Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Back to the house and senate judiciary committees. We're continuing to receive testimony of public safety and specifically the Chittenden County three b docket. Okay. So welcome. Identify yourselves for the record.

[Teri Corsones (Vermont State Court Administrator)]: Thank you. I chaired for sound state administrator.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: And Tom Zonnay, chief superior judge. So we do not have a flashy PowerPoint today. What we, I think, to say is that as you've seen, you've heard testimony about lessons learned and the benefits from the 3B pilot docket. I think it was representative Arsenault who may have mentioned something about, well, isn't this best practices throughout the state? In other words, you give the people who are coming into your courts the time, you give them the resources, and you also give them a location to meet. And that enhances not only the outcomes for the individuals who come in, but it also enhances public safety. And so what we've learned, I think Zach said it very well this morning, and that was when you put all this together and you have communication and you have a common goal, we can achieve things in our criminal justice system that just going through the normal system, their normal docket, the way we've handled things, hasn't been achieving. And so the question for the judiciary right now is, okay, so we saw what happened in Chittenden. We saw that when you put these intensive services in that community, you can get real benefits. Significant dozens of individuals who 79, I think, case of defendants last I knew, over 700 cases dockets resolved. But it's not just about numbers, it's about people. And when you're delivering services earlier, the opportunity for individuals to get the help they need, and still of course have due process support, because just because someone's getting assistance doesn't mean they're guilty, but it lets them get assistance. And we heard about the warm hand on. You heard about the services being there and people taking advantage of it. Well, that will enhance outcomes. And the enhanced outcomes for the individuals, we don't have studies on recidivism and there's no numbers that we can point to and say, See, it worked. What we do know from the criminal justice system is that if you get someone help earlier, they take advantage of that opportunity, you are greatly reducing the potential for recidivism and you are enhancing safety. We've seen a lot of this in the judiciary and other areas of state government with the focus on mental health. We have the Mental Health Commission. We have an individual who has been working with us, and we talked about this yesterday in house judiciary, about a mental health coordinator to try to help get services delivered to the courts. Because you may have heard the expression SIM, sequential intercept model, the sooner we can get mental health services from resource, the greater the opportunity for someone to take advantage of them and benefit them. And so when we look at this program, the docket and how it has operated, the plan going forward is that we're going to start looking in other counties. And I would again agree with Zach when he said that it's not, first of all, it's not for every county. And I think Zach quoted the governor and I agree with the governor when he said that we have to be nimble. We have to look at each county, ascertain what is this core need? What are the number of five plus cases or even four plus, whatever it may be? What's the need and how can we address it there with available resources? Obviously, brings into budget impacts and how do we get the resources there? But the plan is going forward that we're going to sit down and I've asked each of the judges and each of the counties to let me know what they think work in their plan through conversations with their bar and their stakeholders. Charlie and I have already instituted procedures to start a meeting in a few weeks in one of the counties to talk about, okay, we want to open you up here. And what can we do and what do you need? A number of counties have already taken steps to segregate scheduling. Rutland County, for instance, if we did nothing there, Judge Goslant has set aside one day a month for for five plus cases, there's going to be a pretrial date. And that's a date that he worked with the defense and the state's attorney, and they have resources from Rutland Mental Health that come in on arraignment day. They've taken steps. But the plan is to see, okay, can we enhance that? And then look at other counties. The goal is to not take away from our existing docket to the extent possible. If we're taking a judge off the bench to handle these cases, well, then we're going to be leaving something as a gap. So we want to try to enhance that. So if we move a judge, ideally we may be able to use a retired judge to backfill so that we can keep all the wheels turning. But in any event, even if we didn't have that ability, even if it's a court house with no extra courtroom space or nowhere to do that, we have to address these cases anyway. They're part of our docket. And if we just leave open case time and say, as Sarah George talked about, the plan in Chittenden is Fridays. If we say it's going to be every Friday, that enhances people showing up. It also maximizes the potential for resources to know, Oh, Chittenden, Friday, that's the day we should be there. And so we're trying to employ those strategies throughout the state. How's it going to look in each of the different counties? As of today, we don't have that answer because we're currently working through it and it requires the input of all the stakeholders. And so again, in one of the counties, the plan is in a few weeks, we're going to be having a sit down, everyone's invited to say, Here's what Chittenden did. And by the way, we're inviting Zach, of course, and the others from the Chittenden project to come down because we think their ability to talk about the way it worked, whether it's coming up with a release, which new, because as Zach pointed out, oftentimes there's this contentious aspect. And this was the ability to make sure someone's afforded their due process rights, while also recognizing that there's something else going on here that we can help somebody with. And so that type of communication is good. And again, if somebody says, well, I don't want to participate or I want to trial. Absolutely, that's fine. That's what the system is designed for. But this provides an opportunity. And so any questions you have, we certainly wouldn't answer, but we support the concept of moving forward. Questions?

[Speaker 0]: Yes, Senator Boise.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: A few questions, and it might be too early for the data, but I'm wondering if you have any data on the clearance rates and reduction in backlog because of this in Chittenden County? I know usually at the beginning, you sort of discuss county by county, and, again, it may be too early.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: The Chittenden backlog as of December would have been, I believe, for the year, it it would have been 110. My understanding is that for January, I think the Chittenden, just January alone, it jumped up to 169. It was a really high number because everything was coming together. And so does this reduce the backlog and clear cases? Yes. And again, the benefit is you're reducing the backlog and clearing cases, but you're helping people and enhancing public safety. So it's a win in each category.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: Oh, absolutely. I also think we do have data that this works. We have fifty years of Department of Justice data that shows quick access to justice and restorative justice work. And this program is grounded in really both of those things. I'm wondering, and you may not know the answer, I'd hope to be able to ask Sarah this because she would better know the answer. But years back, I think it was about three years back, she implemented a program with a grant that she got that was meant to do something very similar, but unfortunately didn't have the governor's support, didn't have the dedicated court time and and the changes. Do you have any sense of how one, are you even aware of that?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: I'm not.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: Okay. Well, then you definitely won't be able to answer my question. But I I really appreciate that. And I'm also wondering, this is just back to caseloads, if you have any sense of how much the DSA caseloads have gone down in Chittenden County.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: I would not know the specific-

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: Like I said, these are questions I

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: have to say. Sarah or

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: Kim McManus may be able to have that information.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: Okay. Great. Thank you. Other questions?

[Rep. Thomas "Tom" Burditt (Vice Chair, House Judiciary Committee)]: I got a quick one here. Judge Zonie, you probably know how to answer this, but I know you're looking at this from a court's perspective as far as can these courts work. The 14 county districts, a a lot of this seems to be based on resources that are available in and around particular courthouses. Do you think that that's something probable that that that could work, like, in an Essex or Grand Isle or even down south? Are those resources available, you think, to the courts? Because seems to be

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: a partnership that it's either all or none from the advocates to the courthouses, to the MH, to everybody here. What's your opinion of that? If you start at a baseline, let's say zero, and you're going to go from zero to ten, let's call the Chittenden pilot docket at ten. Busiest city got resources that no one else has, it has jails within reasonable proximity, we have transports, we have the ability to do that. Then you have another county that might not have the resources and it's down closer to zero. My view is that we might not get to 10, but if we get to one, two, three or four, we're better than where we started. And so a county might not have the available resources today. Question is, can they have them tomorrow? What can we do to facilitate them having them tomorrow? And even if they don't get all the resources that we would find ideal, can we make those resources available to someone, even if it means traveling to a contiguous county or doing something a little different? But I think that we can build the counties based on build each of the counties up to the maximum that county may be able to have for resources. That's still better than what we have now.

[Teri Corsones (Vermont State Court Administrator)]: The efforts to ascertain the level of that involvement is already underway. We had the bi regional sequential intercept model workshops through the Mental Health and the Courts Commission over the past year and a half, where all of the stakeholders are brought together and collaborated. That's such a key component of this new venture and something that when we meet in each county that will they will be involved and we already have kind of the framework for what's available there. And we also would be able to take advantage of remote access as well. But as Judge Loni said, the idea would be to have in each county take full advantage of whatever resources there. And it's very consistent with what we're doing in any event, with the mental health and the courts commissioner, number of you have participated, we're at the regional workshop. So this, I think, is a great continuation of that. And we really appreciate the legislatures and the governors' recognition of how important that is for court processes in the criminal division, especially.

[Rep. Thomas "Tom" Burditt (Vice Chair, House Judiciary Committee)]: And you pretty much led into my next question, Terry. But I I commend all the stakeholders involved in this, and more importantly, certainly addressing, the accountability core along with the due process involved in its procedure here. But my question was going to be, so if the counties don't have the individual partnerships involved, you've already said that you've looked at this from a regional aspect of Maine. That would be great news. Yes.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: You commented too that you say you recognize that it's all the stakeholders coming together. Also, every now and then I think it's important to the legislature to turn a mirror back and look at itself too. Several years ago, your two committees were in favor of getting us more judges. And one of the positions that we advocated for was that we were going to have a statewide treatment court judge. And the thought was that we would expand things. We'd have one person who could bring consistency and really raise the level of what we were doing in the treatment course. One of the things that we heard, and I did this part of Zach's testimony, I apologize if he talked about this, was that the ability to have the treatment docket in Chittenden enhanced this community docket. It brought a benefit because there was a number of people who were able to take advantage of the treatment court option in resolution and it worked very well. Well, we have now a single treatment court judge throughout the state. And so what that does is it brings us the opportunity to use that benefit from Chittenden and not have to go back to square one to start recreating with a different judge, a different understanding, a different knowledge. But instead, in the counties where we have treatment courts, it's Judge Kevin Griffin. He's already on board to say, Okay, what can the treatment court do as we've done in Chittenden to help in this project? And so, without that extrajudicial position, our ability to really deliver something that we think might have real benefits for the state wouldn't have been what it is now. And so, don't think any of us were thinking about that at the time. We just knew that it seemed like the best way to go for reasons in that one category. But now it's another category. Thank you. Because without that judge, we don't have the results that we have up here. Some of the categories.

[Speaker 0]: Questions? Yeah. Senator Halsky.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: So, the first question is, do you think it makes sense to have a dedicated judge for this work like we did in treatment court? A judge that can move throughout the state and do this?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: I don't know that we have the resources right now to have a dedicated judge to move throughout the state. And that's for a number of reasons, including that the scheduling would be very difficult to have someone responsible for all of the counties. Right now with the treatment court and the number of dockets we have, it works. But if we were expecting someone to take on seven or eight counties, that's much more difficult to bring that into play. But the idea of having a dedicated judge as Ms. George represented, the new program in Chittenden that we're gonna continue on for the pilot docket, the plan is to have Judge Catos. So the idea is to have a consistent judge. It may not be the same in every county, but having a judge to bring some consistency to the docket, that is something we think is important.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: I'm a little concerned about sort of geographic justice. You know, we heard from the the last presenters that this is both effective and humane and connects people with the services they desperately need. I'm worried, as we're talking about doing this in some places and not others, about the geographic justice for people and that access to those same supports and resources, which sort of piggybacks on the question for you of how you plan to bring counties on board where the culture may be resistant to this type of model.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: The judiciary is in charge of scheduling cases and determining the docket time, what case is going to come in at what time. My position is that we have the ability to schedule. We have to schedule all of our cases at some point, if you will. And if we take a scheduling position in our courts that we're going to schedule X cases on every Wednesday or every Friday, that is a judicial decision and the attorneys have an obligation to work with us on that. One of the complaints that we certainly heard when cases not moving at a level that we find acceptable is from attorneys saying, Well, my clients aren't having the cases heard enough. There's due process issues. We want to fix things up. This enhances that. So, bringing cases in more should be something that everyone gets on board with because it's a win win. It provides more timely justice for individuals and the public interest, and it's something that we should all work towards.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: Absolutely. And I appreciate that you are able to schedule the cases. I guess sort of the the bigger piece here is, are you also able to push people in the direction of having service providers in the room and having these more frequent round the table conversations that aren't scheduled? You know, what what we've heard is that it's not just that courtroom availability that is what's making this work. But there's the aspects of service connection and the aspects of, you know, letting go of the

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: sort of adversarial role.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: So I I guess I'm wondering how if if there is a plan to sort of try to build that in places where the culture may not be as ripe for it.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge, Vermont Judiciary)]: Yes. If we look at case flow management strategies, one of the things that's important when you look at case flow is judicial leadership. Judges set the tone. Each county may have its own culture, but the judge is the one who's in charge of that county and making sure that the parties understand the common goal. Judges, the plan is we have bench bars, but to facilitate that, judges to bring people around the table, to try to find the common goals, identify what's going to work, and to let everyone know that it's not someone losing something, it's everyone gaining something. So what can we build together to do that? And are there counties where the culture is such that you have a prosecutor and defense attorney who might not see eye to eye? Are there counties where the prosecutor has a different prosecutorial view than for instance, Zach Waite did with his goals of trying to resolve cases. Yes. The challenge for judges is to try to bring those sides together. We'll do the best we can to try to highlight that. When push comes to shove, defense attorneys have a job to do, the prosecutors have a job to do, and it's important that we respect that. But again, highlight the benefits of coming together and trying to work on our common goal.

[Maria Godleski (District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, VT DOC)]: Yeah. I I really appreciate that.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: And I just sort of recognize, you know, in Chittenden County, Sarah's laid the groundwork for this for a long time. So it was really ripe to do this work. And I hope to see it expand because it's clear. It's very effective. Senator,

[Teri Corsones (Vermont State Court Administrator)]: we didn't want there to be misunderstanding. The plan is to convene these meetings in each and every county so that there will be the opportunity and the goals of implementing these tools and these strategies in each and every county, rather than saying in some counties, no, in some counties, yes. The plan is to do it in every county.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: Okay. So I misunderstood then when I was hearing that this was going to happen in some counties and not other counties.

[Teri Corsones (Vermont State Court Administrator)]: We wouldn't be able to implement the exact same model in Chittenden County and other counties. Primarily, we don't have an extra courtroom typically in every in every county. But the strategies, the tools, the convening of all the stakeholders know that, I mean, I think it's clear the advantages to that. And that's what we'll do everything we can to implement that. Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you so much for your testimony. Really appreciate it. Thank you. General Valerio can join us next. Thank you, Matt, for being here. Appreciate it.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Happy to be here. What can I tell you?

[Teri Corsones (Vermont State Court Administrator)]: Well, we

[Speaker 0]: like the Defender General view. Mean, we're focusing on the Chicken County three b docket pilot accountability court, what, any number of games Mhmm. And understanding how, you know, that has worked and lessons learned. That's really been the focus this morning.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Well, I think it we learned things that we all already knew, which is if you focus resources and efforts on a particular docket, you're gonna get results. And so that's what happened. We got extra judge time. We got an extra prosecutor. The, AHS

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk, House Judiciary Committee)]: had,

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: you know, resources that were directed toward, this effort with the multidocket cases. I designated two of the most experienced lawyers in the staff public defense office to focus on this particular docket. The our system, defender general's office, employed a social work organization, for $47,500 to work for three months to work with this particular docket. And as a result, we resolved, hundreds of dockets during that period of time. The, you know, that was a, kind of lurching start because it started on short notice. But, I think that everybody saw early on that, there were benefits to to doing it this way, and this docket was one that didn't have a lot of attention directly prior to this effort. And as a result, it was vanquishing. And people were who had, substance abuse issues, mental health issues, all kinds of issues that could be addressed by various social work efforts, started to get hooked up with services. And I think one of the things that the company we used was Therapeutic Works. They provided the connection, that didn't exist previously. So in the in the past, you might have orders to access, treatment or whatever. And you literally have people who are living on the street, are transient, who have mental illness, who have drug problems, or both. And they literally you could give them an order, but they literally couldn't get from a courthouse to access the services at AHS. And what TherapeuticsWorks did was basically get them there. It also provided after hours services to them, at their place of business where they had a drop in center. They had food. They had, soup. They had coffee. A place to be warm. A place to not be hanging out in somebody's door doorway in on Church Street and causing disruption. And as a result, this, you know I mean, I've heard it called the warm handoff. But, really, what was going on is that there was, social work going on from the time they, were ordered by a court, to do something. And those folks, this isn't lawyering. This is social work, made that happen. That made that connection occur between, the AHS folks and, the client. The other thing that was very helpful is, the Department of Corrections, very early on, was at the table, when it came to, a client who might be facing, like, a furlough sentence or a transition transitional housing issue. And and so rather than putting somebody directly into jail before you could access what was going on, they were at the table immediately. And the memo that I received from Josh O'Hara, was attorney managing attorney at the Chittenden office, was that they were like, no. This person doesn't have to go to jail. This person can go directly from where we are to a transitional housing, to a treatment center, and then back out the same way. So the negativity that comes with jail and we there are plenty of studies on this, and Vermont did its own study about, you know, likelihood of recidivism when people who have mental illness or have a drug addiction or have both, go into jail, even for a short amount of time, it it has a negative impact on recidivism. There was a study done by John Perry and Bill Young. Perry used to be the statistician guy for DOC. And Young, at least when I was first PG, he was the commissioner of DCF, but he'd been in government for forever. And they did a study on this some number of years ago. I still have it hanging around. Bottom line is if we can keep these people out of jail and keep but get them immediately engaged in treatment, the likelihood of a good result is better. Now you're not gonna save them all. You're not gonna result know, you're not gonna you know, honestly, if you got a fifty percent positive, it would be a tremendous, success rate. But DOC was right at the table helping with that, and that was a big difference compared to business as usual, with this docket and with any docket. Because, usually, they just kinda take what's coming to them as opposed to being involved in the transition planning right at the right at the beginning. So from a I I will say Chittenden County is was perfectly suited to do this kind of where you had a a group. You had you had enough numbers, where of attorneys, of prosecutors, of treatment providers, and the like, so that these, the services were available. The people who were doing the work, it was not taking away from you know, if we took one lawyer out of an office of 12 or 13 lawyers to designate to do this particular work as it came up, that worked well. But you know? And and then, you know, Howard Center was on board, you you know, and we we threw these resources at it, it worked. And that is, you know, that's that's the key. Now, a lot of these cases were the result, in part, at least, of, you know, dealing with this backlog we've been dealing with for a while. So people stayed out on conditions of release for long periods of time. And with the struggles that they had just to kinda live an everyday life, they picked up charges along the way. So being able to resolve those charges, get them access to treatment was a huge benefit to them and to the docket. One of the things that I said at the beginning, and I meant this, I still mean it, is that the mentality of what was going on from the public defense side did not change. Their job was to represent the client. And so if the client wanted a trial or if the client had a constitutional issue that arose regarding charge a charge or charges or whatever it was that came before the court, that was not gonna change, and they were not giving up rights to access this. And so there were some number of cases that fit the criteria for, the three v docket that didn't access that. But as you would expect with this group, the vast majority did, and a lot of progress was made. And and so I think, overall, it's very legitimate to say that it was a very successful project for a lot of different reasons.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: Senator? Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate that. And I've been advocating actually that we embed social work in our state's attorney's offices for years for exactly the reasons you point. But when you're saying

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Should actually be the other way around.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: So that that was actually my question before we finish it. Was should it be embedded in the state's attorney's office, or should it be embedded in your office?

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Well, traditionally, what has happened in around the country, and, like, Connecticut just went through a process like this, and they embedded social workers in the defense offices.

[Jaye Pershing Johnson (General Counsel to Governor Phil Scott)]: Okay. So

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Because to be perfectly honest, the clients don't trust the state's attorneys or the Department of Corrections or AHS or any of the people who aren't there to represent them. So the that was one of the great benefits of, you know, the Therapeutic Works folks is they knew that they were working for them. They were they were on their side. And so when you give them advice, when you direct them to, like, look. You should access this person. They're there to try to help you. They buy that. And they also have the ability, that particular group now around the state, it's a whole different ballgame, but they have, you know, licensed clinicians who can do the same kinds of screening, can see whether or not whatever screenings were going on with DOC and AHS were legitimate because part of what the defense job is is to make sure that everybody else is doing their job the right way. You can't just rely on the Department of Corrections or anybody else to just do the right thing. It's our job to make sure that they do the right thing. And and the clients, by and large, know that. And so when the advice comes that, well, this is really something you should do, they accept it. And that's why traditionally and around the country where social workers are used, they're attached to the defense function as opposed to somewhere else.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: That makes a lot of sense. Do you have a sense of what a proposal would look like to provide that across the state through your office and what that cost would be?

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: No. But I could tell you what it would be in Chittenden County because I I didn't know how long this was going to last. Bottom line is I did three months for $47,500, So multiply it by four. Mhmm.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: And Was that because it was a short term contract? If you had a long term standing contract, could that be negotiated to a lower yearly rate?

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: I don't know what the, I don't know what the I don't know what the other side of the negotiation would be like. And I actually thought that I was gonna get a better deal than I did, with what I negotiated, because but I think the fact that it came on so quickly

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: Yeah.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Such short such a short guaranteed amount of time and and the like, I didn't have much bargaining position. So, you know, that's kind of where we ended up. But it it was fine. We got our money's worth. We're still getting our money's worth because even in this the month following kind of the the end of the kind of the formal five day a week kind of thing, we have a month of follow-up with with, TWI that is assisting the clients for this going forward. Now how what I have reports on what this might look at in Chittenden look like in Chittenden County, for example, after the big push is done, which it's effectively done at this point. And, you know, I'll have to see how that see what that starts to look like and what kind of social work resources we should appropriately deploy to that.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: What do you think would be the time frame to develop a more robust statewide proposal for this? You don't have to convince me, the social worker, in the room, the value of social work supports.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Yeah. I mean, I could do it a day or two. It's not it's not rocket science to come up with numbers. That's the that's kind of the easy part. The harder part is to come up with who.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: Well, and that's what sort of a more robust proposal. You know?

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: You know, money, I can come up with money. I can give you what numbers would look like based upon our experience with this. But there is not a there are not businesses like Therapeutic Works in every county. Right. There are not treatment resources available, that are that aren't related. You know, the AHS side of it, the Howard Center side of it, the, you know, co occurring disorder type stuff. Vermont doesn't have places like that to for people to do residential treatment for co occurring disorders. You know, we've been working with one of the things Therapeutic Works did as well is assisted us in getting people into New Hampshire, who has a couple of different places that provide that sort of treatment. So, you know, if you go around the state, it's not just about the social work, it's about, but about the ability to designate particular resources in particular counties, in, you know, some of the obvious ones. You know, you have counties like Essex or Addison or Orange where you're you effectively have one lawyer doing public primary public defense there. So, you know, you can't designate just, you know, the an arm and a leg to do this stuff and leave the rest. You gotta, you know, you gotta figure out a way. Maybe if you're gonna do it, you might have to bring on somebody else specifically to do you're gonna do the multi docket, you know, effort in that that county. The other thing is every county might not need it. Some don't have as many of these types of cases, and and their caseloads are low enough where even though they had a backlog, that they've sort of it's starting to work itself out. There are particular counties that are, I think, more amenable, to it based on the treatment resources that are available in the counties, the number of lawyers who are available, in the staff offices, there. I will say too, you know, there are things we learned in Chittenden County, the things that didn't work quite as well. The conflict contract lawyers in in the county oftentimes have multiple they have multiple contracts in multiple counties to make their business work. And they aren't available and can't be available every day or on no notice effectively to show up in court when a client gets picked up. And, you know, along the way, I I right now, and I think I've talked about this. I talked this about this in your committee. Yesterday, you know, I have four conflict contractors in Chittenden County. Perfuffle arose during the course of this, and, you know, one of the contractors was pretty angry about it and quit and said, I'm done. I'm not doing this anymore. And, you know, I judge was very helpful, and I intervened as well and, got the person back in the fold because, frankly, it was more important that the contractor do the conflict work than deal with this docket. And effectively, you know, if the person was if the lawyer was available, they'd do it. If they were not, then they wouldn't. But, you know, we're our contractors are splitting time in multiple counties. You can't be always available in one county. And we,

[Speaker 0]: you know, just

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: talked to talked the lawyer off the ledge. They came back to the assigned counsel side of it, and we moved forward. But it the biggest kick that I got from the lawyers was not from the staff office. That was not the problem. But it was from the conflict contract officers who would put together businesses that necessarily work in multiple counties.

[Teri Corsones (Vermont State Court Administrator)]: Yeah. I appreciate that.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: I just as you know, I think what this is highlighting for me is it's really important not just to look at the the monetary cost, but to be looking at a statewide public safety needs assessment. And it's clear to me that some of those needs are case management, are resources in those communities for treatment and housing. And so this is one piece of that for me. And I appreciate you bringing that to the table.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: I I think too, though, we we don't have to get too complicated about this. This is this is not, you know, we don't I don't believe we need some large statewide assessment. A lot of this, 90% of it, is known to us in each county because it is what public defenders and prosecutors do every single day. The the big difference in Chittenden County is, you know, it was the focus the laser focus of particular resources on a particular level as opposed to and we know where the treatment resources are. We know because we access those all the time. The difference here was that you knew, with this group, that they were gonna be in court at a certain time and a certain day, everybody was gonna be there, and we could get something done. I I I will you know, studies are good. I don't think we need, like, big studies on

[Speaker 0]: this. This is

[Renee Weeks (Director of Complex Care & Field Services, Vermont AHS)]: just yeah.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: This is just we know what's out there. We just need to do it in the places where we can do it.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: And that's when I asked for a proposal. That is sort of what I meant was you using the to sort of give us what would we need, what are the gaps, what would it cost, not just the budget.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Yeah. And I will and I'll also tell you, I had a every year, I have a couple of statewide managing attorney meetings. And I one of the things I ask, and I this was just a couple of months ago, and I asked, what is what are the couple of what are the things that if you get one or two things, what are the one or two things to make to be able to resolve things, get the get things done for you and your client. What did you need? And every single managing attorney said the exact same thing. I want a social worker in my office, and I want my clients brought to court. Those are the two things. Because and and that would make, in their mind, a huge difference.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: Representative or so? So yes or no question, I prefer.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Of course.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: So and just to make sure that I'm understanding correctly, that social worker who was provided through the contract with Therapeutic Works will no longer exist as this moves forward.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: They're not under contract after the February. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: So I assume that you will be part of the ongoing discussions that I understand that's gonna happen in each county as far as what if anything to do based on what we did in Chittenden County. So, so we need to move on to the next witnesses as well. Thank you very much. I really appreciate you coming over.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Thanks for having me.

[Speaker 0]: And we're going to go to Maria Goslant. I hope I pronounced that right.

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: All going to go Alright,

[Speaker 0]: excellent. That sounds great.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: This space shuttle back here. Thanks,

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: Matt.

[Speaker 0]: Alright. Thanks. You're welcome.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: Oh, thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you for being here. If you could all identify yourselves and proceed. Thank you.

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: Yeah. So I'll go first. My name is Nicole DiStasio. I am the director of federal policy and strategic initiatives for the Agency of Human Services.

[Renee Weeks (Director of Complex Care & Field Services, Vermont AHS)]: Thank you for inviting us. I'm Renee Weeks, the director of Complex Care and Field Services, Senior Human Services.

[Maria Godleski (District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, VT DOC)]: I'm Maria Godleski. I'm the district manager of Burlington Probation and Probation, and we're attached to the accountability core. Great.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: Thank you.

[Renee Weeks (Director of Complex Care & Field Services, Vermont AHS)]: I'm gonna start. There's a few slides we put together just to give you perspective from the NHS lens and our role within the accountability court project.

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: It's not letting me share. It's not letting me share yet.

[Renee Weeks (Director of Complex Care & Field Services, Vermont AHS)]: So It's not letting us share yet. I think everybody received the slides, earlier this morning. But I'll just get started. I think one of the key successes in this court was the collaboration between the judiciary and AHS on this project. And, really, it was starting with a shared goal and clear roles and responsibilities for the human services lens and then the judicial lens. The goal that we came up with was just to provide a structured pathway from court involvement into treatment, housing, and stabilization in the community. We also wanted to have a swift response and access to services, which doesn't always happen in the community. So it really took a team approach to navigating that and breaking down barriers and access to care. And then also, we wanted to test a model that was collaborative, data informed, and adaptable, to understand the value of expanding this model statewide. One of the things, as someone mentioned earlier in testimony, was that there was a short window to stand this up. So in effect, we were building the plane as we were flying it, as we do in state government quite often. But, really, the the collaboration and meeting with attorney, wait and then also with the defender general in advance and really talking about our shared goals and processes was helpful. We also worked with our departments under AHS, Department of Mental Health, DOC, obviously, and then our division of substance use programs, just to leverage resources and supports and all be clear on the goals moving forward. I also wanted to mention our field service director, Carrie Duquette Hoffman, was really instrumental in convening care teams and whatnot. So I'm going to share the care model that we used in this court just so you have an understanding of that. So the clinical goals, we felt it was really important to have a standardized screening process to assess the mental health and substance use treatment needs that people that were referred to us through the court needed and were experiencing so we can make a treatment recommendation. We also, because we know that outside of mental health and substance use needs, many folks are experiencing health related social needs, not having access to healthcare, housing, transportation, social isolation, and other needs that need to be met so that they can then be available for those treatment options. We also wanted to use a team based care approach to their care. So it wasn't just a one off, oh, we're going to refer you to Valley Vista, and they'll take it from there. We really wanted to bring that care team together so that everyone's role was clear and who was providing which services. And that's an approach that AHS has been promoting for years. Since it was a short ramp up, we did have to initially utilize some of our state staff who are licensed to do the assessments in the court. And they were there forty hours a week when the court was in session so that people would have immediate access to those assessments. The other key component for clinical services was the care coordination. And we were able to reallocate temporarily, very temporarily, one of our care coordinators within the Vermont Chronic Care Initiative program to provide that care coordination to people. So things they would do would be if someone had work and we couldn't find them, there were stories of the care coordinator running out onto Church Street, finding the person and saying, Hey, it's your time to come into court. Run-in. Or they would arrange transportation to Valley Vista or Serenity House, etcetera. They really were there to be that support person and help them access the services that they needed and wanted. So key features of the model I mentioned already were the screening and assessment, that team based approach to care coordination, care team meetings, those were weekly meetings that were set up by Carrie Duquette Hoffman, our field director with the great community in Chittenden of care providers. And in the next slide, I'll review which partners were, part of that care team. But it really, was essential so that the care teams could keep folks informed on engagement of the participants in their services. Or if we identified a gap in someone's care, the care team was right there and they could say, hey, I can fill that gap and do that work. The other component that I think was essential was we convened daily huddles with the clinical team, which became we had contracted with Howard Center staff, two staff to take over doing the assessments and the care coordination. So Nicole and myself and Carrie met with them every day. We'd huddle to see what the needs were and troubleshoot any issues or barriers in access to care at that time. The care team partners in Burlington was the Burlington Community Justice Center, Burlington Police Department Crisis and Their Advocacy and Intervention Programs, the Chittenden County Public Defenders Office, the state's attorney's office, the Community Health Center of Burlington, Department of Corrections, Probation and Parole, Howard Center, Pathways Vermont, Therapeutics Works, as mentioned earlier by the Defender General, the Vermont Chronic Care Initiative, the Division of Substance Use within VDH, and WellPath, who is the healthcare provider for the Department of Corrections in the facilities. I know I've said team based care a few times, and I just wanted to highlight some of the key aspects of that approach. One is sitting with the participant and doing a relationship mapping with that person to see what services they might already be receiving or have been connected to previously. It also helps them to identify key supports that they might have in their life at this time so we can engage them in the process in supporting the individual moving forward. We also engage in goal setting with the individual. So going through each of the domains in the social determinants of health and having the participant identify what their goals are in relationship to addressing mental health or substance use issues, in addressing housing instability, transportation, or social connectedness in the community. We also convene care conferences with the identified care team that's drawn from that relationship mapping tool, and then develop a shared care plan with those providers and with the participant. And that was utilized in this process as well. The other key piece is in that care team, one of the care coordinators to be the lead on that, who can keep that shared care plan up to date with other providers or schedule a next meeting in a month or two to check-in on the progress. Some of the other things that were happening at the same time that we were building out this accountability for that really seemed essential in the process were the pretrial supervision program. Valley Vista was expanding some 3.1 recovery beds, and I think it was for gens. We had

[Speaker 0]: what the 3.1 recovery beds are I'm not not familiar with?

[Renee Weeks (Director of Complex Care & Field Services, Vermont AHS)]: So those are a lower level of intensity, like, treatment bed. I wouldn't I don't know if they're considered treatment beds.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: Excuse me?

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: But dismiss or no?

[Renee Weeks (Director of Complex Care & Field Services, Vermont AHS)]: House is more of a shelter. These are specifically kind of step down beds from residential treatment that offer supportive services. It's not like the medically based treatment services you receive in residential, but it's a step down from that. Perfect. And I'd have to check with my DSU partners on the number of beds that were stood up, but that certainly has been a resource that was utilized in this process. CVOEO in Burlington is in the process of developing or opening up a recovery based shelter program modeled after one in Washington County that Good Samaritan Haven runs. So that will be a resource for people who really want shelter that's focused around recovery supports and maintaining recovery. There was also availability of both assessments, co occurring mental health and substance use assessments in the facilities, as well as treatment options for people to get services there. We had the Burlington Care team that we stood up, which I referenced earlier with all of those partners, and then coordination with the residential treatment facilities, Valley Vista and Serenity House, because we did have quite a few people access that as a resource. Some of the initial outcomes were we had at least five residential substance use treatment stays, two people connected to residential mental health treatment, 26 people connected to community services, two people placed in pathways supportive housing. They were a key partner in this. And we have two people awaiting placement right now, people that had been experiencing homelessness. 10 people working with the Chittenden treatment court, one person working with a federal treatment court. And then we also had just so many of the people we worked with express gratitude for this opportunity and having just access to care and treatment services. And one thing they really talked about was having that little push to get back into treatment or services because they really weren't in a space to do that on their own. So having those helping hands to pull them up and access those services and get on the path to recovery. Some of the key, lessons learned, you've heard a lot, from our partners today, is around how important it is to collaborate and communicate as a team, even across agencies and divisions and programs, if we're all working towards the same outcome, it's more possible. I think having clearly defined roles and responsibilities and a shared understanding of the goals that we're all working towards is essential. We found that having the weekly care team meetings involve our our partners in the community, and the daily huddles really helped enhance that collaboration and communication from the treatment lens and helped us aid in like having a swift response when barriers were put up. The other thing that we heard was being called back to court on a regular basis really aided in accountability and increased engagement in services. We heard that from the participants that without that, like next court date in the next week or two, I might not have really engaged as much. But knowing I had to go back in two weeks and report back helped me stay engaged with services in the community. And then I think just the consistent access to support. They knew where to find, the two staff, from the Howard Center that were working under an AHS contract when they needed support or wanted to follow-up because they were in the courthouse every day the court operated.

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: So I think I'll say something about my role. Maybe let Maria go and then questions, or do you wanna

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: Let's talk

[Speaker 0]: about the questions then then we'll Okay.

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: So I think I started on the project as the project manager right around that November. And the secretary gave me one of my favorite jobs, which she kinda said, like, you have the opportunity. Like, break every rule you need to. Move every boulder out of the way. Like, you have authorization. Go for it. So my job is I really just sat in the courtroom, and every single time a problem came up, I was like, I am here to make a solution to that immediate problem and also to think about, like, you know, how do we like, if there are policy or legislative or other billing problems that exist everywhere, like, how do I kind of make sure they get out of the way for everyone rather than just this Chittenden County docket? And so I just was sitting in the courtroom literally and, like, things would come up. And I have some specific examples I'll give you. I'll try to not do too much, but I do have a bunch of them. But pretty much one of the first examples that we ran into, and it's probably one of our most successful cases, he gave testimony in house healthcare. You wanna go first into his experience on it? But one of the immediate things was I found out that they wouldn't And I wanna just say, our providers are responding to really hard situations, so I don't blame them for anything they're doing. But we had a situation where they wouldn't our substance use residential wouldn't give somebody a bed date because the step down treatment this individual needed was in New Hampshire. And they kind of said, right now, he's involved with the Department of Corrections. He's not going to be allowed to leave the state. We're not going to start somebody down a process where we have no escape to get to the end of it. And so I was immediately able to kind of say, like, look, I'm gonna solve this problem by the time he's he's finished his treatment. I need you to take him. Like, when can you take him? And they gave him an immediate bed date. And then I, like, moved what I needed to do in order to allow him to get to New Hampshire, engage in the ninety day treatment. And he is wildly successful right now. So it was just really things like that, of our Pathways beds. Come to find out that they needed to have been fully adjudicated through the criminal process before they could start. And I basically, I brought everybody together and I said, If we know somebody's gonna end up here, can we just start now so that way, like, they have a vet that's ready to go, but they don't have to go sit in jail and have all these things happen. So we were able to kind of bring people together and make some changes that we're gonna adopt in the way that we contract now, the way that we work with providers, if we need special releases. So those things are in place and kind of part of what my role was in this. So I just because I know there's a lot of questions about like, what happens next? And are you pulling out? Are you moving here? And I think it's probably gonna end up being a little bit of both. My job really was to try to make sure where there are where we can make some changes that can impact, the process statewide. That's what we were really trying to do. So I think that's my piece of it.

[Speaker 0]: Good. I'm sure we'll

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: have some questions as

[Speaker 0]: well, but we'll go

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: over them.

[Maria Godleski (District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, VT DOC)]: Yeah. So my role with accountability court was participating in the weekly care team meeting along with a probation officer that we designated for that purpose. So he was then responsive to the court, whatever the needs were for a probation officer to give direct opinion or meet with someone or assess somebody at that point. My district manager also participated in those meetings so that we could look at how can we take what we're already doing and build on it or improve on it so that I'm trying to think, is this a system we're already doing? The things that we found most successful were the timelines that Zach set and was able to set, instead of somebody being like, I have no next court date. My next court date is in three months. Someone's coming back. So he scheduled it so people would be, don't have a court date, now you're coming in two weeks. You have a court date in March, now you're coming in November. And that made a huge difference for how quickly these cases were moving along, both for the defendant, but also for whoever they had victimized, whatever chaos was going on in their life, that was fast forwarded. And then even if someone's simply placed on probation, they're now receiving case management, right, where they weren't receiving case management before. So he was giving people choices to say, do you want to do treatment court? Here's what treatment court is. Do you not want that? Okay, here's a plea. If you not want that, here's the trial date. And so setting that up that things were happening, and these are things that had happened in the past. I have a history of being a probation officer a long time ago, and things moved along at a faster rate in the past. And not just pre COVID time, this isn't just catch up, it's just the court got further away from setting these timelines, which, in a way, to try to help their clients access services in the community. But it also meant that if they weren't accessing services, things were getting worse and worse and worse because there wasn't anybody involved. I can't speak highly enough about Howard Center's involvement and the role that they played because we, Corrections, doesn't know everybody. They knew the people we'd never seen. They knew what person's mental health, substance use, physical health. They knew all of those things about someone and can weigh in about, well, how do we get this person on board to be able to access the services? Because if they're not buying in, they're not going to be able to access the services. And what was helpful with that is that the Howard Center wasn't with the defense, they weren't with DOC, they weren't with the state, and they were a known person because these are service providers in our community that have been around for a long time. And creating that all parties to talk. Historically, hear from the state's attorney and say, what do you think we should do with this case? And we're knowing that person like a piece of paper. Now we're knowing the person with all of this information, assessments already done, or a little bit of a bio on somebody even if an assessment hasn't been done. So we can better frame what history do we have with that person. Do they have a history of violence? Do they have a history of violating their supervision? Is this a person, honestly, that sometimes it's appropriate to incarcerate person because those other options haven't worked, and they haven't demonstrated an interest in case management or working with Howard Center or other staff. So we were very grateful for this pilot and do think that there's a lot of things that can be continued from there.

[Speaker 0]: So just a quick question for you. So how much was your involvement in the context of the new pretrial supervision program as opposed to this is somebody who might go into probation and you're kind of

[Maria Godleski (District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, VT DOC)]: So through the course of Just Accountability Court, we only had through Friday afternoon, Zach's last day, six referrals for pretrial. Of those six referrals, one person also had a warrant simultaneously issued, so they were ineligible to be on pretrial. One person kept calling the probation officer assigned to accountability court and never showing up for the appointment, so she was unable to be assessed. Three redeemed eligible for pretrial, one was placed on pretrial, and the other two, shortly after being assessed as appropriate for pretrial, were sentenced. So both of those women were given zero minimums, went to residential treatment, and then are in the works of receiving other services. So we, in the grand scheme of things, we did not have a lot of people referred for pretrial. And in some ways, I think that's a product of the pace at which things were moving along. By the time we would have assessed somebody, they would already have a bed and have a plea agreement that they had understood and were agreed to, and they were showing up. So they were receiving services. So pretrial in some ways would be a duplication of that.

[Speaker 0]: So your work was also to kind of transition into how you were going to help out in probation if they were put on probation? Is that

[Maria Godleski (District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, VT DOC)]: Well, what seems like appropriate conditions they need, what services are they accessing, what are their history? We wound up with, I want to say, about 30 people directly out of this courtroom that were placed. And this doesn't include the other people that were sentenced out of the other courtrooms, the standard function, we had a whole caseloads worth of people placed on supervision as a result of accountability court. So we were triaging all of those people, like these are the people that are coming to the office today. Here's what's going on for them. She's going to residential treatment. The intention is for a 3.1 bed. Now the probation officer is in touch with residential treatment, trying to make sure that there's a place for that person to go after they complete.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. Senator Bahowski and then Representative Arsenault.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: Thank you. I'm wondering, you had said you're sort of looking at the big system and looking at changes that might need to be made. Are there legislative changes that we might make to better support this work?

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: Yeah. I think there's nothing that I would say right now. I think we're all really excited about the progress we've made and the outcomes. But I think it does take a little bit of time to kind of settle down and figure out what are any real legislative and policy changes we'd put forward. Right now, we've really focused on what we could immediately do without any long term changes. So it would be, like, minor changes in languages to contracts or just having a conversation to clarify intent over something that's in a contract. But I I I do anticipate there's gonna be at some point, hopefully in the near future, where we would have something that's more actionable for the legislature.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: Now, I'm going to ask a question you may not be able to or allowed to answer, and that is the budgetary needs. Are there budgetary resources, positions that would be needed to really launch this as a statewide program within AHS?

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: I think we're still looking figuring that out. Yeah. We're still we're still really, like, just digesting and and thinking about it. But Okay.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: That's cool.

[Speaker 0]: So Senator Arsenault, then Senator Goslant, Representative Rachel.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: Thank you. So my question is kind of related to Senator Rutland's last question about the potential budgetary needs and then a second question. So the first question is, like, this is so it's so great to hear this level of detail. I had no actually no idea that AHS was involved at this level, and I'm really happy to hear that the agency has been playing this role. Of course, that brings up questions about scalability and capacity. And I'm frankly happily surprised that you were able to do it as it is, you know, without additional FTE or whatever. So understanding you're still digging into it, is there anything you can say about prospects for a longer

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: term program? I don't know what to Yeah.

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: Gonna let I bet Jay can probably answer that question when she comes up, because I think it's the governor is gonna kinda figure out how to to do that next, and we'll just follow, you know.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: Yeah. Gotcha. Was wondering, my second question was just hearing that you were able to take the time with some folks, as you said, I think you said we're gonna get them on board. Do you have any rough sense of a conversion rate from perhaps folks who started out kind of treatment resistant or involve what would have been like involuntary to a voluntary treatment program?

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky]: Just a guess.

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: We do, but I mean, most people were willing to work.

[Speaker 0]: Okay.

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: It really was. The engaging, actively and continuously engaging in treatment is hard. So there was varying degrees there. But I think we only had, of the 100 and so people, maybe a small handful of people that kinda said, like, that they weren't really interested. And I've identified that some of that might have like, I'm listening today. I heard some things that I hadn't heard before, so I was already problem solving the next step. So I think even the folks that said no, I think we might be able to work with, like, the defender general and some other folks to get them to yeses next time.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: That's good to hear. Yeah. It's just it's really I'm, like, quite jazzed about all of this, and and I'm worried that it's gonna be this great thing that we don't sustain. That's not a that's not for you all to to worry about, but I'm just that's my as I'm think I don't wanna get too excited because it's like it's not it's just so much more you're in what you just described is so much more personnel intensive than I understood Mhmm. HS's involvement to be. You know, I was picturing it not knowing, not because of anything anyone said or put out there, but just kind of my conception was that it was more like guidance and, you know, participation kind of over here, but it was, like, literally in the courtroom and so great.

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: Yeah. I owe because I don't think we gave her enough credit, too. I do want to give all the credit to Secretary Sandalson, who gave us the ability to to do that and to engage in the work level.

[Speaker 0]: So

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: Yeah. Great. Thank you.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk, House Judiciary Committee)]: Representative Goslant. So I'm I'm trying to understand everything that I'm hearing that that that has been going on for a long time. But it sounds like all the services were already in place. They just weren't being utilized or they weren't being utilized collectively and people didn't maybe communicate that well. Is there a possibility with that?

[Renee Weeks (Director of Complex Care & Field Services, Vermont AHS)]: I think that many of the people that were coming through had engaged in services at some point and didn't remain engaged because it's voluntary. People don't need to access agency of human services programs. I think that the accountability for helped people to want to reengage in services or have the supports that they needed in place through the Howard Center staff to access those services.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk, House Judiciary Committee)]: But we've had but but we've Yeah.

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: Because think about the timeline. That is, like, one of the key distinctions here. If If somebody doesn't have another court date for six months, it's really hard for the Howard Center to like hold onto them for six full months. When their next court date is in ten days, the Howard Center can actually like meet with them two or three times in between knowing that they're coming right back. So I think that might be a big piece of it. Like, the things are in place, but there is something about that timeline happening quickly that allows the people who are working on the care team to actually keep that person at the top of the, like, at the top of the pile rather than just more people and more people. And it just you know, you deprioritize something that six months out.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk, House Judiciary Committee)]: So am am I correct in in thinking assuming this that that it took governor Scott to go and set up the pretrial court lawyer, whatever you wanna say, to go and get this process moving so we could get some cases through so we could cut down on the backlog and and and some of this other stuff that's going on. Because, obviously, there's a big

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: Yeah. I think the focus I think the focus here and, again, like, I do think the governor gets a lot of credit for for telling every like, getting everybody to focus on the same thing. So I would I kind of phrase it more like that, it's like having everybody focus on the same problem at the same time.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk, House Judiciary Committee)]: Yeah, I'm not looking to give him all the credit, I'm just looking to get stuff.

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: I'll give everyone the credit.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk, House Judiciary Committee)]: Right, you know what I'm saying? It's like everybody's got to get a part in this, and it seems like, again, things were in place. They just weren't getting done. And if it took him to utilize it and and, you know, maybe that press conference that that is still in my mind to to to get this moving, let's get it moving because public safety is is so important. And and all this the lack of housing, I've heard over and over and over and the mental health and and all this stuff, and and I'm just trying to understand why we weren't doing something in my mind that is so common sense to begin with, and I know we're dealing politics and nothing's common sense, but still, like, I just can't get it through my head why this wasn't being done in the first place.

[Renee Weeks (Director of Complex Care & Field Services, Vermont AHS)]: I think a lot of this work was being done at the AHS level, but it was the collaboration between this particular court within the judiciary and AHS. The court helped be like a feeder for these care teams going on. So they were a referral source to give people access to care and treatment when on their own, they were not reaching out to access treatment and care. The court provided, like, this patient panel, so to speak, and a referral base for our care teams to come in and help connect them to services.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk, House Judiciary Committee)]: But I think Jay's coming up, and I'll answer. But, again, all this stuff was still in place and we weren't don't take this the wrong way, I'm not criticizing, I'm trying to understand how we got from point A to point B. Now we're back on the floor. It seems like we're headed on the right track. I definitely want to stay there and make sure we stay on those tracks. You know what I'm saying?

[Maria Godleski (District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, VT DOC)]: We weren't necessarily involved with defendants until they got sentenced. That is a change. So it's not that DOC or AHS didn't exist before. We weren't connected with the court in this way before. And so if the defense attorney suggested to their client that they might do treatment or do X, Y, and Z, then the person would do that. But again, with the length of time that it would take for someone to get then to probation, sometimes there weren't the services to support them for that long. So they may choose to go to residential, but not get sentenced to whatever for six months, and that's sort of fallen off. And now they've picked up more charges. The defense being at the table, we had a lot of success in having collaboration with them because they didn't see us as the enemy, but rather as a resource for their client. Because in the past, we've been seen as the bad guy, not the bad guy, but you don't get case management if you've never sentenced, unless you have some access or stability in the community based services.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk, House Judiciary Committee)]: And again, I'm just trying to figure out why this wasn't done a long time ago, and it's not I'm not blaming you. I'm trying to understand it in my not so complicated head on this stuff, ask again, that's that's good. Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Representative Rachelson, that's the last questions, then we'll move on.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: So, I have worked in human services since the early nineties, and a lot this sort of reminds me of, like, what the lit like, I don't know if any of you were around for so, Nicole, it seems like your role of breaking down the barriers is what can make a difference. Because the number of times that an organization is working with someone and it's like, no, only this can happen. This is the categorical limitations. So I'm wondering, it's great that you could break down the state ones, but usually there are a bunch of federal ones that are, unless we get the Medicaid state plan changed, or especially the release for people in substance abuse treatment. So I'm just wondering

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: how, you know mean, and there were there are definitely times that we had to lean on general fund that would not be scalable Sure. If we had to do this for everyone. So that's why some of this is just about showing us where some of the careers exist to see if we can have a policy or legislative solution or some other state plan amendment that could come next. Because I do think you're right. There are some things we could kind of get out of the way because this was small. Right.

[Maria Godleski (District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, VT DOC)]: Yeah. Yeah.

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: And that's just gonna be a

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: real about it until we get the right people on the phone or together to problem solve it. Yeah, I really

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: just kind of directed traffic. It was the clinician that And did the clinical

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: in terms of scalability, I worry with my managerial head on, collaboration became like, if you're not billing something, if you can't make money, you have to start saying no to these great collaborations. And so I just worry about scalability for the Howard Centers and all the other

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: And those are real concerns. This was a contract, it wasn't Medicaid billing. It's a different game. But it's also part of what we're doing right now is looking at what of this could be billable. And even if we needed some contract to deal with some of the non billable activities, could we get the bulk of it? So we're kind of doing that work now to get a sense of it.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: Right. Because I think each individual provider doesn't have the wherewithal to navigate that. You think system change is so important.

[Nicole DiStasio (Director of Federal Policy & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont AHS)]: And sometimes, one of the things of having a little bit of fresh eyes on a problem too, is that sometimes people have hit the same wall over and over again. They just think it's immovable. And so just relooking at it with a different lens can have somebody be like, oh, you can just change this? Sometimes, yeah. It's great.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you very much. Really appreciate your time and your testimony. So general counsel Dave Johnson, I believe, could join us. Thank you for being here, Dave. I would say you have the final word, but there's probably not a final word on these on on these issues.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: I think that No.

[Speaker 0]: We'll be talking about this and looking at things on this for a while. So but thank you for being here.

[Jaye Pershing Johnson (General Counsel to Governor Phil Scott)]: Jake Pershing Johnson, governor Scott's legal counsel. Yeah. I would like to think that it is just the beginning of the word. It was initially I mean, I think, as you know, part of the response to some of the issues that Chittenden County specifically was facing for a period of time in the fall. And we worked with the mayor's office to come up with you know, to to sort of think about the kinds of of approaches or, you know, first, to understand some of the problems, come up with some approaches. But this was something the governor took on a number of meetings with members of the community, law enforcement, others, you know, businesses in the community that were facing a lot of the impact from, I think, the sort of low level, high impact crimes that were sort of, you know, are taking place in Burlington, particularly. And so as part of that solution, we convened a group of, you know, that included the chief justice, the Tom and Terry, the state's attorneys and sheriffs, state's attorney George, Matt, the defender general. And at that point, there wasn't anyone there from AHS. But as the executive branch representatives, we were thinking we will do what we need to do to bring together this concept that's been described to the committee today, DOC, AHS partners. So the AG was invited, but in the end, it really was the special prosecutor, Judge Malay, the designated defenders, the designated court space, the cooperation that then ensued. And I think a lot of that, and I think Zach mentioned the importance of the releases. I think when you come to the table with just a contractor of the defender general's office, there is a problem with information sharing because that contractor works for the defense. Bringing together the and I think that the human the AHS folks can maybe speak to this, but I think the idea that AHS was brought into the room with in that sort of team approach, with the defense, with therapeutic works, with sort of the prosecutor at the table and the judge, and working out how they could work together. That AHS doesn't work for the prosecutor, had to be explained to everyone. They're clinicians, they're independent. So that was this whole idea of distrust that I think the Defender General mentioned, that all had to be broken down and may have to be broken down in every county that this moves to. But the idea was that those barriers were broken down. It was explained to all of the parties, the consents were obtained, and there was a lot of information sharing. And I think, as you have heard, that has been key to the process. So I think there has been sort of a criminal justice and public health underpinnings behind this. A lot of it, I think we've mentioned, or I know I've mentioned, I think Tucker Jones has mentioned in committee before, Doctor. Keith Humphreys from Stanford, who really is a proponent of incentivizing individuals to sort of move into treatment, individuals who are justice involved. I think from my perspective, it was important to use the tools of the justice system to incentivize this kind of success that we've seen. Individuals weren't just nothing was voluntary. They were in the court system at that point. These are offenders with five or more offenses. What we had been hearing from communities was a lot of this low level, the trespass, the drug use, the drug sales, the retail theft, the car theft, the theft from cars. A lot of this is driven by substance use, mental illness, combination. How do you you can't just take in these people, giving them a citation, asking them to show up in court forty five days later, nothing is happening there. And people are referring to that as catch and release, the revolving door, whatever you wanna say. And it was important for the community safety and the community peace of mind to address their underlying root causes. You can't just say, retail theft is a crime, let's make it a felony if we aggregate. That's not the issue. The issue is the drug use, the mental illness. And so that's what we focused on. How do you use the tools of the criminal justice system to get these kinds of outcomes? And you have to bring that human services component to the table. And it's not just enough to have that be a contractor of the defense bar. But I think it's the case assessment, the case management and the clinical assessments that were done right there in the courtroom. And you've heard from all the most important people in the room who actually did that work. So we brought together the key stakeholders. We needed somebody to turn on the lights. We needed court staff. We needed to think through how are we going to use how are we going to staff admin and victim services. There was the issue of transports. I mean, we had that initial meeting, and the initial resistance was, I guess not unsurprising, but there are ways that people do business. And I know these committees often hear from the stakeholders that it's not them, it's them. And you have, if only this one had more money, this wouldn't be a problem anymore. But then you're you're in an arms race because they all need more money and they all need more staffing. You get to a point where we have, since COVID, poured millions of dollars into the criminal justice system, and we have basically a flat clearance rate. I mean, we Dylan Lamston from our office who's here did a lot of the data analysis for this project, and we are sharing that with judiciary. But right now, for this project, it looks like something like an over 300% clearance rate. And we focus the resources. It's true. Defender General Valerio said, it's not surprising that we had some good outcomes because we dedicated extra resources. But it's obviously more than that. It was the collaboration piece. It was the information sharing piece. It turns out initially, transports were going to be a huge problem. We're going to need to address transports. So we set up a system where emergency management was going to serve as something of a phone tree so that when we needed transports, we had a process for getting local law enforcement, state local law state law enforcement, DOC, to actually engage, you know, do some of that transport work. Because every certified law enforcement officer in the state and DOC is authorized to do transports. That's not how it works because now we have transport officers. And if the transport officers can't manage the caseload, we don't have the transports, the people can't get to the courtroom. It turns out that wasn't actually a problem in Chittenden County, because as has been discussed, all the resources were right there, the facilities were right there. The sheriff's office really stepped up, and the sheriff's office handled really all of the transports. I think Tim Lerner's Dumont could tell you that there is maybe one other transport, and that that was a sheriff from Madison County. So but that will be a completely different kind of issue in, say, Washington County. As Zach explained, it's you know, the resources aren't first of all, they only they have a very small sheriff's office, very sparse local law enforcement, and they don't have any facilities here. So they're going be running to get people. But that sort of phone tree concept and who does it, whether it's VEM, whether potentially it's even DMV. I mean, we have to think about, from our perspective, like Nicole said, it really was thinking about how to do things better. We understand that there are going to be resource needs, and there's money in the BAA for this project, and there's money in the budget for future needs. But it's hard to say, based on Chittenden's experience, which had a much larger caseload, but also more resources right at hand, what we're going to need in the other counties. There may be other counties that are way more prepared to step up with a prosecutor resource or a judge resource. I mean, one of the things we heard early on about Chittenden was that space would be an issue. Well, space was not an issue. So it's really a matter of digging in and asking the questions and finding out. The cost, you have a 14 county system, not of justice, but of human resources. And you have field directors in all of the AHS centers in various counties. I don't know if you have 14, but there are certainly a number. It's not like these folks you've heard from today who all work in Chittenden, except for Nicole, who's going to be probably involved in all of this. You have those resources in Rutland County and in Washington County and in every single county, that kind of availability of resources, capability of resources is going to vary. And that's why sort of keeping an open mind, thinking about being flexible, I think our initial thought, our you know? And it's not again, we are not of course, we are not a court. The executive branch the court runs the court system, and this was a a judicial docket. And that, of course, was an issue right out front. The governor can't do this. He's not a Well, we had the judiciary as a partner. The judiciary opened the doors to the courtroom and hired the judge. It was important to have that collaboration. The name that we were calling it, Accountability Court or Accountability Docket, there was resistance to that because every court is an accountability court. But we talked to Judge Malay, who I would urge you to hear from, I'm not sure if he wants to be heard from, but he was amazing. He was instrumental. And he said he was a defender by trade before he became a judge. And he said, at first I resisted the notion of calling it accountability court, But he said, Now I get it. It really was the pace and the flexibility that he was able to establish in his courtroom, and people had to come back. You just don't have accountability. When you give a person who's homeless, who is perhaps a co occurring drug use and mental illness disorder, and then you give that person a ticket and tell them to come back in sixty days, and that person is, you know I don't know that I am that organized in my life, right? I mean, you have to have a process that can work with the individuals that you're talking about, that you're, you know, you're interested in helping. I mean, again, it really was using the tools available, bail, pretrial supervision, which it turns out we didn't need in this. We thought it would be a perfect candidate. But the fact is because of the pace, as Maria said, you didn't actually need pretrial supervision, but maybe you think about it in a different way. If you know in regular court, you're going out sixty days, ninety days, that's maybe when it's most appropriate for a five or more. Or I think Maria mentioned in one of our meetings prior to this, maybe you're looking at three or more. Why are you waiting to five? These are individuals who need the help now. So it's really thinking about how we use those tools, using them in a flexible way. So pretrial supervision, treatment court, amazing synergy, but there was no choice. You actually had this range of options, which ended up So individuals weren't just able to choose They could choose treatment court, but if they didn't choose treatment court, there was another consequence over here, and then another consequence over here. There was, again, the consents, the information sharing, and the trials. I mean, I don't know if Zach mentioned or had the chance to mention that he actually, I don't think ever had a trial. He set three trial dates, but setting the trial dates was very important. Trials, you know, and you had Judge Malay and the trials were ready to move, but they were never necessary. They always settled before. So the idea that you actually moved individuals toward trial dates So that's I mean, from my from where I sit, it was what we are thinking as sort of the future model. And it certainly does not address this availability of justice in the 14 counties. If we don't do this statewide, well, we're not doing it statewide now, and we have inadequate outcomes. So if we pick this up and move it to, say, Rutland County, which is indicating an interest, absolutely indicating an interest, and is thinking about how to do it, working with AHS already, working with the judiciary already, and talking about who would be doing this work. They actually have a great relationship, from what I'm hearing, with their defense bar, and they are very interested in taking this on. I mean, Judge Goslant said a few weeks. I'm hoping that it's more like within the next week that we gather as a team because they are ready, they believe they are ready to go. And we have to just talk about that and turn on the lights. I think that, you know, there was some concern about, and you may have concern about what was said about the nature of the quick startup, but we didn't government think it to death, right? We just did it. And we met with the judiciary and they said, When were you thinking? And we said, Monday. And they opened the You know, had Judge Malay on board and they opened the door and we appointed Zach as special prosecutor. And things came together from there. And it took some adjustment, but it was it fell into place. But it was sort of a if you're not doing it, you don't know what you need. And we could have spent weeks, months figuring out all of the various ramifications and maybe still not have gotten it right. But we just we were given permission to just go ahead and do it. We did it, which is the way that the best kind of government service, I think, can work. I don't know if you have any specific questions for me, but that's our my our view is because many of the counties have independent issues and independent and all different kinds of issues, you can maybe pick this up and move it to one county and start conversations in another county about how to do it if they're interested and think about how to put those resources in place.

[Speaker 0]: Sounds like those conversations are starting and are going be going forward. So that's great. Questions? Representative Rachelson, then representative Goslant. Oh, you didn't have a question?

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: Okay. Thanks for your role in helping this happen. It's great. The results are so much better than I was worried that it would be, and it just seems like getting the right team together was great. I'd love to see Nicole help with the juvenile system. So I just want to put in a plug for that because this kind of process would be amazing to move that. Yeah, I guess it's- Yeah,

[Maria Godleski (District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, VT DOC)]: So no, that's great. So

[Speaker 0]: tomorrow we are taking up a bill related to pretrial supervision and It sounded to me like having the probation officer at the table pre trial, even though it wasn't really doing the pre trial supervision, it was kind of helping with the transition into treatment through probation. Maybe we need to look at that a little bit differently of what that pretrial supervision program can be. It's just a matter of getting probation, pretrial probation, whatever you want to call it, there at the table. Sounds like that's where the success came from there.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson]: We'll be talking about that tomorrow. Great.

[Jaye Pershing Johnson (General Counsel to Governor Phil Scott)]: And we I mean, I think that that's right. Bringing DOC into the process earlier, I think Zach would say that it made a tremendous amount of difference. And it was it gave, I think, everybody involved, the defender, the defendant, the opportunity to understand what exactly the options were. And you don't always know that if DOC is not at the table. So it really helped, again, to settle cases. And it was I mean, I think what was great about it from my perspective, and several people said it, is it wasn't about just clearing dockets. It was about connecting individuals with the right services and being placed in appropriate settings. And sometimes that was DOC. Another observation Judge Malay had in a separate meeting is that he was surprised how he used bail, but because the hearings were so quick, you would have somebody in jail on bail maybe for a week or two weeks. But he was surprised, he said, at just the sort of stability that the person had achieved in that small window of time, with some maintenance medications, just a bed, regular meals. And that person is able to come to the table in a period of two weeks and really engage in their future as it relates to, and seeing all those resources right at hand and being able to make informed choices. So I think that observation was important. DOC is We think of it as Corrections is something we should abolish. But actually, in Vermont, we have DOC in AHS for a reason. It's supposed to be rehabilitative, so let's use it as a tool that's rehabilitative. Something else that we thought would be necessary going forward in this project process, and it's not really represented here, I think Maria mentioned it, but is the idea of additional sort of substance use resources, treatment and recovery resources in facility. It is the one place in the state where you can get treatment on demand. So it doesn't make sense. We are doing a disservice to people if we have them in our facilities and aren't making long term treatment and recovery services available. So that's another piece of this that is really more on the post adjudication end.

[Speaker 0]: Excellent. Well, thank you and and the governor for your leadership on that. I think it's, been a great pilot, and we'll hopefully build it out a little bit further. So thank you. Bye.