provisions that will make our duty of public protection even better. And with that, I'm turning it over to Jen. Thank you so much. And good to see you all again this year. Thanks for having us. So an old friend that was introduced last session, early childhood education, is back this year, but albeit in a slightly different standalone bill that's new this year. And so you'll be seeing that. That bill, we testified about that last year, but it creates individual licensure credentials for folks who are early childhood educators working in non public settings. And those non public settings are regulated by the Child Development Division of DCF.

[Jennifer Cola, Director of the Office of Professional Regulation]: And those are family child care homes and center based facilities. And so right now, those regulation in that space is really happening through the facilities. OPR did a report last year saying that essentially for public protection, we should grant individual licensure to the folks who are working within those facilities in lead teacher and assistant teacher positions. So that's something that we'll be hopefully talking with you more about this year. Also, we have in the dental profession, we're going to be seeking a new limited scope academic dental license for dental faculty. OPR have learned that there's a dental school that wants to open a satellite location in Vermont, which is very exciting because we have a shortage of dental professionals in this state. So, we'd like to offer a credential, a limited scope credential for the faculty of that school so that they can teach and work in a dental clinic associated with the school. The dental clinic would offer low and no cost services to folks, and dental faculty could work for that kind of clinic. So that would be part of the OKR bill. In psychology, there was a bill that passed the House last year, H-two 37, about psychologists prescribing. That's doctorate level psychologists who get additional training and experience, more education. We will offer a specialty that allows them to prescribe mental health medications. So that's very exciting. Bill, optometry is another one that may be familiar to y'all. Optometrists scope expansion, which again, would offer a specialty to optometrists who have advanced training and education to be able to do some surgical procedures and some injection procedures. That's a standalone bill. I think that came in last year in the Senate, so it may make its way over here this year, hopefully. In terms of removing unnecessary regulatory barriers, we've got three efforts along that theme. One in pharmacy. So in pharmacy, we want to remove the requirement that vaccines that are prescribed by pharmacists and administered by pharmacy professionals, that those vaccines are limited to ACIP approved vaccines. ACIP is the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that is housed within the CDC. So there were changes to that advisory committee late in the summer, and there's a lot going on with the CDC these days. So basically, we want to remove the requirement that those vaccines that pharmacy professionals can administer and prescribe be ACIP approved. They will still be approved by the Vermont Commissioner of Health. And so, that's a new change. Funeral services, we want to include additional services in the scope of what the practice of funeral service is. So, those services are cremation and natural organic reduction and alkaline hydrolysis. Those are already approved services that can be provided in funeral, but we wanted to be sure that funeral directors understood that that's part of the scope of their particular license, so that they don't need to get an additional license to be able to offer those services. Right. That's right. And then for midwives, every time a midwife in the state of Vermont renews their license with OPR, they have to do extensive reporting on data for every single birth that they attend. And we gather that data for the Department of Health. And it's a really onerous requirement. And I think as part of onboarding it was as a recognized profession, I think there was some, I don't want to say distrust, but hesitancy. Hesitancy. Great, better word. There was some hesitancy about that. So they wanted a lot of data about every single birth that was being attended by midwives. I don't think that data is really being utilized much, and it's not really serving a purpose. Right now, we also have additional reporting requirements that if there's a birth that goes wrong, or if there's something that happens on a midwife attended birth, there's a peer review process that they're required to go through. So we still have plenty of public protection oversight there, but we're wanting to curb all the data that they have to report on. They'll still have to report some data, but hopefully reduce that burden. Really, if something goes wrong, we'll absolutely hear about it. And they are reporting every birth independently now to the Department of Health, because that's a requirement for live births. And then in terms of strengthening public protection, a couple of things that we're moving forward this year. Regulation of massage establishments. Right now, we regulate the individuals working in those establishments, but we want to regulate the establishments themselves. And that's kind of intended as a hello. That's kind of intended as a tool in the tool belt to help fight human trafficking, frankly. So the credential that would be required for establishments would be a registration. And sole practitioners would be exempt from that requirement. So the sole practitioners wouldn't have to get two licenses. And that would also come with us having stronger authority for inspection of establishments so that we can send inspectors in. Next, we have, in our unprofessional conduct authority, there's a reporting requirement that health care facilities have to report to OPR when a licensee in their facility, their privileges have been curtailed or taken away. So in other words, if you work in a hospital and you're a licensee at OPR, if the hospital is taking away your ability to practice in some way, it needs to be reported to OPR because that's the result of likely unprofessional conduct. The way the statute is written needs a little bit of clarification because there's a double negative in there that makes it a little bit hard to understand when they have to do this reporting. So we want to straighten that out and make it clear so that they know when they're required to report. And then the last thing, and I have to say I'm really excited about this one, I joined OKR in 2017 and I've wanted us to do this since that time. So the last thing that we're hoping to move forward this year is a voluntary alternative to discipline program. OPR is going to be asking for the authority to establish that kind of program through rulemaking. Alternative to discipline program is something that we have in nursing only. And basically, there are two arms to that program. First, for people who have substance use issues that have not yet impacted their business or their profession. So in other words, we don't have any complaints against them, but they have a substance use issue that they're concerned could ultimately impact their practice. We would have a program where they could report themselves to OPR and engage in this program where they would be required to do monitoring and drug testing and have an evaluation and mental substance use treatment. And that would be kind of monitored by OPR. That's a way for people to kind of hold themselves accountable and to get better and also to assure that it doesn't impact their practice as professionals. It's a public protection measure. And then the other arm of the alternative to discipline program would be for folks who do have complaints at OPR on minor practice issues. So, something that probably wouldn't warrant a prosecution, but something that could be remediated through additional coursework. They put an IV in somebody incorrectly and it wasn't a huge risk to that person, but there's additional education that's needed. That would enable OPR prosecutors to offer that person practice remediation. And then if the person completed the coursework or did whatever remedial work was needed, then that complaint could be dismissed. And again, those are for minor issues only. It's not in cases where there was a significant public protection risk. So those are the strengthening public protection efforts that will be moving forward this session, and we're really excited about our agenda.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Excellent. And I'm excited to see the language. We've been working together with Attorney Devlin. The bill I submitted for release just under my name. So it should be here. I've been thinking this week to actually have the formal content to start discussing the

[Lauren Hooper, Deputy Secretary of State]: market beyond. So Fantastic. We're excited for that.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Yes. I see a hand there. Yes. Representative Morgan. Yep. Thank you.

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: Ma'am, you were talking to optometrists. Yes. Y'all are in support of moving forward with some of the things they're looking to do that are, for lack of a better word, a little more revolutionary in their world, so to speak.

[Lauren Hooper, Deputy Secretary of State]: Really allowing them to practice to the full scope of their training and experience with their optometry work. So yes, we are in support of that. That's been a how many years has OPR been involved in How many years has OPR existed? Yeah. Just We've done so many reports on this scope expansion. And initially, we did not agree with the scope expansion, I think largely because we weren't getting a lot of information from optometry schools about what coursework is offered and how that's being taught in optometry schools. But we've done a lot of work with the professional organizations. And last year, we did kind of come out in support of the bill that was offered. There's been some revision to that, or was last year, so we do support it.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Okay, great. It

[Lauren Hooper, Deputy Secretary of State]: really requires additional education.

[Steve Howard, Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association (VSEA)]: It does.

[Lauren Hooper, Deputy Secretary of State]: And it is a limited set of procedures.

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: I think they've come to us saying that they're willing to report that work to do that and expand that scope as you put. But I do know they and the ophthalmologists have loggerheads on that one.

[Lauren Hooper, Deputy Secretary of State]: There's a couple of areas, and this happens with scope. And it may come up with pharmacy prescribing. It definitely comes up with psychologists prescribing. It definitely comes up with optometry. But we also have workforce shortages. And we know that people on all of those issues, know or OPR knows and has provided reports to you that the training is sufficient, that Vermonters would be protected. And if something went wrong, we would use our enforcement process. And we would revoke or suspend or condition the over credential immediately. So we know that we have tools to remove bad actors, and we are confident that the training is sufficient. But yes, a theme could be we could have had a different theme, but it would have undercut our other three away from It's other making sure that the workforce is strong. We're seeing that in pharmacy. We're seeing that in funeral. We're seeing that in every profession that we're talking about. These are responses to making sure that the workforce is clear what they can do, how they can do it, and making sure that we are not creating barriers to that. So for scope expansions, that's definitely true for optometrists and the psychologist prescribing as well. Massage, we are putting a restriction on the practice. But it really is in response to the work that we did. When we did our original Sunrise report, we did not recommend registration of the establishments. But now that we've been in the space, and we're now at three years, I believe, regulating, if you look at our registry of complaints, a third of them roughly are related to human trafficking. A third of them, maybe even a half of them, quite sadly, are related to sexual misconduct that's not human trafficking. And so it's important for us to make this policy shift.

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: Thank you.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Any Yeah. No. I remember I discussing that pretty extensively last year. So I was when I saw the original draft of the language and copy come in, I was happy to see that we're moving forward forward with trying to solve that problem because it's real.

[Lauren Hooper, Deputy Secretary of State]: I will say, I know that, and I don't know if we're out of time, and I appreciate it if we are. But it did come up in SGO. There was a question about the mental health reform, because we really do want to do that. We have been talking about that. That is not in this bill. And we have made a very conscious decision to wait until next session to do that. It's a significant statutory rewrite. We want to make sure that we have all of the stakeholders on board or as much on board as they can be. And we also the executive officer position that thank you for creating. Thank you, thank you. She hasn't started yet. That's what happens. You guys create a position, and it takes time for it to create actually in DHR. And then we have a full recruitment process, and then if it's the right person, they're going to have things that they need to wrap up. So she's starting in February, and it didn't seem right to do that work without her fully on board, fully understanding the history of the issues. And we're really excited to do that next session. We think it's going to take at least one year, maybe two, which is why it didn't make sense to start this at the second year of the biennium. But if you have constituents who are concerned about mental health, we are too. We know that this is a workforce issue. We know that it's a problem. And we're really committed to changing it.

[Steve Howard, Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association (VSEA)]: Thank you. Thank you. We look forward

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: to picking the bill up when we get it on the wall. Great, thank you. Alright. Now we're gonna do a clean pivot to our next group. We have Steve Howard and mister Vince Cluzzi. Unless Steve just wants to fly a snowball on this one.

[Steve Howard, Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association (VSEA)]: My New Year's resolution is to keep Vince from speaking to legislators, so I'm gonna have him sit quietly in the corner.

[Lauren Hooper, Deputy Secretary of State]: All have goals. My goal.

[Steve Howard, Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association (VSEA)]: Okay. That's a good one. Welcome back. Thank you. These are very nice digs. I hope you got that

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: up here.

[Steve Howard, Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association (VSEA)]: Oh, you know? Stalker Well since you moved to the fancy

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Really? We

[Steve Howard, Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association (VSEA)]: were here almost I I like it. I I just got the theme of the Jeffersons running in my booth.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Hey. You know? It's all about

[Steve Howard, Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association (VSEA)]: this this simple don't know what the Jeffersons are. You know what the Jeffersons are? I know. Yeah. Straight into guessing. So so so I realize I'm aging myself. Sorry. Yeah. Anyway Both are true. This is fact. Thank you, mister chairman. Table is yours. For the record, I'm Steve Howard. I'm the executive director of the Vermont State Employees Association. It's my thirteenth year at the VSEA, which is surprising to everybody involved, including myself. But here I am. So I'm very pleased to just walk you through some of the things that I hope that your committee may have time to focus on in this legislative session. I do want to reference and encourage you to take a look at a document which I believe we've emailed to you. That's the employee engagement survey, which is a survey that's done by the Department of Human Resources that engages state employees across the state. It's both managers and bargaining unit employees as well. The agencies that have the highest level of dissatisfaction among their employees, which are agencies that we pay close attention to, clearly, there's something happening at that agency. The highest one is the Department of Corrections at 40% dissatisfaction. The Department of Motor Vehicles at 35% dissatisfaction, and the Agency of Education at 30%. Agency of Agency of Education also has a 14% vacancy rate. It's a very high turnover rate. And given that education is a major theme of the legislative session, maybe figuring out what's happening at the agency of education, could be helpful in those discussions. And so I just wanna put that before you. You know, one of the major issues that we would hope that this committee might, in its oversight role, legislative oversight role of the executive that you might pay attention to is what our members call the return to commute, which is the governor's order that, employees return, three days a week to their offices. And on the surface, that issue seems like a fairly simple issue. On Monday on Friday, you're at home. On Monday, you just drive to work. It's far more complicated than that. And I'd I would encourage the committee to take a look at it, just really through the lens of what the impact is to the taxpayer. First of all, think from our members' perspective, this is an issue that's near and dear to their heart. We've had two or three, maybe four information meetings with our attorneys and with our staff and with our members and on their lunch hour. And routinely, we have between five hundred and eight hundred people, sometimes three actually, maybe three to 500 people. We have had as high as 800 people on a Zoom. The working Vermonters caucus held a meeting, on this issue, and the Zoom crashed, because so many people wanted to speak. And the reason for that is because, there's a few things that employees, of the state want the governor to know and want the legislature that has oversight over the governor to understand. First of all, our members felt very betrayed by the governor's announcement. It was never discussed with them. They were never consulted. It was never anything that was brought up to them. But to them, it was a message of we don't trust you, and we need to surveil you. Even though our members had successfully led this state through a pandemic and two floods, snowstorms, crisis after crisis. Now they don't have the press conference. They don't get the glory, but they do all the work. And the the governor's announcement came as a shock to them. It has a profound impact on their lives. Many of these employees were promised when they were hired in the job posting and in the in the conversation with their employer that they could work remotely. Some were hired who live in other states and were hired for positions that we have had a hard time filling. This, we believe, is leading us to what the Sloan School School of Management and MIT found was the result of the private sector. Best and the brightest are looking for other jobs. The hour and a half, two hour commute that so many folks, are now required to do three days a week is too much for them. It's been particularly bothersome to the folks who were told that it would be okay for them to work remotely and made life decisions of a childcare facility to go to, what adult daycare facility to use, all of those things based on the commitment of their employer, remote work was here to stay. So I would ask you to look at that because your constituents are gonna expect that when they call state government, and they rely on state government, they're gonna have the best and the brightest, they're gonna have enough people there to respond to them. And we're entering into a time not because of this mandate, but that may not be true. Our members are also concerned about $3,000,000 being spent on leases that we believe are unnecessary in the water. Leases that are in fact going, fortunately, to a friend of the governor's who made campaign contributions to him, bought his business when he needed to sell his business. It doesn't look good to our members or to the taxpayers that this unnecessary space is being leased, when our members were doing quite well working from home, particularly the health department employees whose building was sold and who all live in Chittenden County and who were were told by their commissioner at the time that the compromise to keep these very valuable employees, the heroes of the pandemic, from quitting was that they could work from home. And so people stayed in these very, highly, skilled positions that are filled with with folks who are special who are specializing in in the work that they do in a way that there are very few people who can do the work that they do. So it's going to have negative impact on the taxpayers, a negative impact on the ability to deliver services to your constituents in a fair a free manner. I'd also ask you to look at staffing. We've had a massive understaffing of state government, eight eighty one physicians vacant in state government. They've been vacant for a while. Down a little bit from a thousand, over a thousand, but it ran quite for quite some time that are around a thousand. The understaffing is pronounced in a few places. In the Department of Mental Health and at the Vermont Veterans Home, 27% vacancy rates. I've mentioned the agency of education, 14% vacancy rate. There's 11% vacancy rate, in the Department of Corrections, but it's a little bit of it's a little deceiving because the position that you wanna look at is the correctional officer one position, which is the entry level position for a correctional officer. Those positions are experiencing massive turnover, And, we've hired a lot of people at $10,000 a pop because they have to go to the academy to be trained who just leave. And they leave because they're asked to work sixteen hour shift after sixteen hour shift day after day after day. And they're promised in the TV ads that they would have work life balance. They're promised in the TV ads that this wasn't gonna be, this was gonna be a job they could see their families and participate in their kids' birthday parties, go to soccer games, that kind of stuff. None of that has happened. And our correctional officers, particularly in the Newport facility, it is I don't know how to describe it other than a humanitarian crisis. Folks are exhausted. They look like walking zombies, and they're fed up because they really don't see any hope. It's been going on for six years. And one of the things that they really hope is that the governor will governor's been pretty good at responding to crises. COVID, whatever the crisis is, the governor's done a pretty good job. He hasn't visited the Newport facility. He hasn't announced that there's a crisis, and the pace at which the administration is responding is the snail's pace. So while these men and women suffer and beg for help, almost nothing is being done to help them. And it's not just in Newport. It's all across the state. Springfield is not that far behind Newport. And so I would ask you to dig into these these numbers all throughout the state, particularly into the c o one position and and really explore, what the governor's plan is, to both raise the morale in the departments that have the highest levels of unsatisfaction. And what is the governor's plan to solve the staffing crisis, particularly in our health care and in our correctional facilities? We'd also ask you to look at the public safety proposal that's been put on the table. Folks may be familiar with the extra deployment of state troopers to Church Street Marketplace. A lot of PR around that. The hire of the moving of a Washington County prosecutor to prosecute cases in Chittenden County. That's had a huge effect on our staff and our members in the judiciary and our, support staff and victim advocates in the Chittenden County State's Attorney's Office. There were no added resources for them. And we're we're sort of doing this on the cheap. Public safety is not something the public wants done on the cheap. So if we're really serious about it, we really need to hire more prosecutors, more victim advocates, more admin staff, and more judiciary staff. Last year, we asked this body. We with the support of the management, we worked hand in hand with Andy Noonan and Tim Lou's Dumont for 20 new positions to hold criminals accountable for the for the damage they've done to the public. We were lucky in to get nine limited service positions converted to permanent classified so that those nine people wouldn't quit. We would ask you to look at that 20 those 20 positions again and to put the the public's priority of public servant public safety, at the near the top of the budget and to fully staff the prosecutor's office. We need to hold these criminals accountable. We can't do it without prosecutors. The victims have a right to know what's happening with their cases. We can't do it with victim advocates. The process in the courts all happen not because judges rule, but because clerk court clerks move the paperwork through to the judge. That doesn't happen if there aren't any judicial assistants or court clerks. So we ask you to take that as make that a major priority and to look at that issue from a public safety perspective. It's like the lost the last the the sort of foundation of the system that's not being supported. So I'd I'd ask you to take a look at that. And in addition, last year, as part of that request from the Department of States Attorneys and Sheriffs, we supported their request for additional transport deputies. Our department for children and families spends hours hours with kids waiting for a transport to bring a kid to a therapeutic facility, somewhere in the state because we don't have one. Despite the FDA's best attempts to get the administration not to close Woodside and to reform Woodside, years later, we still have no place to bring our youth, who have been trauma who are traumatized youth, who have acted out because of that trauma, and who deserved an education and deserved therapy and the kinds of services they were getting at Woodside, before the administration unilaterally closed it without an alternative. So that's an issue that I think is a public safety issue because many of these folks are judicial. These kids are judicial are involved judicial with the judicial system. And right now, often, they're released because there's no place to put them, or they're brought to the Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility. And our members find that kind of ironic. Our trained residential counselors who were doing the good work of helping folks back to a better path find it really, interesting because what they were told when the administration closed that facility is it looks too much like a jail. Well, that was true. It did look too much like a jail. Should have been torn down and rebuilt into a rehabilitative facility. But now what are we doing? Bringing the kids to an actual jail. And that kind of, situation, you know, there's a lot of reasons that's not the that aren't they're beyond the administration's control, but the buck stops with the governor. He decided to close the facility against the employee's advice. He has to own it, and he has to speed up the process of getting that facility established so that we can help these kids, get back on their feet and have a life that is better than their life that they've had so far. So we'd ask you to look at those issues. We have a couple of bills. I think they're in here that are big priorities of VSEA. H three fifty nine, which is an anti privatization bill. That's a bill that curbs the ability of the executive, the governor, not just this governor, but any governor in the future to privatize the work of skilled and valuable state employees to low paying contractors who provide poor service and end up costing the taxpayers more money. This needs to be, a strengthening of that statute, a statute that exists now and has almost no teeth in it. And it's they work they figured out a way around it, and this bill would close those loopholes. The second is to upgrade our and and enhance our retirement system in a couple of ways that I think are really important. First of all, we think there are added class classifications that should be in group g. So social workers, our our staff at the public safety answering points that are taking nine eleven calls, very stressful job, a number of other positions that require great physical and mental exertion and that are trauma inducing. We're asking those folks to to we like those folks to be included in group g so that they can retire with a full retirement earlier given the impacts that their work have has on their mental health and their physical health. Particularly the trainers. One thing that we're interested in is the trainers at the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council in Pittsford that train our law enforcement officers. I think we all agree, well trained law enforcement officers, very important. Those trainers, have to be correctional have to be, law enforcement officers. Law enforcement officers are in group c. The training positions are in group f. So, there are very few people willing to go from group c to group f. And so we can't fill those positions. And so the the our members at the criminal justice training council have asked us to to move those positions, those trainer positions into group c, so that we can have some consistency between their their life as a law enforcement officer and their life as a trainer. That's an important thing. We have not updated our military service credit in since Vietnam. So we have if you served in Vietnam, you get a military service credit in as part of your retirement calculation. Not for Afghanistan, not for Iraq, not for any of the conflict since. And we think that's something that we need to we need to update and and change. We also believe that, a pension is an agreement. It's a contract between, the employer and the employee. And we think that, Vermont should follow the example of California and put the California, principle. It's called the California principle into the Vermont statute and make it clear that our pension is a contract a contractual agreement between the employee and the and the employer. So the other the other bill that's coming in, that we call retirement two point o would also, I think, write something that we think is an injustice. So if you're a correctional officer or you're a nurse or you're a family service worker, AOT worker, whatever it might be, and you are disabled as a result of an attack, that you were attacked by an inmate, attacked by a youth, attacked by a parent, attacked by a patient. Whether the patient knew they were wanting, you know, had the ability to control their attack or not, and you're disabled as a result of that attack, you now are eligible for a disability retirement, which is substantially lower than the retirement you would have had, had you not been attacked doing your job. And, you know, we have some folks who are a year or two away from full retirement who've given, you know, twenty or thirty years to the state of Vermont, they get to that last they can see the finish line. They get to the finish line. They are attacked by an inmate. They're disabled. Now there's their retirement is substantially reduced. That seems wrong, and, we should we think we should change that. And then lastly, mister chairman, it's sort of consistent with what I just talked about. The world we live in is not as safe as the world we once lived in. And public officials, and you all know this from your experience as public officials, and public servants like our members, are consistently approached in state work sites by people who are out of control, who think it's okay to be abusive, and have been told by some leaders that it's okay to be abusive. Not any leaders in Vermont, fortunately, and they are abusive, and some are violent. And in some state office buildings, there is zero security. None whatsoever. There's certainly inadequate security. And what VSEA wants is we believe that the social workers in DCF, while they're working in their office, should have the same protections as legislators who work in the state house and as tourists who visit the state house in the fall. There should be a a a state buildings police force that provides the kind of level of security and protection that society today demands. So looking at the issue of safety and security, I think would be an important thing for our members. We also need to have an independent look, an independent commission that is, split between the administration and the union on what the security needs are for the state and what the appropriation for the for that for those needs should be. One of the challenges we've had, and I won't give secretary Clark, who I like very much, a break because we haven't talked to her about it. But previous secretaries of administration in Democratic and Republican administrations have said to the SEA, even after the brutal murder of Lara Sobel, this is not a problem. We are not spending any more money on security. And they've told their directors of security who, on the side, say to us, we have serious problems in the state, serious situations, but I'm not allowed to speak to you because my boss has told me this is not an issue. This is a boss who, by the way, works in a building that is secured, not somebody who's going to take a child out of an abusive situation and going back to their office and finding the parents in the in the parking lot waiting for them. So we would ask that you take a serious look at this, because we've already had one of our members murdered. We don't expect that it won't happen again, and particularly in those buildings where there's absolutely no state security at all. And with that, mister chairman, that is our wish list for 2026.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Alright. Does anybody have anything for Steve at the moment before we wind down on our first day of formal business? We know we'll have you in here on a couple of these things. I just don't wanna have you come in

[Steve Howard, Executive Director, Vermont State Employees’ Association (VSEA)]: to tee up the conversation. Thank you. Yeah. Appreciate it.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Alright. That was no. Alright. Committee, fabulous starts the first day of this second year of the biennium.