Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: Per year. And that includes a lot of the VSP requests are fairly quick turning them right out the door. I don't work on those, but, Heidi who works on those, she just does a very, very high volume of those. And the thing with those is they come in through the Vermont state police portal. There's a statutory fee schedule for a police report, video, and audio. Police report costs $20. So you're you're not getting a police report unless you go onto the website, pay $20, and that's how you receive your police report. And unless there's it falls into one of the more complex categories, you're getting that in the next day or so. And then when it comes to the more complex requests, we get about, like in 2022, we had two fifty of those. 2024, we had 165. I think that was more of like a division of labor that we changed that it went down. I don't think we received less in that category. We just sort of divvied them up differently.

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Perhaps give you an example of what a complex would be compared to some of the others. VSP records are oftentimes very simple. Crash report, police record, these are things that are existing. We just turn them around.

[Josh Hanford, Director of Intergovernmental Relations, Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT)]: Right. But a complex one

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: is On the other hand, yeah. One of the I mean, this isn't even one of the most complex ones. So this is just, what we need to do is like, if we, for example, got a request for a recent DUI investigation, first we have to search for and compile the records. We have to make sure this is our case. Sometimes we get a request for a case that the SP didn't investigate. It was the local PD. And in our case, we refer them to request it from the local PD, but let's say it's ours. And we find our database, look it up, get a copy of all the records we have from that. There usually is photos, videos, like body cam video, and a report. Then we have to determine whether or not the investigation is open or closed, whether or not our officers at VSP are still still investigating it or whether they consider it to be closed and have moved on to sending it to the state's attorney's office for them to review and make a determination of whether they're gonna file charges. If it's closed in our opinion, and they've sent it off for review, we then have to check with the SA to see if they filed the charges yet. That's relevant in our determination of whether or not it's going to be released or deny. We have to see if the case has been arraigned yet. That's relevant in determining whether or not the suspect's name can be released. If it's been arraigned, it can. If he hasn't been arraigned, it cannot. Status of the criminal charges, whether additional investigation is going to be needed. Sometimes the SA requests that officers do more follow-up. And then we have to confer with the state's attorney to see if they think it's going to our release of the records or some of the records would interfere with their prosecution, which is a very thorny issue to work out and involves working with someone outside of our organization, someone who it's not really their job to like answer my questions. So they don't always get back to me right away. So it's pretty time consuming. And there's almost always with that type of request, there's pretty much always body camera footage, which is painstakingly, you have to have training to use the equipment. You have to have the equipment. You have to spend a lot of time redacting the video. It's very difficult to do. And always 100% of the time requires redaction because, witnesses, victims, names, faces, anything cannot be released. So it's very difficult to you know, the idea that that is statically required to be turned around immediately or within three days is just it's not possible because we need to we need to take into account the integrity of the investigation, of the prosecution, and privacy rights of everybody involved.

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: There are great many needles to thread is, I think, another way to say it. Yeah. You know, we we certainly want to respect the the the state and and democratic society and all that. But at the same time, we also wanna protect privacy, privacy of victims, privacy of those who in an adjudicated case, all of those elements have to be considered here, and none of them are simple, as we as we process through these.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: So maybe this question's too granular for now, but I'm gonna take a shot at it anyway. So you said 250 ish larger complex requests last year. Right? Mhmm. And with that, like, ballpark out of the two fifty, how many times do you have to engage with another aspect of government, whether it be like local law enforcement, like you said, state's attorneys and sheriffs, things of that nature?

[Samantha Sheehan, Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT)]: You're touching cages outside.

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: Maybe 50 maybe 50%.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Okay. No. That's that's great. I was just looking for an ish there just to get a sense

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: from you. And just understand that no two of those are are the same as well, and there are some of those for example, if you ask us for an email chain, especially around, like, a purchase or something like that, there may be 40 different contractors that negotiated with, 70 different consultants that we've played with. Some of them exist still, some of them don't. There's lots of complexity in these moments where we've got to respect their proprietary information, respect security, any number of considerations that have to go through this that makes these very complicated. Right.

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: And sometimes it's not just a town or an essay that's fairly easy to get ahold of. Sometimes it's there's a federal investigation ongoing or there is an investigation in a different state. Those are more difficult to track down.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Any other questions from the committee while I got a pause button here? Yes, yes. Yes. When

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: you so, if you have photos or videos, and you said you need to redact and who does that work? Is there a person who works in your department whose job it is to just go through all of those things and work?

[Renee Marshall, Deputy Town Manager, Town of Colchester]: Yes, I do. You do it? Okay.

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: I do all that. We so we there's me and then one other, his name is Sam Weaver, and he does he just kinda has a parallel position to me. And we do all of we do all of the above. You know? We we've taken the request and we've redacted and we do all the legwork of communicating and we send it out the door.

[Josh Hanford, Director of Intergovernmental Relations, Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT)]: Just to be clear

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: Like Dan along the way.

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: That's true as well. But that's a course in video editing. Is no small skill. It's no small amount of training and software and requirements. We are very fortunate. Like I said before, we are rich in resources to have these folks who have not only done this before, but we have the opportunity to train them and have people in legacy that can bring them forth. I can only imagine any number of other situations where people don't simply have those resources to be able to do that kind of work that we that we are fortunate to have.

[Renee Marshall, Deputy Town Manager, Town of Colchester]: That's a lot.

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Substantial. That's the correct me if I'm wrong here, but that is absolutely a painstaking long process of being careful about feces. And that's not simple. Right? I mean, especially in insensitive homicides and investigations where we're really trying to focus on victims' rights and that element. It's a very you have to be very cautious in that process and very painstaking to to go through that process in a very sophisticated way.

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: I agree.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Any other hands? No. Back to you.

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: So, yeah, I think if you're trying to that, that was me running through, a common law enforcement related record. Another request that is more complex is requests for emails. And those are very And I think this is more like other agencies around the state deal with this. And there's just so much that is documented in emails these days. I mean, if you're working on something, there's usually a large volume of emails about any given topic. And again, it touches on like the it may seem some people, I think, may think it seemed like the emails are right there or why don't you just turn them right over? But things like people's cell phone numbers and direct lines are not public information. So some people have that in their in their email signature. And so every single email from this person has a cell phone number that needs to be taken out. And there's there's technology that we use to help us grab, repetitive information that that's found throughout a record, but it's not foolproof, and you gotta check through with a fine tooth comb to make sure you didn't miss anything. Because one it only takes one time for your cell phone number to be out there and then it's out there. And we treat every request as if it's going to be put on social media, is what I say. So it doesn't matter if you are requesting something that's like, let's say it's a police report that you are personally involved in. Unfortunately, we have to redact that the same way we would as if it were going to some you know, a reporter from seven days. And

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: this isn't just about social media, by the way. And I know you all know this, and I but I'll say it anyway. We learned some very important lessons with the assassination attempts in the Midwest, earlier last year about the availability of private information in the Ethernet, right, out there. And that's something we take very seriously. We we take very seriously that these emails contain information about our public safety infrastructure. For example, I was just here with you folks last week talking about the Public Safety Communication Task Force. We get that has been a request for emails over and over and over again, and and that's fine. You know, we're happy to share. But when we start talking about discussions around the land mobile network and the location of towers and the the readiness of of infrastructure, that can't be in in the public conscious. I mean, we wanna share the information that's that's relevant, but we can't just be publishing where our radio locations are and and the weaknesses of our radio locations. That's that's welcoming disaster, among many other problems that that it occurs. So that's the needle we thread. And and as as Tracy points out, when somebody comes and says, give us all the the emails associated with the public safety communication task force, that not only makes Tracy have to go back and say, we just can't do that. There's literally hundreds of thousands of people involved in this. So then we have to narrow the focus and we get the focus narrowed. Then even then, one chain of emails might involve six different contractors, six different stakeholder groups, all of the people in those stakeholder groups. And that is just a rabbit hole that takes hundreds of hours to to untangle. And there's nothing in this the PRA that that

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: you know, I'm just relying on requesters being cooperative with me. They don't need to narrow their request. If they want all emails from the deputecture from the past five years, I can say

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: this is

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: really, I can't, this is gonna be, this is gonna take forever. I wish you I would like you to narrow your request. They can say, no. No. No. I want them all. And that's that. Know?

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: And to be clear, I'm not being hyperbolic here. When we this we really had requests that says, I need all of the emails forever on this particular topic. You know, how how do you even navigate that? Yeah. That's the challenge that we're faced in a lot cases.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Yeah. No. No. No. And and that's understood. Right?

[Josh Hanford, Director of Intergovernmental Relations, Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT)]: Like, that's the, like, sort

[Chair Matthew Birong]: of the the voluminous requests that are, like, not focused to a, you know, a fixed curiosity or concern. Has it I'm gonna just throw, like, the AI question out in the conversation. Have you seen aspects of AI integrated into your requests? Because I've been hearing that out of municipalities now.

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: So we've I don't know if this answers your question, but we've explored AI as a tool to help do redaction and speed up our process time.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: I was thinking more of the requests coming in.

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: I'd be bothered. Not

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: that I know of. Not that I know of. So there's two ways you can go. You can make a public records request. One, you can make another portal that I mentioned. DSP is a portal. You go in, you fill out the information, pay, you get records that way. But the ones that I process mostly are emails from people. So they seem legit.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Yep. Well, even if you folks started using it as a resource to do sort of just like the sweeping first run on a redaction per se. Right? You know, you still have yourselves going over the finalized work for your in any way. Yeah. Sorry to stop you there with that question. But do you have anything further to offer radar?

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: One last point I'll make is just when we're talking about the email requests and how voluminous they can be, usually no one is paying anything for them. And then the person who's requesting a police report is paying $20 So there's two ways that you can charge. One of them is the statutory fees for police records, which is very clear. And then the other is the secretary of state fee schedule, which is, just more difficult to assess. And it's quite frankly, something we use very often because it requires, it's like a minute by minute assessment that needs to be made. And it's pretty difficult to make that assessment within a reasonable timeframe upfront and accurately predict how many minutes it's going to take for certain types of There's different staff levels that are different fees. And so our goal is to get the records out to the people who want them as fast as possible. And we find that the fee schedule usually slows it down. And we just haven't found a way to effectively use that. And so we do end up it's a little bit of an unfair fee structure where people are paying $20 for a really simple thing that is really quick and then paying nothing for other requests that take

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Oh, yeah. That is an interesting tweak to the matrix. It's been in

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: the commission since 2022. I don't think I've ever seen us charge, other than the fee scheduled ones, the police reports. I don't think we've ever used it in in my time with the committee, with the RA committee. I think that's you know, again, to be very clear, in no way is the Department of Public Safety pushing back against public records requests. We we certainly want to do that, and and I think we do extraordinary amount of effort to match the request that come in. It's just in those cases, it's almost impossible. It it it's so much work to create that fee process, and it's easier just to do the work

[Chair Matthew Birong]: and give it out. Yeah. And that's scar. That's Let's say, simply, like, eat the cost because trying to calculate it is And then they'll come

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: in and say, we just wanna review the records, which means we have to have staff hours while they review the records. And, again, it's just in at least in my history with this, it's simpler just to to push the records out and do the work than it is to have a charge for.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: In and around that, yeah, mean, it seems like you're in early early in the testimony, you identified roughly six full time staff ish between Well, so, two that

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: are that are entirely full time dedicated just to this. Two that are at least part time, but I would suggest that at least three quarters of their time of that part time of their of their overall job is dedicated to public records. And then two staff attorneys, in addition to those folks, who dedicate a substantial amount of time to this, among many other things that they

[Chair Matthew Birong]: do. Understood. Staff Waters Evans?

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: I'm just thinking about this. I don't think I I don't know if there are any answers to these questions. I'm wondering if there's, like, just thinking about what you were just saying, is there? Is it possible that this is just reality now that sort of these advancements and like, I think email is probably a huge chunk of it. Right. And so is this just the way that we live now? And do we need to adjust accordingly and like we're just having more people. I'm not saying I want to do that. I'm just saying, like, having another person who does this full time, would that be just accepting the reality moving forward? Like we're just struggling a little bit with, like you said, you don't want to limit people's. Access to public information. It's really important that they have that. I'm concerned about the cost, meaning that there's a barrier being created that only people who can pay for it can get the information. I don't know.

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: We're concerned about that too. Yeah. I think, representative, there's a philosophical musing there that I'm not sure that I'm prepared to fully answer.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Right, which is why I said you can't answer. I don't know.

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: However, I think it's a very reasonable question to ask, ask, I can say this about that. It's certainly our reality. We have in the last again, I've been here I've been with the Department of Public Safety for four years. In that time frame, we have fully embraced that this is new reality of what we do. We've dedicated more people than we've ever had before, more hours than we've ever had before, and that is just sort of the forty four hour news cycle request for information all the time. I think that is in part part of the reality. If you want to know whether it should be the reality, that's a different question and I'm not sure I can I'm not sure I'm ready to answer that.

[Unknown committee member]: Do you find that there are repeat requests from the same people over and over again about different agencies or just like, they have nothing better to do than ask for public record requests on different agencies. Do you see

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: that? Yes.

[Unknown committee member]: So, I'm also wondering if

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: We should be clear, I don't want to say what their motives are, I don't know what their motives are. We have familiar names. I'm sure if which I uttered here would be of no surprise to any of you. There are definitely ones that occupy an inordinate amount of time of our team.

[Unknown committee member]: So, being said, and then the time consuming of that maybe there shouldn't be a fee of some sort for those I'm just trying to stop there, five public requests per calendar year. With those five up, then you gotta pay. I mean, we all want access to public records, but again, you don't want the burden of all of the work that they're taking time off of somebody else that might have a little good legitimate request.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: I don't

[Unknown committee member]: know, for those people that just love to chase the ambulance and rescue squad and whatever. Just start it off.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: I appreciate that.

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: It might make more sense to have some sort of a threshold. Like if a request comes in and an agency assesses it will take over a certain number of hours, then there might be some nominal fee or something. Because it's more about the Someone can make five requests or 15 requests, and each of them are very easy and don't take a lot of time and resources to process. So it's less about the number of requests and more about the nature of the request and how much sought, like the volume of records that is sought.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Okay,

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: so let's say that I wanted all of your emails, and I made a public records request, and then three days later, Chair Birong also wanted all of your emails and made a public records request. Do you have a system where you can start or you've already done the work for my request, and then you just do the extra work for the three days after my request that your Bairam wanted? Or are you obligated to start over every single time?

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: No. No. I mean, I think no. We would more like this is my analogy for that. If someone requests all the records from police number +1 23, when that's done, as long as it's, like, within as long as it's pretty contemporaneous, it's not like five years have passed and some of the circumstances have changed. If we just redacted and prepared those records for public release with any any kind of recent, we can just release the same. Don't start over. Say we archive everything and, we're able to reproduce that. Like, if there's one in you know, if there's one investigation that a lot of people are interested in, we do that work once and we're done with it. Unless something changes something changes with the investigation or circumstances change in a way that would make us have to do the redactions differently. But that's usually not the case. It's pretty recent.

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: And sometimes that's very easy. We do we do have a lot of similar processes, and and we do try to work smarter in that regard. Sometimes it's not, though. As as you mentioned, sometimes it's not contemporaneous. Sometimes it's just a little bit different than the last one. So there is a lot of starting and stopping and restarting again.

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: Right. Let's say there's a DUI and we released the records while the case was pending. Now it's resolved. There's a conviction, but count two has been expunged. That is starting from the ground up.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Any further hands? Representative Hooper of Burlington.

[Rep. Robert Hooper (Member, Burlington)]: Do you maintain a file or the equivalent of a file of all requesting five year period so you have the ability to extract. Yes. And

[Unknown senior official, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: then also we're also very fortunate that we have people who've been doing this for a while, so there's a a relative surplus of historical knowledge who can say, that's one of the challenges we have. For for instance, one of our staff attorneys just retired last year, and with her went years of institutional knowledge who could look at this and say, oh, well, that's just like the case we had two years ago that as we replace her, we're not gonna have that. And I can certainly imagine many communities that don't have that that capability.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Anything else from the table? Okay. Thank you so much for your time. Anytime. Yes. Thank you. Alright. We are gonna now shift testimony over to the league, and I believe they have, Renee Marshall. Please. Yeah. Yeah. However you wanna do this. Mister Hanford, good to see you.

[Josh Hanford, Director of Intergovernmental Relations, Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT)]: Yes. So for the record, Josh Hanford, director of intergovernmental relations at the Vermont League of Stays and Towns. I would have brought, Renee Marshall, from the town of Colchester here to talk to you. But just to just to kick things off, thanks for for having us back. Thanks for your continued interest in the Public Records Act, reform. Just wanna also emphasize everything you heard from public safety and state police also happens at municipalities that have local police departments. And clearly, maybe there's a different set of resources and, ability to respond at those levels, but all of the things described that the Department of Public Safety sees happens at municipal police departments. So those concerns are also our concerns. Also, the AI front, whether it's using AI to manage incoming records or receiving AI requests, I think there should be concerns on both sides of those, know, both sides of that process of of using AI to help you manage your public records as well as receiving public records. So Renee Marshall is, she can introduce herself, but she is the deputy town manager in Colchester and also is the officer designated by Colchester, a charge of public records. They're fortunate enough to have a a large enough community to, have a position like that and someone that manages public records. I think she'll tell you often she spends more than half of her time, not in the service of what a typical town manager does, but in managing public records and have brought to light some additional considerations that we believe you should consider in the public records reform related to what you heard about for the first hour of your morning, fraud and potential losses of taxpayer dollars that come in the form of public records requests. You know, I know she's got a specific example to tell you about and a proposal to try to correct some of that. But I I know as an organization, Vermont Legacies in town, we are inundated with fraud attempts. I can't even check voicemails that come through our voice over IPA because 99% of them aren't real and they're an attachment if I opened would corrupt our system. And cause great harm in it as an anti club. And you often receive public records requests from individuals. Don't know. Maybe they're across the world because we have no residency requirements, and their record may be on the attachment that you may be clicking on or ask to click on or ignore it and be in violation of not responding to that record. So I want to turn it over to Renee, unless you have any questions for me. Excellent.

[Renee Marshall, Deputy Town Manager, Town of Colchester]: Thank you, Mr. Chair and Presidents on this committee. Welcome. Again, you very much for having me here today. I'm going to be sharing our support for the proposals the BLCT had shared with you last week, as well as adding a couple additional ones to that list. Could you just state your

[Representative referred to as “Stella” (name uncertain)]: name and title for the record, please?

[Renee Marshall, Deputy Town Manager, Town of Colchester]: Renee Marshall, Deputy Town Manager for the town of Colchester. Transparency is an essential element of open and democratic government. In Vermont? Is it not fair?

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Take your time, we've plenty of clock.

[Renee Marshall, Deputy Town Manager, Town of Colchester]: Alright. Okay, so in Vermont, the primary means of providing transparency are the state's own meeting law and the public records law. These laws implement the command of Chapter one, Article six of the Vermont Constitution. That officers of government are trustees in service of the people and are at all times, in a legal way, accountable to them. So the full text of Article six, that all power being originally inherent in and consequently derived from the people, therefore all officers of government, whether legislative or executive, are their trustees and servants, and at all times in a legal way accountable to them. Vermont's constitutional accountability language has changed very little since it was first adopted in 1777 as Article V. In 1786, it was renumbered as Article six and a qualifier in a legal way was added. So again, if this presentation is going to articulate Tad of Colchester's support of the LCT's proposed legislative, actions that were, discussed by Samantha last week. And additionally, I will, suggest two other ones. So first, extend the number of days to respond to allow up to fourteen business days from receipt of request. With the increasing volume of public records requests, additional time would allow municipalities more time to fully evaluate those requests. And to be clear, most municipalities do not have dedicated staff resources for this. Many are sharing the role with many other tasks as well. The penalty and consequence to municipalities for disclosing personally identifiable information, medical information, or other information that is otherwise legally exempt would be significantly worse and far more costly than the failure to respond to these public records requests. To prescribe a clear act of denial for which the requester may appeal. In Colchester, requests are being sent to a variety of departments and often not to the appropriate staff person that would be responsible for such a request. Also technology malfunctions, a missed email or email sent to spam may result in missing that three day window. Premature escalation of appeals can result in unnecessary costs and liabilities for municipalities. And to clarify the process of appeal at the municipal level. While in Colchester, is not an issue, this clarification would benefit many municipalities where there is uncertainty on who the head of agency is. So it's often the select board, unless there's a town administrator or a town manager, or unless the select board designates another individual. Allow the municipalities to recover the true cost of producing records and for the cost for redaction, regardless of whether the requester chooses to view or receive copies of the records. So as articulated earlier, for some requests, there is a significant amount of staff time that's required for locating those records and then evaluating if there's anything that contains the personally identifiable information or medical information or anything else that would be otherwise exempt. And the cost of the staff time is not currently recoverable if the requester elects to just come in and view those files without taking copies with them. And finally, support of the VLCTs create relief from vexation requests. So we've had related situations where we've received multiple and ongoing requests by the same requestor that resulted in monopolizing approximately half of the position for the deputy town manager's time. In reviewing these requests and then producing the appropriate materials that were responsive to those requests, but also follow the applicable state and federal laws. And again, in Colchester, the position of Deputy General Manager is the custodian of public records or the public records officer. And so for the two additional proposals, one being consider applying the Public Records Act only for requests from residents and businesses within the state of Vermont. And I'll explain that a little bit. We're seeing the largest volume of our requests now are coming from places outside of Vermont. And some of those, the residents and businesses within the state of Vermont are paying our taxes. And it is their duty and right to check up on governments. I believe the intent of the Vermont Public Records Act was to make state and local government more transparent and accountable to their citizens, but it was not purposefully developed to provide easy access to public records for the financial or time saving benefit of businesses outside of Vermont. We are receiving, again, a large volume of those requests from businesses outside of Vermont that use the public records request as sort of an easy button, and others who turn around and sell that information to businesses or individuals that may or may not use it for legal purposes. And the final proposal. Consider language in the Public Records Act that only requires information about financial transactions to be produced electronically, mailed, or allowed to be photographed six months after that transaction have been completed. So the contracts related to the records are completed and paid. Explain a little bit about that. The town of Colchester had an attempted fraud for an amount above $1,000,000 This was made possible by online public records related to purchases. Fortunately, in our case, we was caught by a diligent employee before anything occurred. While this attempt didn't result in a financial loss to the town of Colchester, other Vermont municipalities have not been so fortunate. I would consider only requiring information about financial transactions to be produced electronically, mailed, allowed to be photographed again six months after that transaction has been fully completed. This would include but not be limited to purchase orders, warrants for payments, checks, and other such information. This change could limit the risks to Vermont municipalities and ultimately the citizens they serve that are required to pay taxes for those services. This would continue to allow access for that in person inspection of these records. So we're not preventing access, especially for the folks that are impacted by the services, but we're trying to limit the liability. So in closing, I'll just, again, list off the proposals by VLCT that we support, as well as the two additional. So extend the number of days to allow up to fourteen days to receive the request, prescribe a clear act of denial for which the requester may appeal, clarify the process of appeal at the municipal level, allow municipalities to recover the true cost of producing records for redaction, for records and for redaction, regardless of whether the requester chooses to view or receive copies of the records, And create relief from vexatious requests. Consider applying the Public Records Act for requests from residents and businesses within the state of Vermont. Consider language in the Public Records Act that only requires information about financial transactions to be produced electronically mailed or allowed to be photographed six months after the transactions have been completed, so those contracts related to the records have been completed and paid for. That's all I have for you. Thank you again for your time. Let me know if you have questions.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Yeah, no, thank you. So, the contract piece is something I had heard sort of anecdotally from municipalities, road crews, things of that nature. So, I just wanted to ask you if you had, like, a little bit more specificity with that, like, type of, like, contracts are being targeted? I heard it was about there was a website that was, like, housing information that was straight from public records. And then it was I I guess I'll use the word bid rigging on things like Rutzfeldt aggregate. And that is just one example. Right,

[Renee Marshall, Deputy Town Manager, Town of Colchester]: that is certainly an example. The example I'm referring to is something I don't want to share publicly, the details of it, but we have taken steps to prevent it from happening. Having that information, public information on your website. But there are certainly that type of information that could be found in other municipalities. I think there needs to be, in order to limit the risk to municipalities and to therefore their citizens and taxpayers, I think there needs to be some sort of more control on who we are providing those records to. Thank you. Robert Hooper.

[Unknown committee member]: Thank you. What

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: role do you think a person's

[Renee Marshall, Deputy Town Manager, Town of Colchester]: motivation and the results of what they do with that information after they get the request? What role do you think that should play in their right to access this, which they currently have? Right. I don't know that we can understand or question people's motivations. I think we just need to do as much as we can to safeguard information from getting in the hands of individuals that may not have good intentions for it and just limit the risk to the towns and to their taxpayers. I struggle with limiting.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: So I guess my next question for you is, do you have a threshold in mind or like an example of what where do we cross the line from just asking the question to asking a bunch of questions to becoming vexatious? And within that, let's say I am vexatious and I make a zillion public records requests and all of them seem frivolous and annoying, but one really gets to the heart of the matter that's really important to me. How do you see someone's request being labeled as vexatious as. Where is that line and do you how do we pick and choose what is worthy of responding to and what is it?

[Renee Marshall, Deputy Town Manager, Town of Colchester]: Well, can I answer it in a way where when we have residents that have concerns and perhaps maybe they start that public records request, our first thing is going to be to call them, maybe invite them to come in, or maybe they have come to the counter? We're going to sit down with them and try to understand what their concerns are and answer those questions as we can and provide information. We will do all of our due diligence and really take the time with residents that have any concerns. And so a lot of times we may go from that public record request to we've had a conversation and now they haven't developed an understanding and they aren't concerned. They've now gotten the answers to their questions. So we are fully willing and we do a lot of public information. We have our agendas around and we have all of our information packets that are available to the public. We have those on our website. So we put out as much public information as we can. We also take the time, have our staff in person, we take the time when people come to our counters and calls. So that we will go above and beyond. The vexatious requests are very uncommon. I think the more the concern is the staff time that's involved. That type of a request or any of the requests that we have, we don't have dedicated staff time, and I don't think there are municipalities that have positions dedicated just for receiving public records requests and acting on those. The concern is these businesses outside of Vermont, that they are just looking for information to sell the information to other businesses. They're not the residents that are impacted by the services. And so those, we're looking for some sort of control to limit that, because that's where we're seeing a large volume and a growing volume of the staff time that's needed to account for those requests.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: What kind of information would they be?

[Renee Marshall, Deputy Town Manager, Town of Colchester]: Looking for all kinds of information. There'll be purchase orders, all the details, financial details of things. So that's a common one. They may be booking for bid information, lots of all the details on that. So those are probably the most common, the largest volume that we're receiving. A lot of them are related to financial information. And do you see a way to be proactive and maybe release a lot of this information or have it available online? If that's information that will eventually be released anyway through public records, would it be more cost effective and easier for staff to just throw it out there initially? So that's the concern. And that's how we wound up in that attempted fraud because it was available online. And so that's when we had to look at how we're doing things and limit the risk and limit the risk to our taxpayers. And so we took that information. And again, I wanna share all the details on it, but we were able to do something different. Still have it available for in person inspection, but not so readily accessible for folks to get all of that information, especially for active vendors and contracts. Thank you. You're welcome.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Any questions from the members right now? So, you cited in your testimony that your custodial duties are not relevant to the law enforcement of the town of Colchester. How does that work with your PD?

[Renee Marshall, Deputy Town Manager, Town of Colchester]: So they have some record staff that that is part of their duty, but they also have other duties as well. So they go through all of the things that you heard from public safety. They're doing that within our local police department.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: How many members do you have in your department?

[Renee Marshall, Deputy Town Manager, Town of Colchester]: How many members are the records staff?

[Chair Matthew Birong]: There's no, no, no, total law enforcement.

[Renee Marshall, Deputy Town Manager, Town of Colchester]: Oh, total law enforcement. There's 31 sworn officer positions.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: And so, I would guess, because I remember having the conversation last biennium, perhaps, in and around record store and footage. Sure. So, doctor, I'm just asking this to refresh my own memory. It's that that cost is on the town for that archiving. Correct? Yes. But I think I'm riffing off of our earlier testimony here with the those folks have to go through the process of the redaction, so the video itself for all of those same standards practices, also, like, communicating with its journeys, its victims, they do all of these things. Yes. That is all internal practice for your

[Renee Marshall, Deputy Town Manager, Town of Colchester]: And certainly if you have more specific questions I can have, I can get information or bring someone else back. Yeah. No,

[Chair Matthew Birong]: thank you. I just wanted to just ask that because I saw that notation in your testimony. Yes. Replorative.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Thank you. This might be a question for Josh from the NCT. What, I'm wondering if there's been a conversation with municipalities about ways to combine efforts or consolidate expenses or something? Because I know that the cost is prohibitive for a lot of smaller municipalities. But do you see a way that maybe they could work together or

[Josh Hanford, Director of Intergovernmental Relations, Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT)]: Josh Hanberg, NCT. For public records request management, I'm not aware of a

[Chair Matthew Birong]: lot

[Josh Hanford, Director of Intergovernmental Relations, Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT)]: of discussions focused on those cost reductions. I think a lot of information is very specific, but certainly there's conversations around other aspects of municipal local government, so forth. I think that the department example, we don't see any Vermont communities really expanding their police departments or ones that don't have a looking to grow them. I think they understand that those costs are challenging and there is a bill on the Senate side just introduced to look at the regional policing model for the whole Wyndham County, that the whole Wyndham County Senate delegation has put forward that we're supporting to see if there is a way to support rural Vermont that can't afford the wrong police department to actually get police coverage. Something like that that would manage records could be a way to have better sharing of costs and professional people dedicated to do this work that would be more efficient than every single department.

[Samantha Sheehan, Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT)]: Samantha Sheehan also with VLCT. On public CT records, and someone far more expert to my right but they have to maintain federal standards. And the security of the records in, I think, every case for a local agency, no matter how small, would be prohibitive of inter municipal coordination for the storage and management of the records. Even the rooms are secure, where the public safety records are kept. And it's a profound duty to maintain the security of those records when you are protecting the right to a defense of someone potentially charged with a crime, as well as the right to privacy of the victims of crimes. And I think what our clerks and our town managers and our municipal officials that are appointed and elected, they are also governing very sensitive records, like employment. At work for the city of Burlington, there were 600 employees. Each one had a physical that was attached to their employment records. That means the city maintains private health care information on 600 of their employees. Have the contemplate for a second the volume of financial information that even the smallest town has an authority to protect for every single taxpayer who pays by check and has their bank account number and their routing number on their property tax bill. And then in the management of even non financial records, so much of the information is proprietary. There's no way that the Rochester town clerk knows what bids were not awarded in RFP process by the town of Hancock. It's proprietary, often even down to a municipal official who was tasked with making that decision or has generated the records. Only that particular town official knows if the material back and forth with a member of this pledge award was deliberative for the purpose of an agenda. The records clerk cannot interpret that information, even as a part of the same town government. So it's all really important to be done by the correct official who has custody of the record. You don't want to be moving these types of files back and forth and interminiscally and from one type of secure data system to another, because each time that happens, the records become more vulnerable. Also, we surveyed this question, even just for deeds and land records. Is that something that municipalities have an interest in coordinating on? And everyone said no that responded to this survey. I can't remember the exact number, but it was extremely low. So unfortunately, this is not a place where there is inefficiency to be achieved, because the proprietary and technical expertise is so particular to the record that's being requested.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: That was incredibly detailed, really, that was a lot but clear, thank you, is what I was trying to say. Representative Stella.

[Representative referred to as “Stella” (name uncertain)]: I just wanted to flag something that was just said about medical records being in these whatever files, that would be breaking federal law. Breaking HIPAA. So if that's being done, that opens a whole other can of worms. It should not be shared, period. That's breaking HIPAA. So, I'm just throwing that out there. People are doing that. That's against federal law.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: I don't know if that was enumerated in the voluminous exemptions that we read in council last year, but most of that was relevant to medical situations. If you recall, there's

[Representative referred to as “Stella” (name uncertain)]: I'm just saying Burlington having people's medical records seems quite curious.

[Samantha Sheehan, Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT)]: They don't hold medical records. Many employers have a release of particular information in their employment that assists with their access to certain benefits attached to their employment. I'm not an HR official. They're not holding the medical records of the provider, but there's medical information attached to their employment records that has been released on the consignors. And same thing in injury, workers' comp. If you have an injury and you're involved in the compensation that you're owed under your terms of employment, the employer would also have information released to that for the person who's facilitating the employee's benefit for workers' comp. So talking like that level of record, not like my entire health insurance trade from my personal doctor. And it's private information that has to be protected. The employee has a right to that information remaining private.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Did I see a curious

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety (Vermont State Police) public records unit]: Employment information.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Do you identify yourself again for the record since you're not at the table? Yes.

[Tracy Lee Bowitz, Department of Public Safety]: Or Tracy Lee Bowitz, public safety. I was just going to mention that there are exempt like, the public records app would not be allowing anyone to get that information because it's exempt. Employment information is exempt.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: You were saying the centralized warehousing concerns of a mishap allowing somebody in there where they can access it in a nefarious way. Whereas it's not subject to the release because it does have an That's what I

[Samantha Sheehan, Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT)]: to confusion. Found and stopped from being released under the exemption.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Okay, that was dense and informative. Thank you, everyone. Any other questions from our guests from Colchester? Okay. Thank you so much for your time and your perspective. Appreciate it.

[Renee Marshall, Deputy Town Manager, Town of Colchester]: Thank you for your talk.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: And anything else from galleries and our guests at the moment? Alright. Well, I guess we'll call it a little bit ahead of schedule, and we have had some soft conversations trying to identify bills to work on and testimony to tee up for other activity. So, I will take us offline and we will do that until the lunch hour.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Thank you.