Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: We are live.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: This is Senate Appropriations, January 20. We're going through budget adjustment items requests. It's Governor, Governor's agency, today we have affirmative public safety. Please introduce yourself for the record and let us know what your budget adjustment is.

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: Sure. Thank you, Senator. My name is Jennifer Morrison. I'm the Commissioner of Public Safety. And we have a relatively straight and large budget adjustment request for FY '26. I'm gonna quickly introduce the folks who are with me, so in case you have questions, you'll know that they're here. But director Richard Hallenbeck, we call him Rick, who is the director of finance and administration, will be doing most of the talking. If you have questions related to the state police, Colonel Matthew Birmingham and Lieutenant Colonel Sean Larson are here. If you have questions about the requests in the Vermont Crime Information Center Director, Jeff Wallin is with me, and my ever steady wingman, Dan Batesy, is the Deputy Commissioner of this operation, and we're both here to fill in glass as needed. So, your permission, I'll turn things over to Director Hallamet.

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: Yep, thank you. Okay, thank you.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And do you know everybody here, or do you need the induction?

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: I know everyone in the room,

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: so. Good.

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: Thank you. Good afternoon. If the chair is okay with it, I'll share my screen and I'll bring up the crosswalk document that should have already been shared.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Assuming we also have this online. It has the we also have this worksheet that Richard Refresh and Data, so it's helpful that we have the numbers to cross reference.

[Senator Anne Watson (Member)]: Sure.

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: For the record, And Rick Hollenden, Director of Finance and Administration and Public Safety, if you would like me to just walk you through this line by line. Yeah.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I mean, if there's lines that are very small, we

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: don't need to go over everyone. It's there's very few lines to the request, so I'll combine the first two.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: If it's all zero, you don't have to go.

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: So the first two lines in administration are related to a revenue shortfall in our interdepartmental fund, which is user of a cost center for our indirect cost rate. I also provided the committee with a little handout that kind of gives an overview of our indirect cost rate and how we do this. Basically the indirect cost rate, it's a ratio of the direct versus indirect cost. An example of the direct cost would be like a trooper on the road. It's a direct cost from the state police, whereas an indirect cost would be like the commissioner and myself, where we're involved in the administration of all of the programs.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Do you apply that only to federal funds, basically? We apply it

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: to federal funds, special funds, and sometimes interdepartmental grants that are ultimately a federal source. It's developed annually by the DPS administration and approved by our cognizant agency, FEMA. And when we draw that revenue based on the rate, funds are spent on staffing costs and internal service fees. And you can the two operating expenses are for vision and human resources. Those are the internal service fees, and requested is 760,000. You may recall last year, we had a similar request. The amount was just over $1,100,000 in our FY '25 budget adjustment. This fine. With the chair's permission, I I can move to B 209. Yes. It's for the state police, overturned line item. 865762 is our projected line item, Sheriff Hall, birth 26 for both sworn and civilian overtime, which is majority of that service on public safety and certain ones, or dispatch centers. The cost increase is primarily driven by three factors. One, had a reclassification of troopers last year, so that changed their overtime rate, that changed from the regular rate, their overtime rate will also increase. Maintaining proper staffing in the public safety answer points that accounts for roughly a third of the state police overtime. And there's also a 100,000 for the patrols that we had to perform in Burlington right around the time of

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the holidays. Was it just the holidays? Was that a part of his that was all volunteer overtime?

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: It was late November through December 31 is what I recall. Whether or not that happened, happened sooner or our normal.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And of that $8.65, then over time, how much was the floor during was that all of it, is it

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: just not a normal other than normal? 100,000 of the

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: $8.65. Okay. Well, Claire, is that is this a normal budget adjustment for overtime, or was

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: there something else? I I assumed more a lot more than a 100,000 was for that. What else? The state police trooper reclassifications increase the rates. Mhmm. This crossing more than the same number of hours, and then dispatchers there over time. They have account for about a third state leases.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Because when we made the budget, we didn't account for that increase? Could we put that in this year? Yes.

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: We did increase over time in the FY '27.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I just assume when we did the budget, we would have accounted for the change in the reclassification, but maybe the timing is

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: Yeah. This is just based on what our projections are showing us. We did our due diligence in building the overtime budget for 2026 when we're preparing a big bill.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: This is just the difference between the proceeding practice and roughly the personal order of care. Okay. And you're saying it's the recognized change in strategies. You're like, there was a reduction or it's like you you had you just didn't have enough staff, so people had to do overtime and work to meet the need?

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: There there isn't enough staff in both the sworn and civilian side, the dispatchers. In the dispatchers or with the In the public safety answering points, that's where the dispatchers work and

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The sworn officers, do you have or do we have any, like, a large vacancies in the number of again, in the

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: past, there's been an issue. You you may want to have the colonel on that. I know we have vacancies in both civilian dance.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. We can go over the budget stuff and then Great. Maybe we'll have So, Watson?

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: Me raise this question. I'm thinking about the operating expenses up and I'm not objecting to anything, but sometimes when numbers are both too round or too precise, it makes me just question things. And so, in terms of the 760,000 for the vision and then the human services, are you thinking like the 760,000 is the right number, and you

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: were just dividing, like it's a third here, like how did you end up with the numbers for the human services? Great question. Yeah. The line items that I chose are somewhat arbitrary, This is just a revenue shortfall, and so I picked two of the internal service fee amounts that add up to the 760,000 or short. My recollection is to be calculated, it's, like, 759,000 and change. Okay. Forgot the exact number. Okay. We rounded it to 700,000. Gotcha. Okay.

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: Thank you. Sorry

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: to go back to that one, but did you change the indirect rate because of the shortfall? Did I hear you say that you did change the indirect rates to kind of avoid having the trial next?

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: We haven't changed it to avoid this problem. The rate is calculated, It's the ratio of our direct indirect costs. We calculate it, and it does fluctuate year to year. But after we calculate it, then we send it to FEMA, and then have to change the rate. It But would be ideal if we could just simply pick the rate to get the revenue stream. We're not able to do that.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But maybe with your total budget, dollars 160 isn't a big percentage, and you're not off that much. I assume at some point if you had to come back every year to adjust, we would recalculate it to see if you have the right answer.

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: Yeah, and part of the issue is not just the rate. There are certain parameters, like some federal grants only like 10% of the grants, and if your rate's one five, you only get 10%, and there's a cap on contracts and grants. So if we have to program a bunch of large grants and contracts, we can only draw the first 25,000, or draw a rate on the first 25,000.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay, yeah. So

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: the next appropriation B210, criminal justice service appropriations,

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: and more specifically, the

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: Wrong Crime Information Center. We're looking for a $570,000 increase in contracts or a contract with third party services. The contract we have with computer projects that are that is sort of UPS message switch. Basically, the switch is it facilitates the electronic transmission and receive restricted data to authorized users. The existing hardware is past end of life, giving to an inability to get parts, and security patches and updates. So rather than purchasing all new hardware for for an on prem solution, this cloud option was chosen. And at the time we we received this simple history record check fund had the cash available, but that cash balance can go over the years in length of time it took for the project to come through the ratio.

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: Question?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: New system is cloud based. Yes. And so I assume that that I just feel like the need to ask the question, which is that, it's all up to date with, you know, security features, multi country authentication, things like that.

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: It it it it go through the agency of digital services. So we'll certainly have

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: it inside the cost. Amazing. Thank you.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I think I saving by going on. Sorry. Sure. Or savings by going in the cloud, like, in the long term. Is that one of

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: the reasons especially cloud and Mhmm. Well, it's less expensive than building another on prem solution. But in in the long term, this system is actually gonna need to be replaced, and so it'll be an RFP student for that. For the cloud system? For cloud system. That contract, we've extended it several times, and if you're looking at future costs, it may not be prudent to stay with the same vendor.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Commissioner?

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: Any any information any system that transmits CGIS, CJIS, criminal justice information systems, right, has extremely high security requirements, and we're audited on those by the FBI and other partners. So we we absolutely have protocols. And if you really wanna get into the nitty gritty, direct the law and demand. Likewise, if anyone really wants to talk about the message switch and why this was antiquated, and it and it remains antiquated even with the shift to the cloud, I wanna be clear, and it took years to get to this leap to move it to the cloud, it is still antiquated and in need of replacement. But the message switch is an absolutely foundational piece of the way we move information, not just between law enforcement agencies, but by anyone who has the authority to access criminal justice information. And that's far more than just police agencies. That answers my question.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Good.

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: Great. So that ends this page. There's nothing for emergency management's warfare safety, whoever identified. Directive attention from the very bottom of the page where I added Conception, Convenience, one on one for fund transfers. Is for the, just I mentioned, it's under the criminal history record check fund that the balance had been removed. We did have a budget adjustment, or yeah, a budget adjustment last year that transferred some funding to the Missouri record check one, and we do need another this year. It's a the amount is $1.59 and that's what our projected deficit is for fiscal twenty six.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It seems like since it's been two years in a row, have have you or the governor thought about raising the fee that people pay to get the criminal records checks so that you don't have a deficit? I thought what that means? Is that the problem that you're not charging them for it? That's why

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: you exempt? We have explored that, and we are similar with other states by average. There are some that charge more, some that charge less, but we're kind of in there, in line with what other states charge.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Where are you transferring the money from?

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: It's a general fund transfer to a criminal history of record check.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: What do you charge now?

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: It's $30 to get it online for a criminal conviction.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: How much would it need to be to cover this million dollar bill? Like how many do you do? What's, do you have that in

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: your debt? I don't, I can get that.

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: Jeff, Mike.

[Jeffrey Wallin (Director, Vermont Crime Information Center)]: The record, Jeffrey Wallin, director of Vermont Crime Information Center. We process, I was just looking at the numbers, so I should have it at the

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: tip of my tongue, and

[Jeffrey Wallin (Director, Vermont Crime Information Center)]: I don't have it. We process somewhere in the order of magnitude of one to two hundred thousand revenue generating checks per year for that fee. There's another similar number that are charged at no cost to local agencies that provide the care for the elderly, children with disabilities for that. So it's a fairly large number. Most of those checks, based on our analysis, done by out of state background check companies, are doing housing, employment checks, etcetera, where an individual indicates they've lived or worked in Vermont, whatever their metric is, so they actually have an agreement with ADS, the billing structure there, and we receive those funds.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So maybe even just a $10 increase, but we're also gonna get close to raising incentives. You'd have to look at everything that goes into that particular fund. There may be some items in there that mortgage and capital is the most appropriate place to pull the funding from, but we could do some kind of analysis of that. I'd be interested to know what the three would need to be to cover that, especially since a lot of her monitors aren't paying.

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: Are you more interested in making the funds solvent or in figuring out other category? There are many categories of people who use this service that don't pay at all, and we don't have the ability to charge them five

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: to It would be good to see that list. Yeah. Maybe we would agree with it, and then we wouldn't. But that was definitely two sides of the ledger there. So yeah.

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: Okay. We can we can take that back and crunch some numbers.

[Colonel Matthew Birmingham (Director, Vermont State Police)]: In your case, senator Norris.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So just so I know, I would

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: ask several people in here.

[Jeffrey Wallin (Director, Vermont Crime Information Center)]: You're talking about a Vermont court records check versus the fingerprinting, which is what, dollars 25 for the fingerprints by statute? So Senator, thank you for that. There are two different functions that VCIC fills in that role, and they're essentially unrelated to one another. So the online conviction reports where anyone can go on for commercial purpose, or just curiosity, name, date of birth, see if an individual has any convictions in Vermont, and that's $30 That is separate from the fingerprint check process we do, which is roughly $20,000 or so per year for civil purposes, so nurses, teachers, childcare workers, real estate appraisers, the various entities that are subject to that. There is a fee of $35 to the local agency to take the prints can charge, and none of that money comes to VCIC.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We're also have passed through to the FBI for the fingerprint portion of their check. We do retain roughly $2 per check for that, but we receive no other revenue for processing fingerprints. All the fingerprint operations are supported by the online conviction report revenue.

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: Okay.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Thank you. So that fee, if this stays, like, you go to the sheriff's office, the sheriff office uses that fee to cover their costs through the fingerprinting. That's correct, sir. Yes. Then they also control Well, complaint I hear about fingerprinting is how long it takes. Whole another story. No, nothing. You've got to just cover it up.

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: We we are deeply involved. Okay.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Could you give an example of someone who wouldn't be required to pay or just doesn't pay and maybe one that wouldn't just, and maybe what the ratio is, and what's the ratio of people who pay the $30 and don't. So the ratio between the two groups, it's roughly 50%, it varies a little bit year by year, you know, in the 40s, high 40s, but I call it 50 just for averages approximately. We do see that number year to year changes a little bit for that. And then the type of agency that pays to be again, and we see that in New York and California, these large background check companies that do it for leasing, for employment, and do a commercial service that run this, so they do pay that $30 fee. Then to be that wouldn't would be, for example, a local agency that provides meals and support and healthcare support to seniors, should be check ins, things like that, so they provide care to the health So

[Senator Anne Watson (Member)]: for example, would it be OND rides

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: for public transit? Volunteer rides for public transit.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So if determined that they're providing care or care placement, which is a federal definition to that individual, so we'd have to look at that particular and what they're doing. You want to

[Senator Anne Watson (Member)]: see the list because they complain a lot about volunteer drivers taking people to dialysis having to pay.

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: They pay the backroom. They might pay for the fingerprints.

[Senator Anne Watson (Member)]: No, I don't know whether they charge or not, but there's a fair amount that people that volunteer their time have to pay for background checks.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: What we often see is, again, there's a federal, the definition of care or care placement comes from a federal rule, so that's what we default to. And what we'll see is, I'll give you an example, we've worked a lot with some of the, I'll use colloquial term meals on meals, where simply dropping off a meal is not considered care, but they almost all do welfare checks, provide records and resources. Once we work with them on that, okay, it becomes clear they're not just dropping off a plate of food and taking a dirty one, they're doing a lot more than that.

[Senator Anne Watson (Member)]: I get all of that, and I, Senator Lyons and I both have a bill on that, and because they do get charged in that, and there's a piece of, it's a zero sum game in here because when you get to this table, we're either gonna pay for it because you've done it, or we it comes out of the general fund someplace else to pay through the AAAs to do it. So for us at this table, it's almost a zero sum game.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's probably good to see the list.

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: Yes. We'd be happy provide a breakdown for you, again, remembering that there's sort of two lanes when we're talking about these things. One is a fingerprint supported background check, which is very different than running a criminal history check.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yep. You guys just deal with the No. Second one, criminal background check. We deal with both. As far as the fee goes, don't you just charge for the second one, not the fingerprint? So the fingerprinting, there's the up to $35 charge that the agency taking the prints can charge, again that's strictly within the agency. The federal government charges a, it's generally $12 to process fingerprints, and they retain about $2 of that charge. So if we do 20,000 fingerprints, we invest about $40,000 in revenue to retain. That's something that the Feds just say, we'll give you $2 as far as your fixed income. So to say, like, we have less ability to die on that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So in this I'll start by my Jeff, is this The money that's been located to DCF, is that updating their system, is that just for fingerprints, or is it

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: for record checks and fingerprints?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So the money that DCF has received to modernize the fingerprint process is strictly for that fingerprint process. Essentially, online name and date of birth invention, it's real, it's near real time. If you go on and put Jeff Wallin twelvenineseventy three and hit enter, within ten seconds you get a result. It's all automatic, so there's no real lag time there, that happens very, very quickly. It's very rare that we have any issues where two people with the same name and date of birth come up, and when we do, then we assist that agency to square that in one case. The fingerprinting has a lot more manual process, and fingerprinting takes.

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: That was the That was the question. That's what I have.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah. It would be interesting. I have couple questions for him. Yeah. We would. And then I have a question about PSAP employment. Would be That'd be better for you as well. Fire away. Okay. Wherever you have. If you want to, you're done, then you can have him sit there. That's a.

[Colonel Matthew Birmingham (Director, Vermont State Police)]: Introduce yourself. Matthew Birmingham, I'm the director of safety.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Thanks for being here. Maybe a little bit off of the budget that you're here, we're gonna have questions about. So I know that you can tell us something about PSAPs, a revolving door is difficult.

[Colonel Matthew Birmingham (Director, Vermont State Police)]: Yeah. So, we have two, the PSAPs are the public safety answering points for the 911 system. There's six of them in the state. We have two. We call them our emergency communication centers because they do more than just answer nine on one calls. They're also dispatch centers. So we have two of them in the state police.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We have

[Colonel Matthew Birmingham (Director, Vermont State Police)]: the one at Williston and the one at Westminster, and they're staffed by a civilian or a non sworn staff with and we have had a tremendous difficulty over the last five years staffing them. So what we've had to do is, you know, work with the union to adjust pay. We've had to pay them overtime. They work twelve hour shifts, and four of those hours are on overtime because we have we have to cover the the twenty four hour clock. The staffing hasn't improved, I'm happy to say, but it's still a challenge, and it's it costs money to run have that vacancy rate and the turnover rate because because of the amount of work that they're doing. It it does burn people out fairly quickly, but we have stabilized in in that regard, but it's still it's still a challenge. On the sworn side, for the troopers, we're about 17% vacancy rate. We have 56 vacancies today at about three twenty two sworn positions, so we are covering a lot of That seems better than it was. It is better than it was. We are improving. Yes. We were almost as high as 70 at one point. So we've had The few classes have been substantially larger, the police academy classes. Don't you have one starting soon? We have one in right now. There's 12 people in it, and the one prior to that was 14, and the one prior to that was 14. But but but twenty twenty twenty eighteen is where 2019 is where it really started to plummet. We were seeing classes of five and six, that was unsustainable. Then we had a net loss of state troopers every year from 2019 to last year. Last year was the first year we hired more than cross. So that's positive. Yeah. But we're still in the hole. So we do cover a lot of our shifts on overtime because, again, we have to we have to cover the shifts, and that's the only way to do it. So to answer your question earlier, I think that that's important about the reclassification. That did not hit our books until June, so the legislature was not in session. So that's why it didn't appear on the twenty sixth budget request, And it was retroactive to September '24, because that's when it was filed. The reclassification was filed by the by well, it was a management classification. And so it did not hit our books until '26. Day of Morton's, were they part of that? They had their own They were not. It was well, that's not true. It was a it was a there were yes. They were. They were. It was a statewide law enforcement reclassification review by all agencies, and game wardens and state police moved the most in that reclassification process. So that that was substantial in terms of budget pressure for us because all their base pay moved up, and therefore, all their overtime pay moves up as well, and we couldn't absorb it. And and again, we're covering shifts on overtime, our shift, and then we had troopers in Burlington for at least two months on overtime. And those were voluntary shifts. Troopers signed up for those on their own. And the

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: other overtime is not voluntary because you just

[Colonel Matthew Birmingham (Director, Vermont State Police)]: have to cover the ships? Correct. So it it well, it's not voluntary from a management standpoint, meaning they have to be filled, but we try and get troopers to agree to work them to force them to work because that's the last thing we wanna do because that's a quick way to burn people out. So

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. It's correct on the suspend. Yes.

[Colonel Matthew Birmingham (Director, Vermont State Police)]: And yeah. So we prefer our first hope is that we open the shifts up that we need as people sign up on their own because they're getting paid overtime, and that's where we're at currently. So we are not mandating coverage of these shifts, but we had we had When we were at 70 vacancies for as long as we were, we did have a rotation where you're you you basically, your number came up at some point. You had to sign up for a shift every couple months. It's but you had choice on where and when. We we moved past that, and now it's just a a voluntary sign up, which is important to us because that's a quick way to earn your workforce out.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: No. I'm glad to hear that the vacancies have decreased. But I didn't know that we were having similar problem with dispatchers. Yes. I didn't know if that if that if there's something that's changed because I know I think sworn officers, things have changed since 2019, but I don't know if they, just the PSAPs have had it, if they're just getting, why do you think you're having more turnover with

[Colonel Matthew Birmingham (Director, Vermont State Police)]: the The complexities of that job make it very challenging very challenging. Has it gotten worse though? We've stabilized the complexities of it. I don't want to get too far into this because it's a complicated conversation that can get a lot bigger really fast in terms of dispatching responsibilities, but we have when I when I backed you up about the nine one one and dispatching, so it's kind of a dual answer dispatching system where we both answer 911 calls and then we we dispatch the entities out into the world, whether it's fire, police, or EMS. So we don't just dispatch for the state police. We dispatch for a lot of municipal agencies, fire, EMS, and police agencies, and the complexities of that as an employee can be very challenging because you have to learn a lot. You have to learn about 911, you have to learn about dispatching, and you have to learn there's a lot of different nuances where every single entity has their own way of being dispatched, and there's fire, there's EMS, and it can be complicated. We've done a lot of work to try and shed a lot of that complexity by working with a lot of the towns and the entities that we dispatch for to try and not simplify it, but make it easier on on the employees. And with the pay adjustments, I mean, there's been quite a substantial increase in pay for for our dispatchers, and that is obviously an incentive in in a lot of ways. So those two things combined have stabilized our situation. And their state employee. Yeah. Our state employee. And they work for the state police and the department.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Does that Commissioner, that's the study that we'd like to talk about with the the is did does that get into that or that's just dealing with the towers? I'll I know you're home It's

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: It's okay, Dan. You'll be alright.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: No. It's not gotten to that level. We're we're just talking about the

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: the heart Talk talk about a situation that can get really big really fast. Yes. The the overall architecture of the way both 911 calls and dispatching happen have been talked about, although Public Safety Communications Task Force was passed with the dispatching side of it, not the 911 system. Right. So there will be recommendations forthcoming from that

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: passport. To, like, how to keep a

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: It does, but there it's a little bit of a menu better, really better, and best. But there's also, like, here are the things you can do a short term. So low hanging fruit, standardizing some things versus the really big things that get really expensive really fast.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And when does that these recommendations be?

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: Within two weeks,

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: I think.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. Great.

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: So Dan has Philip has been going as co chair for the last seven months so that I could get up on the balcony and represent DPS' best interest as opposed to being the co chair of the task force because there are going to be recommendations coming from the task force that we don't agree with.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Did the annual combat pay for that?

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: Well, I did for two years.

[Daniel 'Dan' Batsie (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Public Safety)]: Mister chair, Stan Bates, deputy commissioner. I'll just add that these challenges also represent sort of a broad notion of recruitment or retention issues across public safety, not just dispatchers, fire, EMS, law enforcement in general. None of them are immune to these challenges. I don't think you're seeing that in addition to the specific local issues that we're dealing with.

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: I think we would be remiss if we didn't mention that in the PSAP space, we're at full staffing in Westminster, which is the first time in my tenure that that has happened. That's not the case in Williston. There's eight eight current eight, nine current vacancies. Uh-huh. Which is very representative of the other job options that are available in Chittenden County that don't require nights, weekends, and holidays, and and people at their worst moment and scary, terrible stuff on a constant every time you pick up the phone. Yeah. So I think that we have to recognize that the job market's very different in one area versus the other, and Williston will probably always be one that we're constantly trying to recruit, hire, and retain for.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Because you have to pay the incentives. Of course. Yeah. Like, it's regardless of where

[Richard 'Rick' Hallenbeck (Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety)]: the It

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: depends on their contract. Yeah.

[Colonel Matthew Birmingham (Director, Vermont State Police)]: There's more opportunity if they if they're unhappy in their job in Wilson, there's more opportunity for them to get another job pretty quick in that job market, and Westminster is not as easy. So they end up staying longer and making a career out of it. Check them. Check them. There's always exceptions.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is is the the actual job upper in Williston than it is in Westminster? Same same type of job. Same of I mean, is it more

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: I've never done their job, so I

[Colonel Matthew Birmingham (Director, Vermont State Police)]: can't begin with students. The same sheriffs that it is the same job. They're both they have different entities they dispatch for. So Westman, they're handles generally the Southern part of the state and what Wilson handles the northern part of the state. But they're all they all have EMS. They all have fire. They all have law enforcement.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You all fall over, like so you could be in Wells then get a call from Brownburg?

[Colonel Matthew Birmingham (Director, Vermont State Police)]: Yes. Because there's redundancy and backup. And so if one center is overwhelmed with calls, it will it will automatically default to the second center. But in theory, you could take a dispatcher in Westminster and they could plug right in both us and then not blink an eye and be able to do that job interchangeably,

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: in theory. Any other questions for public safety? Thanks for your service. Thank

[Jennifer Morrison (Commissioner of Public Safety)]: you you very much. Okay,

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: we don't have

[Colonel Matthew Birmingham (Director, Vermont State Police)]: anything else. We have one more.