Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: This Tuesday afternoon, February tenth, and now we're going to move to budget presentation from the Vermont Criminal Justice Council, and we have the executive director Christopher Burdittenden and Lindsey. I'm going to try.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Make them do it. Wait

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: a second. No, don't, don't. I apologize. People have a horrible time with my name too. Thydeerj.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Wait, say that again. Didn't hear it. Verge. Okay, it's the verge. It's Vermont.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Thank you very much. So over to whoever is going to walk us through just generally kind of the high points of the budget request. Really want to understand if you are supporting the governor's recommend or if there's anything in addition beyond that you've that been asking for, we'd like to understand what that is and the rationale if there are these additional things that's not in the governor's budget. I'll turn it over to you. Christopher, thank you very much for being here.

[Christopher Purkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: Thank you, Sheriff, for the invitation and the opportunity to go over our budget with you. For the record, Christopher Purkel, executive director of Vermont Criminal Justice Council. As you so aptly put it, it is Lindsey Taverge, the director of administration who's joining me, and also Holly Farrant, who is the chief executive, of our financial piece. I've never met Holly either online or in person, so this is new for me too. Jason is our typical folk. So, welcome, Holly, and thank you for being here as well.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Thank you, Holly, for being here.

[Holly Farrant (Finance staff, VCJC)]: Thank you, Jason. Is out sick today, so I'm standing in session.

[Christopher Purkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: So I will I will start with, really just a brief overview. Our our budget is fairly simple and non complex. We have a four point, and I'll make a little correction from the presentation that you have here. It is not a 4.38 budget. 4,380,000.00 is actually a 4.33, but our budget this year increased a total of $71,443 or 1.68 percent increase in the general fund budget. The other increase that we had to our budget was 43,527, and that was an 11.11% increase in the, interdepartmental transfer fund budget. Those are the funds that go to, administer our highway safety programs. So overall, that breakdown is basically a 92.6% funded budget from the general fund and 7.4% that is funded by the IDT funds. We did have a vacancy savings rate that was 10.7% in 2025, and so far this year, 2026, it's at 12.5%. This budget also funds two exempt employees and, 14 classified employees, so a total of 16 employees. This budget does, also meet the governor's recommend of the 3%. So while we put our budget together, we were actually over amount of 40,472, and we took from vacancy savings that 40,000 so that we could stay within the 3% of the governor's recommended budget. So, going on to the, '27 budget, and what does that actual money entail? It essentially covers, as I mentioned earlier, the $347,000, the IDT funds, which covers highway safety programs. So our DRE training, our A ride training, SFSTs, which are the standard field sobriety testing for DUI. And then what that also covers is obviously the 16 staffing positions, and it basically covers the operating expenses that we take into consideration when we are covering 82 agencies for training. Between state, local, and constables even are included in that training. It's 82 actual different agencies and within that budget we also use funding for agency compliance. We are at a 96% compliance rate with the agencies that we have checked on. We still have one of the mandated policies that the council is responsible for, which is the fair and impartial policing policy. We still have, I would say, three and a half agencies that we're still working with to get them totally compliant and be a 100% compliant with agencies. Moving on to page six of this, presentation, just so that you're aware, our cost per tuition student for level three training breaks down to $6,700 per recruit when they're actually going through the training. Now that's just the level three training, which we do twice a year, and that is for seventeen weeks residential training. That number fluctuates based upon how many recruits we get from the agencies, how well agencies are able to hire and get them through the process so that they come to us. So that number does fluctuate. But over the last year, to give you an idea on some of the costs, we've had over 27,544 meals that were served, which were responsible for statutorily to provide anytime somebody's receiving their initial certification. So that's part of our cost. Was there a question there? Sorry.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: No. No. Go ahead.

[Christopher Purkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: Okay. So that you there's a a comprehension on the amount of training that is that equals seven zero five hours of actual training that a full time level three recruit does. That doesn't include things like community projects that they do, a special event that they do that they hold with Special Olympics class reviews when they're getting ready for tests and quizzes that they do the night before in any administrative time. So that's seven zero five hours is actually classroom and scenario based training time that the recruits have. We currently have right now statewide 1,070 level three certified officers. Those are full time certified officers and 456 level two certified officers. Those are the less than full time. They come here for a brief period of training, go out, get their FTO training within their agencies, and they are in the field as part time officers. They are what we used to refer to as part time officers. Also, out of the costs that we incur, we've had 74 complaints so far this year of unprofessional conduct against law enforcement officers. That doesn't mean that those 74 complaints are all legitimate complaints, but that's the numbers so far that we have received this year.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: I those pause it, before you go on, when you say this year, just 2027 or this fiscal year?

[Christopher Purkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: In 2026 so far this year.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: '26, I meant. Jeez, 2026 versus the fiscal year. Just the past month and a half. Alright.

[Christopher Purkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: Yeah. And and a lot of this, to break that down, like they they have to meet the statutory requirement for what we would investigate or what we would accept, as a complaint. Some oftentimes we'll get complaints that are just on an officer's demeanor or behavior or that somebody was issued a citation for something. A result of an investigation is not something that we oversee. It's unprofessional conduct. So sometimes that number appears larger than it actually is. Those complaints, not just those complaints, but we've had 13 stipulated agreements. Of those 13 stipulated agreements, what doesn't get accounted into, and what you will see in a future slide is some of the pressures that we face as a result of the changes in the statutes of unprofessional conduct are the amount of administrative time and legal time that gets devoted to that process. So the stipulated agreements, are ferreted out through our attorneys drafting, and then that, agreement is worked into with either another attorney or the officer directly themselves. And in the event that there isn't a stipulated agreement, that goes to a council hearing, which is yet another expense. So prior to July 2025, category B offenses of unprofessional conduct, which were the most commonplace type of complaints, were confidential by law for a first offense. Now as of July 2025, all, unprofessional conduct complaints both on and off duty are actionable by the council, so they are public information. And what that means to us, which we couldn't totally anticipate ahead of time budgetarily wise, but what that means to us is now every complaint that we have that's legitimate that gets filed through the process ends up in either a stipulated agreement or a council hearing. And that's not only, very time consuming, but it's also very costly. When we talk about counsel time, our counsel is a member of 24 people that are volunteers. We have one special date per month that's set up just for hearings. That's the involvement of 24 people, but then legal staff experts that might have come in and testify. We're averaging about $5,000 a cost per hearing when we have to go to a hearing. Those are some things that you'll see in future pressures that are not allocated for in this budget. Moving on to some of the successes that I just wanted to make sure that this committee is aware of the amount of work. We're very fortunate, and some of the members of this actual committee visited us this past fall to see some of the work that goes on here, because a lot of folks hear about the Academy or the Criminal Justice Council, but they don't know the extent of what the work is that's actually done here. What I'm going to move on to is just a couple of things that we do on a regular basis that folks may not be aware of. So, obviously, we had to create professional, regulation procedures that took staff time, that took attorney time. We have regulated, procedures that have been adopted by the council that outline how we handle unprofessional conduct complaints. We have a, new written entrance test, which was now corrected for the old test, which was determined to have disparities. We wanted to make sure that we regulated those. We also went through a process where it is now available online. For instance, if an agency has a potential recruit or a potential hire that they want to hire who is from another state, they don't actually have to travel here to come and take the written test. They still can, but they can take it online now. Those testing processes that get, the person to the next step for a hiring through an agency can be done online. We implemented our ACADIS RMS or CAD system here so that we have better better processes that are more clearly defined and allow for us to have interactions with the agency so agencies can log into our system, submit their own training records. They can schedule training if they want to come here to the Academy. It's much more interactive, so it's not a one way where they actually have to come here or we have to go to them so they can access those. It also makes all of our records automated and brings us into line with some of the recommendations that we received from the state auditor's So we're coming into line with with the auditors report. And then we're midstream of our curriculum rewrite and review. The training that is going to be for law enforcement officers in level three certification. We hosted this past year the ICP Women's Leadership Institute in an effort to support women leaders coming into law enforcement and coming to the state of Vermont so that we get a higher amount of women leadership and women recruits. We also hosted our first naturalization ceremony, with the court. So we had host families and new American citizens that were able to, take their oath here and become citizens. We've participated and staffed in career boost at our local high school here at Fairhaven, attended national night out activities and the Rutland's Pride Festival this past year. We've hired a FIP instructor, so we now actually have a fair and impartial policing instructor statewide, so there's an actual position for that. We also are required to provide mandatory FIP training to all law enforcement, and we've done that and included neurodivergence training that we have been offering regionally with our fifth instructors. So that has been taking place. We've hired an attorney. We have just had a canine, detection and patrol school this past year. We are starting I believe in April our next patrol school for canine. We completed an identity based policing job task analysis so that was another project that we did separately on a contract because it plays into what fair and impartial policing does. But some of the things that have been identified in the fair and impartial policing policy already are in play, but this is a better way to get officers aligned with all of the different cultures and the people that they're going to deal with on a regular basis in the state of Vermont. We've had the expense, and I'll speak to that again momentarily on translating our fair and impartial policing policy into 14 languages, including an ASL video. That way we're reaching everybody that is impacted by that policy so that they know and can expect how law enforcement will interact with them when they're dealing with law enforcement. Then one of the big ones again that'll speak to a little bit about one of the pressures that we face is we've continued to contract with O2X. O2X is a company that we have contracted with for an overall officer Wellness. It's especially important with the recruit classes that we're, bringing in here for their level three certification. Training years ago used to be they came in here and they did PT with the training coordinators and they'd be, you know, doing their mile and a half run and their push up sales and all the PT that they regularly do. We realized and recognized that people get hurt and damaged sometimes during just regular PT training if they're not really acclimated before they get in here. We started working with this company O2X initially because we found that two recruits that were coming into us have been previously diagnosed with rhabdomyosis, and so we didn't want to worsen that condition, and it's a condition that once it happens, you can do a lot of physical damage to somebody and we couldn't risk that happening. That's what began our career with O2X. But what that provides for us is an on-site person who acts as an athletic trainer who can diagnose impact injuries, soreness injuries. It's reduced the amount of trips that we have recruits taking to the hospital or doctor's appointments. It significantly reduced injury rates here at the Academy, and it also incorporates Wellness. So we're talking about sleep nutrition, our our health and our food choices when the recruits are here. So having that person on-site and being a part of the recruits everyday life had been an overall help to the recruits welfare, which leads to their future success and also a reduction in the injury rates that we're seeing. For us, that's a statewide impact that reduces workman's comp claims. I haven't been able to make that argument loud enough in our budget for that to be successful. It's a costly endeavor. It's a $200,000 contract with O2X each year. Our first year we were able to manage This year, we were not. We didn't get the budgeted funds, and what we did was we booked some of our vacancy savings. And out of that 200,000, we still couldn't afford that. But the company itself found a grant for us that covered half of that cost. So we've continued it for another year. But if we were to go a following year after that, and we think it's a very worthwhile program, that's going to be a future cost to us in a future budget, not this one. Moving on to just a couple of other things. We've graduated 74 level three officers and 54 level two. As I mentioned earlier, we hosted and some of you attended a legislators meeting here at the Academy to give a tour and an explanation of what our programs are. We have had six in house agency visits that we've done for compliance checks to make sure that not just that their policies that they're required to have are in place, but that their training records are accurate, their compliance rates so that what they have to respond to and send to us is accurately, depicted so that we're verifying what they send us actually is accurate. We've done a fair and impartial policing policy reviews of several agencies. We've conducted death investigation schools, background investigation schools, de escalation training, and instructor training schools, internal affairs schools, sent a staff member to de escalation train the trainer program as part of a de escalation initiative that we're moving forward on. We put together an alternative pathways subcommittee because we've been mandated by the legislature several years ago to, come up with training other than a residential model. That hasn't happened. There has been no funding for that to have happened, but the alternative path work group, was for me to get an actual answer to come back to the legislature on why we haven't been able to do that. And oddly enough, that work group was consist of the education field, folks from within the Vermont State Colleges, and subject matter experts within law enforcement and all of the law enforcement agencies that are on the council, all looked at these and felt that the residential model that we do is not only, the best model that they feel, but it's an essential piece. So even if we break from that, there are parts of what we do here at a residential academy that just can't be replicated in a classroom and can't prepare people for what the profession actually asks of them. So we're looking at dual models of how do we have something that can prepare people before they even come in here, but then schedule them to come into the academy to do the hands on the scenario based training that that we would have to make sure that they can adequately do to make sure that they're prepared for the profession. We've also voted on annual training requirements, updated canine standards, and then we have, this committee, provided for us, although we were not completely aware of it last year, draft procedures that we needed to come up with for 20 VSA twenty three fifty nine, which is the, the procedures on, what we are required to do for agency compliance. So to keep agencies in compliance, the auditor's office, found that what we should be doing was to make sure that we had, a procedure. So I'm I'm gonna get this backwards, that we had to have a policy in place to hold agencies accountable for the re the standard mandated policies that they're required to have. In legal review of that mandate from the auditor's office, What we really found is that we needed to have adopted a procedure. We are in that process now of adopting what those procedures look like so that we make sure that we have a process that we can go to agencies and say, if you're out of compliance, we're going to cut your services to the academy. In the meantime, we have adopted a draft procedure that has been adopted by the council so that we can move forward in that step if there is an agency that stays out of compliance. So getting back to our budget, the only budget ask that we actually had for this year was a $30,000 request for one time funding, was really for language access, and that was for us to have the ability to translate policies and language for the communities that we would be serving. Things like our use of force policy, which is rather extensive. It would make it would make sense that the communities that are impacted by a law enforcement use of force policy can be read in their native language so that they understand what law enforcement knows that they're following. So those are the things that are rather costly. When we we did tap into this last year, there was a funding through the Office of Racial Equity that we were made aware of the from the agency of administration that there was that fund. They did do that for us. That was a cost for one policy of 8 over $18,000. So we have multiple other policies that we should really be doing just as a matter of what's fair and equitable to the people that need to understand what our policies are. We did go back to the Office of Racial Equity as suggested by the Agency of Administration, and we're told that we really should put that into our budget request because there are other agencies that also will be coming to them for that funding. We did they make that request just so this committee is aware. We have gone through house appropriations. They understand that process, but also know that we were directed back to the also racial equity. There's going to be some question as to whether or not they feel that that's an appropriate ask on our part. And then the only other ask that we had, which was going to be the $300,000 for us to actually complete the curriculum review was handled through the Budget Adjustment Act, that we understand did go out through the house. Now we're just waiting to see where that falls, and we're hopefully gonna be successful there. So those are really the only two, asks that we've had that impacted our budget that were outside of the 3%. I'm happy to get into if you would like to hear what the future pressures might be. They're on page 10 of but our I don't wanna take up your time if you have other questions.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Well, actually one of my questions was gonna be what your cost pressures are that you're facing right now. Will so please, you know, proceed and talk a bit about that.

[Christopher Purkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: Thank you, chair. So again, the the wellness program, which to us is a cost of $200,000, which is what I spoke to with o two x, They real I I can't stress enough the importance of that program in that it takes away, some of the responsibilities that our training coordinators have when there's a full time, class in session, but really focuses solely on the recruit and their wellness during the time that they're here, making sure that whatever they might have for a pre existing injury before they come here is recognized, diagnosed, and then we give them an alternate path of keeping physically fit during the program without overusing whatever that pre existing condition was and then putting that person in a worse situation or a potential failure where they can't then complete the academy. So while we we don't have any say over who agencies send us, it is our responsibility once they send us to look out for their well-being. So for us, that's a that's an important program. We want to try to move forward with a de escalation curriculum, which to us would be a cost of about $250,000 We do. We did find and did apply for a grant for de escalation training that was awarded. We haven't accepted yet because we haven't gotten the Okay from the state to do that yet. So we're still waiting that. But given the pressures of we already do de escalation training, where we identify it in our curriculum, as well as how we do it in scenario based training and recognizing that there are other requests and other pieces of legislation around mental health crisis training and things in that nature. That's a worthwhile investment that will be a future pressure for us as well. If that gets given to the council for for us to be responsible for. Before you go ahead on

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: yep. Absolutely. Before you go so you said approval from the state in what sense? Who's approving the the grant?

[Christopher Purkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: I will ship that to Lindsey because she's got the best information for you on that.

[Lindsey Taverge (Director of Administration, VCJC)]: Hello. Yes. For the record, Lindsey Taverge, director of administration. So the I believe from our budget analyst, it's in process of signature. It has to go through the governor and then JFO to actually get to the point that we can accept that.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Okay, and so if that is accepted, you're saying that going forward, you may have a higher annual cost of implementing that, is that Did I understand that right?

[Christopher Purkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: That's correct. That initial funding would get us the technical and expertise from outside as well as partially the equipment to do that training. Then that would be a program that we would want to move forward with and enhance what we already do, but have a new program that would cost funding.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Okay, great. Thank you. Another question. I apologize. Another question. Angela.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Thank you very much. Just a question about that type of training. Just realized I don't know this. Does the Criminal Justice Council provide, and the police academy provide ongoing training or only as officers are being trained? Does the responsibility shift local law enforcement?

[Christopher Purkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: That no. That's a that's a great question. Yes. We do continue, with ongoing training. So we have two basic full time certification courses per year, and then we have three level two that'll go in between those two courses. So those are for part time certified. But all throughout the year, we have in service training that is offered to agencies. So agencies can conduct their own training. They can go out and get outside training wherever they want, but we try to bring programs to this state that are worthwhile for people that are already certified to further their education and further enhance their skills that serve the communities that they're facing. So for us, de escalation is just a continual. You know, everything that law enforcement does should start and does start with de escalation. So before you even insert yourself into a situation out in the field, de escalation should be the first and foremost thought on a law enforcement officer's mind. So it's traded heavily here.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Thank you.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Cure.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Just following up on I appreciate understanding how the system works and how sites can get their own training or come to you. What trends are you seeing? Is it kind of staying the same as far as departments choosing to use the council or doing things on their own, or is there a shift? What what what have you been seeing over recent years?

[Christopher Purkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: So some some courses are somewhat fixed and, in constant need by agencies. So a lot of times we'll have, FTO certifications or field training officer certification because agencies have to have certified field training officers to train their new recruits when they come out to them. Or if they're getting level two folks, they have to work with an FTO as well initially. Agencies are always in need of training for internal affairs investigations. They need supervisory training so that they can promote within their ranks folks that they feel are competent to help with the assistance of running their agencies. We host once a year, death investigation school, which is, something that almost all agencies look for to have somebody that's certified within their department that can handle death investigations because that's kind of a unique certification in that we provide that training, although it's not a certification training. It's part of the requirement to be able to be authorized as a person that can conduct death investigations, and that, certification actually comes from the elected state's attorneys in each county. They designate the law enforcement agencies within their county that have the authority and their training and the expert expertise to do death investigations. We also have a almost annual need for firearms instructors training, use of force instructor training, driver training. Again, every anything de escalation wise, these are all avenues that we try to bring in new training to make sure that agencies have a wide variety of things to choose from and then add to that the pressures of, you know, making sure that fair and impartial policing is not something that you're just taught at the Academy and then it goes away. That's something that's a continual progress, and agencies may need to make sure that their folks are up to speed on and that they're interacting with their communities in the way that their communities expect them to interact with them. That's just a piece on on in service training.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: And I apologize, I I'm curious if, like, regarding the number of departments that you serve for trainings, have you has that been going up, down, level?

[Christopher Purkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: I would say it's usually pretty steady. I think it's fair to say that because of the amount of time that we have within a year and how many offerings that we can offer, that it's fair. It's a fair statement to say that agencies also look outside into other states to get either specialized training or, you know, training for homicide investigations or crime scene investigation, things that require a very specific niche, but we may not get enough people that would come here for that type of training. So those are some of the things that agency specific might want to go outside away from the Academy for.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Okay, you keep on going. I know there are a couple more things you wanted to hit as far as future pressures.

[Christopher Purkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: Yep, the other two things are the IBR curriculum, the identity based curriculum. As I mentioned earlier, we had the job task analysis done. That was also through a contract that was working somewhat jointly with the I Atlas project that we're working with and the fair and impartial policing as well, but they go hand in hand. So a lot of people look at our fair and impartial policing policy and some will look at that and read it and say, boy, this is really a heavy immigration policy And while it does have a lot of components in immigration, our law enforcement partners, interaction with federal authorities, civil immigration law versus criminal investigations, It does in fact have all of that, but the identity based curriculum is more around officers taking the fair and impartial policing principles, but using that in their everyday life in their communities with the different cultures and the people that they deal with within their communities. So understanding the nuances of a different culture in somebody in your community or their religious beliefs or how they interact with law enforcement. That's what the identity based curriculum is really about, so we're trying to weave that into fair and impartial, but it's another big chunk, and we want to make sure that that's done in conjunction with and not separately from. So that's, that's another promotion that we would really like to move forward with. So we already have the job task analysis completed and we know where within the fair and impartial policing policy, all of those things interact. Now putting that curriculum into play is the next step. So that would be our next future cost. And then the the last one really that I just want to touch upon is, the legal services. We could literally use two full time attorneys here, and I know that's not in the books, or in the future with the state pressures that we're facing. However, I do know the responsibilities that are on our attorney. And aside from all of the tasks that I put on him and the policies that need to get reviewed, for adequate, processes on our part, the Administrative Procedures Act and just going through rule changes and the time that is allotted to that, and then the hearings and the stipulated agreements of unprofessional conduct, we're going to I I know undoubtedly we are going to have much higher costs in the realm of unprofessional conduct and how we manage those, those future hearings. And it's something that we can't overlook because we are the body that is responsible for the certification of law enforcement officers. That's really the last future pressure that I wanted to speak to.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: I appreciate that. I really appreciate it. It sounds like at least for this coming or this next budget, it's fairly narrow. The only additional ask beyond the governor's recommend is that $30,000 for the language translation as I understand it. We should be looking in future budgets that there are some developing needs certainly. So no, this has been very helpful. I really appreciate all of your time and we may be seeing you again on some other things that we're gonna be looking at in the next few weeks. So I appreciate it. All right, so we're gonna move up. We

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: all have frozen. All

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: right, so we are gonna move on though. You're all frozen, apparently, but

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: I think it's enough. It's sad.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: It seems to be fine. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Alright. So I'll the live

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: stream. Shouldn't be

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: So they all Just double check the live stream to make sure that we're

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Gotta love the connectivity. Okay.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: So we'll have we'll we'll move on to the defender general's budget presentation next, if you could join us.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I'll attempt not to freeze. You're gonna freeze up on us, too? My guess is they were all in the same place.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: I

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: have to

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: kind of hook up.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Oh,

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: I'm sorry. No. No. She's she's oh, sorry. Thank you again, Christopher and Holly. We lost you for a few moments, and we're moving on to to the Attorney General. Really appreciate your time. That was a very helpful presentation.

[Christopher Purkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: It's a great way to end my conversation. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: All right. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: did forget to ask somebody. They had 74 level three grads last year. I wonder if that compares to last year, so

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: I can find Right. Out Well, that's the thing I'm trying to get at. Like, they serving the same number? Are they seeing less?

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: I think they have to have the same hours of class if it's a full class or if it's

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: a partially attended group. Yeah. But if it's not well attended, that's not a concern. It's fewer than you.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: It's yeah. And I highly recommend if if they provide an invitation again this summer, I know at least Alicia and I and there were a few others who went, they had like a day there where we could see what they do and it was good. It was a good learning experience.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I could miss you.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: You were there?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Oh, you were there.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: You have it covered.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Do you need to be

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I need to actually be able to get here.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Let's see if I can Do you need to become a co co host?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I just did get some. I think she's working now. This link isn't clicking. Oh. It's fine. No. No. Mine. Alright. Oh, cool. I'm good.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: This is not my This is right there.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: You'll

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: be happy to talk to you about it. Right, maybe we'll be right back to get you set up. So is your, the budget documents, would that be on the JFO site as well? Do you know? You're asking me? Fair enough. I will look myself,

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: see if I can find it.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: I think I think I saw it, but not I'm not sure I saw it.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: That's not even don't even bother with that. I'm gonna show you what you need to see.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Oh, good. Alright.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Because the when I first was DG these budget docs that we would they were 12 pages. And this year, they're 43. Yeah. So and, literally, there's no additional information being provided.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Wait. Is that is that a document that came from the the federal general's office or from JFO? No. 43

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: We have to fill out some kind of

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Thing. Oh, okay. So it's alright. Okay.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: This house of folks

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: No. It's unbelievable.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Oh, I you know? Well, they have an open place. But isn't that isn't that the documents that we require in in the statute that I asked you about a couple weeks ago?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yeah. It used to be 12 pages. It's now 43. Yeah.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Because here's what he's saying.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I'm giving you GUI now. There's there's literally pages and pages and pages of stuff that are irrelevant.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: What are the It is. It's a relegated movie. No.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: No. Seriously.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Was able to stop being infected. And it seems like I'm here, but You're you're right. Can see you.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: He's got

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: a little here. Oh, there's nobody over there. No. They're here. They gotta let me in.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: We're alive. Just hang. Just hang out.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Well, there he is there.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: He didn't even notice you were calling me.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: I know. I know. Everybody did but Karen.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I wonder nothing but tap tap.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: We'll we'll have you up and running at any moment.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I believe you. Our our

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: tech who returns. Sorry. I was thinking I

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: that's alright. Okay. Alright. All

[Watson (technical host/support)]: set.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. We see that, Watson.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yeah. Oops. You're muted. You're good. Yeah. Just a big holiday. It's a shoddy holiday. About how you look at it. Very poppin'. It's poppin' all right. From the beginning.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Is this that 43 page one, or is that

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: No. This is what you need. Okay. Are you trying to irritate me? You ready?

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Yes. Yes. We're all set.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: It's unknown. Do we have this? Complete the case. This? Yeah. No. Senate judici I mean, House Appropriations had it. They did this exact thing last week.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Okay. On their committee page.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: But I have to say that yeah. No. This is the one. Anyway, I'm Matt Valery. I'm defender general, and this is the budget for '27.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: It's a pleasure to be here. I'm so happy. So

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: defendant, if you don't know, sometimes I have to go into these probabilities, and they think I'm the attorney general. And so I have to tell them what we do. Do I have to tell you that? No. I think we're I think we're good. Alright. If you need a refresher, it's this slide. This is important, though. We're structured in a in a unique well, you'll be able to see it on your screen when you pull it up at another time.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: So we don't have access to now.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Right. It's the the defender general's office is split into basically two types of programs. So on the one hand, we have the public defense cell. Right? So we'll move that right there. It's kinda finky. And the green side is assigned counsel. Public defense side is primary public defense, which is the staff ops and the contract office to provide the primary public defense option. They represent about 60% of the state caseload. The other side, which is it's called the signed counsel, but it's the conflict side. So where they're at conflict with cases, and clients On the public defense side, those get pushed to the conflict side of the program. I budget and manage both sides of that program. And on each side, there are serious felony units that handle homicides and some very serious life in prison cases, like serious sex cases. And and that's on both sides. We also have what I call caseload relief contracts, which do a couple of different things. One, the most primarily now what they do is when all of the conflict contractors have a conflict, the courts get and one of the cases is a felony. The courts give me a call, send me an email, and say, hey. We've got this case, and all of our local conflict contractors have a conflict. So, can you get us a lawyer? And I have these caseload relief contracts, and that's what they do. The other thing they can do, and although it hasn't happened as much in the last year or so, if somebody in a staff office is out on, parental leave or they are ill and can't work for an extended period of time or whatever, I can deploy a case load relief contract to accept cases in that county to keep that case flow covered. On the assigned counsel side, you also have the assigned counsel conflict side. We also have ad hoc assignments, and that's cases go to ad hoc. If all of the conflict contractors have conflicts and there's usually, now it's only it's only misdemeanors. Because if it is a felony, I send it to a case of a relief contract. There are times and I may I I've not actually run into one where I had to send a felony to ad hoc in a while, but I think there might be a case coming now out of Windsor County, where there's, like, 11 codefendants. And I don't know if I have enough lawyers under contract to do that. And so then when that happens, the court has to find ad hoc counsel, which is basically somebody, anybody with a pulse and a law license who's willing to take the case. That's why usually it's just very minor misdemeanors that go that way. And but we'll see what happens with that. But here's there's important things about remembering these distinctions between primary public defense, conflict contractors, and ad hoc, and I'm gonna explain some of that. First, what I did wanna talk to you about is basically what the governor's recommended budget does. It effectively continues the current service level. It provides funds, the the ben you know, staff salary and benefits that roll out, and some of that is subject to collective bargaining agreement with our nonlawyer staff. All of the lawyers are exempts and, don't fit under that, but we are under the defender general's pay plan addendum, which is pretty much a rote situation unless and, you know, if you aren't getting a step, you're probably getting close to being fired. So the bottom line is, steps occur pretty regularly. We also have, as I said before, primary public defense contracts. Vermont evolved from the very beginning in from from when the system was devised in the early seventies, where we have staff offices, like in Chittenden County and St. Albans and Addison County, and also contract public defense offices, like what we have in Windsor County and in Washington County. When I first started SDG a long time ago, those contracts were negotiated on an annual basis, which led to a lot of uncertainty in budgeting. What I did one of the things I did very early on was I made those contracts, four year contracts, that coincided with my term. And so this year, this past year, I was reappointed to do another four year term. I'm one year in. This year is the second it's the year two increase that was negotiated as part of those four year public defense contracts.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Yeah.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: We have it was also provided in the in the government's recommend an increase for public defender serious felony unit contracts. I can give you I think it's important, actually, that kind of understand this. And then also for the conflict SFUs, we just divide this. There's no real rhyme or reason. You can put them in one lump because they both get conflicts or primary public defense murder cases. But when I was again, going this goes back a long way, but I think it's important. Serious felony units were implemented Yeah. Under my watch, and they were originally budgeted for $150,000 per unit. Governor Dean at the time was holding that money, froze the money. And then I got appointed, and I said I can implement them for a $100,000 and save you $50 a unit, which we did. Over a period of years, I've increased those payments to, you know, one ten, one fifteen, one twenty, whatever. Right now, we are at a So 150 the bottom line is today, as we've said, those units are getting funded the same as they were originally appropriated fiscal year 2002. And so I told them that we need to increase those because one of the other things that happened is all the other contracts have kinda caught up. And so there's an increase for those two things. Question? Yeah, Kim, go ahead.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Thank you, Chris. And as you're sharing this, it's reminding me maybe of last year's, you just know this budget for your books has been a very long time that you've worked with it. And so in seeing this, just to get context, you are not asking for anything outside of the governor's recommend. Is that correct?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: No. That's not correct.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Okay. So he's saying that you're saying is what's in the governor's recommend right now.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Right. The this provides the governor's recommend does provide for an increase in third party services, but that primarily is is investigators and other people we have to employ to do our casework. We do a lot of investigation. We also do and this is on the assigned counsel side and the public defense side if you have a contract. Those we're using private investigators routinely. Our private investigators are currently getting paid $50 an hour, which is less than half of what pretty much everybody else in the system around New Hampshire, New York, Massachusetts are and the feds. Feds are, like, one seventy five, I think, or one twenty depending on what it is, but one twenty five, one seventy five. New Hampshire is anywhere from 90 to 125. Massachusetts is over 100. They've been asking for a number of years for an increase, and I did increase them some from $40 to $50 a couple of years But I have gone in. I've asked for the money. I haven't always gotten it. And this year, we've had some got some more money for that. There's also kind of the minimal increases, you know, for rents and those sorts of things that it provides for, you know, IT stuff and and those those kinds of things. That's not a huge increase in the budget. I will kind of re I wanna reiterate or at least tell you folks I've reiterated in other places that the whole rent situation around the state is an annoyance to me. BGS is tasked with doing this, and it doesn't work well. You know, I will we'll have to create a budget that has a 3% increase, and they'll come in and get 19% increase in rent. And I'll tell them I'm not doing it. And then I they get mad at me because I negotiate behind their back and get a 6% or 5% increase or whatever. I've been doing this over and over again. And I asked I said, did you do you understand that we are being asked to create a budget with a 3% increase and then you come with 19%? And they go, no. Said, do you talk to finance when they get no. So I just I get, you know, annoyed, and I put myself in the middle of it. And I negotiate directly, and they don't like it, but I do it anyway. And so this this issue is one that has this past year, we had a number of different places that changed changed rentals. And so it was a little bit tense with BGS.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: So far, my question. So does BTS give you a breakdown on why they're charging you back?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: No. Not really. Well, it's not they're not it's not they're not renting from, you know, kind of state buildings. What I'm talking about is where we've got where we have to rent you know, we're renting from private people in, like, Addison County and in in Franklin County and the like. And then they do the they send out an ad. Whoever answers the ad, they answer the ad. But, you know, my big one of the big complaints about this issue, and I don't wanna get hung up on this in this budget presentation, but is that I don't think they know the market. And I know the market in these various areas, having been doing this for a long time. And we had In the Northeast Kingdom, we were looking for rental space up there with the idea that we had to potentially establish a staff office instead of a contract office. And they came back to us and said, there's no place to rent. Meanwhile, I had people bidding on contracts. Three different people or three finalists who came in. Each of them came in with a place to rent, and one of them came in with two places. But BGS couldn't find any place.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: They don't, like, follow the happy guestroom bids on stuff. And then, like

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Well, they they put the ad in, and and and whoever answers answers. And if there's three, there's three. If there's six, there's six. But nobody answers those ads. The bottom line is it's just one of the things that we know, we know what's going on in the ground. You know? We know what the market is in those areas. And and so I know it anger is the word. I don't know. Anger is the word. They don't like it when we get involved, but I can't not do things because they say, oh, we don't have anything. And we, you know, we we found our own places. We end up negotiating our own deals, and then and and, you know, we waste a lot of time. So, anyway, that's just I'm just I'm it was rent increases are in there, and they are minimal because I negotiated. We've said this many times when I come in here, and I think that people would now pass over it and don't under you know? Because they don't remember the way it used to be. We've been within budget, without budget adjustment, for twenty four consecutive years and twenty six actual budgets. And before that I'm I'm just trying to give you some facts here. For the twenty nine years before that, DG's office would be in the red every year. They would literally stop paying people in the middle of the year. They would furlough people. They'd stop operating. Cases would get pushed pushed to ad hoc council. And it was, you know, it was not good. So, you know, it is one of the things we're proud of is being able to maintain this understanding that we've created now a structure so that we can stay within budget without budget adjustment, and what levers we have to push and buttons we have to pull over, whatever, pull the levers, push the buttons to make things work. And, you know, it's a delicate balance, and every year I'm adjusting things. But it it has worked for you know, this will be the twenty sixth going into the fiscal twenty seventh, it'll be the twenty sixth consecutive budget that I'm confident we'll be able to do the same thing. So doesn't mean everything's all rosy. Biggest issues that we have going forward are that there aren't enough lawyers out there that wanna do this work. We have difficulty keeping and maintaining case load relief contracts and assigned council conflict contracts. Two years ago in Chittenden County coming here from Chittenden County, raise your hand. Okay. I had five primary Everybody. There you go. Now that's no surprise. It's representative of the

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Right. Now I'm curious about that. Why is that not a surprise?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Well, it's a whole bunch of people.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: People are. You

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: know? It does represent 39% of the state caseload, so perhaps 60% of the house judiciary committee. But I don't know. 60. I don't know. Anyway, I had five prime I had five conflict contractors. Five. I had two backups, and I had one backup to the two backups. I also had five case load relief contracts. Right? Right now, I have four primary conflict contractors in Chittenden County. I have no backup. I have no backup to the backup, and I have three case load relief contracts. So I'm down almost 50% in the available people who are willing to do this work in Chittenden County right now. So the ones who are left, the four who are left, are making an awful lot more money, and they are handling an awful lot more caseload. And they are getting help out of them Because while it is you know, on on the one hand, it's a it's just a lot of work for four people. And what I also do now is I have to call in case load relief contractors from the South to handle cases in the North in Chittenden County. And that's not the only place, but Chittenden County is an example of what I was just talking about, being able to attract and keep these folks. Part of this is just pure demographics of lawyers. People are who are doing the work are old. They're retiring, and they're not being replaced by younger people because the bar as a whole is old. It's retiring, and it's not getting replaced by younger boys. We have this problem at Chittenden County? Absolutely. It's costly. It's all over. It's the entire state. But Chittenden County, I'm just giving you as an example. If you want, I'll go through every town for you. No. Chittenden County is good. But but there are places where it is more tenuous. But because of the amount of the caseload in Chittenden County, it it's it's a pressure cooker there. Northeast Kingdom may even is worse for be having even less lawyers. So I'm pulling lawyers in from, like there there are almost none of the lawyers in the Northeast Kingdom are in the Northeast Kingdom who are doing the work. They're coming in from other from Washington County, from Windsor County, all over the place. And when you do that,

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: that costs more money. Right?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: None. No. Not really. I mean, I have to I probably have to pay a little bit more if I'm gonna attract somebody from Washington County to go up there, but it's not it's not significant. I have to pay mileage for them to travel up there. But with you know, this is where the video stuff works, is is being able to do noneventually hearings, you know, kind of the logistical stuff, status conferences and discovery conferences, that kind of thing. You do by by video. And it allows us to handle this distance. That similar issue in, you know, in Windham County. Every every county has its has this issue. Every county. But it's really that there's a lack of lawyers who are under the age of 40 who are the ones who are traditionally drawn to do public defense work. And Vermont law school produces almost no lawyers for Vermont. And, you know, it is a big problem. It is it's bigger than public defense. States attorneys, I know, have the exact same problem, hiring people. When I was first DG in the in 2000 first ten years, if I had an opening in the staff office in Chittenden County, get a hundred hundred applications. Now I advertise. I can go months with with no no applicants. I and then I get three applicants in there, someone who's been doing real estate law in New York and thinks coming to Vermont would be a good thing, with no experience doing criminal law whatsoever, and they're not even licensed yet. That seriously, this is what I'm dealing with. So, you know, we've done some things. It's a separate issue, but these are some of the challenges that, you know, this this budget is encountering encountering. You know, over time, the private sector for attorneys, has again begun to, since COVID, has begun to outstrip what is available in the public sector. And I've told this story a number of times. Have a niece who graduated from Proctor High School, went to Holy Cross, then went to Catholic University School of Law. She was a very good student, but she wasn't, like, number one in her class or anything. She got a job just outside of Boston in a medium sized, like not hailing door with 15,000 lawyers or whatever, but a medium sized firm in in Massachusetts. Her starting salary, having not practiced one day of law in her entire life, was $200,000 She got a $40,000 signing bonus that she stayed for six months. They paid her $10 to move there. And then she got a bonus at the end of the year if she made her hour hours. And at the end of her first year, she put $300,000 in her pocket. Our starting salary is 63,000. So, you know, we have a if you have law school debt, you make your choice. So the bottom bottom line is I haven't been able to hire anybody at $63,005.06, 7 years. So I'm starting people at $80.80 to 90 in that range anyway, just because that's what the market bears. The bottom line is there are all of these factors that are mitigating against, you know, being able to kind of fix this problem. We don't really have we don't have enough there's no competition. You know? It's not it's not an oversupply of lawyers where they're all fighting for a job. The private sector is paying more. We don't we have a law school that doesn't produce Vermont lawyers. And so, you know, when I'm hiring people this year, I've gone to Kansas. I've gone to Nashville, Tennessee. I've gone to Florida. I've gone to North Carolina. That's where I'm hiring people from, people who want to escape south oftentimes, and attracting people who have an affinity for sort of what they perceive as, like, the Vermont culture. The ones from Florida don't usually stay, honestly. I had one that came up the company in September. It's like, this is awesome. I love Dubai. This is, like, the most beautiful place on earth. And we had our first snow in the November. They were like, well, this must go away by, like, March. I'm like and we had a we had a holiday party, and it was below zero, and it was snowing. And then she quit and was gone by the first of the year. I can't do this. I gotta get the hell out of here. Anyway, so let me let people on the budget start.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Can I ask yeah? Go ahead, Ian. One question before you go to

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: just because talking about young attorneys and trying to get them in Vermont I think is something that we've been hearing and thinking about here in this committee. My one question is, when you're trying to retain people for these contract positions, do you hear at all about one of the barriers or one of the difficulties in attracting people is just that for a young attorney not having benefits with the contract prevents them from being able to do the work?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: They don't like it. Yeah. And has it's always been a thing. Well, we don't get this. We don't whatever. You don't understand the way these contracts are, you probably do. But our design is so they are designed so you can have other work. They're not a lot of them are not full time. You know, in the old days, they used to be point three of an LEC or equivalent case load. Think of an LEC as, like, an FTE, full time employed. It's like a point three or a point five. You know, now they're point 7.8. And so you can take other work. So you can do personal injury work or private criminal work or whatever it is you wanna do, wills and trusts, whatever. And it was never really considered, this is all I do. Well, now the contracts have gotten to the point where people build their entire firms around the contract, and they supplement it with other work. What they used to do is have other work and supplement it with the contract. So the the design has sort of changed. And as a result, the the payment per lawyer equivalent caseload has gone up significantly. When I was first DG, it was $35,000 per LEC. It's now a minimum of 150,000 per LEC. But if you have a half a contract, that means you get $75. The biggest deterrent that I have found is and I've expressed this to people who's been in the court, is that some courts treat part time contractors as if they're full time employees of the court. They don't understand. They don't work for them, number one. And number two, they just they have expectations that are not consistent with a half time work. And so people are like, I'm just not doing it because I could easily make this money, in another way. It'd be you know, the availability there's a whole bunch of reasons why you have to do contracts, and they all have to do with conflicts. So we can't treat them like employees. And while this comes up every now and then, we try to provide other benefits, like all of their training is free. All of their you know, we send them we send them to trial school. We do a bunch of things that get them Westlaw for for no money. We there's a bunch of things that we can provide them that sort of cancel out the fact that you don't have health insurance. Although, god knows what that's gonna look like now is in in any event. Yeah. It's it's an issue. I don't know how you get around the conflict side of it and the requirement that you be an independent contractor and and providing that.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: I appreciate it.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I there I think there are I have an idea about that, but that's not for today.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: Yeah. Because I was just thinking of, yeah. Like, someone coming out of law school, and they're trying to, like,

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: have a family and to like,

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: what ways that you could yeah. Just try

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: What I try to do with those folks who are interested is I place them with firms that already have contracts. And so then they have people they could deal with. Now this is just to give you the context of what we're coming out of. In fiscal year twenty four, there was a small increase in felonies, small increase in misdemeanor, huge increase, 60% in probation violations. For the for this is the full year, fiscal year twenty five. We had 11% over 11% use cases. And cases are people. Right? Charges are counts, effectively. And this is comparing '25 to '24. I set it out this way because everybody's already always interested in their own county. I for fiscal year twenty five, which ended in July, you can see the various ones where there were significant increases are improved and some where there were decreases.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: And,

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: you know, the thing I'm always concerned about is, like, what happens in Chittenden County? Because it represents such a big part of the caseload. We had a 15% increase in clients and a 20% increase in the number of charges that were attached to the clients. I don't really worry too much about counties like you know, for example, Orange has a has a small relatively small caseload. But ones like Windsor, Rutland, Bennington, tend to be lots of caseload. I was advised by a representative from Addison County that Addison County only gets a thousand more people than Bennington County, yet, it has a significantly smaller criminal footprint. You'll notice that. Thank you.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: This goes back to to, I think, rep Goodnow's question and the piece of of that you've shared that the balance that the budget is always balanced each year, and you don't need a BAA adjustment. But you also mentioned the challenges that your budget faces every year. So I'm curious, are you kind of making changes within the budget to address those challenges? Based on the are there needs that aren't being met by the budget that is so well balanced? Every year? But can you share some of those? Like,

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: what you want? I'll I'll get there.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Mhmm. Just a quick question about that that is this fiscal year can you go back to the one that says fiscal year 2024 above that order? Should that be fiscal year 2025? No. That's one.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: No. This is where you compare fiscal year twenty five to '24.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: So Whereas it says a five for example, Addison County, 5% increase in cases, that's over fiscal year twenty four.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Got it. Thanks.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Comparing in two years. Flat. No. I understand. Okay. This is family cases, juvenile cases, CHINs, a b c d, delinquency, determination of parental rights. It was basically flat, but we had come off a year in fiscal year twenty four where we had, for example this shows 11% decrease in the things on my screen that you don't see, but it shows 11% decrease in termination of parental rights. That prior year, we had an 80% increase in termination of parental rights. They'd better go better go back somewhere. It just there's still a lot of The, otherwise, things are pretty kinda calm. But as you might expect, it was relatively flat. Sometimes those things, like, for example, you see Orleans County, had a big had a big increase, I think it was. Is it Orleans or is that Orange? Orange County. Sometimes you see that you have a DCF office that has had challenge you know, they had to hire. A bunch of people quit, left. District director wasn't around. Whatever wherever it was, you have staffing changes. And then all of a sudden, everything that had been held that prior year, even though it's not big numbers, you'll see a big increase. And a lot of it has to do with what's really going on locally. It's not it's not like a systemic thing. It's a personnel thing. This is the first half of fiscal year twenty six in public defense. I am actually if you look at I wanna I always keep talking about let's look at Chittenden County. Chittenden County is basically flat when you compare the '25. If you remember, I was in the summer, I came in and talked to Joint Justice Oversight, and it's like a 39% increase in caseload over the same period in Chittenden County. And I was like, if this continues, we're gonna have a big, big problem. Well, you don't the but don't get too excited because sometimes these things are a blip. And I actually I don't want get into the whole detail of it. I have an algorithm that I created over twenty years ago where we try to do some predictors and where caseload is gonna go. The 39%, that huge increase in the first quarter made no sense at all to me. But, know, Chittenden County killing it at that point. But we get finished the second quarter, and actually, we're down a little teeny bit compared to fiscal year 'twenty five. So that was a big relief, to be perfectly honest. And all it really means is we've kind of settled into something. Now I coming out of COVID, everything was weird. Nothing was normal anywhere. It had to do with all kinds of things. States attorneys who didn't have enough states attorneys and courts that losing staff, we were down six judges at one point, and nothing was getting processed. In any event, overall statewide, we're seeing about a 6.7% increase, on top of the increase from fiscal year twenty five, which I go back to, which was, 11/2003. So we're not seeing a decline. We're seeing this kind of constant big increase. And then it's a little bit less of an increase, but it's on top of big increases. And this is what we're dealing with, unfortunately. We're dealing with this caseload with less lawyers than we had before. That our staff system, however, aside from one person who resigned just recently, we were actually fully staffed in a staff system. This is just a way of kind of graphically showing what we have seen. The biggest increases, by the way, tend to be these other cases. And others are probation violations. That's what those are. And so graphically showing that, this is what you see. We saw some decreases year after year when you compare the '25 to the '26, except for, in probation violation cases. And overall, we're seeing the 6.7 increase. We always wanna talk about backlogs because that's all we seem to talk about. Backlogs are starting to go down. If you remember over a period of the last couple of years, I've come in with this exact same chart. This is core data. This isn't my data. But we started '25 with 14,000 in the backlog. It kinda nothing really changed. I'm like, here we go again. It tends to go up for whatever reason in July, August, and September, then starts to drop a little bit. But this year, it precipitously dropped through January '26. And this is just a snapshot of and I put this in. This is, again, for the benefit of representatives and senators who are how their county's doing. And this just tells you what the, you know, what the gross numbers are for their particular counties. People are interested in that. To me, from a allocation standpoint of of resources and the like, it doesn't mean as doesn't mean as much, any individual county. If you remember, I showed you this last year, and maybe you don't. But that dotted line you see across, this was when we were sort of paying off the credit card by making a minimum payment. Take you thirty nine years to pay it off, but eventually, you'll get there. But this is what it looks like right now. The last if you go from the '25, it was kinda doing that same thing,

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: then it went up a

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: little bit. But September, October, we've seen a pretty big decline. So we went from over 14,000 in the backlog to 9,000, and that's that's a significant reduction. We're still working on it. Now the only thing I worry about is there are cases that have come in in the first quarter and first half of this year, particularly that first quarter in Chittenden County, there's other counties too, obviously, those aren't in the backlog yet because they aren't old enough. So it would not surprise me if at some point you see a blip in this backlog just like you saw the decline. But these are kind of the caseload pressures. Now this is important. I put this every year, I put this out there, and I want you to try to focus a little bit on this. There are four primary ways we provide the service. Alright? PD staff offices, con public defender contracts, assigned counsel conflict contracts, and ad hoc counsel. This is the payment per lawyer equivalent caseload of the way we provide these services. The most efficient way that we provide the services by assigning counsel contracts, the conflict contracts. Well, it has to do with lack of benefits. The public defender contracts are another way that we provide them. Similarly, it's benefits issues, but it these are tend to be the bigger firms who have you know, 60% of their gross revenue of the firm or more is not public defense work. It's something else. And then you've got ad hoc console, which is far and away and continues to be the most expensive way we do business. Now this is like we're looking at fiscal year 2223 here. What I wanted to show you and I I try to, like, track this, we have actually reduced our cost for lawyer equivalent caseload between '23 and 25. Even ad hoc counsel is down. And so oddly enough, our cost efficiency has improved over the last three fiscal years despite increasing costs in other in in the in where we're getting kit, because this doesn't include operating expenses and other personal services, the cost of the actual the lawyers has gone down. Why? Because the old people are retiring, and they're more expensive. And the, ones who are left while they're getting paid more money are handling more caseload. When you break up a lot of contracts into, like, point 2.3 four, there's a diseconomies of scale that goes with that. Window contract get to be point 7.8, now you get an economies of scale because you're getting payment for volume even though they're getting paid more money. This is not necessarily a good thing. It looks good from, like, the bean counters, but it's I will question whether it is sustainable from a workload standpoint. This is the comparison. A little decrease in PD staff offices. That's primarily because older people have retired. PD contacts went up a little teeny bit, but if I had stretched that out over a period of other years, the reason it went up from $2.25 to $2.40 per LEC is because we entered a new contract period for that four year contracts that I talked about earlier. Signed council contracts per LEC have dropped. Remember I said it was a minimum payment per LEC, so of 150, we're at 163, we were at 183. And for AdHoc Council, the reason this is actually the most kind of most interesting to me. When you can drop ad hoc from $6.71 per LUC to $5.53, it means that we're doing a really good job keeping it in misdemeanors. Because misdemeanors are cheaper and they they have lower caps. So if we're doing all the right things, which is keeping felonies out of ad hoc, you should see that decline every so often. And that's what we did. So I'm just

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: gonna do a time check. We have about ten minutes, and Nigel folks have meetings that they have to go to at quarter end

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: or so. Yeah. Don't worry. I've done this. I got this time down to, like

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: What if we have budgeting to sell about the new things?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: This is just a graphic showing you what's happened with ad hoc over the years. It used to be the kind of thing we were looking at trending toward 1,200,000.0. And now it represents a minuscule portion of the caseload, which is exactly what we should be doing. This is the ups and downs sheet that you see. I put it in here because some people like to look at that. I barely look at it. Fifth is the part that you probably are all interested in. What didn't what didn't they what is not in the government's recommend that I'd like to see, and any other kind of issues. Oddly enough, other personal services in the conflict side of the budget received a $250,000 increase. Other personal services on the public defense side, spent the same $250,000. My guess is they're just trying to make stuff fit because I can't rationally understand why you would do that. So that's why that's number one on the list. Number two on the list, this is one. Remember this slide I showed you about cheapest way we do business is to sign council contracts? They still need increases. And that, we didn't get any of that. There's $250 we were looking for, which we didn't we didn't get. And to me, you have to lean into your most efficient way of doing business, and that is conflict contracts that are out there. Finally, and this is just sometimes when you work for government, you wanna just smash your head into something. And in person training is one of the things that I've been in my head for four years. During COVID, I said, we aren't gonna do in person training so you can take that one out. And then we got out of it. I'm like, we'll put it back in. And then it didn't. And then it didn't. And last year, went in, but it went I it's supposed to go back in the base. They put it in one time. I have no idea why it went one time because we do it every time. I want and I told them, like, in the appropriations, I know you don't have control of this. Right? But the $80,000 concerns goes into the face of the budget, not in one time money. So I can train people. That's why it's there. Okay? The the two unfunded additional needs are the an issue we deal with every single year, and I just bring it up so that people don't think I've given up or forgot about it. The public defender special fund is funded by copays and the like on a sliding scale, and ordered by the court on a kind of a regular basis. Every year, we get spending authority of around 600,000. I think it's 589 or something. And we haven't gotten that kind of money in six, seven years. They collect way less. So while they're spending authority, there's no money. And I don't spend money we don't have. And so it's a total fallacy to think that we have $589,000 to spend to balance the budget. What it really means is that start every single year with the difference between the spending authority and the actual money. And it averages it's averaged out about $290,000. So I always start out with a $290,000 hold. So I bring it up again, and this happens every year. The other thing is this year, I think, make everything work, they put in a vacancy savings of $610,000, which no way in hell is that ever gonna happen. I don't have that many people leaving. It's it's not gonna happen. And realistic vacancy savings would be about $300,000. And so I put it in as an unfunded additional need. So those two things at the bottom, what I end up doing is I just end up holding positions open longer. I don't fill a position. I do all kinds of things to make sure that we stay within our budget because it's you know, I do these things all the time, and I've been doing them for years. But I don't wanna ever let it sly that I'm not recognizing the fact that you're starting with a $290,000 hole and then another $310,000 that I don't have that you have declared that I have even though I don't. So it adds up to $1,100,000, one thing. But but the bottom line is if I can get the things I need to fund the current services that remain unfunded, that $580,000, then I can deal with the rest of it and and be okay. The the bottom line, it you know, the in person training was actually in the budget. I mean, I'm not even asking for new money. I'm just saying put it in the right place. So what it really boils down to, I have a 30 plus million dollar budget, and I'm looking for half 1,000,000. And it's it's not a lot that I should get. It.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: It's a a statement like it's already

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Well, I think I should. But I but I understand the way these things work. They gotta you know, they when they're doing a budget, they add things up and, well, we gotta take some out of everybody, so we'll take some out of that. And that's what it adds up to. In our budget, that $500,000 is not even rounding error. It's not even it's you know, the average promoter would say that's a lot of money, but it's not a lot of money, even 30,000,000 plus that that is the bucket as recommended. So, honestly, we're very we're very close. I and I've actually said this to Adam Gresham. You know? I'd love to go in one year and just say, we're really content with the governor's recommend. We're very close. Honestly, we're very close. But what did I say? Close is only good in core shoes and hand grenades. So this is a budget.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Different. So just to not put too final point on it, if you don't fund the attorney contracts, you might be looking at the ad hoc, which is just you have to defend, and it's just a lot more expensive.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Right. And we also and there's there's a whole bunch of problems with ad hoc, but you have to have it out there. It it costs, you know, three three to four times what what a contract costs. We have no control over the quality of the representation because they're the court is just finding warm bodies. It's not it's we don't have any ability to train them. It's just somebody who's willing to do it. And and so it's not a it's not really the best way to provide a service. But right now, it's such a small number, and it's only misdemeanors that it, you know, doesn't bother me that much in the aggregate. Any individual case, it might bother me if I kinda peel back the layers of the onion. But the the bottom line is it really is very, very small. We're talking, like we do twenty two thousand cases overall a year, and it's, like, 69 cases. So yeah. So the 500,000 is above 3%. Is that right? We had a 6.4% increase over last year. But it's this is the 500,000 over the governor's recommend. Right.

[Christopher Purkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: Right. Which is 3%.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: No. No. Which was 6.4%. Oh, okay. Okay. Gotcha. But if you like, if you add it in and do the math, instead of 6.4%, it ends up being, like, 6.9%. It's the the percentage difference is key. Any

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: other questions? All right, not saying. Thank you very much, Matt, for being here. That was very helpful. Try to get it for you. You should have it. Yeah, you should have it. I agree with that. That's it. We're adjourned in April tomorrow at nine. We're at the pavilion tomorrow to hear about pilot, the three d pilot. I think we have Matt coming in tomorrow morning, I believe. Uh-huh. Yeah. At some point. So