Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Thank you. Alright. Welcome back after lunch, everyone. Shortly after 1PM on January 7, House Government Operations and Military Affairs. We have a couple of friends from the Department of Public Safety here, and we're just gonna have a early session conversation with them about introduction and priorities. And we will be talking to commissioner Morrison, and also the new director of animal welfare, Lisa Thank you. Alright. Yeah. Feel free to the table on the end there. Yeah. Rep. Vincent was not with us today, so that's perfect for the if you wanna do a duet.

[Jennifer Morrison]: Oh, it she's the star. Yes. I'll just sit off to the side here. Do you want harmonize with me? Yes. I'll

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: take my side. Duet. Here's how we go. What would you like to start with, Lisa?

[Jennifer Morrison]: Good morning. Thank you for the record. My name is Jennifer Morrison. I'm the Commissioner of Public Safety, and the Division of Animal Welfare is one of the eight divisions of the Department of Public Safety. And I'm excited to introduce you to Director Lisa Mylot. She's going to give you a little overview of who she is, how she came to us, and some highlights of the report that is in its final phases of coming your way. And that's pretty much it. We're available for questions. And of course, as you know, all the work she's doing is laid out by statute. And we are threading a needle between the requirements of the statute and the realities of a very, very lean fiscal year and competing priorities in the areas, of course, as you know, of housing and education and public safety and many other competing priorities. So with that sort of framing, I'll turn it over to Lisa.

[Lisa Milot]: Thank you. And thank you very much for having me here today. I've been excited to get started on this part of my job, and so it's nice to be here. I'm Lisa Mylett, and I was hired as the Director of the Division of Public Safety. I started work in mid May, which is a bit later, I know, than might have been anticipated, but I was a law professor before coming here, and I could not move until after the end of the semester. I'm a lawyer, I practice law in the DC area initially, which is where I got involved in animal issues, and then I moved to the University of Georgia to teach in 2007, where I started working on the local government shelter side of things. Georgia has municipal shelters that are funded by local taxpayers, and so I started working to make reforms on that end of things. And I switched my teaching focus in 2018 to focus on animal welfare. I started a law school clinic where my students and I worked with jurisdictions around Georgia on animal welfare. I worked on Well, in that respect, I was working on practices and programs to a large extent to improve things for both the most vulnerable people and their pets, as well as on ordinances. But then I also worked on state legislation concerning animal issues. So that's my background in coming here. I wasn't looking for a new job, but I have to say, when I read the job posting, it seemed to describe both what I've been doing and what I'm interested in doing, and it's Vermont. I grew up in Pennsylvania and my mother's family is from Maine, so I have strong ties to the Northeast, and it's nice to be back up in this area. So that's my background and how I got here. Since I've been here, I've been meeting with a lot stakeholders. I've been meeting with various folks in the government who currently have hands in the animal welfare world. So I've met with folks from the Agency of Agriculture. I've met with folks from Department of Fish and Wildlife, I'm sorry. I've met with some folks from VSP, just the folks who are out there and currently working on these matters to find out I want their ideas. No matter what I've done before, I think there's a lot to be said for the way things are the things that are currently working and trying to figure out how to make those better instead of coming in and looking at a revolution. I'm pretty big up in incrementalist. I don't think that, most real change on the government level happens through completely overhauling things in one day. I think that you make changes, you see how things play out, and then you respond to those and make further changes to see what still needs to be improved. As Commissioner Morrison said, I have a draft at this point of the comprehensive plan that is due to you all in the very near future, and I'm working on tweaking it and finalizing that. I hope to have it to you at some point next week. So that will be gripping reading for all of you because as a law professor, I don't do things very briefly. You get history, you get citations, you get research. So just know that that's what will be coming your way. But I've actually really enjoyed getting to do all of this. I know there are a lot of people who worked very hard, including all of you all, to have this division created and to get to this moment where there's somebody who is sitting in front of you. And so I very much appreciate all of that. I would like to say, I think Vermont has a real chance to be a leader in this area. The fact that the division is a new thing, and so we're talking about what are best practices. Okay, how can we get there in a way that is physically responsible as well as responsible in having it be somewhat organic based on what currently is in Vermont. I'm going to be open to a lot of questions, but the priorities I've been focused on are where are there marginal gains to propose to you all and your colleagues? Where there could be cost savings, there could be process savings, things that are not going to cost money, are not going to take more traditional time, for example. Where can we do a little bit more with the same resources we have or by reducing the burden on the current resources? As well as where are there inefficiencies to work on getting out of the system. And so the report I'm giving you explains a lot of concepts, but it is effectively a menu. And like any menu, there are a number of options that you can choose between. Menu items have costs, but I'm also planning to give you a menu of ideas that are not raising taxes, new fees, anything like that. It's how do we do more with what we currently have. And I just as an example, I to give you an example, representative Krasno and Senator Williams have both submitted bills this week in the animal welfare realm that are addressing one of the issues where I think there's huge inefficiency. It's something that other people in the state obviously are talking about. I know it's been brought up a number of times when I've been meeting with people, but how do we deal with when animals are seized? They have to be held for an extended period of time. And there are costs that hold in. There's financial costs, there's space costs, there's opportunity costs, And it costs the animals. So how can that be more efficient? And I know both representative and senator Williams have ideas for how to fix that. And so I'm excited that these things are coming up and we can talk about implications of any of the approaches. Not today, I've not read their bills in detail, but just as an idea of the sorts of things I'm also hoping to identify, is things like that where, yeah, there's a process already, and so what can we do to just make this a little bit easier on everyone?

[Jennifer Morrison]: And more coordinated across the state, so there's not so much disparity in how cases are treated across the state. So that's something we're focusing on as well, is to examine minimum standard sounds very rigid. That's not really what I mean. But you understand what I'm saying.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Yeah, I got you.

[Jennifer Morrison]: We can get to some baseline so that the way you report an animal abuse case is standardized across the state, that people aren't shuffled to two different town clerks and then to an animal control officer who then says, call the police, who says, the state police, who says, the the mile by. It's like

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: I had that occur actually one time with restaurants and whatnot. One of my employees, by the way, totally respect the menu. Good call. But one of my employees had a, like, small farm that he did produce food for sale, chickens. There was, you know, an issue with a wild cat. He trapped it. And I have a heart trap, but it was a little too just the proximity of this kind of rough book. As we were calling around to figure out what to do with it, we were in this, like, infinity loop of calls somebody else's. So and this is, like, twelve years this conversation. I just want to see if that's a lived experience.

[Jennifer Morrison]: Yeah, we've heard that obviously in the past. There are some communities, as you know, that have animal control officers or community service officers who have training in animal control issues, and others that absolutely do not. And it can be a very different experience as a caller trying to report what they feel is real abuse or neglect of an animal. So trying to build a connective tissue between the existing resources and now what could be a focal point with this position to at least standardize some of these things. And if nothing else, there's now potentially one stop shopping of report to Lisa's office, she will get the person in the right direction. At least we can make some improvements, even if we didn't spend more dollars than per position. Do you want your chair back, sir?

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: No, no, yes, it's the other Oh, that. I'll

[Jennifer Morrison]: take this bench. Yes,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: My question is for you, Commissioner. When we created this position, there was a lot of debate about should it be in Fish and Wildlife, should it be in Public Safety? Have you seen any administrative burden thus far? I know you've been part of the hiring process, and that takes time. But has it

[Jennifer Morrison]: been manageable so far? I would have to get my financial director to give me the numbers. The short answer is the money that was appropriated is not sufficient to cover the expenses of the position. So we already know that that's a deficit. So I could come back to you at another time with actual numbers.

[Lisa Milot]: I can actually provide that. It's about $30,000 a year short of what's needed for between salary benefits and the hard equipment that I need for the job. 30 ks short of

[Jennifer Morrison]: operating costs. And that's based on our estimate. Don't she's doing some travel around the state. And there's mileage reimbursement, which, of course, varies from year to year. What the next full year will bring, we're not sure. But yeah, I knew we were somewhere in that ballpark. But I didn't launch it too far out there.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: No, that's fine. We at least have an ish to work from once we get

[Jennifer Morrison]: to budget for those things. Yes. Yes, thank you.

[Lisa Milot]: But I'm a delight to be there, so

[Jennifer Morrison]: it's working. I can tell. It is a delight. It's a value added to our team. When we were in the hiring process for assistant general counsel, which is a position that's now in background check, we're excited to bring another general counsel member on. She was part of the oral board team, because why wouldn't you use the expertise of an in house, very experienced attorney? And so she brings a lot more to the team than just expertise in animal welfare. So we've really hit it out of the park on this one. You said

[Lisa Milot]: you traveled the state.

[Sandra "Sandy" Pinsonault]: Have you been involved with the horse rescue stuff in the Dorset area? That's so sad.

[Lisa Milot]: I have. I actually went in June, I went out with Fishermont when they did the most recent seizure. It is sad. It's constantly getting more

[Jennifer Morrison]: and more horses.

[Lisa Milot]: And there are more horses still on the property. I know that they just had one of the civil forfeiture hearings for that June seizure, I think earlier this week. And so they're waiting for a decision about whether or not the horses are forfeited. It's hard because the current statute allows you to serve to seize animals that are appear there's probable cause to say that they're being cruelly treated. So even when you know there's a huge issue with the overall place, you can't take them all. And there is a very real question. If you take 30 horses or whatever was taken in June, the remaining ones Will there be capacity to care for the remaining ones so that they don't end up need to be taken? Yeah.

[Sandra "Sandy" Pinsonault]: Well, the rescues in my town, the Dorset.

[Lisa Milot]: They're wonderful. They are such a huge help. They just took nine horses from a New York case as well. They're passionate and they do a good job, which doesn't always go together.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Representative Waters Evans?

[Chea Waters Evans]: Can you assess if? The situation like there has been a lot of stuff in the news, like last summer in particular, there were some pretty high profile and cruelty cases and some other things. I'm. Do you have an assessment of what the scale is for everything that happens that's on the news? Is that an anomaly? Is it something that's really regular? You know, just from what you've seen in your travels and the people you've spoken to? I can give you some sense of at least the reported cases. So I went through the Valcor database, which

[Lisa Milot]: is where law enforcement, the state, actually, I guess, almost all of the law enforcement entities in Vermont entered their cases. I looked at all the cases that came in through VSP and through Fish and Wildlife that were animal incidents. They're not necessarily coded as cruelty versus something else because a lot of times you aren't sure. The person who's talking is not sure. When they call it in, what they know is they heard yelping. They heard a thud, they heard yelping. Who knows what? Innocent explanations, they're not innocent. And so between VSP and Fish and Wildlife, there were about 400 animal incident calls in 2024. That includes running at large. That includes animals hit by vehicles. It includes all of the things that were coded as animal incidents. Incidents. What it doesn't include is what was called into municipal police forces, into sheriff's departments. VSP report records all the calls they get. So all of theirs show up. Fish and Wildlife, if they get a call directly, they report it if they open a case. If they call the person back and they can't reach the person or they don't think that there's something to investigate, that doesn't show up in the record. So those 400 animal cases are what show up in the record for VSP and Fish and Wildlife. Of those I believe it was about 200 of those cases were what I coded as potential cruelty. Again, that doesn't mean they were all cruelty. It means that looking at it, this could be cruelty, it might not be. Dog in a car in August. I would code that as potential cruelty. Dog in a car in November, I'm not coding as potential cruelty. And so can be a little bit variable as far as where these things fall. But there were about 200 cases. But there were only about, I think, seven or eight cruelty cases charged total. There's other cases that disappear. So for example, there is a dog tethered out, underweight, no water, And somebody goes out and says, you need to feed your dog and you need to give it water. And they believe the person will legitimately comply. That case doesn't get reassessed unless there's a new call. And so cases, for example, where the animals aren't necessarily visible to bystanders, they might be inside an enclosure, they might be in a rural area, don't necessarily get those recalls. So we don't know just because a case doesn't proceed to cruelty, we don't know what that means. So in answer to the question, I don't know. I know that there were about 200 potential cruelty that came in through VSP and Fish and Wildlife. I have the exact numbers in the report, so you will be able to see those. But to give you an idea of the scale. A lot of them involved one or two animals. What you see in the news is usually the more sensational ones. It's going to be the 30 horse seizure. It's going to be the blunt force trauma case. A lot of them are a lot more mundane. And one of the things I've realized in my years of doing this, I came into dealing with animal cruelty where I wanted to prosecute everyone. Ten years ago, I was on the hardline role, let's prosecute everyone. After spending a lot of time working with members of the community in Georgia that I was in, and working with people on these cases, an awful lot of it is preventable neglect. That becomes cruelty. But it's not the blunt force trauma. It's not the large scale problems. It's mundane things where somebody, for example, there is not SNAP funding for a month, let's say. So somebody who used to share their food with their dog. They would buy human food and they would just under eat for themselves, no longer has that ability to feed their dog. And that becomes a potential cruelty case. I'm a big believer in figuring out how can we have resources in the community. Where somebody is willing to take advantage of the resources, how do we make sure they're available and that people know about them? Because that's an issue. You actually have a fair number of resources in Vermont, and I'm not sure that those are really well publicized. Like a hay bank. So people with horses can get free hay if they need it. Not well publicized. Of course it runs it. Or not well publicized in all regions. I think they do a good job on their social media, for example. But that doesn't mean that people who need it are on that social media. And so I think there's a lot that can be done to head off a those potential lot cruelty cases simply by making information more accessible or building up the preventative resources that are around. That's kind of rambling, but again,

[Jennifer Morrison]: lobster, sorry.

[Sandra "Sandy" Pinsonault]: Sorry, question. You said 400 calls. Is that 400 calls or 400 animals?

[Lisa Milot]: That's 400 distinct calls dealing with between one and thirty animals. A lot of them are one or two animals. Hopefully they're not all 30 animals. They're not all 30 animals, thankfully.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: I have a question. I don't know if it's too granular, but you're saying that you have a notable percentage of the calls where you're just making contact with that person, it doesn't require a follow-up. How often off the cuff do you actually get It's not

[Jennifer Morrison]: her doing that. It's not her. She's reporting to you what law enforcement's doing.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Oh, okay. Sorry

[Jennifer Morrison]: about She's not the primary responder on any of these at this point. Not calculating that one.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: But I guess for those calls themselves, do you have data on how many times there is a callback to that location?

[Lisa Milot]: My understanding is that they always try. Oh, you mean so so there's a call there's

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: There's

[Lisa Milot]: call. Recorded. Yeah. I law enforcement calls and, you know, checks in on it. It seems like it's okay for now.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Yeah. And then there's a callback to the same location for a similar scenario.

[Jennifer Morrison]: Well, that would show up in a deeper dive, just by address.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Yeah. And I just

[Jennifer Morrison]: It's knowable. It's something we know here. It It was just a curiosity.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Didn't know if Yeah. Apologies for framing that question so poorly.

[Lisa Milot]: Some of the big cases definitely Get back

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: in game shape here.

[Jennifer Morrison]: It's okay. We're happy to be here. Crash test dummies.

[Lisa Milot]: Some of the higher profile cases are those sort of persistent issues where the horse case, for example, there's been three or four seizures on the property thus far. And there are other cases like that where there are chronic issues. But a lot of them seem to be one offs, but it isn't clear if that's because the person is somewhat transient or if it's just because the animal is not seen again.

[Jennifer Morrison]: What you're asking leads to the logical, and at this time next year, we would hope to have a better handle on what's happening, because we don't see everything that's happening. So we don't know, we can't tell you the answer to how many things were reported. For instance, where I live in the islands, if the call doesn't go to the Grand Isle County Sheriff's, but it goes directly to the, what is it, the first constable or the, There's somebody up there that's responsible for animal complaints. They don't have access to the same records management system. They are not law enforcement. And so we would not know. There's no way for us at this moment to tell you how many incidents they went out on, followed up on, or then referred to law enforcement. So there's still a lot of information out there that if we can build better connective tissue across the ecosystem of people doing this work, that we could have more solid. This is candidly a lot like domestic violence. You only know what gets reported. And we know that that's a really small percentage of what's actually happening in our communities. So I think that we've got to start from the premise that we're never going to have our arms around the real number. We're going to have a guesstimate on the most egregious and visible incidents.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: It requires a sentence.

[Chea Waters Evans]: You just reminded me when you said that, part of the reason why you wanted to create this division and position in the first place is because we heard a lot of testimony a couple of years ago about how there was a connection between things like domestic violence and mental health challenges and stuff like that. And these animal cruelty or negligence cases. I don't. I'm wondering, you don't have to give us the figures right now. But did you address that at all yet? The report that's coming up or is in the connection between that? Is that something you've seen?

[Lisa Milot]: It's not something I can see directly in the data I looked at here. I do know. Mean, I'm familiar generally, it's called the link between abuse of vulnerable people and abuse of animals. There's a huge connection there. Previously in my prior life and research, I looked at the connection between some abusive animal conditions and gang activity and drug crimes. And so there's this way in which animals are either a proxy for a human victim. They are lead up to a human victim. They're part of the whole victimization. Or they're instrumentalities of these other more violent, externally violent crimes, I guess outside of a home. And so I don't have data on how frequently that's happening here. There's plenty of data on how frequently those things overlap generally. And part of my thought process with preventative programs, which is part of what the report talks about, the potential for grant funding or for partnering with existing organizations better. It's Housing instability, for example, can actually be precipitated by having pets sometimes. Or the animal gets into a bad condition because the person was unstable with housing. Spoke to some folks from Burlington yesterday, and they have three people right now who are unhoused because they have dogs. They will not go to housing despite this weather because there's no place that they can take their dogs with them. That's a fixable problem. We're not talking about needing to build a 50 animal shelter, we're talking about needing some kind of kennels, perhaps partnering with a humane society where the animals can go just overnight and the owner takes them back during the day, So that we don't have the problems with degrading, we don't have the problems with cleaning and things like that, if an animal is there 20 fourseven. But where it's a partnership with these existing organizations and looking for grants that would provide the funding that's needed to make that happen.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Anyone else? Do you want to be conscious of time? We should be on the floor in the next fifteen minutes. So thank you so much for the time, and thank you for coming in early and hanging out with us guys when we're here. Thank you for laughing. No. Absolutely. Anytime. The door is always open on the Java machine. Alright. We will see everybody upstairs. That's it for committee today. We have the governor's address and then floor. So that's a wrap for,