Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: We are live. Hi. Welcome to the House Judiciary Committee this Friday morning, February thirteenth. First order of business is a vote on age five seventy eight. We're having posted right now graph number 3.1. And just by way of introduction before Eric explains the one change that's on page 15 is the agriculture committee. They looked at this the last couple days, and they had a little confusion on this one place where Eric will will address. And and we went back to some language that we had in a previous draft. The government operations committee has looked at the one section that they needed to look at the very end of the bill. They actually did a straw poll. It was eight zero three. Agriculture did not do a straw poll. I didn't think that was really necessary. But they looked at them primarily. Well, they looked at stuff they wish they hadn't bothered looking at because it's not their jurisdiction. But they

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: did look at the stuff

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I asked them to look at as well, which is related to livestock. And overall, they had some suggestions that actually, frankly, just don't fit, but actually, they were generally fine. They were fine with that provision. So I'll turn it over to Eric to explain the one other thing, and if there are any questions for Eric before we vote. Sure.

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Eric Fitzpatrick with the Office of Legislative Counsel, here to take a look with the committee at version 3.1 of the house judiciary committee break all amendment, eight five seventy eight. As the chair was mentioning, there is other than as the editors always do, various changes, one of which I do wanna point out after we talk about this first one because it's quite interesting.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Was Word, hope. No. I didn't even

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: oh oh, Ray. Good I didn't even I didn't double check that. I think they kept it. I didn't see any changing. So I think it stayed with Word.

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: Okay.

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: That's right.

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But the one change that the chair mentioned is on page 15, line 15, page 15. And you remember the committee has gone back and forth once or twice with whether or not to frame that language. And this has to do with the veterinarian accompanying the humane officer when the warrant is executed for purposes of seizing an animal that's being subjected to animal cruelty. And the language in the existing statute provided that veterinarian must accompany the humane officer, I think the committee was trying to discuss, well, under what circumstances would it be required? What legal effects would it have if the person was not accompanied by a veterinarian, for example? And the committee's first attempt at how to address that situation was to rather than say, must say shall if practicable. And then in a go round after that, committee clarified the consequences, the failure to accompany even further by adding that second sentence based on the same concept having to do with the Secretary of Agriculture being consulted. And that's making clear that, well, if the vet doesn't accompany the that doesn't mean that this enforcement action is gonna be dismissed. So you add that sentence. So when that sentence got added, I think it became clear that it really made more sense just to go back to your first thought, which was shall, if practical, if any of those two provisions read together, make sense. If practical, the veterinarian accompanies. If not, though, it doesn't mean that the enforcement action gets dismissed. So I think that's where the landing point was as far as logically what made sense for both changes.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: And we think we took the weight in on that. Okay. Any other changes you have to highlight, you said, as far as

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the edit? Well, more from a, yes, from an interest point of view, and that would be over on page 10. Now this has to do with the Hosted folks at The US. Yeah. Starting on line one, but really line one through line 17 is page 10. It has to do with Romanettes and Roman numerals. Oh, yes. See so what the what the editors pointed out was that in the previous draft, there were no roman numerals. You see the roman numerals, which we used to be referred to as capital one, capital two, capital three, in lines one, four, and seven. Those were romanette one, two, three, and line 16 was romanette four. But the editors pointed out that it did not make grammatical sense to have that last sentence that is now romanette two romanette two to be set off the way it had been because it was in a list that had introductory language at the very top of the page. You had a separate sentence like that, it grammatically didn't make any sense. So they said, how do you wanna fix that?

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: And I said, I have

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: an idea. Let's put Roman numerals in for the first three, and we'll change Roman at four to Roman at two. I thought

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: it's very

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: interesting for many people in this committee as well, considering a lengthy discussion of Roman at over the past several weeks. That was the other one I thought would be interesting to move. Not a substantive difference. But but still reads better.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Something that

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: Somebody I'm happy.

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: One person. Right. Right. That

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: brings me personal joy for Madison. Happy to hear that. All right, any questions for Eric? Anybody need more time? I'll take a motion to start by let me make sure I'm getting my motions right. My eyes gotta be bad. There will be a straw poll motion. No, I think I need a motion. I don't need a second, mister Robert. But I will take a motion anyway. I'm gonna take a motion to approve amendment 3.1 to H five seventy eight. So moved. Second.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: So all

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: those in favor of the amendment, raise your hand. And now I'll take a motion that we report H578 favorable with amendment.

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: So moved. Second.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: All right, any discussion? Uh-oh. All right. So we'll start with Alicia, then Ian, then Barbara.

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: So I brought it up once previously, but I couldn't remember if it was in I can't remember. So I just want to make sure This can't be used for frivolous claims, correct? That was my one concern, like with municipal animal control and the kind of often frivolous claims that we hear. I would ask Eric, well, I mean, so one can't completely prevent frivolous claims, is this No, no, how something that can I explain? The convict, I guess, then the Does this put more teeth in those frivolous claims, I guess is what

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: No, because I mean, well, the claims would be brought by prosecutors against individuals who are committing animal cruelty. It's not like this isn't opening up claims against municipalities. If that's kind of part of the question. I don't see anything in here that

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: Part of the question only because that would be my experience. Trying to word this in a way that's not disrespectful too. Maybe animal or sexist. But sometimes there's a broad range of what constitutes cruelty to an animal. But this Hoping that this doesn't open that door to that.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: It's prosecutors are involved and they have to exercise their discretion on what cases to bring. This isn't bringing in new civil remedies that don't already exist.

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: Okay. That's just I just wanted

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: to thank you. Is that correct? Did I

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: end up And I would add also that the language around when an animal can be seized and subject to forfeiture, which is on line 15, isn't changed. So whatever is the case currently, this doesn't change that, one way or the other.

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: I if that helps. No, that does. Thank you.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: On the same line,

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: You're talking about the frivolous cases, wouldn't the would the town be, in a lot of cases, be the first people that would allow to see what's going on, the animal control office officer, and then decide if it's a frivolous case or not.

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: Yes.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: And if it's not a frivolous case, then that animal control officer or town manager or whoever then would pass it on to the next level.

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: That is true. And there's

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: just a lot we

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: there just oftentimes are people who will push it, you know, when they there's a lot people that just see animals outside and automatically are, you know, it's cruelty. It's cruelty. And then I did can be stopped at the municipal level. I just don't know if I didn't understand if this was, but that helps me. Like I said, I didn't know if this was adding any kind of initial language that somebody could point to and be like, but see this new.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: You deny that only because I'm not familiar with procedures.

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: Yeah, okay. Yeah, but no, I think that sounds like it's

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yeah, agree with

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It doesn't matter. Whatever the state is now, as far as that goes, will be the same, for better or for worse.

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: Yeah, okay. Thank you.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Yeah. Well, and I think just I would also say, because this bill helps to expedite the civil proceeding, if there was a frivolous claim, that's better. That makes you right. We're moving the process forward faster. So if it's frivolous, then we're all going to understand it's frivolous, and it will be able to be resolved faster than this long, protracted thing where people are having their animals taken for maybe they shouldn't have. But But I think it's a really good question. I was just going to say, as one of the sponsors of this bill, that I'm very grateful for the time that the committee has taken on it. And all joking aside, this is a really important issue. We from a lot of witnesses that the current system, it comes to animal cruelty and animal forfeiture in Vermont, is not working as well as it could. And I think that this bill, the draft form that it is now, is going to help to alleviate the pressure that animals and animal shelters are currently feeling. And so I'm just very grateful for all the time that we put into it and for Ledge Council's work on it. Because I know it took a lot to get there, but I'm very happy with where it's landed and happy to vote for it.

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. So

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: with all the problems and issues facing us that address human suffering, I know many think we spend too much time on a bill that protects animal cruelty. Animal suffering is not only reprehensible because animals do suffer, they are not just regular property. I'm proud to vote yes for a bill that will help to protect animals, rehabilitate abusers who often have underlying issues that lead to other types of violence and harm in our society, and that will protect shelters from going under. Anybody else?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Thank you, legislative council. Thank you, Eric. Thank you, committee. This was the bill that took a lot of work and back and forth. I really predicted that we'd have seven versions, so we did pretty well at only three. So the clerk can call the role

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: for Arsenault? Yes. Dolan? Yes.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Goodnow? Yes. Will sign yes. Harvey, abstinent. I'll find out later. Malay? Yes. Oliver? Yeah. Rachelson? Yes. Christie, I've signed. Burditt? Yep. Dolan? Yes. And I understand Barbara is need to be a reporter on this bill. Should be a fun one.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: You covered.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Is it going to approach first? It probably is, but it will go to

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the floor and then to approach. Okay.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: And I will double check that it's gonna go to approach, so if it's not, we'll be ready to Wednesday. But my understanding is it's wonderful. But I'm gonna double check.

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Is it away from the needs too? I don't think so.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: I don't

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: think so. But you never know with them, so.

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: And they just sent a wolf. Are able

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: to email me?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Let me just automate and send

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: it. Yeah.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: It's supposed to be nice. Alright, so thank you very much, and we need to be Matt on Hilarious. We're looking at

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Let me have a couple

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: of different things for Matt. Karen got a

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: hot spot.

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Bakery. Take your cake with you.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: We'll let Michelle and Hillary know there's cake over here. Oh, yeah, it's not fine. You can have some more pizza.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: It's And

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Eric, you put a number on that cake it's one point zero.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: All right. Thank

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you. All right,

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: so we'll move on. All right, thank you, Matthew. Matt, I apologize that we didn't get to you right away, but I was going to lose a committee member and couldn't postpone that vote, because we need to get that one out of here. I apologize for that, but I appreciate you being here. So we wanted your view, not necessarily, I guess to start, not necessarily on the language H5-seventy nine, I can't remember exactly.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: 59. 529,

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: thank you. Certainly could weigh in that. But yesterday we really talked more conceptual of what was happening with the pretrial supervision program, why it's not being used as much and what we could change to make it a viable program. So that's kind of, so it was more kind of that background, if that's okay. But welcome to comment on the the as well.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yeah. I'm not the lawyer, the defender general. Do you want me to do May?

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I don't care which one.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: No. I would do more conceptual. And and I think it's just

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Well, the time whatever you know, I testified at length in House Corrections and Institutions about the pretrial services for I literally was there for an hour talking with you know, the programs had almost nobody in it. I mean, you can count the total number of people on less than two hands. And there's all kinds of reasons for it. And I think you and I what I told them is that I would abandon the program. I don't think that it's not a matter of use it or it's get rid of it. The as of right now, I think you're talking about if you had the carried forward money from a couple of years ago, there's been committed about $1,500,000, and we've dealt with, you know, eight people in the program. And and not all that that hasn't all been spent. But the the the bottom line is I think it was ill conceived given the structure of the way we have things in Vermont. When senator Sears brought this issue to the poor, it was he saw Illinois had done something like this with a pretrial services program and that the feds have a pretrial services program. And these were places where the probation and parole is attached is actually under the jurisdiction of the courts. It's not under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections. And and you're in areas where you have, you know, sufficient social work and mental health and substance abuse resources to access for people who might be in it. It it the concept is not wrong. The way we did it is totally wrong. And so it it I don't see it working at all in the way that it is currently conceived. What I am convinced does work is what we, just did in Burlington, which is the, having the availability of social workers from my office, resources from AHS, and the Department of Corrections, available for clients who present like the ones who would be affected by 05/29, that that group, available at courthouses so that for those who want to take a treatment route in the resolution of their cases. All of those resources are ready. The court can, the court can make, conditions of release that apply to the situation. There are AHS screeners available. My office has would have a social worker, which I don't know if you folks were all at the last thing that I talked about, so that we could do our own, you know, trust but verify kind of thing with with the screenings and also with the making sure that once releases are signed and the person's amenable to doing it, we can make sure they get there. And that worked. Now I don't it's not gonna be easy in every county because for all of the reasons I talked about the other day, sometimes you don't have the treatment resources. Sometimes you don't have the, you know, maybe I'm not gonna be able to find somebody who can social work that county, and I'd have to bring somebody in from somewhere else. Whether we're doing it by contract or you know, I think contractors is the way to do it with the social workers, honestly, because that can apply to both my conflict side of the program and, well, the staff side of the program. But the bottom line is our the way our system is fed up is not amenable to implementing what was passed a couple of years ago. And that's why one of the one of the biggest reasons why we don't have any anybody in it.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Is it is it also in part because of the kind of narrow restrictions we put in there as far as far five dockets, violation of conditions of violence?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: There are plenty of five dockets who violated the conditions. You know, I there's there would be plenty of people who are who fit the criteria. But you gotta remember, you're dealing with people pre conviction. So you can't order them around the same way you order around somebody who's on probation or, you know, on furlough or parole or or whatever. So, you know, the the what this what this always presumes is that everybody who's charged is guilty, and we wanna get you into treatment. Well, that isn't true. Some are actually innocent. Some would be not guilty because the facts don't support the charges. And there are all kinds of reasons cases go away that have nothing to do with the treatment. So you get while you're going to have a bunch that are amenable to it, there's also gonna be a bunch who are going to be want to enforce due process rights. And, you know, there's sort of another side of this too, which you know, we're defenders in general, and I'm not not just public defense, but any defense lawyer is representing the not just the rights, but the wishes of the client. And so that oftentimes interferes with, you know, amenability. You know? I I one of the things I don't sometimes folks from administration have said, well, you know, the lawyers are impediment to us, having clients access this stuff. What it is is actually the clients are the impediment to the clients, because we are actually representing clients. We don't we don't settle cases. Clients ultimately decide whether they're going to settle cases. And so, you know, there are times when go, well, why isn't this case in, you know, in treatment court? Why isn't this case in pretrial supervision or in some other You know, I've had clients turn down diversion referrals because they're like, I didn't do it. I'm not going to admit anything. Why the hell would I do that? And, you know, even if I only have to write a letter saying, I'm sorry, I did something I didn't do, and then I could walk away. And there's plenty to do that too. So the bottom line is that I don't think that I think part of what we've learned from this is that if you open it up, I don't know that you're gonna get much different results. But I I was very I wasn't totally surprised, as I said a couple of days ago, But I was pleasantly I was happy that it kind of reinforced something that I thought all along, is that if we, you know, focused resources on a particular target, you'd get a particular result, which we did. So there are really two things going on at the same time. You know, it might not have been the best thing in the world to to start at New Orleans County, Any. Where where you know? And then it sort of got transferred over to Chittenden County at the same time we were doing the the multi docket court, the three so called three b court. And so that was drawing a bunch of people who would have otherwise maybe done this, but I'm not sure. You know, the thing about the thing about this is this sets up a totally adversarial situation with the client. So, you know, you sign up, I'll do these things, but then you have the prospect of being violated for the things you agreed to do that you might not be able to do. And I always saw tension with signing up for something that might get you in more trouble. So anyway, conceptually, that's, you know, that's what I see. So a couple questions on that. So, I mean, if we lifted those restrictions and

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: if it was more of the situations where somebody has been a flight risk, there's a good case that they're a flight risk and that bail could be imposed, but the choice then is, all right, we're gonna impose bail or they have you under pretrial supervision. I mean, might that change people's, you know, defendant's calculus on whether to

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I think that's basically what it is now. I mean, the only people who have done it and I actually talked to Vince Lusi just the other day. He says, got my first one on pretrial supervision. I'm like, geez, Vince, how'd that happen? He said, Well, he had a choice. He's either gonna go to jail or be on pretrial supervision. Like, that makes some sense. But it take you have to get to a certain point, because our constitutional bail laws Right. You know, if there you're a few problems down the road before you get to the point where you're required to you were it gets to a point where you're going to be held on bail or without and or you're going to go on pretrial supervision. This this the thing about this too is remember we had the home detention that was out there for a while, and there weren't a lot of people on it? It's the exact same thing.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Right.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: You know? It's basically a last resort. Said, look, where are you gonna put yourself, put you I I was almost getting very cloaky over there for a second. But we're gonna put you in jail, or you're going to have home detention so you can go to work and go to the doctor, and otherwise, you're staying home. And there's your choice. Well, there weren't very many people on that. Like, you know, statewide, less than 10. It's the same thing. It's just we necessarily confining to the home, but we're asking them to do certain things. Because the way the law is, you have to put the least restrictive conditions to ensure that somebody is gonna show up in court. Not that somebody's gonna do things, but show up in court. So we said, if you get to that point where there are no conditions that would ensure you coming to court, we're now going to oppose bail. Or we're gonna do we can do pretrial supervision, which is kinda like your last shot before that. So you're a number you're whittling the population whether you say you need five dockets or no dockets or, you know, you or one docket. It it doesn't really matter.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: So something like home home detention, a client is given an either or choice. It's just not something that's implemented by the courts?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: With home detention, the there are two ways that it could be agreed to by the state's attorney and the defender, or the one of the ways it was originally constructed, you end up being held on bail. And if you're not bailed out within seven days, then you then Department of Corrections has to file something with the court that says this person is amenable to home detention. Basically, they have to have a good place to live that is you know, that Corrections approves of, which that wasn't always easy.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Connectivity. Connectivity.

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: Right. Connectivity was a

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: big issue. Connectivity. That they can connect to the, you know, to Your bank. Settled or whatever.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Oh, yeah. They had to have a phone. Right.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Are you are you good? Yeah. Angela, I'm very good.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: But, you know, you can't be couch surfing. And we, you know, we have a lot of clients like that who they're either, you know, because they're homeless or they are transient. Lot of transient, just moving friend to friend, place to place, phone to phone.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: You know, that kind of thing.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: So quest two questions. I caught myself yesterday using pretrial supervision and pretrial services interchangeably, and they're different. Right? Would you say they're different?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I don't know. They're kinda the same. I don't know what you're trying to say.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: Well, when you because you said that, you know, pretrial supervision, rather than trying to tinker with the program, we should just scrap it. And that's not to say that we should stop offering pretrial services

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: to Right. Well, what we were doing with the three b court was really connecting people with the services. That's not that's not the bad thing.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: Right.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: It's just that when you formalize it and you basically put someone in a position where they sign up for a situation that could get them violated and incarcerated anyway, why would you ever do that unless it's, like, your very last resort?

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: Right. So that my second question is, in in the three b docket, how was how how were things framed for for your clients? Like, what was the framing? What was it?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Really, what they wanted to do is get into court. So they got they got into court, and they said, now that we're up, we're at court. And and let's say, compare a traditional due process model to what was going on there. You'd be brought into court, and we'd apply the bail laws. And the judge would if you if you were qualified to be held on bail, the judge would impose it, or if it would impose conditions of release, they'd set another court date. The difference is, with the three b docket, is that we had need screeners at the courthouse. We had Department of Corrections at the courthouse. So those cases that could be resolved, you had people right there who were telling you, like, what we could do if we're gonna do a furlough sentence or if we were gonna do, a probationary sentence and and the like. And you also had because our clients, believe it or not, don't trust the Department of Corrections or the state or law enforcement. We had our lawyer there, obviously, designated specifically, and a licensed therapist who could confirm or say, hey, that screening's BS. And we could say to the client, yes, we reviewed it. The screening is legitimate. And we will make sure that you can get where you need to get to access the services you need to access. And so you had all of these resources readily available on-site every day to get those people where they needed to go and at least get them started. Now as far as clearing a docket, it did a great job. Mhmm. Is it going to prevent recidivism and all of those things? I don't know. It's been two months. You know? And it also depends on what your definition of recidivism is. If you do a six month recidivism study, you're probably gonna be great. If you do five years, it's probably gonna stink like it always does. But, you know, somewhere in the middle there.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: So then it sounds like the supervision provided in the three b example or

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: Plus the services provided. Right. But they're

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: because they can choose a lot

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: so I guess that's what I'm trying to I'm trying to

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: understand can choose. They can say, I'm not doing any screening. I wanna try it. And there were a good number of people who said, okay. And they'd say, fine. Now you're going down the hall into the regular regular due process docket, and we'll forget about this stuff. And, you know, along the way, we'll as part of your, you know, lawyer lawyer dealing with the case, we'll bring it up again and see if you know? But there are some folks who said, I wanna I wanna try it. And and so you know? But you had a good number of folks who took advantage of it. There were hundreds of dockets that were resolved.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: Right. And so those folks who chose who opted in

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: Were supported in their pretrial in their acquisition of pretrial services. Yes. Not supervised.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Right. Yeah. I don't think they were really supervised per se.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: Okay.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: And that's kind of the The

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: support was key, I'm sure.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Oh, absolutely. This is you know, Chittenden County has done this before. You know, when TJ was up there, Andy Pulido was the corrections commissioner, and myself, Andy Pulido, and TJ, signed on to we we approached senator Leahy about getting a grant for what was then known as the WIC program, if you remember. And all that was was wraparound services for people before they were ever charged at that point. And there was a they there was a coordinator, and TJ stole somebody from my office to do some kind of the legal side of it on for for the state's attorney's office. But it was the same thing. It wasn't and it wasn't just mental health. It wasn't just, you know, substance abuse or co occurring. It was housing. It was employment, it was transportation, it was childcare. It was You know, you might not have any problems with mental health that need specific addressing. I think we probably all have some problems. And or any problems with substance. But you have no transportation, and you got two kids, and you don't have a place to live on a regular basis. And all of those things are gonna impede your ability to, like, be successful and even show up at court. So what the RIP program did, but it was all pre charged, was getting a whole bunch of people out of the system. Now eventually, the grant went away, and then the program went away as things tend to do. But what we're do what we did and what, you know, the governor committed resources to and brought us all together to do and I honestly, without him pushing it, I don't know that it ever would've happened because we needed to get those resources. You know, I found it within within my own budget, but the other day, was DOC and AHS and the Howard Center and all of those folks. This wouldn't have happened to get them all together at the table. We're just doing the same concept as what Rick did twenty years ago.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: And Sarah George had a similar initiative that she used grant funding for a couple years ago. So, yeah, whenever it's grant funded, it ends. It falls apart. And then we think we're learning some new revelatory lesson. Why do we have to keep learning the lesson? Why don't we fund what we see works?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yeah. You know, I will say the big thing here, and I I know that it's passe maybe at this point to say this was all caused by the pandemic. But, honestly, this was all caused by the pandemic. I mean, the things that you guys were arguing about yesterday while I was watching you argue about it was

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Conversing.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Was was caused I don't know. I saw one guy seem like he was arguing. Anyway, in any event, when the court takes two years off and the only things you can do, because constitutionally, absolutely have to, are the held without bails, the the speedy trial cases, and the juvenile cases. Every other case is getting pushed to the side, every single other one. I mean, I'm sure the public doesn't like, you know, burgers on the street, that kind of thing. I get that. But the thing that really annoys them is all of the other stuff. You know? It's it's the people in their door wells, you know, of the of their businesses, the people coming in to get warm, and the people taking stuff. You know? It's all in the general scheme of the criminal justice system.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: You mean by people taking stuff, stealing?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yeah. Re retail theft. All of that in the general scheme of the criminal justice system is relatively low on the level of of of, you know, when you're trying to what the court prioritizes, what the constitution prioritizes. The problem is all of those cases were getting backlogged. Those are the ones that nobody was dealing with. And while they weren't being dealing dealt with, more of them were occurring, and more and more cases were being brought. They were violation of conditions. But when you're in a backlog, you are still have to deal with those core fundamental, you know, the speedy trial cases, the murder cases, and the the juvenile cases by statute get priority. So the other ones were not. There's no surprise at all that you were gonna get a backlog of those, quote, unquote, minor cases. But those minor cases piss everybody off. That's what, on a day to day basis, that is what annoys people. So you've gotta get rid of them.

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: You know? And and this is with the resolution of these cases, you know, I saw Sarah George the other day, and and she's like, you know, what we did in, like, this three months with this intensive effort has kind of made managers everything else that we were struggling with in the office. Their you know, the caseload per attorney, like, shrug immensely. And the ones we were spending all this time on that built up, when you can't deal with them for two years, I, you know, I always say, it's gonna take way more than two years because the new ones keep coming in. You know, something had to happen. You know, in Franklin County, the state's attorney and the defenders got together. And at some point, they got rid of hundreds of cases, like, voluntarily. They just said, dude, yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, they didn't actually do a Rule 48, but they did stipulate to dismiss them. But I it's akin to the same thing. Yeah. And and so, you know, we're just in a situation where we are still and it's 2026, and the pandemic allegedly ended on in 2022. It was declared ended, and it ended then, more or less. But we still are dealing with that two years of minor cases that are just lingering out there.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: And so I wanna get back to talking about DOC and the pretrial. So that was helpful. With the limited time we have, so looking forward, I understand that pretrial supervision program has not been bringing a lot of people in. That one of the things that we were gonna at least open it up a little bit to more discretion of who might go there and it's still gonna be narrow. But at the same time, we would like to see in the different courts that are doing something like we did in the three B docket, like every Friday or whatever they're gonna do, that they have a DOC liaison essentially there to try to recreate how that happened. It's possible that that DOC liaison in those situations could also handle the supervisory duties of the pre trial supervision of the handful probably of people that fit that program. So I think that's kind of where we're heading, but we want to make sure that the pretrial supervision can be as useful as it can. And I understand it's pretty significantly limited just like the home monitoring. Yeah. I mean, is there anything else that is preventing pretrial supervision from being a useful program?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Well, no. I mean, the first thing is our system's not structured in a way that would make it amenable to do. The second is that the way our constitution is written, there's gonna be a very limited number of people who would qualify for it anyway.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Is there anything, like, information issues as far as the fact that it would require defendants to provide additional information, like, for the risk assessment? Has that been a barrier as well? I don't think

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: it ever gets to that point. Would it

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: be a barrier if it got to

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: that point? I don't think that's the biggest issue. You know, literally, have been like eight people in the entire state who have ever done this. They might they were 10 or 12 or something who sort of qualified in the pilot. And I

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: think

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: that The number that I had was four people. But I saw I can't remember his first name, mister Marvel from the Department of Corrections, who was the one who was supervising the program. And, I mean, you can literally look at every single individual. You don't have to this is like a statistical difficult, statistically difficult thing. It's more like talk to the eight people. I don't think that that was a huge issue.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, and mean, of the issue that at least in the Chittenden doc and pilot was that things are moving quickly enough that pretrial supervision probably made even less sense there. So I mean, I feel that it hasn't been given necessarily a fair

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: chance. It's been two years, right?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, we started at Orleans and Essex, I think it was, and then in Chittenden only with respect to the pilot docket.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yeah. I I I think that I'm not even sure if there were there might have been one out of Chittenden. It was three. I'll give you three. How about that?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I I

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: think so.

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: K. By the

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: just real quick. You you talked about the minor cases earlier, and that those are the ones that people are concerned with.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: They're relatively minor in the criminal Well, right. Right. They're not sexual assaults. They're not

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: And and my take on that, it's the reason it bothers people is because it's like a death from a thousand cuts. You know, they're they're like mosquitoes compared to a bee sting type thing. So and and that's they're always in front of people where the bigger cases, say, murders, I mean The indoor. They're boom and and gone and into court.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I'm not lessening at all the way people feel about it. I know exactly the way they feel about it.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: But that's yeah.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: I I think that's why people continue to bring up the issue. They should. So is it is a tool like this? Isn't it isn't it potentially in the best interest of the client? Especially those that

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: are potentially,

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: I'm saying, I'm not saying it's working perfect by any means or or it's written perfect in in the law, but especially the ones that are difficult to keep track of their potential.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: It's always potential. So so if

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: there's potential, how do we fix other than

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: just Well, the part part of what you have to look at is the cost benefit analysis. It's like 1 and a half million dollars that has been committed, and we've dealt with something less than 10 people.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Right. But that's what I'm

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: saying is is is how do we fix it to get more people into it?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: How about you do something else instead of I'm not saying that it does this this reminds you know, you're arguing what you're talking about is the same thing as No. I'm not arguing. No. Well, you're

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. No. I'm not arguing.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: I'm I'm asking questions that I don't know the answers to.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Well, I'll

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: tell you. Mean, you you already accused Kenny of arguing. Now you're accused Oh,

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I watch. I can see.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: My my they're just questions. I I don't wanna argue with you. Alright. Now I'm arguing with you because you accused me of arguing. Well,

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: then I think I won. But now the here's the here's the bottom line. Right?

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: That was a Get broke.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Can can you do can you do this? And and, does this help some people? All I was gonna do is make an analogy to work crew. Right? Work crew helps some number of people. Defenders really like work crew because it is another tool in the toolbox, so to speak We love it. To to to assist people. Department of Corrections does not like work crew because it costs a lot of money. It doesn't show a lot of success. And so over a period of over a period of time, their cost benefit analysis is that it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't work. What I see here is kind of a similar similar analogy. Does it can it help some people? Absolutely agree that it can. If could more people do it? Maybe. But the way our system's structured, it's always gonna be a small number. So all I'm suggesting to you is that is at a cost benefit analysis, this, to me, there are there are better ways to kind of skin this cat and and get at this population. We

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: just passed. I know. You

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: know what I'm saying?

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Okay. I understand.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: It's it's just can it help some people? Absolutely. Could it help a few more people?

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: I don't think you understand understood what I said is is that I understand what you're saying that as far as the the the cost analysis going. What's the language to get more people into it?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: You just make everybody eligible. We'd have no restrictions.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: That's fine. We're gonna have no restrictions, but we're gonna be able to meet the discretion of them.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: But I think that you're gonna get the same situation, you know, because because of the way because of the way bail and conditions of release constitutionally work. This is going to be no matter who you if you say everybody is eligible for pretrial supervision, it is going to be a last resort after all of the other options have kind of been whittled away, and that is necessarily a small number of people. That's all. So you you should let everybody in. I wouldn't even be against it. But I I think you're gonna run on into the same thing.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: So it would still be a small number of people, but it would would it compared to what it is now, would it be a bigger number of people?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yeah. But I'm guessing, you know, if first of all, it was we were a tiny county and all that stuff. Yep. But if you look at it as akin to, like, home detention, which I thought was gonna be a lot more robust over a period of time, they never had more than 20 people on that at any given time. So even if you said statewide, this is available, and you got 50 people, it's just not much. Okay. Yeah.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: It's Well, what I'm having a hard time understanding, I guess, in the in a world with limited resources, you know, I am trying to do that cost benefit analysis, I guess I'm not very clear on this might be for discussion or maybe DOC to answer, but I don't quite understand what the resources are that are needed, that are not currently in place to widen the scope of pretrial supervision. And if the money that we would need to put into that could actually be better spent broadening the three d doc fit type response. Mhmm.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: You know, DOC mister Marvel and he had another person with them. They also had a budget person over at House Corrections Institution a day or so ago. To give you the exact numbers, but, basically, what I think they're trying to do is add one person in each DOC district office who would be in charge of supervising pretrial supervision. So it's like I think it's like seven employees. You know, if I had their numbers, I could do it. But the bottom line is it it doesn't matter. So they're they're adding they're adding some personnel to do that.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: And what I'm hoping is if they are adding those personnel, that they can have a dual purpose, and they can be the individuals who are the liaison, like we had with the pilot project, and secondary can be doing the supervision because they're not gonna have lots of people to supervise. But that's a conversation for DOC and Trevor Squirrel and other folks. I mean, or maybe all those resources aren't necessary. Maybe they have enough people to do both in each of the districts.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: You know, the the key with what I saw, the biggest difference really with any of this is just that they were available at the courthouse when the people were there. That's the that is the lynchpin. Now I don't know if one in each district works. It depends how many days you do it, what courts, and that kind of thing. Virginia County had enough, you know, gravity, so to speak, enough cases where you could where you could have somebody there every single day, and you would have enough cases every single day. That's not gonna be the case in Orange County. You know, it's not gonna be the case in Addison. I'm not sure it would be in any other town, but there are gonna be some, the bigger ones. The bottom four, if they went to went to Bennington, you're gonna have a fair amount of volume. But, you know, I I don't know how they would allocate their personnel. I might you know? I have enough problems figuring out my own personal

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: No. We're gonna let them but I think the idea is to try to get them to have this as a dual purpose for individuals. But Ian, go ahead.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Just really quick question, because I'm just trying to understand your point. So you sort of see, it makes sense to me too, the inflection point here is the moment where conditions of release aren't sufficient, and now we're looking for bail, and this could be a release valve for somebody to get something in between the two. And so, think that that's only probably 50 cases in the state if we were to open it up to anybody, there was no five dockets or multiple violation requirements for this. Well, bail and and having not the ability to make bail.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yeah. So, I mean, you know, the way the law is, it's not legal to impose a bail that somebody can't meet. The judge has to make a finding that the person actually can, that the amount is reasonable to you know? And so this might be available on some of the other ones where, you know, where you have repeated violations and there are no conditions that are available that would ensure the person's detentant. You know? So it's not even it's it's almost like in hold without cases. It's almost it's almost a little higher than just, like, your standard. It's gonna be $200 bail.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Well, because the the example I'm thinking of, and it does come up enough that I'm kind of that's why I'm kind of curious about the numbers is, like, the argument where it's nine failures to appear. Defense attorney says, your honor, it's $200 bail cap. Your honor, dollars 200 can be held up essentially. My client cannot pay $200 We're at that tension moment. This seems like Yeah. Right? I that's it I don't know.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Is that 50 cases in the state? Don't know. Yeah. I don't know.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: You know, we had we have I don't know what our today is, which usually when we have our highest detention population lately, usually tends to be, like, on a Monday, and they're talking about six twenty. Yeah. We used to be in the range of 300, two eighty, 300 in that range. There are people getting held now that weren't getting held before. So I it's somewhere between that 300 and and then then you gotta get by that Monday. So what is our average? Say our average is 400. That number is somewhere between that three hundred and four hundred. So it's anywhere, I'm guessing, 50 to a 100.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Yeah. No. And I'm not I'm not really pushing

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I'm just trying to I'm just trying

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: to say what numbers you might be looking at. Yeah. Because I think you can't exclude a bunch, then you're probably talking some number under a 100 is gonna be the number statewide that might be eligible for this. So

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So I'm I'm not gonna have you weigh in on the other bill, seven forty one, because we're still we're gonna be working on that a little bit more. So That's fine. Yeah. Not gonna need you to weigh in on that since it's a work in progress, though. I appreciate it. I don't know if we'll have you in next week. Maybe we're not gonna we're gonna save you some time next week. Unless you wanna weigh in on S-two08 or S-two09, which I don't think you do.

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We don't have those yet.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Would not know.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: OS208. Yeah. That's that's the name. Oh, yeah. I didn't see him. Don't think I don't think you testified in in the senate.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. He would have remembered.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yeah. Yeah. What are those?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: One is masking of of law enforcement. And the other is the other is sense of some places places where one can't make a civil arrest. Also not really a new round. Alright.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Well I don't

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: think your office will qualify to defend

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: the people that need to

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: be defended with no escape.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: You know, it's interesting. I don't know if you know this, but by statute and I think it was something that was actually collectively bargained at some point. If you're a member of the state police and you are charged with a crime, you automatically get a public defender, irrespective of means. And interestingly enough, by statute, you get to choose which public defender it is. They almost never choose the public defender, which is really you know, they should sometimes. Yeah. But they often

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: If I would come to you and ask you to contract the best lawyer in the state. Yeah.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Well, they have to be under contract already.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: People's affluence. Yeah.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: But, you know, honestly, the best and I I the best lawyers in the state, best criminal defense lawyers in the state are under contract with the attorney general's office right now. They they really are.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: You gonna name that for us?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I'm not under contract. I'm I'm a bureaucrat.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Alright. Well, thank you very much for your thank you very much for your testimony and I used

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: to be a lawyer.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: We're gonna adjourn until 01:00, and we'll be hearing the Department of State's attorneys and sheriff's budget presentation, which I think is the last budget presentation we need to have in