Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Alright. Welcome to the House Judiciary Committee this Wednesday morning, January fourteenth and continuing testimony on H five seventy eight. We're gonna reverse the order of what I have on as far as the witnesses. So, Era, you're gonna be third and I hope that's okay. Do you have any time constraints on that? Because I know Judge Zonay does.

[Ira McDonald (Founder & Executive Director, Merrimack Farm Sanctuary)]: I do have to be somewhere at eleven. So

[Speaker 0]: that's Okay. Well, that that will be done way before then, I'm sure. So we'll start with Judge Zone. Over to you, judge. Thank you for being here.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: Well, thank you. Good morning. Tom Zone, chief superior judge. I have had an opportunity to review the bill. I'll just go through section by section with some comments if that's permissible. Sounds great. On section one, page two, if you go to lines eleven and twelve, this is within the definition of sexual conduct. Subsection D says any intentional transfer or transmission of semen by a person upon any part of an animal. It would appear that that would prohibit animal husbandry practices for artificial insemination. So

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: I

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: didn't see an exception for that.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, I think during testimony yesterday that was pointed out and it's likely that we would be leaving the same introductory language that we have in B and C without a bonafide veterinary or animal husbandry purpose. And we would move that to D as well. So thank you for consistent with testimony we received yesterday.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: Well, have to acknowledge that my degree in food industry is from Delaware Valley College of Science and Agriculture, where animal husbandry was a major, and we took courses in it. I would have felt remiss if I did not point that out.

[Speaker 0]: I appreciate it. Thank you.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: On page five, line one, it talks about, it says possess films or distributes visual images of sexual conduct with an animal. It may be a little cleaner if it's said of a person engaging in sexual conduct with an animal.

[Speaker 0]: Alright, while you're on that, a quick question on that. Would you interpret that language as including images that are AI created, created by artificial intelligence?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: Is an AI image, the question for the court would be, is an AI image a visual image?

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, do we need to be clearer on that from your perspective?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: It may be helpful. That's a very good point because if something is a visual image, it does not say that it excludes digitally created images or AI created images. Okay. We'll look into that. Age eight, line 10, what this does is in the sentencing aspect for the animal cruelty charge, it takes what currently says the court may require a defendant and then it has a number of specific provisions that could be imposed for a sentence. It takes it from a may to a shall. Now this is certainly a policy decision for the legislature, but when you take a may to a shall for sentencing, you are creating a one size fits all model. You are removing discretion from the prosecution to resolve matters. You are removing the ability of defense counsel to visit with the prosecution, and you're removing the ability of the court to fashion an individualized sentence by saying, okay, everything here has to be in this sentence. And so if that's the direction the legislature wants to go in, certainly that's a policy decision, but I'm unaware that there have been problems with the May. The state certainly has the ability to seek appropriate individualized sentences that will address the behaviors and provide for safety of animals and the public. So I'm not sure that that change is one that

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: furthers what we have in Vermont as far as, again, individualized sentencing.

[Speaker 0]: So a question on that as well is, so when a judge is, and maybe you can't answer this question, I'll try to throw it out there. Is there a concern that when a judge is sentencing somebody in this situation that the judge may think that they can't have a ban on possession of an animal beyond like the probation period or the incarceration or I mean, we sending a message at a minimum of sending a message to the judges that you may have a possession ban for up to five years or ten years or whatever we pick to make clear that it's not attached to the probation term or the other components. Or is that not a confusion? Do judges understand that they can do as long as they want as far as the possession ban, whatever the underlying probation or sentence is?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: Well, currently subsection b three has a specific provision that allows the judge to have such a provision as part of a sentence. So I don't know that there's any confusion there. So I don't think that changing the may to the shall would change that aspect of the judge's ability to impose that type of provision. Already a judge can impose.

[Speaker 0]: Guess that's not, I wasn't being very clear on my question. Wasn't even the may to the shall. I mean, it was staying May, but we made clear that for a misdemeanor that the judge can sentence as part of a sentence have a possession for up to five years, ten years, whatever for felony up to a certain amount of time. Is that sending the signal to the judge that the legislature doesn't want the possession ban tied to like the probation period or those kinds of things?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: But again, it's already there, and I'm unaware of any issues that have been raised with this under line 19. It says the court may order and forfeit any future right to own, possess, or care for any animal for a period that the court deems appropriate. That's what it currently says, and it's gonna be changed to five years. So I think that language is already there. So the message is clear from the legislature that this is an option that judges need to consider at the time of sentencing.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, great.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: And that it is not tethered to the term of probation under the statute. Now whether or not somebody challenges that's another question, but right now the legislature has that and it is not tethered to whether it's a misdemeanor, whether it's a felony or a period of probation, if any.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, thank you.

[Rep. Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Hey, judge, thanks for being here. Just a quick question, if we change the language from May to shall, do I understand correctly that there could not be a stipulation in a plea agreement that removed any of these essentially like mandatory elements to a conviction if this plea agreement included an animal cruelty charge?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: Not in my court. Some judges may view it differently, but if the legislature has clearly and unambiguously and the governor has enacted a bill that says the court shall do something and it's signed into law, that that shall. We have to follow the intent of the legislature. It would seem pretty clear.

[Rep. Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Great. Thanks, judge.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: And now I leave open that some others may view it differently, but I I say that, not viewing this bill not, prejudging this bill, but telling you how I have ruled numerous times in the past when faced with That's why I noted that it removes that ability of the state's attorney and defense to reach stipulations and agreements because I've had counsel come into court numerous times and say, Judge, we've agreed to this. We want to resolve this. And my position has been, it says shall. We have to follow that. So I would say that the shall is pretty clear.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Yeah.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: On page 12, line nine, if you look at line nine, the subsection D, you add the title civil forfeiture action, on line 11, it notes that these proceedings for the forfeiture are currently held in the criminal division. If you are going to be changing the statute, it would be my recommendation that these cases go to the civil division. They are better suited for the civil division given the nature of the proceedings. When you look at the criminal division, it is just not the place where we have the time, if you will, to devote to these when we're trying to address backlogs and other matters. There is a civil matters, we do have some civil cases in the criminal division, for instance, the civil suspension for DUIs, but the difference is that's a summary proceeding. This is not a summary proceeding. This is long drawn out. I'm aware of cases in Brattleboro that have taken a while because they've over a day of hearings and they still need more time with numerous animals involved. So it would be my recommendation that the legislature, if you're going to be changing things, you may wanna consider moving these matters over to the civil division as opposed to having them in the criminal division. On page 15, line 20 is another place where it talks about this is where you have a new action, cost of care action, and this places the cost of care action in the criminal division. And I would again suggest that this is something that should be in the civil division. The cost of care action then goes forward and talks about the petition. It talks about the process that's going to be followed for this new action. As part of it, on page 16 on line 12, subsection J talks about service of process. And it says that process can be served by any humane officer, and there's a definition. That definition does not include all law enforcement officers. And so this bill limits service. If your humane officer from the town is not around and there's no humane officer from another area that's willing to come in, this bill does not allow a police officer to serve. And so it is a very restrictive service. What that section also does for service of process is on line 14. It talks about if the officer is unable to personally serve the process, they basically can just post it on the door of the residence. In civil court, this is what we would call attack order. Attack order is not something that you generally have out of the blocks. In other words, oh, we're gonna just let you do attack order right away if you can't serve somebody. It has to come to the court and the judge has to assess whether attack order is necessary. There have been times where I have had cases where someone has sought a TAC order because they've gone to serve the person every day at noon, let's say, during daytime hours, and they say their person is not home, I need a TAC order. Well, know the person, the information also indicates the person works at a factory down the road and they're not going to be home. And so this statute would actually remove the service, the due process components from service.

[Speaker 0]: Hold up one second, we've lost your, we can't hear

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: you now, Judge LaLonde. Even if they

[Speaker 0]: haven't

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: made effective efforts at service, and that can be problematic. And so I'm unaware of if this was in the civil procedure rules, why they wouldn't work for service. If you wanted to add a humane officer in to serve it, that's fine. Also, could have law enforcement officers, but they already provide what is personal service. We have a body of law, we have rules that provide for that, and they provide for protection for both the person seeking to have someone serve, to be able to serve if someone is being recalcitrant or avoiding service, but they also provide procedures for people to make sure that there have been reasonable good faith efforts for service. If someone was in the hospital after suffering a heart attack, and the officer knows that, even under this provision, they could go tack it on the door and say service has been made, and knowing the person wouldn't get it. So this is not reasonably calculated to assure service, and the rules of procedure are geared for that. So I would suggest taking a close look at this and making sure that if you're going to have provisions for service, that they assure that the procedures are reasonably calculated to assure actual service and not some type of per pardon expression lip service to service.

[Speaker 0]: So can I just, on that, so should a fix of this could be to essentially reference the rules that we have in the civil court for service, but make clear that the humane officers can also conduct that service, not just law enforcement? Am I understanding you right?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: That's correct. Also, that's another reason why these should be in the civil division because it would have them follow the civil rules.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: That's okay, no. I was gonna say, if this already exists, where can you find it? Mean, great. On

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: page 17. Here, what this sets up on line one, it says cost of care hearing, then it goes on to say that upon the court's receipt of return of service of process of the motion, so we've just served that petition, that motion that we were talking about a moment ago. The officer's gone out, served it. What this now sets up is they have to come back and the court then sets a hearing And then they have to reserve the person. So you've added two, now we have a second service that adds cost as a practical matter. It also adds a component of difficulty if someone has had if there's been difficulty finding someone to serve them, you have to go out and try and serve them again. What it seems to be trying to do with this statute is create something that is akin to, we'll say a motion to pay rent into court. That a procedure is being set up where you wanna file the petition and you wanna bring them into court, you want to have an initial hearing, at that hearing you want to set up something where they're going to have to pay money into court, and then there's procedures for that. If that is the intent of how this is supposed to generally work, another reason why it should be in the civil division, but you may wish to change this to allow it like in a motion to pay rent into court. When you file the complaint, you get the notice of hearing, and then you can serve only once. You serve the complaint and the notice of hearing. It cuts down paperwork for people and it can be clearer. Now, are there times where you get a notice of hearing and have difficulty serving someone within that timeframe? Yes. That also happens with motions to pay rent into court and that can be addressed. But you may want to consider not having this two step process for serving the person and then serving the notice of hearing. I can't see any reason why that would have to be the case, if you will. And I think doing it like a if it's going to be like a motion to pay rent into court, it would seemingly make sense. Line I'm sorry, let me get to line seven. The hearing shall be conducted as promptly as possible after the court's receipt of the service or process of the motion or petition on the owner. We try to conduct all of our hearings as promptly as possible and to try to bring them in as soon as we can. I think that when language like this is put in, we start having competition between statutes. Oh, this statute says it should be promptly. Well, that's because now I would suggest that over the past several years we may have seen more of an effort to try to put these in when we've had backlogs and difficulty moving cases. Does that mean that this case should take precedence over a statute that may have come in a few weeks before that type of attention was given and doesn't have the word promptly? I point that out because as a practical matter, unless the legislature wants to tie us in to say we want a hearing conducted with X amount of time, it is our intent to always have prompt hearings. And putting this language in can give false hope in terms of people thinking, why are you having that case? You should bring my case in sooner. And that can sometimes lead to frustration among citizens, I think. People wondering, it says promptly, why isn't this going? Why is that other case going? Again, we try to address all cases promptly. And if there's no specific timeline, I don't know that it's necessary.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Good morning, judge. I'm noticing in this one here, it's got as promptly. I assume that word as isn't used frequently with promptly in most other areas?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: No, that type of language is not generally there. Does it cause a problem? No, in terms of our ability to do things, But the goal is, again, is always to have a prompt hearing.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Yeah, I get where you're going with that. I just wanted to know on the ass. Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: If we changed it to an actual number of days, like ten to fifteen days, as I think somebody had suggested, how would you do that?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: We're gonna be moving something else. So what are we gonna bounce? What are we gonna be bumping to put this in if it comes in? Probably not the landlord tenant cases because they have timelines too, but we only have limited numbers of court days and every time there is a specific provision for how quickly we have to bring something in, we're scheduled out four months in many of our courts. And so when we do have blocks of time set up, for instance, for landlord tenant matters. And if there was a timeframe, what I would be saying to the clerks is, well, we already have blocks of time for rent escrow hearings, maybe we try to put this in that rent escrow hearing time. But it will affect those cases. And so anytime we have to get more cases in in a shorter period of time, there is an impact, absolutely.

[Speaker 0]: So I've taken it the preference is to not say promptly or have any days, but if we were gonna do anything, it'd be preferable to have the number of days. Maybe I'm misreading that.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: If you're gonna do anything, if you put in promptly, that provides more flexibility. If the choice is a set number of days or as promptly as possible, I'd vote for promptly as possible. That gets more flexibility. But again, we know we want to get these in right away. And there's a number of factors that play into that. Sometimes people will say, geez, we think it's going to be difficult to serve, or I can't get the service done. We want to put this out. And I know the attorneys, when the court says, oh, we can bring you in on this date, the attorney may say, well, you know what, I'm on vacation that week. Let's go a week later for the hearing. And so the promptly would provide greater flexibility.

[Rep. Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Judge, I was just wondering if that set number of days language that we could include and the concern around scheduling, do you feel that way if we were

[Speaker 0]: to move to civil court?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: It's a pressure in all of our courts. Certainly the pressure is different in the civil court, but we have cases that are scheduled and they're pending for a while. When we have, for instance, if someone files a complaint and there's a request for a preliminary injunction, we find the time, we bring it in, but there are times we have to move something else if something is coming in that has a time frame. So that is a potential.

[Speaker 0]: I guess another question on these lines, it matter if the volume of cases is not high?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: I actually asked to see if we could find the numbers out about the number. I don't think the volume of cases is that high for these types of cases, which is why I think we can bring them in and make arrangements to get them done. But even if it's a low volume, it's still a case that has to come in and move something else. So there is that effect. There will be an impact. But is it an impact that we can absorb with a number of cases? The short answer is yes, I think we can.

[Speaker 0]: Okay.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: On page 17, I'm sorry, yes, page 17, line 18. This sets up, basically it talks, it uses the phrase registry of the court, not a phrase that we generally would use in Vermont. It's payment into court is how it's done. So this is an apparent attempt to, I would say mirror the payment of rent into court for rent escrow for landlord tenant matters, where a hearing is held, the judge makes a decision as to how much money is the cost of care for 30. The judge orders that and then each thirty days the person has to keep paying it in until the court changes that. But what it also says is that if you look at line 20 I'm sorry, if you go to page 18, line 20, Upon payment of funds into the court registry in accordance with this section, the petitioner may immediately begin to draw from those funds for payment of the actual costs incurred in keeping and caring for the animal or animals. And so how this would seem to work is there is a hearing, petitioner comes in and says, Judge, here's how much it is for the next thirty days for us to care. Here's how much we anticipate and project that it's going to be for the next thirty days. And let's just say for round numbers that it's $100 The judge order is $100 Under the subsection five, it says that the petitioner can then come in and immediately start drawing on that, but it doesn't tell us how. Do they walk up to the clerk's office and say, I need $20? Do they have to file a written document outlining what it's for specifically and why they need it? Is there any court oversight in the distribution of those funds? Unlike a landlord tenant case where we have a set rent that the judge knows, we have found that the rent is due in the amount of, let's say, 100. This is different. This is a projection. There's no set absolute amount like a rent in a landlord tenant matter. And so it's important to understand that this ability of someone to come in, not guided by the court or it's not overseen by the court that the money is actually being used. There's no requirement for receipts, there's no requirement for accountability. It's once we make that finding, they can draw down to the top amount and there's no process for that. And so I'm not looking necessarily to have the court have to approve every expenditure, but I do think it could lead to a situation where the projection would be 100 and the actual cost is only 50, but there's nobody catching that. And finally on page 19, line M.

[Speaker 0]: Before you go, Angela, this question.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Hi, Joshson. I'm wondering if I hear what you're saying about that concern about accountability, I guess, or accounting for the funds that might be drawn from the registry, if that exists, or the court. Are there other issues with this? Does this I hear what you're saying as well about in landlord tenant law and cases involving rent. So it sounds like there's a structure in place for that instance.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: Yes.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: And there's no structure offered in the bill as written right now for this case, for the animal cost of care. So if we were to set up such a structure, other than trying to figure out how to account for the monies, how they're being spent, would we just set up a similar structure to the one that exists for rent payments.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: With rent escrow, the court, the person has to file a request to get the money.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Just to be clear, because I don't think I am being very clear, but I'm asking if there's a model, if that model would work at least as a basis for this type of account or fund or registry?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: Yes, in some ways. But the problem is this: the difference is when the judge makes the decision in the rent escrow, court if finds the tenant is obligated to pay rent and has failed to do so, the court shall order full or partial payment into court of rent as it accrues while the proceeding is pending, and that's under 12 VSA forty eight fifty three a. But the starting point for that is a known number essentially, that here's what the rent is. Now, times there may be disputes, yes, but the vast majority is we know rent is a thousand dollars a month and they haven't paid it allegedly. And so the court says, well, you're gonna have to pay in. Under this under rent escrow, under section f, it says the landlord may at any time by motion apply to the court for disbursement of all or part of the funds paid into court. The motion for disbursement shall be accompanied by affidavit setting forth particular facts in its support. If the court finds that the landlord is in danger of loss of premises or other personal hardship resulting from the loss of rental income, it may award all or any portion of the funds under deposit to the landlord. And so under the landlord tenant statutory framework, we have a system where the person can ask to get the money and there is oversight for the court to release it. Under the proposal here, that does not exist. It would be like what I just read to you, it would be saying that the landlord can come in and take whatever they want up to the full amount, and that's not how it's done there. I mean, again, it's a legislative policy, but it's a policy that I think could lead to court action, if you will, where someone says, well, they took the whole $100 they didn't need it. And so you may want to have a framework set forth upfront that minimizes the potential for disputes in the future, if that makes sense.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Okay. But it sounds like we wouldn't have to include in this in this bill or in this statute, like, the design and functionality of I just don't know anything about how a court holds money that is then distributed to people.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: There's not that many cases. So is it doable? Yes. It takes time and effort on the staff, but I cannot tell you that it's not something that we can do. The court

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: But has to we don't have to spell it out is what I'm just trying to get at.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: You all would say deposit it's fair

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: that part.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: If you say it has to get deposited into court, we currently take bail monies and the court does take monies for rent escrow. And I would envision that the court would simply have to set up another, if you will, escrow account that the money can be put into.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 0]: So before you move on off of the subject, looking at possibly even a little bit differently, do we need to have the middle person of the court in this situation or can the court order that the payment will be made directly to the provider over a period of time?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: Absolutely, the court can order that the payment would be made directly to their provider. And that keeps the court out of it. The court does not want to, to the extent possible, we would not want to be the middleman or middlewomen to have to navigate that. And so it would work if you said they have to make X amount of payment and then

[Speaker 0]: set Yeah, it up like because with the rent escrow often it's being held in escrow because there's some underlying dispute that needs to be resolved. And that's not quite the same scenario as we have here. Maybe that's So another option that we look into with our legislative council. Okay, I'm sorry, go ahead.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: And finally, on page 19, subsection M, what you were essentially doing is setting up an immunity provision for anything that the defendant may say at the hearing. There already are different immunity provisions in other statutes. And what I would suggest is that you track the language in subsection M to be consistent with some of the other immunity enactments that the legislature has made. In particular, there is an immunity provision found under the civil suspension for DUI at 23 VSA section twelve oh five subsection O. And what that says is the section is entitled use immunity, and it would seem to be the same intent as what you have here under this subsection. It says, no testimony or other information presented by the defendant in connection with the proceeding under this section or any information directly or indirectly derived from such testimony or other information may be used for any purpose, including impeachment and cross examination against the defendant in any criminal case except a prosecution for perjury or giving a false statement. And if you utilize that here, it brings consistency through the different statutory enactments for how the legislature is treating use immunity. And it doesn't raise a question as to is something different intended by subsection M of the animal cruelty statute because it's not the same as other areas.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Great. Yep. Okay.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: Those are my comments.

[Speaker 0]: I appreciate it. Any other questions? Yeah, Barbara?

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Hi, Jeff Zunay. I'm wondering if you have thoughts about, I guess it's page nine, subsection four. So I have a couple of concerns about it. One is we currently don't seem to have any available Vermont based. There are some online courses that people can take that are nationally run. My concern was that I mean, I have concerns that are related to how we'd raise psychiatric or psychological counseling, but I don't think that's my question for you. My question is more participate in seems like you could go once and that would be participating in. So, I just wondered from sort of a court perspective if things were sort of more spelled out. I think I'm familiar with batterer treatment programs, I know that you have to complete the batterer treatment program, you have to successfully complete it rather than participate. Participate in might be you went to the first session and you got kicked out of the group, or you chose not to go again.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: So, that also ties into when I mentioned the may as opposed to shall. I didn't really focus on that because that's the existing statute. And oftentimes if we don't have a

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: plan that

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: necessarily fits. Right. If it doesn't fit, we try to find what we can to put in there. Certain language that you could look at is to participate or successfully complete is what we use oftentimes in probationary sentences. And so the probation order would generally say successfully complete a program in X, Y, or Z. And so that would be captured oftentimes in the actual order. The fact that it's not there doesn't mean that when we order a program that it doesn't say successfully complete, because it usually would say participate and successfully complete.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: And are you able to put in the order now if somebody wanted to see a licensed clinical mental health counselor or a licensed social worker in Vermont for cognitive behavioral counseling, which is often considered part of successful treatment for somebody who's abusing somebody or an animal, would you be tied to the psychiatric or psychological language because the law says that?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: Right now, it says may. So when the court is imposing a sentence, the court has the ability for the individualized sentence. So the individual you just described, if there was a CBT program that was more appropriate than, let's say, subsection four, the court could order that. If the shall comes in, the court could still order the CBT program, but it would also have to order something under subsection four.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Staying in this section, Judge Zoni, I'm just wondering if you have either a sense of or actual data regarding typical sentences in these cases or common sentences. I'd like to know before we decide on May or Chao. I understand the importance of discretion. That makes a lot of sense to me. But if we were to learn that sentencing in these cases often doesn't prohibit a person who's abusing animals from possessing, owning animals in the future or for an amount of time. That might influence my thinking. So I'd love to know if you have any idea, any information you can share with us about common fences.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: I don't have specific information about that crime research group. Monica Weaver, I think that's probably the best location to get that sentence tracking information. And I would also again highlight, and I'm looking at you, Mr. Goodnow, Representative Goodnow, that the state's attorneys, when we look at sentences, have an opportunity to be part of that process, right? And so when we have the state's attorneys and defense and the good judge, the vast majority of our sentences in the state of Vermont are entered into by agreement by the parties. And so when you look at sentencing data, keep in mind that this is not necessarily the judge saying here's what I would impose if I was free to do it. It's the parties have reached an agreement, they presented the facts and circumstances to the court, and it falls within what I refer to as an acceptable range. And so there's a number of factors and reasons why, again, I think having that flexibility there, sometimes if it's a shall, you remove the ability for resolution that would be there if it was a may. And so those are considerations I think are important to have in

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: mind. Thanks.

[Speaker 0]: Any other questions? Not seeing any, thank you very much, Judge.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: Thank you. Have a great day.

[Speaker 0]: You too. All right, we will turn to the Director of Animal Welfare next.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: Sure, LaLonde, is it okay if I sit in that empty chair?

[Speaker 0]: Only for so long as legislative council doesn't show up. Goodness. Legislative Legislative council's chair generally, but you're not. I didn't even have mine. Please identify yourself for the record and then proceed.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: Hello, my name is Lisa Milet. I'm the director of animal welfare in Department of Public Safety for the State of Vermont. Chair LaLonde, thank you very much for having me here today, and members of the committee, I appreciate you taking up this topic. It's one that a number of folks in Vermont have raised with me. I've spent the last eight months here talking to stakeholders, and that includes animal shelter staff. It includes rescue organizations and investigators, as well as state's attorneys who work on these cases. And the topic this bill is addressing is one that has been flagged a number of times as needing some sort of improvement. Before I go into the specifics, some of my thoughts, I have a number of provisions tagged as far as the things for you to consider about this bill. Some of them have already been mentioned, so I won't spend much time on them. But I wanted to give you a little bit of an idea of my background. So I was hired as director of the Division of Animal Welfare and started work in May up here. Prior to that, I was a law professor at the University of Georgia, where I was the Anning and Zach Stanton Distinguished Professor of Canine Welfare Law, which is a mouthful. And my students and I worked with jurisdictions around Georgia to improve animal welfare in terms of programs, practices, and ordinances. We also worked on the state level, on some state legislation, and we worked a lot in Athens Clarke County, which was our home base. It was a small city for Georgia. It's 130,000 people. So we worked on the animal cruelty cases that arose in that jurisdiction over the time. And my students were actually responsible for preparing the initial petitions based on a law that's very similar to the one that you're considering today. They would prepare the initial petition, I would look over it, and then we'd work with the prosecutor on actually moving ahead with it. So I have that background on how these provisions work in practice. Some things I want to flag for you to consider in terms of how you might want to think about specific parts of it. I also just want to say that because I worked on these so much, and in Georgia I have fairly high profile, I've been contacted by folks in a number of states saying, Hey, we need help streamlining our process for disposing of these animals. So this is a common issue. It's not that Vermont is in some way unique in needing some help on this, or wanting to think through how to better do it. And I think that this bill addresses some really important issues. Expanding the definition of animal cruelty, sexual abuse, bestiality. So looking at felony charges for that. That's something that I think is important to think through, whether or not that's Those are things that you want to send a very clear signal about here. There's the prohibition on animal ownership by convicted abusers. That's also, I think, something that is pretty important in terms of what do you want your approach to be? Do you want it to be discretionary, or do you want it to be mandatory that these people, for some period of time, cannot have this contact with the animals? There's the question about funding for the cost of housing and rehabilitating the animal victims of crimes, which this bill partially addresses, as you heard yesterday. And then there is the reducing the period of time that animals seized in connection with a criminal case legally have to be held before they can be disposed of, before they can be adopted out, or before it's determined they should be returned to their owner. Because in some cases, that is the ultimate outcome, that they get returned to the owner. And this is a really big issue. Shelters and rescue organizations have flagged for me that they can no longer help, for the most part, with criminal cases where animals are being seized. They cannot hold the animals for months on end, waiting to be allowed to get them spayed and neutered, be allowed to adopt them out, or even in some cases to be able to make the decision to euthanize them if that's what's in the animal's And just in the last month or two, there have been several cases where the determination has been made to leave animals in homes where the conditions qualify as cruelty because there's nowhere to put those animals. And so, I think this is a really important thing to be talking about and figuring out what should be being done. So, I really appreciate you taking it, because I also know these topics aren't fun. This is an incredibly hard area a lot of times to look closely at. And I'm not here to support or oppose the bill. The Department of Public Safety doesn't have a position on it, and that's not really my position. It's to give you the benefit of my experience in this area, so that you can make decisions that are the best decisions out there. Big picture thoughts before I get into more details is, I don't have major comments on three fifty one, three fifty two, 352A, and three fifty three, which is the range of what counts as animal cruelty for the most part. I've got a couple of particular comments on those I'll get to, but for the most part, I don't have anything to drill down on. With respect to three fifty four, the bond or forfeiture provision, I think that this can help in cases where you are trying to get funds to pay for the costs of seized animals. But as currently written, I don't see it as reliably speeding things up, getting animals out of care more quickly. And what it does really well is that you have one route for getting animals that have been seized as part of cruelty cases released. That's a civil forfeiture procedure, this bill is working in partnership with. So it allows an action to be brought to strip title, because even though we don't think about animals or other things as having legal title associated with them, like a car or a house do, they do. I was a property professor, so I can go into the property law stuff, but I won't. This provides an alternate route for getting those animals released, and in some cases it will shorten hold times. And it expressly makes owners responsible for paying for rehabilitative care for the animals and for the housing and other costs associated during the mandatory hold periods. And so that's what this bill does that really advances where you are now. My concerns with it as written, though, are that there would be no certainty that the time the animals need to be held would be reduced. And in some cases, where a defendant has the money to pay the cost of care, it would actually extend the amount of time they have to be held. This is a bond or forfeiture bill. If somebody pays the bond, they don't forfeit title, so that animal has to continue to be held. And so, in the cases where somebody has the money to pay that cost of care, which is very important, as you've identified yesterday, and as by the fact that you're looking at this bill, where somebody has that money to put in, title does not get forfeited and that animal has to continue to be helped. Now, at that point, you can redirect and go down the civil forfeiture route. If you've gone the Cost of Care Act route, the person has not voluntarily relinquished title despite knowing what they're going to owe, they lost the hearing, so they have to put the money in. If they put the money in, that means the animal has to continue to be held by the Humane Society or Rescue Group. I want to make sure that you understand that that's the core part of this bill. So, the difficulties with the current civil forfeiture statute, some of them are duplicated here. The initial petition to get everything started is something that is a lot of times hard for a prosecutor to get started. If you haven't done these before, it's like a foreign language. You're looking at veterinary evidence of abuse. You're looking at conditions of care and trying to explain the circumstances around the seizure of the animal that make it appropriate to make the owner put the money in, in this bill. Or in the civil forfeiture one, it's the circumstances around all of that that show by clear and convincing evidence that this animal was treated fully. It's hard intellectually, if this is not the world you're in. It's also incredibly hard emotionally. And that's not a reason not to do it. But it's a reason why if an attorney, a prosecutor is looking at, Okay, I've got a trial next week. I've got motions I've done before that are relatively unemotional. And I've got this motion that I don't really know how to do. I've never done one before. I can dig into this evidence of animal cruelty. This one goes to the bottom of the pile. And that's one of the current problems with the civil forfeiture procedure. The civil forfeiture petition would allow these to be disposed of quickly if those petitions were started on day one. Similarly with Cost of Care Act, if you started on day one, this can move along fairly efficiently. They don't get started on day one. They get started on month six because of these factors. And there's fixes for this. I'm not saying that I just want to give you sort of the big picture on how these operate. So we've got the time and effort to get cases started. That's a big gating point in moving these cases along right now. And this doesn't necessarily fix that. There is that bond or forfeiture that I explained, where somebody pays the money, even after you've gone through all this. You prepared the petition, you've had the hearing, they lost the hearing, because defendants almost always lose these hearings because it's a low standard of proof, which is fine. The animal's been seized and it's being held and something has to happen with it. But then they can just put money in and have it continue to be held. So there's that factor. And what rescues and shelters have been telling me is they need to have a fair degree of certainty on how long they have to legally hold these animals before they will commit to taking them in the first instance. They can't do It might be a month. It might be eight months. Because they just say no. We don't have municipal shelters here that are obligated to take the animals. These are private organizations. And they say no, because tying up that space for whatever amount of time it takes to get the animal released means they can't help Vermonters who need help recovering their animals. They're watching animals sitting in kennels, mentally degrading and suffering. And that is really hard for people who choose to work in a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the suffering of animals. And I was a volunteer in Alham Clark County for the eighteen years I was there. I went to our local municipal shelter, embarrassingly for a while. I was there every day and saw what happens to animals that you can't along with. They go from being happy, normal, friendly animals, to being incredibly stressed, and there are biochemical changes that occur that don't get reversed. Now, that doesn't mean they can't adapt to a home life later. One of my dogs was at the shelter for four months. He's awful. But it does mean that there's harm happening to them simply by being contained in these stressful situations. And so rescue groups and animal shelters need to know that the time period they have to hold these animals is not indefinite. There's some options to look at both the current civil forfeiture process and this cost of care act bill, because they do work together in a lot of ways. One addresses title, one addresses the money, and they're both important factors. But as written, neither of them addresses the amount of time the animals are held. And so there's some things you can consider as far as models that are out there that can help with that end of it. So one of them is to start the process for hearing automatically as soon as an animal is impounded. And there's two ways to do that. I'm going to call them the Minnesota and the Texas approaches. And so the Minnesota approach says that from the time an animal is seized, well, an animal is seized and the defendant, the owner, has ten days to request a hearing to determine whether that animal should be returned to them or title should be forfeited. The owner has to put in some amount towards the cost of care, as well as request the hearing to show that, Hey, I would be feeding by animal if it was at my house. Here's the amount of money that represents food. And if there was urgent medical care, you're gonna have to put that amount in too, because those are things that you're otherwise legally obligated to pay for if you choose to have an animal in But there's the automatic process where after ten days title is forfeited, unless the defendant requests a hearing and puts in cost of care. That gets that clock running on day one instead of waiting till month six. I do want to point out that S-one 182, which is in Senate judiciary right now, is modeled on that approach. And I think it's useful looking at the two bills together and saying, How do we think about what's best for Vermont if we look at those two bills together instead of as two separate bills? But S-one 182 is modeled on this Minnesota approach. And this approach reduces judicial and prosecutorial load, because in case A lot of times the defendant, they're not willing to affirmatively sign the animal over, but they actually aren't going to fight to keep their animal either. They're just kind of indifferent. And in those cases, this just lets ten days take care of that, and says, If you don't respond in ten days, then title's stripped, and the animal can be disposed of after that. So folks in Minnesota tell me that in almost all cases, the defendant does not bother to request the hearing and put the money in. That most of their cases are just taken care of during this default period. It's the same concept that gets used with stray hold periods. So if a stray dog is found and is held by a shelter after some period of time, and states that have stray hold statutes usually use a five day period of time for stray animals, the owner doesn't come forward and say, I want my animal back. After five days, title forfeited, and that animal can be rehomed. So this is giving a longer time because the animal sees, and we are very worried about the defendant's due process rights. So that's one of the approaches. The second approach, the Texas approach. When an investigator takes out a search warrant, not a search warrant for animals in connection with cruelty, the court automatically sets a hearing for within the next ten days. So it's a different approach. It's not that there's a ten day period and the defendant starts the clock running, it's that the court just sets this hearing when that warrant's taken out. So And at the same time as the animals are seized, the defendant served with the notice of the hearing, and that hearing happens within ten days to determine whether or not that animal should continue to be held. Whether or not that animal should be returned to the owner, or whether title should be stripped so it can be disposed of. So that's the second possible automatic trigger. So we don't have this six month wait to actually get something filed. Then the third possibility, which would work with either of these, is to say, Look, these cases, there's not tons of them, but they do take expertise when they come up. And repeat players have a much easier time drafting these petitions. There are some people who are really motivated to work on these cases. Case in point, I'm sitting here, right? I mean, I have opted to be in this world. There are people who are very motivated to work on these cases. And so you could say, Hey, we're going to appoint one DSA or one state's attorney's office, and you're going to head these up, and there's going be one court that hears them. This is a reallocation of existing resources. It's not saying we're going use more resources than before. We're saying that instead of having it dispersed out there, so everybody has to get up that learning curve every time there's one of these, we're going to have someone who's an expert at it. We're going put these in their court. Those are policy decisions for you all in terms of whether you want any of those approaches, and if so, which ones? Which one? So I wanted to give you those items. And when I've been asked by other states, What are the options? These are what I've told them as well. So I did want to go through some specific items I flagged in the bill as well. I know I'm talking a lot, but No.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: No. No. Sorry.

[Speaker 0]: Before you get to that, can I take a couple questions and then I'll go through the Definitely?

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Well, yesterday, I had these questions, and now I

[Speaker 0]: can't really remember much of them. They were probably all answered. Brilliant.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: If they were, I wouldn't be speaking still. In your experience of all the years you've done this, were there a lot of people that you dealt with that could afford to keep these animals, and they were still abused, or they were still not taken care of?

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: I was shocked. But, in the sense that a lot of people, if they're really pressed and have to prioritize, will figure out the money. So I went to animal control offenses in Athens Clarke County or Port Olmpey. Anybody who gets a ticket for an animal control offense has to go to court. And I have to tell you, every person says, I can't pay any amount. I can't buy a dog house for my dog. I can't afford a fence. But if you tell them that the options are you do one of those things, or you let this outside organization pay to spay and neuter your dogs, so we reduce your fine. The number of people who say, Oh, look, I have the money. It's actually really surprising. So my organization would spay and neuter animals for free in Athens Clarke County, they would use it. This is one of the ways we used those free appointments, was that the county attorney would reduce fines by $100 if my organization could pay to spay and neuter your animals. And so, discount on your fine, and it's getting vet care needs. People would still rather pay the money than have that happen. Same with my students and I created an animal welfare class, which we taught monthly to offenders in Athens Clarke County, and people opted into it, and they would get $100 off their fine if you take this two hour class taught by law students who are charming. Most people would not take the class. So, do they have tens of thousands of dollars? For some of the worst cases, probably not. Do they have $300 a month to cover $10 a day of care for their animal? Yeah, I think a lot of them can come up with it, even if that's not what they would normally do. I'm not big on either fining poor people, I don't think that makes anything better, and I'm not big on taking animals away from people just because they don't have resources. But when the lack of resources intersects with a callous disregard for welfare, I think that's a different issue. That's a really long answer to your question.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Yeah, that is a different issue, but where I'm going with that is if I mean, it's a lack of common sense to not be able to take care of your animal. If you think go out there and it I mean, it's to put up a a a fence or a runner or or something like that. I mean, it's pretty logical. It's pretty easy to just use a little bit of what's resting on your shoulders to go and do that. That's remarkable to me. If you think

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: of animals just as property, and legally, they are property. They're a chair. Now, there are care standards associated with them, which treat them somewhat different than a chair. But legally, they're your thing. This statute, if you look at it, if you look at page two, lines seventeen and eighteen, it says the person commits the cruelty to animals if the person intentionally kills or attempts to kill any animal belonging to another person without worth obtaining legal authority or consent of the owner. This says that I I believe you're the one who talked about getting a new dog the other day yesterday. Is that right? Yeah. This says that if you tell me I can kill your dog, not for any reason, that I can kill your dog, then it's not cruelty. Animals are legally property and can be disposed of as long as it's not in one of the wrong ways, as long as there's no added cruelty to the killing. So as long as I don't strangle or whatever. Think of, I don't want to go there. So people don't put the money towards their animals at times, even when they can. Now there are people who are good owners who don't have the money to put towards their animals. And I have a lot of sympathy and I'm all for developing programs to help those people. But yes, there are plenty of people who think of them as money makers. They have a side hustle of selling puppies. They think of them as guard animals. They're not feeling animals. They're there to guard criminal activities. There are a lot of people who, if this animal starves or freezes to death, they just get another one.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: So so what I know about things, I believe there's been, animals that have been, held in shelters and stuff like this for years. They're still there, and they definitely they're in a cage, you can you pay attention to that stuff, which I've done more than my whatever. I mean, you see them being degraded. You see see how they're going down and stuff. I mean, that's not good for them either. And then you, you know, the the older ones that are just giving up for whatever reason and and all this stuff. But, I mean, I I just I'm just trying to understand how this whole mindset works. And and, I mean, the veteran the the vet veterinarians that are out there and something that are doing all this free stuff and and helping out with making sure there's not more, but it it's it's like in your expertise with this stuff, I mean, the situation's getting worse. It's not getting better. And it seems like it's creeping up more and more in Vermont. That's not a heavily populated state. And whether it's whether it's a livestock or or or whether it's or domestic animal or, you know, bobcat, stuff like that. Is that what you're finding?

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: That is my understanding, is that it is getting worse, but it's also just more visible. Social media makes a lot of things a lot more visible than they were ten years ago. There definitely are, from my understanding, there are a lot more issues with, for example, stray dogs that don't get reclaimed and were probably abandoned by their owners. They're not looking for them. So that didn't used to be a thing. My understanding is that animal control officers almost always were able to return a straight dog to their owner within a day or two. And that still happens a lot, but increasingly, the owner's not stepping forward. And that's a problem. Social media has really enabled the transport of animals between states in much higher volume than it used to happen. When I got involved in animal rescue in 2006, I was in the DC area. I was practicing law at the time, and I was on the receiving end. So I was at Vermont, in that I was working with Southern shelters to bring animals to the DC area to find homes for them. Those were fairly low volume operations though, because it was a volunteer from this part of North Carolina would drive a couple of animals in their car an hour and a half, and they'd meet in a McDonald's parking lot and transfer those animals to somebody else's car, you're moving a couple of animals at a time. About seven or eight years ago, there was a really big move by some of the national organizations to buy transport vehicles for Southern shelters, and they went all in on transport. And so instead of it being three animals in someone's car, it was 60 animals in a van in a weekend. So the volume of this activity increased dramatically. And social media made it much easier to reach into new markets and advertise your animals. When I started in rescue, again, was personal relationship developed. I started by helping a West Virginia shelter. I had a dog that came from a shelter in West Virginia, there was a particular volunteer there that had really advocated for it. The dog was deemed unadoptably shy. She just sat in her kennel, scared, drooled, not eating. So they were going to euthanize her. This volunteer argued for her, I saw her photo and totally irrationally fell completely in love with this dog. And this dog changed my life. She is the reason I am in this And so I developed a relationship with that volunteer. Now it's big social media, and they're hard to ignore. If you're in this world and in these fields, you get these. There are so many people who I am Facebook friends with, and I have unfollowed them because I have learned that I need blinders. I will work on the things I can work on. But all of this has really exacerbated the problem, because if you're bringing 60 animals a weekend in, some number of them are not going be behaviorally sound, some number of them are going to be ill, some of them just aren't going to work in their home for whatever reason, so you're greatly increasing the number of animals that need new homes. If those animals particularly aren't being spayed and neutered before they're being adopted out, you're also having much more reproduction, which Vermont historically didn't have an issue with. You didn't have overproduction problems. And then, this winter aside, and as somebody who moved up here from Georgia, I'm very aware of what this winter feels like. Winter Oh,

[Speaker 0]: no, are you not?

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: My understanding is that the winters have gotten generally less harsh, and the warm periods have been extended, which means that you're going to start having the problems that the South has of longer reproductive seasons. In Georgia, the animals never stop going into heat. Cats are giving birth in January, year round. The Northeast has not historically had that problem. If you have warmer winters, you've got that problem. And so there's this perfect storm of pressures, I think, that are increasing these problems, as well as making them more visible because of social media, and so we're more aware of the problems that exist. But it means that getting ahead of this and thinking about what can we do now to set up structures for later, I think is really important, and doing it in a thoughtful way. Not doing it in a reactive way, but in a, well, let's look at what we're seeing, let's look at the issues we're seeing, and try and plan for the future, not just put a band aid on today.

[Speaker 0]: Zach, and then just a time check, because we do need to get to air up by 10:30.

[Rep. Zachary Harvey (Member)]: I'm gonna go ahead. Thank you, Chair. Ahead. And first and I think this is actually probably a good segue because I know that you're moving on to recommendations that you've had for the bill, and this is kind of related to that. And before I get to that,

[Speaker 0]: I just wanna say thank you

[Rep. Zachary Harvey (Member)]: for coming in because I think your testimony is not only compelling, but it's clear that you're a subject matter expert, but it's also very deep acting for you to help animals and make sure that their well-being is taken care of. So I thank you for that. Specific to the bill, so I'm on page eight, line 20, and this was a topic that came up yesterday, and another witness who's actually in the room, We talked about the penalties for animal abuse and whether five years is adequate, if it's a deterrent, if it's not. The witness in the room actually testified that there's a near one hundred percent recidivism rate for people that if you've abused animals in the past, you're near one hundred percent probability to do it again if given the opportunity. And so I'm curious about in your professional perspective, but also your experience in working with legislation like this in other states, if there is some kind of penalty that you've seen that you feel works. I know that the lead sponsor of the bill asked for an indefinite ban of owning animals. That seems pretty reasonable to me, but I know that there's others on the committee that have a variant view of that. So I'm curious on your perspective, if it's not five years, is it a tiered approach? What have you seen in other states? And what would your recommendation be?

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: And this is one of the things I flag, so we're I getting through my list a little believe the testimony yesterday was that hoarding has almost 100% recidivism. Animal cruelty itself does not actually have 100% recidivism. And you have to look at who's doing the acts and what's the basis for them. Some cruelty comes out of poverty, and simply not having animals will voluntarily not have animals. If these ones are taken away, or if they're provided resources, that won't reoccur. There's some cruelty that's based on lack of education, lack of information. So there are probe remedies. A dog that has fleas, somebody without much money might put motor oil on that dog. It does kill the fleas, it's probe remedy. It might kill the dog. So there's that problem with it. But that's something education and resources can fix, access to flea preventatives and knowledge and information about it. Cruelty that comes from those things are actually fairly fixable. Cruelty that comes from the cluster of vulnerabilities that go together, the substance abuse, the mental health issues, the domestic violence issues, the untreated past trauma issues, those go with animal cruelty as well. That is harder to fix without some sort of integrated solution that looks at that whole cluster. Hoarding is about self care issues and mental illness a lot of the times. And so again, you have to have support for that. And for hoarding, you're going to need to have check ins. It's not just saying you can't have animals, you definitely need to check-in and make sure they don't have animals. And so it's hard to say there's a uniform approach. And studies of deterrence tell us that a higher likelihood of getting caught is going to deter the behavior more than really stiff penalties. A possession ban takes away an opportunity to cause the harm, though. And so I would say that that's something that best practices in the animal welfare world is to have some sort of mandatory possession ban in connection with pleas of guilt or in connection with findings of guilt. So some sort of mandatory ban actually does help. Now, you have to confirm in some way that they're actually complying. That's one thing I flagged on the next page, is page nine, sub-five has periodic unannounced visits for a year after any possession ban is over, but it doesn't provide for any checks during that possession ban. So that is something I would flag that you might want to correct that. So having a mandatory possession ban is best practices, is shown to work because it takes away opportunity for the abuse. And something like this, it's of not less than five years, where you're saying, It's got to be five years, could be more, gives that judicial discretion to say, In this case, I think it has to be more. Tiers between first misdemeanor, repeated misdemeanors, first felony, repeated felonies, that also works. You want escalating responses. You don't want the first time somebody is found guilty of cruelty to have the same response as the tenth time. Those are very different issues you're dealing with. And so allowing for escalating response is one of the best practices as well. This does allow for that escalating response because it's got a floor, but you can do more.

[Rep. Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Thank you. And I think the point on education is a point very well taken, because I know it's a conversation I had with you yesterday, in saying that some of the offenders, right, are raised in an environment where they don't know the proper way to treat him.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: So I

[Rep. Zachary Harvey (Member)]: think there could be some it's an important perspective to take into consideration with craftiness. So thank you for

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: that. Sure.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Barbara, then Andrew. Thank you for moving to Vermont. It's been great to have you here. So I'm going to build on some of the questions that are representing Barbara just asked you. So I'm a social worker and have worked in the field of abuse and neglected kids. Looking at kids, like I was getting the animal pictures too for a while. That's so neat. So one thing that's always big is trying to figure out, as you said, I love that you're like, one size does not fit all. A lot of times it is education and the goal is reunification. Prevention also seems critically important. I have adopted four rescue kittens in my life. I have two now. So it's interesting because you talked about the I didn't know that there's a Vermont law about the medical care obligation. I don't know what that law is, but it seems like any of us that are adopting an animal should be required to get a piece of paper that says, Here's what it costs. So I had one cat that got poisoned by a cat food issue back in the mid-2000s, the plastic. They were talking about kidney transplants, and we were like, We probably can't afford a kidney transplant. We will try IVs, get her IVs at home, and she lived to be 18. But she was just cost a small fortune. My recent rescue needed blood transfusions at age one. They still can't figure out what So you have no idea what you're getting into, and I stupidly can't buy animal insurance, which again, I don't know. So that education piece up front seems like that could help with a lot of situations. The neglect and the failure to educate seem like if there are any prevention things that we could build into this, I'd love to avoid these situations happening in whatever percentage of those cases are the low hanging fruit.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: I completely agree. I think that looking up straight and saying, What can we do to prevent a large number of these cases from getting to this point? Because I firmly believe that animal cruelty is like, it's bodily harm to a human, not the same scope, but in terms of it's irregardless once it happens. You can't undo it, you can just manage it at this point. And so looking at preventative resources. And there are a lot of gates doing really good work in Vermont. I learned yesterday that there's about half $1,000,000 worth of free cat and dog food dispensed annually in Vermont based on donations. That's a lot of cat That's wonderful. I don't know that everybody who needs access to it knows that exists. So I think there's ways to build preventative resources and to build information about what resources exist. They don't need to necessarily be in legislation, but they need to be encouraged activities. And so that's something that I completely agree with you on. I'm not sure that that's a legislative act. I do think that figuring out how can we My perspective in Athens was to say, We've got this pot of cruelty and I don't like it. And so what can I do to the different streams feeding in there? What can I do as a volunteer, as a law professor, try and divert some of those streams? And people who are only offending because of poverty, you divert that stream by offering them resources. Now, if they say no to those resources, that means that's not the issue. Same with the education, like I said, for the offenders in Athens Clarke County. If I offer them that and they say no, well, sorry, you don't get passed just because you said no. Some people are offending out of inertia. They're kind of indifferent, and if you just make offending a little bit less convenient than not offending, you divert them. And then you get left with the people who are really the harder cases. And those are the ones that you probably want enforcement action against. But it takes setting up those resources and figuring out how do I divert these streams in efficient ways. And I mean, so I worked in teen pregnancy,

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: so it's like, here's how much it costs to have a baby. They're really cute, but here's how much it costs. And I'm just wondering, it's really hard to go into Petco and see these cute kittens and not take two home. But if people were required to share, what they're getting into. I just worry about that bumper. There are so many college students that will adopt and then they can't bring the cat home in the summer.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: Or they can't find rental housing that allows a cat, right? Yeah, I think that there is purely information that can help. It's not even education in the sense of changing behavior, but here is information about first year possible ownership and the difficulties with rental housing, if you have an animal. I have to say, moving up here, I have six dogs. They're medium to large sized dogs, and I was in a position I had to buy a house before I moved up here because I could not rent. So I, timing selling a house in Georgia with buying a house here that was appropriate for everything here, that was a huge complication in accepting this job, was figuring out how do I even find these things, because renting is off the table. I do think long term looking at packages of social problems that are tied into animal neglect and food and saying how can we provide support that is more efficient in terms of money and time and resources to head off the problem, rather than dealing it on the other end once the hunts are heard? And I'm hoping that I I think, Vermont, the fact that you all created this position, you created this division, a lot of people put a lot of work in. I would not have considered this job if H. Six twenty six in its original form was not out there for me to read, to see how much work had been put into improving things here. If the unification report that the Department of Public Safety had put out probably in 2023, I think, If all of that work had not gone in to make it so clear that people here were really looking for answers, I would not have applied. And I think there's a lot of good that can be done that can head off a lot of these issues. I'm not sure that that's legislation. Angela?

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Thank you so much, your You've been incredibly helpful and welcome. Glad to hear it's great to meet you. Thanks. And thanks for tipping us off on S one eighty two. I'm wondering I'm wondering if you can say a little bit about the animal welfare fund and if that would be an appropriate That's mentioned in S-one 182. Just given the conversation we have with Judge Zone about this complication of having the money passed through the court and be dispersed and everything, is that Could the Animal Welfare Fund replace that proposal, replace that proposed

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: model? At least in theory, yes. I don't really know the mechanics of it, and right now I'm the only employee in the division, and so they're not an accounting feature. There's no way to In theory, yes, I think that could happen. I don't know the mechanics of how that would happen.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Okay, that's fair. It was just interesting to read it here in 01/1982, which I'm looking at now. I was going to ask a different question about 01/1982, but that seems unfair, so maybe I'll talk

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: to you later. I've not dealt with in enough detail, but Let's wait,

[Speaker 0]: just do our house bill.

[Rep. Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Let's see

[Speaker 0]: that one. We'll definitely take a look at what they've done. You run through really quickly the other comments But on first, Anita, I'm sure a very quick question.

[Rep. Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Very quick question. Why don't you take a position on the bill?

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: I can answer that.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Yeah. But it's right.

[Speaker 0]: You gotta have to ask yourself for the record for its commissioner.

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: Jennifer Morrison, I'm the commissioner of public safety. I hired this superstar. We have a poll internal policy team, and we review all pieces of legislation that come our way. We have not yet gotten to this one, so we don't have a position on this. Furthermore, we also try to align ourselves with the governor's office. So that's just the reality of how this works, and this one has not come into the queue yet.

[Rep. Zachary Harvey (Member)]: So at some point, you may have a position on it?

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: At some point, when we see what the revised versions look like, when we see what happened with s one eighty two, we will certainly offer an opinion, or we will be very clear that we're not offering an opinion for various reasons. But at this point, she is a resource to you and a very good one. And if it pleases the chair, she could certainly submit her feedback, specific feedback in writing to you if you want to move to

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: your next witness, if that's

[Speaker 0]: That would actually be really helpful to have it in writing, if there's specific feedback on these different provisions, if we could do that instead. But if you want to just run through kind of really.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: Yeah, I'll run through and I'm going to skip the ones that have already been discussed by other people, because I agree with a lot of the comments that have been made. But I can include those in my rundown. Okay, so on page seven, subsection and this exists in the law, but one thing to flag for you that you might want to think about is this is where a civil ticket is given instead of criminal charges. That's a really important thing to have available. Having civil options are important, but this can, in any way, limit that civil ticket to a one time thing for somebody. So I could get a ticket every year in lieu of animal cruelty charges under this, And it doesn't in any way prohibit this person who is getting a civil ticket in lieu of criminal charges being filed from possessing it. And so I just want to flag that for you as something you might want to think about. With respect to page eight, line 13, there was some discussion yesterday. It's the prohibition on Somebody who's been convicted of animal cruelty has to forfeit their rights to the animal subjected to cruelty, and to any other animal except livestock or poultry. There was a question about horses, and horses are legally considered livestock in Vermont. They're part of the definition. So here, somebody who abuses one horse is not prohibited from keeping other horses. And there might be reasons to treat horses differently than cows. Horses aren't food animals. And so, you might want to think about whether as a policy, want companion animals and horses in one bucket, and other livestock and poultry in another bucket. But that's a policy question. Sorry, horses are what animals? Horses are considered livestock.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Know that, but you They're

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: not food animals, they're not companion animals. We put domestic cats along the way. I do want to flag that there are definitely cases in Vermont where the animals that are subjected to cruelty are returned to their owners currently. And I think that's part of what that may shall change in line 10 is dealing with. And so I just want to flag those cases do occur or where somebody is cruel to one dog and they're allowed to keep the others. So currently, with the May approach, it's not removing these animals from the homes. Page nine? We've already

[Speaker 0]: got a question. Just have to weigh in on whether we should add to the own, possess or care for animals residing with. Yes, that's one

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: of the comments from yesterday that is a best practice, because the workaround that I believe Jo Anne described yesterday in her testimony, where people just transfer ownership of the animal to their spouse, but then they're still around that same type of animal in a private setting where they can't be observed by outsiders and have that opportunity to re offend. So yeah, residing in this, I think, that's considered best practices. I would say on page nine, the participating in available animal cruelty prevention programs or educational programs, like the judge was saying, I might move that to a may provision, even if you move the others to a shall. And I am happy to go into detail, not right now, about the different programs that exist, that help with different sorts of offenders, and that you might want to think about in terms of policies later, but I also understand you're trying to get to the other ones. Like I mentioned on page nine, rechecks during the prohibition period are important for compliance. Page 10, this is the existing law. Right now, under the enforcement section for voluntary surrender, search and seizure using a search warrant, and seizure without a search warrant, there was a requirement that those animals either have a vet on scene when they're being seized, or that they see a vet in a very short period of time. That is a gating mechanism to getting animals out of homes because having a vet on scene is a lot of times impossible in your season. So requiring it by statute means those animals don't get removed from the position. And even requiring they be seen, it might be a best practice in a lot of times they need to be seen by a vet, but requiring it in the statute is potentially problematic where you can't get a vet on scene or where there's actually no vet evidence to collect. If the problem is this animal was being, let's say, tethered inhumanely, they're in a condition, removing them from the condition takes away that full treatment, and a vet doesn't add anything to the analysis. Same thing with the videos of bestiality porn that you've been talking about. So where somebody has a video of bestiality and they're being prosecuted for that, there is nothing for a vet to see. You have the video evidence. And so I think requiring these things in statute, you want to think about whether or not you actually want to require these, or whether or not the requirement is more along the lines of, and take them to a vet if it's reasonably necessary. Having the vet on scene is a really high bar, actually. Page 12, line two, one thing that was flagged by humane society for me, is it says that humane societies, or whoever's taking care of the animals that have been seized, can euthanize when the animal cannot be safely confined under standard housing conditions, so this would be a really aggressive animal. They flagged the point that some animals can't be humanely confined, even if they can be safely confined, and so you might want to consider whether or when the animal cannot be safely and humanely confined under standard housing conditions, allowing euthanasia because that's the more humane solution there in those instances. Page 13, also existing law, line 11. Right now, at a civil forfeiture hearing, the state has to show by clear and convincing evidence that the animal in front of them was treated cruelly. That is a really high standard. In civil cases, and that's all this is in civil actions, it's usually the ponderance of the evidence more likely than not. Clear and convincing evidence is equivalent to about an 80% certainty. Ponderance of the evidence is a 51% certainty. 80% is really high. We use that typically for proven fraud, civil fraud, which is borderline criminal, or if we're taking away parental rights. We don't usually apply clear and convincing to property, which is once again what animals are, or to civil cases. And so one of the bars to civil forfeiture proceedings being effective is that really high standard of proof, where a prosecutor effectively has to prove cruelty before they go prove it criminally. And you might think about whether that standard is something you want here. One of the suggestions on page 15, line 19, to make it easier to bring the Cost of Care Act cases forward, this suggests that a custodial caregiver could initiate the petition instead of the state. Take the burden off state's attorneys. Make this move faster. I do wanna make sure you're aware if you're adopting that language. That means giving evidence about an ongoing criminal investigation to a lay person. That's not normally disclosed through open records requests. That's normally held until the end of the criminal investigation. Since this hearing is happening before the criminal trial, this means making evidence available outside of that normal privilege realm. And I want to make sure you think about guardrails, if you're going to do that.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: But we're gonna be working quite

[Speaker 0]: a bit on this additional language, given some of the court testimony as well. So I'll wait for your written testimony because I do need to get to Hera.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: Yeah. Okay. I'm happy to end there and write up the rest

[Speaker 0]: of Yeah. And we'll definitely have you back in to talk about some of these other things. And we'll have another version of this at some point. We'll probably want to wait and and wait.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: That's awesome. And I would love to work with anyone who's interested on preventative resources as well. Absolutely. I appreciate your interest in figuring out how to deal with us. Thank you. You

[Speaker 0]: very much. Era, sorry we got into this a little longer than I thought I would, but I think we have a good chunk of time. If you can't finish in the twenty minutes, I understand you have, we can certainly have you back as well. But I'll turn it over to you.

[Ira McDonald (Founder & Executive Director, Merrimack Farm Sanctuary)]: Okay, can you see me and hear me?

[Speaker 0]: Yes, and if you just identify yourself to your record and proceed. Thank you.

[Ira McDonald (Founder & Executive Director, Merrimack Farm Sanctuary)]: My name is Ira McDonald. I'm the founder and executive director of the Merrimack Farm Sanctuary. We were founded in March 2023. I'm just gonna tell you our what I'm doing today is a little bit different than Lisa, and we're so lucky to have Lisa in our state, by the way. She's an amazing human. So, Lisa, I'm so glad I get to work with you. Mary Mac Farm Sanctuary's mission is to provide abandoned farm animals with permanent healthy homes where they can live free of abuse and cruelty to provide education for the broader and local communities about the well-being of animals and to promote a culture of equity between animals, people, and the planet. The animals that we have at Merrimack Farm Sanctuary include horses, donkeys, cows, sheeps, goats, turkeys, chickens, ducks and rabbits. We have over 100 animals that live permanently at the sanctuary for the rest of their lives. We do have some animals that get adopted out, but most stay with us forever since most come from some form of neglect or abuse or they are aged or in some sort of hospice type situation where they will live with us forever. Animals that come to Merrimack Farm Sanctuary from homes of neglect, they're humans. Sometimes they come from homes of neglect. Sometimes they come from homes where their humans have aged out of being able to physically care for them. Sometimes they come from homes where their owners are financially no longer able to care for them. Sometimes they come from homes where their owners are unable to keep them due to their own mental health challenges and so many more stories. Merrimack Farm Sanctuary also just became the first GFAST, which is Global Federation of Animal Sanctuary accredited farm sanctuary in the state of Vermont. This accreditation certifies that our sanctuary maintains high standards of animal care and daily protocols for how we run as an organization. Humane education is also a key factor to our mission. In order to help prevent future abuse from happening, we must always be teaching compassion, empathy, and respect for all living beings. Our education starts as young as a toddler program all the way up through our high school and college internship programs. We also have over 75 volunteers who come to the sanctuary throughout the week to help care for our animals on a daily basis, as well as five full time employees, four part time employees. We are 100% privately funded through donations. Farmed animals are one of the most forgotten animals in the welfare world and some of the most poorly treated. They are seen outside of the accepted domesticated animals such as dogs and cats. Horses can get a touch more protection than cows, chickens and sheep, but at the end of the day, they can all end up at the same livestock sale heading to a meat buyer. Farmed animals deserve humane treatment and standards no matter what their ultimate fate is in life. This past year, we were asked to help with a state seizure case of two starved pigs coming out of the town of Williamstown, Vermont. They were severely starved, body scores of zero point five and one point five out of a zero to five scale. In March 2025, Gladys and Olivia came to Merrimack Farm Sanctuary waiting a court case to see if their abuser would forfeit them or go to trial. The state case took months to finally come to court in October because the owner refused to surrender the pigs. The court proceedings ended up extending to multiple days to finish hearing the witnesses, and ultimately, the decision by the judge to have the pig ownership forfeited was made public on 12/08/2025. Nine months to determine that two severely starved pigs who were almost dead when seas needed to not be returned to the abuser. Who paid this bill? Merrimack Farm Sanctuary submitted a bill of almost $9,000 for their care for them from March to the first day of court in October. This cost was never presented during the court trial since it was deemed not important at the time. Sadly, this should have been presented by the state's attorney because it would have helped prove the defendant could not afford to pay to feed the pigs in the first place. They were starting an adequate food, water and shelter, which are the basic components of all humane welfare, were missing from the owner's property. Why did this case drag on? How is our current legal process failing them? Will restitution ever happen? Will the state case make it back to court where the owner will ultimately potentially face neglect charges? Those are all questions we still don't know. Merrimack Farm Sanctuary never did fundraising for Olivia and Gladys because we were told the town of Williamstown would cover their costs, and then we were told potentially the owner would be covering the fees and restitution. Merrimack Farm Sanctuary has yet to be reimbursed for any of Olivia and Gladys' expenses, and we're now told we will wait for such time that a separate court order potentially could happen. At the end of the day, we're happy that Gladys and Olivia are safe and able to live out a life free from starvation and neglect, but ultimately, the state of Vermont will have to work on how we handle cases like this one. Vermont also faces one of the fastest aging populations in The United States. This summer, we helped orchestrate a 15 rabbit rescue in Rutland, where we encouraged four state humane societies to assist us in this rescue. Knowing none of us could take 15 rabbits at one time, it was a beautiful collaboration with all of us working across county lines and throughout the state to help what could have been an animal welfare case if intervention had not occurred. And right before Christmas, we assisted a 97 year old woman who had lost her caregiver and had been taking care of a blind miniature horse and another companion horse. Once relinquished, Merrimack Farm Sanctuary concluded no vetting or farrier had been done on these horses since 2012. We live in some uncertain times for sure right now, but overall, humans care passionately about the welfare of animals. Truly, these bills being brought forward are helping bring Vermont up to speed with other states that take humane welfare seriously. I thank you for your time today, encourage each of you to take each animal welfare bill in Vermont seriously in hopes that the animals in Vermont will have great advocates for them. And I did include, which I sent to my email to you guys, just the bill for the $9,000 so you can sort of see what two large pigs care for nine months would look like from the day that they came in until the court date, just because I know that's been brought up in some of the, like, what holding, like, what holding of dogs would look like, and this is sort of what holding of like two large pigs would look like.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you, and if you haven't already, if you could submit your written testimony as well to Nate, I'd appreciate that. Questions

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: for Erin?

[Speaker 0]: Angela.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Hi, Era. Nice to see you. I'm wondering, we heard in testimony that for shelters and rescues, it can really help to have some idea, a reasonable idea, of how long you might be caring for these animals. Can you tell us from that perspective, from your perspective, what that would provide for you if there was a way knowing, I can imagine none of these things are, you we can't be certain about things, but are able to make a So this is a silly question. You prefer making informed decisions?

[Ira McDonald (Founder & Executive Director, Merrimack Farm Sanctuary)]: I think it's a little bit I think it's harder too with farmed animals because, you know I mean, most of our animals are not in cages, right? So we're not talking about dogs and cats. But I have had a lot of, you know, more in-depth conversations with different game wardens and stuff of, like, what if what if we got a call for, you know, three cows, you know, 10 chickens, three horses, like, what would the holding capacity look like for that? And that that is a bigger issue for the state to think about. I mean, Lisa and I've had those conversations as well as game wardens as well as because they're the ones primarily first on scene of looking at something. Would we leave animals potentially in a location and bring food to them? Would we relocate those animals? Where would we relocate those animals? You know, we are a sanctuary, and we certainly we have a quarantine area where we can occasionally take animals. But if it was a large seizure, then we would need bigger, you know, state help with that of like where we would put those animals, which I think is all in the plans of working on. I think that, for instance, Gladys and Olivia were so thankful to be moved because they were in such horrific that where they were living was in such like was so horrific that they hadn't had fresh water. They were literally drinking each other's urine because they had had no access to clean water. So for them, it was almost opposite. They had, like, gotten to the glory land, you know, coming to the sanctuary. The harder part is when months and months and months go by and you don't know if you're going to have to send them back to where they came from. I think that's the bigger issue, and we've certainly seen that with Dorset equine, where they have put months and months and months into, you know, animals that sometimes those animals have to go back to said person who is potentially neglected those animals. And that's probably the hardest thing that, you know, you've put care and time and vetting, potentially fostering like, you know, you've had somebody put in foster time to those animals and then to have to send them back to someone who has had neglect, you know, like for the Dorset case, like that person was guilty and all these other animals, but this one animal got sent back to them. So I think I think the timing of everything, and I think Lisa certainly brought that up, and Renee brought that up yesterday, like, that is the kind of thing that, like, seizure cases and whether the person's going to surrender the animal or whether the court cases get extended out, that is kind of a hard thing to stomach sometimes when you're talking about a living animal.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Thank you.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: Yes.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possible Rep. Karen Dolan or Alicia Malay)]: Hi, Era. Thanks for being here. Just as you were talking, I realized one of the pieces of this is moving to, if an animal is, being abused to not only remove that animal, but all other animals that are there. And I'm hearing you share that there's capacity concerns now with current law. So I feel like it would be amplified with this change because now there would be even more animals that would need to have homes or placements. It's not, again, something that I would support, but I feel like that is a piece that we would need to solve. And I you said that there are plants in the works. Can you just share more about what you think would happen if we started saying it's not just the animals that are being abused, but you take all animals from that person?

[Ira McDonald (Founder & Executive Director, Merrimack Farm Sanctuary)]: Yeah. That's a great question. I think, like, we just saw a seizure case happen in Massachusetts where the MSBCA came in and took almost two and fifty animals out of a situation. And I think that Vermont is just going to have to look at resources and and come up with a plan, which is part of the reason that Lisa's here, right, is that we come, you know, we are there. We have the capacity. And the reason I brought up at the end is that people love animals, and they it is a priority that animal welfare is at the top of most humans. Most most people will support animal welfare. I just think that, you know, it may be like in a case with livestock. The biggest thing is Vermont may have to go outside Vermont barriers to have like foster homes or work with like the New Hampshire ASPCA. We just did that in like doors. It just did a case this past two weeks where they worked with Maine Society and New Hampshire, ASPCA on a nine horse rescue. So, I mean, in livestock, sometimes it's such a big thing. And I also think with dogs, we've talked about some seizure cases with dogs where the ASPCA comes in. So I just think we're talking about bumping up like what we're doing in terms of protection and animal welfare, maybe on a bigger case than we've ever done before. I hear like being some stuff being brought up that we're leaving animals in homes where we know that there's abuse. I can't believe that those words are being used because, like, Vermont has a ton of dog rescues in it. And we also have the resources of the National ASPCA, the Humane National Humane Societies that I think I've heard, you know, are willing to come in and willing to help with bigger cases. And I just think we're heading in the right direction. We've got bills that are coming forward that we haven't had in the past, and I think we're moving in the right direction. I just think we're like kind of like the momentum's there, but we just need to kind of keep going and doing exactly what you guys are doing

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: today. Hope that

[Unidentified Committee Member (possible Rep. Karen Dolan or Alicia Malay)]: Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Any other questions for her? Nancy, thank you very much for being here. Really appreciate it. And we will have another version at some point. And if you wanna weigh in on that, I'll certainly let let us know.

[Ira McDonald (Founder & Executive Director, Merrimack Farm Sanctuary)]: Yeah. I certainly hope livestock can begin to be a bigger discussion because it gets left out of most animal welfare laws. Horses get a little bit accepted into it, but livestock has not been really part of the bigger discussion and certainly can like, the tricky part with the pigs was this, the person that has the pigs also has 50 to 70 dogs at their house, too. So there's some bigger discussions that need to happen and some crossovers of if you're an abuser of livestock animals, but you also have domesticated animals and how that might work in that situation as well.

[Speaker 0]: Right, appreciate that. Thank you.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Yeah, all

[Ira McDonald (Founder & Executive Director, Merrimack Farm Sanctuary)]: right, thanks.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: Thank you. So

[Speaker 0]: actually, I have a couple follow-up questions for you, Lisa, if you can join us. Hopefully this won't be long, because I know we've been here for pickup time this morning. But once we're done, we don't have anything else until 01:00. People have a nice long lunch. So looking again at actually just what we were talking about, I was looking at this. It's a page eight. Let me grab my

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: I don't know if it's least one chance fault.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, there's the forfeiting rights to the animal subject to cruelty and to any other animal, and then it has the exception. I'm not sure how this works if the animal subjected to the truancy were livestock. It seems like if you're being fueled to the other 10, if that happens to be the case. So I'm kind of curious about that as one.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: And yeah, if you could comment on that. And then I had a couple other follow-up questions on the same kind of issue. Sure. In the animal welfare world, best practice would be to seize all of the ants and to prohibit ownership of all of them. I think that that exception is here because of concern about farmers. And just because there's been abuse of one animal, there's caution about seizing all of them. There's a couple of different approaches. Best practice would be prohibit ownership of all you know, seize all of them. So if you're seizing one dog for abuse, and this comes up earlier, seize all of those animals as well. And then here, prohibit, forfeit the rights to that entire class of animal. Alternatively, a secondary approach would be to forfeit the rights to all animals in that same category. So somebody who has abused a pet loses all of their domestic pets and their rights to have them. Somebody who abuses a livestock animal loses all of their livestock, but it doesn't necessarily cross those categories. And then a third approach would be a species approach. Abuse one dog, lose all of your dogs, but you can keep your cats, you can keep your horses. So either all of them, category, species, or Vermont does all of them except livestock, poultry, are this other category that even if you've abused livestock and poultry, can keep those animals out of protection, I think, for agricultural businesses. Would it

[Speaker 0]: be species or genuses? Because I did see in another law that they looked at genus.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: I don't know how much Catas de mexicus is a species, I believe. I believe that it would have genus underneath it. I don't know if that's where breeds come out.

[Speaker 0]: I'm just kind

[Rep. Zachary Harvey (Member)]: of getting

[Speaker 0]: that because I just saw a lot of that.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: I've heard it referred to as species.

[Speaker 0]: So we have to discuss that among ourselves. I guess the other thing is that right now, any future right to own, possess or care for any animal for the five years. And then there's not the exception for livestock and poultry. So I think we need to be consistent if that's what we want to do presumably.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: I agree, that's one of the things I also flagged is that those two provisions are inconsistent. Okay, that's just it. Yeah, Angela, then Barbara.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: That's it. I can't actually take two hours. Have you ever seen have you seen any states or jurisdictions that have some sort of test to I don't know if that's the right word, but to verify that the livestock or poultry are part of making a living.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: So I see that there are I'm not as good on the agricultural rules just because they're specifically out agricultural, whatever the Department of Agency of Ag controls is outside of potentially what would end up as a division ban of welfare. I believe that there are definitions of what qualifies as a farm or as a farm business for purposes of agency of agriculture oversight. If you don't qualify as that, there's no like a small homestead or somebody with horses probably has no oversight whatsoever. So I think there are definitions out there. Don't know what they are. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. And so that could be something you wanted to take into account in terms of these exceptions is that if it's it would yeah. I I think you've got a lot of pieces to play in to to play with there.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: So I'm wondering the question that our chair just asked you about how to determine who gets removed.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: Is there a sort of

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: research or of like people who abuse animals tend to abuse all of them or maybe they feed cats, but love dogs, so that we could make this decision and then educate them. Unfortunately, it's

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: kind of like parents who abuse children. There might be one. I've seen a case I saw the case that got me involved in actually figuring out how to move animal cruelty cases in my jurisdiction before I had focused on that was a case where there were two dogs that were being kept in someone's backyard. One of them was well fed, happy, allowed to come in some. The other one was starved to the point where by the time she was found, she couldn't stand anymore and her blood sugar levels were spiking, her organs were shutting down from starvation. The family was feeding one, starving the other. The question is whether you want to risk leaving any animals in because these are private settings, right? It's hard to know if the abuse is going on. This dog was starved at the point where she couldn't stand before a neighbor reported it. I went to the vet three days after she was impounded, where we had her in boarding, and the vet staff was so excited. They're like, Gibbies, try and stand. I went over and found her, and she's like face down on the floor, lifting her head up. But that was the most she'd done in three days of being, because she was that workout. And so that's the problem is that there isn't good unmucking of this, but you're saying that somebody who has such a lack of empathy that they would do this to one helpless being would do it to others. And what we do know is that people who prey on vulnerable beings prey on vulnerable beings. The same people who abuse elderly people, abuse children, who abuse spouses, abuse animals. So I'm a mandated reporter.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: If somebody's abusing animals, does that trigger any I mean, again, if you don't know, but that's not it's a mandated reporter, that's

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: not my job, that's DCX job to figure out. So that do any states have that trigger if you call protective services? Yes, some states do. Have cross reporting laws, and they also have mandated reporting laws for animal cruelty in some categories. So some states, for example, vets are mandatory reporters. Other states like Vermont, vets are not mandatory reporters. And so there's a cluster of laws that go with trying to deal with the link between cruelty to animals and cruelty to vulnerable people. Domestic violence, which I guess is Yeah, that's part of that whole thing. And Vermont has not, at this point, adopted that cluster of laws, but it is something that you all could very well consider.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: You have state choices for us?

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: I don't have them off the top of my head, but they are one I mean, a couple of national discussion groups, folks who are in policy positions like mine, and that's one of the subcommittees that is getting formed in those areas that I'm part of. Frankly, this sort of legislation is also one of those subcommittees. It's one of the topics that even states with a couple of different legislative options are trying to figure out how do we do this better. So the answer is I could in the future, I don't today.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Vets. They're not mandated reporters, but if they suspect abuse, they can still They're not discouraged from doing that.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: Right. So vets are They're protected if they make a good faith report, but they're not required to make the report. I'll double check that. About half the states are mandatory reporting states for vets, and about half are permissive with protections. Historically, was one state that Vets cannot report, but my understanding is that's changed. Yeah, part of it is vet practices and what their preference is, right? There's a lot of concerns around reporting your clients, the impact of that. I actually wanted to address your question to Era, if that would help, about increasing the scale of animals being impounded and how that would affect things. Where some animals are seized and others are not, a lot of times those other animals come in later anyway, and they are in worse condition than if they came in on day one. And so one of the issues I had flagged for me by an investigator here in Vermont is a property with 120 animals approximately, many of which have already been seized, but it's been a rolling series of seizures because they're not allowed to seize all of them. And so they have to wait both until this next set of animals has degraded to the point where they can say, This one has been fully treated. This one has been fully treated. And they also have to wait until another outsider sees and reports the situation, because a lot of this is not visible. If you're talking about rural areas, farms, and people's houses, it is hard to see what is going on inside of those places. And we have a complaint based reporting system, and that's not unique to Vermont. But it's not that anyone's going door to door to check on animals. Animals aren't going to school and being seen by teachers. They are being housed in ways where outsiders cannot see them. And so one, it increases the need immediately if you're seizing a whole bunch, but there's a high likelihood you're going to have that need anyway, or that the suffering is occurring and you don't know about it. For

[Unidentified Committee Member (possible Rep. Karen Dolan or Alicia Malay)]: me, it was just the infrastructure capacity to handle that piece of it. So I just would want to make sure that you, people in Vermont felt like, okay, we're ready to take this on when all these animals are going to come. I totally get in support. Let's get them out sooner so then their cases are less severe when they do come through. But it's that piece of, Okay, day one, all of a sudden, they're at this farm and this farm. Are we going to be able to take all the animals?

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: I think that it gets figured out, but I think that it's very important that there is a mechanism for being able to move them along quickly and efficiently in place. And so absent, under the current civil flow picture process and under the cost of care approach, I would worry about that because the amount of time those animals will be in limbo and not be able to be passed on to ultimate owners. And so I think that the policy decisions you're making on this bill are critically important to get figured out so that existing holding capacity can turn over much more quickly.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: So does it ever make sense to have the animals that are not going to go back home and you're allowed to pass them on, if they're healthy enough to be sold and have those proceeds help to fund some of the needs that exist?

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: That's an option. With farmed animals, that's a possibility. A lot of times there's some rehabilitation needed, so they're not going to have any real sale price. But One of the good options for farmed animals sometimes is to be parceled out to commercial farmers who do a really good job with caring for their animals while they're alive. They might slaughter them at the end of the day, but they would bring them back to help. They would have a good quality of life for the period of life they have. And so that's one of the options, is moving that way. It is a lot harder to get money in return for a cruelty case animal because, like Era was saying, dollars 9,000 for two pigs over the March and beginning of the trial was October. So that's seven months, 9,000, two pigs. That's a lot of money that goes into rehabbing them. Horses are so expensive to care for, right? You might think, Oh, we can sell this horse, but if you're getting a $10,000 liability with that horse, you're not paying anything. And so Right. Yeah, was just wondering if could find the funding mechanism. That's always a question, funding mechanism, right? Yeah.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: I wanted to bring up a question that Representative Dolan brought up yesterday, I think, or maybe we talked about it after his testimony was over, but do you see a need for any kind of standard or standards for the custodial caregivers?

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: Yes. I think people who step up as custodial caregivers are coming from a really good place. They mean the best. That doesn't mean they necessarily have the qualifications to care for abused animals. So just to give a very simple example, with starved animals, part of the reason it costs so much to bring them back to health is that you can't just put food down and let them eat. They will die, if that is your approach. They need to be refed slowly, or they end up having heart attacks and things from just their bodies have adjusted to a stage of starvation. Custodial caregiver who means the best doesn't necessarily know that. So I do think that it's important that there be training and certification. Custodial caregivers need to be There needs to be some confidence that custodial caregivers will be caring appropriately for the animals, and that they also understand the legal obligations of caring for somebody else's animal where that owner is not consenting to them caring for it. If I was caring for a cruelty case dog, I would say that dog should not interact with my dogs. It's not just about liability, it's about the fact that this is somebody else's property and they haven't consented to being in my house. And so I need to take a higher standard of care in many ways than I would of an animal I'm fostering normally. There's also confidentiality concerns. A defendant has a right to a fair trial And posting on social media about the conditions this animal was in before they were seized, or even about their evolution in your home is potentially polluting the jury pool. It's potentially introducing evidence that couldn't be introduced at trial. Nobody's doing this intentionally, nobody's doing it maliciously. But I think that there's training and certification that has to happen to make sure that there aren't these collateral effects to having these animals. And the other thing, like Arrow is saying, it is a huge stress to not know whether or not you are giving this animal back. Because even if technically it ends up not qualifying as cruelty so the animal can go back, you know the animal did not come from a good situation, and you become attached to it. I think there has to be a lot of controls about making sure that whomever is caring for these animals, whether it's a humane society, a rescue organization, or an individual, that they are very clear on their obligations to return this animal if it's legally required. Because I don't know of cases here, but I know of animals disappear in these circumstances. The other end of it is that housing animals that are part of cruelty cases and having their location known and having it not be a secure location, we don't do that with any other evidence. We don't take someone's drugs and stick them in someone's house and have the person whose house they're in and say, Hey, I've got your drugs. And there have been some instances where there's been threats of violence against the people caring for seized animals. And so I think all of this means that, yes, I think there needs to be some thought about where are these animals going while they're being held, and how do we make sure that legal requisites as well as emotional and practical requisites are being met.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Is that something that your newly created division would, down the road, potentially be responsible for, or is that something that you would need in statute?

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: So my comprehensive plan for the animal welfare division is in the final stages of being distributed, being reviewed before it's passed on to the legislature. And by final stages, I mean, I'm expecting it to have it to you guys later this week or the beginning of next And so I would like to defer on that question. That's amazing

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: that you're at the plants that way.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: Oh, months. That's the requirement. You guys give me an eight month requirement. So eight months up within eight months of starting work, Monday is eight months. Nice

[Speaker 0]: that when people keep following But

[Rep. Zachary Harvey (Member)]: that was a pretty rare. It doesn't happen

[Speaker 0]: very often. Well, you very much.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Thank you. You're welcome.

[Lisa Milet (Director of Animal Welfare, Vermont Dept. of Public Safety)]: I'll get your written comments.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, this will be an ongoing thing, or an iterative thing. I appreciate it.