Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Live.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Hey. Welcome back to the House Judiciary Committee this Friday afternoon, February thirteenth, and if they are continuing to receive presentations on budget requests, and this afternoon, we're gonna hear from the Department of State's attorneys and sheriffs. Over to you, Tim. Thanks. Nice to see you back.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Thank you very much. Tim Leaders Newmont, Department of State's attorneys and sheriffs. And I will be a bit of a tour guide for you in our in our budget, also some system pressures given the interest of this room. With me in the room is a few wonderful employees from our department, and our director of labor relations operations, Lauren Clemens here Hello. Will be sharing her screen. And over here, have Kim, who's McManus, who's with you all the time, our legislative attorney. And then Annie Noonan, who is here, who needs no introduction, but is currently helping mostly with fiscal operations and advising me on on the department's budget. And we are very appreciative of our our great team here in Montpelier. So jumping right in, the main thing I'm gonna do is is give you an overview of things. On your website, there's an executive summary document. It's a it's a four page document, which basically is a a speed course through our budget and some of the pressures. I'll then quickly mention the four budgets that we have. Our department has four separate budget lines, state's attorneys, then our special investigation unit. I don't use acronyms anymore. Thanks to Angela, our representative of Arsenault, our victim advocates budget, and then our sheriff's budget. But jumping right in, as as you know, our department was essentially founded in the eighties because you were sick of having people from all the counties come in and talk about what they needed. So we're kind of county pass through. Our Department of State Attorneys and Sheriffs is comprised of 28 constitutional county officers, 14 state attorneys, 14 sheriffs, so 28 field offices, and then a central office here in Montefiore, the department's headquarters, the executive director's office. And within those two entities, there's two executive committees, executive committee of state's attorneys and of sheriffs, five each. They hire the executive director. They advise our department. And they also help with policy matters, things that come up where we support. And they meet on a quarterly basis with each other. We are right now dealing with, if you're looking at the executive summary document, pretty interesting time period. We're engaged in a basically nine hundred day data analysis. This department started looking at judicial filings back in 2023. And because of that work, I was able to successfully respond to chair, Robin Shai's request this year and chair. How are things going? Not just this year, but over the last few years. So when you're looking at, our executive summary, you'll see 2023 was essentially a high watermark coming out of COVID, but also a residual backlog that existed before COVID. Twenty six thousand cases. I sat here a couple years ago. We are now at twenty two thousand cases, so we've moved about fifteen percent reduction in cases. That has been due to a number of things, and I know there's a number of Chittenden County representatives here. Over the last quarter, we've moved seven hundred cases off the docket in Chittenden County, which is an incredible moment of progress by incorporating human services, Howard Center, and a bunch of other entities right into the court process. And I was reminded by chair Emmons down the hall that they also tried this in Windsor, and it has happened in the past, was successful in the past, and became a fossil. So we we wanna avoid fossilization and silo silos developing in the future. Right now, as you know, we deal with not just the criminal cases, but family cases, CHINs, children in need of care and supervision, youthful offender, juvenile delinquency. And our caseload, which I know this department's very this committee is very interested in, two ninety eight cases. Well, I rounded up to 300. 300 cases per SAS attorney, about 600 cases per victim advocate, and about 800 cases per administrative production. And that just breaks down by staffing essentially. We have more attorneys than we have victim advocates and admits. Looking at some of the trends, as you'll see on page one, over the last year, some of that progress has slowed, which is why I said potential flat out. Even though we've had success in Chittenden, we've had some issues in other counties with increasing cases. So three and a half percent over the last year. That's what we've made. Some very positive news over the last three years. Basically, the last nine hundred plus days, we've had five hundred and forty days where we've been in trial across the state. That's very good in 2024. From 2023 through 2024, we saw a 54 increase in trial date utilization, which is excellent. And over the last year, it slowed a little bit, but still 24% higher than it was in 2023. There's granular breakdown of trial dates in our massive data presentation, but we used 178 trial dates in the last calendar year, 2025. Looking at what are these cases, what are the 22,000 pending cases? 6,966 sorry, 6,096 felonies, 13,000 misdemeanors. Of that, one hundred and eleven homicides. Our department is staffing 103 of the 111. Homicide filings are on the increase over the last three years. So if you look, 90 pending homicides, and I wanna provide a caveat when I'm done with this, piece. In 2023, now we're up to a 111. So it's about a 23% increase as to the snapshot. If you have a case where someone commits homicide, it's on camera, it's filed, it is closed within a month, it won't be caught in the snapshot because it came in and out so quickly. Snapshot data is very helpful for us, but it doesn't capture the fluidity of our system. And we had a time period where were nearing 130 homicides. We're at 111 as of the end of last year. That means we closed a lot of homicides over the last two years. We've closed a huge amount of twenty twenty two homicides, which is fantastic. We still filed 34 new homicide cases in the last calendar year, 2025. So that's a major pressure point. It's also one of the major pressure points on our budget, our expert witness fund. Even though mental health homicide related cases are minority of homicides, they take up the majority of our expert witness fund dollars. And it really inhibits our ability to move on those cases if we have a limited dollar amount. For example, in a gun case with no mental health, we still often need gunshot residue experts. And in a mental health case, those are cheaper, by the way, than a mental health expert. And a mental health expert, we need them for competency. And we need them for the hospitalization, potentially. If they come back to competent again, then we need them for the trial. So we need them all the way through. Recent case right now, we're probably going to spend between 30,000 and $70,000 We will definitely spend over $30,000 on a single case and upwards to $100,000. And we need to continue to build up our expert witness fund. That is the majority of our expert witness fund. One case. And so that's an area that we will get in more detail with down the hall and and and downstairs, and if we had a good conversation about that rest of it. In the category of what's the other pressure, we have violent crime, homicides being a major pressure point, and then we have people, high volume defendants. Three or more, five or more. We talked about this before in this committee, but the three or more group takes up about 44% of all pending dockets. The five or more group takes up about 26% of all pending dockets. So again, homicides and high volume defendants take up the majority of our time. And they also grab more of the public's attention for the very same reasons. People are coming back through, coming back through. And those are different than incidents. A police officer I always look to representative Oliver. Police officer could interact with someone 15 times. It might be two cases or two cases that result in a filing. But it's 15 interactions with the police. And so when you look at incidents, if, for example, there's been a lot of news about Burlington and South Burlington and Williston having lots of incidents individuals, those don't always correlate to a case filing. And if they happen in the same day or same two days, it's probably a single docket. So individual counts are different than dockets. You could have five counts in a single docket. So when we talk about 20 plus thousand cases, many, many dockets sorry, many, many counts within those 20,000 dockets. Often also sometimes multiple victims, which goes to the caseload for those victims. 600 cases per victim advocate does not include the number of victims that they are working with. Single homicide cases, often you're communicating with a family of five to 20 people that have a real vested interest in what's happening with that case. Some of the interesting things that I, in prior years, have done a less than admirable job of of talking about in here, specialized work that we do at the executive director's office. We have the traffic safety resource prosecutors, two of them, two deputy states attorneys, Dennis Wigmans and Matt Dolan, that work for our central office. And there's a submission with some federal funds, governor highway safety funds, is to work on the cases, and I'm gonna use the exact terminology that Annie make sure I use. Serious bodily injury, death, other highly complex cases, distracted driving, DUI, neg ops, and often the ones where there's death involved or serious bodily injury. Did I say it right? Reckless. Reckless as well. So we used two prosecutors to assist both the training, law enforcement training of our prosecutors, and also actually prosecuting cases with those two. A high profile case in Chittenden County was staffed by them recently with pedestrian death. Same in Rutland, same down in Windsor County. So they are deployed to help with those cases. And seven about eighteen percent of all pending dockets are DUI cases. So it's a huge percentage of what our alliance staff deal with. And it continues to be an area where a lot of our prosecutors get a lot of experience, a lot of training. Everyone has to do DUI cases. We are and this is a a stopping point because I I'm not gonna use the word progress, but we've seen a statistical improvement in the number of fatalities. We had sixty one fatalities. We twenty five. In 2021, we had seventy four. So that is an improvement, but sixty one fatalities is still awful for the individuals involved. We also have had a reduction in the number of crashes over time, but it stayed largely consistent, between seventy and sixty, essentially. It always stays in that range. One piece to note is that these are largely not counted in our homicide docket. There is one driving related case that's fairly prominent in the southern part of the state, is being charged as essentially a murder case. But for the most part, these are charged as DUI, SBI, S. R. S. Bodily injury cases that are not a part of that 111 pending homicides. But when you combine those, we're dealing with 100 to 160 death cases that we're experiencing. Another specialized area, folks that have been in here for a number of years, are appellate services. We have one deputy state's attorney that covers the majority of all criminal appeals that occur in the state out of our central office, Evan Meenen, who used to work in this building a lot in in Kim's position. And incredibly, by the time we did this data analysis, he had filed a 100 appeals in his three years on the job, 2022 through 2025. And in terms of how many we've closed or sorry, he's actually staffed 100 appeals, many of them he's responding to. 81 of those 100 have been closed. 18 are currently active. When you look at a superior court case where you have a filing, an arraignment, and let's say there's a conviction, that's what we call the lower courts. And if it gets appealed, that's where our centralized appellate attorney gets involved. If a trial happened, it could be thousands of pages of review, sometimes years later. And so it's high volume, high intensity. It also shapes the case law, which complements your statutory scheme here. So Evan Meenen is the one that works on all of those cases. Our field also does appeals, and he often is counseling them on how to respond to appeals. And the field deputy state's attorneys in the field also do appeals. But we have a centralized person to help speak with one voice as much as we can in making those determinations. And we're very proud of that work. The filings range from we had 30 back in 2023. We're at the end of 2025, we had 24 that we had responded to in that year. And those are obviously cases that can be impactful years after a conviction, and a lot of money and time is spent on these cases. So it's something that I always like to highlight as very much still a part of the original case, but it can occur years later. And I should also mention that the family court cases that result in the Chin's filings, often Evan, Meenen, our deputy on appellate services, staffs those as well. So it's not just criminal cases. The majority are criminal, but he does family court cases as well. Another interesting piece that impacts, both sides of the house is our state transport program. We have 25 positions. 24 of those positions are funded. And right now, I'm looking at barn where 22 are filled. 21. 21 are filled. 21 of those positions are filled. Something we talked about on the 1st Floor of this building in appropriations is that our overtime costs are basically inhaling the rest of our budget. So inhibiting our ability to hire our open vacant positions for transport. And that is a huge problem. So we have a not full suite of staff right now, in part because our overtime costs are nearing 80%, and we're not near the end of the fiscal year. So we're way off target in terms of not off target, but way way upward pressure on the overtime budget. And that is often directed by the courts. The job duties are set by our department, but the courts are the ones setting the schedule. And often, we have very little control over the day to day interactions between our transport staff and the system. Another pressure point is the number of detainees. So we have a lot of pending felonies. We have 111 homicides. And so therefore, we have a lot of pending detainees. Those people all are presumed innocent, and they all deserve to get support. That is putting pressure on our transport staff with high level of detainees. A lot of people need to get to court. And previously, we had more support, what I would call pure county per Diem deputy sheriffs, some of whom had retired from other law enforcement that would help fill the gaps in transporting when our transport deputies were occupied. That staff has dramatically dropped off. Those were pure county deputies, for example. Let's see. Mister Goodnow was a was a state police officer. He retires at 55. He wants to continue to work and keep his certification. And, basically, he gets a job with a local county sheriff. We need we need help with transports. You're gonna help us. And so we'll give you a car. You have access to a car. And help us when you've got a trial day and other transports. That workforce has dropped off dramatically. That older range of people that could drive folks around has dropped off dramatically. And it's borne out in our per diem hours. We pay for non state employee transport staff to effectuate transports. And those hours are dropping off historically over time because we don't have a lot of people out in the field filling that gap. So it's more and more on our transport staff. Another piece you'll hear, Department of Corrections used to help a lot more with facility to facility so that on a Monday, a person doesn't up in Newport there in Marlborough Valley for their Rutland hearing. That is basically fallen off completely. They need a couple weeks notice. And even with that, they don't And I'm looking at representative Oliver here. We had a lot more support in the past. They have staffing issues, which are very dramatic. So that means that our transport deputies are doing the facility to facility transports in between port hearings, which is putting Those are further trips that we didn't used to have to make that we're making now to make sure port happens. One piece you'll see at the very back of the large document that we sent is we've issued a number of policies and memos to put healthy pressure on the courts to assist us in better managing our overtime and also better managing how we do transports. We hope that the state and our courts move to a block scheduling system with respect to detainees. Certainty between 10AM and 2PM, we will be heard between ten and two so that our transport staff can get back home and that the detainees can get back to the facilities, not at 11:00 at night. And there is a huge document we've shared with corrections in the past. The time it takes to get from each courthouse to each facility broken down by county is something that we maintain. And I don't have to tell anyone that if you try to get to Newport and back from Burlington, it takes a long time. It's four hours before you get to court. So if you get seen by 8AM at an 8AM hearing, you've already been in car for four hours. If your hearing doesn't happen until noon, you put in an eight hour day. And very quickly, you're into overtime categories even before the afternoon settles in. So we're working on those issues with Judge Zonnay and Terry Bourzons from the judiciary about how can we get the courts to do scheduling that makes more sense. And obviously, continue to utilize virtual hearings when someone is not going to be released. An in court appearance is never an excuse to meet your client for the first time. And we know that that sometimes happens in part because of the pressures on the defense bar's schedule and volume of cases as well. In terms of the crime trends, and these are on the last page, these are a year lagging. So 2024 is the last fully analyzed year from the FBI and the national incident based reporting system. But you'll see these are pressure points that will feel quite familiar to this committee. From 2018 to 2024, there has been an 110% increase in what the FBI calls shoplifting, but is retail theft in Vermont. Theft for motor vehicles, 84. Aggravated assault, 46%. There's almost bills attached to each one of these in this committee over the last four years. And then murder and manslaughter, homicide cases, seventy two percent. In your data, there's actually a breakdown of the number of incidents from 2016 to 2024 that is in an actual breakdown. So it's I think it's on page 19. We'll find the actual page number. It's the actual numbers. Take a look. I have a detail more there.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Is there

[Unidentified Committee Member]: a chart somewhere in here that also shows the number of FTEs for that same time period? Because I know we've increased the FTEs. For who? For state attorneys, for sheriff. It just would be good to kind

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: of So we have 194 FTEs. Last year, this committee was supportive of us moving nine limited service positions to permanent positions. People were in all of those positions, and we were very grateful that this legislature and the governor in support of moving those positions. And we could look into historically, and that would be in the budget bill the last many years of positions have been awarded. That would be helpful. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, from our perspective, when I when I say 01/1994, it's across the whole spectrum. It's state's attorneys, sheriffs, victim advocates, our central office. Andy, anything I'd add, Vanessa? No. Okay. Terms of looking at our budget asks, and we can follow-up. We're sending a memo with the numbers to representative Squirrel. But in terms of looking at our budget asks, this year, Mr. Chair, I've made sure to prioritize. Last year, I think you asked me, and I said, they're all tied for first. And I appreciate that. I was frustrating. And I will say, if Steve Howard is sitting where I'm sitting, you you probably have a different opinion regarding regarding priority.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: That doesn't take your response.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: You're right. I agree. What's that? No. We were not talking about But the number one thing to avoid layoffs is eliminating vacancy savings. As everyone knows, vacancy savings are not true vacancy savings in the layman's use of the terms. It's a it's a, can you meet this target? And so we have a breakdown 330,000 for the state's attorneys. That is multiple layoffs. And we cannot reduce force at this time. For the sheriffs and victim advocates, I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but that would be our number one priority. Eliminate vacancy savings so we can maintain our workforce. So where where do

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I find those numbers? So they those numbers will be

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: in the budget document, but we'll send you basically the breakdown of the total. The major one is for for state's attorneys, 330,000 will need to be eliminated. And for the sheriffs, we can get you that number probably by the end of this.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: 139,000 for the sheriffs.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: 139,000

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: for the sheriffs. And we'll get the victim advocate on in a sec.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: 1 and 47,000.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: 147,000 for the victim advocates. So

[Unidentified Committee Member]: you mentioned that you have vacancies right now. So in addition to having to not fill those vacant positions, you know how many, what the nut is that you would need to

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: lay off? For the shared, the vacancies I mentioned were actually for the state transport program. Just for that. We have some other vacancies, but we only have one vacancy for victim advocates right now. And it's actually to meet last year's vacancy savings target. Two months. Yeah. Which was a substantial amount of money on last year's budget. For the state's attorneys, we can get you a number, but we maintain our force pretty effectively. So in the state's attorneys and victim advocates, we do not have many vacancies. We can get you the full number. But the transport vacancies are because of the overtime. To avoid layoffs, we've had to hold positions open for transport programs. Lauren, if you want to move to the second, the moment that's consolidated. So now in your big 155 page piece, we're not going to go through all that. Do not worry. But it is a huge amount of data and narrative. The second piece I just wanted to note before we launch that is increasing operating expenses. So our expert witness fund is not sufficient to prosecute the level of serious crime and mental health crime and drug related crime that we are experiencing in the state. It also is not sufficient in our very serious aggravated domestic case, where we often have to get an expert involved to talk about things that I'm sure the committee is well aware of regarding tactics that defense counsel make in the interest of their clients regarding paddocks, typically. And so to prevail in those cases, we need experts. And to have those experts do the work, we need sufficient amount of dollars. So that's one area. Mostly for homicides. Transcripts. So when we're doing all these appeals and obtaining convictions in serious cases, most of those will be appealed. All of those require transcripts. And those can be quite costly per page. It's also to use transcripts for more than just appellate work. We do it for motion practice as well at the lower level. The the next major piece for us, which has been an interesting one because it impacts states turning into tariffs, extraditions. The same transport staff that are moving people in the state are also leaving the state and going to other states and bringing people back here for trial. That is because Vermont is still a very hospitable environment for the drug marketplace. So if you're engaged in that activity here, and let's say you are picked up with a felony amounts and firearms and you're a prohibited person and you assault somebody, you get a few felonies. You may get a citation because you've never had an issue with risk of flight in the past according to your brief record. So you go back to I'm just gonna use the state as an example. I do not mean anything by saying Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Maine. Places that people sometimes travel to and from to Vermont. In those locations, we then have to go get those folks when they are picked up for crimes in those locations, and there's now a which state gets the person first? Misdemeanor in New Hampshire, aggravated assault in Vermont. So we pay for them to come back here and try to expedite those cases as best we can. And because of the increased number of violent crime, extraditions have gone way up. And when we have a transport team going to one of those states, they are not here moving people. So that's a major pressure. Did the transport program, as I mentioned, over time? Yes, absolutely. I would just give We made changes to

[Unidentified Committee Member]: the extradition laws last year. Did that have any impact positively? Or is

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: that just because there were corrections wheelhouse instead? In my opinion, it didn't have any impact on either decreasing or increasing. The criminal activity that sometimes results in an extradition happens before the extradition. So I think it did help educate the field what you need to do in an extradition, but it it didn't have an impact on volume. Another major piece is the transport program in general, as we talked about over time, mileage and per diems. We pay mileage when people are using their cars, and the sheriffs subsidize the state program. So we use sheriff's vehicles that they pay for, car insurance, restraints, firearms, vests, uniforms. All that is paid for by the sheriffs. We pay the salary and benefits of the transport staff, but we do not pay for the equipment. We do pay for mileage. Also, per diems. We still need that per diem budget to ensure that when there is a gap and a per diem can make it work, that we're able to pay for that trip. The last category is required trip.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Oh, yes. So one thing that's been confusing to me is when the sheriffs have a contract with either courts or, I don't know who else,

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: DCF. Can

[Unidentified Committee Member]: you just explain how that Yes.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: And we have a transport policy at the very conclusion of this that actually talks about that. So over in this bucket is state transport activities. Can be ordered Any law enforcement officer can be ordered to transport a person and the Department of Corrections and any constable, whether or not they're certified or not, but we try not to emphasize that. The transport program is state employees. We have those physicians, and they're doing that work. And they can be ordered by either a minimus or a transport order, depending on if you're going to or from. The contracts that you're talking about are DMH would like someone to be moved. DCF would like a child to be moved, not a court order, a separate contract with the sheriffs. Nothing to do with our department. It's a separate contract. So that is something that they do private contract with AHS and the sheriffs. We respond to court orders and minimises to move people. The court security also is on the other side of the house. We've been in the room during some of those discussions, but sheriffs have to provide security in a statewide contract with the judiciary also with those county staff and county employees. So the same people are doing work for multiple contracts? Correct. And they're working more than forty hours a week. Who pays the overtime? Is it you guys? So for the county activities and the county work, that would be the county sheriff. But if it's the same person and they're doing The only time we're paying overtime for deputy sheriffs is when they are state transport deputies that work for our department, and it's for transport activity. So that's our overtime pressure, is to and from four.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: That policy is on page one forty four.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: And our policy on transport is on page one forty four. We have an appendix of stuff we did in the last year that is policy related issues that we've done. Nope. You have a bunch of

[Unidentified Committee Member]: pending comments coming up. Is that going to be over burdened some, do you think, to help fulfill transports? And have you thought or

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: I don't know that we have a lot. We've had a couple.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I know there's at least two coming from Chittenden.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Will say when we're filling a vacancy for the transport program, we pay out their leave, which is a cost to the state. And then it is sometimes difficult to recruit. If someone's not a law enforcement officer, they have to go through the academy even if it's just three weeks. But it is difficult. It can be difficult to recruit.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah. I'm just wondering if staffing is going to become challenging if you lose a couple here and there.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: So we've been a lot for the record, Andy, you know, the Department of State's transit chair. We've been allowing the sheriffs who have retired vacancy to go ahead and fill even though, for example, on one of the most recent retirements, the payout was $22,000 annually. But we were able to, the shift between the higher, longer tenured employee and the newer employee, salary difference made it such that we could think. What Tim was mentioning before was that right now because of the overtime cost explosion we've been holding the city's vacant. For example in Washington one of the counties had a vacancy we let them fill that. So we anticipate each time a vacancy comes up we look at do do we have the money to fill it? I think for upcoming retirements of one or two of those people do decide to go, that we would probably be in a position of allowing those to be filled, but we still have to have somebody coming to us from budget adjustment for overtime. It's only going to bring us hopefully to the end of this fiscal year without a deficit, but we still have to hold three of those vacancies open, as you know.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: My understanding is they're aging out, so there's really not a whole lot of

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Well, you know, it was interesting because I think the committee may knew that for people who are in UC, which is mandatory retirement, some of the longer term deputies stating that So they don't have a mandatory retirement. Would

[Unidentified Committee Member]: it be advantageous to raise the mandatory retirement age for transport deputies?

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Well, if you do that, they wouldn't I mean, they want to stay in groups. So I think that that's a very big question because there are a lot of state law enforcement officers in groups who would not want them in before every time an age raise.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Right. Well, thing is I know they're a different burning group, obviously. There's a lot of folks that could still continue to transport and continue to

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: do a lot of work just because, you know,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: they're aging out at 57.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: So some of what happens is the sheriff, and this happened with a recent retirement in Washington County, the sheriff, that person came back and is working for the sheriff on the sheriff's side of the house, not the state. So they could be doing the work, they could be doing the civil process. And And we see that a lot. I think in your opinion, you saw that a lot.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: So just quickly looping back to finish up our executive summary, the last operational ask that you make that we hope to have an increase in our budget this year on is required training. So whether you're transporting someone in a car or you're prosecuting someone for homicide or you're talking with a victim about what a weight of the evidence hearing is gonna look like or you're deciding how to staff your office with respect to caseloads. All of this requires very specialized training. And right now, our training budget has not been updated since the Great Recession. And that a disservice to the state and a disservice to the field. People get experience in this department by doing trials and being basically ineffective. And often, we have our annual training in June, and we try to shove in all this really specialized work. What we've done over the last year is we try to have a virtual training each month during the lunch hour, and then we plan for our annual June training. And our hope would be to provide a more and this is a multiyear ask, but it's to be able to provide real substantial management training for states attorneys and sheriffs and actual prosecutorial specialization work for the prosecutors, victim and trauma informed work for the victim advocates, and what I would call trauma informed work for the whole department in general, because of the type of work that they're dealing with. My number one concern in our department is typically burnout based on the amount of work that they're dealing with. And it doesn't mean that they're always leaving the workforce. It means that people are physically getting The type of work that they're seeing on a daily basis is so tremendously luminous and difficult. And so whether you're a transport deputy on the road for twelve hours a day, strictly talking with people who have been alleged to have killed other people, that's also pretty difficult work. Standing up physically hard, or you're standing in a courtroom for eight hours talking with victims and defense attorneys about serious cases. All of it is quite difficult. And we think the training that we do as a department has to be more substantial. And we hope to be able to provide that in the coming years. And I know we've talked about it in here too as well. But when something comes up, a particular type of case comes up, hey, we only do that seven times a year. But we should be good at it, those seven times a year, even if we don't do it every day. The last ask that you'll see is no not asking for any attorneys this year. I'm not asking for any transport deputies unless you wanna expand the accountability docket, which is a big if in the footnote at the bottom of this page. Six administrative professionals or legal assistants. These folks can help us move cases quickly, effectively. And they also are the folks in our department with technically the highest case loads, secretaries, administrative professionals, and legal assistants. They are dealing with every case that comes in and out of an office. And if they're well staffed, they can move more cases for the attorneys. They can help attorneys prepare for trial. And they are cheaper than attorneys. That isn't why I'm saying we need them. But it's also because when we increased the number of deputy state attorneys a few years ago, we didn't increase the number of admins, paralegals, and legal assistants. And all of those attorneys need that support. The next area is victim advocates. About 600 cases per victim advocate. That doesn't count the number of victims. And we talked about it in here, obviously, at length in your memo last year, really, points it out as well. But we hope that this committee knows if you have victim advocates that are spending time with victims in cases, it helps us with resolution. Victim advocates will come to the attorney and say, hey, the person I'm working with would be okay with this type of resolution. That helps triage and prioritize with the attorneys. If those victim advocates are not getting enough time with the people that they're helping, then it hurts our ability to move cases, certainly. And I would say with the accountability docket piece, we utilized our Chittenden staff with the special prosecutor. So Sarah George's staff, our SAS staff, worked with the special prosecutor and helped move those cases. If we want to see that expansion be successful, you have options, I think. Our department has options. We could deploy people to hotspots rather than have them siloed off in counties for the end of time, which sometimes happens, and sometimes it's fine. Or we could do a complete field based approach, and that means we're less flexible. But it's really a decision for the governor and for you all. If you wanna see accountability dockets expanded, we can do some of that great work through admins, paralegals, and legal assistants. And having more of a focus on data. That's one of the things that we're able to talk about. We know we need 700 of 798 cases in a quarter and shipped. Trapping that data for the next year will be really helpful to know how successful that program was. Right now, no one owns that data work right now, other than us trying to pull judicial data? Which is fine. But I think if we wanna continue to see success, we do need to expand these workforce areas. And certainly, if the rest of the law enforcement community is unable to assist with transports and DOC believes they can't do it, both of which I would take slight issue with, by the way, our transport staffs need to be expanded. If the rest of law enforcement is willing to help with transports and moving people, then we don't need as many transport staff. It's question. Yes, we receive dedicated resources for it. But if there's gonna be more cases happening more quickly, we would need more capacity, whether it's with us or with other entities. So that's kind of the big picture for the department. If if it's helpful, and I wanted to ask if Annie can help go through the how each of the four budgets has seen upward pressure from a money perspective in terms of the governor's recommend, or we are happy to open up for questions, whatever works best for you.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Let's do questions first, because a couple of people are not going to stick around much longer. You have any questions? I guess I do have a couple questions to kind of cutting to what we need to do or what our responsibility for our budget document is it really, I mean, first of all, presumably we're gonna support the governor's recommendation. I don't know if there's been any pushback from the Appropriations Committee, probably not because they only just saw your presentation yesterday. But it would really be what you're asking for beyond the governor's recommend. I assume that you agree with that much. Although my second question is, is there anything that can be cut from your governor's recommendation? Is there anything there that that you think could be used for these other things that you find to be more of a priority?

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: You're not prioritizing anything in your budget. That's usually rather than someone else. And who knows about I get spoken to by any number of people after I say this, but in my opinion, it's gonna be a question of if you want to expand accountability docket statewide, having a flexible amount of money that can be used so you don't have to do BAA next year or as much BAA next year will be an interesting point. So if we deploy to Windham County or Rutland County next, and we will realize we need another administrative professional to help. The volume is too much in Windham. We we need to make sure we have someone down there who can help. Whether we're hiring a temp or whether we are hiring or paying overtime for an existing admin to help with more cases after hours, we may not know that now, but we might know it a month in. And so the ability for us to move in that environment will be quite important. So I am definitely supportive of the governor's FY '27, what I would call dollars for the accountability expansion. I don't know whether it's too little. I don't know whether it's it's too much of time.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Specifically for state's attorneys and

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: and what is My understanding is it's not it's not allocated to a particular area in terms of what we we've seen. It's for the accountability effort in general. $500,000? I believe that's what I understand. So we're obviously very, very supportive of that. The judge time in Chittenden County was quite expensive to pull a retired judge, and he did a fantastic job. So we would be supportive of ensuring that there is a judge in a courtroom and court staff. What I have said for a long time, we said it last year, our department could benefit from a docket manager. And whether it's one of those six administrative professionals that were that we've asked for here or whether or not it's a recommendation from you all, someone that can consent to Windham. Here's your here's your five or more. We're gonna help you analyze which ones have been pending the longest. Right now, we're kinda doing that with the judiciary. But in my opinion, we should be pushing that ourselves. State's attorneys should be pushing the ball on that. And having dedicated staff to help with notices, help with discovery, and help track the data, I think, would be really important. The data you see in this presentation is mostly a result of my time and a state's attorney's time working on judicial filings. But it's not my full time job. And if it's something that we had the space to do, a dedicated person to help with this effort, accountability, high volume, we'll call it just high volume defendant population, I think it would be a very efficient use of state dollars to have a person working on that issue statewide, a docket manager for high volume defendants. And they could help. They could help with the cases themselves if you hired an attorney. If you didn't hire an attorney, a paralegal could help prepare documents, including motions to dismiss for cases that are old, which we sometimes don't feel like we have the time to even look at cases. Cases. So having that dedicated type of staffing, in addition to the type of staff the field needs, would be important. But I don't have any At this point, I think our elimination of vacancy savings would be the the greatest point of difference right now in terms of the governor's recommend. We would that is our number one priority, eliminating vacancy savings for our department.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So the the others that you had increasing operating expenses, strategic staffing increases, those were not in the governor's recommended. Right? And I just wanna make sure that

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: I understood that. I will say in our operating, it's a little bit more nuanced because there has been increases in our operating that the governor's office has recommended, which we are very appreciative of.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: May not be enough.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: And I think, yeah, Annie, might have Annie speak to that if that's Okay, Mr.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Trent. Chancellor, our contracted expert, Rutland, Mental Health and Physical Self Help. We proposed a $50,000 increase kind of as you suggested, mister chair, that the areas where we shifted, we proposed shifting, the governor's office agreed with. But I can tell you that the way that these bills are coming into us, you could have one case, one very difficult case that could be $40,000 $50,000 for expert witnesses because it can go back and forth, back and forth. Tim mentioned that that's probably the biggest pressure areas that we see. We also see some with transcription and translation services, we have more people coming into assisted community assistance because they're English second language speakers so that's a problem. So there are areas of our operational schedule where we really feel like we need to go forward where we were able to put more money in based upon the governor's meeting, the governor's bottom line on the budget and in this budget, with the governor's recommend for us trying to get to where the boundary line would be governed, there are no new positions written in here. They are on the boards too, showing you those are positions we think we need, but we're not proposed for, I don't wanna say not supportive, but not part of the governor's discussion with us for the 5th Floor.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Right. So I think in the three priorities, there is some operational increases, which the governor has supported and the governor's staff has supported, are 50,000 for expert witness. Greatly appreciated. As stated, that can be one case. And the governor support in BAA, which I know is separate conversation, has been tremendous because it goes to the accountability docket and it goes to overtime for transports. Both of those things, we've been in lockstep with the governor's office. There is in our opinion, we we could use more for expert witnesses, for training, for transcription. And we were talking with the representative of SCHWOL yesterday, and we would wanna do a bit of the allocation. But something in the range of a $100,000 extra for operating on top of what the governor's recommending would be helpful from our perspective in that second priority. But again, I can't emphasize it enough. Elimination of vacancy savings is the is the number one priority for our department. Everything else would be great. But we know, we spoke with the speaker on Wednesday, the pressures you're dealing with, with education, with health care, we are not blind to that. Both the speaker and the pro tem made that clear to us this week.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah. No. I think it's very important to have that $150 and it's very important to understand that you'd find that helpful but not crucial. Mean that's, I understand the vacancy savings meets that higher criteria. And I appreciate you having those in there, recognizing that chances are slim, frankly, on those just from what I'm hearing from full appropriations on community economy positions particularly. But the one other question, don't know if I quite asked the question right, or you answered a different question

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: being rude. I've never done that before.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: And that is, so do you agree completely with the governor's recommendation, or are there monies that he has put towards one thing that you'd rather have towards some of these other priorities? Or is it fine, great with the recommendation, but here's one more additional thing, which is the vacancy savings, which is a thing you don't agree with, obviously.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: That would be the category we'd fall into the second description of. We think everything that is being put out there is going to be helpful. And we think in addition to that, that elimination of vacancy savings and an increased op increase over and above to operating would be would be fantastic. And, you know, and I think it's more of a question of policy concerning how quickly you wanna move. We have slowed in our pace to move cases in the last year in some of the counties. Addison County, being a small county like that, has really struggled to meet clearance rate targets a 100%. Right? We're not meeting that. Last thirty six months, Addison has failed to meet that. They've met it 16 times. Places like Washington County, with very, very busy activity, we don't have enough court time, judge time, to move cases in Washington County. Windham County, same thing. Rutland County, they've done a great job with historical aging cases, but they've had a recent uptick of high volume folks that are occurring very recently. And so they could use more court time as well dedicated where we're not competing with the violent felonies. If that's an area of interest and sustaining what we've done in Chittenden, our ability to distribute administrative staff to assist on that and be deployed, as the governor said, I think, to drop in. And I don't mind that description, to drop into hotspots. We think that six administrative staff and additional victim advocates will help push that. It would be an increase, we will send the number for the increase in staff that would be needed. But Annie just did the numbers in the last forty eight hours on how much each of those positions would cost. Those are estimates. Healthcare, like talking about the other issues, healthcare is driving up our cost and we have zero control. So when you just talk about paying a person $90,000 a year, dollars 80,000 a year, it could be as much as double if they have very reasonable healthcare costs and retirement goes up every year as well. A family plan in the state health

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: care system is over $40,000 for the employer costs.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: C, education fund.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: And those issues leading into your environment is, I think, really I mean, it's one of the most important issues that we're seeing, we get it with the education pressures. So I appreciate how you put the

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: priorities, because we're gonna be putting our budget network together, and we would have your three priorities, they may be split up as far as our ranking into tiers. Think we did tiered systems there.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: That worked okay. Yes, there was a key on the side.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I would make Ian risk the blood test. I'll feed that by Tuesday, man. That's good. So I have one last question, and we have five more minutes because we're going end at two. And I'm going let Angela have a question instead of mine. Maybe I'll start off.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: I don't know. Maybe it's the same question. Well, we heard from Representative Squirrel a few days ago, and he mentioned that your department has a carry forward of $800,000 And we just wanted to understand that more.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Yeah. So when we can provide the details on carryforward, one of the things that I think is interesting is the fiscal year does not care what happens from a billing perspective or pressure perspective. So when you hear carryforward, think money that we're spending. It just happens to be during the time of the year where the executive branch says, Okay, you still have pressures. Let's spend it right now. For example, I got seven expert witness requests last Friday. I hadn't received a single expert witness request for three weeks. They all came in on a Friday. And so percentage wise, we took up another forty percent of our expert witness fund was inhaled in one day. So when we talk about carryforward, Andy can detail that for you. That considerate dollars spent, but the inconvenience of our fiscal year being uncaring of what's happening in our department is the best way to think about it.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: So that number is primarily reflective of a large chunk of money that was unspent in the special investigation unit budget. As Tim mentioned, we have four budget lines. We have the state's attorney, the sheriffs, the victim advocates, and the SIUs. The SIUs have been having an incredibly difficult time connecting with law enforcement support services. So we have part of our money goes for program support to the SIUs and law enforcement support to the SIUs. Because of short staffing throughout the state of Vermont actually throughout the country in law enforcement services, they're not able to get dedicated law enforcement commitments. So if they don't have a commitment from a local agency or whomever and state police provide services without charge. But if for example St. Alden's Police Department for many years was supportive of the newsy, the Northern SIU, they were unable to commit any new hours. So that grant for the law enforcement in Franklin County did get spent. So there was a fit. Most of the money that was available in the end of last fiscal year was as a result of newsy underspending plus Orange County program would kind of go down. We've been able to revive it and Rutland kind of went down at one point, we had to revive it. So when they're not spending money, they kind of go offline and they have staff, we don't continue giving them money for staff that doesn't exist. So that was the bulk. The sheriffs on the other hand rolled into June 30 with $12.19 dollars in reserve. So you kind of see this at hundreds of thousands of dollars

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Really in budgeting.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: On and then $1,200 left in the sheriffs. The state's attorneys, some of that was just sort of as Tim says, the churn of people coming out in and out of the system. Victim advocates have so little turnover that last year that their vacancy savings number was 270,000. And you think we should be able to meet that. Still have not met vacancy savings for this year. Like we're still struggling to get to that number with the victim advocates. Of course, we're not gonna lay anybody up. So what happens at the end of the year is with our core budget lines and it's year to year, we are able, the 4th Floor, Commissioner Gresham will say, okay, it doesn't look like you're gonna make payroll for the state's attorneys. And that happened to us two years ago. We won't be able to make payroll. So he'll say take money from the sheriff, remove money from the sheriff's line. So at the end of the last week, couple of weeks in May and June, there's all of this moving money. So that's what happens too. So report I have that I'm able to provide that can give the community a little more information about where the where that money was. But that was pretty much from the SIU and some money in the state's attorneys as a result of some vacancies that we did late in the season.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: We've had a a couple of vacancies that we filled. But during the time period where the end of the fiscal year occurred, there was that gap. So it's sort of like a phantom savings.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Yeah. That's helpful because And here is my next question was gonna be, are you Can you move money among the four? Don't

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: do it during the fiscal year generally. What we do is in the last few payroll periods, we work with finance and management and tell them where the stress is, and then we can move somewhere. Thank you. It

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: wasn't my question. In one minute, so I just noticed that there isn't any ask for additional funding for transports. I know last year we asked for six. So has pressure been released, or have there been other ways of dealing with it?

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: On your website, you'll see that I had a memo that was submitted during your accountability docket discussion. You'll also see at the conclusion of of the massive PowerPoint that you have on your website, a title 24 memo describing that there's a large amount of there's people, there's entity, there's professions listed in title 24 that can perform transports that are not sheriff's staff. It's really a question. If the state would like sheriffs to continue to respond to about a 100% of the transport orders admitted in this, then, yes, we would need more staff, and we would need more overtime. If the state of Vermont, utilizing entities like Vermont Emergency Management that we had for the accountability docket, was willing to say, you know what? Transport deputies are busy all day today. We need someone from what's a what's a town that doesn't exist in Vermont? I don't find anyone. But with my town, right, Lincoln doesn't have a police department, the town where I grew up. Lincoln Police Department, can you please help with the transport today? Everyone would need to step up. If we were to expand accountability dockets, even to meet some of our current needs, all of law enforcement would need to be at the table and the Department of Corrections to move people in between facilities and things like civil hearings for PCRs, post conviction relief cases, shins hearings with an incarcerated parent, we our priority is the criminal division. One of the things I haven't mentioned yet is that I worked with judge Zone and the Supreme Court to alter administrative order 18. That was the order about when, you know, attorney Goodnow has a conflict between two courts, the judge sorts it out. I was previously essentially policing the priority for the transport program and really bothering a lot of judges. I'm not in the judicial branch, yet I'm telling them which this hearing is more important than this hearing. I'm understandably at great attention. I was nearly held in contempt for for engaging myself in one case, in Franklin in particular. Administrative order 18 means that judge zone a in the judicial branch will decide the priority, which means that there may be a very serious tie between weight of the evidence hearing and competency hearing, Windham County and Windsor County. The judicial branch will need to sort that out. So getting to your question, we need to improve scheduling. We need to improve how we are booking our transport time. The pressures are all still there, but everyone all of law enforcement plus better scheduling needs to happen. And my hope is that it does happen over the next year. The six transport deputies are have additional costs, including the sheriffs out in the field that have to get cruisers, all the different things that they need. So let's put it this way. The request from last year remains. It's just not going be on my top three priorities, because I hope that the courts and the rest of law enforcement recognize that we can't do it alone.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: We

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: started after one, I think. It was a little after one.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: No, she's going ahead. No, it's great.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Keep it going. I have a meeting at three, so I can No. You've mentioned the 3B docket and the potential extension of that a couple of times. And I'm very interested in understanding the resources that would be necessary to How do I even want to say this?

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Scale?

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Well, yes, to scale properly. What I'm worried about is, oh, look at this thing that works. This is so cool. And then like you said, either it becomes a fossil or we say we're expanding it, and we don't properly resource it, and then it doesn't work as well, surprisingly. It's so weird how that happens. So I just want to hear from you and from everyone, really. What is it actually going to take to make this work?

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Yeah. So on your website, you have an answer to this question written by an attorney with attorney language about what I could take. But to sum it up, we need to, first of all, make sure that we're tracking the work that we just did well. I mean, one's owning that right now. I mean, Sarah George is gonna step in on every Friday to do the accountability docket, but she doesn't have full time data staff. She's gonna have to take on the tracking exercise that Zach Wade had done Right. On her own.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: And I'm not even clear on whether or not that really will be a one day version of it exactly what was happening

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: with

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: all the players in the courtroom.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: A 100%. And we hope and we I have to say, I wanna make sure I keep this clear. Howard Center and AHS, that combo, we couldn't have made any of this progress if they weren't in the room. We do not have Howard Center in the other 13 counties. Howard Center has a staff office in the courts. Washington Counties, that's not the case. I don't think in any other county it's the case. And so that's a really big piece that has nothing to do with us per se, that the human services, housing, treatment infrastructure needs to be physically in the courthouse. They can't walk down the street. They won't go down the street after the hearing. They won't. We know that they will not do that. And it's because of the situations that they're in. That's number one. And then the flexibility of court time. These are two things that are out of my control that need to happen. Someone needs to be able to say to someone, we'll see you next Wednesday and actually mean it, and your trial's in thirty days. Flexibility of court time, AHS right there. And AHS has been a brilliant partner with DOC, all of DMH, all the folks. Know you don't often hear that from state's attorneys. DMH has been quite helpful, as has DOC in that docket. But that needs to be replicated across the state. With us, it's things like overtime for transports, overtime for admins, paralegals, and probably someone to own the data for us. Like I said, a docket manager to deploy and set up the meetings. Like, if we did it down in Windham County with mister Goodnow's constituency, hey. How do we do it? You need a release form to say all these people can talk to each other. And that without that release form then, Chittenden, none of this would have happened. So and from our opinion, I'm not quite sure what we need depending on the county from our resources other than probably overtime and additional some additional staffing. But it's those other two things need to happen first. Dedicated court time and human services right there, which is what really drove success. And another thing, Zach had 900 cases. That is totally inappropriate for most other folks, but he didn't have to deal with murders. He didn't have to deal with things involving extraditions in and out. And that allowed him to be like a social worker prosecutor in that case in that courtroom. And state's attorney George closed a huge amount of homicide cases during the last quarter. That's not a coincidence. I mean, I know she said it the other day. And I don't know if the staff and the norm has anything that I've missed on that, but I would also, Annie or Laura, anything you've observed.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Yeah, I would think that if this were to be replicated just from a staffing perspective, took a prosecutor out of the Washington Capitol office to dedicate to him, that's great. Michelle Donnelly deserves a lot of kudos for her willingness to support the program. But if you're looking at what would be a proper structure you probably need a dedicated prosecutor, victim advocatelegal assistant which we actually do have some active capacity right now at this time, probably an administrative person to do all of the filings and get paperwork ready, all of that scheduling. And in a situation where if it's not going to stay like if it's going be a one year project in a certain camp, leaving you to Windham, you probably want to hire those folks in the capacity of like a limited service. Attempts to me don't get benefits in Sydney.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Have a

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: hard time as a department we try very hard to make sure we're fair to people along with us. So I would say we almost want be looking at the community, three limited terms people, let them know this is a year's worth project right and you know then if project moves from other county you know they have those options if they want to go with it but otherwise they would know that it's been connected to them for a year. So I think people potentially be interested in that kind of work, would take that kind of work. Think that might be the structure that would suggest for long term review routes.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Is a long term version of limited service like floaters? Because I know that's not limited service, but I'm just hearing that we may not have the numbers in every county.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: The hard thing with floaters is that people like say for example they wanted to start programs to make this up like in Orleans County and then the person gets told now you're in Bennington. That's for the travel perspective. People are going to be just not going

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: to do that.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: So if you hire and they've got a job and the people who come in as women and serve, when you've seen it, they often just stay at the department when a physician becomes vacant, right? They move, hey I'd like to go there. So I think that's a good model because you show a commitment to them and when things change, try to make sure that they're first up for options to come back to the department as a permanent care.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: You can actually see on screen the breakdown of the number of people, the number of pending dockets that we were talking about. So you can see, right, 10,000 people in this have people with three or more. So there's 10,000 individuals in the state that right now

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: are kind What's of getting that? Where's the Oh,

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Here it is. Right here. Sorry, 1,700. Sorry. There's 10,000 total defendants in the state with at least one doctor. There's 1,700 with three

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: or more.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Six sixty five with five of them.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: As soon as you can

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: see, it's a minority of persons. If we can just get more services to those people and accountability, I mean, the dispositional data that Zachary provided to you wasn't just incarceration. It was parole probation treatment court. It was pretty scattered. It was a pretty even pie chart that most people at the beginning said, is this just going to incarcerate people? And I think we found out how it's combined. How many admin staff did Zachary? So in that situation, what we did was we spent about 30,000 in overtime for administrative staff in Chittenden County in the last quarter. And how many did we deploy on that from Sarah's office? It was Sarah's

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Basically anybody who was working in Sarah's office were willing to help out.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Oh, man, we all have questions.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm just wondering if the governor is really clear on what There was a chunk of money put aside, but what the range of costs are so that they Because it feels like us shortchanging that process seems unfortunate. It seems like the governor's office seems to fully understand accountability for it and what it's going to cost depending on where

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: it meets. Right. I'm going say something that I think the chair was gonna be getting at, but now that he's not here, I'll answer it. Pretrial supervision that you talked about. Oh boy. We need that a whole lot less when we have accountability docs.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: So we have the prosecutors and the defense saying, you don't need Can that unless you tell me It the

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: works when we have long delays, thirty, sixty, ninety days. That's where we need it. We have accountability dockets pushing, and I would say quicker court. And as representative Oliver said, I think on the radio, this is how court should be, quicker turnaround time. Then pretrial supervision works when someone's really lagging in the system for multiple disease. Yes, do listen.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: It actually weighs the dysfunction rather than

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: solving for the wrong thing.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: It still could work though. It works because of the way our lagging system is impacting people

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: right It's the system.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So Ken had his hand up, and I didn't realize since I'm midway through the mess. How

[Unidentified Committee Member]: did you get the warranty doing this?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I was sitting next to Martin. You have your hand up next. Okay.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: So if we were to and I'm not sure if this is your category, but I

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: think what I'm hearing it is. If we were

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: to do the same thing in Washington County as what was done in Chittenden County, would that help with your budget and everything else that goes along with it? Will that lower your cost? Over time, we've seen state attorney George said it's reduced the caseloads of her staff, meaning they have more time to work on the serious cases. So I think cost wise, I'm not sure I can say that now, but it will help with the work that's happening in Washington. From a pressure point in Washington, just because you've asked, and I know your constituency is, we don't have a detention facility here. So getting people to and from the Washington court is always a struggle. And we also don't have multiple judges. So Judge Pack, Judge Catums were able to do major felonies down the hallway, while Judge Malay did accountability docket repeat folks. In Washington, you'd have to think about it a little bit differently. Maybe it's a court time or judge time once a week and a family courtroom when it's not being used for family court. That would be a potential model. But then you need to make sure there's transport capacity to push people in and out once a week. Choosing a day a week or a couple of days a month helps with scheduling. It helps with the AHS side. They know, okay, I need people there that day. Ambiguity is what's gonna be a problem for this sort of thing. But knowing it's every Friday and shipment is, I think, a really good certainty piece for victim advocates to say, Okay, I got all my stuff on Monday through Thursday. I had get my accountability docket notices when they go out the week before.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And I hope taking the opportunity to look at that switch to Friday without having the same exact staffing there, if problems are identified, because that will further support what people need to do accountability for success. So Tom had his hand up, and then

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm playing.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And then Angela.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Did you, you asked your question, right?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Just like Martin, I'm done.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: I just thought you wanted to If

[Unidentified Committee Member]: you know if the Chittenden County pretrial service people are involved at all in the accountability.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: So special prosecutor Waite was very much involved with DOC, including the pretrial folks there. They were talking right at the start of the program. He He may have told you this, but the Defense Bar raised a number of concerns, particularly about the analysis that went into whether or not someone should be in pretrial supervision from DOC. So we're kind of learning from that.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm not talking pretrial supervision. The pretrial services.

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Oh, PTS. Yeah, the direct Yes, that's all. And thinking about the release that we signed, it made pretrial services actually something that the prosecutor and the defense and DSC could use. Okay, you've got housing, you're doing this, you've been to treatment three times in the last week, that's great. The flow of information back to the prosecutor could only have helped.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: It sort of emboldens that group of people into a different

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: In fact, there was a special, commission on mental health that the chair and I were both on. We talked about this a few years ago. If we have more information coming from the pre trial services load information across the state, as a prosecutor, I can say it changes my analysis about does this need a trial, does this need incarceration? People are engaging and they're not re offending. That's what you want to know.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, a

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: good distinction. Free trial services versus free trial supervision. Thank you.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Ian Smith? Yes.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Was just going to ask, did you say you were held in contempt?

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: No. I was

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: postified.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: I

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: did have to go to a discussion with the judge in person in Franklin County about why I told the sheriff not to perform a transfer. But we worked it out.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: My question was to the chair. I just wanted to know, so we're going have some

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: This is our last budget presentation.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Well, we're going to try to get DOC in, but apparently DOC doesn't really want to have us support their budget because they don't give me any time to actually work. Take your money. Was that Starkey? Are you listening to DOC? I hope you're listening to DOC. So I'm trying, but no, I'm just DOC, and I don't know how I'm gonna schedule the limited time that they're making themselves available to have us help with their budget is limited. So yeah, we probably are done. Okay. And so we'll just have our we'll have some discussions and And

[Unidentified Committee Member]: we could follow-up. We could get follow-up

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So, thanks. Thank you very much, Dan. And so, yeah, we we will be working on the budget memo, and I am probably myself going to be doing the first draft on Monday and might just reach out to you if I have. And I hope

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: the prioritization is helpful last year. It definitely is. It

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: is. Thank you very much. Thanks. You.

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: You can answer

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: your question,

[Annie Noonan (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: but So

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: we're going to go offline for adjournment till Tuesday

[Tim Lueders-Dumont (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: at